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. Khr. 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 leib-gvardii egerskago polka za sto let 1796–1896, SPB, 1896, prilozheniia, pp. 56 ff.); the Guards Lancers (P. Bobrovskii, Istoriia leib-gvardii ulanskago E.I.V. gosudarnyi Imperatritsy Aleksandry Fedorovny polka, SPB, 1903, prilozheniia, pp. 140 ff.); Her Majesty’s Life Cuirassier Regiment (Colonel Markov, Istoriia leib-gvardii 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 leib-gvardii 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.
42 Mémoires du Général Bennigsen, 3 vols., Paris, n.d., vol. 3, pp. 278–9 (letter to Alexander Iof 24 June (OS)). RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 70: Essen’s report on his troops’ condition upon departure from their training camps is on fo. 4 and the list of men dispatched on fo. 5.
43 SIM, 11, no. 13, Lobanov-Rostovsky to Alexander I, 16 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 109–11.
44 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, pp. 578–80. This was in a report by the inspector-general of artillery, Müller-Zakomelsky, dated 3 Jan. 1813 (OS). SIM, 11, no. 12, 14 Nov. 1812 (OS), is Lobanov’s acknowledgement to Alexander that he had received this order. V. N. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka Rossii k bor’be s Napoleonom v 1812–1814 godakh, candidate’s dissertation, Gorky, 1967, pp. 385–454 is excellent on small-arms production in 1812–14.
45 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 163, fos. 31–2: Gorchakov to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 31 March 1813 (OS).
46 SIM, 11, Saltykov to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 19 Dec. 1812 (OS), p. 199.
47 The two key sources on the Reserve Army in this period are Lobanov-Rostovsky’s reports to Alexander I for 7 Jan.–6 Aug. 1813 (RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47) and the journal of outgoing correspondence of Lobanov’s headquarters for 1 Jan.–1 April 1813 (RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 42).
48 Alexander’s orders are in SIM, 3, no. 52, Alexander to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 5 Feb. 1813 (OS), pp. 39–43. Lobanov’s initial response to the movement orders is in RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 147, fos. 17–18: letter dated 15 Feb. 1813 (OS).
49 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3441, fos. 31–2: Lobanov to Alexander, 17 Feb. 1813 (OS).
50 For Lobanov’s report, see RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47, fos. 26–9. For Neverovsky’s report to the emperor, see RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 39, fos. 28–9. The statistics come from the same Delo and are on fos. 31–2. Lobanov’s letters to Alexander I of 9 May (fos. 62–4) and 18 July (fos. 104–5) 1813 (OS) (in RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 47) state that of 9,000 sick left behind in Belitsa 7,000 had already rejoined their units and more were expected to do so. The reserve companies of the Guards Jaeger Regiment, for example, left Petersburg with 704 men and arrived in Silesia with 481; see Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka, p. 113.
51 Even the Chevaliers Gardes at Kulm put out skirmishers: see S. Panchulidzev, Istoriia kavalergardov, SPB, 1903, vol. 3, p. 314.
52 The best shorthand guide to the Russian cavalry of this era (including useful illustrations of horse furnishings, how to hold the reins and use a sword, and how to deploy to skirmish and charge, etc.) is Alla Begunova, Sabli ostry, koni bystry, Moscow, 1992.