Author : Hugh Barnes
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 9781861974624
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (746 download)
Book Synopsis Gannibal by : Hugh Barnes
Download or read book Gannibal written by Hugh Barnes and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A truly amazing 18th century life restored to history - Tsar's godson and nobleman, Russian Bluebeard, engineer of genius - who began life in an African village. When Major-General Gannibal died in 1781 in his eighties, he could look back on a long and successful life. He was the godson of Peter the Great, the Empress Elizabeth had given him nobility, thousands of acres, villages of serfs. His French education and a natural gift for mathematics had led him to fame as a fireworks expert and the architect of a string of fortifications from the Arctic Circle to China. As a husband he was a provincial Bluebeard, but his descendants would include the great poet Pushkin and a bevy of British aristocrats. Yet Abram Petrovich Gannibal had been born in very different circumstances. He was a black African, perhaps from Ethiopia, perhaps from modern Chad, sold as a child into slavery. In a brilliant biography Hugh Barnes who has tracked Gannibal's footsteps across three continents restores an extraordinary life to history.