A member of one of Russia's
Rurikid families, Pyotr Borisovich Kozlovsky had a short career as a diplomat, was a writer and translator, but is known mainly for his contacts with the numerous literary figures with whom he became acquainted during his extensive and protracted travels in Western Europe. His early intellectual development was greatly aided by contact with the cultivated foreigners, primarily French emigrants, who were frequent visitors to his parental home. He received an education at home, though this was not taken seriously until the death of an older brother. Kozlovsky became a fluent speaker of French, English, German, and Italian. Enjoying the patronage of Prince
Alexander Borisovich Kurakin, in 1801 he entered the Russian diplomatic service in
St. Petersburg and in 1802 was appointed interpreter to the Russian mission to the
Kingdom of Sardinia. Initially in
Rome, where he developed his interest in mathematics and physics, Kozlovsky followed the Sardinian court to
Cagliari, when it was forced to flee Rome in 1806. By 1810, he had been promoted to
chargé d'affaires. Recalled to Russia in 1811 and briefly dismissed from the service, in 1812 he was appointed ambassador to Sardinia in
Turin, where he remained until 1816. During the brief peace between France and Russia after the signing of the
Treaties of Tilsit in 1807, Kozlovsky helped a group of French officers escape English captivity, for which he was awarded the Cross of the
Légion d'honneur by the Emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte. He was closely involved in the negotiations on the demarcation of the frontiers between
Switzerland,
France, and the
Kingdom of Sardinia and was also a minor member of the Russian delegation to the
Congress of Vienna (1814–1815). Kozlowski was familiar with
François-René de Chateaubriand and
Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais, under whose influence secretly converted to
Catholicism from Russian Orthodoxy, his religion by birth. In 1816 he married an Italian called Giovanetta Rebora. In 1818, he was appointed ambassador simultaneously to the
Kingdom of Württemberg in
Stuttgart and the
Grand Duchy of Baden in
Karlsruhe, but in 1820 a political dispute with the Russian government, caused by his public defence of the beginnings of democratic government in these states, led to his resignation and self-imposed exile, although he continued to receive a salary and remain, theoretically at least, available for service. During this period he turns up for varying lengths of time in
Austria (1821–1822, in
Vienna,
Graz,
Prague,
Teplitz),
Switzerland,
France (1823–1824 in
Paris),
Germany (1825-6, in
Berlin), the
Netherlands and
London (from 1829). Even after the new government of Tsar
Nicholas I almost halved his salary in 1827, Kozlovsky remained interested in political events, hoping for active employment during the
Russo-Turkish war of 1828–1829, a post as Russian Consul in
Hamburg in 1830, and watching the events of the
July Revolution of 1830 in France and the
Belgian Revolution of the same year. Events in France prompted him to write his
Lettres au duc de Broglie sur les prisonniers de Vincennes, in which he pleaded the innocence of former ministers under
Charles X. The Belgian revolution prompted him to write
Belgium in 1830 in the hope of influencing British policy. The work was not published, however, until 1831, by which time it had been overtaken by events. Kozlovsky only returned to Russia in 1835, having suffered a serious injury in an accident in Poland which left him permanently disabled. In the summer of 1836 he finally returned to diplomatic life as a member of
Paskevich's Council for the
Kingdom of Poland in
Warsaw, so that during the last four years of his life he was travelling between Warsaw and St. Petersburg. He died in Baden-Baden where he had gone to take the waters for health reasons. During the 1810s in Italy Kozlovsky married Giovanetta Rebora from
Milan who bore him a son Charles, and in 1817 a daughter, Sophie (Sofka) Koslowska (died in 1878). Sophie was in close contact with the French novelist
Honoré de Balzac, who followed Kozlovsky as the lover of Frances Sarah Lovell (1804–1883), wife of Count Emilio Guidoboni-Visconti. One sister, Maria Borisovna (1788–1851), a poet in her own right, was the mother of the composer
Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky (Александр Сергеевич Даргомыжский), another, Daria Borisovna, was married to the poet, translator and state councillor
Michail Sergeyevich Kaisarov (1780–1825, Михаил Сергеевич Кайсаров) ==Literary life==