The kings do not control the kings

Of all the natural disasters that tormented Russia, the deepest mark in history, culture and folk memory left floods. For all the inevitability of misfortunes, there were among the rulers and those who blamed themselves in it.

Peter I, who built his capital in a deadly place, two months after the founding of the city, in August 1703, had the opportunity to see a picture of its flooding. Three years later, the flood was repeated.

His sight amused him, about which he wrote to Menshikov:

The third days by the wind, the West-Zyuid west caught up with such water that, they say, did not happen. I had 21 inches in the mansions on top of the floor, and on the city and on the other side they went freely on the street ... And it was comfortable to watch that people and trees, as if during the flood, were sitting.

Twice even during the life of Peter, Petersburg flooded. The flood of November 1724 became an indirect cause of his death: he caught a cold, saving the drowning, and died in January 1725.

Catastrophic flood of 1777 Catherine II described in a letter to Grimm, too, not without playfulness:

A gust of wind woke me up at five o’clock. I called, and they reported to me that my porch was and was ready to fill it ... wanting to find out closer what was the matter, I went to the Hermitage. Neva represented the spectacle of the destruction of Jerusalem ... This morning, her hairdresser would not come to any lady, no one to serve a bait for, and it would be empty on Kurtag.

However, Mother took measures: she ordered a prayer to the palace priest to serve, as well as baked and resigned, policeist General Chicherin. Together with him, the author of the "Chronicle of St. Petersburg floods" reports , his right hand Markov was settled. "Although both were accused of the fact that the flood befell the capital due to the random content of wastewood, but this was only an excuse for their dismissal for bribery, which came almost to robbery. There is no thin one without good! Water washes dirt, and the flood washed away two dirty people."

Immediately after the disaster, the empress was concerned about the warning system of residents. The Admiraltez College by the name decree was ordered to "establish signs and signals in the city", namely, flags, lanterns, cannon firing and drum battle. By the color of the flags and the number of lanterns and shots, Petersburgers had to determine the level of threat.

It was three cannon shots that woke Griboedov in November 1824, who left the description of the most destructive to date of Petersburg flood. He writes (with reference to other sources) and about the behavior of Emperor Alexander I:

At this fatal minute, the sovereign appeared on the balcony. From the surrounding him, one threw off his uniform, fled down, entered the water on the throat, then sailed on the boat to save the unfortunate people. It was Adjutant General Benckendorf.

Another adjutant general, Miloradovich, acted in the same way.

Pushkin in his Mikhailovsky initially underestimated the scale of the disaster. “What do you have?” He wrote to his brother, “is nothing to the damned Petersburg! Voilà une belle ocasion à vos dames de faire bidet (here is a great case to wash off).”

But the Petersburgers were not up to the Pushkin Bonmo. In December, Alexander Sergeyevich writes to the same addressee:

This flood will not be crazy for me, it is not at all as funny as at first sight it seems. If you want to help any unfortunate, help from Onegin's money. But I ask, without any noise, neither verbal nor written. It is not at all funny to stand in a “disabled person” along with an idyllic college assessor Panaev.

The St. Petersburg Flood became the plot of the “Bronze Horseman”, where Pushkin inserted the king on the balcony and the generals who rushed to save the people, and the almost protocol -accurate phrase of Alexander: “The kings do not control the kings with God's elements.”

There are many descriptions of this disaster. There is it in the novel by Alexander Dumas "Teacher of Fencing", where there is such a detail:

The wooden grave cross, demolished from a cemetery, was found in the emperor’s bedroom - an ominous omen!

And the famous poeticist, Count Khvostov, quickly composed the “Epistle to NN about the flood of Petropol”, in which he portrayed not only the horrors of the disaster, but also the merciful care of the monarch for the victims:

*Sprung millions from the throne here;

Among Petropol from the rage of evil waters

Let there be the dead - but, right, there is no orphans.

Love with pure, heavenly warm

All at the refuge, fed, dressed,

Everything, the goodness of the fables of the sacred pledge,

Rekut: "In the middle of heavy evils, there is a merciful God."*

Millions really sprinkled. Adjutant General Komarovsky recalls how the next day after the flood of his and two other generals, Benkendorf and Dreradovich, he called the emperor and sent to the aid for those in need, ordered everyone to give each one hundred thousand rubles for the first case and providing them with instructions, about which Komarovsky is expressed as follows:

The instruction tested by his Majesty’s hand will remain the monument, the sovereign is given to us, in which his delicate and paternal guardianship about the unfortunate, who suffered from the flood, and in which nothing was missed to delight their deplorable fate is visible.

Soon, Alexander himself went to inspect the destruction. His mood was the most gloomy. By the end of his life, he lost everything in everything, fell into mysticism and was still tormented by the fault for the silent consent of the murder of his father. Hearing an exclamation from the crowd: “For sins, our God punishes us,” he said bitterly: “No, for mine.” Another legend has been preserved in the Pushkin drafts: as if the emperor "did not hide the forebodings of his own death. He said that before his birth (December 12, 1777), Neva flooded the palace in exactly the same way."

He had a year and several days left to live.