staff positions at headquarters should be reserved for trained general staff officers. Traditionally, commanding generals had run their headquarters through a duty general and a bevy of aides-de-camp, many of whom were relatives, friends and clients. In a manner typical of the Russian army and bureaucracy, headquarters resembled an extended family household. Now professionalism was attempting to upset and nose its way into this comfortable and traditional arrangement. Commanding generals might find the principle hard to swallow. They might also wonder whether the unknown, young and often non-Russian staff officers foisted on them were truly competent at real war, as distinct from organizing marches and drawing maps.
In addition, one great point about the friends and clients who had traditionally manned headquarters was that they were loyal to their patron. Could one be so sure of this with unknown staff officers appointed on supposedly impersonal professional grounds? In his manual for staff officers Toll had stressed loyalty to their commanding general as being of paramount importance. That did not stop Alexander from telling the chiefs of staff of both Barclay’s and Bagration’s armies to write directly to him about all matters of interest in their commands. Not at all surprisingly, it took Russian command structures some time to settle in 1812–13. The historian of the general staff suggests that if Tormasov’s Third Army did so more quickly than Barclay’s First or Bagration’s Second that was because Tormasov himself and all his key staff officers came from the old network of Field-Marshal Prince Repnin.35
As this suggests, if in some ways the Russian army had been renewed in 1807–12, in other ways old habits and problems remained. On the whole the Russian army in June 1812 was not just bigger but also better than the one that had faced Napoleon in 1805. Over and above the specific reforms which had taken place in 1807–12, the army benefited from having far more experience of European warfare than had been the case seven years before. Nowhere was this more true than in the Guards. Paul I had begun their transformation from ornaments at the imperial court to a fighting elite but when the Guards regiments went on campaign in 1805 they had minimal experience of war. In the Preobrazhenskys, for example, no officer under the rank of colonel, no sergeant-major and very few sergeants had ever seen action.36 Blooded in 1805–7 and reinforced in subsequent years by veterans drawn from the line regiments, the Guards were now much closer to being an elite reserve fighting force whose commitment could decide the fate of a battle. Nevertheless the army’s most fundamental strengths and weaknesses remained unchanged from 1805. On the credit side stood the numbers and quality of the light cavalry, and the immense courage, discipline and endurance of the infantry. On the other side of the balance were problems in the high command. Above all this meant rivalries between the generals and the difficulty of finding a competent and authoritative supreme commander.
Once one goes into detail, the deployment of Russian forces to meet the threat of invasion inevitably becomes complicated. For that reason it is useful to think of the Russian forces as divided in principle into three lines of defence.
The front line was filled by the Guards, the Grenadiers and most of the line army. Initially it was divided between Barclay de Tolly’s First and Bagration’s Second armies. When Petersburg learned of the Franco-Austrian alliance a Third Army was formed in May 1812 under General Aleksandr Tormasov to defend the invasion routes into northern Ukraine. These three armies combined and including their Cossack regiments added up to only 242,000 men, which was barely half the first wave of Napoleon’s invading forces. If they were destroyed, the war would be over. Without their cadres it would be impossible to rebuild an army capable of challenging Napoleon during the course of a war.
Since in principle the Russian army was said to have almost 600,000 men on its rolls in June 1812, the fact that it could put less than half of this number in the front line against Napoleon appears surprising. To some extent this merely reflected the usual gap in the Russian army of that time between men on the rolls and soldiers actually present in the ranks. There were always many men who were either ill or detached on a range of duties, or even dead and not yet removed from the rolls. In addition, however, many troops were deployed on other fronts. These included 42,000 men in the Caucasus, many of whom were engaged in the ongoing war with the Persians. Most important were the 31,000 men in Finland, the 17,500 in Crimea and southern Ukraine, and the nearly 60,000 soldiers of the Army of the Danube who had just become available as a result of the peace treaty with the Ottomans. These troops were not just numerous but also battle-hardened veterans. They were too far away to join the fray in the summer of 1812 but if the war could be prolonged their impact might be decisive.37
The second line of defence was manned by reserve units. Part of this force was made up of the line regiments’ reserve infantry battalions and cavalry squadrons. In this period Russian infantry regiments were composed of three battalions, each in principle approximately 750 men strong. In the event of war, the first and third battalions set off together on campaign, while the second battalion was designated as ‘reserve’ and remained in the rear. Cuirassier and dragoon regiments were formed of five squadrons, one of which was left behind as a reserve. Two of the ten squadrons of light cavalry regiments were called ‘reserve’ and left in the rear. The function of these reserve units was to fill up the front-line regiments, guard regimental stores, train recruits and (in the cavalry’s case) muster and break in remounts.38
Unfortunately, matters were a little more complicated than this simple picture suggests. As was so often the case, the Guards were an exception to the rule. Their infantry regiments set off to war in full three-battalion strength.39 In addition, all Russian infantry battalions – Guards, line or light – were composed of four companies. Of these the elite company was called ‘Grenadier’, the other three usually ‘Musketeer’. Though the second battalions of the line infantry remained in reserve, they detached their Grenadier companies for front-line service. These companies were united into so-called ‘Combined’ Grenadier battalions, brigades and divisions. Between them the First and Second armies had two such divisions and both fought at Borodino.
In 1812 there was a lively exchange between successive governors of Riga (Dmitrii Lobanov-Rostovsky and Magnus von Essen) and army headquarters about the quality of the reserve battalions which formed the Riga garrison. Not only the governors but also the senior Russian military engineer, General Karl Oppermann, complained that reserve battalions were by their nature very under strength and often poorly trained. Alexander denied this, arguing that good regiments had good reserve battalions and vice versa. Common sense suggests that Lobanov, Essen and Oppermann were at least partly right. Any sensible colonel taking his regiment off to war was likely to try to slip weaker elements into a reserve battalion designated for service in the rear. By definition, a battalion which shed its elite Grenadier company declined in quality as well as size. Nevertheless, Alexander was right in insisting that many of the reserve battalions which served under Bagration or joined Count Peter Wittgenstein’s First Corps fought very well in 1812.40
The other half of the Russian ‘second line’ was made up of battalions formed from the Reserve Recruit Depots initially created by Arakcheev back in 1808 to ease peasants’ transition to military service. In 1811, with war looming, it was decided to form the recruits who had almost completed their training in the so-called ‘first-line’ depots into reserve battalions. These were officially called the fourth battalions of their respective regiments. Their cadres were provided by the officers, NCOs and veterans who had been detached from the parent regiments to train the recruits in the depots. The fourth battalions were then united into reserve brigades and divisions. In March 1812 proposals were hatched to unite all the reserve units of the ‘second line’ into three reserve armies. In time these reserve armies would be able to reinforce Barclay, Bagration and Tormasov. In the event that the front-line armies were defeated or forced to retreat, they would be able to fall back under the cover of these rear formations.41
This plan never came to fruition and in reality reserve armies never existed in 1812. One reason for this was that Napoleon advanced more quickly than anticipated and the Russian reserve units were forced to decamp before they could form such armies. More importantly, many reserve battalions had to be redeployed in 1812 to stiffen the front line of defence. In May 1812 when Tormasov’s Third Army was created in response to the new threat from Austria, it included many reserve (i.e. second) battalions. Reserve battalions also comprised most of the 18,500- strong garrison of Riga, as well as the smaller forces assigned to hold the fortresses of Bobruisk, Kiev and Dunaburg. When Dunaburg was abandoned its garrison joined Wittgenstein’s corps in defending the approaches to Petersburg.
Meanwhile, of the eighty-seven fourth battalions from the Recruit Depots twelve joined the Riga garrison and six fought under Wittgenstein but the rest were incorporated into the retreating First and Second armies on the march. General Mikhail Miloradovich joined Kutuzov’s forces on the eve of the battle of Borodino with most of the last remaining group of battalions, some 13,500 men. The fourth battalions were all broken up and their men distributed to refill the ranks of Kutuzov’s regiments. This made good sense. The recruits in the fourth battalions
