Nikolay Alekseyevich, Prince Orlov

Nikolay Alekseyevich, Prince Orlov (born April 27 [May 9, New Style], 1827, St. Petersburg, Russia—died March 17 [March 29], 1885, Fontainebleau, France) was a Russian diplomat notable for his humanitarian interest in his country’s internal affairs.

The son of Prince Aleksey Fyodorovich Orlov, he entered the army in 1845, fought in Hungary in 1849, and lost an eye on the Walachian front during the Crimean War in 1854. Prince A.M. Gorchakov, the chancellor, took him into the diplomatic service and sent him to be ambassador in Brussels (1859–69). After short periods in Vienna and London, Orlov was appointed ambassador to Paris in December 1871. He was thus Gorchakov’s spokesman in Paris during the years of tension after the Franco-German War and during the crisis that led to the Congress of Berlin (1878). Recalled in 1882, Orlov was posted for a time to Berlin. As a political writer, Orlov criticized corporal punishment in a number of articles published in the monthly Russkaya Starina in 1881 and advocated tolerance for religious dissenters. He also published in 1856 a sketch of Napoleon’s three-week campaign of 1806 against Prussia.