Franz Lefort — statesman with roots in the Russian Empire
Francois Jacques Le Fort was born in Geneva in January 1656, the son of a merchant family of Huguenot descent, and began his military career in the Dutch service. In 1675 he sailed to Archangelsk looking for employment in the Russian army. Moscow turned him down; the foreign office registered him simply as a visiting foreigner. He settled in the Nemetskaya sloboda, the foreign quarter outside the city, applied again in 1678, and was taken on as a captain.
He served in the Russo-Turkish war and the Crimean campaigns of 1687 and 1689, and around 1689 became close to the young Peter I, who was then in his teens and drawn to the foreign quarter and the Europeans who lived in it. The friendship shaped both men's careers. Lefort was made major general in 1690 and lieutenant general in 1691, commanded the navy in the Azov campaigns of 1695-96, and was appointed admiral. He was given the governorship of Novgorod and estates in two districts.
In 1696 he was named, with Fyodor Golovin and Prokopy Voznitsyn, one of the three grand ambassadors of the Grand Embassy, the mission that took Peter through Prussia, the Dutch Republic and England to study shipbuilding and recruit foreign specialists — the journey that did more than anything else to set the direction of the Russian state for the next century. Peter travelled in it incognito as Peter Mikhailov, with Lefort as the official face of the delegation.
He moved in 1698 into a palace built for him on the Yauza, which became the setting for Peter's meetings and entertainments during 1698-99. Contemporaries were divided on him: Prince Boris Kurakin recalled a man of French tastes and expensive habits who gave dinners and balls continuously, at the tsar's expense.
He died in Moscow in March 1699, aged forty-three, of a fever. Peter gave him a state funeral second in scale only to those of tsars and patriarchs, and is recorded as saying that he was now alone, that Lefort alone had been faithful to him, and asking whom he could rely on now. The Lefortovo district of Moscow is named after him.
"Geneva to Moscow, 1670s"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Moscow (Russia)
The Lefortovo district of Moscow is named after him.
Born in Geneva, he settled in Moscow's foreign quarter and became the closest confidant of the young Peter I, encouraging the westward orientation that shaped the Russian state.
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Moscow (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.