Mikhail Lermontov. Combat officer. Part of 1
The future officer and poet was born in 1814 in the family of Yury Petrovich Lermontov and Maria Mikhailovna Arsenyeva. Michael's father came from the Scottish clan Lermontov, and mother had a direct relationship with the noble family of Stolypin and the boyar family of Arsenyev. However, this marriage was unhappy. Soon Yuri lost interest in Maria and began to look at other persons of the opposite sex. During one of the quarrels, Yury Petrovich just punched his wife with his fist, which was the beginning of the end of the family. Soon, Maria died, and Yuri was alone with his mother-in-law - Mikhail Yuryevich's grandmother Elizaveta Alekseevna.
Misha Lermontov in childhood
Elizaveta Alekseevna, an old widow, kept the estate in her fist and was a strong and strong-willed woman, so the Scottish offspring had to almost run away from the mother’s great estate, leaving her son in the care of her grandmother. Thus, Mikhail Yurevich remained in the Tarkhany estate. Strict Elizabeth Alekseevna, surprisingly, didn’t like the soul in Misha. She spent huge sums on his upbringing, but her grandson, feeling all the tension in his formal family, was still unhappy. This situation aggravated Misha's extremely poor health. By the way, this is why, as a child, his grandmother took him to the Caucasus for treatment, who conquered the future poet.
All the time, Michael was surrounded by teachers and mentors, whom my grandmother periodically changed. One of the teachers was a colonel of the old French Guard, a certain Gendreau, a prisoner of the 1812 war of the year. Perhaps it was he who put the delight of the future officer in the soul of military glory with his stories about the era of that great war. In Tarkhany, through the efforts of the grandmother, an excellent library was assembled, and Mikhail, at the age of 11, engaged partly in self-education, while grandmother was looking for another worthy mentor. One way or another, but even before entering Moscow Noble University Boarding House, Lermontov knew, besides Russian, French, German and English.
Manor Tarkhany
In 1828, he entered the boarding house, immediately to the senior department, and in 1830, Michael moved to the university itself. Two years later, Mikhail the mischievous, having quarreled with Professor Malov, left the university at his own request (officially). Having gone to Petersburg under the influence of the Stolypin kin and partly of his own torments, Mikhail enrolled in the School of the Guards Secondary lieutenants and cavalry junkers. In 1834, Lermontov went out of the school gate as a cornet of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment. Despite his turbulent literary activity of that time, he recalled his studies at school as “deux annees terribles” (two terrible years). This melancholy, hidden under the touch of hussar bravado, went through almost all his life.
Monument to Lermontov next to the building of the former School of Guards Secondary Guards and cavalry junkers
This was followed by the first poetic takeoff, interrupted by the death of Pushkin. Bomond, buzzing with all sorts of nonsense to the deceased Alexander Sergeyevich, irritated the young hussar. In addition, some women with zero abilities and the same education (however, as now) openly sympathized with Dantes. In response to these worldly squabbles, Lermontov burst out with the poem “Death of a Poet.” Soon those representatives of the beau monde, whom he had touched for the great poet's talent, began scribbling numerous denunciations against Lermontov (again, as now). Mikhail was arrested and sent to the Caucasus in the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment with the rank of ensign.
Once in the Caucasus, he immediately began to "learn the Tatar language" (then the so-called Azerbaijani) and sprinkled ashes on his head, which did not have enough time to master it. The intercession of a well-born grandmother, which Michael did not ask for, returned Lermontov to the Grodno Hussars, and later in the Life Guards Hussars. So the first link was an easy voyage.
Returning to St. Petersburg, he was again mired in the life of the capital. And that same duel broke out that abruptly changed the life of the poet, as if fate itself was trying to “save” Lermontov from the meaninglessness of court life. The reasons for the duel between Mikhail Yuryevich and the son of the French ambassador, Ernest Barant, are many. This is the struggle for the heart of the court persona, and the sharp language of Lermontov, and his dislike for the French after the Pushkin duel, and so on. Anyway, 18 February 1840 of the year (old style) in St. Petersburg in the area Pargolovskoy road duel. At first, duelists fought with swords, when Lermontov's blade broke, they switched to pistols. Barant missed, and Mikhail Yuryevich, having spared the opponent, shot in the air.
Portrait of Lermontov by Peter Zabolotsky
After a duel, Mikhail Yuryevich was arrested a few weeks later and put on trial. Due to great wisdom and traditional fear of offending the high overseas guests, the son of the French ambassador was not attracted to the proceedings at all, even the convictions were not shown. Some officers at the court began to look at Barant, to put it mildly, disapprovingly. While the French dandy continued to enjoy the high society, the guard officer was first detained in the Petersburg officer's prison, and later in the Arsenal guardhouse. Therefore, Barant began to assert, in order to raise his reputation, that the poet was aiming at him, but he missed.
The effect was the opposite. First, the poet could miss, but now the officer is unlikely. Secondly, and this is important, even if we imagine that Lermontov lied, there were no reasons for this lie. This would not have made his fate easier, because he was tried not for participating in a duel, but for “failing to report.” If, of course, Mikhail Yuryevich had shot the Frenchman, he would have been convicted of murder, and the rest of the participants - for aiding. In addition, after learning of the gossip spreading by Barant, Lermontov insisted on a personal meeting with the French, during which he offered to shoot again, hinting that he would now precisely send pardoned Barant to the coffin.
But the son of the French ambassador did not have to sweat, thinking about the new duel. The authorities quickly found out about this and demanded Mikhail Yuryevich to apologize to Barant. Lermontov flatly refused. As a result, the young officer was sent to the Caucasus in the Tengin regiment, i.e. on one of the hottest sections of seemingly everlasting war. This was done, of course, as instructed above, because the duel became known in Europe and exposed the gossip Barant, and, accordingly, the prestige of France to ridicule.
Small sketches devoted to military service, brushes of Lermontov himself
On June 10, 1840, Lermontov arrived at the House of the Commander of the Caucasus Line in Stavropol. Stavropol in comparison with other settlements of the North Caucasus was a real center of life. Officers from central Russia and from outposts of the empire in the Caucasus came here to await a new appointment. The trade with mountain residents was in full swing. Every evening, friends, relatives and acquaintances who had not seen each other for months, or even years, preparing for the next long separation, arranged revels. Luxurious by those standards and conditions, the Naytaki Hotel (named after the main tenant of the Greek Petr Naytaki) even received the code name "officer club", where Lermontov lived for some time. Now historical the building is rented by merchants of all stripes, introducing a unique touch of savagery into architecture.
Finally it was time to go and Michael, but the distribution annoyed him to the extreme. The officer was supposed to go to the Black Sea coastline. And it completely deprived him of at least some even the slightest freedom of action. No, not the gravest service frightened 26-year-old Lermontov, but the fact of constant waiting on the spot. Therefore, Mikhail Yuryevich, having learned that a military expedition was being prepared against the detachments of Shamil himself, immediately began writing petitions to send him to this inferno.
At the same time, Muridism entered into force. This Sufi teaching from Persia began to conquer the minds of ordinary people with its doctrine of the equality of the faithful. The leaders of the Highlanders, having understood this simple truth of the temptation of the promise, took Muridism into service, uniting the nations. However, democracy did not even smell here. Muridism quickly became political and military. weaponsbecause rallied people instantly sent to war with the Russian Empire, declaring gazavat. Soon the naibs (governors) of the imam and their entourage overlaid the peoples with such high requisitions and introduced such harsh courts that Muridism no longer smelled. As a result, in our history, Muridism is associated exclusively with bloody wars.
General Galafeev
As a result, on the wave of, so to say, “political muridism” Avar Shamil began to rise. Immediately for the start of the war, the new leader set about administering the territory in order to rally various tribes and ethnic groups into a single army. Ichkerians, Kakkalykites, Galashevs, Karabulaks and Chechens flocked to the call of Shamil. To counter this army, an expeditionary detachment was formed under the command of General Apollon Vasilievich Galafeev, who already had awards for the victory over Imam Tashev-Khadzhi and for a successful but bloody assault on the mountain fortified village of Ahulgo in Dagestan.
The detachment assembled by Galafeev, like all other detachments that went to war with the militant imams of Chechnya and Dagestan, was called Chechensky, and it was formed in the fortress of Grozny, founded by General Alexei Petrovich Yermolov (now the city of Grozny). Having persistently requested his transfer here, Lermontov entered the fortress of Grozny by the end of June (beginning of July) and joined the expeditionary detachment with the rank of lieutenant.
To be continued ...
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