Pyotr Aleksandrovich Tolstoy

On return, Empress Catherine II awarded Tolstoy the Order of St. George of the 3rd degree with her own hand and appointed him the chief of the Pskov Dragoon regiment.

On 9 November 1797 he obtained the rank of major general with appointment the chief of the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon regiment and in the next year received the Order of St. Anna of the 1st degree.

In September 1805 he departed with 20,000 landing corps into Pomerania and operated in the North Germany under the general command of King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden.

In the beginning of the War of the Fourth Coalition Emperor Alexander sent Tolstoy to reconcile Corps Commanders Bennigsen and Buxhoeveden and to report about their quarrel personally to himself.

His main objective was to observe the Treaty of Tilsit, and Tolstoy wrote to Alexander that all friendly assurances of Napoleon are mendacious, he entreated him not to believe them, but to prepare for the rebuff in advance, and predicted the forthcoming French invasion of Russia.

He recommended to the Russian government a system of measures for the protection of the interests of Russia against possible aggression from Napoleon: to greatly increase the size of the army, to move it to the Western borders, to conclude a secret agreement with Austria, to finish the war with Turkey and Sweden, to conclude peace with England and to organize a new anti-French coalition with Prussia and Austria.