Russia Against Napoleon (100 page)

65 Oncken,
Österreich
, vol. 2, pp. 323–4, and no. 46, Stadion to Metternich, 3 June 1813, pp. 660–63.

66 For Alexander’s view on Schweidnitz, see RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 51ii, Volkonsky to Wittgenstein, 11 May 1813 (OS); Müffling,
Memoirs
, pp. 44–9.

67 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fo. 18, Kankrin to Barclay de Tolly, 23 May 1813; RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, fos. 158–9, Barclay to Wittgenstein, 26 June 1813. Botzenhart,
Stein
, vol. 4, Kutuzov to Stein, 6/18 April 1813, p. 287.

68 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 55ii, Volkonsky to d’Auvray, 19 May 1813 (OS); Pflugk-Harttung,
Befreiungsjahr
, no. 135, L’Estocq to Hardenburg, 30 May 1813, pp. 171–5; M. I. Bogdanovich,
Istoriia voiny 1813 g. za nezavisimost’ Germanii
, 2 vols., SPB, 1863, vol. 1, pp. 299–301.

69 F. Ley,
Alexandre Ier et sa Sainte-Alliance (1811–1825)
, Paris, 1975, pp. 63–5. On Alexander’s behaviour, see e.g. Oncken,
Österreich
, vol. 2, p. 330.

70 Langeron,
Mémoires
, p. 199.

Chapter 10: Rebuilding the Army

1 RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1/2, Delo 2888, fos. 11–13.

2 John Keep, ‘The Russian Army in the Seven Years’ War’, in E. Lohr and M. Poe (eds.),
The Military and Society in Russia,
1450–1917, Leiden, 2002, pp. 197–221. For an overall view of logistics in the Seven Years War campaigns, see F. Szabo,
The Seven Years War in Europe
1756–1763, Harlow, 2008.

3
MVUA
1813, 1, pp. 119–20. The army law of January set out the basic arrangements for military roads: see
PSZ
, 32, no. 24975, 27 Jan. 1812 (OS), pp. 116–18.
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, no. 461, Order of the Day, 15 March 1812 (OS), pp. 416–17.

4
PSZ
, 32, no. 24975, 27 Jan. 1812 (OS), part 3, pp. 107–58.

5
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, no. 255, Kutuzov to Stein, 31 Jan. 1813 (OS), pp. 214–15; L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.),
Pokhod russkoi armii protiv Napoleona v
1813
g. i osvobozhdenie Germanii: Sbornik dokumentov
, Moscow, 1964, no. 7, Stein memorandum to Alexander, 6/18 Dec. 1812, pp. 6–8, and no. 53, Stein to Kutuzov, 25 Jan./6 Feb. 1813, pp. 47–8.

6 F. Martens (ed.),
Sobranie traktatov i konventsii, zakliuchennykh Rossiei s inostrannymi derzhavami
, vol. 7:
Traktaty s Germaniei
1811–1824, SPB, 1885, no. 258, pp. 88–96. See also p. 123 of
Upravlenie General-Intendanta Kankrina: General’nyi sokrashchennyi otchet po armiiam…za pokhody protiv Frantsuzov, 1812, 1813 i 1814 godov
, Warsaw, 1815.

7 In late 1813, for example, the Russian war ministry calculated that in the previous four months it had spent 3.9 million rubles feeding units of the Reserve Army deployed within the empire, and only 1. 1 million on the much more numerous forces stationed in the Duchy. Even this 1. 1 million was only due to Alexander’s order that the Reserve Army’s meat and spirits rations should be paid for by the Russian treasury, and no longer by the Poles: ministry of war memorandum for Prince Aleksei Gorchakov, 30 Dec. 1813 (OS), RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3441, fos. 100–101.

8
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, no. 370, Law on the Provisional Government of the Duchy of Warsaw, 1/13 March 1813, pp. 329–35; quotation on p. 332.

9
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, no. 34, Kutuzov’s proclamation to the Polish population, 27 Dec. 1812 (OS), p. 29, and no. 326, Kutuzov to Alexander, 18 Feb. 1813 (OS), p. 291.
MVUA
1813, vol. 2, no. 96, Vorontsov to Chichagov, 1 Feb. 1813 (OS), p. 70.

10 For Kankrin’s instructions, see RGVIA, Fond 474, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 1204, fos. 4i–ii.
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, no. 442, Kutuzov to his wife, 11 March 1813 (OS), p. 400. Adamovich,
Sbornik
, III, pp. 302–5, has interesting statistics on victualling the Kexholm Regiment in the advance guard in January–April. On Frederick’s treatment of Saxony, see Szabo,
Seven Years War
, pp. 119–20.

11 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 208a, Sv. 28, Delo 31, fos. 161–7, Barclay to Alexander, 18 June 1813 (OS). There is another copy of this letter in Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 100–106.

12 There are two key reports on Chichagov’s mobile magazine: see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 76, fos. 20–25: report of Lisanevich to Kankrin, 5 Dec. 1813 (OS); RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 184–7: report by Major Alekseev to Kankrin, 25 June 1813 (OS). See also
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, Kutuzov to Chichagov, 31 Jan. 1813 (OS), pp. 212–13.

13 On the deal with Adelsohn and co., see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 240–41, 317–18. The first document is a report by a senior Prussian court official, Count de Bethusy, dated 25 July. The second is a report submitted by Adelsohn himself on 8 November. On the main army’s magazine, see in particular the reports by Kankrin to Barclay of 6, 10 and 16 July 1813 (OS): RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 207–8, 226, 251–3. On peasant carts’ operational limits, see Keep, ‘Russian Army’, p. 215.

14 This was mostly money in the so-called exchange offices set up to remit back to Russia paper rubles which foreigners had received and which they wished to exchange for their own currencies.

15 Alexander’s orders to Gurev are in
SIM
, 3, no. 136, Alexander to Gurev, 14 June 1813 (OS), pp. 100–101. Two of Gurev’s letters to Barclay, dated 28 June and 1 July (OS), are of interest: see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 208a, Sv. 28, Delo 31, fos. 125 and 219.

16
SIM
, 1, section B, ‘Sekretnyia ofitsial’nyiia svedeniia o polozhenii nashikh finansov v 1813g i ob izyskanii sredstv k prodolzheniiu voennykh deistvii v chuzhikh kraiakh’: no. 1, memorandum by Gurev of 24 April 1813 (OS), pp. 47–50 and 54.

17 Ibid., pp. 55–63.

18
VPR
, 7, nos. 13 and 14, Alexander to Lieven, 20 Jan./1 Feb. 1813, pp. 36–9.

19
VPR
, 7, no. 55, Lieven to Alexander, 25 March/6 April 1813, pp. 132–7; no. 84, Gurev to Nesselrode, 5/17 May 1813, pp. 203–6. E. Botzenhart (ed.),
Freiherr vom Stein: Briefwechsel, Denkschriften und Aufzeichnungen
, 8 vols., Berlin, 1957–70, Stein to Kochubei, 31 May 1813, pp. 350–51. The biggest remaining problem was the exchange costs of British treasury bills on the continent.

20 Kankrin’s list is in RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 64–5: Kankrin to Barclay, 30 May 1813 (OS); Barclay’s letter to Lanskoy, dated 31 May (OS) is on fo. 66 of the same Delo. Alexander’s orders to Lanskoy are in
SIM
, 3, no. 140, 14 June 1813, pp. 102–3.

21 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34: Lanskoy to Barclay, 22 June 1813 (OS), fos. 167–8; Open orders to Major Vinokurov, 18 June 1813 (OS), fo. 135; Vinokurov to Barclay, 23 Aug. 1813 (OS), fos. 311–12; Lieutenant-Colonel Lekarsky to Barclay, 27 July 1813 (OS), fos. 313–14.

22 Beskrovnyi (ed.),
Pokhod
, no. 184, Order of the Day, 29 May/10 June 1813, pp. 195–6.

23
Kutuzov
, vol. 5, no. 300, Kutuzov to Barclay, 9 Feb. 1813 (OS), pp. 259–60; no. 258, Kutuzov to the commandant of Königsberg (Major-General Count Sievers), 2 Feb. 1813 (OS), pp. 216–18; no. 441, Kutuzov to Alexander, 11 March 1813 (OS), pp. 398–9.

24 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 3/209b, Sv. 10, Delo 117, fo. 6: report by Kankrin on boots and trousers. Radozhitsky,
Pokhodnyia
, vol. 2, pp. 156–9. RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 209b, Sv. 11, Delo 2, fos. 104–10: report by Major-General Prince Gurialov to d’Auvray, 13 July 1813 (OS) on muskets.

25
MVUA
1813, 1, pp. 97–132.

26
Kutuzov
, vol. 4ii, pp. 575–7. Alexander set out his plan to Kutuzov in a letter dated

29 November 1812 (OS):
SIM
, 2, no. 367, pp. 211–13.

27 V. V. Shchepetil’nikov,
Komplektovanie voisk v tsarstvovanie imperatora Aleksandra I
, SVM, 4/1/1/2, SPB, 1904, pp. 55–62. The average age of conscripts into the Moscow Dragoons in 1813 was 28 – four years above the peacetime average. See RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 2442, fos. 94–119: note that, although the document states that the men joined in 1812, in fact very many did so in 1813. Forty per cent of conscripts into the Kherson Grenadier Regiment in late 1812 and 1813 were married: see RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 1263. The folio numbers are indecipherable but the list of new recruits comes after the
formuliarnyi spisok
of NCOs on fos. 43 ff.

28 V. A. Aleksandrov,
Sel’skaia obshchina v Rossii (XVII-nachalo XIX v.)
, Moscow, 1976, pp. 244–5.

29 I. I. Prokhodtsov,
Riazanskaia guberniia v
1812
godu
, Riazan, 1913, p. 119. RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1/2, Delo 2636, fo. 11, for the ministry’s circular urging recruit boards to check the records submitted by the state peasant administration.

30 V. Lestvitsyn (ed.), ‘Zapiski soldata Pamfila Nazarova’,
RS
, 9/8, 1878, pp. 529–43.

31 These records are held in the British Library as Additional Manuscript 47427 of the Lieven papers.

32 On the estate, see Edgar Melton, ‘Household Economies and Communal Conflicts on a Russian Serf Estate, 1800–1817’,
Journal of Social History
, 26/3, 1993, pp. 559–86.

33 On Staroust, see BL Add. MSS. 47424, fos. 47–53. Melton, ‘Household Economies’, p. 569, for the Leontev case, in which the estate management’s efforts to allow the wife of a conscripted man to be the breadwinner and keep his land were rejected by the commune. All other individual cases are drawn by me from Add. MSS. 47427.

34 Charlotta’s instructions for the ‘wealth tax’ are in BL Add. MSS. 47427: they and the lists providing sums to be raised from each household are contained in fos. 122–41. See also Melton, ‘Household Economies’, p. 569.

35 RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1/2, Delo 2636, fo. 53.

36 S. E. Charnetskii,
Istoriia 179-go pekhotnago Ust-Dvinskago polka:
1711–1811–1911, SPB, 1911, p. 26.

37 I used above all the service records (
formuliarnye spiski
) in RGVIA. The regiments covered were: the Kherson (Ed. Khr. 1263) and Little Russia (Ed. Khr. 1190) Grenadiers; the Murom (Ed. Khr. 517), Kursk (Ed. Khr. 425), Chernigov (Ed. Khr. 1039), Reval (Ed. Khr. 754), Selenginsk (Ed. Khr. 831) and Belostok (Ed. Khr. 105) infantry regiments; the 29th (Ed. Khr. 1794), 39th (Ed. Khr. 1802) and 45th (Ed. Khr. 1855) Jaegers; His Majesty’s Life Cuirassier Regiment (Ed. Khr. 2114), the Iamburg (Ed. Khr. 2631), Siberia (Ed. Khr. 2670), Moscow (Ed. Khr. 2442), Borisogleb (Ed. Khr. 2337) and Pskov (Ed. Khr. 212) Dragoon regiments and the Volhynia Lancers (Ed. Khr. 2648). In addition, the appendices of three regimental histories have lists of officers giving dates when they were commissioned. These are the Guards Jaegers (
Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka za sto let
1796–1896, SPB, 1896,
prilozheniia
, pp. 56 ff.); the Guards Lancers (P. Bobrovskii,
Istoriia leib-gvardii ulanskago E.I.V. gosudarnyi Imperatritsy Aleksandry Fedorovny polka
, SPB, 1903,
prilozheniia
, pp. 140 ff.); Her Majesty’s Life Cuirassier Regiment (Colonel Markov,
Istoriia leib-gvardii kirasirskago Eia Velichestva polka
, SPB, 1884,
prilozheniia
, pp. 73 ff.). In all there were 341 new officers, of whom 43 per cent were former sub-ensigns or junkers. This does not comprise all the newly commissioned officers in these regiments, since some of the service records are from January or July 1813. That also biases the results towards men who had served as noble NCOs.

38
Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka
,
prilozheniia
, pp. 56 ff., is a mine of information.

39 Of the new officers surveyed, 20 per cent were formerly non-noble NCOs. In fact a handful of these men were nobles but had not yet reached even the rank of sub-ensign or junker. But this was far fewer than the twelve non-noble NCOs commissioned into other regiments, so the statistic of one in five holds good. In reality Russian society was more blurred than the sharp legal distinctions between estates admitted. A halfway house was the many petty Polish noble NCOs from lancer regiments who received commissions in the Russian lancer units which in 1813 were created out of some dragoon regiments.

40
SIM
, 2, no. 249, Alexander to Wittgenstein, 26 Oct. 1812 (OS), pp. 119–21.

41 In my survey, 8. 5 per cent of the officers came from the Noble Regiment and 7 per cent were former civil servants but the bias towards the first half of the war undoubtedly underestimates their importance. Another source of officers was the military orphanages, where the sons of dead officers were educated. On the Noble Regiment, see M. Gol’mdorf,
Materialy dlia istorii byvshego Dvorianskago polka
, SPB, 1882; the statistics are fromp. 137. Alexander wrote on 18 December 1812 (OS) to Count Saltykov that there were superfluous civil officials and what the state needed at present were officers. Men unwilling to transfer to the army should therefore be dismissed:
SIM
, 2, no. 417, pp. 253–4. On 29 December 1812 he ordered that the Noble Regiment be ‘restarted’, which reflects the reality that it had more or less come to a halt amidst the emergency of 1812:
SIM
, 2, no. 412, Alexander to Viazmitinov, 17 Dec. 1812 (OS), p. 250.