shadow of britain

Chapter 621 Arthur Hastings Report
Q: Based on your observations during the Napoleonic Wars, if the French cavalry broke through the infantry phalanxes of the northern nations in a battlefield charge, would they surrender and allow you to control them?
A: If this happens, the Austrian infantry will throw down their weapons, claim to be Poles, and follow you faithfully. The Prussian infantry will also put down their weapons, but as soon as they notice friendly reinforcements coming, they will immediately pick up their weapons and join the battle. The Russian infantry will lie prone on the ground, let the cavalry jump over them, and then stand up again and use their weapons.

——French light cavalry expert, Jean-Baptiste de Braque, "Light Cavalry Outpost"

confidential
To: Viscount Palmerston, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

From: Sir Arthur Hastings, Cultural Attaché to the Russian Court of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Cc: The Duke of Wellington, Leader of the House of Lords; Viscount Melbourne, Home Secretary; Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for War and the Colonial Office; Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Rowland Hill, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army; Sir Thomas Hardie, First Sea Lord

"First Diplomatic Report on the Survey of Current Conditions in Russia"

At your request, as the Cultural Counselor in Russia, I have recently entered Russia by land and conducted in-depth observation and research on the local customs and people of Russia. By chance, I stumbled upon some important intelligence that could not be collected by conventional means. Here, I would like to report my initial findings to you and gradually explain the progress of my initial work in Russia.

During the process of entering Russia, due to the extremely bad weather, I was trapped in a small town in the northwest of Russia by a snowstorm, and I met Pavel Andreevich Barkov, the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Cavalry Regiment of Russia, who was passing through. According to Barkov, he was sent by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs to collect information about the Pugachev Rebellion in the early years along the Little Russia region.

(Note: Pugachev was a Russian Cossack born into a poor peasant family along the Don River. He joined the Russian army in his early years and was promoted to second lieutenant for his bravery in Russia's war against the Ottoman Empire. After retiring in 1773, he pretended to be Peter III, who was killed in a palace coup. He accused Catherine II, the then Tsar who ascended the throne by killing her husband Peter III, of being the culprit for the heavy agricultural taxes and instigated Russian peasants to revolt. At its peak, the number of participants in the Pugachev uprising reached more than , affecting a large area including the Urals, Western Siberia and the middle and lower reaches of the Volga River.)

Through my conversation with Barkov, I vaguely learned that there seemed to be a secret organization called the "Peasant Committee" in the Russian court. The organization was led by Tsar Nicholas I, and the committee members included the highest bureaucrats of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of War. According to the information I have obtained so far, the establishment of this secret committee should be related to the riot in the military settlement area of ​​Novgorod Province in 1831.

After the war ended in 1812, in order to solve the problem of tight military expenditure and food supply, Tsar Alexander I followed the advice of Army Minister Arakcheev and set up military settlements across the country. The residents of the military settlements were mainly veterans who had served in the regular army for more than 6 years and local "state serfs" aged 18 to 45. Depending on the size of the military settlement, its organization was usually divided into battalions or regiments.

Male children in military settlements were registered as "hereditary soldiers" from the age of 7. They wore military uniforms in their daily lives and received military training during the slack season. Orphans, street children and other people without homes lived in specially built barracks and lived according to strict military regulations, getting up, eating, training and working on time. Field work in military settlements was led by non-commissioned officers and under unified command. Soldiers could get married, and their spouses were designated by their superiors. Anyone who violated discipline, including women and children, would be punished according to military regulations.

Based on what we have seen and heard along the way, we can roughly estimate that the number of military garrisons in various parts of Russia should be at least 16. In addition, the number of hereditary soldiers should also be very close to this number.

When the Russian government first implemented the military settlement system, it was originally intended to replace conscription and greatly reduce military expenditures. However, according to what I saw and heard from several military settlements after entering Russia, there is obviously a big gap between the idea and reality. I cannot conclude that all military settlements have messed up production, but at least the few military settlements I saw were not self-sufficient. The officers in the military settlements told me frankly that they needed a lot of subsidies from the state to support themselves.

What’s more serious is that this kind of rural area with the whole people armed became a favorable condition for peasant uprisings. Only eight years after the new Tsar Nicholas I ascended the throne, more than 8 peasant uprisings of varying sizes broke out across Russia. Among them, the peasant uprisings with the greatest influence and destructive power, without exception, all came from military settlements.

When cholera broke out in 1831, the Tsar ordered the establishment of epidemic prevention stations on the country's main roads. However, the epidemic prevention stations blocked traffic and hindered production, making contractors and coachmen penniless, cutting off local farmers' sources of income, and triggering large-scale riots in the sixteen provinces of western Russia.

Among them, almost all officers and doctors in the Novgorod military settlement were beaten to death by the rioting peasants, including several generals and dozens of colonels. Even the foreign officers sent by the King of Prussia were not left alive. In order to escape punishment, the rioting peasants sent representatives to Enola to plead guilty to the emperor. The peasant representatives carried with them a forged poisoning list that was forced to be written by the officers of the military settlement before their death.

According to the poisoning list, the peasants claimed that the officers and doctors conspired to poison the military settlement to create a large-scale cholera. Nicholas I summoned the peasant representatives and promised them that he would go to Novgorod to punish the poisoners and forgive the rioters. Nicholas I fulfilled his promise and led his army to Novgorod. According to the statement of a gendarme present, the emperor had lunch in the military settlement, and the soldiers offered him honey and bread. He originally planned to forgive the mob as planned, but the accompanying General Arndt stood beside the emperor and announced angrily: "Today, we should not offer you bread, but our funeral porridge."

Nicholas I then gathered the troops on the playground, ordered the priest to read prayers for the dead soldiers, kissed the cross, and then turned to the participants of the riot and announced that the emperor would never forgive them and asked them to hand over the leaders of the riot. The leaders of the riot were ordered to be beheaded, but the eight military settlements involved in the riot were not severely punished, but were moved to Gatchino, about 30 miles south of St. Petersburg, where the Tsar's summer palace was located.

I have good reasons to suspect that the establishment of the "Peasant Committee" that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not know about should have a significant connection with this uprising, because the establishment time of the committee is highly consistent with the uprising of the Novgorod military settlement. The Tsarist authorities sent military personnel to investigate the Pugachev rebellion in the 18th century, mostly because they realized that the existence of the military settlement had greatly threatened the stability of their rule, and tried to provide direction for the formulation of agricultural policies by analyzing "why Pugachev could gain great influence among the people."

Although the Russian government promulgated new military service regulations after the uprising in the military settlements in 1831, the new regulations stated that the Russian army still implemented conscription, but the main targets of conscription were: peasants, petty bourgeoisie and soldiers' sons (hereditary soldiers) and other working people. The children of the ruling class such as nobles, merchants and clergy were exempted from military service as usual. Moreover, the new regulations did not solve the fundamental problem, because according to the previous rules, the service period of Russian soldiers was still as long as 22 to 25 years.

However, suggestions such as implementing compulsory military service and shortening the service period were not accepted by the Tsarist government. This was mainly because these suggestions were once important ideas of the noble officers who launched the Decembrist uprising, and were therefore considered disrespectful to the emperor in Russia. In addition, since compulsory military service would largely affect the interests of Russian landlords, which would draw their serfs from the land to the army, it was also widely opposed in Russia.

When talking about the Russian army, what particularly caught my attention was the low literacy rate of Russian soldiers. I was invited to visit the garrison camp of a certain city. Through contact with the garrison soldiers, I found that only two of the more than 2 soldiers in the city could read and write their own names. The same situation also occurred among the elite Russian Cossack cavalry. The same standard is applied to the British Army, and our literacy rate is close to 48%. Of course, I have no intention of discrediting this army that once defeated Napoleon.

This was an excellent army with many 25-year veterans. The Russian soldiers were models of drill, and I was struck by the discipline of the army as I toured the barracks. However, I also found that the troops were impeccably formed in square formations, but they were also very bad at dispersing and fighting in small units, to the point that the only tactical option for Russian officers was to order their soldiers to charge the enemy in square formations.

All tactical maneuvers were abandoned here. The only slogan I heard was: forward, forward, forward. Such dense infantry formations, because they were very dense, naturally became the most ideal target for artillery. Here, I must borrow a remark I heard when chatting with a Russian businessman in the hotel: picking out a single Russian will not allow him to enter heaven, but if it is a whole village, you have to let him in.

According to the officers there, the tactical ideas they were proud of were all learned from the military academy. The General Staff Military Academy, Russia's highest military academy, which aims to provide excellent combat staff for the General Staff, was established only two years ago. Prior to that, except for about 70% of hereditary nobles who had never attended military academy, the remaining 30% of Russian officers graduated from the military academy.

Therefore, I have reason to believe that the vast majority of Russian officers hold the same tactical ideas and train their soldiers in the same way as the garrison officer I met, and that such tactical concepts should continue to influence the Russian army for at least 20 years.

My view was verified in the Russian Infantry Regulations. Through the Russian military regulations I borrowed from the captain of the garrison, I found that the first article pointed out that the focus of training was dense formations and pace, emphasizing strict and complex marching movements, but not mentioning tactical movements. After I established a familiar relationship with this captain, he revealed to me his requirements for soldiers: the guns must be polished to a shine, but accurate shooting is not required. Everything is for inspection, not for actual combat. Artillery does not train to aim and shoot, and the hit rate is extremely low. But whether or not the target is hit, the report must be loud.

At the same time, according to what I observed along the way, the Russian artillery equipment also remained at the level of the Napoleonic Wars. Their artillery mainly consisted of 6-12 pound field guns, 1/4 pood and 1/2 pood unicorn guns. The maximum range of these guns, according to my visual estimation, was about 600 yards. The 6-pound and 9-pound field guns currently used by the British Army have an effective range of more than 800 yards, and the 24-pound siege guns can easily cover 1500 to 1800 yards.

Through my contact with General Barkov, commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Cavalry Regiment, I observed that this group of Russia's most elite Cossack cavalry is still equipped with the 1812 carbine produced by the Tula Military Factory.

At the Cossacks' kind invitation, I personally test-fired the pistol and confirmed that its effective range should be between 100 and 150 yards. Once this distance is exceeded, the accuracy will become very poor.

I also tried the 1812 model rifle in the hands of the garrison. The theoretical range of this rifle can reach 300 yards, but due to its large recoil, usually only senior veterans can maximize its potential.

Under the current circumstances, it is obviously not a wise choice to compete with the Russians in terms of the number of troops, and it is also not in line with the military principles that Britain has always implemented. The development path of the Russian army mainly emphasizes the development of human potential, while I suggest that Britain should focus on technological innovation in the development of the army.

The Baker rifle, which is currently the main weapon of the British Army, has an effective range of about 200 yards and a maximum range of 500 yards. According to my understanding, the new Enfield rifle currently being developed by the Royal Ordnance Bureau has an effective range of 300 yards and a maximum range of 600 yards.

If the Ordnance Department can continue to work in this direction, when the effective range of rifles exceeds 600 yards, we can easily deploy the army's skirmish line outside the range of Russian artillery. Fortunately, according to the information I got from the garrison captain, the military police officer and General Barkov, Russia currently has no plans to develop new weapons, so as long as we work a little harder, we still have hope of achieving this goal.

In addition, I must send a friendly reminder to the cabinet. Even though Nicholas I liked to intervene in local affairs through the army, he usually liked to choose generals with military backgrounds when selecting local governors and other local officials to be sent to local areas. However, even so, mobilizing the military commander of an elite cavalry unit like Barkov is still an unusual move.

Maybe Barkov did not lie to me and he was indeed ordered to investigate the history of Pugachev's rebellion, but I think this may not be the only task he has. Given that Barkov's subordinates have a history of many battles in the Caucasus, I will report this matter to Ambassador Earl Darramore in person after arriving in St. Petersburg, and suggest that Sir George Harrington, the consul in Kiev, should be immediately instructed to contact British merchants near Zaporizhia as soon as possible to find out whether the 2nd Ukrainian Cavalry Regiment stationed there has been mobilized, and to forward the relevant information through diplomatic channels to Sir John MacInniel, the British Minister to Persia.

Sir Arthur Hastings
1834/ 2/ 1

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Arthur sat in the Vienna carriage that Mayor Druisk had presented to General Barkov, and slowly wrote the first diplomatic report after arriving in Russia.

Suddenly, the whip lifted the curtains, and Barkov's face appeared in front of the window. As soon as the Cossack general saw the letter in Arthur's hand, he asked half-jokingly and half-seriously: "Brother Hastingov, are you secretly reporting me to the higher-ups?"

Arthur put the letter into his jacket pocket and said with a smile, "Write your report? Is there anything you want me to report? Are you talking about this carriage? But didn't you win this carriage from Mayor Bakalkin? It's a pity that I wasn't as lucky as you that night. I only won a few clothes. If I had better luck, this carriage would be named Hastingoff now."

Gogol, who was cushioning his butt with a small blanket, sighed: "General, thanks to your good luck, if it weren't for this car, I would definitely have to suffer all the way."

When Barkov heard this, he nodded with satisfaction.

At least, Hestingov is not as stubborn as some gendarmes who are determined to fight to the death with the locals and exchange the heads of officials in a province for the position of gendarme commander. People like him may be able to cooperate in the future.

When he returns from the war in the Caucasus, if he's lucky, he might be promoted to a higher rank.

If he gets the rank of major general, he will have a chance to apply to be a provincial governor. By then, the emperor will be far away and if Hastingov is willing, he can be promoted to be the commander of the gendarmerie. By then, the two of them will be able to join forces and be invincible. After fighting for a lifetime, it is time for Barkov to enjoy the blessing of being a local emperor.

Suddenly, a soldier's announcement came from outside the carriage: "General, Petersburg has appeared on the horizon!"

Hearing this, Arthur used his cane to push aside the curtains and looked out.

At first, the silhouette of St. Petersburg was just a vague block of color on the horizon, like a vague outline in a painting.

As the carriage slowly moved forward, the outline of the city became more and more apparent, gradually rising from the vast expanse of ice and snow.

The Neva River runs through the entire city. The magnificent buildings, solemn domes, exquisitely carved bridges, the golden-domed Winter Palace, and the spacious Nevsky Avenue are like a flower of ice and snow breaking out of the cold winter, waving to Arthur.

It's like saying: Welcome to Petersburg, welcome to the heart of Russia, Arthur Hastings, or Hastings Goff!

(End of this chapter)