VIII. 1815. CHAP. empire. They owe their origin to the Emperor Alexander, who, being struck with the protection which similar establishments on the frontiers of Transylvania had long afforded to the Austrians and Hungarians in warding off the predatory incursions of the Mussulman horse, resolved in 1817 to found colonies of the same sort in several parts of his dominions. The system was extended and improved, under the able guidance of General de Witt, in the southern provinces in 1821. Several divisions of veterans, regular cavalry, were colonised in this manner, and a floating population of seventy thousand wandering tribes settled on certain districts allotted to them. The principle of these establishments is, that an immense tract of arable and pasture land is divided among a certain number of leading colonists, who are married, and for the most part have families, each of whom holds his lands, like the military tenants of former days in Europe, under the obligation of maintaining constantly a horseman and horses completely equipped, and providing for his maintenance. In return, he is entitled to the labour of the cavalier, when not actually in the field. In addition to these horsemen, who are constantly ready for service, there are a much greater number of substitutes, or suppléans, as they are called, who also are trained to the use of arms, and being all expert horsemen, are ready at a moment's warning to take the principal's place if he is killed or disabled for active service. All the children of the colony are trained to military service, and are bound to serve, if required, twenty-two years, after which they obtain their discharge and a grant of land to themselves. The whole are subjected to the most rigorous military discipline, and regulated by a code of laws entirely for themselves. At first the children were brought up some410, 411; what after the Spartan fashion, being taken from their Voyages, i. parents at the early age of eight years, and bred exclu193, 215; Schnitzler. sively at the military schools; 1 but this was found to be 1 Malte Brun, vi. Marmont, attended with so many evils that the system was essen VIII. 1815. tially modified by various regulations established by the CHAP. Emperor Nicholas between 1829 and 1831. At present the military colonies form a sort of permanent cantonment of a part of the army, and they can, at a moment's warning, furnish 100,000 soldiers, fully drilled and equipped, capable of being raised by the suppléans and principal colonists to 250,000 men. 44. sacks. The COSSACKS, so well known during the war with Napoleon, form another sort of military colony on a still The Cosgreater scale. Their lands are of immense extent, embracing fifty-seven thousand square geographical milesabout two-thirds of the entire area of Great Britain, and incomparably more level and fertile. They are all held under the obligation of furnishing, when required, the whole male population of the country capable of bearing arms for the service of the emperor. They constantly furnish 100,000 men, distributed in 164 regiments, to the imperial forces. So strong, however, is the military spirit among them, and so thoroughly are they all trained from infancy to the duties of horsemanship, that if summoned to his standard, they could easily furnish double this force, either for the defence of the country or the purposes of aggressive warfare. Glory, plunder, wine, and women, form irresistible attractions, which impel the entire nation into the career of conquest. It is their immense bodies of horse, more nearly resembling the hordes of Timour or Genghis Khan than the regular armies of western Europe, which constitute the real strength of the Czar; and as their predatory and roving habits never 1 Bremner, decline, and cannot do so from the nature of the country Russia, ii. which they inhabit, while their numbers are constantly Enorowsky, and rapidly increasing, it is easy to foresee how formidable 74, 75; they must ere long become to the liberties of the other vi. 402, 403. states of Christendom.1 What renders the Russian armies the more formidable is the extreme ability with which they are trained, disciplined, and commanded. Whatever may be thought of 432, 440; Poland,. Malte Brun, VIII. 1815. 45. able discip line and equipment of the army. CHAP. the inferiority, in an intellectual point of view, of a nation where only 1 in 280 is at the entire schools of the state of any description, the same cannot be said of their miliThe admir- tary training, which is conducted on the most approved system, and in the most efficient manner. All the improvements in arms, tactics, accoutrements, evolutions, or discipline, which experience or science has suggested to the other nations of Europe, are, with the rapidity of the electric telegraph, transmitted to Russia, and taught in the military schools which train its youth for their duties in the field, or adopted in its vast arrays. The Russian army, accordingly, exhibits a combination of physical strength and intellectual power-of the energy of the desert and the resources of civilisation, of the unity of despotism and the vigour of democracy-which no other country in modern times can exhibit, and to find a parallel to which we must go back to the Roman legions in the days of Trajan or Severus. The ranks of the infantry are recruited by a compulsory levy, generally, in time of peace, of five in a thousand-of war, of two or three in a hundred; but the cavalry, in a country abounding so much in nomad tribes, and where, in many vast districts, the whole male population nearly live on horseback, is in great part made up by voluntary enrolment; and as the whole rising talent of the empire is drawn into the military or diplomatic lines, it may easily be conceived what a formidable body, under such direction, the military force of the empire must become. Every soldier is entitled to his discharge after twenty-two years' service in the line, or twenty in the guards; and he leaves the ranks a freeman, if before he was a serf-a privilege which goes far to diminish the hardship of the compulsory levy on the rural population. The weakness of the army consists in the want of inteBrun, vi. grity in its inferior officers, which is as conspicuous in Bremner, general as the honour and patriotism of its generals and Schnitzler, commanders: the necessary consequence of the want of a class of gentry from which they can alone be drawn.1 1 Malte 412, 413; ii. 370; CHAP. 1815. 46. The navy, like the army in Russia, is maintained by a compulsory levy, which amounts in time of peace to 33,000 men. The fleet consists of thirty ships of the line and twenty-two frigates in the Baltic, and of sixteen Russian sail of the line and twelve frigates in the Black Sea, navy. carrying in all 6000 guns. These large forces give the Czar, in a manner, the command of those two inland seas, which cannot be regarded in any other light but as vast Russian lakes. But as the sailors who man them are accustomed only to navigate a sea shut up with ice during half the year, or to plough the comparatively placid waters of the Euxine, they could never contend in the open sea with those who have been trained in the storms of the German Ocean, or braved the perils of the Atlantic. Still, as the Russian sailors, like their soldiers, are individually brave, and stand to their guns, as well as point them, as steadily as any Englishman, they may eventually prove formidable even to the colossal maritime strength of England; the more especially when it is recollected that Cronstadt is within a fortnight's sail of the mouth of the Thames; that the fleet is constantly kept manned and afloat in summer, by the compulsory levy; that thirty thousand soldiers are habitually put on board those in the Baltic, to accustom the crews to their conveyance to distant quarters; and that the interests of Great Britain, and Russia in the East so frequently come into collision, Brun, vi. that several times during the last thirty years they have ii. 375, 376; been on the eve of a rupture, once with France and Russia ii. 176. united against England.1 1 Malte 410; Brem. Schnitzler, Russia. The revenue of Russia, though not considerable com- 47. pared with that of France or England, is perfectly Revenue of adequate to the maintenance of its vast establishments, from the high value of money and low rate of pay of nearly all the public functionaries, civil and military, in the empire. It amounts to 460,000,000 paper rubles, or 500,000,000 francs (£20,000,000), and is raised chiefly by, 1st, A capitation-tax of four francs (3s. 6d.) on every 1815. CHAP. male inhabitant, that of serfs being paid by their masters; VIII. 2d, A tax on the capital of merchants, ascertained by their own disclosure, checked by judicial authority; 3d, The revenues of the Crown domains, with the obrok paid by the emancipated serfs, who are very numerous; 4th, The customhouse duties by sea and land, which, on articles of foreign manufacture, are for the most part very heavy; 5th, The stamp-duties, which on sales of heritable property amount to an ad valorem duty of 5 per cent; 6th, A duty on spirituous liquors and salt; 7th, The imperial duties on the mines of gold and platina, which are daily becoming more productive, from the great quantities of these valuable metals, now amounting to £3,000,000 annually, which are worked out in the Ural and Atlas mountains. It cannot be said that any of these taxes are peculiarly oppressive, or such as weigh on the industry or capital of the nation; but they produce, when taken together, a sum which is very large in a country where the value of money is so high, and the standard of comfort so low, that the common soldiers are deemed to be adequately remunerated by a pay which, 1 Schnitzler, ii. 276, 280; after the deductions for rations and other necessaries are Malte Brun, vi. 406, 103. made, leaves them scarcely a halfpenny a-day to themselves.1* 48. the princi As the distances in Russia are so prodigious that it Positions of takes at least a year and a half to gather up its mighty pal armies. strength, the principal armies are permanently disposed in positions where they may be comparatively near the probable scene of military operations, and best favour the * The Emperor Nicholas, since his accession to the throne, has laboured assiduously to diminish the public expenses and check the frauds continually practised in the distribution of the national revenue. In his own household and guards he has effected a reduction, with no diminution of splendour, of no less than 67,500,000 paper rubles. The expenses of the kitchen and cellar were reduced at once from 600 paper rubles to 200 a-day. By similar economics in every department he was enabled to carry on the costly war in Turkey and Russia, in 1827 and 1828, without any sensible increase to the public debt. In 1830 it amounted in all to 1,300,000,000 francs, or £52,000,000. -SCHNITZLER, Hist. Int., ii. 184-186. |