With the enthronement of Elizabeth Petrovna, Rumyantsev was made a count and sent to govern Malorossia, or Left-Bank Ukraine. He died there on March 4, 1749, leaving a son, Peter (see below), and a daughter, Daria, married to the Austrian count Wallestein. His wife survived him for 40 years, and entertained the St Petersburg society with the stories of her acquaintance with Louis XIV, Madame de Maintenon, and Duke of Marlborough. When she died at the age of 90, Gavrila Derzhavin wrote a remarkable ode glorifying her virtues.
Throughout the reign of Catherine the Great, Rumyantsev was supreme governor of Ukraine. In this post, which his father had held with so much honesty, Rumyantsev made his priority to eliminate any autonomy of the hetmans and to fully incorporate the newly-conquered territories into the Empire. He is often blamed for having promoted Serfdom in New Russia, but obviously this was not a policy of his choosing.
With the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1768, Rumyantsev was placed in command of the army sent to capture Azov. He thoroughly defeated the Turks in the Battles of Larga and Kagula, crossed the Danube and advanced to Romania. For these dazzling victories he was made Field-Marshal and awarded the title Zadunaisky (i.e., the Trans-Danubian). When his forces approached Shumla in 1774, the Sultan started to panic and sued for peace, which was signed by Rumyanstev upon a military tambourine at the village of Kuchuk-Kainarji. [image]
At that point, Rumyantsev was undoubtedly the most famous Russian commander. It is said that other Catharinian generals, notably Potemkin, were so jealous of his fame that they wouldn't permit him to take the command again. In the times of peace, Rumyantsev expressed his innovative views on the martial art in the Instructions (1761), Customs of Military Service (1770), and the Thoughts (1777). These works provided a theoretical base for reorganisation of the Russian army undertaken by Potemkin.
During the Second Russo-Turkish War, Zadunaisky suspected Potemkin of deliberately curtailing supplies of his army and presently resigned command. In the Polish campaign of 1794 he was again appointed Commander-in-Chief, but the armies were led into battle by his rival Suvorov. This time Rumyantsev didn't bother even to leave his Ukrainian manor at Tashan which he had rebuilt into a fortress. He died there on December 8, 1796, several month after Catherine's death.
During the years of his foreign service, Nikolay Petrovich amassed a huge collection of historic documents, rare coins, maps, manuscripts, and incunabulas which formed a nucleus of the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow (subsequently transformed into the State Russian Library). Being keenly interested in Russian history, Rumyantsev was the first to publish several old Russian chronicles and ancient literary monuments of Eastern Slavs. He was also a notable patron of the Russian voyages of exploration. Nicholas Rumyantsev died on 3 January, 1826 in St Petersburg.