Russia Against Napoleon полностью

Meanwhile, once the conscript had adapted to military life, the regiment could become a new home. The new soldier’s messmates became a sort of substitute family. If a man died, his possessions went to his comrades. Each company had its own mess cooperative (artel’), into which part of a soldier’s pay, half his outside earnings, and most of any money given as a reward for good service was invested. Particularly in the Guards, the funds of the regimental artels could add up to many thousands of rubles. This money was used to buy the soldiers ‘luxuries’ to supplement their diet of bread and porridge, and to save money by purchasing food, kettles, transport and other items in bulk. Ideally a soldier would serve in the same regiment all his life and many did so. Even when men were moved into new regiments, however, they usually transferred with their whole company, so many collective loyalties and solidarities remained.⁴¹

Prince Eugen of Wuürttemberg, Emperor Alexander’s first cousin, commanded initially a Russian brigade, next a division and finally a corps between 1807 and 1814. He admired his soldiers and had a reputation not just for courageous leadership but also for ‘mucking in’ with them and forgetting his royal dignity. His memoirs are probably the most useful written by any Russian general in the Napoleonic era. He recalled that

the young recruit is normally patient and very eager to learn, and he accepts his unavoidable fate more readily than is the case with the peoples of other countries who are compulsorily conscripted…In time the regiment becomes his new home and to understand the attachment which can inspire a Russian soldier for this home you must witness it with your own eyes. No wonder then that, armed with such sentiments, the Russian soldier fights so well.⁴²

Alexander I understood the power of regimental solidarity and tried to preserve it by ensuring that as far as possible officers remained within a single regiment until they reached senior rank. Sometimes this was a losing battle since officers could have strong personal motivation for transfer. Relatives liked to serve together. A more senior brother or an uncle in the regiment could provide important patronage. Especially in wartime, the good of the service sometimes required transferring officers to fill vacancies in other regiments. So too did the great expansion of the army in Alexander’s reign. Seventeen new regiments were founded between 1801 and 1807 alone: experienced officers needed to be found for them. In these circumstances it is surprising that more than half of all officers between the rank of ensign and captain had served in only one regiment, as had a great many majors. Particularly in older regiments such as the Grenadiers, the Briansk or Kursk infantry regiments, or the Pskov Dragoons the number of officers up to the rank of major who had spent their whole lives in the regiments was extremely high. As one might expect, the Preobrazhensky Guards, the senior regiment in the Russian army, was the extreme case, with almost all the officers spending their whole careers in the regiment. Add to this the fact that the overwhelming majority of Russian officers were bachelors and the strength of their commitment to their regiments becomes evident.⁴³

Nevertheless, the greatest bearers of regimental loyalty and tradition were the non-commissioned officers. In the regiments newly formed in Alexander’s reign, the senior NCOs arrived when the regiment was created and served in it for the rest of their careers. Old regiments would have a strong cadre of NCOs who had served in the unit for twenty years or more. In a handful of extreme cases such as the Briansk Infantry and Narva Dragoons every single sergeant-major, sergeant and corporal had spent his entire military life in the regiment. In the Russian army there was usually a clear distinction between the sergeant-majors (fel’dfebeli in the infantry and vakhmistry in the cavalry) on the one hand, and the ten times more numerous sergeants and corporals (unterofitsery) on the other. The sergeants and corporals were mostly peasants. They gained their NCO status as veterans who had shown themselves to be reliable, sober and skilled in peacetime, and courageous on the battlefield. Like the conscript body as a whole, the great majority of them were illiterate.