Bagration, Pyotr

(1765 –1812), descendant of the Georgian royal family of the Bagrations, was a general of the Russian army. His courage was legendary. He was called the Lion of the Russian Army. As a hero of the Napoleonic Wars he returned to St. Petersburg, to become the lover of Catherine, the sister of the tsar, Alexander I. A marriage was out of the question. He then married another Catherine, a relative of Prince Potemkin. She, however, soon left her husband for an interesting life as a salon hostess in Vienna (and sometime mistress of Metternich). At the Battle of Borodino he was mortally wounded.