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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BER-BLA |
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BESTIA , the name of a family in ancient Rome, of which the following were the most distinguished. I. Lucius CALPURNIUS BESTIA, Roman tribune of the people in 121 B.C., consul
exile (90) to avoid punishment under the law of Q. Varius, whereby those who had secretly or openly aided the Italian allies against Rome were to be brought to trial (Appian, Bell. Civ. i. 37; Val. Max. viii. 6. 4). Both Cicero and Sallust express a high opinion of Bestia's abilities, but his love of money demoralized him. He is mentioned in a Carthaginian inscription as one of a board of three, perhaps an agricultural commission.See Sallust, Jugurtha; Cicero, Brutus, xxxiv. 128; for the general history, A. H. J. Greenidge, Flist. of Rome, vol. i. (1904), pp. 346 foil. 2. Lucius CALPURNIUS BESTIA, one of the Catilinarian conspirators, possibly a grandson of the above. He was tribune elect in 63, and it had been arranged that, after entering upon his office, he should publicly accuse Cicero of responsibility for the impending war. This was to be the signal for the outbreak of revolution. The conspiracy, however, was put down and Bestia had to content himself with delivering a violent attack upon the consul on the expiration of his office. This Bestia is probably not the Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, aedile, and a candidate for the praetorship in 57. He was accused of bribery during his candidature, and, in spite of Cicero's defence, was condemned. In 43 he attached himself to the party of Antony, apparently in the hope of obtaining the consulship. Sallust, Caliline, xvii. 43; Appian, Bell. Cis,. ii. 3; Cicero, Ad Q. Fr. ii. 3, 6. BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXIUS PETROVICH, COUNT (1693-1768), grand chancellor of Russia, the second son of Count Peter Bestuzhev, the early favourite of the empress Anne, was born at Moscow on the 1st of June 1693. Educated abroad, with his elder brother Mikhail, at Copenhagen and Berlin, he especially distinguished himself in languages and the applied sciences. Peter the Great, in 1712, attached him to Prince Kurakin at the Utrecht Congress that he might learn diplomacy, and for the same reason permitted him in 1713 to enter the service of the elector of Hanover. George I. took him to London in 1714, and sent him to St Petersburg
Alexius at Vienna, assuring his " future sovereign " of his devotion, and representing his sojourn in England as a deliberate seclusion of a zealous but powerless well-wisher. This extra-ordinary indiscretion might well have cost him his life, but the tsarevich fortunately destroyed the letter.' On his return to Russia he served for two years without any salary as chief
gentleman of the Bedchamber at the court of Anne of Courland, and in 1721 succeeded Vasily Dolgoruki as Russian minister at Copenhagen. Copenhagen was then a whirlpool of diplomatic intrigue, for George I. was endeavouring to arm the northern powers against Peter the Great, and this it was Bestuzhev's mission to counteract. On the occasion of the peace of Nystad, which terminated the 21 years' war between Russia and Sweden, Bestuzhev designed and struck a commemorative medal with a panegyrical Latin inscription, which so delighted Peter (then at Derbent) that he sent a letter of thanks written with his own hand and his portrait set in brilliants. It was at this time too that the many-sided Alexius invented his famous " drops," or tinctura toniconervina Bestusclae fi, the recipe of which was stolen by the French brigadier Lamotte, who made his fortune by introducing it at the French court, where it was known as Elixir d'Or.The sudden death of Peter the Great seriously injured Bestuzhev's prospects. For more than ten years he remained at Copenhagen, looking vainly towards Russia as a sort of promised land from which he was excluded by enemies or rivals. He rendered some important services, however, to the empress Anne, for which he was decorated and made a privy councillor. He also won the favour of Biren, and on the tragic fall of Artemy Voluinsky in 1739 was summoned home to take his place in the council. He assisted Biren to obtain the regency in the last days of the empress Anne, but when his patron fell three weeks later, his own position became extremely precarious
' A copy of the letter was taken by way of precaution, beforehand, by the Austrian ministers, and this copy is still in the Vienna archives. Bestuzhev prevent the signing of a Russo-Prussian defensive alliance (March 1743); but he deprived it of all political significance by excluding from it the proposed guarantee of Frederick's Silesian conquests. Moreover, through Bestuzhev's efforts, the credit of the Prussian king (whom he rightly regarded as more dangerous than France) at the Russian court fell steadily, and the vice-chancellor prepared the way for an alliance with Austria by acceding to the treaty of Breslau (1st of November 1743) A bogus conspiracy, however, got up by the Holstein faction, aided by France and Prussia, who persuaded Elizabeth that the Austrian ambassador was intriguing to replace Ivan VI. on the throne, alienated the empress from Austria for a time; and Bestuzhev's ruin was regarded as certain when, in 1743, the French agent, the marquis de La Chetardie, arrived to reinforce his other enemies. But he found a friend in need in M. L. Vorontsov, the empress's confidant, who shared his political views.' Still his position was most delicate, especially when the betrothal between the grand-duke Peter and Sophia
The attention of European diplomacy at this time was concentrated upon the king of Prussia, whose insatiable acquisitiveness disturbed all his neighbours. Bestuzhev's offer, communicated to the British government at the end of 1745, to attack Prussia if Great Britain would guarantee subsidies to the amount of some 6,000,000, was rejected as useless now that Austria and Prussia were coming to terms. Then he turned to Austria, and on the 22nd of May 1746, an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between the two powers manifestly directed against Prussia. In 1747, alliances were also concluded with Denmark and the Porte. At the same time Bestuzhev resisted any rapprochement with France, and severely rebuked the court of Saxony for its intrigues with that of Versailles. About this time he was hampered by the persistent opposition of the vice-chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, formerly his friend, now his jealous rival, who was secretly supported by Frederick the Great. In 1748, however, he got rid of him by proving to the empress that Vorontsov was in the pay of Prussia. The hour of Bestuzhev's triumph coincided with the peace congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, which altered the whole situation of European politics and introduced fresh combinations, the breaking away of Prussia from France and a rapprochement between England and Prussia, with the inevitable corollary of an alliance between France and the enemies of Prussia. Bestuzhev's violent political prejudices at first prevented him from properly recognizing this change. Passion had always been too large an ingredient in his diplomacy. His Anglomania also misled him. His enemies, headed by his elder brother Mikhail and the vice-chancellor Vorontsov, powerless while his diplomacy was faultless, quickly took advantage of his mistakes. When, on the 16th of January 1756, the Anglo-Prussian, and on the 2nd of May the Franco-Austrian alliances were concluded, Vorontsov advocated the accession of Russia to the latter league, whereas Bestuzhev insisted on a subsidy treaty with Great Britain. But his influence was now on the wane. The totally unexpected Anglo-Prussian alliance had justified the arguments of his enemies that England was impossible, while his hatred of France prevented him from adopting the only alternative of an alliance with her. To prevent undergound intrigues, Bestuzhev now proposed the erection of a council of ministers, to settle all important affairs, and at its first session (14th3oth of March) an alliance with Austria, France and Poland against Frederick II. was proposed, though Bestuzhev opposed any composition with France. He endeavoured to support his failing credit by a secret alliance with the grand-duchess Catherine, whom he proposed to raise to the throne instead of her Holstein husband, Peter, from whom Bestuzhev expected nothing good either for himself or for Russia. The negotiations were conducted through the Pole Stanislaus Poniatowski. The accession of Russia to the anti-Prussian coalition (1756) was made over his head, and the cowardice and incapacity of Bestuzhev's friend, the Russian commander
chief
See The Sbornik of the Russian Historical Society, vols. 1, 3, 5, 7, 12, 22, 26, 66, 79, 8o, 81, 85-86, 91-92, 96, 99, 100, 103 (St Petersburg
BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, MIKHAIL PETROVICH, COUNT (1688176o), Russian diplomatist, elder brother of the foregoing, was educated at Berlin, and was sent by Peter the Great to represent Russia at Copenhagen in 1705. In 1720 he was appointed resident at London at a time when the English court was greatly inflamed against Peter, who was regarded as a dangerous rival in the Baltic; and Bestuzhev was summarily dismissed for protesting against the lately-formed Anglo-Swedish alliance. On the conclusion of the peace of Nystad in 1721 he was sent as ambassador to the court of Stockholm. His first official act was the signing of a defensive alliance between Russia and Sweden for twelve years, in 1724. He was successively transferred to Warsaw (1726) and to Berlin (1730), but returned to Stockholm in 1732. How far Bestuzhev was concerned in the murder (June 28th, 1739) of the Swedish diplomatic agent Sinclair in Silesia on his journey home from Constantinople, it is difficult to say. It is certain that Bestuzhev sent information to his court of Sinclair's mission, which was supposed to be hostile to Russia, and even supplied the portrait of the envoy for recognition. The Swedish authorities are unanimous in describing Bestuzhev as the arch-plotter in this miserable affair; yet, while the active agents were banished to Siberia, Bestuzhev was not even censured. The Sinclair murder led ultimately to the Swedish-Russian War of 1741, when Bestuzhev was transferred first to Hamburg and subsequently to Hanover, where he endeavoured to conclude an alliance between Great Britain and Russia. On his return to Russia in 1743, he was made grand marshal, and married Anna, the widow of Paul Yaguzhinsky, Peter the Great's famous pupil. A few months later his wife was implicated in a bogus conspiracy got up by the French ambassador, the marquis de La Chetardie, to ruin the Bestuzhevs (see BESTUZIIEV-RYUMIN, ALEXIUS), and after a public whipping, had her tongue cut out and was banished to Siberia. Thither Bestuzhev had not the manhood to follow her, but went abroad, and subsequently resumed his diplomatic career. His last and most brilliant mission was to Versailles, shortly after the conclusion of the coalition against Frederick the Great, where he cut a great figure. He died at Paris on the 26th of February 176o. See Robert Nisbet Bain, The Daughter of Peter the Great (London, 1899) ; Mikhail Sergyievich, History of Russia (Ras.), vols. xv.-xxii. (2nd ed., St Petersburg, 1897). (R. N. B.) End of Article: BESTIA If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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