31 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 1, p. 423: no. 19, Instructions for Lebzeltern, 8 Feb. 1813; vol. 2, pp. 323–4, conversation with Count Hardenberg, 30 May 1813. On military preparations, see the first two volumes of Geschichte der Kämpfe Österreichs: Kriege unter der Regierung des Kaisers Franz, Befreiungskrieg 1813 und 1814, vol. 1: O. Criste, Österreichs Beitritt zur Koalition, Vienna, 1913; vol. 2: W. Wlaschutz, Österreichs entscheidendes Machtaufgebot, Vienna, 1913.
32 Count A. de Nesselrode (ed.), Lettres et papiers du Chancelier Comte de Nesselrode 1760–1850, Paris, n.d., vol. 5, e.g. Gentz to Nesselrode, 16 Jan. 1813, pp. 12–21; 28 Jan. 1813, pp. 27–31; 10 March 1813, pp. 35–44; 12 March 1813, pp. 44–7; 17 March 1813, pp. 48–51; 18 March 1813, pp. 51–5; Nesselrode to Gentz, 14/26 March 1813, pp. 58–60; Gentz to Nesselrode, 11 April 1813, pp. 64–70; 16 April 1813, pp. 70–78; 2 May 1813, pp. 83–90; 16 May 1813, pp. 96–101; 13 June 1813, pp. 104–7; 23 July 1813, pp. 122–4.
On Gentz’s position in Vienna, see Helmut Rumpler, Österreichische Geschichte 1804– 1914, Vienna, 1997, pp. 78–80.
33 Most of the later negotiations were conducted by Fabian von der Osten-Sacken and the relevant documents are in his journal of outgoing correspondence: RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3403. The Austrians passed on considerable information about Polish movements. The text of the original armistice is in Martens, Sobranie traktatov, vol. 3, no. 67, pp. 70–91. Subsequent agreements are in VPR, 7, p. 118, and no. 74, pp. 184–5.
34 Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 320, Order of the Day, 16 Feb. 1813 (OS), pp. 282–4. N.S. Pestreikov, Istoriia, leibgvardii Moskovskago polka, SPB, 1903, vol. 1, pp. 115–19.
35 Pestreikov, Istoriia, vol. 1, p. 115; on the Kexholm Regiment, see B. Adamovich, Sbornik voenno-istoricheskikh materialov leibgvardii Keksgol’mskago imperatora Avstriiskago polka, vol. 3, SPB, 1910, p. 300.
36 On the Iaroslavl Regiment, see RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 1098, fos. 46–71.
37 Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 59, Tettenborn to Alexander, 31 Jan. 1813, pp. 54–6. For his reports to Wittgenstein, see RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905: the two reports cited are Tettenborn to Wittgenstein, 9 March 1813 (OS) (fos. 22ii–23i) and 11 March 1813 (OS) (fos. 24ii–25i).
38 Londonderry, Narrative, p. 63.
39 J. von Pflugk-Harttung, Das Befreiungsjahr 1813: Aus dem Geheimen Staatsarchivs, Berlin, 1913, no. 136, conversation of Bernadotte with Pozzo and Suchtelen, June 1813, pp. 175–7.
40 R. von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol. 1: Der Frühjahrsfeldzug 1813, Berlin, 1911, pp. 196–7; C. Rousset, La Grande Armée de 1813, Paris, 1871, pp. 96–7; A. Vallon, Cours d’hippologie, 2 vols., Paris, 1863, vol. 2, p. 473. I am grateful to Professor Thierry Lentz for bringing Vallon’s work to my attention.
41 A. Uffindell, Napoleon’s Immortals, Stroud, 2007, pp. 76, 88–90.
42 The two key sources here are Rousset, Grande Armée, chs. I–XII; Friederich, Frühjahrsfeldzug, pp. 162–80. Friederich states that Napoleon withdrew about 40,000 veterans from Spain: Scott Bowden writes that ‘the Army of Spain immediately provided 20,000 proven veterans for Napoleon’s new Grande Armée’, so the difference between the figures may be a question of the precise period involved. S. Bowden, Napoleon’s Grande Armée of 1813, Chicago, 1990, p. 29.
43 Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813 1814, Paris, 1902, p. 190.
44 Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 141, Kutuzov to Golenishchev-Kutuzov, 28 March/9 April 1813, p. 142.
45 Ibid., no. 131, Kutuzov to Winzengerode, 24 March/5 April 1813, p. 132.
46 Tartakovskii, Voennye dnevniki, p. 329: this is an extract from Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky’s diary for 1813. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 105, Kutuzov to Wittgenstein, 8/20 March 1813, pp. 107–8; no. 123, Kutuzov to Wittgenstein, 17/29 March 1813, pp. 125–6; no. 94, Wittgenstein to Kutuzov, 26 Feb./10 March 1813, pp. 95–6; no. 150, Volkonsky to d’Auvray, 8/20 April 1813, pp. 151–2.
47 K. von Clausewitz, Der Feldzug in Russland und die Befreiungskriege von 1813–15, Berlin, 1906, pp. 196–202.
48 Pflugk-Harttung, Befreiungsjahr, no. 82, Blücher to Wittgenstein, c. 20 April 1813, pp. 106–7: no. 45, Scharnhorst to Volkonsky, 22 March 1813, pp. 62–5.
49 P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 220–21.
50 I. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski artillerista s 1812 po 1816 god, 3 vols., Moscow, 1835, vol. 2, pp. 22–5.
51 S. G. Volkonskii, Zapiski Sergeia Grigorovicha Volkonskogo (dekabrista), SPB, 1902, p. 232: there are many similar comments, e.g. by young staff officers, as a group the best educated men in the army.
52 Tartakovskii, Voennye dnevniki, pp. 333, 345.
53 Hon. George Cathcart, Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany in 1812 and 1813, London, 1850, pp. 122–30. J. P. Riley, Napoleon and the World War of 1813, London, 2000, pp. 79–89 (the description of the villages is on p. 80).
54 Clausewitz, Feldzug, p. 209.
55 On this, see Botzenhart, Stein, vol. 4, memorandums and correspondence with Scharnhorst, Hardenberg and Nesselrode in April 1813, pp. 274–6, 289–90, 293–4, 299–300, 304–6.
56 VPR, no. 102, Alexander to Bernadotte, 26 May/7 June 1813, pp. 238–42; Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, no. 46, Stadion to Metternich, 3 June 1813, pp. 660–63.
57 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, nos. 33 and 34, Metternich to Lebzeltern, 29 April 1813, pp. 630–34.
58 Ibid., vol. 2, no. 38, Instructions for Stadion, 7 May 1813, pp. 640–44.
59 VPR, no. 80, Nesselrode to Alexander, 1/13 May 1813, pp. 196–7.
60 VPR, no. 101, Nesselrode to Alexander, 24 May/5 June 1813, pp. 236–7.
61 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 169–78. Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 3, p. 39.
62 In addition to the basic texts already cited (Bogdanovich, Friederich, Chandler, Riley and Hofschroer), Baron Müffling’s memoirs are a vital source on this, but his figure of 5,000 for Barclay’s corps should be discounted since Langeron, who commanded this unit, states that 8,000 men were present that day: Baron Karl von Müffling, The Memoirs of Baron von Müffling: A Prussian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, London, 1997, pp. 36–8.
63 Langeron, Mémoires, p. 189. Baron von Odeleben, A Circumstantial Narrative of the Campaign in Saxony in the Year 1813, 2 vols., London, 1820, vol. 1, p. 95.
64 Odeleben, Narrative, vol. 1, p. 103.
65 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, pp. 323–4, and no. 46, Stadion to Metternich, 3 June 1813, pp. 660–63.
66 For Alexander’s view on Schweidnitz, see RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 51ii, Volkonsky to Wittgenstein, 11 May 1813 (OS); Müffling, Memoirs, pp. 44–9.
67 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fo. 18, Kankrin to Barclay de Tolly, 23 May 1813; RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, fos. 158–9, Barclay to Wittgenstein, 26 June 1813. Botzenhart, Stein, vol. 4, Kutuzov to Stein, 6/18 April 1813, p. 287.
68 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 55ii, Volkonsky to d’Auvray, 19 May 1813 (OS); Pflugk-Harttung, Befreiungsjahr, no. 135, L’Estocq to Hardenburg, 30 May 1813, pp. 171–5; M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia voiny 1813 g. za nezavisimost’ Germanii, 2 vols., SPB, 1863, vol. 1, pp. 299–301.
69 F. Ley, Alexandre Ier et sa Sainte-Alliance (1811–1825), Paris, 1975, pp. 63–5. On Alexander’s behaviour, see e.g. Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, p. 330.
70 Langeron, Mémoires, p. 199.
Chapter 10: Rebuilding the Army
1 RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1/2, Delo 2888, fos. 11–13.
2 John Keep, ‘The Russian Army in the Seven Years’ War’, in E. Lohr and M. Poe (eds.), The Military and Society in Russia, 1450–1917, Leiden, 2002, pp. 197–221. For an overall view of logistics in the Seven Years War campaigns, see F. Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe 1756–1763, Harlow, 2008.
3 MVUA 1813, 1, pp. 119–20. The army law of January set out the basic arrangements for military roads: see PSZ, 32, no. 24975, 27 Jan. 1812 (OS), pp. 116–18. Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 461, Order o
f the Day, 15 March 1812 (OS), pp. 416–17.
4 PSZ, 32, no. 24975, 27 Jan. 1812 (OS), part 3, pp. 107–58.
5 Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 255, Kutuzov to Stein, 31 Jan. 1813 (OS), pp. 214–15; L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod russkoi armii protiv Napoleona v 1813 g. i osvobozhdenie Germanii: Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow, 1964, no. 7, Stein memorandum to Alexander, 6/18 Dec. 1812, pp. 6–8, and no. 53, Stein to Kutuzov, 25 Jan./6 Feb. 1813, pp. 47–8.
6 F. Martens (ed.), Sobranie traktatov i konventsii, zakliuchennykh Rossiei s inostrannymi derzhavami, vol. 7: Traktaty s Germaniei 1811–1824, SPB, 1885, no. 258, pp. 88–96. See also p. 123 of Upravlenie General-Intendanta Kankrina: General’nyi sokrashchennyi otchet po armiiam…za pokhody protiv Frantsuzov, 1812, 1813 i 1814 godov, Warsaw, 1815.
7 In late 1813, for example, the Russian war ministry calculated that in the previous four months it had spent 3.9 million rubles feeding units of the Reserve Army deployed within the empire, and only 1. 1 million on the much more numerous forces stationed in the Duchy. Even this 1. 1 million was only due to Alexander’s order that the Reserve Army’s meat and spirits rations should be paid for by the Russian treasury, and no longer by the Poles: ministry of war memorandum for Prince Aleksei Gorchakov, 30 Dec. 1813 (OS), RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3441, fos. 100–101.
8 Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 370, Law on the Provisional Government of the Duchy of Warsaw, 1/13 March 1813, pp. 329–35; quotation on p. 332.
9 Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 34, Kutuzov’s proclamation to the Polish population, 27 Dec. 1812 (OS), p. 29, and no. 326, Kutuzov to Alexander, 18 Feb. 1813 (OS), p. 291. MVUA 1813, vol. 2, no. 96, Vorontsov to Chichagov, 1 Feb. 1813 (OS), p. 70.
10 For Kankrin’s instructions, see RGVIA, Fond 474, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 1204, fos. 4i–ii. Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 442, Kutuzov to his wife, 11 March 1813 (OS), p. 400. Adamovich, Sbornik, III, pp. 302–5, has interesting statistics on victualling the Kexholm Regiment in the advance guard in January–April. On Frederick’s treatment of Saxony, see Szabo, Seven Years War, pp. 119–20.
11 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 208a, Sv. 28, Delo 31, fos. 161–7, Barclay to Alexander, 18 June 1813 (OS). There is another copy of this letter in Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 100–106.
12 There are two key reports on Chichagov’s mobile magazine: see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 76, fos. 20–25: report of Lisanevich to Kankrin, 5 Dec. 1813 (OS); RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 184–7: report by Major Alekseev to Kankrin, 25 June 1813 (OS). See also Kutuzov, vol. 5, Kutuzov to Chichagov, 31 Jan. 1813 (OS), pp. 212–13.
13 On the deal with Adelsohn and co., see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 240–41, 317–18. The first document is a report by a senior Prussian court official, Count de Bethusy, dated 25 July. The second is a report submitted by Adelsohn himself on 8 November. On the main army’s magazine, see in particular the reports by Kankrin to Barclay of 6, 10 and 16 July 1813 (OS): RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fos. 207–8, 226, 251–3. On peasant carts’ operational limits, see Keep, ‘Russian Army’, p. 215.
14 This was mostly money in the so-called exchange offices set up to remit back to Russia paper rubles which foreigners had received and which they wished to exchange for their own currencies.
15 Alexander’s orders to Gurev are in SIM, 3, no. 136, Alexander to Gurev, 14 June 1813 (OS), pp. 100–101. Two of Gurev’s letters to Barclay, dated 28 June and 1 July (OS), are of interest: see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 208a, Sv. 28, Delo 31, fos. 125 and 219.
16 SIM, 1, section B, ‘Sekretnyia ofitsial’nyiia svedeniia o polozhenii nashikh finansov v 1813g i ob izyskanii sredstv k prodolzheniiu voennykh deistvii v chuzhikh kraiakh’: no. 1, memorandum by Gurev of 24 April 1813 (OS), pp. 47–50 and 54.
17 Ibid., pp. 55–63.
18 VPR, 7, nos. 13 and 14, Alexander to Lieven, 20 Jan./1 Feb. 1813, pp. 36–9.
19 VPR, 7, no. 55, Lieven to Alexander, 25 March/6 April 1813, pp. 132–7; no. 84, Gurev to Nesselrode, 5/17 May 1813, pp. 203–6. E. Botzenhart (ed.), Freiherr vom Stein: Briefwechsel, Denkschriften und Aufzeichnungen, 8 vols., Berlin, 1957–70, Stein to Kochubei, 31 May 1813, pp. 350–51. The biggest remaining problem was the exchange costs of British treasury bills on the continent.
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. K
hr. 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 leibgvardii egerskago polka za sto let 1796–1896, SPB, 1896, prilozheniia, pp. 56 ff.); the Guards Lancers (P. Bobrovskii, Istoriia leibgvardii ulanskago E.I.V. gosudarnyi Imperatritsy Aleksandry Fedorovny polka, SPB, 1903, prilozheniia, pp. 140 ff.); Her Majesty’s Life Cuirassier Regiment (Colonel Markov, Istoriia leibgvardii 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 leibgvardii 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.
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