Dannenberg, Peter Andreevich

Born on June 9, 1792 in the Olonets province , in a noble family of Reformed worship .

He received his initial education at the Sofia Forestry Institute (1807–10), from which he moved to the St. Petersburg Forestry Institute . Here in 1811 he graduated from the course with the title of scientific surveyor and at the rank of 13th class, he assumed the post of city secretary. However, in the same year, Dannenberg decided to devote himself to military service and, striving for higher special education, entered the Column Leader School , after which, on January 26, 1812, he was promoted to ensign with enrollment in E. IV’s kvtmeysterskoy part and with a secondment to the 24th Infantry Division .

Patriotic War of 1812

Participated in the battles of the Patriotic War : June 12, 1812 - in the battle near Smolensk ; August 26 - at Borodino ; October 6 - under Tarutin ; October 12 - under Maloyaroslavets , and for this battle he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir of the 4th degree with swords and a bow, and, finally, from 3 to 10 November - in the battle of Red . December 4, 1812 for the difference in the battle, he was promoted to lieutenant.

Foreign campaign of 1813-1814 was for Dannenberg a new series of military differences: on April 20, 1813 he was in battle near Lützen , on August 16 - near Dresden , on August 17 and 18 - under Kulm (for which he received the Kulm cross ) and then on October 4 and 6 under Leipzig . In 1814, while in the reserve army, he participated in the battles: at Brienne , at Arcy-sur-Aube , at Fere-Champenoise , in the capture of Paris . Consisted with the Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich . For differences in battles he received the rank of lieutenant and staff captain, the Order of St. Anne of the 2nd degree and on August 1, 1814, was transferred to the Guards General Staff . Under the heir to the crown prince, he served until 1830 and during that time received the rank of colonel (1818) and major general (1827) with the appointment of quartermaster general of the general staff of the cesarevich.

Polish uprising of 1830

On the day of the beginning of the Polish uprising, Dannenberg stayed with the Jaeger companies and the horse regiment to cover the palace. In 1831, having crossed the border of the Kingdom of Poland and consisting under the detachment of the Adjutant General Count Toll , he participated in the battle near Minsk on February 5 and, while under the crown Prince, in the battle of Grokhov on February 13. On the orders of Count Dibich , Dannenberg was sent on April 10 to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, but left with the guard detachment at the place Stokek; April 25, again called to the main apartment. From 1 to 18 May, he was on a business trip with a guards detachment and took part in the battle of Ostrolenka , after which he returned to the disposal of the commander in chief. Count Toll then sent him to the reserve army and "with special verbal instructions" to General Khrapovitsky in Vilna , where he arrived on June 6 to the Guards detachment, which then joined the detachment of Lieutenant-General Osten-Sacken . The very next day, Dannenberg took part in the battle on the Ponar Heights, for which he was awarded the Order of St. Anna of the 1st Degree, and on June 12 he went to the commander-in-chief of the reserve army, Count Tolstoy , in which he consisted until the end of the campaign against the Lithuanian rebels. After that, he joined the army with the Guards detachment - Field Marshal Paskevich, who replaced Dibich.

In order to avoid bloodshed during the capture of Warsaw, Dannenberg led negotiations with Prondzinsky , which were unsuccessful, and Paskevich ordered to storm Warsaw . Dannenberg took part in the storming and capture of Warsaw and, as he was familiar with the city, was to serve as a conductor for the troops. During the two-day battle of Warsaw, he was granted the Order of St. Vladimir of the 2nd degree. Under Prince Paskevich Dannenberg, he remained until 1834, when he was appointed commander of the 1st brigade of the 12th (later on the 18th) infantry division.

Hungarian trekking

In 1836, he was given command of the 15th Infantry Division , three years later promoted to lieutenant general , and in 1840 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the 5th Infantry Corps; On December 3, 1839, he was awarded the Order of St. George of the 4th degree for long service (No. 5911 according to the list of Grigorovich - Stepanov ). When in 1844 some parts of this corps were sent from the Novorossiysk Territory to the Caucasus , all remaining parts of the corps were handed over to Dannenberg (until May 29, 1846). The same thing happened again in 1848, when the commander of this corps, General Liders , with a special detachment joined the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia . The following year, at the highest order, General Dannenberg was transferred to all the other parts of the same corps that remained in the Danube principalities, and the other troops were subordinated there. In May 1849, Dannenberg arrived from Odessa to Bucharest . When in July Bem with the militia invaded the principality, General Liders ordered the Dannenberg detachment to march out of Moldova through Oytozskoe gorge to Berechka; in this direction, he pursued the already broken Bema to the town of Chik-Sereda in Transylvania . In September, at the end of the war, Dannenberg returned to Odessa. In 1852, he was appointed head of all reserve and reserve infantry troops, and then commander of the 4th infantry corps, with production to generals from infantry .

Crimean War

In 1853, the Eastern War began . On June 21, General Dannenberg, with a part of his corps, crossed the border river Prut from Skulyan and entered Moldavia. October 23, he led the Battle of Oltenitsy . Some military writers blamed Dannenberg for this unsuccessful battle, which cost the Russians quite significant losses: in particular, he was accused of ordering to begin a retreat when the Russians approached the fortifications of the Oltenitsky quarantine. According to Generals Bogdanovich and Leer , a significant part of the blame for this failure lay on Prince Gorchakov , who should have been sent to Oltenitsa not one brigade, but a whole division, and had previously given proper instructions to General Dannenberg. Without going into a detailed analysis of his actions in Oltenitsa, it is worth mentioning that "for the difference in service, when attacking a fortified enemy position in Oltenitsky Quarantine" he was declared the royal favor (December 17, 1853). Nevertheless, this day damaged Dannenberg's reputation as a military man.

When the Allies landed in the Crimea , the position of Prince Menshikov , who commanded there, due to the lack of troops, became dangerous. The commander-in-chief of the southern army, Prince Gorchakov, on October 3, 1854, ordered Dannenberg with the corps entrusted to him to enter Crimea, where he followed a forced march. Realizing that with the arrival of reinforcements the Crimean army was in very favorable conditions, Menshikov decided to act offensively. After some hesitation, he ordered the Allied attack on October 22, but at the request of Dannenberg, due to the heavy fatigue of the regiments from a long and hasty campaign, the attack was postponed until October 24. Unfortunately, Dannenberg, among other generals who were entrusted with command of the troops, was completely removed from drawing up a disposition for the impending offensive and was not present when drawing up the final action plan, which was assigned to Menshikov’s headquarters. According to the disposition of the latter, the role of Dannenberg was uncertain and did not correspond much to his position as a corps commander.

In the battle of Inkerman which ended in failure for the Russian army, the offensive was carried out by two detachments: General Soymonov from Sevastopol (from Kilen-beam) and General Pavlov from the Inkerman mountain; at the same time, the last detachment was ordered to be to Dannenberg, “to whom, by combining the aforementioned two detachments, to accept the command over them. Menshikov had to entrust all private orders not to Soimonov and Pavlov, but to Dannenberg, and if he did not do it, then only because of his dislike for Dannenberg. His unsuccessful activity on the Danube was known to Menshikov, who, at the first news of the 4th Infantry Corps moving to the Crimea in its entirety, repeatedly expressed verbally his unwillingness to have General Dannenberg among the commanders of the Crimean army. Prince Gorchakov, although he knew about it, but could not, however, fulfill the desire of the most luminous, for lack of sufficient reasons for that. Despite his indiscretion towards Dannenberg, the commander-in-chief outwardly showed him complete confidence. Therefore, Dannenberg was extremely surprised when he received the disposition of Menshikov, who put him in an ambiguous position. According to this disposition, he had to command the troops, the movement of which at the beginning of the actions he could not dispose of: he was forced to be the superior and execute the decision of his subordinates; he was entrusted with command of the troops, and at the same time ordered to be with General Pavlov's detachment, which deprived him of the opportunity to be the commander at the very beginning of the battle. Subsequently, in the most common report on the battle of Inkerman, Prince Menshikov said that the command of the troops was unconditionally assigned to General Dannenberg. This expression, in the absence of information on all the details of the case, had a natural consequence that the failure of the battle of Inkerman laid all its weight on one person, and Dannenberg was blamed completely unfairly.

The consequences of this accusation haunted him until his death and remain in force even now, after the publication of many documents. Without touching upon the details of this battle, in which Dannenberg nevertheless managed to display considerable discipline, despite his uncertain role in the disposition of the commander-in-chief, we only mention that he had to give an order to retreat (two horses were killed under it); for some unknown reason, Dannenberg brought into battle only part of his 12,000th reserve. Prince Menshikov initially opposed this order of Dannenberg, but was then forced to agree with him. In no case can one Dannenberg be considered the culprit of the failure on October 24, along with him are Menshikov, who gave unspecified instructions, and Gorchakov , whose 22-thousand squad stood idle at Chorgun. Fearing that in the event of his illness, the command of the army did not pass to Dannenberg, the commander-in-chief asked the minister of war to draft the permission of the Sovereign to change the commanders of the 3rd corps - Baron Osten-Sacken and the 4th - Dannenberg. And indeed, Menshikov managed to remove the latter: in a handwritten letter to the commander-in-chief from November 14–15, 1854. Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich expressed his desire that Liprandi accept the corps from Dannenberg, “and he should go to Petersburg,” wrote the Sovereign, “where I appointed him to the members of the Military Council, where he would be useful.”

So ended for the Dannenberg Sevastopol campaign.

Recent years

In November 1855, he was appointed chairman of the commission established "for improvement in the military unit", but in April of the following year, on the occasion of his dismissal for two months in foreign leave in Switzerland , this post was occupied by his highness, General Mikhail Nikolayevich ; Since September of the same year, Dannenberg was not at all in this commission.

On January 27, 1862, General of Infantry Dannenberg celebrated the 50th anniversary of his service as an officer and on this day was most graciously awarded the Order of St. Vladimir of the 1st Degree with swords. In October of the same year, he received the last appointment - the chairman of the committee for the device of the military ground forces, and in 1866 - the last highest award: a diamond ring with a portrait of the emperor Alexander II .

Dannenberg was married to the landowner’s daughter, Matilda Zablotskaya.

He died in 1872, according to various data on August 6 or 14 (according to Art. Style).

• Dannenberg, Peter Andreevich // Military Encyclopedia : [in 18 t.] / Ed. VF Novitsky [et al.]. - SPb. ; [ M. ]: Type. t-islands I. D. Sytin , 1911-1915.
• Gervae V.V. Dannenberg, Pyotr Andreyevich // Russian Biographical Dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. - M. , 1896-1918.
• Dannenberg, Peter Andreevich // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : 86 t. (82 t. And 4 extra.). - SPb. , 1890-1907.

• Bogdanovich M. I. The Eastern War of 1853–1855. Vol. 1-4.
• Tarle E.V. The Crimean War. T. 1-2.