Nikolai Orlov

Born Apr. 27 (May 9), 1827; died Mar. 17 (29), 1885, in Fontainebleau, France. Prince; Russian diplomat; cavalry general (1878). Son of A. F. Orlov.

Orlov graduated from the Corps of Pages in 1845. He fought in the Hungarian campaign of 1849 and the Crimean War of 1853–56. From 1859 to 1869 he served as minister to Belgium and Austria-Hungary; in 1870 he was transferred to Great Britain and in the following year to France, where he served until 1882, pursuing a policy of rapprochement. In 1884 he was appointed ambassador to Germany. His memorandum “On the Abolition of Corporal Punishment in the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Poland” (1861), which he submitted to Alexander II, was the basis for the decree of Apr. 17, 1863, abolishing corporal punishment.