In the journal "Auxiliary Historical Disciplines," Dr. Vladimir Shishkin from the St. Petersburg Institute of History describes a travel permit issued to Pyotr Dubrovsky, a secretary-interpreter and famous manuscript collector, who served at the Russian Embassy in Paris from 1777. The document, dated May 27, 1792, was signed by Louis XVI and verified by Minister S.-F. Dumouriez and Mayor of Paris J. Petion. The travel permit contains manually filled information about P.P. Dubrovsky in the handwriting of a duty secretary. The article provides an accurate translation of the French text of the permit, which allowed Mr. Dubrovsky to return to Russia without any obstacles. The travel permit is currently stored in the Scientific and Historical Archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History.
This document not only characterizes the situation of those years but also answers the question of how the Russian leadership reacted to it. In mid-April, Catherine II decided to freeze Russo-French relations and recall the remaining diplomats from France due to the rapidly developing events of the French Revolution in 1792. On April 22, Russian Foreign Minister Osterman sent a letter to the temporary envoy at the French court, Novikov, ordering him to leave France immediately under the pretext of his health. He was also instructed to take the "secret and other ministerial archives of ours and translator Dubrovsky" with him. Novikov received this order in mid-May 1792 and immediately began to execute it. Novikov and Dubrovsky immediately approached the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dumouriez, with a request to issue travel permits. Essentially, these were passports for departure. By that time, there were no other accredited Russian diplomats left in France.
"The Russian envoy rushed because he wanted to take advantage of the temporary cessation of hostilities on the border between France and the Austrian Netherlands and leave before their resumption, using the shortest route," writes Vladimir Shishkin. The preserved service notes about Dubrovsky's stops at post stations allowed determining the exact date of the diplomat's departure from Paris and trace his route practically by the hour. He moved towards the northeastern border of France and arrived in Ruao in Picardy. The first notation of the postal worker states that the passport was marked in Ruao on June 3 at half-past three in the morning. This suggests that Dubrovsky left Paris on the evening of June 2, 1792, and, after covering 130 kilometers, arrived in the town of Ruao during the night. Considering the average speed of a trotting horse - 15-18 km/h, his journey took about 8-9 hours, meaning that the trip started around 6 pm. It is known that Dubrovsky had significant luggage, including mission documents and the most valuable part of his own collection, so he most likely hired a carriage.
Seven years after these events, Peter Dubrovsky's collection became the basis of the Manuscript Department of the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg. A significant part of the collection consisted of manuscripts gathered by the Russian diplomat in France, including early Latin codices from the libraries of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Corbie abbeys, papers from the Bastille archives, and almost 8,000 autographs of famous Frenchmen. "The March of the Defeated" through the eyes of archivists, historians, and writers. On July 17, 1944, Muscovites witnessed an extraordinary sight - the procession of German prisoners of war stretching for kilometers. 57,640 soldiers and officers - a part of the army that planned to capture Moscow in the fall of 1941 - finally passed through the city. Tens of thousands of Moscow residents observed the "parade of the defeated."
According to the research on the campaign churches of the Russian Imperial Fleet. Russian researchers explain the origins of the "American Dream." Unknown memoirs of Napoleon's comrade about the Moscow campaign have been published. The model of the "Island of the Vanquished Landing" has been handed over to the museum in Vyborg. For questions related to the site's operation, please contact us by email.
