Nicholas de Giers

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Nikolay Karlovich Giers (1820-1895) was a Russian Foreign Minister during the reign of Alexander III. He was one of the architects of the Franco-Russian Alliance, which was later transformed into the Triple Entente.

Giers, or Girs, was born on the 21st of May 1820. Like his predecessor, Prince Gorchakov, he was educated at the lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo, near St Petersburg, but his career was much less rapid, because he had no influential protectors, and was handicapped by being a Protestant of Teutonic origin. At the age of eighteen he entered the service of the Eastern department of the ministry of foreign affairs, and spent more than twenty years in subordinate posts, chiefly in south-eastern Europe, until he was promoted in 1863 to the post of minister plenipotentiary in Persia. Here he remained for six years, and, after serving as a minister in Switzerland and Sweden, he was appointed in 1875 director of the Eastern department and assistant minister for foreign affairs under Prince Gorchakov, whose niece he had married.

On the death of Alexander II in 1881 it was generally expected that M. de Giers would be dismissed as deficient in Russian nationalist feeling, for Alexander III was credited with strong anti-German Slavophile tendencies. In reality the young tsar had no intention of embarking on wild political adventures, and was fully determined not to let his hand be forced by men less cautious than himself. What he wanted was a minister of foreign affairs who would be at once vigilant and prudent, active and obedient, and who would relieve him from the trouble and worry of routine work while allowing him to control the main lines, and occasionally the details, of the national policy. M. de Giers was exactly what he wanted, and accordingly the tsar not only appointed him minister of foreign affairs on the retirement of Prince Gorchakov in 1882, but retained him to the end of his reign in 1894.

In accordance with the desire of his august master, M. de Giers followed systematically a pacific policy. Accepting as a fait accompli the existence of the triple alliance, created by Bismarck for the purpose of resisting any aggressive action on the part of Russia and France, he sought to establish more friendly relations with the cabinets of Berlin, Vienna and Rome. To the advances of the French government he at first turned a deaf ear, but when the rapprochement between the two countries was effected with little or no co-operation on his part, he utilized it for restraining France and promoting Russian interests. He died on the 26th of January 1895, soon after the accession of Nicholas II.

His son Mikhail Nikolayevich von Giers acted as last Imperial Russian Ambassador in Constantinople until the beginning of World War I in 1914.

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.