Karl Nesselrode

Karl Nesselrode was a Russian statesman who was born in Lisbon on December 14, 1780 and died in Saint-Peterburg on March 23, 1862. He served as the foreign minister of the Russian Empire for forty years and was among the conservative diplomats of the Holy Alliance period in Europe.

Her father, German nobleman Wilhelm von Nesselrode, was Russia's ambassador to Portugal at the time of her birth. Nesselrode entered the Russian navy at a very young age and served as naval aide to Emperor Paul I. Then he moved on to the army and from there to diplomacy; He worked at the Russian embassies in Berlin and The Hague.

He became one of the trusted figures of Alexander I during the Napoleonic Wars and assisted the tsar in the Tilsit negotiations.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

He was the head of the Russian delegation at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815, but the real decisions were made by Tsar Alexander I himself. He became foreign minister in 1816; He directed Russian diplomacy on the major issues of the period, especially the Eastern Question. In 1844 he received the title of imperial chancellor.

Although he tried to prevent the Crimean War (1853-1856), he failed. After the 1856 Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, he left the ministry of foreign affairs and retained the title of chancellor until his death. His long tenure made him one of the most enduring faces of 19th-century Russian foreign policy.