IMPERIAL ERA MILITARY - NINETEENTH CENTURY I

THE ARMY AND NAVY IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

At the outset of the century, Alexander I inherited a sizeable and unaffordable army, many of whose commanders were seasoned veterans. After instituting a series of modest administrative reforms for efficiency and economy, including the creation of a true War Ministry, the Tsar in 1805 plunged into the wars of the Third Coalition. For all their experience and flexibility, the Russians with or without the benefit of allies against Napoleon suffered a series of reverses or stalemates, including Austerlitz (1805), Eylau (1807), and Friedland (1807). After the ensuing Tilsit Peace granted five years’ respite, Napoleon’s Grand Armée invaded Russia in 1812. Following a fighting Russian withdrawal into the interior, Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov in September gave indecisive battle at Borodino, followed by another withdrawal to the southeast that uncovered Moscow. When the French quit Moscow in October, Kutuzov pursued, reinforced by swarms of partisans and Cossacks, who, together with starvation and severe cold, harassed the Grand Armée to destruction. In 1813, the Russian army fought in Germany, and in 1814 participated in the coalition victory at Leipzig, followed by a fighting entry into France and the occupation of Paris.

The successful termination of the Napoleonic wars still left Alexander I with an outsized and unaffordable military establishment, but now with the addition of disaffected elements within the officer corps. While some gentry officers formed secret societies to espouse revolutionary causes, the tsar experimented with the establishment of settled troops, or military colonies, to reduce maintenance costs. Although these colonies were in many ways only an extension of the previous century’s experience with military settlers on the frontier, their widespread application spawned much discontent. After Alexander I’s death, unrest and conspiracy led to an attempted military coup in December 1825.

Tsar Nicholas I energetically suppressed the socalled Decembrist rebellion, then imposed parade ground order. His standing army grew to number one million troops, but its outdated recruitment system and traditional support infrastructure eventually proved incapable of meeting the challenges of military modernization. Superficially, the army was a model of predictable routine and harsh discipline, but its inherent shortcomings, including outmoded weaponry, incapacity for rapid expansion, and lack of strategic mobility, led inexorably to Crimean defeat. The army was able to subdue Polish military insurrectionists (1830–1831) and Hungarian revolutionaries (1848), and successfully fight Persians and Turks (1826–1828, 1828–1829), but in the field it lagged behind its more modern European counterparts. Fighting from 1854 to 1856 against an allied coalition in the Crimea, the Russians suffered defeat at Alma, heavy losses at Balaklava and Inkerman, and the humiliation of surrender at Sevastopol. Only the experience of extended warfare in the Caucasus (1801–1864) afforded unconventional antidote to the conventional “paradomania” of St. Petersburg that had so thoroughly inspired Crimean defeat. Thus, the mountains replaced the steppe as the southern pole in an updated version of the previous century’s north-south dialectic.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the navy, too, experienced its own version of the same dialectic. For a brief period, the Russian navy under Admiral Dmity Nikolayevich Senyavin harassed Turkish forces in the Aegean, but following Tilsit, the British Royal Navy ruled in both the Baltic and the Mediterranean. In 1827, the Russians joined with the British and French to pound the Turks at Navarino, but in the north, the Baltic Fleet, like the St. Petersburg military establishment, soon degenerated into an imperial parading force. Only on the Black Sea, where units regularly supported Russian ground forces in the Caucasus, did the Navy reveal any sustained tactical and operational acumen. However, this attainment soon proved counterproductive, for Russian naval victory in 1853 over the Turks at Sinope drew the British and French to the Turkish cause, thus setting the stage for allied intervention in the Crimea. During the Crimean War, steam and screw-driven allied vessels attacked at will in both the north and south, thereby revealing the essentially backwardness of Russia’s sailing navy.

Cossacks

The Cossacks originally settled in the southern steppes of Europe and into Russia. As early as 1380, the Cossacks along the Don River are recorded as fighting with the Russian grand duke Dmitri against the Mongols. On September 8, 1380, Dmitri won a decisive victory over the Mongols at Kulikovo by the Don River, effectively marking the end of Mongol rule over much of Russia.

By the 16th century, the Cossacks had merged into two large autonomous bands, the Don Cossacks and the Zaporojie, who lived along the bends of the river Dnieper. (Zaporojie is translated as “below the bend in the river.”) Other historians have pointed to additional areas of Cos- sack settlement as time progressed, including areas in which entire settlements of Cossacks resided. While surrounded by the power of the growing Russian state of Poland in addition to the Crimean Tartars (or Mongols), the Cossacks still managed to keep a large measure of independence because of their military prowess.

Many serfs, or slaves, ran off to join the Cossacks because the measure of freedom enjoyed under the Cossack leaders (called atamans or hetmans) was not found anywhere else in Russia or East Europe during that period. The word Cossack is derived from the Turkic term kazak, meaning “free man.” Most of the Cossacks were of Slavic descent, and the majority Christian, usually of the Russian Orthodox faith. The Cossacks were governed by the Rada, or Legislative Assembly, led by the ataman. During wartime, the ataman served as the supreme war commander.

The Cossacks realized that keeping their freedom meant keeping their military skills at a high degree of readiness. Their lifestyle reflected the influence of the Mongols before them. Boys were given weapons almost as soon as they could hold them and taught to ride some- times before they could even walk. Indeed, the main strength of the Cossacks came from the quick charges they could execute on their horses. The atamans staged sham battles with the younger boys to accustom them to a military life from as early an age as possible. Brave and daring boys were noticed by the leader and were marked from an early age for advancement.

Cossacks began to use their centralized position to raid the domains of the nations growing around them, although most of their attacks were directed toward the Muslim Tartars of the Crimea and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, when the frontiers of the powers in East Europe were so fluid, each county could see the value of the Cossacks as frontier troops, perfectly suited to counter raiders from enemy lands.

In 1569, Poland and Lithuania formally became the Union of Lublin. Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila ruled the united monarchy as Ladislas (Władysław) II Jagiello, first of the Jagiello dynasty. The pact that set the state for his marriage to the queen of Poland stipulated that he become a Roman Catholic, the religion of Poland. In 1596, the Union of Brest united the Russian Orthodoxy of Lithuania with the Roman Catholicism of Poland to form what was known as the Uniate Church. The Uniate Church began a persecution of Orthodox believers who would not convert, and perhaps thousands fled to the Sech Commonwealth of the Cossacks. In 1645, Ladislas IV sought to involve the Cossacks, who by now were within the boundaries of Polish power, in war against the Ottoman Empire. When his plans were revealed, the Cossacks feared becoming the scapegoats for the two countries.

In addition to the continued persecution of the Orthodox Church, the exposure of Ladislas’s secret treaty led the Cossacks under Bohdan Khmelnitsky to rise up against Poland in 1648, the very year that the Treaty of Westphalia sought to bring peace to Europe by ending the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). Khemelnitski formed an alliance with the Tartars and the Zaporojie Cossacks and led an invasion of Poland. Polish serfs rose up when Khmelnitski approached. For six years, the rebellion ravaged Poland and the Ukraine. Thou- sands of Poles and Jews were massacred in some of the most savage butchery ever seen in Europe. Finally in 1654, seeing that the destruction of the Polish Kingdom was beyond his means, Khmelnitski took the irrevocable step of making an alliance with Czar Alexei, the second of the Romanov dynasty. Tragically for the Cossacks’ love of freedom, Khmelnitski had exchanged one master for another, the Polish king for a Russian czar.

Under the Romanovs, the 17th century saw a tightening of the control of Russia over the Cossacks. The Russians saw the Cossacks as excellent troops to be used against the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Cos- sacks carried out fierce raids against the Tartars and in 1663, Turkish sultan Mohammed IV sent a large army against the Zaporojie Cossacks. Although the Zaporozhians were asleep after a drinking bout, one aroused himself in time to see the Turks approaching. Incredibly, the Cossacks were able to fend off their attackers and force them to retreat.

Eventually, the tension between Russian rule and the Cossacks’ desire for freedom led to the rebellion of Stephan (Stenka) Razin in the last years of Czar Alexei’s reign. Razin turned against the Russians in 1670, beginning what became a full-fledged Cossack revolt. Although many Cossacks joined him, others allied themselves with the Russians, whose disciplined troops soon crushed Razin’s uprising at Simbirsk. After undergoing torture in Moscow, Razin was beheaded in 1671. Ever after, he became a symbol of Russian resistance to tyranny.

The son of Czar Alexei, Peter I, or Peter the Great, recognized the military potential of the Cossacks, despite their rebelliousness. In 1696, Peter seized the Black Sea port of Azov from the Turks, thanks to his Cossack allies. The greatest test of Peter’s reign came in the Great Northern War against King Charles XII of Sweden (1700–21). Ivan Mazeppa was the leading Cossack hetman at the time, and he reestablished the Cossacks as an important factor in eastern European affairs, balancing the ambitions of Poland and Russia.

When Peter decisively defeated Charles at Poltava in July, Mazeppa was forced to flee. Mazeppa died of natural causes in September 1709, before Peter could catch him. After Mazeppa, the Cossacks became a part of the Russian Army, even raiding Berlin in the army of Czarina Elizabeth during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) against Frederick II of Prussia.

However, the Cossacks’ love of liberty would lead to one more rebellion before the close of the 18th century. When Elizabeth died in 1762, her son Peter III was overthrown and killed in a palace coup by his wife, Catherine. Catherine, who would be known to history as Catherine the Great, was faced in September 1773 with the rebellion of the Don Cossack Emelian Pugachev. To the serfs of Russia, little better than slaves, Pugachev seemed to be their champion, as he fought against the oppressing landlords. In March of 1774, Pugachev was defeated by Catherine’s troops at Orenburg; as was Razin, he was executed by beheading. The rebellion of Pugachev was the last real defiance against the loss of the Cossacks’ liberty. It is one of the great ironies of history that in later years, the Cossacks would become some of the most ruthless defenders of the Russian despotism against which they once had fought so bravely.

Further reading: Erickson, Carolly. Great Catherine: The Life of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994; Grant, R. G. Battle: A Visual Journey through 5,000 Years of Combat. London: Dorling, Kindersley, 2005; Massie, Robert K. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981; Ure, John. The Cossacks: An Illustrated History. New York: Overlook Press, 2002.

ALEXANDER DANILOVICH MENSHIKOV, (c. 1672–1729)

Soldier and statesman; favorite of Peter I. 

Menshikov rose from humble origins to become the most powerful man in Russia after the tsar. Anecdotes suggest that his father was a pastry cook, although in fact he served as a noncommissioned officer in the Semenovsky guards. Alexander served in Peter’s own Preobrazhensky guards, and by the time of the Azov campaigns (1695–1696) he and Peter were inseparable. Menshikov accompanied Peter on the Grand Embassy (1697–1698) and served with him in the Great Northern War (1700–1721), rising through the ranks to become general field marshal and vice admiral. His military exploits included the battles of Kalisz (1706) and Poltava (1709), the sacking of Baturin (1708), and campaigns in north Germany in the 1710s. At home he was governor-general of St. Petersburg and president of the College of War.

The upstart Menshikov had to create his own networks, making many enemies among the traditional elite. He acquired a genealogy which traced his ancestry back to the princes of Kievan Rus and a dazzling portfolio of Russian and foreign titles and orders, including Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince of Russia and Izhora, and Knight of the Orders of St. Andrew and St. Alexander Nevsky. Menshikov had no formal education and was only semi-literate, but this did not prevent him from becoming a role model in Peter’s cultural reforms. His St. Petersburg palace had a large library and its own resident orchestra and singers, and he also built a grand palace at Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland. In 1706 he married Daria Arsenieva (1682–1727), who was also thoroughly Westernized.

Menshikov was versatile and energetic, loyal but capable of acting on his own initiative. He was a devout Orthodox Christian who often visited shrines and monasteries. He was also ambitious and corrupt, amassing a vast personal fortune in lands, serfs, factories, and possessions. On several occasions, only his close ties with Peter saved him from being convicted of embezzlement. In 1725 he promoted Peter’s wife Catherine as Peter’s successor, heading her government in the newly created Supreme Privy Council and betrothing his own daughter to Tsarevich Peter, her nominated heir. After Peter’s accession in 1727, Menshikov’s rivals in the Council, among them members of the aristocratic Dolgoruky clan, alienated the emperor from Menshikov. In September 1727 they had Menshikov arrested and banished to Berezov in Siberia, where he died in wretched circumstances in November 1729.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bushkovitch, Paul. (2001). Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671–1725. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hughes, Lindsey. (1998). Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.