Aleksey Gorchakov

Prince Aleksey Ivanovich Gorchakov (20 May 1769 – 12 November 1817) was a Russian general and statesman from the Gorchakov family.

Aleksey Gorchakov was a son of Prince Ivan Gorchakov and a sister of Alexander Suvorov. In 1786 he entered the army and served with distinction under his uncle Suvorov in the Turkish Wars. Gorchakov distinguished himself in campaigns of 1789 (at Akerman and Bender) and of 1790. In 1790 he was promoted to colonel of Azov regiment. In 1792 he fought in the Poland (Polish-Russian War of 1792).

Gorchakov took part as a general officer in the Italian and Swiss operations of 1799, and in the war against Napoleon in Poland in 1806–1807 (Battle of Heilsberg). He succeeded Barclay de Tolly as the Minister of War in 1813.

His brother Andrei Ivanovich Gorchakov (1776–1855) was a general in the Russian army who took a conspicuous part in the final campaigns against Napoleon. Their cousin Princess Pelageya Nikolayevna Gorchakov (1762–1838) was fictionalized by her grandson Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace.