the army of nicholas i: its role and character

The Army of Nicholas I: Its Role and CharacterAuthor(s): John Shelton CurtissSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Jul., 1958), pp. 880-889Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1848945 .

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The Army of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character

JOHN SHELTON CURTISS

VOLTAIRE'S description of Prussia as a country that did not have an army, as the army had the country, to a considerable degree applies to the Russia of Nicholas I. The empire, with a population of some sixty to seventy millions, supported a force of over one million under arms. Prob- ably no contemporary army could equal it in the magnificence of its great parades, the masses of resplendent cavalry, or the perfection of a complicated system of drill and maneuver. Furthermore, it added to the glory won in the stubborn defense against Napoleon's Grande Armee and its victorious march to Paris in I8I4 by gaining new laurels through vic- tories over Persians, Turks, Poles, and insurgent Magyars. It was by virtue of its prestige and power that for nearly thirty years Nicholas could play the role of gendarme of Europe.

There is no need to define the role of this army as an instrument of foreign policy, as it is well known. Its functions within Russia are less familiar. It was the favorite agency of the emperor, who always wore a uniform, slept on a hard camp bed, and surrounded himself with soldiers. Not only did he have an unprecedented number of aides, adjutants, and other military flunkies around him, he even staffed his ministries with generals of his suite. In the I840's military men held ten of the thirteen ministerial portfolios, and there is some reason to think that he would gladly have filled the ministries of justice, education, and foreign affairs with generals if he had had any capable of holding them.1 It should be said that many of these soldiers in ministerial armchairs were not field commanders, but rather court generals.2 Some, however, had smelled

1 M. 0. Gershenzon, ed., Epokha Nikolaia I (Moscow, i9iI), pp. 2I-22. The following generals headed ministries in the I840's: Prince Volkonskii, minister of the imperial court; Count Chernyshev, minister of war; Count Kankrin, minister of finance; Count Benkendorff, chief of gendarmes; Count Perovskii, minister of internal affairs; Count Protasov, over procurator of the Most Holy Synod; Count Toll, chief of ways of communication; Count Kiselev, minister of state possessions; Count Adlerberg, chief of the postal department; Prince Menshikov, acting minister of the navy.

2 Mikhail A. Polievktov, Nikolai 1. Biograflia i obzor tsarstvovaniia (St. Petersburg, 1914),

p. 321.

88o



The Army of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character 8 8 I

powder. General Kiselev, minister of state possessions, had done well in the Napoleonic wars, and the agnostically inclined Count Protasov, who in his capacity as over procurator of the Most Holy Synod dominated the administration of the Russian church, had been a dashing cavalry commander. In these high posts, as well as in a number of lesser ones, the military men enjoyed high prestige and preference.3

Just as soldiers held governmental posts that civilians occupied in other lands, so did the army perform many tasks that elsewhere the police or other civilian officials performed. Some i8o,ooo of the army formed the Internal Defense force, composed of old soldiers unfit for regular duty.4 They garrisoned cities all over Russia, guarded banks and state institutions, including prisons, and accompanied convicts to their places of confine- ment. (In St. Petersburg alone they did not perform these duties, for here the Guards regiments provided details of troops to guard state buildings and to maintain order in the capital.) It cannot be said that the military always performed these duties well, since many of the old soldiers were not fit to catch lawbreakers or to suppress riots. While in France and Austria a mere twenty or thirty thousand gendarmes, and armed police performed these tasks, Russia used some i8o,ooo of the Internal Defense to discharge similar functions. Moreover, the suppression of peasant revolts, which was the especial task of the Internal Defense, usually proved beyond its powers, and in most cases the authorities had to call on regular troops to restore order.5

Other tasks assigned to the army also were not common to the rest of Europe. When great epidemics swept the land, the government detailed regiments to maintain quarantine lines of small pickets over hill and down dale to prevent the movement of carriers of infection-a duty that both ofEcers and men greatly disliked.6 At the request of Count Kankrin, minister of finance under Nicholas I, the Ministry of War assigned an even more remarkable task to some of the troops. When it proved impossible to collect arrears of taxes from the peasants by ordinary means, Kankrin ordered forces of troops to be quartered on the villagers and fed by them until they paid up. The dragonades proved to be so persuasive

3 It is a curious fact that only soldiers enjoyed the right to wear mustaches, whether on active duty or in retirement. Military men who took up civilian functions had at once to shave off their facial adornment. Gershenzon, p. 2I.

4 Rostislav A. Fadicev, Vooruzhennyia sily Rossii (Moscow, I 868), p. 28. r Ibid., pp. 93-98. 6 A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia (4 vols., St. Petersburg,

I882), I, 235-36; Vsevolod Krestovskii, Istoriia 14-gO Ulaliskago lamburgskago Eia Impera- torskago Vysochestva Velikoi Kniazhnoi Marii Aleksandrovny polka (St. Petersburg, I873), PP. 391-92.



882 John Shelton Curtiss

that the peasants hastened to sell their last head of cattle in order to re- lieve themselves of their unwelcome guests.'

The army proved quite effective in assimilating non-Russians into the Russian community. The government gave opportunities to noble youths from the Baltic states and Finland, Poland and Lithuania, Georgia and the mountain tribes of the Caucasus to enroll in military schools or toi receive officer's training through field service with the regiments.8 During the Crimean War many Polish officers fought with great bravery in the Russian army at Sevastopol.' On the other hand, Poles drafted into the army as enlisted men probably had an unenviable fate. Even worse fared the Jewish conscripts. Often taken from their homes at twelve years of age or less for preliminary training before they entered the army, they were under extreme pressure to accept the Russian Orthodox faith, and those who remained true to Judaism often suffered a veritable martyr- dom.'" Side by side with these unfortunates served men sent to the army as punishment, for the army served also as a prison without bars. Members of the Decembrist uprising, Polish insurgents, rebellious students, un- submissive peasants delivered by their landowners, stubborn religious dis- senters, as well as various sorts of felons sentenced to the army for life were found among the ranks."

The people of Russia found this great army a grievous burden. In part because of Russia's miserable communications and in part because of the nature of the serf system, the authorities felt it necessary to maintain this enormous body of men under arms, even though in other countries the system of universal training and vast reserves was beginning to make it possible to reduce standing armies. Because by well-established law a Russian serf became free after completing his army service, it was impossible to have universal military service.'2 Instead, the army filled its ranks by drafting men of the lowest classes at the rate of five, six, or eight per thousand males. Their families mourned those taken as though they were dead, for few came back from the twenty-five-year term of service. The

7 Nikolai M. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye Krestiiane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva (2 vols., Moscow, 1946), I, 202-204; Ivan S. Bliokh, Finansy Rossii xix stolietiia (4 vols., St. Petersburg, 1882), I, 215-I6.

8Svod Voennykh Postanovlenii (5 pts. in i2, St. Petersburg, 1838), Pt. I, Bk. HI, "Obra- zovanie voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii s ikh upravleniiami," arts. 671, 682, 722-23, I747-62.

9 "Many Polish-born officers and soldiers served in Sevastopol with the dazzling bravery for which this people has been famous of old," Arnold L. Zisserman, "Zamietki o krymskoi voinie," Voennyi Sbornik (1859, No. 4), p. 391 fn.

10 Semen M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (3 vols., Philadelphia, ca. 1918-20), II, 18-29.

11 Svod Vocn. Post., Pt. II, Bk. I, "O prokhozhdenii sluzhby po voennym viedomstvu," arts. 273-80, 290.

12 Fadieev, pp. 26-27.



The Army of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character 883

recruits, torn from their families, sometimes from wives and children, whom they often never saw again, also felt doomed. Conscription was a grim burden for Russian society."3 In I834 Nicholas lightened this load somewhat by the provision that men who had fifteen-year good-conduct records might enter the reserves for the balance of their terms. From then on some seventeen thousand men annually became reservists.14 Nonethe- less, the drafting of men remained a nightmare for the people.

In certain parts of Russia there existed military colonies, w'here the peasants were not subject to conscription. Actually, here the loit of the peasants was worse than elsewhere, as they had to quarter soldiers in their homes in addition to being themselves under military discipline. Their commanders strictly regulated every minute of their waking hours, so that they had no peace. Even worse, their sons, officially termed cantonists, on reaching manhood automatically entered the army, for which they had undergone rigorous training from their tender years.15 It is no wonder that in 1831 thousands of military colonists rose in fierce revolt, which the government subdued with equal ferocity.16 Later the military colonies became somewhat less onerous, but to the end of the period of Nicholas I the peasants hated them with all their hearts.

Another burden borne by part of the population was that of sheltering soldiers in their homes, usually for some six months of the year. The authorities quartered each soldier on one or several families, which by law must shelter and feed him. In prosperous villages this was no great hard- ship, especially as the householder had the right to receive the soldier's food rations,17 although in practice this was apparently not always ob- served. For poor villages the obligation was hard to bear. Quartering was a heavy load for the poor folk in Lithuania and the western provinces, who had to mix chaff and bark with their bread and who stripped the fields bare of blades of grass in the spring. Russian military men com- plained bitterly that their troops suffered from wintering under such conditions."8

For the nation as a whole, the army was a grave fiscal burden. Count 13 Skorov, "Riadovoi Zinov'ev," Voennyi Sbornik (i86o, No. 6), PP. 433-40; Heinrich

Brandt, "Zhenatye nizhnie chiny," Vo-ennyi Sbornik (I86o, No. 12), pp. 358-60. 14 Svod Voen. Post., Pt. II, Bk. I, art. 298; Polievktov, p. 330. 15 Pavel P. Kartsov, Iz proshlago. Lichnyia i sluzhebnyia vospominaniia, I83I-I878 (2 vols.,

St. Petersburg, I888), I, 6-7; Graf Arakcheev i voennye poseleniia, i809-i831 (St. Petersburg, I871), pp. 200-207.

16 Kartsov, I, 8-2I; Graf Arakcheev i voennye poseleniia, pp. 9-84; P. P. Evstaf'ev, Vos- stanie voennykh poselian (Moscow, 1934), pp. 113-235.

17 Krestovskii, pp. 5I6-17. 'sDruzhinin, p. 341; N. Obruchev, "Iznanka krymskoi voiny," Voennyi Sbornik (i8S8,

No. 4), p. 462.




Kankrin, the finance minister, strove stubbornly for nearly twenty years to persuade the tsar to balance the budget by ending the war in the Cau- casus, but he failed."9 After him less able men permitted ever larger deficits and overspending. The cost of the struggle in the Caucasus continued to mount, and when the expense of wars against Magyars, Turks, and the Anglo-French allies combined with it, the budgetary problems became insoluble. Arrears of taxes continued to rise, and it proved necessary to resort to loans from banks and savings funds and the spending of antici- pated revenues from the next year. Even in time of peace the army of Nicholas I was the nation's largest single expenditure, and in the war years it swallowed vastly more.20

It cannot be said that the people of Russia received a proper return for the expenditures of flesh and blood and of the products of their toil. Even if one overlooks the unproductive nature of these military expenditures, one must admit that the army they provided was not efficient and that it suffered from a number of basic defects. Of course, it won the wars against Turkey, Poland, and Hungary; but the war in the Caucasus dragged on, getting worse rather than better, until the situation improved in the later years of Nicholas' reign. Above all, the weaknesses of the Russian army became glaringly evident during the Crimean War of I854 and I855, when it proved unable to defend its own territory.

One of the weak spots was an inferior military technique. While in some respects the Russians were not backward-noticeably in engineering, to which the tsar devoted much attention, and in artillery to some degree -in general they failed to keep up with contemporary military develop- ments. Instead of stressing the use of open order and effective musketry in battle, the high command chiefly emphasized perfection in close-order drill and battle formations in which each detail was minutely specified by field regulations. The infantry had learned to march across level parade grounds in ranks as straight as taut strings, with regiments of twenty- five hundred men each in line. One enthusiast exclaimed that a parade of troops in regimental fronts was "the spectacle of the gods."'" To which one may add: Magnificent, but was it war? Under this system the ideal infantryman was he who could perform the exaggerated goosestep used on parades with a full glass of water on his shako without spilling a drop.22 So strong was the mania for perfection of military evolutions that

19 Bliokh, I, 169-24T. 20Ibid., I, 249-90; TI, 4-21. 21 "Iz zapisok sevastopol'tsa," Russkii Arkhiv (I867, No. I2), pp. I585-86, quoted in

Andrei M. Zaionchkovskii, Voennyc reformy z86o-I870 godov v Rossii (Moscow, 1952), p. 34. 22 Petr P. Dirin, Istoriia leib-gvardii Semenevskago polka (2 vols., St. Petersburg, I883),

II, I68.



T'he Jrmy of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character 885

in preparing for the great annual reviews the commanders were at pains to secure a completely even expanse of ground; they had all furrows and ditches leveled off and hedgehog mounds and molehills erased. They avoided uneven, broken terrain like the plague.23 Even in time of war parades continued in the very combat areas. In the summer of I828, wheIi the tsar was with the army in Bulgaria facing the Turks, he held three parades in four days, capped by maneuvers on July i-to the great distress of the troops.24 At the end of Nicholas' reign the same formalism ruled. In I854 Prince M. D. Gorchakov, commander of the army on the Danube, in his reports stressed the skill of his troops on review rather than their battle training. Of one brigade he wrote: "The alignment and formation of these troops in the ceremonial march by squadrons and in close columns was so fine and so exact that the men appeared ready for a parade."25

The cavalry was even less ready for war than was the infantry. The splendid regiments above all sought to keep their horses sleek and fat, which they achieved by reducing the exercise of their mounts to a mini- mum.26 The horses had learned to use a shortened trot or canter, which presented an elegant appearance but covered little ground. As a result, at several reviews bodies of infantry and field artillery at an ordinary march overtook horsemen at the trot. Nicholas thereupon forbade the shortened paces at reviews, but the horses continued to use them as before.27 When the cavalry had to make practice marches, the commanders were careful to limit them to seven or nine miles per day, with long rest periods. The troops covered the entire distance at the walk, under strict orders not to trot. If they had to make marches of as much as sixteen miles, they went slowly, with extended rest periods, and for a considerable space the men marched on foot, leading their horses. One general is reported to have said that if some genius had only been able to devise a way for the men to carry the horses on their backs, so that they could trot briskly into camp at the end of the march, his reward would have been great. But as this was impossible, cavalry regiments continued to take four weeks to march from St. Petersburg to Moscow-a distance that they should have covered in ten days.28

In time of war this system produced dire results. After several months 23 Nikolai P. Glinoetskii, Istoriia Russkago general'nago shtaba (2 vols., St. Petersburg,

1888-94), II, 192-93. 24 Theodor Schiemann, Geschich:e Russlands unter Kaiser Nikolaus 1 (4 vols., Berlin,

1904-19), II, 249. 25 Zaionchkovskii, p. 36. 26Vasilii Z. Potto, Istoriia Novorossiiskago Dragunskago polka. 1803-1866 (St. Petersbuirg,

i866), pp. 150-51; Krestovskii, pp. 387-90, 500-501. 27 Krestovskii, loc. cit. 28 Ibid., p. 499.




of campaigning against the Turks in I828, whole regiments found it necessary to go back to Russia at the height of the campaign, with the men carry- ing saddles and gear on their backs, leading their crippled mounts. In the Polish war of I831 the Russian cavalry proved far inferior to the Poles in mobility until the rigors of the campaign had hardened the Russian horses.29 The commanders, however, quickly forgot this lesson and continued to use the old training methods. Again they achieved glittering perfection on the parade ground. But when, at the great review of i837, the tsar had the regiments gallop rapidly to the muster-point under the hot summer sun, fallen horses soon littered the field.30

The pedantry of Nicholas' military system, which stressed unthinking obedience and parade ground evolutions rather than combat training, produced ineffective commanders in time of war. Only the Caucasus army brought forward young, original generals with little regard for spit-and- polish soldiering, and the higher military authorities, regarding these men as unfit for normal warfare, failed to promote them to high commands.3 It is no accident that in the Crimean War Nicholas depended on a group of elderly and ineffective generals. Paskevich, M. D. Gorchakov, Prince Menshikov, and Count Osten-Sacken all failed dismally in the crucible of war. The army of Nicholas went to war under the terrible handicap of incap- able leadership.

Because of incapacity at the top (for which Nicholas himself must take much of the blame) the Russian army lacked the proper implements of war. Russian military doctrine still clung to the ideas of Suvorov, who in the eighteenth century had won battles by stressing the elan of the troops and the superiority of the bayonet over musket fire.32 Throughout the reign of Nicholas the troops carried smoothbore muskets with an effective range of two hundred paces. Only a few had muzzle-loading rifles, against which there was a strong prejudice because they were slower in loading than the muskets.33 It is interesting to note that Russian military opinion rejected the Prussian needlegun for the opposite reason: the ease and rapidity of loading these weapons would cause the infantryman to fire so fast that he would soon use up all the cartridges that he could carry.3" Thus the Russian army remained true to its muskets, only to find

29 Ibid., pp. 387, 484-85, 497. So Potto, pp. 153-54- 3' Glinoetskii, II, 201-202. 32 Estaf'ev, 0 souremennom voennom iskustvie (St. Petersburg, 1856), pp. T65-66; Polievk-

toV, p. 329; Vladimir G. Fedorov, Vooruzhenie russkoi armii v krymskoi kampanii (St. Peters- burg, 2904), p. I23.

33 A. Andrianov, Inker.manskii boi i oborona Sevastopolia. Nabroski uchastnika (St. Peters- burg, 1903), p. 2; Polievktov, p. 329.

" PolkoYnik Korostovtsov in Artilleriiskii Zhurnal (I855, No. I), p. 43.



The AIrny of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character 887

that the British and French troops in 1854 were far superior in firepower.35 The Russian army in the Caucasus even continued to use flintlock muskets until the end of i855.36

The Russian high command provided the army with outdated weapons, and then failed to train the troops in their use. Army regulations pre- scribed extremely small amounts of ammunition: thirty blank cartridges and ten ball cartridges per year for each enlisted man.37 The troops did not always receive even these amounts, however, and some commanders made shift to train their men with blank cartridges and bullets of clay.38 Others did not take the trouble to use the cartridges allotted but dumped the powder into streams or gave it to their friends among the neighboring landowners.89 As a result, the marksmanship of the Russian infantry was very poor. Their leaders expressed relatively little concern on this score, however, for they regarded cold steel as much more effective than bullets. Nevertheless, when conflict loomed in the Crimea Prince Menshikov sent word to Prince Gorchakov that he refused "to attack the enemy with our infantry, which in a year has received only two ball cartridges."40

Another weakness of the system was its inflexibility in wartime. Ex- tremely few reserves were available, and their quality when called to the colors proved to be low. By the beginning of I856 the Russian army had managed to raise its strength to 1,775,000 men, but of these a considerable number were in half-trained militia units.4' During most of the campaign in the Crimea the Russian forces were inferior to their adversaries in manpower.42

Other failings, less obvious but nonetheless grave, also existed. Cor- ruption was rampant. Regimental commanders made up for years of low pay by using regimental funds to buy poor-grade supplies and pocketing the difference. There was skimping on the firewood used to heat barracks, so that the men kept them tightly closed in winter, with grave conse-

35 Fedorov, pp. 4-8; Zaionchkovskii, p. 38. 36 Podporuchik Andrievich, "Strielkovaia ofitserskaia shkola," Voennyi Sbornik (186o, No.

2), p. 38I; Pavel 0. Bobrovskii, Istoriia 13-go leib-grenaderskago Erivanskago Ego Velichestva polka za 250 liet (5 pts., St. Petersburg, I892-98), IV, 454.

37 Fedorov, p. 72. 38 Mikhailo A. Kovalevskii, Piat'desiat liet sushchestvovaniia leib-gvardii dragunskago polka

(Novgorod, I870), pp. 43, 50, 8o, I74 fn. 39 "Vzgliad na sostoianie russkikh voisk v minuvshuiu voinu," Voennyi Sbornik (i 858,

No. i), p. I2; Petr V. Alabin, Chetyre voiny, quoted in Zaionchkovskii, p. 38. 40 Nikolai F. Dubrovin, Materialy dlia Istorii Krymskoi Voiny i Oborony Sevastopolia (7

vols., St. Petersburg, I87I-74), II, 388, quoted in Fedorov, p. 70. 41 Modest I. Bogdanovich, Istoricheskii ocherk deiatel'nosti voennago upravleniia v Rossii v

pervoc dvadtsatilietie blagopoluchnago tsarstvovaniia gosudaria imperatora Aleksandra Niko- lacicha I855-i88o (6 vols., St. Petersburg, I879-8I), I, 53-62.

42 Eduard 1. Totleben, Opisan7ie oborony g. Sevastopolia (2 vols. in 3, St. Petersburg, I863-78), II, Pt. 2, pp. 312-14.



888 Johin S//elton Curtiss

quences for their health.43 Officers looked on command of a regiment as the equivalent of the ownership of a fine estate.44 Military hospitals were especially profitable to administer, since profiteering from laundry con- tracts, the issue of drugs and rations, and other items brought in sub- stantial income.45 Likewise the Quartermaster's Department and the Com- missariat were in ill repute because of graft through issuing inferior equipment and bad food in wartime. In I854 some of the troops in the Crimea found themselves forced to subsist on rotten biscuit that the troops on the Danube had rejected some months before.46

In logistics the Russian army was also weak. Far more than the effec- tiveness of the enemy resistance, it was the problem of supplying the army that delayed Russian victory over the Turks and the Poles. The troops often had insufficient food and always lacked gunpowder.4 The difficulties of organizing vast trains of peasant wagons and oxcarts and of supplying fodder for army horses and the wagon trains were a main cause for Rus- sian defeat in the Crimea. If in I854 Russia had had a railroad from Mos- cow to the Black Sea, it might well have been worth as much as two hundred thousand soldiers.

Finally, the army suffered greatly from disease. Pulmonary ailments were especially deadly, but in addition dysentery, cholera, malaria, typhus, and occasionally bubonic plague took a heavy toll. While in other armies of the time the soldiers had a death rate twice as high as that of the cor- responding civilian age-groups, the Russian soldiers died three times as fast as the Russian civilians of the same abes.48

As a result of these defects, the Russian army proved inefficient in war. Although many of its foes, such as the Turks, Persians, and Poles, suffered from internal dissension, the Russians found it difficult to subdue them. Relatively small numbers of Caucasian tribesmen, aided by a most difficult terrain, were able to hold off the Russians throughout Nicholas' reign and in the I83.0's and I840's even inflicted severe defeats on them. During the

43Stolietie Voennago Ministerstva I802-1902 (I3 pts. in 36, St. Petersburg, I902-II), I, Nikolai A. Danilov, Istoricheskii ociherk razvitiia voennago uprarleniia v Rossii, Appendix Io, pp. 65-66.

44Ibid., pp. 6o-65. 45 Ibid., III, Pt. 2, Glavnyi Voenno-Sanitarnyi Komitet, Appendix 5, pp. I73-84. 46 "Kniaz' A. S. Menshikov v razskazakh ego ad'jutanta A. A. Panaeva," Russkaia Starina

(Apr., I877), pp. 698-99, quoted in Evgenii V. Tarle, Krymskaia voina (2 vols., Moscow, I950), II, 243-44.

47 Totleben, II, Pt. I, pp. 98, 121, I33, 151, 3I2, 335; V. Kolchak, Voina i plien. I853-i855 gg. (St. Petersburg, I904), p. 25; "Gorchakov-Aleksandru II," Russkaia Starina (July, I883), p. I99, quoted in Tarle, II, 444.

48 Sbornik sochinenii olitserov Nikolaevskoi Akadernii General'nago Shtaba (z vols., St. Petersburg, I863), II, 6-7.



The Jrmy of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character 889

Crimean War the Russians had to keep two hundred thousand veteran troops in the Caucasus.49 In I849 they quickly overcame the Magyars, but more by superior numbers than by skillful leadership. And in the Crimean War the Russians tasted defeat. To be sure, because of the fear that the Austrians, the Prussians, and even the Swedes might fall upon them, they felt compelled to keep most of their army in Poland and the Baltic area. They also had the severe handicap of the impossible logistics of the Crimea. But Russian defeat largely resulted from incompetent leadership, from a grave deficiency in small-arms fire, and above all from a shortage of powder that often doomed the Russian gunners to suicidal inactivity. As of old, Russian junior officers and men displayed great valor and initiative, but allied superiority in technique and in leadership snatched victory from them. Thus the army of Nicholas I failed in its major test.

It is clear, then, that the Russian army under Nicholas was less effective than its glitter and its vast numbers would indicate. While it was strong enough to repress all peasant revolts at home, it proved less successful against foreign foes. Above all, the burdens that the army imposed on the nation were not in proportion to its value. It seems safe to say that the strengths and weaknesses of the army reflected those of Russian society. It had the numbers and the endurance of a virile and unsophisticated people. Its weaknesses, complicated by the pedantic policy of the emperor, were those of a backward serf system that lacked industrial and commer- cial techniques. Vast social and economic changes would have to occur before Russia could have an effective army.

Duke University 49Faclieev, Slest'desiat liet katkazsbkoi voiny (Tiflis, I86o), p. 39; Bobrovskii, IV, p. iv.



the army of nicholas i: its role and character

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