Abstract
The French Revolution brought about a rapid and dramatic increase in the size of Europe’s armies. This increase posed a number of difficult problems for the European states, especially how to recruit soldiers, how to administer them, how to command them in such large groups as came into being after 1792, and, not least, how to pay for them.1 Austria, Prussia, and France chose systems of recruitment that allowed them largely to ignore the new problems of administration and command: after 1815 armies of about 200,000 men each—the administration, command, and maintenance of which was not beyond the means of already existing structures—served as cadres for reserve armies that would provide mobilized strengths in excess of 400,000 each. Russia, however, did not adopt a reserve system2 and so faced the daunting task of administering and paying for an army that came to number over 800,000, in peacetime and in war.
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Notes
See Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1977),
Chapter II, for the logistical problems involved and Gunther Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980) for a good discussion of the tactical, administrative, and organizational changes the new armies required.
William Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600–1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 34.
Russia’s economic and financial history in the nineteenth century (and earlier) remains incomplete. The basic secondary works on Russian economic policy under Nicholas are Walter Pintner, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1967) and William Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization 1800–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). Both authors argue that Nicholas’s reign was not simply a period of stagnation, but an important stage in the development of the industrialization process in Russia. Neither had access to Soviet archives. In the absence of archival materials historians have had to rely mainly on the figures given in Ministerstvo Finansov, 1802–1902 (St. Petersburg: 1902) and on the work of Ivan Bliokh (I. S. Bliokh, Finansy Rossii XIX stoletiia: Istoriia—Statistika, vol. I [Saint Petersburg: 1882]). Although both Bliokh and the official history of the Ministry of Finance had access to primary materials, there is reason to doubt the complete accuracy of their portrayals of the state of Russia’s fiscal affairs, if only because those affairs were far more complicated than can be stated in tables and charts. The comparison of military budgets given in these works with those cited in War Ministry documents, however, reveals that the inaccuracies, although noticeable, are not such as to distort our view of the economic situation of the country out of easy recognition. For example, for the year 1835, Ministerstvo Finansov gives the War Ministry budget as 201,446,000 rubles (p. 628), while Bliokh gives the “supremely accepted” budget as 198,275,000 rubles (p. 206). Rossisskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter RGVIA), fond 1, opis’ 1, torn 4, delo 9616, Po otnosheniiu Ministra Finansov o sostavlenii normal’noi smety na 1836 god raskhodam Voennogo Ministerstva, list 1 oborot gives the budget assigned to the War Ministry for 1835 as 197,729,122 rubles, although it notes that only 188,639,969 rubles were to come from the State Treasury, while the rest were to come from the revenues of the Kingdom of Poland. The figures given in the secondary sources are not “right” in the sense of being completely accurate or even clear, but they are more than adequate for conveying an impression of the economic situation of the state and the relative budget sizes of the various state bodies.
Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 346.
See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Towers (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 130ff
See John Keep, “The Russian Army’s Response to the French Revolution,” Jahrbücher fir Geschichte Ost Europas, hand 28 (1980), hefl 4, p. 502ff. V. G. Sirotkin points out that the Russian treasury suffered in addition from a quantity of counterfeit rubles that Napoleon began producing in 1810. See V. G. Sirotkin, “Finansovo-ekonomicheskie posledstviia napoleonovskikh voin i rossiia v 1814–1824 gody” Istoriia SSSR no. 4 (July-August 1974), pp. 46–62 for this and other details of the financial crisis in Russia following the Napoleonic wars.
Bronsart von Schellendorf, The Duties of the General Staff, 4th ed. (London: 1905), p. 5.
Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 72–73. The Russian organization was copied from the Napoleonic system, with appropriate changes (perhaps improvements). The Russians were able to make this adjustment prior to Napoleon’s attack because of information obtained by Prince Petr Mikhailovich Volkonskii, who was to become Chief of the Main Staff in 1814, and by a young cavalry officer serving as Alexander’s liaison to the French court, Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev. Chernyshev gathered much information when the French Emperor imprudently undertook to lecture him about the principles of war. Chernyshev’s reports are contained in Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestva (hereafter SIRIO), vol. 21 (1877), (not titled—hereafter SIRIO 21), and “Bumagi A. I. Chernysheva za tsarstvo-vanie Imperatora Aleksandra I, 1809–1825gg.,” SIRIO, vol. 121 (1906), (hereafter SIRIO 121). See also the biographical note written by A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii reproduced in “Zhizneopisanie, vsepoddan-neishie doklady i perepiska Kniazia Alexandra Ivanovicha Chernysheva,” SIRIO, vol. 122 (1905) (hereafter SIRIO 122). Stolietie voennago ministerstva 1802–1902 (St. Petersburg, 1902), (hereafter SVM), vol. IV, part 1, book 2, section 1, p. 250ff contains a brief account of Volkonskii’s mission to Paris and his conclusions.
See Michael Josselson, The Commander: A Life of Barclay de Tolly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 99ff and especially p. 100;
David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 783;
L. G. Beskrovnyi, Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda (Moscow: Social-Economic Literature Press, 1962), pp. 293 and 305ff.
A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia(Saint Petersburg: 1882), p. 30, my emphasis.
See Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801–1825 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 61–62;
also Anatole Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, 1825 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), pp. 58–63.
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© 1999 Frederick W. Kagan
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Kagan, F.W. (1999). Alexander’s Legacy: Russia’s Administrative-Financial Crisis to 1825. In: The Military Reforms of Nicholas I. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299576_2
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