In 1729 he fled from Selenginsk but was arrested before he could reach Europe. His papers and valuables taken from him, Hannibal was brought to Tomsk, a city in Western Siberia. There for some time he was kept as a prisoner, although his salary as an officer was still paid. In January of 1730 he was freed but not permitted to leave Siberia. He was appointed to serve in the Tomsk garrison as a major.

Soon afterwards St. Petersburg was the scene of a new coup-d'etat. Anna, a niece of Peter the Great, was summoned to the Russian throne. Counts Dolgorukov became the most powerful persons at the court. New hopes were aroused in Hannibal, as the Dolgorukovs were his friends, since the time he and they lived in France. Hannibal without asking or waiting for permission left Tomsk, but when some time after he arrived in St. Petersburg he learned that Dolgorukovs lost their influence as suddenly as they won it, that they were arrested, and after all their estates had been confiscated, were exiled to Siberia. Great dangers threatened Hannibal as a Dolgorukovs' friend. Biron, erstwhile a stable man but now adviser and lover of Anna, sought Hannibal's life. Field-marshal Minich, commander-in-chief of the Russian army, however, saved Hannibal by granting him a commission to inspect fortifications in Lifland. In a little village near Reval, then, Hannibal lived in obscurity for 10 years, fearing every day the arrival of a messenger from St. Petersburg with an order for his arrest.

Before his coming to Lifland, Hannibal married the beautiful daughter of a Greek captain by the name of Dioper. Almost from the first day of their marriage he began to suspect her infidelity. The birth of a white baby-girl proved his suspicions and justified their divorce. The Russian court sent Hannibal's wife to a convent, and Hannibal married Christina-Regina Von-Sheberg, a Lifland German woman. She gave birth to five sons, all of whom were mulattoes. His first wife's white daughter he kept in his home, gave her a good education and a considerable dowry, but never permitted her to come before his eyes.

In November of 1741 Elisabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great, was proclaimed the Empress of Russia. She immediately returned from exile all former favorites of her father. Among these was Hannibal, on whom she showered various honours. He was given the post of commandant of city of Reval. About ten villages with several thousands of white slaves were presented to him as his personal property. He was decorated with medals and ribbons and asked to come to St. Petersburg. He preferred, however, to stay on his newly acquired estates.

Other important tasks awaited him. In 1752 he was commissioned to fix the Russo-Swedish boundary line. In 1756 he was one of the members of the Ladoga Canal Commission and also of the Commission for the Inspection of the Russian Forts. In 1762, with a rank of general in chief, he retired from public service, being then an old man. His services were remembered at the court for a long time after, however, for once Catherine II asked him to compose a plan of St. Petersburg-Moscow Canal.

During his last years he was frequented by spells of sudden fear, the consequence of his old sufferings. He was especially afraid of the sound of a bell, imagining that his persecutors were coming again. Under one of these spells, as we mentioned above, he destroyed his memoirs not long before he died in 1782 in his eighty-fifth year.

He did not want his sons to join the army or be at the court, fearing they might be involved there in dangerous intrigue. Ivan, his elder son, joined the army against his will, and only after he won fame as a brilliant victor over the Turks could he on his knees receive his aged father's forgiveness. Ivan Hannibal distinguished himself not only as a strategist but as a man of a great personal valor as well. He participated in the Russian naval expedition to Greece and captured Navarin, a Turkish fort, in 1770. He was the hero of the Chesma battle. Returning to Russia in 1779 he founded the city of Kherson in the Ukraine, of which he was appointed a governor. Later Ivan Hannibal quarreled with Count Potemkin, lover of Catherine the Great and ruler of Southern Russia. The Empress defended Hannibal and decorated him, but he left the service and went to live in one of his numerous estates. There in 1801 he died.

His brother Ossip (Joseph) was a naval officer in the Black Sea Fleet and for several years navigated the Mediterranean. Of other sons of Abram Hannibal very little is known. Ossip's daughter Nadejda, a Creole of striking beauty, married Pushkin, of an ancient Russian noble family. In 1799 a son was born to them and named Alexander, who later won fame as the greatest poet of Russia. He was killed in 1837, while duelling with a diplomat over the honor of Pushkin's wife, who was not worth her great husband's noble love.

While all the works of Pushkin could be bound together in one volume, thousands of books have been written on him and on what he created. Numerous monuments are erected in his honor all over Russia; special magazines entirely dedicated to him are published; and in famous paintings by distinguished Russian artists are pictured different periods of Pushkin's short life. When you look at these paintings, black curls, olive skin and thick lips speak to you of Pushkin's race. He himself was proud of it, all but worshipping his great-grandfather in many of his verses.

Albert Parry