General Pavel Petrovich Liprandi, 1796-1864.

(From Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, 1912. Curiously, this entry for Liprandi is incomplete as printed and does not go past 1848.)

Liprandi, Pavel Petrovich, lieutenant-general, chief of staff of the Grenadier Corps, born 15 January 1796, died 27 August 1864. After entering service as an ensign in the Pskov Infantry Regiment in 1813, he took part in the campaign against the French and was at the battles of Katzbach and Dresden. In 1814 he was at the battles of Brienne, la Rothière, la Ferté-sous-Jouarre (for which he was promoted to sub-lieutenant), Montmirail, Chateau Thierry, Méry, Craonne, Laon, Soissons, and the capture of Paris. In 1818 Liprandi was transferred to the Life-Guards Grenadier Regiment. Before the outbreak of the 1828 war with Turkey, Liprandi was sent to the fortress of Isakchi on the orders of the commander-in-chief of the active army to notify the pasha of the declaration of hostilities. In addition, he had the secret mission of inspecting this point’s fortifications and discovering what information the Turks possessed regarding the movements of our army. After brilliantly completing this assignment, he was sent to Galicia in order to find out if there were suitable boats for ferrying our troops in the event of the proposed operation against Isakchi. This task was also successfully accomplished. In May of 1828 Liprandi took part in the siege and capture of Brailov, and after our forces crossed the Danube he was sent to General Rudzevich with orders to invest Isakchi and seize the road to Brailov, Babadag, and Tulchi. On 8 July he took part in the battle at Shumla and for his distinguished conduct was decorated with the order of St. Vladimir 4th class. As a lieutenant colonel in 1829, Liprandi had a secret mission of observing all that took place in the Austrian possessions, and to collect the most detailed information possible regarding Austrian movements anywhere along the Moldavian border. In 1830 he managed the Satunov quarantine, and when cholera appeared in the New Russian territory he was appointed commander of the fortresses at Kinburn and Ochakov. In 1831 Liprandi was commander of the Yelets Infantry Regiment, with which he took part in the war against the Polish rebels. At first he was in General Rüdiger’s column operating against Dwernicki’s forces, and then was at the blockade of Zamosc fortress. where for excellence he was promoted to colonel. Then he took part in the storming of the Warsaw defenses, where he commanded the 1st Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division. When General Baron Geismar was wounded, Liprandi took command of the whole assault column and was first to enter the fort, for which he was awarded the order of St. George 3rd class. After the submission of Warsaw he joined Lieutenant General Sivers’ vanguard and pursued the rebels as they retreated to Lublin, where he took part in the blockade of that place. In 1833 he was named aide-de-camp [flügel-adjutant] to His Imperial Majesty, and in 1839, upon promotion to major general, he was appointed commander of King Frederick-William III’s Grenadier Regiment. In 1842 Liprandi received command of the Life-Guards Semenovskii Regiment. In 1844 he was awarded the order of St. Stanislav 1st class for his special efforts to improve soldiers’ living conditions and for drawing up rules regarding food for lower ranks in the guards. In 1848 he was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed chief of staff of the Grenadier Corps.

Sources: Russkii Invalid, 1864, No. 241. Bogdanovich, Istoriya imperatora Aleksandra I. Leer, Entsiklopediya voennykh i morskikh nauk.

A. Akimov.

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(From Sytin’s Voennaya entsiklopediya, 1911.)

Liprandi, Pavel Petrovich, general-of-infantry (1796-1864). With the outbreak of the Patriotic War of 1812 he set off for the active army to join the Akhtyrka Hussar Regiment, but instead he had to content himself with a volunteer position on the staff of Dokhturov’s VI Corps in which his brother, Ivan Petrovich, occupied the post of senior quartermaster. Liprandi took part in the battles of Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, and Krasnoe, and having recommended himself by his distinguished actions, he was enrolled as an officer candidate in the Pskov Infantry Regiment. In the 1813-14 campaign Liprandi took part in 17 battles and for distinction at Katzbach was promoted to ensign. In 1816 he was appointed adjutant to the commander of the 16th Division, General Talyzin, and in 1818, holding the rank of staff-captain, he transferred to the Life-Guards Grenadier Regiment. In 1822 he moved to the line as a major with an appointment as adjutant to corps commander General Sabaneev, with whom he developed friendly relations and through whom became known to Graf Vorontsov and P. D. Kiselev. Close contact with these enlightened and humanitarian commanders had a great influence on Liprandi that was evident when his himself came to command military units. With the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, Liprandi was attached to the chief of staff of the active army, General Kiselev, and carried out a series of important assignments and reconnaissances. In 1831 Liprandi received command of the Yelets Infantry Regiment, with which he took part in the suppression of the Polish revolt. At the storming of Warsaw on 25 and 26 August he was two times the first to enter the walls of fortifications Nos. 54 and 22, standard in hand at the head of his regiment, and he was awarded the Order of St. George 3rd class. With the end of military operations Liprandi set to carrying into effect those principles for improving the soldier’s daily life that he had jointly worked out with generals Sabaneev, Kiselev, and Vorontsov. In two years the Yelets Regiment was so outstanding in all regards that in 1833 Liprandi was made an aide-de-camp to the emperor, and in 1835 he was awarded an estate in Poland. In 1839 Liprandi was promoted to major general and received command of King Frederick-William III’s Grenadier Regiment (now the Life-Guards St.-Petersburg Regiment), and in 1842 he was appointed commander of the Life-Guards Semenovskii Regiment. He continued to be actively concerned for improving the soldier’s lot, and he drafted special instructions for company commanders regarding food and provisions which were subsequently accepted for use throughout guards units. On the bank of the Kryukov Canal he built for his regiment a water tower with a filtration system. He so improved the regiment’s internal economy that he was able to dispense with sending soldiers out to find part-time paid work. During the whole of the 17 years that he commanded various regiments Liprandi never had an officer arrested and never inflicted corporal punishment on any lower rank, thus demonstrating that the harsh command methods that prevailed at the time were unreasonable. In 1848 Liprandi was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed chief of staff of the Grenadier Corps with branch assignment to the guards infantry and general staff, as well as being entered onto the rolls of the Life-Guards Semenovskii Regiment. With the declaration of a military campaign in Hungary in 1849, the commander-in-chief, Graf Paskevich, offered Liprandi command of the 12th Infantry Division, with which he then took part in military operations. When the Eastern War began [1853], Liprandi was named commander of the Lesser-Walachia force covering the right flank of the Southern Army and protecting Lesser Walachia. By means of reinforced reconnaissances followed up with an advance by his entire force, he occupied the town of Chepurchei through force of arms and put an end to all Turkish probes out of Kalafat (awarded the Order of the White Eagle with swords). From Bessarabia Liprandi’s division was sent by forced marches to the Crimea. The emperor recommended Liprandi to the commander-in-chief in the following words: “General Liprandi may be entrusted with an independent force, and may be confidently relied upon as an experienced general.” Liprandi was not slow to justify this Highest recommendation in his first independent operation at Balaklava, during which he himself was wounded by a shell fragment in the leg but remained in the field. Liprandi then took part in the battles of Inkerman and the Chernaya River. In 1855 he took over command of VI Infantry Corps, but in 1856 went on indefinite leave. When in 1858 he inherited the village of Yefim’evo in Nizhnii-Novgorod Province and became its landowner, Liprandi immediately freed his serfs from their bondage to the land. In 1859, at the personal wish of the sovereign, Liprandi took command of II Infantry Corps in Poland, but in 1860, following disagreements with the viceroy, Graf Lambert, he was appointed a member of the Military Council, and in 1862—inspector of troops. He died in 1864 and is buried in St. Petersburg in the Mitrofan’ev Cemetary. His son, Rafail Pavlovich Liprandi, died in the early 1900’s in Warsaw, a retired major general of the general staff who had taken part in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 with distinction, having been awarded a gold sword and the Order of St. George 4th class for the defense of Shipka.

Sources: R. Liprandi, “General ot infantrii Liprandi,” in Voennyi Sbornik, 1900, No. 12; “Zhurnal general-leitenanta Liprandi o sobytiyakh v Krymu,” in Voennyi Sbornik, 1902, No. 5)

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