The Russian Army
The disastrous outcome of the Crimean War left the Russian army in a parlous state. It had begun that war with a reputation (based in part on its size) that, as events soon showed, was undeserved. It was, of course, an enormous army; it had emerged with credit from the Napoleonic Wars and had been ultimately successful in the Russo-Turkish
War of 1828-1829. But its very size, its clumsiness and inflexibility, and the social structure which it reflected, had brought it to a humiliating failure.
Even before the Crimean War it was apparent to some observers, although not to the high command and certainly not to Nicholas I, that reforms were necessary. One General Staff officer, A I Astafeev, argued that the army should look to the principles of Suvorov rather than those of Napoleon; while F I Goremykin, a military writer at the Nicholas Military Academy, complained of the pedantry that affected the whole army: ‘It is time to leave behind the oppressing and strange forms in which military learning is sometimes wrapped.’1
An even clearer voice was that of Dmitri Alexeievich Miliutin, who unlike most theoreticians was to be able in due course to put his ideas into practice. He was born in 1816 into an impoverished noble family. His mother, however, was a sister of the influential Count Paul Kiselev who was able to be of assistance both directly and indirectly to his nephew’s early career.2 After obtaining a commission in the Life Guards, Miliutin graduated in 1837 from the Nicholas Military Academy with a silver medal, and was appointed to the Guards General Staff. After two terms of service in the Caucasus, in the first of which in 1839 he was severely wounded, he joined the faculty of the Nicholas Military Academy as a lieutenant colonel in 1845. For the next decade he led the life of an academic as Professor of Military Geography, studying in detail a wide range of military issues. At the request of Prince Chernyshev, the War Minister, he completed a history of the Russian army in Suvorov’s campaigns against France in 1799. By the outbreak of the Crimean War Miliutin had risen to the rank of major general. During the war he was employed as an adviser to the War Minister, Prince Dolgorukov, and served on a number of key committees. He was now close to the centre of military power in Russia, a position in which his writings, calling energetically for military reform, began to be increasingly noticed.
Alexander II was far more ready than his predecessor to accept the need for military reform. However, his appointment in 1856 of the conservative General Sukhozanet to succeed Dolgorukov as War Minister did not at first signal a recognition of the need for change, and later that year Miliutin accepted a posting as Chief of Staff to Prince Bariatinsky, the Commander in Chief in the Caucasus. During this assignment he enjoyed an excellent relationship with his chief. It was not until the summer of 1860 that he returned to St Petersburg, after the Russian forces in the Caucasus had in 1859 defeated and captured the famous rebel Shamil. As Chief of Staff Miliutin had been largely responsible for the innovative reforms in the military administration in the Caucasus and earned much of the credit for their success.4 He had been called back to take up an appointment as deputy to Sukhozanet, a decision made by Alexander on the recommendation of Bariatinsky. In November 1861 Sukhozanet was given the post of Viceroy of Poland, and Miliutin was appointed as War Minister in his place.
General Dmitri Alexeievich Miliutin. (Ollier)
With his hands at last on the levers of power, Miliutin wasted no time in putting before the Tsar a comprehensive reform programme. His objective was to devise a way in which the colossal army budget might be reduced while at the same time giving Russia an army worthy of her. This meant adopting the kind of system in place elsewhere in Europe, which enabled a rapid expansion of the army in time of war. Drawing attention to the extent which other Great Powers could do this, he wrote:
Under present conditions of the European powers’ situation, when each of them has a significant standing army and the assured means of expanding its military forces in case of war, the relative political significance of Russia can be supported in no other way than by corresponding armed forces with the same foundation for proper expansion in wartime.5
The emancipation of the serfs made a policy of national conscription a target at which to aim, although political resistance and the scale of the changes necessary delayed its introduction until January 1874. In the meantime in 1862 Miliutin set about the reorganisation of the Field Army, basing it at first on four military districts; six more were added in 1864 and four more in the following year. He also embarked on a reorganisation of the War Ministry, slashing its total workforce by 1,000. By 1869 it was divided into five principal departments, the Imperial Headquarters, Military Council, High Military Court, War Ministry Chancellery and Main Staff. Supporting these were the specialist administrations, inspectorates and main committees.6
General Nepokoitschitsky, Chief of Staff of the Russian Army in Europe. (Russes et Turcs)
Miliutin’s reforms encountered opposition, not least from his former chief, Prince Bariatinsky, who favoured an organisation on the Prussian model. The outstanding success of the Prussian army in 1866, to be followed again in 1870-1871, made this an attractive option. But in spite of the very considerable weight of Bariatinsky’s influence, the Tsar backed his War Minister. This left the emerging Main Staff, headed by the chief of the General Staff, as having very wide administrative powers; it has been suggested that these were in fact too wide to allow proper attention to complex information-gathering and planning processes.7
The administrative improvements had greatly enhanced Russia’s ability to mobilise. By 1863, the entire army could be put on a full wartime footing within ten weeks; by 1867 the mobilisation period had come down to twenty-five days in the Kiev Military District although still one hundred and eleven days in the Caucasus. Five years later the corresponding periods were nine days and thirty-nine days. Unfortunately it was evident that the mobilisation periods for potential enemies such as Germany and Austria-Hungary were still much less.
Quite apart from the process of mobilisation, the Russian army’s need of men had always been enormous. The existence of a standing army of over 800,000 throughout the period that followed the ending of the Napoleonic Wars had put a colossal burden on the national exchequer, and it was this problem that Miliutin was resolved to address. However, even the maintenance of such a large standing army did not provide sufficient forces for the many conflicts with which the army was involved, since the country’s foreign policy always required that a large part of the available force remained in position along the Western frontiers. This policy had ensured that in most of its campaigns the Russian army fought with inadequate numbers for the tasks which confronted it. The most startling illustration of this had been during the Crimean War, during which it has been estimated that, inclusive of irregulars and militia, the Russian army reached a size of over two and a half million men. The total of the allied forces actually engaged with them in the Balkans, the Crimea and the Caucasus was not a great deal more than 300,000.8 Another instance of this had been seen in 1828, when the Russians crossed the Pruth with 100,000 men, an entirely inadequate number for the campaign that was to follow.
Russian infantry in camp. (Budev)
Miliutin’s reforms had by 1872 produced a cadre and reserve system that would provide, on full mobilisation, a total of 1,358,000 men, a figure well short of what he believed was needed. In the autumn of 1870, therefore, he began a campaign for the introduction of universal conscription; two commissions were set up to investigate the issue, and these reported by mid 1872. Miliutin now pressed the Tsar to initiate a comprehensive review of exactly what was required, and in February 1873 a month long special conference was secretly convened to study the matter.
Grand Duke Michael of Russia. (Ollier)
As it turned out, the conference very nearly did for Miliutin’s reforms. It brought together a number of key ministers and others intimately concerned with the issues of Russia’s military future, and among them were a number of serious critics of Miliutin’s programme. These included, of course, Bariatinsky, but also the Tsarevich, the Grand Dukes Michael and Nicholas, and Count Paul Shuvalov, the head of Imperial Security. As soon as the conference began to look at army organisation, Miliutin found himself assailed by a number of his critics. A sub-committee appointed by Alexander to look at ways of cutting costs was, to Miliutin’s fury, to be chaired by Bariatinsky. However, the sub-committee’s report was delayed, and the Tsar supported his War Minister and his call for conscription, and in due course the decree introducing it came into effect on January 1 1874.9
All men were required to give military service of six years in the active army and nine in the reserve. Exemptions relieved some 48 per cent from peacetime service and 24 per cent in wartime; the annual intake now gave Russia an adequate standing army and wartime reserve. The Active Army was organised into field troops and local troops, the latter consisting of garrison troops in European Russia, regular troops in Asia and stationary troops, gendarmes and other local units. The Reserve would, upon mobilization, provide the troops necessary to bring the Active Army to its war establishment, together with an ersatz reserve to make good wartime losses and, separately, reserve regiments available wherever required. The field troops were organised into 48 Infantry Divisions, of which three were Guard Divisions, four Grenadier Divisions and the rest Line Divisions. There were 8 Rifle Brigades, 48 Field Artillery Brigades, 19 Cavalry Divisions, 35 Horse Artillery Batteries and 19 Engineer Battalions, together with supporting units. Divisions were organised into army corps, of two or three divisions, with corresponding field artillery, a cavalry division and two horse artillery batteries.10 Apart from headquarters and support services, the establishment of an army corps of two divisions would be 20,160 infantry, 2,048 cavalry, 96 field guns and 12 horse artillery guns.
In addition to the regular and reserve troops described above there was also a militia, called the opolchenie, which comprised men with exemption from conscription and those under the age of forty who had completed their service terms. The opolchenie could only be called upon by a special Imperial decree.
The organisation of artillery and cavalry units was overhauled. Reserve artillery formations were created, capable of expansion on mobilisation, which could produce 144 reserve artillery batteries, of which two-thirds were available to support reserve divisions and the remaining third to provide replacements. Although the introduction of rifled guns had been completed, the four and nine pounder guns were already obsolescent, and the training of the artillery was seriously deficient, as was the understanding of senior commanders as to their proper employment. The cavalry, organised into two Guard divisions, two Cossack divisions, one Caucasian division and fourteen regular cavalry divisions, had been somewhat expanded in the light of the experience of other European armies in the wars fought since the Crimean War. This expansion had especially affected the Cossack units, which were integrated into the regular army and mobilisation structure.
In planning for a Russian army that was so much larger, Miliutin was taking account of the ever-present fear that war with a European adversary would at once stimulate a further uprising in Poland. This meant that a large garrison must be maintained there at all times. Similarly there were pressing requirements that the army must fulfil in other borderlands of the Russian Empire, each of which further reduced the number of troops available for other theatres, such as the Caucasus region and in Central Asia.11 The complete change in the balance of power in Europe following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-l871 obliged Russian strategists to review the nation’s capability to deal, for instance, with the possibility of a war against an Austro-Prussian alliance, which would particularly threaten Poland, where the slower Russian mobilisation would enable the enemy to overrun large areas of the country. The conference of February-March 1873 paid particular attention to this.
A Russian column on the march. (Illustrated London News)
Although by 1877 Miliutin’s reforms had not yet produced a peacetime army or an army on mobilisation of the size that he judged would be required in the event of war with Germany and Austria-Hungary, it was nonetheless a huge improvement on the situation following the Crimean War. In 1874 the active army stood at a total of 754,265; on January 1 1878 the total strength available had grown to just over one and a half million.12
The War Ministry also embarked on the reequipping of the army, a task rendered urgently necessary by the evident requirement for breechloading rifles. Various efforts were made to find a system suitable for converting muzzle-loaders to breechloaders, and in 1869 the Krenk conversion was adopted, when 800,000 of these weapons were purchased. However, an alternative had also been identified in the rifle manufactured in the United States by Hiram Berdan, which was considerably more robust than the Krenk. By the spring of 1877 the Guard Grenadiers and nine Line divisions had been equipped with the Berdan, as had the Rifle brigades; the remaining Line divisions had the Krenk. The Berdan was sighted to 1,500 yards, while the Krenk was limited to 600 yards.
The Russian army had not, however, properly grasped the lessons that were to be learned from the effect of breechloaders in the Wars of German Unification, and there was still a strong disposition to regard the bayonet as the crucial weapon for the infantry:
They were trained to advance to the attack in column of companies, and to move to the assault while still at a distance from the position to be captured. The bayonet assault was looked upon as the one decisive feature in an infantry attack; no attempt was made to obtain superiority of fire over the enemy. In short the possibilities of the breechloading rifle were not understood. There was no provision for a mobile battalion ammunition reserve which could follow the infantry in the attack.13
In addition, unlike their Turkish adversaries, the Russian infantry were inadequately provided with entrenching equipment.
The Imperial family provided the commanders in chief for each of the European and Caucasus theatres. In all, twelve members of the family came to the war, occupying positions at all levels down to the rank of captain. The Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas, was assigned to command the army assembling to invade the Principalities. Born in 1831, he was from the outset destined for a military career, and became commander of the Imperial Guard in 1864. A notorious womaniser, he was of limited intelligence. Francis Greene thought him a man of ‘remarkably frank and genial nature,’ and considered that if he had not been a grand duke ‘would probably have made a dashing leader of a cavalry division.’ If his military talents alone would not have made him a commander in chief, Greene thought it doubtful if any general could have been selected who would have been more acceptable to the army.14 As it was much of the responsibility for directing his army would fall upon his Chief of Staff, General Nepokoitschitsky. The latter appears to have had a high reputation in Russia, where he was known as ‘our Moltke,’ since he had made a careful study of Moltke’s methods. He was interviewed at the start of the campaign by a correspondent of the Daily News, who provided this description for his readers:
The General is a short, square-set, but active-looking man, hale and hearty, in spite of his seventy years; he looks as fit to make a campaign as if he were twenty years younger … General Nepokoitschitsky’s hair, whiskers and moustache are snow-white, but there is a flush of hale colour on his cheek; his eye is not dim, neither is his natural force abated.15
Russian Cossack officers, summer 1877. (Rogers)
The Daily News correspondent, noting the Chief of Staff’s placidity of temperament, was struck by the fact that his personality was complemented by the excitable Assistant Chief of Staff, General Levitsky. Francis Greene, on the other hand, had a particularly low opinion of the Chief of Staff and his Assistant Chief, regarding them as ‘men of very mediocre abilities,’ commenting:
The first was never more than a chief clerk, and the second was reduced to being one after having committed two or three crass blunders early in the campaign. Yet these two men, whose incompetency nobody disputed, were, for reasons never fully understood, retained in their places to the end of the campaign.16
Lieutenant-General Baron Krüdener, commander of the Russian IX Corps. (Russes et Turcs)
Lieutenant-General Zotov, commander of the Russian IV Corps. (Russes et Turcs)
In the first instance the Army of the South, commanded by Grand Duke Nicholas, comprised four army corps, the VIII (Lieutenant-General Radetzky), IX (Lieutenant-General Baron Krüdener) XI (Lieutenant-General Prince Shakofskoi and XII (Lieutenant-General Vannovsky). There were in addition two rifle brigades (Major-Generals Dobrovolski and Zviazinsky) and a Cossack division commanded by Lieutenant-General Skobelev I, father of the rather more famous Major-General Michael Skobelev II. Two other corps, the VII and X Corps, were also mobilised and deployed for the protection of the coast, based on Odessa and Nicolaiev respectively. These six corps represented the first wave of the Russian mobilisation, and had been mobilised as long ago as October 17 1876. It was soon evident that the four corps initially constituting the Army of the South would be insufficient; three more corps were added on May 6 1877 – XIV Corps (Lieutenant-General Zimmerman), IV Corps (Lieutenant-General Zotov), and XIII Corps (Lieutenant-General Prince Korsakov).
Michael Skobelev was already the most famous soldier in the Russian army. His exploits had provided journalists with an immense amount of material, and the war correspondents who accompanied Russian headquarters naturally fastened on him as a source of copy. On May 20, Januarius MacGahan encountered him as a familiar figure:
Among the many officers on the Grand Duke’s staff, there is one who would attract attention anywhere, and whose career has been curious and brilliant. He is a tall handsome man, with a lithe, slender, active figure, a clear blue eye, and a large, prominent, but straight, well-shaped nose, the kind of nose it is said Napoleon used to look for among his officers when he wished to find a general, and a face young enough for a second lieutenant although he is a general – the youngest in the Russian army. It is the famous General Skobelev, the conqueror of Ferghana, or Khokand. The last time I saw him we were both standing on the banks of the Oxus, in the Khanate of Khiva.17
Lieutenant-General Radetzky, commander of the Russian VIII Corps. (Rogers)
Lieutenant-General Shakofskoi, commander of the Russian XI Corps. (Illustrirte Geschichte des Orientalischen Krieges von 1876-1878)
Another correspondent met Skobelev a few days later, and was also struck by his apparent youth, finding him a ‘tall, stalwart, fresh-coloured young man, looking so like an English squire.’ His unprecedently swift promotion was, he noted, nothing to do with his having an influential mentor:
He owes, indeed, something to luck – that good fortune which has placed him so often where opportunity offered to distinguish himself; nor has he omitted to make the most of every opportunity. It is something for a man while yet in his young prime to have added to his country a territory larger than the whole of Great Britain – the Khanate of Khokand.18
In one respect, however, Skobelev had not been lucky. His successes in the East, and his rapid promotion, had earned him the jealousy of rivals and the hatred of the contractors whose fraudulent practices he had exposed. The latter promoted stories of atrocities perpetrated by the troops under Skobelev’s command and of his embezzlement of millions of roubles. He returned from Khokand to clear his name, and was obliged to remain in St Petersburg until the Government’s auditors had assured themselves of his honesty. Only then could he seek to repair his reputation in the eyes of the Tsar, who had however already left for the front. When Skobelev arrived there, he found that the Tsar’s mind had been effectively poisoned against him, and he was denied a command, being assigned instead to act as his father’s chief of staff. It was to be some time before the Tsar remedied this gross injustice.19
Major-General Michael Skobelev, legendary commander. Due to the presence of his father in the army, Lieutenant-General Skobelev, commander of a Cossack division, he was sometimes referred to as Skobelev II. (Ollier)
Russian infantry on campaign in Bulgaria, summer 1877. An excellent on-the-spot sketch by José Luis Pellicer. (Budev)
Lieutenant-General Loris-Melikov was an Armenian by birth, and played an important part in the Caucasian campaign. (Hozier)
In the Caucasus, the nominal Commander in Chief was the amiable Grand Duke Michael, the eldest brother of the Tsar, who held the office of Viceroy. His deputy was Prince Dmitri Sviatopolk-Mirsky, described variously as lacking both energy and military talent, and as irresponsible.20 He had under his command, organised in four detachments based respectively on Rion, Akhaltsik, Alexandropol and Erivan, a total of five infantry divisions, a Cossack rifle brigade, two Cossack cavalry divisions and ten Cossack regiments. The most senior of the subordinate commanders was the Armenian Lieutenant-General Loris-Melikov, who had served in the Caucasus for very many years; a competent if cautious leader, he lacked any clear strategic vision.