Alexander Vorontsov

Who was Alexander Vorontsov?

Count Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov was the Russian imperial chancellor during the early years of Alexander I's reign.

He began his career at the age of fifteen in the Izmailovsky regiment of the Guards. In 1759, his uncle, the grand chancellor Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov, sent him to Strasbourg, Paris and Madrid to train him in diplomacy. Under Peter III, who was in love with his sister Elizabeth, he represented Russia for a short time at the court of St James's. Catherine II created him a senator and president of the Board of Trade; but she never liked him, and ultimately compelled him to retire from public life.

In 1802, Alexander I summoned him back to office and appointed him imperial chancellor. This was the period of the triumph of the Vorontsovs, who had always insisted on the necessity of a close union with Austria and Great Britain, in opposition to Nikita Panin and his followers, who had leaned on France or Prussia till the outbreak of the French Revolution made friendship with France impossible.

Vorontsov was also an implacable opponent of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose "topsy-turvyness" he was never weary of denouncing.