Russia Against Napoleon полностью

Both the peasant militiamen and the state liked this arrangement. For the militiaman it implied recognition that he was not a soldier and would return home at the end of the war. Meanwhile the state was freed from the obligation to provide militiamen with uniforms, which in present circumstances it was totally incapable of doing. As the minister of the interior reported in mid-July, there was already a 340,000-metre deficit on existing military orders for uniform cloth. It was totally inconceivable to meet the projected additional wartime requirement for 2.4 million metres. Not merely, wrote the minister, were there too few factories but Russia even lacked the sheep to provide this amount of wool. In fact, apart from the Guards, Dmitrii Lobanov-Rostovsky’s men were the last Russian recruits in 1812–14 to be supplied with the dark-green uniforms traditional in the Russian infantry. All subsequent conscripts had to struggle along in shoddy, grey ‘recruit dress’, made from inferior ‘peasant cloth’ and ill-suited to the rigours of a campaign.³⁵

The new militia was divided into three districts. The eight provinces of the first district were in principle committed to the defence of Moscow. The two provinces (St Petersburg and Novgorod) which made up the second district were given the task of defending the emperor’s capital. Both these districts were to be mobilized immediately. The third district of six provinces was not to be mobilized until after the harvest, and even then in stages. The third district’s commander was Lieutenant-General Count Petr Tolstoy, previously the ambassador in Paris. Tolstoy was far happier fighting Napoleon than paying court to him. As he explained, if only someone would give him enough artillery to cover his attacks, he would launch his columns of militia armed with pikes against the enemy in a Russian version of France’s own levée en masse of 1793.³⁶ Much the most effective militia in 1812 were the regiments formed by St Petersburg and Novgorod. With Wittgenstein keeping the French at bay, they had a short time to train before being committed to action. The capital’s garrison provided officers and NCOs with long experience of training recruits. With the St Petersburg Arsenal at their service, all these militiamen received muskets. After five days and nights of training, Alexander I reviewed the Petersburg militia in the presence of the British ambassador, Lord Cathcart. Watching the new recruits perform their basic drill with remarkable skill, the ambassador commented to Alexander that ‘these men have sprouted out of the earth’. In the autumn 1812 campaign the Petersburg and Novgorod militias were to fight alongside Wittgenstein’s regulars in a number of battles, performing better than anyone had a right to expect.³⁷

The operations of the second militia district in 1812 were exceptional. Unlike their Prussian equivalent – the Landwehr – in 1813–15, the Russian militia was never integrated into brigades and divisions with units of the regular army. In the great majority of cases it remained an auxiliary corps rather than a part of the field army. In the early autumn of 1812 most militiamen were employed to man cordons and block roads in order to stop enemy foraging parties and marauders breaking out of the area around Moscow. When Napoleon retreated some militia units were used to police reconquered territory and help with the restoration of order, administration and communications. Others escorted prisoners of war. In 1813 most of the militia was used to blockade Danzig, Dresden and a number of other fortresses in the allied rear with large enemy garrisons of regular troops. None of this work was particularly heroic or romantic, though it took a heavy toll in lives. Nevertheless, the militia’s role was very important because it freed tens of thousands of Russian regular soldiers for service in the field.³⁸