Biography Tornau

Tornau Fedor Fedorovich - Baron, Russian Officer, Diplomat, Writer, Scout, Caucasian War, Author of Documentary Literary works: “Memoirs of the Caucasian Officer”, “Memories of the campaign of the year in European Turkey”, “From Vienna to Karlsbad” and others. The works of Tornau are an important and reliable source on the history of Russia of the 19th century, from the Russian-Turkish war to the events of the post-reform era.

In the year he arrived in Tiflis, where he began serving in the General Staff with the rank of army second lieutenant. From the years, he spent among the highlanders as a scout, including as a prisoner. It is this period of his service that is described in the "Memoirs of the Caucasian Officer." During this period, he was the first of the Russians under the guise of a highlander a year through the main Caucasian ridge Pseashho Pass in the area of ​​the modern large Sochi Krasnaya Polyana, Kudepst, host, Matsesta, the central part of Sochi for the “secret viewing of the sea coast north of the Gagra”.

During the third expedition in order to explore the sea coast from the river. Sochi, as a result of the betrayal of the guides, was captured by the Kabardinians, where he spent two years and two months. The highlanders demanded a huge ransom for him: as much gold as the prisoner himself weighed. Tornau, faithful to the idea of ​​sacrificing himself for the benefit of the state, rejected all the conditions of redemption.

After several unsuccessful attempts to liberate it by Russian troops, on the night of the 9th to November 9, the Nogai prince Tembulat Karamurzin managed to abduct the captive at the Kabardinians. Tornau is one of the vivid representatives of the progressive Russian officers of the period of accession of the Caucasus to Russia. Tornau collected and published, and partly left in handwritten numerous materials on history, ethnography, historical geography of the Western Caucasus, giving a wide picture of the life of the Caucasian peoples of the first third of the 19th century.

Great fame in Russia and abroad was his book “Memoirs of the Caucasian Officer”, which was first published in the year in the “Russian Herald” signed “T”. Later it was translated into a number of European languages. In the year, "Memories of the Caucasian Officer" were published by the Sochi branch of the Russian Geographical Society. The well -known Caucasian scholar A.

presenting a lively story ... the author’s languor in captivity among the highlanders, they contain many new and curious details about the home and legal life of the Abkhazians and their neighbors of the Circassians. As in the presentation, so, mainly, in terms of its content, the essay Thornaau belongs, in my opinion, to the best works that have come out of the pen of our domestic figures in the Caucasus.

” Source of text and photo: Wikipedia.