3 July — the special chancellery of the Minister of Internal Affairs was abolished. All matters of the secret police were transferred to the newly created Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancellery, headed by General Benckendorff. The scope of this office included:
1) all orders and reports concerning all cases of the high police;
2) information on the number of various sects and schisms existing in the state;
3) reports on discoveries of counterfeit banknotes, coins, documents, and the like, the investigation and further proceedings of which remained under the authority of the Ministers of Finance and Internal Affairs;
4) detailed information on all persons under police surveillance, as well as all directives on this subject;
5) exile and placement of suspicious and harmful persons;
6) supervisory and administrative management of all places of confinement in which state criminals were held;
7) all decrees and directives concerning foreigners;
8) a register of all incidents without exception; statistical information relating to the police.
13 July — five leaders of the Decembrist movement were hanged: P. I. Pestel, S. I. Muravyov-Apostol, M. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, P. G. Kakhovsky, and K. F. Ryleyev. The rest were sent to penal labor or to settlements in Siberia. Many soldiers were subjected to corporal punishment; some officers were reduced in rank and transferred to the Caucasus. Soldiers of the Chernigov Regiment were also sent there.
22 August — the coronation of Nicholas I took place.
On the day of the uprising on Palace Square, Karamzin caught a cold; then for two months he struggled on, took to his bed, and half a year later died, without making use of the frigate outfitted by the highest command to take the ailing historiographer to Italy.
3 September — A. S. Pushkin was in Trigorskoye. At about 11 p.m., the Osipova sisters and Wulf saw him off. At dawn on 4 September, Pushkin’s nanny, Arina Rodionovna, arrived there out of breath and sobbing—an elderly woman who, however, enjoyed a drink. In the evening, a courier appeared and announced that Pushkin had to leave with him immediately. Pushkin only had time to take some money and throw on his overcoat, and within half an hour he was gone. By the highest will he was summoned to Moscow, where he had the good fortune to be presented to His Imperial Majesty.
The Russo–Persian War began, lasting until 1828. It was initiated by Persia in an attempt to regain Eastern Transcaucasia, which the Shah’s troops invaded in July. As a result, Russian forces would take Nakhchivan, Erivan, and Tabriz.
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov was born on the hereditary estate of the old-line nobleman Yevgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov, in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazin Uyezd, Tver Governorate; later he would write under the pen name Shchedrin. He would die in 1899.