When the late war in Europe* broke out, a great number of 
military men pointed, not without a certain sense of awe, to the 
wonderful organization of the Russian army. While in France and 
England, brigades, divisions, army-corps, had to be formed from 
elements hitherto entirely disconnected, while commanders had to 
be appointed to lead bodies of troops which they had never seen 
before, and staffs had to be formed of officers arriving from all 
corners of the country—in Russia, the huge war-machine had 
been perfected, in all its subdivisions, years before; every regiment 
had its unalterable place in the organization of the whole; each 
body of men, from the company to the army-corps, had its 
standing commander, and each more important division had its 
regular staff. The machine was said to be, in fact, in working trim; 
it only awaited the word of command, the putting on of the steam, 
in order to move with the utmost ease; every cog, wheel, screw, 
pulley, strap, valve and lever in its place, doing its work and no 
more. That was what we were told we should see; but, 
unfortunately, we saw something quite different. The army-corps 
were scarcely ever complete, whole divisions, and still oftener 
brigades, being detached to distant theaters of war, while other 
troops were mixed up with the main bodies. The desire to keep 
together as much as possible the elements of each corps, division 
and brigade, appeared to hamper the movements of the army on 
the march quite as much as the strict regulations laid down for the 
order in which battles should be fought; and finally the nice 
subdivisions of command with all the generals in charge—corps, 

a The Crimean war, 1853-56.— Ed. 

Changes in the Russian Army 263 

divisions, brigades, with their respective staffs, all well known to 
their troops, well acquainted with each other, and well at home in 
their respective places and duties—all this turned out to be one 
vast conspiracy to swindle the Government out of its funds and 
the soldier out of his rations, clothing and comforts. 

If these facts still required an official confirmation, the Russian 
Government has just given it. The new organization of the army 
aims first and mainly at the rooting up of those hotbeds of 
wholesale embezzlement, the subordinate staffs and headquarters. 
The staffs, both of the army-corps and of brigades, are done away 
with. Nay, the very name of brigade disappears from the Russian 
army. The whole six corps of the line are placed under the 
command of one man, Prince M. D. Gorchakoff I., the late 
commander in the Crimea. Each corps has, it is true, a 
commanding general; but as he has no staff—that is to say, no 
means of actually exercising the details of this command—he is at 
best but the inspector of his corps—a sort of check on the five 
generals of division under him. In reality, the generals of the 
thirty divisions (eighteen of infantry, six of cavalry and six of 
artillery), forming what is called the “first army,” depend directly 
upon the commander-in-chief; and in each division again, the 
colonels of the four regiments, infantry or cavalry, and the chiefs 
of batteries, are directly dependent upon the general of the 
division. The generals of brigade, being entirely superseded by 
this new arrangement, are attached to the staff of the divisional 
general, as his lieutenants and seconds in command. The reason 
of all this is plain enough. 

Upon Prince Gorchakoff the Emperor can rely; and Gorchakoff, 
again, can to some extent rely upon the officers of his personal 
staff. With the bureaucratic nicety and hierarchic gradations of the 
former system, the direct influence of the commander-in-chief 
ended with the chiefs of corps; they and their staffs had to 
transmit the orders to the divisions, whose staffs again handed 
them to the brigades, from whose staffs they reached the colonels 
of regiments, who saw to their actual execution. This was nothing 
but a well-organized scheme of fraud, embezzlement and larceny; 
and the better the service itself was organized, the better 
organized and the more successful was the plundering: of the 
treasury. This was shown in the march of the first, second and 
third army-corps from Poland to the South during the war; and it 
is simply with a view of removing the evil that the Russian 
Government has done away with all but the names of the 
commanders of corps, and entirely with the commanders of 

brigades. There are now but two intermediate grades between the 
commander-in-chief and the company officers, namely, the 
general of division and the colonel; and there is but one staff, that 
of the division, which can be used for purposes of embezzlement. 
If the Government should succeed in eradicating the habit of 
plunder from the divisional staffs, it may reasonably expect to 
banish it, by and by, from the regiments also. 

Thus the whole organization of the army is upset, by taking out 
of the chain two links, the necessity of which, in time of war, 1s 
sure to show itself. Indeed, the Russian Government acknowledges 
that neither chiefs of corps nor generals of brigade can be entirely 
left out of its military hierarchy. The chief of the corps is left 
there, but as a mere dummy, while the general of brigade is 
completely relieved from his command, and made a _ simple 
appendix to the general of division. This means nothing but that 
the command of these officers is suspended during peace, while 
they are kept in readiness for use as soon as a war breaks out. In 
the only army, indeed, which still faces the enemy—that of the 
Caucasus—the brigades have been retained. Is any other proof 
wanted that the abolition of brigades in the remainder of the army 
is only an attempt to render brigadiers and their staffs innoxious 
while peace lasts? 

Another important change is the dissolution of the great 
dragoon corps, consisting of ten regiments of eight squadrons 
each, drilled for infantry as well as for cavalry service. This corps 
was intended to play a brilliant part in all great battles. When the 
decisive moment approached, it was to fall with the rapidity of 
cavalry upon some important post on the flank or rear of the 
enemy, to dismount, to form into sixteen battalions of infantry 
and defend the post, supported by its heavy horse-artillery. 
During the whole of the late war, this corps was nowhere; and the 
total unfitness of these hybrid troops for active warfare appears to 
have been recognized on all hands. The consequence is, the 
change of these amphibious mounted foot-soldiers into regular 
cavalry, and their distribution, in twelve regiments of eight 
squadrons each, with the six army-corps of the “first army.” Thus 
the two great creations by which the Emperor Nicholas expected 
to establish his place among the greatest military organizers of his 
time, have both disappeared within a few years of his death. 

Among other changes, we may mention the establishment of a 
second battalion of rifles for every army-corps, and the formation 
of two new infantry regiments in the Caucasian army. By the 
former innovation, the great scarcity of light cavalry is to some 

Changes in the Russian Army 265 

extent remedied. The latter shows that Russia is resolved to finish 
the Caucasian struggle as soon as possible. For the same reason, 
the reserve brigades of the Caucasian corps are still held together. 
It is, therefore, likely that by this time a campaign of importance 
has been opened in that country. 

Written on about April 16, 1857 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 5006, May 6, 1857 as a 
leading article