SUVOROV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH, COUNT SUVOROV RIMNIKSKY, PRINCE ITALYSKY (1729-1800), Russian field mar shal, was born at Moscow on Nov. 24, 1729, the descendant of a Swede named Suvor who emigrated to Russia in 1622. He entered the army as a boy, served against the Swedes in Finland and against the Prussians during the Seven Years' War. After repeatedly distinguishing himself in battle he was made a colonel in 1762. He next served in Poland, dispersed the Polish forces under Pulawski, stormed Cracow (1768) and was made a major general. In his first campaigns against the Turks in 1773-74, and particularly in the battle of Kosludscki in the latter year, he laid the foundations of his reputation From 1787 to 1791 he was again fighting the Turks and won many victories; he was wounded at Kinburn (1787), took part in the siege of Ochakov, and in 1788 won two great victories at Focsani and on the Rimnik. For the latter victory, in which an Austrian corps under Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg participated, Catherine II. made him a count with the name Rimniksky in addition to his own name, and the emperor Joseph II. created him a count of the Holy Roman Empire.
On Dec. 22, 1790, Suvorov stormed Ismail in Bessarabia, and the sack and the massacre that followed the capture equals in horror such events as the "Spanish Fury" and the fall of Magde burg. He was next placed at the head of the army which subdued the Poles, and repeated the triumph, and some of the cruelties, of Ismail at Warsaw. He was now made a field marshal, and was retained in Poland till 1795, when he returned to St. Petersburg.
His sovereign and friend Catherine II. died in 1796, and her successor Paul dismissed the veteran in disgrace. But in February 1799 he was summoned by the tsar to take the field again, this time against the French Revolutionary armies in Italy.
The campaign (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS) opened with a series of victories (Cassano, Trebbia, Novi) which reduced the French government to desperate straits and drove every French soldier from Italy, save for the handful under Moreau, which maintained a foothold in the Maritime Alps and around Genoa. Suvorov himself was made a prince. But the later events
of the eventful year went uniformly against the allies. SuvOrov's lieutenant Korsakov was defeated by Massena at Zurich, and the old field marshal, seeking to make his way over the Swiss passes to the Upper Rhine, had to retreat to the Vorarlberg, where the army, much shattered and almost destitute of horses and artillery, went into winter quarters. Early in 1800 Suvorov returned to St. Petersburg in disgrace. Paul refused to give him an audience, and, worn out and ill, he died a few days afterwards, on May 18, 180o. But within a year of his death the tsar Alexander I. erected a statue to his memory in the Field of Mars, St. Petersburg.
Suvorov is specially the great captain of the Russian nation for his leadership responded to the character of the Russian soldier. In an age when war was mere diplomacy he restored its true significance as an act of force. He spared his own soldiers as little as he showed mercy to the population of a fallen city. He was a man of great simplicity of manners, and while on a cam paign lived as a private soldier. But he had himself passed through all the gradations of military service; moreover, his education had been of the rudest kind. His gibes procured him many enemies. He had all the contempt of a man of ability and action for ignorant favourites and ornamental carpet-knights. Dragomirov (q.v.) avowed that his teaching was based on Suvo rov's practice.
Byron has given SuvOrov a place in English literature in cer tain cantos of Don Juan.
See Anthing, Versuch einer Kriegsgeschichte des Grafen Suworow (Gotha, 1796-1799) ; F. von Smitt, Suworows Leben and Heerziige (Vilna, 1833-1834) and Suworow and Polens Untergang (Leipzig, 1858) ; Von Reding-Biberegg, Der Zug Suworows durch die Schweiz (Zurich, 1896) ; Lieut.-Colonel Spalding, Suvorof (London, 189o) ; G. von Fuchs, Suworows Korrespondenz, 1799 (Glogau, 1835) ; Souvorov en Italie, by Gachot, Massena's biographer (Paris, 1903) ; and the standard Russian biographies of Polevoi (1853 ; Ger. trans., Mitau, 1853) ; Rybkin (Moscow, 5874) and Vasiliev (Vilna, 1899).