Russia Against Napoleon

by Lieven, Dominic

  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.

  42 Mémoires du Général Bennigsen, 3 vols., Paris, n.d., vol. 3, pp. 278–9 (letter to Alexander Iof 24 June (OS)). RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 70: Essen’s report on his troops’ condition upon departure from their training camps is on fo. 4 and the list of men dispatched on fo. 5.

  43 SIM, 11, no. 13, Lobanov-Rostovsky to Alexander I, 16 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 109–11.

  44 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, pp. 578–80. This was in a report by the inspector-general of artillery, Müller-Zakomelsky, dated 3 Jan. 1813 (OS). SIM, 11, no. 12, 14 Nov. 1812 (OS), is Lobanov’s acknowledgement to Alexander that he had received this order. V. N. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka Rossii k bor’be s Napoleonom v 1812–1814 godakh, candidate’s dissertation, Gorky, 1967, pp. 385–454 is excellent on small-arms production in 1812–14.

  45 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 163, fos. 31–2: Gorchakov to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 31 March 1813 (OS).

  46 SIM, 11, Saltykov to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 19 Dec. 1812 (OS), p. 199.

  47 The two key sources on the Reserve Army in this period are Lobanov-Rostovsky’s reports to Alexander I for 7 Jan.–6 Aug. 1813 (RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47) and the journal of outgoing correspondence of Lobanov’s headquarters for 1 Jan.–1 April 1813 (RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 42).

  48 Alexander’s orders are in SIM, 3, no. 52, Alexander to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 5 Feb. 1813 (OS), pp. 39–43. Lobanov’s initial response to the movement orders is in RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 147, fos. 17–18: letter dated 15 Feb. 1813 (OS).

  49 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3441, fos.
31–2: Lobanov to Alexander, 17 Feb. 1813 (OS).

  50 For Lobanov’s report, see RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47, fos. 26–9. For Neverovsky’s report to the emperor, see RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 39, fos. 28–9. The statistics come from the same Delo and are on fos. 31–2. Lobanov’s letters to Alexander I of 9 May (fos. 62–4) and 18 July (fos. 104–5) 1813 (OS) (in RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47) state that of 9,000 sick left behind in Belitsa 7,000 had already rejoined their units and more were expected to do so. The reserve companies of the Guards Jaeger Regiment, for example, left Petersburg with 704 men and arrived in Silesia with 481; see Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka, p. 113.

  51 Even the Chevaliers Gardes at Kulm put out skirmishers: see S. Panchulidzev, Istoriia kavalergardov, SPB, 1903, vol. 3, p. 314.

  52 The best shorthand guide to the Russian cavalry of this era (including useful illustrations of horse furnishings, how to hold the reins and use a sword, and how to deploy to skirmish and charge, etc.) is Alla Begunova, Sabli ostry, koni bystry, Moscow, 1992.

  53 See e.g. Arakcheev’s letter to Kutuzov of 31 March 1813 (OS) and Alexander’s letter to the Grand Duke Constantine of the same date: RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/20, Sv. 3, Delo 22, fos. 42 and 43.

  54 Kologrivov received 269 fine horses from the state studs in December 1812, for example: all were for the Guards and he gave only one even to the Guards Lancers: MVUA 1812, 20, Kologrivov to Gorchakov, 12 Dec. 1812 (OS), p. 153.

  55 V. V. Ermolov and M. M. Ryndin, Upravlenie general-inspektora kavalerii o remontirovanii kavalerii, SVM, 13, SPB, 1906, pp. 126–7.

  56 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3442, is devoted to this mission. See also Komarovsky’s memoirs: Zapiski Grafa E. F. Komarovskago, SPB, 1914, pp. 200 ff. Ermolov and Ryndin, Upravlenie, SVM, 13, pp. 134–6.

  57 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 513, memorandum, pp. 488–90: no date but probably late November.

  58 A. Grigorovich, Istoriia 13-go dragunskago voennago ordena general-fel’dmarshala Grafa Minikha polka, 2 vols., SPB, 1907 and 1912, vol. 2, pp. 32–3. Even in late October (OS) the five cuirassier regiments of this division had barely 1,000 other ranks present.

  59 N. Durova, The Cavalry Maiden: Journals of a Female Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, ed. and trans. Mary Fleming Zirin, Bloomington, Ill., 1989, p. 168.

  60 V. Godunov, Istoriia 3-go ulanskago Smolenskago Imperatora Aleksandra III-go polka 1708–1908, Libava, 1908, pp. 133–4. At Slonim they were joined by the 8 officers and 155 veterans of the former reserve squadron, the 7th, which had been deployed in the rear at Olviopol in 1812.

  61 The report is entitled ‘Otnoshenie Generala ot Infanterii kniaz’ia Lobanova-Rostovskago s otchetami o raspredelenii v rezervy voinov i loshadei’. Together with a covering letter from Lobanov to Gorchakov dated 14 April 1815 (OS), it is to be found in RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1/2, Delo 3230. The Reserve Army’s cavalry corps had dispatched 543 officers and 21,699 other ranks to the Field Army. Since the formation of the Reserve Army 1,749 officers, 33,423 veteran other ranks and 38,620 recruits had served in its cavalry corps. The Reserve Army’s infantry corps had dispatched 635 officers and 61,843 other ranks to the Field Army; 3,662 officers, 116,904 veterans and 174,148 recruits had served in the infantry corps during the existence of the Reserve Army. It is important to remember that these statistics do not include the ‘first wave’ of reinforcements dispatched by Kologrivov and Lobanov in the spring of 1813 before the Reserve Army was created.

  62 A. S. Griboedov, Sochineniia, Moscow, 1953: ‘O kavaleriiskikh rezervakh’, pp. 363–7.

  63 For the statistics, see Ermolov and Ryndin, Upravlenie, p. 136. For Lobanov’s comments on cavalry training, see e.g. his report to Alexander of 4 Feb. 1814 (OS) in RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 153, fo. 21. RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47, no. 135: Lobanov to Alexander, 29 Nov. 1813 (OS), on Wittgenstein’s men.

  64 A. Brett-James (ed.), General Wilson’s Journal, 1812–1814, London, 1964, p. 147.

  65 Rudolph von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol 2: Der Herbstfeldzug 1813, Berlin, 1912, pp. 18–26.

  66 Friedrich von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, p. 311.

  67 SIM, 3, no. 131, Alexander to Bennigsen, 25 May (OS) 1813, pp. 96–8.

  68 MVUA 1813, 1, Barclay to Bennigsen, 14 June 1813 (OS), p. 123. On troop strengths, see M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia voiny 1813 g. za nezavisimost’ Germanii, 2 vols., SPB, 1863, vol. 1, pp. 722–7. Essen’s battalions, intended for Sacken and Langeron’s regiments, were attached to regiments in Bennigsen’s army rather than merged into them, in order to preserve their own regimental identity: see e.g. Lieutenant Lakhtionov, Istoriia 147-go Samarskago polka 1798–1898, SPB, 1898, pp. 66–7.

  69 SIM, 3, no. 150, Alexander to Bennigsen, 10 July 1813 (OS), pp. 107–9. Lobanov passed on these instructions in an order of the day dated 16 July 1813 (OS): RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 149, fo. 35.

  70 The statistics are from Lobanov’s final report and accounting for the Reserve Army, with a covering note from him to Gorchakov dated 14 April 1815. The figure of 325,000 includes 45,783 supernumerary other ranks, in other words men not yet formally assigned to units. As always, theoretical numbers will have been considerably larger than the number of men actually present in the ranks. See RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1/2, Delo 3230 passim. On sickness, see RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 144, fo. 12, Essen to Lobanov, 8 May 1814 (OS).

  Chapter 11: Europe’s Fate in the Balance

  1 VPR, no. 101, Nesselrode to Alexander, 24 May/5 June 1813, pp. 236–7. W. Oncken, Österreich und Preussen in Befreiungskriege, vol. 2, Berlin, 1878, Metternich to Stadion, 6 June 1813, pp. 663–4; 8 June 1813, pp. 664–5.

  2 VPR, no. 104, Nesselrode to Lieven, 2/14 June, pp. 246–9; Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, Metternich to Stadion, 30 July 1813, pp. 680–81.

  3 VPR, no. 118, Alexander’s instructions to Anstedt, 26 June/8 July 1813, pp. 283–92 (quotation from p. 286).

  4 VPR, no. 107, Nesselrode to Metternich, 7/19 June 1813, pp. 257–8.

  5 E. Botzenhart (ed.), Freiherr vom Stein: Briefwechsel, Denkschriften und Aufzeichnungen, 8 vols., Berlin, 1957–70, vol. 4, Stein to Gneisenau, 11 July 1813; to Münster, 17 July 1813; to Alexander, 18 July 1813, pp. 372–81.

  6 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, pp. 402–5.

  7 Ibid., pp. 405–8.

  8 R. von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol. 2: Der Herbstfeldzug 1813, Berlin, 1912, pp. 26, 31; M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia voiny 1813 g. za nezavisimost’ Germanii, 2 vols., SPB, 1863, vol. 1, p. 448. The figure given by C. Rousset (La Grande Armée de 1813, Paris, 1871, p. 180) is 425,000 soldiers ready for battle, of whom 365,000 were in the ranks of Oudinot, Ney and Napoleon’s three armies. In August 1813 Davout in Hamburg and Girard in Magdeburg were able to contribute 40,000 men to the advance on Berlin.

  9 Friederich, Herbstfeldzug, pp. 33, 348.

  10 N. S. Pestreikov, Istoriia leib gvardii Moskovskago polka, SPB, 1903, vol. 1, pp. 129–30. RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 1098, fo. 220, on the men detached from the Iaroslavl Regiment.

  11 F. G. Popov, Istoriia 48-go pekhotnago Odesskago polka, 2 vols., Moscow, 1911, vol. 1, pp. 119–27.

  12 RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 1098, fos. 177–94 and 271–391 (Iaroslavl Regiment); Delo 105, fos. 194i–195ii (Belostok Regiment); Delo 106, fos. 111–13 (Kursk Regiment).

  13 All this information comes from the two regiments’ service records in RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Dela 105 and 106. In the Belostok Regiment, 10 of the 29 sub-lieutenants, lieutenants and staff captains were of lower-class origin. None of the more senior officers and none of the ensigns was.

  14 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, Bubna to Metternich, 9 Aug. 1813, pp. 684–6. Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 3, pp. 64–8.

  15 Karl Fürst Schwarzenberg, Feldmarschall Fürst Schwarzenberg: Der Sieger von Leipzig, Vienna, 1964, p. 233.

  16 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, Volkonsky to Wittgenstein, 9/21 Aug. 1813, fo. 1i.

 
; 17 A. G. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, Moscow, 1990, p. 355; Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenberg, p. 233.

  18 L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod russkoi armii protiv Napoleona v 1813 g. i osvobozhdenie Germanii: Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow, 1964, Trachenberg Conference, 28–30 June/10–12 July 1813, p. 462; Geschichte der Kämpfe Österreichs: Kriege unter der Regierung des Kaisers Franz, Befreiungskrieg 1813 und 1814, vol. 3: E. Glaise von Horstenau, Feldzug von Dresden, Vienna, 1913, pp. 3–6.

  19 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, Alexander to Bernadotte, 9/21 Aug. 1813, fos. 2–3.

  20 On the Swedish army, see Marquess of Londonderry, Narrative of the War in Germany and France in 1813 and 1814, London, 1830, pp. 72–4. On Bernadotte, the latest book is C. Bazin, Bernadotte, Paris, 2000.

  21 The best appreciation of Bernadotte’s position is in the Prussian general staff’s history: Friederich, Herbstfeldzug, pp. 146–8. See also M. Leggiere, Napoleon and Berlin, Stroud, 2002, for a fine account of operations in the northern theatre and the mobilization of Prussian resources.