Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (born 1831)
Russian grand duke (1831-1891); third son and sixth child of Nicholas I of Russia and Charlotte of Prussia

Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (Russian: Великий князь Николай Николаевич; 8 August 1831 – 25 April 1891) was the third son and sixth child of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and Alexandra Feodorovna. He may also be referred to as Nicholas Nikolaevich the Elder to tell him apart from his son, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929). Trained for the military, as a Field Marshal he commanded the Russian army of the Danube in the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878.
Military career
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich was born on 8 August 1831 at Tsarskoye Selo in St. Petersburg.
His father arranged for Nicholas Nikolaevich a career in the army. On the day he was born, he was appointed honorary colonel in the Life Guard Lancers and enlisted into the Life Guard Sappers battalion. A soldier most of his life, he first saw active service in the Crimea War, when he was in his early twenties, taking part in the battle of Inkerman (1854). Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich showed a special interest in military engineering. In 1856, he was appointed as general Inspector of engineers and in 1864, he became commander of the Imperial Guard.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q163863. VIAF identifies the subject as 13118597. The Library of Congress control number is n85370703. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1831, 1891, 1856 and 1929.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (born 1831)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.