he was sent to Paris to join the embassy of Count Peter Tolstoy, whom he accompanied in the spring of the next year to the meeting of the two emperors at Erfurt. After his return to Paris he strengthened the understanding between Alexander I. and Talleyrand consequent on the Erfurt meeting, and acted as intermediary between the two. On the appointment of a successor to Count Tolstoy he retired to St Petersburg, but returned to Paris early in 1810 charged with a commission from Speranski to Talleyrand and the marquis de Caulaincourt, formerly ambassador in St Petersburg, both of whom were hostile to Napoleon’s policy of aggression. After the breach of diplomatic relations with Russia in 1811, Nesselrode returned to St Petersburg by way of Vienna in order to exchange views with Metternich. He sought to persuade Alexander to open negotiations with Napoleon, if only to throw the onus of breaking the peace entirely on the French side. He joined the tsar’s headquarters at Vilna in March 1812 and, though Rumiantzov was still foreign minister, it was Nesselrode who directed the foreign policy of Russia from this time forward. He was present at the battle of Leipzig, and accompanied the invading army to Paris; he negotiated the capitulation of Marmont and Mortier at Clichy, and signed the treaty of Chaumont on the 1st of March 1814. His former relations with Talleyrand facilitated negotiations in Paris, and his great influence with the emperor was used in favour of the restoration of the Bourbons, and, after Waterloo, against the imposition of a ruinous war indemnity on France. At the congress of Vienna he was associated with Count Capo d’Istria, and when, in August 1816, Alexander made him secretary of state for foreign affairs in succession to Rumiantzov, it was again in conjunction with the Greek statesman, from whom he differed widely in temperament and ideas. The emperor Alexander I., however, was apt to keep the direction of affairs in his own hands and so long as Alexander inclined to Liberalism Capo d’Istria was the interpreter of his will, but as the emperor veered towards Metternich’s system Nesselrode became his mouthpiece. After Alexander’s final “conversion” to reactionary principles, Capo d’Istria was dismissed (1822) and Nesselrode definitely took his place. He had consistently advocated Alexander’s project of a “universal union,” symbolized by the Holy Alliance, in contradistinction to the narrower system of the alliance of the great powers; and, when the Greek insurrection broke out, he did much to determine the tsar to sacrifice his sympathy with the Orthodox Greeks to his dream of the European confederation (see Alexander I., emperor of Russia).
After Alexander’s death in 1825 Nesselrode retained office under Nicholas I, He was responsible for the change of policy of Russia towards the Ottoman empire after 1829, viz. that of abandoning the traditional idea of conquering Constantinople in favour of keeping the Ottoman power weak and dependent on the tsar. This was his policy during the revolt of Mehemet Ali (q.v.), and it was Nesselrode who inspired the terms of the famous treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (1833). Nicholas I. was, however, even less inclined than his brother to place himself in the hands of a minister; and Nesselrode showed himself amenable, though when his views differed from those of the emperor he stated them with great frankness. He conducted the negotiations which led to the shelving of the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi and to the alliance between Russia and Great Britain which, issuing ultimately in the Straits Convention of 1841—to which France also was a party—healed the breach which had so long divided the powers of eastern and western Europe.
In 1849 it was Nesselrode who suggested the intervention of Russia in Hungary in favour of the Austrian government, although he restrained the tsar from active intervention in France then as in 1830. During the crisis of 1853 he prolonged negotiation in the hope of averting war. The last of his important political acts, the signing of the treaty of Paris in 1856, undid the results of his patient efforts to establish Russian preponderance in the Balkan peninsula. He then retired from the foreign office, retaining the chancellorship, which he had held since 1844. He died at St Petersburg on the 23rd of March 1862.
See Lettres et papiers du chancelier comte de Nesselrode 1760 –1850, the first volume of which was issued by his grandson Count Anatole Nesselrode at Paris in 1904. This work includes letters of the chancellor’s father, Count William, Nesselrode’s correspondence, and important state papers. In vol. ii. is a fragment of an autobiography (to 1814), which Count Nesselrode did not live to complete. See also Correspondance diplomatique du comte Pozzo di Borgo et du comte de Nesselrode, edited by Charles Pozzo di Borgo (Paris, 2 vols., 1890–1897).
NEST, the place where a bird lays its eggs, hatches them out,
and shelters them until they are fledged. The word is used by
analogy of other animals than birds, insects, &c. It appears
in much the same form in Teutonic languages; related to it
are Irish nead, and Lat. nidus, whence Fr. nid. It has been
referred to the Gr. νόστος, return home, but it is now established
that it represents a form nizdo- for nisido-, from ni-, down;
cf. “nether,” and sed-, to sit. Sanskrit has nīda. The Lat.
nidus has given the scientific term for nest-building, nidification
(q.v.).
NESTOR, in Greek legend, son of Neleus and Chloris, king
of Pylos in Messenia. When all his brothers were slain by
Heracles, in consequence of the refusal of Neleus to purify him
for the murder of Iphitus, Nestor alone escaped, being absent
at Gerenia—hence his epithet Gerenios in Homer (Apollodorus
i. 9). He is the old warrior of the Iliad and the wise counsellor
of the Greeks before Troy. After the fall of the city he returned
to Pylos, where Telemachus visited him to obtain news of his
father. In his earlier years he took part in the battle of the
Centaurs and Lapithae, the Calydonian boar hunt, and the
Argonautic expedition. The name is used in modern times
for any old man of ripe experience, or the oldest member of a
class or corporation.
NESTOR (c. 1056–c. 1114), the reputed author of the earliest
Russian chronicle, was a monk of the Pecherskiy cloister of
Kiev from 1073. The only other fact of his life is that he was
commissioned with two other monks to find the relics of St Theodosius,
a mission which he succeeded in fulfilling. The
chronicle begins with the deluge, as those of most chroniclers
of the time did. The compiler appears to have been acquainted
with the Byzantine historians; he makes use especially of
John Malalas and George Hamartolus. He also had in all
probability other Slavonic chronicles to compile from, which
are now lost. Many legends are mixed up with Nestor’s
Chronicle; the style is occasionally so poetical that perhaps he
incorporated bīlini which are now lost. The early part is rich in
these stories, among which are the arrival of the three Varangian
brothers, the founding of Kiev, the murder of Askold and Dir,
the death of Oleg, who was killed by a serpent concealed in the
skeleton of his horse, and the vengeance taken by Olga, the
wife of Igor, on the Drevlians, who had murdered her husband.
The account of the labours of Cyril and Methodius among the
Slavs is also very interesting, and to Nestor we owe the tale
of the summary way in which Vladimir suppressed the worship
of Perun and other idols at Kiev. As an eyewitness he could
only describe the reigns of Vsevolod and Sviatopolk (1078–1112),
but he gathered many interesting details from the lips of old
men, two of whom were Giurata Rogovich of Novgorod, who
gave him information concerning the north of Russia, Petchora,
and other places, and Jan, a man ninety years of age, who died
in 1106, and was son of Vishata the voivode of Yaroslavl and
grandson of Ostromir the Posadnik, for whom the Codex was
written. Many of the ethnological details given by Nestor of
the various races of the Slavs are of the highest value.
The latest theory about Nestor is that the Chronicle is a patchwork of many fragments of chronicles, and that the name of Nestor was attached to it because he wrote the greater part or perhaps because he put the fragments together. The name of a certain Sylvester, an Igumen, is affixed to several of the manuscripts as the author.
The Chronicle has come down to us in several manuscripts, but unfortunately no contemporary ones, the oldest being the so-called Lavrientski of the 14th century (1377). It was named after the monk Lavrentii, who copied it out for Dimitri Constantinovich, the prince of Souzdal. The work, as contained in this manuscript,
