Russia Against Napoleon полностью

The other crucial pre-war legislation transformed the organization of internal security within Russia. To some extent the new law on internal security, issued in July 1811, was a spin-off of efforts to shake out manpower from the army’s rear echelons in order to get the maximum number of soldiers into the ranks of the field armies. Above all this meant combing out men capable of service in the field from the many so-called garrison regiments distributed very unevenly across the empire’s cities and fortresses. Thirteen newly formed regiments, roughly 40,000 trained men, were added to the field army in this way without recourse to an additional levy. Most of the soldiers released from the garrison units were potentially of good quality. Very many of the officers were not, however, since assignment to a garrison regiment (except in the key front-line fortresses on the Baltic coastline) implied that an officer was either physically incapable of front-line service or had a poor record.¹⁹

Roughly 17,000 men of the garrison regiments were deemed unfit for service in the field. They were to form the nucleus of the new internal security forces, with a half-battalion (in other words two companies) deployed in each of the empire’s provincial capitals. They joined the small internal security units which already existed in the provinces and the more numerous but less mobile companies of veterans (invalidy) who were often deployed in the smaller provincial towns. All these units were now integrated into a single command which covered the whole of European Russia. It might have seemed logical to subordinate the internal security troops to Aleksandr Balashev, who, as minister of police, had overall responsibility for preserving order within Russia. But Alexander distrusted his police chief’s growing power and was unwilling to add the internal security forces to his empire. He therefore made the internal security troops a separate organization, commanded by his own aide-de-camp general, Count Evgraf Komarovsky, who reported directly to the monarch.²⁰

The internal security forces guarded public buildings, and helped to enforce judicial verdicts and to uphold public order, though in the event of widespread unrest they would need reinforcements from the regular army. What really mattered in 1812–14, however, was that they were responsible for guarding prisoners of war and, above all, for mustering recruits and escorting them to the camps where the army’s reserves were being formed. As one would expect, many of the officers of the internal security forces who commanded these escort parties were of low quality. Prince Dmitrii Lobanov-Rostovsky, who commanded the Reserve Army in 1813–14, complained about them constantly and no doubt many recruits suffered at their hands. From the point of view of the Russian war effort, however, the new internal security forces were a godsend. Before 1811 regiments had been obliged to send officers and men back to the provinces to collect and escort the new recruits. Even in peacetime this had been a major distraction. In 1812–14, with a vastly expanded army operating far from the empire’s interior, the diversion of effort would have been crippling.²¹

It is relatively easy to assess the impact of the new legislation on the field army and the internal security forces. Coming to firm conclusions about the results of Barclay’s efforts to improve military training is more difficult. Hundreds, even sometimes thousands, of kilometres from Petersburg the effect of even the most intelligent and best-intentioned circulars might be muted. It is true that in 1808–12 bright young officers of the line were seconded to the Guards training camps outside Petersburg and were then expected to take the lessons they learned in tactics back to their regiments and teach them to their soldiers. Most generals commanding divisions in these years also did their utmost to ensure effective training of their soldiers. For much of the year even an infantry division, let alone a cavalry one, was quartered over a wide area, however. A great deal therefore depended on the regiments’ commanding officers.²² Some commanders were brutes and pedants. Only rarely were they punished for their brutality if it was seen to threaten the army’s effectiveness. The commander of the Kexholm Infantry Regiment, for example, was actually court-martialled and dismissed the service in 1810 for mistreatment of soldiers on a scale to cause near mutiny.²³