The surname Dantes is familiar to everyone. Still, after all, the fame of the killer of the greatest Russian poet was forever entrenched in her bearer. However, few of us remember the name of this person. And only a few know about whom he loved, how he tried to avoid the fatal duel and how he lived after it. Even the reasons for the fight are misunderstood by many. Meanwhile, all these facts allow us to look at the incident on the Black River with different eyes and rethink the circumstances of the tragedy.
Dantes was not Pushkin's offender
It is believed that Pushkin and Dantes shot themselves because of the latter's connection with the poet's wife. But in fact, Dantes did not go to the duel because of his deeds. The main offender of Alexander Sergeevich was the adoptive father of a Frenchman by the name of Gekkern.
He sent out anonymous letters to Pushkin's entourage, in which he called the poet "cuckold", hinting at the connection between the wife of the luminary of Russian literature and Dantes. It all started with this message. The offended husband challenged Dantes, urging him to answer for the insolence of his adoptive father.
Later historians suggested that the letters were sent by the ill-wishers of Dantes and Heckern in order to incite the jealous Pushkin on them. Whether this is so, we will never know.
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Dantes was adopted when he was an adult
The Frenchman became Heckern's adopted son at the age of 24. Georges met his future father by chance, when on the way to Russia he fell ill with pneumonia in the German city of Lubeck. Gekkern settled in the hotel where Dantes was staying, and the men quickly became friends.
In order to adopt Georges, Baron Gekkern had to obtain permission from his own father and the King of Holland. It is said that Dantes decided to marry Heckern out of greed, but the baron was not so rich.
In secular society, there were rumors at all that the relationship in this family was not entirely kinship. And Dantes 'love for unattainable women was explained by Georges' attempt to cover up his true feelings for his adoptive father. Pushkin supported these rumors in every possible way.
In his diary, the poet wrote: "I was the first to know that Dantes was indulging in the sin of Sodom, and I happily made this news public."
Once Dantes barely managed to avoid a duel with Pushkin
Dantes accepted Pushkin's challenge, forgetting that his father, the Dutch envoy, could lose not only his post, but also the right to be in Russia because of this incident (Georges himself, by the way, risked the same). Therefore, he decided to postpone the duel. He offered Alexander to conclude a deal: he withdraws the demand to shoot, and Dantes "in return" marries Ekaterina, the sister of Natalia Goncharova.
Catherine, as they say, was not as pretty as Natalia, and besides, Dantes was 4 years younger than her. Pushkin decided that marrying an unloved one was a worthy punishment for a Frenchman, and accepted the offer. They say that neither Catherine nor Georges were delighted with the upcoming marriage and almost cried during the wedding.
The Frenchman generally dreamed that another woman would be his party. And no, this is not Natalia Goncharova, as many have now thought. This is Idalia Poletika, daughter of Count Stroganov, close to the emperor.
Despite the "tortured" marriage, by those standards, he turned out to be happy
Oddly enough, Georges and Catherine were nevertheless able to create a fairly strong union.
They lived for 7 years without quarrels and scandals. During this time, they had 4 children.
Most likely, they would have lived together much longer, but at the age of 34, Catherine died of postpartum fever.
Dantes was a relative of the Pushkin family, and marriage has nothing to do with it
Historians have established that Dantes's grandmother, Countess Hatzfeld, was married to the Russian diplomat Count Musin-Pushkin. He was a distant relative of Natalia Goncharova's grandmother, Emilia Karlovna.
Why did the duel on the Black River take place
They started talking about the duel again only 2 years after the wedding of Catherine and Georges. Baron Gekkern continued to spread rumors about the relationship between Natalia and Dantes. As a result, Pushkin, tired of gossip, wrote to the Dutchman an extremely offensive letter. In it, he spoke of the romantic connection between Heckern and Dantes and the shameful diseases of both.
The baron did not tolerate this slap in the face and immediately recalled Pushkin's challenge to Dantes to a duel. He announced that the truce was canceled. That is, despite the fact that the initiator of the fight was the Heckerns' side, the challenge, in fact, still belonged to Pushkin.
This state of affairs changed the scenario of the upcoming duel, because according to the rules, the one who initiates the fight shoots second. Pushkin was the second to shoot.
Dantes fired for the first time
Previously, Georges never took part in duels. In general, he was a non-conflicting person and calculated his every action several steps ahead. Risky ventures like duels were simply not for him.
The same cannot be said about Pushkin. The hot-tempered poet challenged him for the 29th time. True, despite the large number of fights (some of which ended in reconciliation of the parties and did not reach the shooting), Pushkin never wounded any of his rivals, let alone kill someone.
Was there a saving button?
You may have already heard that a button saved Dantes from a fatal wound. This story even appears in some textbooks on literature: they say, a bullet fired from Pushkin's revolver pierced the Frenchman's arm through and was supposed to hit the heart, but bounced off the metal button on Georges's uniform.
In fact, there is no evidence of this story, and according to ballistic expertise, the bullet should have pressed a button into the body, and not bounced off it. Most likely, this version was invented by the German envoy Liebermann and the Saxon envoy Karl Lutzerode to justify how Dantes received such a slight injury. More convincing is the assumption that the Frenchman protected himself from the bullet, having previously put on metal chain mail under his uniform, which covered the vital organs.
Trial over Heckern and Dantes
Georges and his adoptive father tried to justify their participation in the duel by presenting at the meeting an insulting letter they received from Pushkin. After reading the message, the servants of the law admitted that Dantes took part in the duel, trying to defend the honor of his father, therefore they chose a relatively light punishment for the Heckerns: both were demoted to the lowest ranks and expelled from Russia.
For Dantes, the duel with Pushkin did a good job
Georges spoke about this himself.
The fact is that in France he managed to make a good career and became a senator and mayor of Souls. In Russia, his career prospects would be much less bright.
Dantes' daughter did not forgive her father for the murder of the poet
Georges Leonie-Charlotte's daughter was a passionate admirer of Alexander Sergeevich's work. The girl read Pushkin's poems and even kept his portrait in her room. She was extremely angry at the act of her father, who shot the creator, and argued that the fight was not conducted according to the laws of honor.
On one of the family evenings, she publicly called Georges a murderer. The girl was fixated on the tragedy, and her mental health began to deteriorate. Tired of enduring attacks from his daughter, Dantes placed her in an asylum for the mentally ill. At the age of 48, Leonie-Charlotte died within the walls of this institution.
Dantes died in old age after a long illness. He peacefully passed away, surrounded by family and loved ones
On June 6, 2019, representatives of the Pushkin and Dantes families met in the studio of one of the popular television shows. The descendants of the Russian poet said that they were not angry with Georges' relatives and were not going to be at enmity with them, but they would never be able to forgive Dantes himself.
Do you think the Frenchman was the only one guilty of the murder of Alexander Sergeevich? Or is the responsibility for what happened equally with all the participants in the duel, including Pushkin himself?