The cathedral of Iglesias, built by the Pisans, has a good façade
(restored); the interior is late Spanish Gothic. San Francesco is a fine
Gothic church with a gallery over the entrance, while Sta Chiara and the
church of the Capuchins (the former dating from 1285) show a transition
between Romanesque and Gothic. The battlemented town walls are well
preserved and picturesque; the castle, built in 1325, now contains a
glass factory. The church of Nostra Signora del Buon Cammino above the
town (1080 ft.) commands a fine view.
IGNATIEV, NICHOLAS PAVLOVICH, COUNT (1832-1908), Russian diplomatist,
was born at St Petersburg on the 29th of January 1832. His father,
Captain Paul Ignatiev, had been taken into favour by the tsar Nicholas
I., owing to his fidelity on the occasion of the military conspiracy in
1825; and the grand duke Alexander (afterwards tsar) stood sponsor at
the boy's baptism. At the age of seventeen he became an officer of the
Guards. His diplomatic career began at the congress of Paris, after the
Crimean War, where he took an active part as military attaché in the
negotiations regarding the rectification of the Russian frontier on the
Lower Danube. Two years later (1858) he was sent with a small escort on
a dangerous mission to Khiva and Bokhara. The khan of Khiva laid a plan
for detaining him as a hostage, but he eluded the danger and returned
safely, after concluding with the khan of Bokhara a treaty of
friendship. His next diplomatic exploit was in the Far East, as
plenipotentiary to the court of Peking. When the Chinese government was
terrified by the advance of the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 and the
burning of the Summer Palace, he worked on their fears so dexterously
that he obtained for Russia not only the left bank of the Amur, the
original object of the mission, but also a large extent of territory and
sea-coast south of that river. This success was supposed to prove his
capacity for dealing with Orientals, and paved his way to the post of
ambassador at Constantinople, which he occupied from 1864 till 1877.
Here his chief aim was to liberate from Turkish domination and bring
under the influence of Russia the Christian nationalities in general and
the Bulgarians in particular. His restless activity in this field,
mostly of a semi-official and secret character, culminated in the
Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, at the close of which he negotiated with
the Turkish plenipotentiaries the treaty of San Stefano. As the war
which he had done so much to bring about did not eventually secure for
Russia advantages commensurate with the sacrifices involved, he fell
into disfavour, and retired from active service. Shortly after the
accession of Alexander III. in 1881, he was appointed minister of the
interior on the understanding that he would carry out a nationalist,
reactionary policy, but his shifty ways and his administrative
incapacity so displeased his imperial master that he was dismissed in
the following year.
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