Curated playlist
Recipients of the Order of St. Anna, 1st class
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOn the 13th of October 1806, Napoleon's army poured into Weimar, and the least disciplined of the French soldiers, the so-called spoon guards, broke into the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They drank his wine, made a great uproar, and…
- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of WellingtonArthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was born in Dublin in 1769 as the sixth of nine children, and died in 1852 holding the rank of Field Marshal and the position of Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. His mother once described…
- Napoleon IIINapoleon III was born in the Tuileries Palace in Paris on the night of the 19th-the 20th of April 1808 - the first Bonaparte prince born after the proclamation of the First French Empire. His godfather was the Emperor Napoleon I himself.…
- Fabian Gottlieb von BellingshausenFabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen stood on the deck of the sloop Vostok on the 27th of January 1820, and looked out at something no human being had ever confirmed seeing before: the landmass of Antarctica. He had crossed the Antarctic…
- Maximilian I of MexicoMaximilian I of Mexico stood before a Republican firing squad on the Cerro de las Campanas on the 19th of June 1867 and handed each of his executioners a gold coin. It was a gesture of courtly European dignity from a man who had crossed an…
- Alexander III of RussiaAlexander III of Russia was born on the 10th of March 1845 at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, the second son of the future Alexander II. He grew up as a spare, not an heir. His elder brother Nicholas was the one schooled for empire,…
- Alexander I of RussiaAlexander I of Russia was born at 10:45 on the 23rd of December 1777 in Saint Petersburg, held at the baptismal font by Catherine the Great herself and counted Frederick the Great and Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor among his godfathers. He…
- Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of Russia was born on the 29th of April 1818, and by the time he died he had freed more than 23 million people from bondage, sold an entire continent's worth of territory, and been blown apart by a bomb on a canal road in…
- Fyodor RostopchinFyodor Rostopchin left Moscow on the 14th of September 1812 after ordering his own house burned to the ground. He left behind disassembled fire engines, fuses planted throughout the city, and a small detachment of police charged with…
- Gebhard Leberecht von BlücherGebhard Leberecht von Blücher was 74 years old, still reeking of schnapps and rhubarb liniment, still aching from being trampled under cavalry horses two days earlier, when he led his army on a muddy night march to rescue the Duke of…
- Michael Andreas Barclay de TollyMichael Andreas Barclay de Tolly led the largest Russian army to face Napoleon in 1812, and his countrymen called him a coward and a traitor. Rumors spread that he was Napoleon's own agent. His subordinates demanded he abandon the strategy…
- Nikolay KaramzinNikolay Karamzin once said his surname traced back to a baptized Tatar called Kara-mirza, an ancestor so distant that no records survived his name. That story tells you something important about Karamzin himself: he was a man who searched…
- Fyodor TyutchevFyodor Tyutchev wrote roughly 400 short poems across his entire life, yet he rarely bothered to write them down. When he did, he frequently lost the scraps of paper they were scribbled on. He called them bagatelles, trifles not worth…