Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800

History of Warfare

Editors
Kelly DeVries
Loyola University Maryland
John France
University of Wales, Swansea
Michael S. Neiberg
United States Army War College, Pennsylvania
Frederick Schneid
High Point University, North Carolina

VOLUME 72

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hw

Warfare in Eastern Europe,
1500-1800

Edited by
Brian J. Davies

LEIDEN BOSTON
2012
Cover illustration: Detail of the View of the Siege of Polotsk by Stephen Bathory (1533-86) in
1579 (engraving), Mack, Georg the elder (c.1556-1601).Image ID: CZA 228782.
Czartoryski Museum, Cracow, Poland / The Bridgeman Art Library.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800 / edited by Brian L. Davies.

p. cm. -- (History of warfare, ISSN 1385-7827 ; v. 72)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-22196-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Europe, Eastern--History, Military--16th
century. 2. Europe, Eastern--History, Military--17th century. 3. Europe, Eastern--History,
Military--18th century. I. Davies, Brian L., 1953- II. Title.
DJK47.W37 2012
355.0209470903--dc23
2011042137

ISSN 978 9004 22196 3 (hardback)

ISSN 978 9004 22198 7 (e-book)
ISBN 1385-7827

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 CONTENTS

Introduction.............................................................................................. 1
Brian Davies

Economic Effectiveness of the Muscovite Pomeste System:

An Examination of Estate Incomes and Military Expenses
in the Mid-16th Century.......................................................................19
Janet Martin

The Habsburg Defense System in Hungary Against

the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century: A Catalyst of Military
Development in Central Europe .........................................................35
Gza Plffy

The Polish-Lithuanian Army in the Reign of King Stefan

Bathory (15761586) ............................................................................63
Dariusz Kupisz

Guliai-gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th17th

Century Muscovy and Eastern Europe ..............................................93
Brian Davies

The Flodorf Project: Russia in the International Mercenary

Market in the Early Seventeenth Century .......................................109
Oleg A. Nozdrin

Food and Supply: Logistics and the Early Modern

Russian Army ......................................................................................119
Carol B. Stevens

Crimean Tatar Long-Range Campaigns: The View from

Remmal Khojas History of Sahib Gerey Khan .................................147
Victor Ostapchuk

The Siege of Azov in 1641: Military Realities and

Literary Myth .......................................................................................173
Brian J. Boeck
vi contents

The Generation of 1683: The Scientific Revolution

and Generalship in the Habsburg Army, 16861723 .....................199
Erik A. Lund

Command and Control in the Seventeenth-Century

Russian Army ......................................................................................249
Peter B. Brown

Ottoman Military Power in the Eighteenth Century..........................315

Virginia Aksan

List of Contributors .................................................................................349

Bibliography .............................................................................................353
Index .........................................................................................................357
 INTRODUCTION

Brian Davies

Scholars in Central and Eastern Europe have produced a rich literature

on the military history of Eastern EuropePolish and German histo-
rians have been especially prolificbut until recently little of it was
made available in English. Anglophone readers are therefore less famil-
iar with the ways in which resource mobilization for war, the conduct
of war, and the impact of war on the state and society differed in Eastern
from Western Europe. This has perpetuated some misunderstandings
about the geopolitical centrality of Western European military con-
flicts in the early modern period and the extent to which Western
European techniques associated with Military Revolution had already
become essential prescriptions for the military success of states. We
hope that the essays in this volume will help address these misconcep-
tions. These essays reveal the scale of destructiveness of Eastern
European wars over the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries and the enor-
mous consequences these wars had for the balance of power elsewhere,
in the West and in Asia; they also provide knowledge useful for criti-
cally unpacking two of the prevailing paradigms in early modern mili-
tary history, the concepts of Military Revolution and Fiscal-Military
State, testing how far either is applicable to early modern Eastern
European experience.
In comparing Western and Eastern European military practice in
the 16th18th centuries it is first important to recognize that there
could have been no single, monolithic Eastern European mode of
warfare any more than there was a comprehensive, uniform Western
mode. Differences in terrain, length of campaign season, population
densities, and above all in the constellations of warring powers make it
necessary to speak here of at least two great military theaters in Eastern
Europe in the early modern period, each with its own distinctive reper-
tory of military practices. They were not the only identifiable theaters
in Eastern Europe, but they were the two most significant, and they
present a striking contrast in terms of military praxis.
The Baltic theater of war extended across northern Eastern Europe
from the Oresund into Ingria and Karelia, and from Scania and Karelia
2 brian davies

as far south as central Poland and the Smolensk road to Moscow.

Population density and urban commercial development were greater
here than in the Pontic theater of war to the south, making it easier for
armies to forage and extort contributions. The larger port cities of the
old Hanse along the southern Baltic coast were especially rich strategic
prizes because of the tribute and control of terms of Baltic trade they
offered. But the longer winter season and the heavy rains of autumn
discouraged long operations and required that armies be demobilized
at winters approach or sent into winter quarters. The dense network of
rivers and tributary rivers facilitated movement of artillery and provi-
sions by barge, which was cheaper and faster than carriage overland.
Because settlement was denser armies could follow shorter march
routes between respites. Thick forest, marshland, and narrow winding
roads tended to slow march rates, however, particularly on major expe-
ditions where larger armies were followed by long trains. Long delays
along comparatively short march routes occurred when baggage wag-
ons caused bottlenecks or slid off-road. The abilities to lay down cordu-
roy roads and erect pontoon bridges were quicker to become necessary
skills in the Baltic theater.
There were some large-scale and decisive field battles in the wars
of the Baltic theater (Orsza, Klushino, Dirschau, Warsaw, Kliszw,
etc.), but they do not provide a clear test of the superiority of Mauritsian
line tacticsthis is true even of many of Gustav II Adolf s battlesin
part because terrain was often too broken to facilitate line tactics,
troops lacked the drill to master more than the most elementary firing
systems, and because commanders still preferred to trust to cavalry
action to decide the final outcome. At Kirchholm and at Klushino
Polish husarz cavalry routed much larger forces of Swedish and
Scots musketeers and pikemen.1 Except in Swedish and mercenary
forces pikes were not much usedjanissary, haiduk, and strelets infan-
try largely dispensed with them. To substitute for pike protection mus-
keteers were often deployed behind field fortifications or in a
wagenburg.
Sieges were more common than field battles and until the beginning
of the eighteenth century the capture of enemy strongholds was
considered a more important campaign objective than attriting or

1
Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars, 15581721 (Harlow, London, New York:
Longman, 2000), 6364, 6768.
 introduction 3

destroying enemy field armies. Until the mid-17th century, when some
Baltic coast cities were refortified with trace italienne works, most for-
tresses were old curtain-wall stone fortresses and not very large (with
the exceptions of Ivangorod and Smolensk), or, as in Muscovy and
Lithuania, palisade or ostrog-style wooden fortresses with high towers.
One would suppose both types to be more vulnerable to bombardment
than the trace italienne, except that the heavy rains and early freezing
of the ground made it difficult to dig trenches to bring siege guns close
enough to the wall. Guns were more often moved and positioned
behind shifting gabion lines than through trench approaches and
behind fortified redoubts.2 Rain and frost also complicated mining.
Gunnery skills before the mid-seventeenth century appear to have
been low; there may have been gunners of good eye who knew from
experience or intuition how to point a piece, but there was little evi-
dence that knowledge of the principles of scientific gunnery had spread
far into Eastern Europe. Although the Muscovites followed the
Ottoman practice of acquiring great numbers of heavy bombard-style
guns (Russ. stenobitnye pushki, Turk. balyemez), these do not seem to
have guaranteed success in besieging enemy castles and fortresses, so
that the Muscovites were usually forced to fall back on lobbing incen-
diary shot over the fortress walls to start fires within and then taking
the walls by storm assault.
Even into the early eighteenth century cavalry continued to play a
major operational role, not just in foraging and reconnaissance to sup-
port siege operations but especially in raiding to demoralize enemy
troops and prevent enemy forces from joining together. The cavalry
raids led first by Shah Ali and then by P. I. Shuiskii and A. M. Kurbskii
paralyzed the Livonian Order and obtained the surrender of Dorpat
and other towns without resistance (15581559); one should note that
much of this cavalry comprised Tatar horse archers fighting without
firearms. Darius Kupisz writes below of the great cavalry raid under-
taken across northern Muscovy in 1581 by Krzysztof Radziwi; it
probably decided the outcome of that years campaign, even though
Radziwi led just 6,000 horse. On the other hand, the Muscovite siege
of Smolensk (16321634) failed above all because prior despoliation by

2
Brian Davies, The Polotsk Campaigns of Ivan IV and Stefan Bathory: The
Development of Military Art During the Livonian War, in Baltiiskii vopros v XVXVI
vv., ed. Aleksandr Filiushkin (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010), 108.
4 brian davies

the Lithuanians and bad weather made it impossible for the Muscovites
to find enough fodder to use their cavalry to break out of the Polish
encirclement.3
Naval operations on the Baltic continued to play an important role
though the entire period, not only to establish claim to sea lanes but
especially to break blockades of the great port cities of the Baltic
coast (Gdansk, Riga, etc.) Initially navies were small, half-corsair in
character, and limited to a few powers in the sixteenth and early sev-
enteenth centuries, to the Danes and Swedes, followed far behind by
the Poles. Lbecks naval power was already in decline by the 1570s,
while the Dutch long preferred to subsidize the Danish fleet to protect
their merchantmen in the eastern Baltic.4 By the late seventeenth- early
eighteenth century the Dutch, English and the Russians joined the
ranks of the maritime powers with war fleets operating in the eastern
Baltic.
Interest in hiring Western military specialists with new skills was
shown early on. In the late fifteenth through first half of the sixteenth
centuries those most in demand in Eastern European courts were
Italian masters who could impart new techniques of gun casting, for-
tress architecture, and siege-work excavation. Ivan the Terrible and
King Stefan Bathory competed with each other to hire Italian masters
in the 1560s1570s. By the late 16th-early 17th centuries recruiting
expanded and redirected to target German, Dutch, French, English,
and Scots officers who could bring into service their own small trained
bands of mercenary soldiers, especially infantry. These mercenary
forces were not large enough to have much impact on the course of
campaigns, even if their technical skills and tactics were observed with
interest. In the 1630s, however, Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania decided
to compete in building semi-standing foreign formations (inozemskii
stroi, cudzoziemski autorament) significantly supplementing their tra-
ditional national formations. Muscovite reliance on foreign formation
troops further expanded during the Thirteen Years War (16541667),
although political constraints prevented Poland-Lithuania from keep-
ing pace with this. By the 1670s we find signs that the techniques
Michael Roberts associated with Military Revolution had actually

3
Brian Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 15001700
(London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 7475.
4
Jan Glete, Warfare at Sea, 15001650 (London, New York: Routledge, 1999), 113,
129.
 introduction 5

begun to transform infantry and artillery tactics in the Muscovite

army, at least in the two foreign formation regiments that were fully
standing.5 Another wave of Russian commitment to hiring foreign spe-
cialists to modernize the army began in the 1690s and early years of
the Great Northern War and had its most transforming effect on mili-
tary engineering and the artillery service.
The Danubian-Pontic theater of war comprised the lands along
the Danube from Croatia and Bosnia through Transylvania and the
lands along the northern coast of the Black Sea from Wallachia and
Moldavia through Ukraine, the Bucak Horde and Crimean Khanate,
the Zaporozhian and Don Cossack Hosts, southern Russia, and the
North Caucasus just below the Kuban River. Tatar raiding and periodic
Tatar invasions could extend this theater as far north as Cracow, Lublin,
and Moscow. The Danubian-Pontic theater was the military frontier
between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian powers of Central
and Eastern Europe. One of the most striking features of military
experience in the Danubian-Pontic theater was the major strategic
role played by fortified defense lines (the Croatian-Hungarian grenze
of the Habsburgs, the Ottoman defense line in Hungary, and Muscovys
Abatis Line, Belgorod Line, and Iziuma Line). Manpower mobiliza-
tion, provisioning, and administrative techniques on these defense
lines were generally similar (there were even close resemblances
between Ottoman and Muscovite wooden fortification construction
techniques). These defense lines linked up small semi-standing or
standing garrison forces of military colonists performing constant
local border defense duty. Larger operations on or beyond the defense
line (attacks, interception of larger attacking forces) were undertaken
by field armies brought down to the line for that purpose.
There were, however, some significant differences in how defense
lines related to shifts in frontier strategy over the longer term. The
frontier marked by the Habsburg and Ottoman defense lines was much
more static over timeeven the Long War of 15911606 ended with
no major change to the frontier, despite the frequent loss and recapture
of border castles on both sides. This remained the case until the Holy
League War of 16831699. By contrast, the Muscovite defense lines
took the form of uninterrupted limes of wood and earth wall linking
garrisons; ran through much less densely populated territory, initially

5
Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 166167.
6 brian davies

forest-steppe and later mostly steppe, which, unlike the Danube basin,
lacked any natural frontier boundary; and defended primarily against
chronic Crimean Tatar slave-raiding and occasional Tatar invasions
aiming at terrorizing and extorting tribute rather than conquering and
holding territory. This presented greater opportunity for Muscovy
with huge investment in military colonization and fortification con-
structionto gradually erect new defense lines farther south and extend
its frontier closer to the Black Sea. These new lines also extended
the Muscovite/Russian frontier farther west into Ukraine and farther
east to the Volga and the Kama. Along that part of the Ottoman/
Christian European frontier lacking a defense line systemPoland-
Lithuanias Ukrainian frontierdefense was entrusted to just a few
small separated border fortresses and the steppes between them policed
by the small royal Quarter Army (4,000 men or fewer) and the regis-
tered cossacks. This proved to be a major blunder when the Polish-
Lithuanian governments refusal to expand the cossack register became
a factor provoking cossack rebellion in 1648, rebel cossack alliance
with the Crimean Khanate (16481654), and the placing of the new
Ukrainian Hetmanate under Muscovite protection (from 1654); it also
led to the loss of Ukrainian Podolia to the Ottomans (1676), to the
depopulation of the western Ukrainian lands formally remaining
under Polish-Lithuanian rule, and to Poland-Lithuanias loss of great
power status.6
The adoption of armaments, military formations, and tactics was
heavily influenced by the military challenge presented by the Ottoman
Empire. One is almost tempted to posit an Ottoman Military Revolution
transforming Eastern European warfare in the sixteenth century.
Muscovy followed the Ottoman example by continuing to invest
through the rest of the sixteenth century in very large siege guns. The
janissary infantry corps served as a model for other Eastern European
gunpowder infantries (Hungarian and Polish haiduks, Muscovite
streltsy) before the seventeenth-century Western formation troops;

6
Gunther Rothenburg, The Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 15221747, in
Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences. Volume 48 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1960);
Geza Palffy, The Habsburg Defense System in Hungary Against the Ottomans in the
Sixteenth Century: A Catalyst of Military Development, in this volume; Mark L. Stein,
Guarding the Frontier: Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe (London, New
York: Tauris, 2007); V. P. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta (Voronezh: Voronezhskii
Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1969).
 introduction 7

Ottoman and Eastern European infantries relied on wagenburg/tabor

defenses rather than pikes for protection. Serbian racowie lancers,
designed to counter Ottoman armored sipahi and deli cavalry, evolved
into Polish husarz lancers and Muscovite kopeishchik lancers. Muscovy
and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth found it tactically advanta-
geous into the early eighteenth century to continue using Tatar
mounted archers as auxiliaries.
Bastioned artillery fortresses came into use on the Muscovite defense
lines beginning in the 1630s1650s, but they were of earthen rather
than stone construction and designed by Dutch engineers rather than
Italians. During the Thirteen Years War Muscovy came to rely not just
heavily but preponderantly upon Western-style inozemskii stroi troops
(soldat infantry, reitar cavalry, dragoons) officered by Western
Europeans and Russians. But until the 16761681 Russo-Turkish War
the advantage the Western formation troops provided was less tactical
than numerical: because they were levied from the peasantry greater
numbers of them could be raised to replace the heavy losses taken by
the army. Political constraints prevented the Polish crown from under-
taking levies on this scale, with the result that the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth was less able to rebuild its regiments and lost the war
through attrition. Under Peter the Great a large standing army of fusi-
lier infantry and dragoon cavalry was formed by making the inozem-
skii stroi levies of Tsar Alekseis time a regular annual occurrence and
keeping recruits in service, initially for life.
We tend to think of the Habsburg-Ottoman wars in Hungary and
Serbia as predominantly wars of sieges, with warfare farther east on the
less populated plains and steppes of Ukraine and southern Russia char-
acterized more by open battle and cavalry operations. Actually, wher-
ever mastery of territory was contested (Moldavia, Ukraine) sieges
were necessary. The challenge was to move large forces of infantry and
artillery across considerable distances of open steppe to undertake
sieges. The most common solution to this, employed down into the
early eighteenth century, was to move troops in large wagenburg con-
voys screened by cavalry. There were instances of decisive cavalry bat-
tles or cavalry victories over infantry (Konotop, 1659; Sobieskis corps
volantes attacks on Tatar columns in the 1670s), but it remained the
case that even the best European cavalry (Polish husarz lancers, for
example) could not provide a clear and constant tactical advantage
over Tatar mounted archers when the latter were numerically prepon-
derant. Such advantage could only be provided by massive infantry
8 brian davies

and artillery firepower, and that too required the use of the wagenburg
as convoy and fighting position.7
Naval power played some role in conflicts in the Black Sea. Before
1700 it was asymmetric naval warfare in which cossack chaika long-
boats attacked Ottoman galleys and merchant ships or made desant
raids on Ottoman and Crimean coastal towns. From 1700 it involved
Ottoman and Russian navies, both by then largely westernized, using
frigates as well as galleys, with naval operations extending out from the
Black Sea and into the Dardanelles and Aegean and the Russian fleet
making effective use of fire-ships and line-ahead tactics (Chios,
Chesme, 1770).8
The notion that the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw
some kind of Military Revolution in Western Europe subsequently
spreading into Eastern Europe and European-Asian military theaters
remains the dominant paradigm in early modern European military
history. Its continuing popularity derives from the fact that it makes a
bold, simple, and sweeping assertion about the impact of technological
innovation on tactics, force structure, state building, estate/class rela-
tions, and the balance of power between Europe and Asia. But there are
competing schools of interpretation as to what particular innovations
drove the Military Revolution, when and where they originated, and
how their effects proved revolutionary.9
The original model, presented by Michael Roberts in a 1955 lec-
ture,10 argued that the Military Revolution was inspired by the works of
Maurice of Nassau and other Dutch and German military thinkers
of the later sixteenth century who prescribed standardizing platoon-
company-regiment unit organization for the infantry and increasing
the number of under-officers so the rank-and-file could be drilled
more intensely and brought to master new firing systems and marches

7
Brian Davies, Guliai-gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th17th Century
Miscovy and Eastern Europe, in this volume.
8
At Chesme the Turks lost 15 ships of the line, 6 frigates, and 30 other vessels, with
10,000 killed; the Russians lost no ships and suffered just 11 killed. L. G. Beskrovnyi,
Russkaia armiia i flot v XVIII veke (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1958), 485487.
9
Some of the essays in this volume (Davies, Palffy, Aksan) approach their subjects
in part through the perspective of the Military Revolution debate; Peter Browns origi-
nal manuscript did as well, in pages which could not be published here because of
considerations of length.
10
Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 15601660, republished in The
Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern
Europe, ed. Clifford Rogers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 1335.
 introduction 9

into and from line rather than tercio block deployment. Gustav II Adolf
then refined the new linear infantry tactics, expanded the number of
smaller regimental guns, and reassigned the cavalry to delivering shock
charge rather than caracole firepower. He had such success with these
tactics in the Thirty Years War they gradually became the model for
emulation for most Western and Central European armies. Competition
to build larger infantry armies drilled by experienced specialists raised
the costs of warfare, exposed civilian populations to greater military
devastation, and posed growing administrative and fiscal challenges to
states. The Military Revolution could also be seen as launching or rein-
forcing a social revolution in Europe because it emphasized the tactical
value of the infantry at the expense of the cavalry and thereby expanded
the relative weight in the army of socially plebeian elements, and
because it increased their cohesion (and thereby perhaps their civic
esprit) through drill.
A second model of Military Revolution, proposed by Geoffrey
Parker,11 sees the Military Revolution as occurring earlier, towards the
end of the fifteenth century, originating in the northern Italian theater
of war, and deriving above all from the innovation of the inclined-wall
bastioned artillery fortress (fortification in the style of the trace itali-
enne) that was more resistant to artillery bombardment and which
could provide more crossfire from its multiple angled bastions. Sieges
of the new artillery fortresses became much more protracted affairs
and required besieging armies large enough to undertake entrench-
ment and countervallation fortifications while bombarding and storm-
ing and guarding their rear from enemy relief forces. This dramatically
expanded army size and thereby spurred states to collect more revenue
for war.
The Roberts and Parker models of Military Revolution have been
subjected to criticism on several points: for downplaying the trans-
formative significance of the expanded roles of infantry and artillery
from the fifteenth century, before the emergence of the artillery for-
tress, for example; or for overstating the extent to which the innova-
tions of the artillery fortress or linear infantry tactics provoked
dramatic expansion in army size.12 Jeremy Black argues that a dramatic,

11
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution, 15601660A Myth? republished in
same, 3754.
12
See Clifford Rogers and John Lynns contributions to The Military Revolution
Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford
Rogers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).
10 brian davies

saltative transformation in the sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries

was not apparent, that the technical breakthroughs that Roberts and
Parker treated as revolutionary were actually foundations for later
innovations that began to show genuinely revolutionary consequences
only over the eighteenth century.13
Black has also made some compelling arguments about lack of clar-
ity in the Roberts and Parker models as to what constituted revolu-
tion and just how technological change worked as cause of larger
effects.
In retrospect one can see easily enough that the trace italienne and
linear infantry tactics at least changed the conduct of warfare in the
sense that they challenged prevailing tactical practices, required some
responding changes, and found quick imitation in other parts of
Europe. In that sense it may be wiser to speak of Military Adaptation.
The term Military Revolution, however, implies that possession of
these new techniques gave a nation clear and lasting military prepon-
derance. The problem for the historian is how that preponderance can
be demonstrated in direct cause-and-effect terms. Generalizations
about the tactical superiority of one formation over another (cuirassier
pistoleers against lancers, for example) are hard to sustain given the
number of exceptional instances to the contrary; and, as operational
military historians recognize, it is not a straightforward matter to iden-
tify the key factor producing victory in a particular battle, much less
victory in a campaign or war.14 In other words, if one is to argue that
the Military Revolution was revolutionary in shifting the balance of
power towards those nations possessing MR techniques, it is not
enough to assume this by observing the effect, the ultimate shift in the
balance of power; one must show its cause by documenting the accu-
mulation of victories in battle, campaign, and war that were clearly
attributable to MR practice. This is not an easy task.

13
Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society,
15501800 (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1991), 93.
14
What concluding assessment could one safely make, for example, about the tacti-
cal superiority of Maurice of Nassaus reformed Dutch infantry at the Battle of
Nieuwpoort? They did show remarkable endurance, but it is also true that they were
driven from their position, and the final stage of the battle may have been decided
instead by a charge by the 2,000 Dutch cavalry. J. P. Puype, Victory at Nieuwpoort,
2 July 1600, in Exercise of Arms: Warfare in the Netherlands (15681648), ed. Marco
van der Hoeven (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 104106.
 introduction 11

Jeremy Black suggests that if we want to continue looking for a revo-

lutionary transformation by MR in terms of a dramatic and lasting
shift in the balance of power, it should be the shift in the balance of
power between Europe and Asia. Such a shift can be discerned in the
second half of the eighteenth century in the ability of small European
armies and fleets to achieve regularly overwhelming victories over
much larger Asian forces, in the opening of Asian powers to European
colonial domination, and in the scramble by Asian powers to adapt by
joining the Military Revolution and developing their own nizam-
i-jedid forces. Eastern European warfare becomes an important test of
this revised model of Military Revolution, since it is in Eastern Europe
that the contest between European powers and the Ottoman Empire
was centered; and here 18th-century Russian adaptation to European
Military Revolution could be suggested as the most transformative
development. The lopsided outcomes of such land battles as Fokshany,
Larga and Kagul and naval engagements as Chesme and Beirut could
be cited in support of this. Black believes that this mid-eighteenth cen-
tury Military Revolution was the culmination of many changes in mili-
tary technology, organization, and tactical and strategic practice over a
long period, with the final European edge attributable to more recent
developments like the replacement of the pike with the ring bayonet,
the flintlock musket, the construction of forward magazines, etc.; he
also sees the real increase in army size occurring in the late seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Bruce Menning emphasizes the development
by such Russian commanders as P. A. Rumiantsev and A. V. Suvorov of
new tactical formations which capitalized on flexibility and discipline
both in the approach march and the assault.15
I see this Russian-led culmination of European Military Revolution
as resulting from a synthesis of lessons from the Baltic, Central
European, and Pontic-Danubian theaters over the course of the eight-
eenth century, from Peter Is Great Northern War through the Seven
Years War and the 17681774 Russo-Turkish War. But I also believe
this Military Revolution must be broadly conceived to allow for the
role of new practices that were not purely military, such as frontier

15
Black, A Military Revolution?, 2326; Bruce W. Menning,The Army and Frontier
in Russia, in Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History, ed. Carl Reddell
(Washington: USAF Academy, Office of Air Force History, 1990), p. 28.
12 brian davies

colonization policies and changes in the structure and function of pro-

vincial government.16
Military Revolution has also been seen as an agency of political and
social change. There seems to be association between Military
Revolution and political and social change, but identifying which is
cause and which is effect is difficult. The Roberts and Parker models
argue that Military Revolution expanded the scale and costs of warfare
and therefore required monarchs to turn to the construction of abso-
lutisms or military-fiscal states able to mobilize greater resources for
war. However, Black argues that those states best positioned to pursue
Military Revolution and mobilize more manpower and revenue for
war were those which had already achieved integration, stabilization,
and centralization on the basis of political-social arrangements that
were not necessarily directly connected with war policy and did not
necessarily require the coercive power of nationwide royal monopoly
of military force (achieved by offering compromises to end religious
conflict, for example, or by co-opting aristocratic and bourgeois elites
with new offices and mercantile ventures). The ability to join in the
Military Revolution was greatly limited where these political-social
arrangements had not already been established. Eastern European
experience provides a striking illustration of this. The Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth had the initial strategic advantages of vast territory,
large population, integration into the capitalist world-system, and large
nobility with a proud martial tradition. The Commonwealth was
involved in intense military competition with Sweden, Muscovy, and
the Ottoman Empire up to the early eighteenth century; its rulers were
open to the borrowing of military techniques from Western Europe,
even to the point of trying to build a large foreign formation army
in the 1630s. Yet the Polish-Lithuanian nobility ultimately refused to
permit the construction of a royal absolutism or even a parliament-
sanctioned fiscal-military state.
Even the association between political culture and the ability to sus-
tain successful participation in Military Revolution is difficult to disen-
tangle. The concept of absolutism has lost much of its analytic power
and even its descriptive power; disagreement continues over whether
the social foundation of absolutism was a royal collaboration with the

16
See Brian Davies, Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russias
Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century (London: Continuum, 2011).
 introduction 13

nobility, with the bourgeoisie, or both kept in equilibrium; meanwhile

Nicholas Henshall has been successful in arguing absolutism should
be understood as a political aspiration by certain monarchs and col-
laborating elites, not a condition ever actually achieved.
Historians have therefore turned to the term fiscal-military state to
describe those states which reached a power threshold enabling them
to mobilize manpower and revenue for war on a much larger scale and
sustained basis. The advantage of fiscal-military state is its own
vagueness: it is a category that admits states of very different political
constitutions (the absolutizing French monarchy, the Dutch Republic,
the English parliamentary monarchy). For this reason much of the
work on the history of the fiscal-military state17 has been preoccupied
with inventorying the range of political systems that aspired to or
attained the power threshold of the fiscal-military state. But the open-
ness of the concept is at the same its disadvantage; it cannot go very far
in identifying common practices, particularly fiscal practices. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century, for example, one of the most effi-
cient fiscal-military states in Western Europe was England, a regime
resting upon a condominium of royal and parliamentary power and
relying on both taxes and finance to mobilize resources for war. In
Eastern Europe at this time the two regimes most successful in mobi-
lizing resources for war were Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The for-
mer pretended to patrimonial autocracy, rested upon the exchange of
state service and royal bounty, and drew most of the resources for war
from royal domain regalia rather than from taxes or finance (taxation
was very ineffective, and finance nearly non-existent). The Ottoman
Empire was beginning the transition from patrimonial autocracy to a
more decentralized multi-polar political system that had started to
raise more military resources through private household patronage
and tax-farming finance. Politically these three regimes had little in
common, but by the test of resource mobilization power they have all
been considered fiscal-military states. Perhaps discourse on the fiscal-
military state has strayed too far from the text that originally inspired
it: Joseph Schumpeters The Crisis of the Tax State (1918), which

17
Richard Bonney, ed. The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 12001815 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999); Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe.
Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 15001660 (London
and New York: Routledge, 2002); Christopher Storrs, ed. The Fiscal-Military State in
Eighteenth-century Europe (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009).
14 brian davies

viewed the fiscal state or tax state as a stage in the fiscal development of
European states (from tribute state through the medieval domain state
to the modern tax state.18

The contributors to this volume are specialists in the history of most of

the greater powers of Eastern Europe (save Sweden) and treat a wide
range of themes in early modern military history. They write here not
only for fellow specialists but especially for non-specialist readers
interested in learning more about some of the fundamental issues in
early modern Eastern European military and political history.
Janet Martin provides a useful introduction to one of the most fun-
damental institutions in 16th17th century Muscovy: the pomeste sys-
tem of military service, which was as important for Muscovite army as
the Ottoman timar system it resembled. Traditional historiography
sees Ivan IVs 1556 reform standardizing service obligations by pomeste
grant size as enabling the state to mobilize large cavalry forces for his
Kazan, southern frontier, and Livonian wars. Martin, however, sees
these service norms as unrealistic almost from the start, just thirty or
so years from the introduction of pomeste-based campaign duty, and
she examines the reasons why pomeste economy was insufficient to
equip cavalrymen for service without supplemental cash bounty pay-
ments from the Treasury.
Gza Plffy examines the frontier fortifications, captain-general-
cies, and central administration of Hungarys Ottoman frontier in the
sixteenth century, showing how the complicated territorial and estate
structure of the Habsburg monarchy did not prevent it from central-
izing and systematizing frontier military administration. Palffy argues
that some of the innovations attending the development of the frontier
defense systemreliance on standing troops, arsenal development,
centralized administration from the Aulic War Council could be seen
as Habsburg refinements of the European Military Revolution.
Dariusz Kupisz corrects the misperception that the political system
of Poland-Lithuania always prevented the monarchy from adapting
successfully to Military Revolution. There were at least periods
Bathorys reign in particularwhen the nature of the military emer-
gency encouraged estates and monarchy to collaborate in expanding
and modernizing the armed forces. In the case of Bathorys reign this

18
Joseph Schumpeter, The Crisis of the Tax State, in Schumpeter, Imperialism and
the Social Classes (New York: Kelley, 1951), pp. 141219.
 introduction 15

paid off in spectacular strategic gains, in part because of the Kings tal-
ent for shrewd campaign planning. Kupiszs chapter is also invaluable
in presenting a crucial part of the Livonian War from the Polish-
Lithuanian perspective (most work on this subject is given from the
Russian perspective).
Brian Davies argues that a difference between Western and Eastern
European infantry tactics was the long-standing preference in the east,
particularly in the Danubian-Pontic theater, for placing infantry fire-
power behind a fortified wagon-lager and moving troops within vast
wagenburg formations. He surveys the spread of these tactics across
Eastern Europe and tries to show how they were ultimately rendered
obsolete and superseded in the eighteenth century.
Oleg Nozdrin works on the subject of Western European mercenar-
ies in Eastern European service. Some recent work has given greater
attention to this subject because of its obvious connections with the
question of the dissemination of new technical and tactical skills, and
there has been some publication on English projects to intervene in
the Troubles and possibly stake out a sphere of influence in the White
Sea North. But Nozdrins chapter is unusual in its use of very disparate
archival and published materials from across Europe to reconstruct the
career of a particularly colorful and important mercenary adventurer
and to examine the nature of his interests in Muscovy. His essay
reminds us that we need to look at the motives of mercenary entrepre-
neurs as well as foreign governments to explain the circumstances of
export of mercenary manpower.
Carol Belkin Stevens focuses on logistics, especially the food provi-
sioning of the 16th17th century Muscovite army, which had been a
neglected topic in secondary literature until her masterful 1995 mono-
graph Soldiers on the Steppe: Army Reform and Social Change in Early
Modern Russia, the result of extensive examination of the records of
the Military Chancellery and other chancelleries. As a domain state
legitimated as patrimonial autocracy by the service/bounty exchange,
the Muscovite state in the sixteenth century relied primarily upon self-
provisioning through the pomeste system to supply its army (see
Martin, above). Stevens shows how this changed over the next century,
the demand for more manpower for more protracted campaigning in
more modern western European-style foreign formations requir-
ing the expansion of sutlering and especially the strengthening of the
states power to tax in cash and grain so as to provision in rations and
annual bounty pay. Her work is indispensible to any serious discussion
16 brian davies

of whether Russia was already a fiscal-military state before the eight-

eenth century.
Victor Ostapchuk reminds us that the Crimean Khanate was one of
the most formidable military powers in Europe, capable of overwhelm-
ing frontier defense systems and moving large armies deep into enemy
territory, even as far north as Cracow and Moscow. Small-scale raiding
for captives led by mirza nobles might be relatively improvised opera-
tions, but the large-scale sefer invasions led by the khan or his sons
were carefully planned and directed operations. As most of the archives
of the Khanate have perished, Ostapchuk turns to a remarkable 16th-
century Ottoman chronicle, The History of Khan Sahib Girey, to recon-
struct how invasion campaigns were organized and conducted in the
1530s1540s. Ostapchuks analysis of this source provides invaluable
information about Crimean Tatar military practice and also addresses
how Crimean Tatar ideology and religion shaped attitudes towards the
purposes of war and slaving.
Brian Boeck critically unpacks one of the most misunderstood
sources on Don Cossack military operations, The Poetical Tale of the
Siege of Azov, a remarkably vivid and detailed account of how a force of
a few thousand Don Cossacks holding the captured Ottoman Black Sea
fortress of Azov withstood siege by a tenfold-larger Ottoman army for
over three months in 1641. Boeck presents his own translation of the
entire text of the Poetical Tale and allows us to experience the political/
religious rhetoric celebrating the Cossacks feat for the tales Muscovite
readers. He shows that the Poetical Tale is not entirely a first-hand eye-
witness account written by or orally related by survivors of the siege,
but a composite work, a reworking and embellishment upon some cos-
sack reports, written sometime later by someone in Moscow appar-
ently interested in making greater propaganda significance of the
cossack stand than the Moscow government was willing to do (Tsar
Mikhail having ordered the evacuation of Azov rather than reinforcing
it and risking war with the Porte).
Erik Lund addresses the association between military and cultural
change in the Habsburg Monarchy. Whether one calls it a Scientific
Revolution or views it as the expansion and deepening of techni-
calism(see Marshall Hodgkins), Lund examines the accumulation of
practical-technical experience by generals and higher officers in the
Habsburg army in the generation of 1683 (from the mobilization to
relieve the siege of Vienna through the long reconquest of Hungary).
His chapter examines the origins, education, careers, and campaign
 introduction 17

experience of the generals on the Generallisten and reaches some

surprising conclusions about the relative representation of certain
nationalities and especially about the correlation between technical
competence and promotion. Promotion favored officers with engi-
neering and artillery experience; engineering skills were not a marker
of bourgeois class origin; and despite the absence of formal training
in military academies, scientific and technical learning was available to
and appealing to officers as noble courtiers. One of the most valuable
and fascinating features of this chapter is the attention it gives to show-
ing how much generalship routinely required technical knowledge and
even powers of theoretical abstraction.
Peter Brown examines another comparatively neglected topic in
Russian military history: the range of command-control practices in
the seventeenth-century Muscovite army, especially regarding the
movement of troops and battle order and tactics. A summary of the
major wars and campaigns of the 17th century allows him to identify a
succession of different leadership styles while also finding a general
continuity of preference for centralizing decision-making down to the
1670s. This preference derived especially from Muscovite political cul-
ture and from low literacy outside the central chancellery apparatus,
discouraging officer skill acquisition (contrast with Lunds characteri-
zation of the aristocratic commanders of the Habsburg army)not only
from inadequate communications and problems of force projection
over distance or inexperience with the new line tactics and more com-
plicated firing systems.
Virginia Aksan, author of a comprehensive new history of the
Ottoman Empires wars in the 18th and 19th centuries, here examines
what Ottoman performance in war over the 18th century tells us about
Ottoman capacities to mobilize and tax, plan, modernize military for-
mations, and adjust strategic goals in Europe to the multinational char-
acter of the empire and the coexistence of other military fronts in Asia.
Most non-specialists continue to adhere to the old interpretation of a
sharp and steady decline in Ottoman power after the late sixteenth-
century, connected with a cascade of institutional breakdowns origi-
nating in the breakdown of the timar system. Aksan adheres to a newer
interpretation, now predominant among younger Ottomanists, which
emphasizes the reconfiguration rather than collapse of the political
system after the 1690s and shows how military resource mobilization
came to be conducted upon different principles in the eighteenth
century.
 ECONOMIC EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MUSCOVITE
POMESTE SYSTEM:
AN EXAMINATION OF ESTATE INCOMES AND MILITARY
EXPENSES IN THE MID-16TH CENTURY

Janet Martin

In the winter of 1556/57, a pomeshchik called Fedor, the son of Vasily

Lodygin, reported for duty at a military review. According to land
records compiled a few years earlier (155153), he was a registered
possessor of a pomeste, consisting of parcels in four parishes (pogosty)
in Shelonskaia piatina, the sector of the Novgorod lands located south
and southwest of the city. For this review he had been ordered to pro-
vide two armed and mounted cavalrymen, one in heavy armor and the
other, presumably a military slave, in light armor. Lodygin, however,
failed to carry out the order. He appeared at the review alone, with a
mount but with only light armor. As a result, the nine-ruble stipend, to
which he was entitled as a military serviceman of the 22nd grade, was
reduced by one ruble. He was, furthermore, denied three rubles for
having failed to provide a cavalryman in full, heavy armor.1
Lodygin was not the only military serviceman to come to the review
with fewer than the designated number of cavalrymen or without the
requisite armor. The majority of the 174 entries (54% or 94) in the mis-
leadingly named boiarskaia kniga of 1556/57, which contains the
records of this military review, contain information on servicemen
who either provided the number of required military men or exceeded
that number. But, over 40% (73 or 42%) of the entries report on ser-
vicemen who did not satisfy the governments demands.2 Like Lodygin,
all the servicemen who did not satisfy the requirements for men,
mounts, or armor received reduced compensation. Even when the
landholders provided more than the required number of warriors,
their compensation was reduced if they failed to provide complete

1
`Boiarskaia kniga 1556/57 goda, ed. A. V. Antonov, in Russkii diplomatarii,
vyp. 10 (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2004), 104; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv
drevnikh aktov (RGADA), f. 1209, op. 3, No. 17144, ll. 130133 ob.
2
Boiarskaia kniga, 82118. The remaining seven entries (4%) either did not indi-
cate whether requirements were met or indicated the landholders were temporarily
exempt from military service.
20 janet martin

armor for them. In some instances, when the serviceman and his slaves
appeared without any armor, no compensation, including the normal
stipend set for each serviceman of a particular rank, was paid.3
The military review of 1556/57 reflects the operation of Muscovys
military apparatus, which was built around a cavalry made up of pro-
vincial landholders, at the time when new, standardized regulations
were being introduced and were going into effect. A significant portion
of the landholders were pomeshchiki, i.e., possessors of landed estates
(pomestia) issued to them by government officials. Muscovys pomeste
system had initially been organized during the late fifteenth century
in the northwestern portion of the country after Grand Prince Ivan III
(d. 1505) annexed Novgorod, confiscated landed properties owned
by Novgorods boyars, bishop, and monasteries and redistributed them
to men who relocated to the Novgorod lands and served the grand
prince, typically as military servicemen.
Through the sixteenth century the pomeste system was established
elsewhere in the Muscovite lands. It has been commonly understood
that this system instituted a conditional form of land tenure. In return
for the landed estates apportioned to them by the grand prince and the
incomes derived primarily from the peasant agriculture conducted on
them, the pomeshchiki were expected to appear, fully armed with horses
and provisions, when summoned for campaign duty. Although the
Novgorodian pomeshchiki participated almost exclusively in military
ventures close to Novgorod during the reign of Ivan III, from the reign
of Vasily III (d. 1533) they and the other landholders in the expanding
pomeste system took part in the military campaigns on all of Muscovys
frontiers. Muscovys armies in the sixteenth century did contain other
units, e.g., Tatars, townsmen, musketeers, artillerymen, and Cossacks,
but the pomeste-based cavalry has been regarded as the core of the
Muscovite military force.4
By the last quarter of the sixteenth century economic condi-
tions throughout the country had deteriorated and Muscovys mili-
taryfortunes were, correspondingly, in decline. Peasant populations,

3
E.g., Boiarskaia kniga, 88 (Obarin), 978 (Chavkin brothers), 99 (Zhitov), 105
(Esipov).
4
M. M. Denisova, Pomestnaia konnitsa i ee vooryzhenie v XVI XVII vv., Trudy
gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia, 20 (1948), 30; Richard Hellie, Enserfment and
Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971),
21; Dianne L. Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 14621598, The Slavonic and East European
Review 71 (1993), 36.
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 21

pressured by the domestic policies of Ivan IV, including rising taxes,

were deserting their villages, leaving vast areas of Muscovy depop-
ulated and fields untended. The estate incomes of pomeste-based
cavalrymen, consequently, fell, and their ability to perform their mili-
tary duties became increasingly burdensome. Rather than providing
the material means that enabled them to perform military service, the
pomestia became obstacles to fulfilling that duty. The same factors that
reduced landholders incomes resulted, furthermore, in decreased state
revenues. Moscows payment of supplemental stipends to landholders
became irregular and incomplete.5 Faced with a conflict of interest
between management of their landed estates and military service,
pomeshchiki avoided the latter. Official memoranda indicate that by the
late 1570s, problems arising from the failure of pomeshchiki to appear
for military campaigns as well as from desertions had become acute.6
The collapse of their pomestia had left many pomeshchiki without the
means to continue their military service and the proportion of pomeste-
based cavalrymen in armies mustered in the late 1570s was falling in
favor of units of supplementary troops.7

5
E.I. Kolycheva, Agrarnyi stroi Rossii XVI veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), 169201;
Agrarnaia istoriia severo-zapada Rossii XVI veka, ed. A. L. Shapiro (Leningrad: Nauka,
1974), 2929; B. N. Floria, Voina mezhdu Rossiei i Rechiu Pospolitoi na
zakliuchitelnom etape livonskoi voiny i vnutrenniaia politika pravitelstva Ivana IV, in
Voprosy istoriografii i istochnikovedeniia slaviano-germanskikh otnoshenii (Moscow:
Nauka, 1973), 1789; Hellie, 37, 945.
6
V. I. Buganov, Dokumenty o Livonskoi voine, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za
1960 god (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1962), 2667; V. I. Buganov, Perepiska gorodogo pri-
kaza s voevodami Livonskikh gorodov v 15771578 godakh, Arkheograficheskii ezhe-
godnik za 1964 god (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), 294; Pamiatniki istorii vostochnoi Evropy,
v. 3: Dokumenty Livonskoi voiny (podlinnoe deloproizvodstvo prikazov i voevod) 1571
1580 gg. (Moscow and Warsaw: Arkheograficheskii tsentr and Centrum Historii
Europy, 1998), 956; Floria, 179, 1912, 2058.
7
R. G. Skrynnikov, Rossiia posle oprichniny (Leningrad: Leningradskii universitet,
1975), 46; Janet Martin, Tatars in the Muscovite Army during the Livonian War, in
The Military and Society in Russia, 14501917, ed. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (Leiden:
Brill, 2002), 3748, 3846; Floria, 17879; Hellie, 95.
Even in these severe conditions some pomeshchiki were able to manage their affairs
successfully and not only perform their military service, but accumulate considerable
wealth. Ivan, the son of Zloba Bazarov, was one example. Substituting slave labor for
absent peasants, raising livestock rather than agricultural crops, and probably selling
hay, the one commodity his estate produced in quantity, on the market, he amassed
sufficient means, even during the worst period of crisis at the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury, to support himself and accumulate an array of items, identified in an inventory of
his possessions, made in 1595 after his death. Although individuals such as Bazarov
were able to negotiate their way through the difficult economic conditions of the
last quarter of the sixteenth century, the widespread depopulation and agricultural
22 janet martin

But in the middle of the century the pomeste system and the
pomeste-based army appeared to be functioning effectively. At the
beginning of the 1550s, the Muscovite army conquered Kazan. Toward
the end of the decade it was advancing victoriously into Livonia,
launching what would become known as the Livonian War (1558
1583), and in the winter of 156263, it waged a campaign that captured
Polotsk from neighboring Lithuania.
It was also during this period that, as the pomeste system was spread-
ing from Novgorod into other regions of Muscovy, the administrative
apparatus that oversaw it was fashioned into a specialized section,
known first as the pomestnaia izba and then as the pomestnyi prikaz.8
But even earlier, from the late 1530s, state secretaries and scribes
had been painstakingly reviewing, updating, and compiling records
on pomeste landholding not only in the Novgorod lands, where the
pomeste system had been functioning for decades, but in regions, such
as Tver, where it had been adopted more recently. The results of their
efforts formed the basis of land distributions to the growing number
pomeshchiki and also of a series of compilations of records, including
in 155153, a set of land registers known as pripravochnye knigi for
Shelonskaia piatina.9
During the decade of the 1550s Muscovite officials were also stand-
ardizing various factors relating to the pomeste system and military
service. Establishing the relationships among military service, land-
holding, and monetary stipends was a central element of their efforts.

failures coupled with reduced numbers of pomeshchiki appearing for military duty
and concerns about desertions suggest that his experience was not the norm.
G. V. Abramovich, Novgorodskoe pomeste v gody ekonomicheskogo krizisa posled-
nei treti XVI v., in Materialy po istorii selskogo khoziaistva i krestianstva SSSR, sb. VIII
(Moscow: Nauka, 1974), 526. See also Shapiro, 2312.
8
A. K. Leontev, Obrazovanie prikaznoi sistemy upravleniia v russkom gosudarstve
(Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1961), 117; Boris Floria, Ivan Groznyi (Moscow:
Molodaia gvardiia, 1999), 56; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible
(London, New York: Pearson Longman, 2003), 72; A. A. Zimin and A. L. Khoroshkevich,
Rossiia vremeni Ivana Groznogo (Moscow: Nauka, 1982), 85.
9
On land surveys and distributions in the late 1530s and early 1540s, see
G. V. Abramovich, Pomestnaia politika v period boiarskogo pravleniia v Rossii
(15381543 gg.), Istoriia SSSR (1974), 1934; Published compilations for Shelon-
skaia piatina are in volumes IV and V of the series Novgorodskiia pistsovyia knigi,
(St. Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia kommissiia, 1886, 1905); unpublished records
are in RGADA, f. 109, op. 3, No. 17144. Compilations for Tver have been published in
Pistsovye materialy Tverskogo uezda XVI veka (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2005)
and Pistsovyia knigi Moskovskago gosudarstva, ch. 1, otd. 2 (PKMG), ed. N. V. Kalachov
(St. Petersburg: Imperatorskoe russkoe geograficheskoe obshchestvo, 1877).
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 23

A regulation on military service, issued in 1555/56 and known as the

ulozhenie o sluzhbe, governed the number of servicemen landholders
were required to provide. It specified that each landholder was to sup-
ply one fully armed cavalryman for every 100 chetverti of good land in
his possession.10 That meant that not only was a pomeshchik expected
to appear for duty, but if his holdings were large enough, he was to
bring additional armed men and horses with him. Other records,
including the detailed entries in the boiarskaia kniga of 1556/57, reveal
that at this time a series of grades or ranks had also been established for
servicemen. Some of these records also make it evident that the amount
of arable land allocated to a serviceman as pomeste was associated with
his grade.11 The records contained in the boiarskaia kniga, however,
show real variation among the sizes of pomestia possessed by individ-
uals at the same grade of service, suggesting, perhaps, that standardiza-
tion was not complete.
The apparent success of the pomeste system in the mid-sixteenth
century may also have been due to the fact that some pomeshchiki
were able to supplement their estate incomes from other sources. Some
had their own votchiny or hereditary landed estates and derived
incomes from them. Others, as the boiarskaia kniga reports, were
assigned various non-military, administrative functions or held fran-
chises to collect taxes in selected towns on an annual basis.12 Perhaps
most significantly, however, during the sixteenth century military ser-
vicemen also received monetary salaries or stipends from the grand
prince.13 By the middle of the sixteenth century the amounts of the

10
Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (PSRL), v. 13 (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kultury,
2000), 2689; Hellie, 38; Denisova, 32; Zimin and Khoroshkevich, 83; P. P. Epifanov,
Voisko i voennaia organizatsiia, in Ocherki russkoi kultury XVI veka (Moscow:
Moskovskii universitet, 1977), 340; Rozhdestvenskii, Sluzhiloe zemlevladenie v
Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI veka (St. Petersburg: 1897), 3334. Abramovich has
argued that a minimum norm of 100 chetverti for a pomeste had been established by
15389; Pomestnaia politika, 1956.
11
See, e.g., Tysiachnaia kniga 1550 g. i dvorovaia tetrad 50-kh godov XVI v., ed.
A. A. Zimin (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1950), 55, 57, 61, 82, and land regis-
ters for Polotsk (1571) in PKMG, 54066; Epifanov, 3401.
12
Boiarskaia kniga, e.g., 103 (Pleshcheev), 104 (Davydov), 105 (Esipov), 116
(Kozlovskii Romodanovskii).
13
Although it is not known precisely when Moscow began to pay its military ser-
vicemen salaries, Sigismund von Herberstein, whose observations were made during
the reign of Vasily III, remarked that the grand prince provided a fixed but inadequate
stipend to younger sons of nobles of slender fortune. Others, when ordered to go
on campaign were responsible for their own expenses. Sigismund von Herberstein,
24 janet martin

stipends, as reflected in the boiarskaia kniga, were standardized and,

like land entitlements, corresponded to the grade of the serviceman.14
The landholders also received payments for supplementary troops they
brought with them for campaign duty.
The example of Lodygin, together with the those of the others who
were unable to meet the military standard imposed by government
officials, contrasts with the image of a maturing pomeste system that in
the middle of the sixteenth century was operating satisfactorily as a
means of reliably enabling estate holders to meet their military obliga-
tions. It raises questions about the effectiveness, on the one hand, of the
pomeste system and its capacity to provide material support for mem-
bers of the Muscovite cavalry in the middle of the sixteenth century
and, on the other hand, of the governments policies and regulations.
The purpose of the following discussion is to address these issues. By
examining the pomestia of Lodygin and his neighbors in Shelonskaia
piatina, it explores their potential for supporting cavalrymen and
inquires whether, at the time requirements and rewards were standard-
ized, stipends were necessary to supplement estate revenues to support
the pomeshchikis military service. It will, thus, examine the expenses
pomeshchiki had to incur to meet their military obligations and their
estate incomes. Comparing the two provides a basis for assessing
whether the pomeshchiki of Shelonskaia piatina had the financial
capacity to afford their military service. The analysis will also yield
insight into the apparent contradiction between the general image of
the effectiveness of the pomeste system and the failure of Lodygin and
his fellows to meet their specific obligations.
Muscovite cavalrymen were required to appear at military reviews
fully armed, and were expected to bear the expense of equipping them-
selves and the additional men, typically military slaves, they had to
supply. The basic weapons they carried were sabres and bows and
arrows.15 Of the two cavalrymen Lodygin was ordered to provide, one

Notes upon Russia, v. 1, trans. and ed. R. H. Major, Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society,
No. 10 (London: 1851), 30, 95.
14
Boiarskaia kniga, 82118; Hellie, 36. See also Rozhdestvenskii, 336.
15
On weapons, see Herberstein, 96; P. P. Epifanov, Oruzhie i snariazhenie, in
Ocherki russkoi kultury, 2936; Hellie, 30; S. K. Bogoiavlenskii, Vooruzhenie russkikh
voisk v XVI-XVII vv., Istoricheskie zapiski (1938), 259. On the requirement to appear
fully armed, see Boiarskaia kniga, 82118; Epifanov, Voisko, 3412; Abramovich,
Novgorodskoe pomeste, 22. For an example of an order for the army to assemble,
see Dopolneniia k aktam istoricheskim, sobrannyia i izdannyia Arkheograficheskoiu
kommissieiu (DAI), v. 1 (St. Petersburg: 1846), No. 65 (1555), 123.
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 25

was to have been in full, heavy protective armor, which typically

included a helmet, chain-mail shirt or body armor with sleeves, and
knee plates. The other was expected to have a lighter, and also a cheaper,
type of armor that consisted of a densely quilted coat (short-sleeved,
high collared), which might have had iron bands sewn inside or armor
plating underneath to provide added protection.16 Lodygin was, fur-
thermore, to have provided horses with saddles, bridles and other tack.
Little is known about the costs of arms and armor used by the
Muscovite cavalrymen in the sixteenth century. The few available
records refer to unusually expensive, imported items that would have
been possessed by members of the elite, not ordinary provincial
pomeshchiki.17 It is not clear, moreover, how frequently the military ser-
vicemen would have had to acquire such items. References to them in
wills and inventories of property suggest the possibility of an extended
period of usefulness for some of the items.18 It is also not well estab-
lished where the items were manufactured or how the cavalrymen
acquired them, i.e., whether they purchased them in the marketplace
or obtained them from local village craftsmen who may have manufac-
tured at least some of the leather, metal and cloth items.19
A value for the equipment typically used by fully, heavily armed
horsemen has, nevertheless, been determined from data contained in
the 1556/57 boiarskaia kniga to have been approximately 4 rubles,
50kopecks.20 The value of less expensive light armor was more varia-
ble, but fell in the range of 2 to 4R.21 Based on these values, Lodygin
would have had to spend between 6R, 50k and 8R, 50k to equip his two

16
Hellie, 31; Epifanov, Oruzhie, 2968; Denisova, 338.
17
Denisova, 38; Hellie, 30.
18
E.g., Akty rossiiskogo gosudarstva. Arkhivy Moskovskikh monastyrei i soborov
XV-nachalo XVII vv. (ARG), ed. V. D. Nazarov (Moscow: Ladomir, 1998), No. 40,
p.128; Abramovich, Novgorodskoe pomeste, 24.
19
For comments on magnates who maintained their own artisans for this purpose,
see G. E. Kochin, Selskoe khoziaistvo na Rusi v period obrazovaniia Russkogo tsentral-
izovannogo gosudarstva (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1965), 312.
20
Denisova, 38; Hellie, 31.
21
This value has been determined, following the method used by Denisova to
obtain a price for heavy armor, by considering the amounts received by pomeshchiki as
compensation for the costs of providing more than the required number of service-
men. These amounts were approximately twice as much per man as those paid for
required men. The landowner was, thus, expected to bear more of the cost of provi-
sioning the required men. See, e.g.,Boiarskaia kniga, 85 (Sumin), 86 (Burtsov), 99
(Shchetinin), 100 (Sorokoumov). On compensation for additional warriors, Hellie, 38;
Denisova, 38; Zimin and Khoroshkevich, 83; Rozhdestvenskii, 334.
26 janet martin

required military servicemen. In addition to arms and armor, Lodygin

was also required to provide horses. The regulation of 1555/56 stipu-
lated each military serviceman was to have one horse, two for long
campaigns. The recorded price for geldings of the Nogai type (kon),
the sort typically used in military campaigns and the type of horse
Lodygin had brought to a previous review in the summer of 1556,
was 1.5R.22 Lodygin would also have had to provide saddles, bridles,
and other tack for the horses. Although it is understood that he, like all
other pomeshchiki, would have had to make investments in his horses,
their maintenance, and the equipment associated with them, such
items, as some articles of weaponry and armor, may have remained in
use for years; Lodygin would not necessarily have had to purchase
them on an annual basis.23
An examination of the incomes of Lodygin and the other Shelon-
skaia pomeshchiki makes it possible to determine whether they could
cover these known costs. Available land registers for Shelonskaia
piatina from 155153 contain records of 144 pomeste estates, each of
which was possessed by one or more male landholders.24 With the
exception of Lodygin and a few others who were present at the mili-
taryreview of 1556/57, the ranks or grades of these pomeshchiki, the

22
For prices of kon in the mid-16th century, see Otryvki iz raskhodnykh knig
Sofiiskago Doma za 1548 god, Izvestii Imperatorskago Arkheologicheskago Obshchestva
(1861), 5; A. G. Mankov, Tseny i ikh dvizhenie v russkom gosudarstve XVI veka (Moscow
and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1951), 123. A will from 1490 valued a kon at 2 rubles; Akty
sluzhilykh zemlevladeltsev XV-nachala XVII veka (ASZ), 3 vols., comp. A. V. Antonov
and K. V. Baranov (Moscow: Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1998; Pamiatniki istorich-
eskoimysli, 1998; Drevlekhranilishche, 2002), v. 3, No. 463, p. 381. For prices of other
types of horses, see Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi Imperii
Arkheograficheskoiu Ekspeditsieiu, v. 1 (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia Akademiia
Nauk, 1836), No. 233 (Tamozhennaia Belozerskaia gramota, 1551), No. 230, p. 223;
Abramovich, Novgorodskoe pomeste, 19. On the type of horse used on campaign,
see Ann M. Kleimola, Good Breeding, Muscovite Style: `Horse Culture in Early
Modern Rus, Forschungen zur osteuropischen Geschichte 50 (1995), 201, 224;
Denisova, 40. On Lodygins horses and the previous campaign, see Boiarskaia kniga,
84, 104.
23
On longevity of use, see ARG, No. 40, p. 128. See also the inventory of Bazarovs
possessions; Abramovich, Novgorodskoe pomeste, 245.
24
Records in the land registers relate to 168 pomeste estates, of which 17 were offi-
cially in the possession of women. In two of those cases the pomeste supported the
service of a son of the female landholder; they are included in the 144. Excluded are
incomplete records (3); one estate held by a pomeshchik who was described as not in
service; and the estates of five pomeshchiki, identified as podiachi or sytniki, who were
in non-military service.
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 27

number of cavalrymen officially required from their pomestia, the

actual number they provided, and the stipends and supplementary
compensation they received are all unknown factors. The land regis-
ters, however, indicate the amount of land, measured in obzhi, con-
tained on each pomeste; one obzha was the equivalent of ten chertverti.
If it is assumed that the sizes of their pomestia and the incomes derived
from them did not change significantly between the early 1550s, when
they were recorded in the land registers, and 1555/56, when standard-
ized regulations were issued, it is possible to determine, based on the
sizes of their pomestia, how many cavalrymen each pomeste would
have been assessed.
The registers also record how much land on each estate was culti-
vated by peasants, how much rent they paid to their pomeshchik and in
what form, and how much land was set aside for direct use by the
pomeshchik (demesne). It is thus possible to calculate estate incomes
and determine whether they would have been sufficient to support the
military service of their pomeshchiki and the required number of addi-
tional cavalrymen. Those calculations are based on an assumption that
one heavily armed cavalryman would be required for the first
100 chetverti on a pomeste at a cost of 4R, 50k and one cavalryman with
light armor, at a cost of 3R per man, would be required for each of the
next 100 chetverti of the estate.
A survey of the number of chetverti contained in the Shelonskaia
pomestia suggests that most of the estates were large enough, accord-
ing the 1556 standards, to support at least one armed cavalryman. The
sizes of the 144 estates ranged from 2 obzhi or 20 cheti to 121.5 ob.
(1215 cheti). Twelve estates consisted of less than 100 cheti, the mini-
mum required to support an armed serviceman; three of them, which
contained almost enough land (95 cheti on two, 97.5 cheti on the
third), will nevertheless be considered in this study as having had the
potential to support one serviceman. One hundred thirty-five estates,
thus, had the theoretical capacity to support from one to twelve
cavalrymen.
A review of the incomes derived from these estates, however, reveals
that only eight of them would have generated sufficient sums from the
portion of the rent (obrok) paid by their peasants in cash to meet
expenses of 4R, 50k for the first cavalrymen and 3 rubles for all others.
Another five produced monetary incomes from rents that would very
nearly have met the expenses for the arms and other equipment
required for each of the military servicemen required from the estate.
28 janet martin

To meet their military expenses using resources from their pomestia,

the pomeshchiki in possession of those five estates and those on the
remaining 122 pomestia would have had to find other sources of
money. The most abundant commodity they had available was the
grain produced on their estates. The sale of surplus grain, which in
Shelonskaia piatina consisted mainly of rye and oats and, in some
cases, smaller amounts of barley and wheat, was thus a likely means of
acquiring additional income.
Most of the pomeshchiki in the region collected some of their rent in
grain. Typically, they collected specified amounts, measured in korobia.
Less frequently they collected portions of the peasants crops, normally
one-quarter or, less commonly, one-fifth.25 To determine how much
surplus grain the pomeshchiki of each estate may be considered to have
had available for sale, it is necessary first to calculate the total amounts
they would have received from their own demesne production, the
rents paid by their peasants in the form of portions of their crops, and
the rents in fixed quantities of grain. The land registers report the
amount of land devoted to demesne as well the amounts of land subject
to rent paid in shares of the crop. Calculations using the ratio of 1
obzha to 5 korobei yield values for the amount of grain in korobia pro-
duced from these sections of the pomestia.26 Those calculated amounts
added to rents paid in designated quantities of grain constitute the
total amount of grain at the disposal of the possessors of each pomeste.
The surplus on each estate may then be estimated by subtracting an
amount that would meet the minimum dietary needs of the required
number of cavalrymen and their wives.27
Using a yield factor of 5 korobei of grain for each obzha of land, a
food allowance of 250 kg/person for each serviceman and his wife,
and the price of grain (rye) at 32 dengi/chet,28 it appears that by selling

25
There were a total of 3906.7 ob. on all 153 pomestia. Specified portions of rye
were collected from 1426 ob. under cultivation by peasants; one-quarter of the crop
was taken from 920.5 ob., and one-fifth of the crop from 335.75 ob. The remainder was
either subject to rents paid exclusively in cash, not cultivated by peasants, temporarily
excused from paying rent, or in fallow.
26
Shapiro, 17.
27
Calculations based on the assumption that each cavalryman had a wife follow the
model used by Abramovich, Novgorodskoe pomeste, 19.
28
The assumed minimum consumption of 250325 kg grain per adult per year is
taken from estimates offered by A. L. Shapiro and his colleagues, who posited that a
man would require 1520 puds/year or 245.7327.6 kg/yr.; Agrarnaia istoriia Severo-
zapada Rossii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971) 4950, 270. Abramovich used 14 puds/year
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 29

their grain surplus, most of the pomeshchiki could have theoretically

raised enough money to purchase the equipment needed for his estates
military requirements. Only 19 of the 135 estates under study (14%)
could not have done so. If the calculations are made using a higher rate
of consumption, 325 kg/person, pomeshchiki on two more estates,
for a total of 21 or 15%, would have become unable to purchase the
required arms and armor.
These calculations, on the one hand, support the view that in the
1550s the pomeste system was functioning well as a means of support-
ing military service. Rents and demesne production on most of the
estates provided their pomeshchiki, at least theoretically, with sufficient
means to purchase arms and armor for the number of servicemen
required from their estates. On the other hand, this observation did
not apply to all the pomestia. If those 21 estates that could not provide
sufficient income are combined with the 12 pomestia that consisted of
less than 100 cheti and, therefore, would not have been considered
large enough to support even one cavalryman by official standards,
then almost one-quarter of the pomestia in Shelonskaia piatina, held
by male servicemen, would have been unable to sustain military ser-
vice using only the incomes from their estates. The stipends provided
by the government would have been essential for their pomeshchiki to
meet their military obligations.29
Fedor Lodygin was, however, among those who, by these calcula-
tions, should have been able to provide for himself and a second armed,
mounted military serviceman. Lodygin shared his landed estate, which
consisted of a total of 70 obezh or 700 chetverti, with two brothers; the

for his calculations; Novgorodskoe pomeste, 19. These figures, although higher, are
consistent with those offered by Colin Clark and Margaret Haswell, who proposeda
range of 190235 kg and concluded that 210 kg/year may be considered a subsistence
minimum; The Economics of Subsistence Agriculture, 4th ed. (London: Macmillan,
1970), 589, Elsewhere Clark proposed that somewhat below 250 kilograms/person/
year of grain equivalent as a minimum dietary requirement. Colin Clark, Popula-
tion Growth and Land Use (London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martins Press,
1968), 130.
The calculations use the equivalencies, provided by Shapiro, of 1 korobia = 8
puds=1.33 chetverti (1974, p. 17); 1 pud = 16.38 kg. For the price of rye, see Shapiro
(1974), 21; PSRL, v. 4 (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kultury, 2000), 622.
29
Rozhdestvenskii (pp. 3356) proposed that stipends were intended specifically
for the purchase of armor and weapons, whereas estate incomes were expected to sup-
port the domestic needs of the pomeshchik, his family, and also maintain his horses. On
the pomeshchiks need for cash to obtain armor and weapons, see Hellie, 37.
30 janet martin

widow and three minor children of a third brother, who had died 1549,
also dwelled on the estate. Fedors share of the pomeste was one-third
or 233.3 chetverti. His quota of two cavalrymen in 1556/57 was, thus,
consistent with the norms established in the regulation of 1555/56
and its implicit assumptions about the productivity and incomes gen-
erated by pomestia. Yet Fedor Lodygin was unable to fulfill those
expectations.
As noted above, Lodygin would have needed between 6R, 50k and
8R, 50k to purchase the armor for the two servicemen he was required
to present at the military review in 1556/57. If he had to purchase new
horses, he would have needed another 3R for two geldings, raising his
expenses to as much as 11R, 50k. In theory Lodygins income from his
pomeste was sufficient to meet his expenses for arms, armor, and
horses. His family estate generated a monetary income of just over
8.5R (1708 deneg), of which Fedor Lodygin received one-third. Peasants
who lived in the 25 hamlets on the pomeste lands paid rents in grains,
measured in korobia, and the Lodygin brothers had set aside a portion
of their estate to be cultivated as demesne. Lodygin would have had to
keep some of his share of the grain to feed himself and the second mili-
tary serviceman he was to have supplied. If it is assumed that each of
these two men was married, grain for at least four adults would have
been set aside for consumption. Using the assumptions for grain con-
sumption introduced above (250325 kg/person/year), he would have
had to set aside 10001300 kg of grain. The remainder could have been
sold to raise additional money.
The grain received in rent by the Lodygin brothers combined with
the amount they could have raised on the portion set aside for demesne
cultivation was 273 korobi. Fedors share would have been 91 korobia
or 11,920 kg. If the two cavalrymen and their wives consumed 1000
1300 kg, Lodygin would have had 10,62010,920 kg or about 110 cheti
available for sale. If another 750850 kg of oats were devoted to feed
for two horses, then the remaining amount of grain available for sale
would have been 977010,170 kg (99103 cheti).30 The price for rye in
Novgorod in 1551 was, as noted above, 32 dengi/chet. Fedor Lodygin
could have earned c. 1616.5R if he had sold all his surplus grain on

30
For the consumption requirements of horses, see Abramovich, Novgorodskoe
pomeste, 1819; Shapiro (1971), 50; DAI, v. 1, No. 170, p. 130. For the use of oats, see
Kochin, 255; Kleimola, 209, 213, 215.
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 31

the market.31 This amount coupled with his share of the cash income
paid by the estates peasants exceeded the 11.5R he would have
needed to purchase the required military equipment and horses for
two armed men.
The example of Lodygin illustrates how the general impression that
the pomeste system was functioning well may be deceptive. Lodygins
inability to meet his obligation may have been due to any one or a com-
bination of several factors. Although government regulations specified
that one armed horseman was to be provided for every 100 chetverti of
good land, only 27.5 ob. (275 chetverti) on the Lodygin pomeste were
actually classified as good land. The remainder of the 700 chetverti was
described as average or poor land. Government officials, furthermore,
used all the arable land on a pomeste as the basis for determining the
number of cavalrymen it should provide. But, in Lodygins case, 8.5 of
the obezh (85 cheti) of the 14 ob. (140 cheti) set aside for the direct
benefit of the Lodygin brothers (demesne) and not subject to peasant
cultivation, were in fallow. An additional three obzhi (30 cheti) had
been uncultivated for so long that they were overgrown with trees
and shrubs.32
In Lodygins case the assumptions used to calculate the amount of
surplus grain available for sale may have underestimated the house-
holds food allowance and estate needs. Those assumptions allowed for
a minimum amount of grain to be consumed and only by a minimum
number of adults. They did not take into account the possible need to
maintain children or other dependents of either the pomeshchik or
additional slaves. Nor did they allow for the use of the grains for other
purposes, such as feeding additional livestock. Although the records
contain no specific information about Fedor Lodygins family or about
the slaves or livestock he may have maintained on his share of the
estate, it is known that he and his brothers were obligated to support
their widowed sister-in-law and her three minor children. They, thus,
had to provide for more than the assumed, i.e., minimum, number of
people dependent upon the pomeshchik.

31
Rye was typically more expensive than oats and barley, but cheaper than wheat;
by using the price of rye for all the grains, these calculations, therefore, overestimate
Lodygins potential income. For relative prices, see Mankov, 1045.
32
RGADA, f. 1209, op. 3, No. 17144, ll. 131 ob. - 132 ob.; for a discussion of the
designation good land, Rozhdestvenskii 3323.
32 janet martin

The calculations are, furthermore, based on assumptions of a stable

market price and the ability of the pomeshchiki to market as much
grain as they wished to sell at that price. They did not allow for local
or more widespread disruptions to either production or marketing.33
They also assume that the pomeshchiki had no other expenses for
the maintenance of themselves and their families, although it is
unlikelythat the only expenses they incurred were for their military
equipment.
Thus, although the third of the 70-obezh pomeste allocated to Fedor
Lodygin could, in theory and possibly from the Muscovite officials
point of view, have been sufficient to support the costs of outfitting two
military servicemen, a range of factors, including his domestic obliga-
tions to support his sister-in-law and her family, may have interfered
with his ability to raise the monetary income necessary to purchase
arms, armor, horses, and other equipment for his military service.
Fedor Lodygins personal circumstances, as revealed in the land regis-
ters of 155153, offer some possible explanations for his difficulty in
meeting the military demands imposed upon him in 1556/57.
Although the boiarskaia kniga does not contain records for most of
the other pomeshchiki from Shelonskaia piatina, their individual situa-
tions, as described in the land registers, indicate that at least some of
Lodygins neighbors may have similarly found it difficult to meet
the new standardized service requirements. The estate of Gam, the son
Semen Tyrtov, provides an illustration.34 Tyrtovs pomeste, which
consisted of parcels of land in two parishes in Shelonskaia piatina, con-
tained a total of 31.5 obzhi or 315 cheti. The estate would have been
expected to provide one heavily armed (4R, 50k) and two lightly armed
(3R/man) cavalrymen. Rental income from the peasants on the estate,
which was paid exclusively in cash, totaled 15R, 2 altyns. This would
have been more than sufficient to pay the required military expenses
(10R, 50k). If three horses had to be purchased, the income would have
almost exactly matched expenses.

33
Some disrupting factors, such as poor harvests and epidemics, associated with
population declines, were noticeable in some portions of the Novgorod lands (although
not Shelonskaia piatina) and other sectors of northern and northwestern Russia by
the mid-sixteenth century. Shapiro (1974), 2901; Kolycheva, 173; A. A. Zimin,
Kratkie letopistsy XV-XVI vv., Istoricheskii arkhiv 5 (1950), 18; M. N. Tikhomirov,
Maloizvestnye letopisnye pamiatniki, Istoricheskii arkhiv 7 (1951), 2212.
34
RGADA, f. 1209, op. 3, No. 17144, ll. 165ob.-167ob.
 economic effectiveness of the pomeste system 33

But, the situation on Tyrtovs pomeste was delicate. Tyrtov himself

had not returned from Kazan. His wife, Efrosinia, and four sons
remained on his estate. The eldest son had entered service, but the
other three, aged 4 to 8 years old when the records were compiled, were
too young. In addition, the household supported at least nine male and
female slaves.35 Because all the rental income was in cash and demesne
production yielded only 12 korobei of rye, a significant portion of the
food required for the pomeshchiks household had to be purchased.
Using the norm of 250325 kg/adult/year, the eleven adults alone
would have required 27503575 kg of grain. Demesne production sup-
plied approximately half of that amount, leaving about 11752000 kg
or 12 to 20 cheti to be purchased. The cost would have been c. 2 3.2R.
If no horses had to be purchased and there were no other expenses, the
Tyrtov household could have met basic, minimal expenses from the
estate income. But, it is more likely, it, like the Lodygin household,
would have needed the service stipend to manage successfully.

Judging from a variety of indicators, the pomeste system was function-

ing successfully in the middle of the sixteenth century. The system had
expanded from the region of the Novgorod lands, where Ivan III had
introduced it. An administrative apparatus was developing its capacity
to oversee and manage it. And, the army that it supported was achiev-
ing impressive victories and extending Muscovys borders at the
expense of its neighbors. Yet, policies adopted in the middle of the cen-
tury that standardized military obligations and attached them to the
size of landholdings, while giving government officials a more ration-
ally based estimate of expected military resources, imposed a burden
on pomeshchiki.
An examination of the experiences and circumstances of individual
pomeshchiki has revealed some of the effects of these policies. Although
incomes derived from their landed estates appeared to be sufficient for
most pomeshchiki to support their households and also afford the
equipment necessary for their required military service, this was not
the case for a significant minority of them. Standardization had set ser-
vice norms at levels higher than many pomeshchiki could afford from

35
A. I. Kopanev, Materialy po istorii krestianstva kontsa XVI i pervoi poloviny
XVII v., Materialy i soobshcheniia po fondam otdela ruskopisnoi i redkoi knigi Biblioteki
Akademii Nauk SSSR (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1966), 1778; ASZ, v. 1, p. 335.
34 janet martin

their estate incomes. It became difficult for individual pomeshchiki, due

to their personal circumstances, including the enlargement of their
households, often with the addition of slaves, to fulfill military require-
ments, to meet expenses for both their domestic and military obliga-
tions.36 As a result, even some of those pomeshchiki, whose estate
incomes theoretically should have been large enough, were unable to
meet their military expenses using only estate incomes.
The pomeste system provided landed estates to military service-
men.But in the mid-sixteenth century, when norms for military ser-
vice and land tenure were standardized, many of those landed estates
provided through the pomeste system did not have the capacity to yield
the material support, in sufficient quantities and in a reliable manner,
that their pomeshchiki needed to fulfill their military obligations. For
those military servicemen, the supplemental government stipends or
salaries linked directly to their grade in the military ranks and their
appearance at military reviews in full armor and with their required
supplemental troops had become a necessary component of their
incomes.

36
B. N. Floria observed that the tension arising from competing demands from
domestic and military responsibilities was sharply felt by pomeshchiki in the 1570s and
1580s; Voina, 1789.
 THE HABSBURG DEFENSE SYSTEM IN HUNGARY AGAINST
THE OTTOMANS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: A CATALYST
OF MILITARY DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL EUROPE

Gza Plffy

The Ottoman Conquest and East-Central Europe

The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 demonstrated that the

Ottoman state had become a strong power in Eastern Europe, and the
subsequent occupation of Serbia (1459) and of the southern part of
Bosnia (1464) left the Ottoman state just one step removed from
becoming the clearly dominant power. This final step was taken in the
reign of Sultan Selim I (r. 15121520), who conquered a significant
portion of the Muslim Near East (Persia, 1514; Syria, 1516; and Egypt,
1517), bequeathing to his son Sultan Sleyman I the Magnificent
(r. 15201566) a vast and powerful empire rich in natural and material
resources. The Kingdom of Hungary, considered to be a strong mid-
dling power in Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages, could no
longer be compared with it (see Table). The Ottoman Empire now held
the power to play the decisive role in Eastern and Central European
politics.1

The Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary about 15202

Ottoman Empire Kingdom of Hungary
Area (Km2) 1,500,000 320,000
Population 1213,000,000 3,300,000
Annual Revenue 45,000,000 250260,000
(florins)
Armed Forces 100120,000 3040,000

1
Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 13001600, 3rd ed. (London:
Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1997); Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 13001650: The
Structure of Power (Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002); Gler Eren
et al., eds. The Great Ottoman Turkish Civilisation, 2 vols. (Ankara: Yeni Trkiye, 2000).
2
Gbor goston, Habsburgs and Ottomans: Defense, Military Change and Shifts
in Power. The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1998): 126141; Thomas
36 gza plffy

It therefore became evident in 1521, when the supporters of Asiatic

and maritime conquests lost out to the Istanbul court faction demand-
ing further conquests in Central Europe, that the next major goal of the
Ottoman Empire would be the annexation of the Kingdom of Hungary.3
The Realm of St. Stephen still played an important role in the Central
European region but its chances were negligible against the much
larger, much more populous and economically and militarily superior
Ottoman Empire. There had been a number of minor border clashes
already during the peaceful period (14631520) and the collapse of
Hungarys southern border fortress system was only a matter of time.4
But the Hungarian political elite did not acknowledge this until the last
moment.5 The changed power relationships at the beginning of the six-
teenth century, the fall of Nndorfehrvr/Belgrad6 on August 29,
1521, and the gradual weakening of the southern defense fortress sys-
tem finally made it obvious by 1521 that the end of the medieval
Hungarian kingdom was at hand.7

Winkelbauer, Stndefreiheit und Frstenmacht: Lnder und Untertanen des Hauses

Habsburg im konfessionellen Zeitalter, 2 vols. (Wien: Ueberreuter, 2003), 1. vol., 2324.
3
Pl Fodor, In Quest of the Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military
Administration in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2000), 105169.
4
Ferenc Szakly, Phases of Turco-Hungarian Warfare before the Battle of Mohcs
(13651526) Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 33 (1979): 65111;
idem, The Hungarian-Croatian Border Defense System and Its Collapse in From
Hunyadi to Rkczi: War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary, eds.
Jnos M. Bak and Bla K. Kirly (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland
Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press,
1982).
5
Andrs Kubinyi, Hungarys Power Factions and the Turkish Threat in the
Jagiellonian Period (14901526). in Fight against the Turk in Central-Europe in the
First Half of the 16th Century, ed. Istvn Zombori (Budapest: Magyar Egyhztrtneti
Enciklopdia Munkakzssg, 2004), 115145.
6
The locations of Realm of St. Stephen mentioned in this study and located today
not in the territory of the present Republic of Hungary (in alphabetical order):
rsekjvr (German Neuhusel, today Nov Zmky, Slovakia), Flek (today Filakovo,
Slovakia), Karlstadt (Hungarian Krolyvros, today Karlovac, Croatia), Kassa (Germ.
Kaschau, today Koice, Slovakia), Komrom (Germ. Komorn, today Komrno,
Slovakia), Lva (Germ. Lewenz, today Levice, Slovakia), Nndorfehrvr/Belgrad
(Germ. Griechisch Weienburg, today Beograd, Serbia), Pozsony (Germ. Pressburg,
Slovak Preporok, today Bratislava, Slovakia), Szabcs (today abac, Serbia), Szatmr
(Germ. Sackmar, today Satu Mare, Romania), Temesvr (Germ. Temeschwar, today
Timioara, Romania), Varasd (Germ. Warasdin, today Varadin, Croatia).
7
Ferenc Szakly, Nndorfehrvr, 1521: The Beginning of the End of the Medieval
Hungarian Kingdom. in Hungarian-Ottoman Military and Diplomatic Relations in the
Age of Sleyman the Magnificent, eds. Gza Dvid and Pl Fodor (Budapest: Lornd
Etvs University, Department of Turkish Studies; Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
Institute of History, 1994), 4476.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 37

The army of Sultan Sleyman far exceeded in both numbers and

quality the armed forces of the Hungarian-Croatian and Bohemian
ruler, Louis II Jagiello (r. 15161526), even though Louis IIs army was
considerable by Central European standards. The Ottomans now had
the largest, best-trained, and experienced standing army, which in con-
trast to European armies had substantial reserve and supply forma-
tions.8 These contributed significantly to the success of Ottoman
campaigns. In addition the Porte also had a growing Mediterranean
fleet. Confronting this large standing army was a Hungarian army
dependent on mustered troops provided by the Hungarian estates. The
defeat of the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohcs on August 29, 1526
was inevitable given the Ottomans commitment to the goal of occupy-
ing Hungary.9 But the fact that the sultan was unable to occupy Hungary
despite fact having the strongest army in the world was due to internal
political conditions in Hungary and especially to the strategic role now
played by the increasing power of the composite state of Ferdinand of
Habsburg, the Habsburg Monarchy of Central Europe.10

Elaboration on the Defense Strategy

Organizing the new border defense system during the decades after
1526 was a much more difficult task than it had been a century earlier
in the Late Middle Ages, when the primary area to be secured was on
the southern border of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Ottoman state

8
Gyula Kldy-Nagy, The First Centuries of the Ottoman Military Organization.
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31 (1977): 147183; Gbor
goston, Ottoman Warfare, 14531815. in European Warfare, 14531815, ed. Jeremy
Black (London: Macmillan, 1999), 118144.
9
Ferenc Szakly, A mohcsi csata [The Battle of Mohcs], 3rd ed. (Budapest:
Akadmiai Kiad, 1981); Gza Perjs, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary:
Mohcs 1526Buda 1541 (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland Lakes,
NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press, 1989),
173272; Gbor goston, Mohcs. in The Seventy Great Battles of All Time, ed. Jeremy
Black (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 100112; Jnos B. Szab, ed. Mohcs [(The
Battle of) Mohcs] (Budapest: Osiris Kiad, 2006); Jnos B. Szab, A mohcsi csata
[The Battle of Mohcs] (Budapest: Corvina Kiad, 2006); Jnos B. Szab and Ferenc
Tth, Mohcs (1526). Soliman le Magnifique prend pied en Europe centrale (Paris:
Economica, 2009).
10
Cf. recently R[obert] J[ohn] W[eston] Evans, The Making of the Habsburg
Monarchy 15501700: An Interpretation (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press-
Clarendon Press, 1979); Paula Sutter Fichtner, The Habsburg Monarchy 14901848:
Attributes of Empire (Houndmills-Basingstoke-Hampshire etc.: Palgrave-Macmillan,
2003), 1430; Winkelbauer, Stndefreiheit und Frstenmacht, 1. vol.
38 gza plffy

had since reached the peak of its development and its political and
military leadership was insistent on realizing its great goal: the occupa-
tion of Vienna, the residence city of the new Hungarian king from the
House of Habsburg, Ferdinand I (King of Hungary, 15261564; Holy
Roman Emperor, 15561564). Following the catastrophe at Mohcs
Hungary experienced political crisis: the Hungarian estates elected
John (Jnos) Szapolyai as King of Hungary on November 11, 1526, but
supporters of the before the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand elected him
to the same position on December 16. The looming civil war the camps
of the two legitimate kings significantly hindered the construction of a
new defense system, and a year later Szapolyai signed a treaty with the
Ottoman sultan.11
In fact through the first two decades after Mohcs King Ferdinands
Viennese military advisors lacked a fully worked out and concrete
defense plan against the Ottomans. During this period their main con-
cern was to suppress King John I (Szapolyai). Therefore the main task
given the commanders-in-chief in Hungary (Oberstfeldhauptmann in
Ungarn) of the Austro-German troops sent by King Ferdinand to his
new country was to secure the largest possible territory under the
authority of their ruler. Their strategy for defense against the Ottomans
offered nothing new from the strategy followed by the Hungarian kings
in the fifteenth century: they aimed only at holding up the Ottomans
on Hungarian and Croatian territory, before they could reach the bor-
ders of the Austrian Hereditary Provinces. In the 1530s, significant
German and Spanish garrisons were sent only to the most important
fortresses along the Danube (Esztergom, Komrom, and Gyr) and to
a few especially vulnerable Croatian frontier fortresses (Biha, Senj,
etc.).12

11
Gbor Barta, La route qui mne Istanbul 15261528 (Budapest: Akadmiai
Kiad, 1994); Sndor Papp, Die Verleihungs-, Bekrftigungs- und Vertragsurkunden der
Osmanen fr Ungarn und Siebenbrgen: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung (Wien:
Verlag der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003), 2751.
12
Christine Turetschek, Die Trkenpolitik Ferdinands I. von 1529 bis 1532 (Wien:
Notring, 1968); Gza Plffy, The Origins and Development of the Border Defence
System against the Ottoman Empire in Hungary (up to the Early Eighteenth Century).
in Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in
the Era of the Ottoman Conquest, eds. Gza Dvid and Pl Fodor (Leiden-Boston-Kln:
Brill, 2000), 1622; Zoltn Korps, La frontera oriental de la Universitas Christiana
entre 15261532: La poltica hngara y antiturca de Carlos V. in Carlos V. Europesmo
y Universalidad. El Congreso Internacional, Granada, 15 de mayo. 3. Los Escenarios del
Imperio, eds. Castellano y Castellano et al. (Madrid: Universidad de Granada, 2001),
321337.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 39

The fall of the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom, Buda on August

29, 1541 finally forced a caused radical change in the defense plans of
the Habsburg military command. In 1542 a force of 55,000 German,
Austrian, and Hungarian soldiers set out with the military and finan-
cial assistance of the Holy Roman Empire to reconquer Buda, although
it failed to do so.13 This failure was compounded by the loss of
Esztergom, Szkesfehrvr, and Pcs to Sultan Sleyman in 1543,
which allowed the sultan to surround Buda with a protective ring and
reinforce his own territories.14 This was the final straw, forcing a new
plan according to which the new border defense system would be
established deeper in the interior of Hungary and Croatia and nearer
the Austrian border. Threats once thought to be distant were now rec-
ognized as imminent. After 1543 Ferdinands Vienna residence lay
closer to Ottoman Esztergom than the capital of Carniola, Laibach, to
Ottoman Jajce which was in Bosnia. It was not enough just to fortify
Vienna.
Luckily, in contrast to the plains south of Buda, where the Ottomans
could take up quarters unhindered, in Transdanubia and north of the
Danube there were natural features (rivers, marshes, ranges, and Lake
Balaton itself) where the key elements in a new system, reinforced
existing castles and new castles, could be sited. Furthermore, in the
second half of the 1540s the Porte continued to be preoccupied with
campaigns in the east and the Mediterranean, offering the Habsburg
leadership in Vienna some breathing space. Emperor Charles V (r. 1519
1556) was helping to divide Ottoman forces by making expeditions
along the coast of North Africa and into the Mediterranean.15 After two

13
Christian Meyer, Die Feldhauptmannschaft Joachims II. im Trkenkriege von
1542. Zeitschrift fr Preussische Geschichte und Landeskunde 16 (1879): 480538;
rpd Krolyi, A nmet birodalom nagy hadi vllalata 1542-ben [The Great Expedition
of the German Empire in Hungary 1542] (Budapest: Athenaeum R. Trsulat, 1880);
Paula Sutter Fichtner, Dynasticism and its Limitations: the Habsburgs and Hungary
(1542). East European Quarterly 4 (1971): 389407; Antonio Liepold, Wider den
Erbfeind christlichen Glaubens: Die Rolle des niederen Adels in den Trkenkriegen des
16. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main-Berlin-Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 1998), 237252.
14
Klra Hegyi, The Ottoman Network of Fortresses in Hungary. in Dvid, and
Fodor, eds. Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs, 163164; eadem, A trk hdoltsg
vrai s vrkatonasga [Fortresses and Fortress Soldiers of Ottoman Hungary] 3 vols.
(Budapest: Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmia Trtnettudomnyi Intzet, 2007), 1. vol.
15
Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-
African Frontier (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Zoltn Korps,
Las luchas antiturcas en Hungra y la poltica oriental de los Austrias 15321541. in
Fernando I, 15031564: Socializacin, vida privada y actividad pblica de un Emperador
del Renacimineto, eds. Alfredo Alvar and Friecrich Edelmayer (Madrid: Sociedad
Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2004), 335370.
40 gza plffy

years of armistice Sultan Sleyman was therefore forced to sign a peace

treaty with the Habsburgs at Adrianople (Edirne) in 1547, where he
acknowledged the division of Hungary between the two Great Powers.16
He did not, however, give up the goal of occupying Vienna, and for that
reason continued the gradual occupation of Hungary.
In Hungary it was felt there was no time for procrastination. Several
times the Hungarian estates and aristocrats represented to King
Ferdinand that If Your Holy Majesty does not support this country
with your other provinces it will certainly happen that, due to the loss
of this country, the other provinces of Your Holy Majesty will be lost.17
In 1547 they appealed to their ruler in a special act at the Hungarian
Diet in Pozsony, There is a need for the financial and military aid by
the Holy Imperial and Royal Majesties [i.e. Charles V, and Ferdinand I]
and by the Imperial Princes, because the Hungarian war tax alone can-
not cover all of these.18 As the main theater of military operations
Hungary obviously depended on military and financial assistance from
the neighboring Austrian Hereditary Provinces and the Holy Roman
Empire. But it was also the case that the security of Hungary could not
be guaranteed without active and permanent participation by the
Hungarian estates and aristocrats in their own border defense.
Through the mutual interdependence of the Kingdom of Hungary
and the Habsburg Monarchy a consensus about defense strategy
against the Ottomans emerged in the second half of the 1550s. The
details of this strategy were developed jointly by military experts at
the Habsburg court in Vienna and by leading personalities among the
Hungarian estates. From the end of the 1540s and especially after
the Ottoman campaign of 1552 (which resulted in the fall of Szolnok,
Temesvr, and some smaller castles north of Buda in Ngrd County),
several military conferences were held both in Vienna and at the new
centre for Hungarian domestic policy deliberation, Pozsony.19 Drawing

16
Ernst Dieter Petritsch, Der habsburgisch-osmanische Friedensvertrag des Jahres
1547. Mitteilungen des Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung 38 (1985):
4980.
17
sterreichisches Staatsarchiv, Wien (hereinafter cited as StA Wien); Haus-,
Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Ungarische Akten (Hungarica), Allgemeine Akten Fasc. 39,
Konv. F, fol. 3637.
18
Magyar trvnytr (Corpus Juris Hungarici) 15261608. Trvnyczikkek [Acts of
15261608], accompanied by explaining notes by Dezs Mrkus (Budapest: Franklin-
Trsulat, 1899), 198199 (act 16, 1547).
19
On the two new capitals of Kingdom of Hungary after 1541 recently cf. Gza
Plffy, The Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy in the Sixteenth Century
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 41

on the experience of several earlier border fortress inspections, the

participants discussed the following: which castles in the future should
be reinforced and endowed with additional garrisons; which should be
destroyed; where to find financing for the new fortresses; what their
military manpower sources should be; and how to provide war sup-
plies and food to the soldiers. These factors all had to be considered in
order to impede the Ottoman advance.20
The essence of the emerging defense strategy was taking into account
the most important geographic and political characteristics of the
country in order to establish separate defense zones around the fron-
tier fortresses located in different parts of Hungary and Croatia. These
zones would be under the direction of the larger fortresses, in accord-
ance with uniform principles. Financing as well as manpower and stra-
tegic considerations played a very important role in the establishment
of the new border zones. Since income from Hungary was not suffi-
cient to finance the garrisons of the frontier fortresses, the estates of the
Austrian Hereditary Provinces and of the lands of the Bohemian
Crown (especially Moravia and Silesia) bordering Hungary, and even
of the Holy Roman Empire, acknowledged the need to contribute
financial aid to Hungarian border defense on an annual basis. For one
and a half centuries, beginning in the 1550s, the Austrian and Bohemian
provinces of the Austrian House of Habsburg in Central Europe were
forced to share the immense financial burden of this cause.21
The Aulic War Council (Wiener Hofkriegsrat), established in
November 1556, decisively assisted the development and realization
of a uniform defensive strategy against the Ottomans.22 This was

(Boulder, Co.: Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications Inc. Wayne-New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009) 6569.
20
Gza Plffy, A csszrvros vdelmben: A gyri fkapitnysg trtnete 1526
1598 [In the Defense of the Imperial City: History of the Border Defense System
around Gyr against the Ottomans, 15261598] (Gyr: Gyr-Moson-Sopron Megye
Gyri Levltra, 1999), 45133.
21
Gza Plffy,Der Preis fr die Verteidigung der Habsburgermonarchie: Die
Kosten der Trkenabwehr in der zweiten Hlfte des 16. Jahrhunderts. in Finanzen und
Herrschaft: Materielle Grundlagen frstlicher Politik in den habsburgischen Lndern
und im Heiligen Rmischen Reich im 16. Jahrhundert, eds. Friedrich Edelmayer,
Maximilian Lanzinner, and Peter Rauscher (Mnchen-Wien: Oldenbourg, 2003),
2534.
22
Oskar Regele, Der sterreichische Hofkriegsrat 15561848 (Wien: sterreichisches
Staatsarchiv, 1949); Gza Plffy, Die Akten und Protokolle des Wiener Hofkriegsrats
im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. in Quellenkunde der Habsburgermonarchie (1618.
Jahrhundert): Ein exemplarisches Handbuch, eds. Josef Pauser, Martin Scheutz and
Thomas Winkelbauer (Wien-Mnchen: Oldenbourg, 2004), 182195.
42 gza plffy

necessary because for two decades after the Battle of Mohcs the newly
acquired Hungarian Kingdom was nearly terra incognita for the
Viennese military leadership of Ferdinand I, and this posed a serious
obstacle to organizing the new border defense system. Initially the
Habsburg Court possessed very few field officers and officials who
were experienced in waging warfare against the Ottomans or conduct-
ing diplomacy with them and had as well familiarity with the geogra-
phy and strategic conditions in Hungary.23
By the 1550s this situation had gradually improved. In the course of
just one generation a cadre of nobles (primarily Lower Austrian) had
formed and had obtained enough experience in the Hungarian theater
of war to articulate a new defense strategy and exercise centralized
direction of border defenses and Eastern diplomacy. Suggestions from
Hungarian aristocrats knowledgeable of the frontline situation and
experienced in Ottoman warfare, made up for Lower Austrian nobles
lack of familiarity with the Hungarian conditions. They often voiced
their opinions about the chances of success in reinforcing border for-
tresses, or about the mode of supply to the soldiers, or made draft texts
and maps about the characteristics of a defense zone.24 In addition they
contributed large amounts of their personal wealth to border defense
from their own personal property and assigned the free labor of their
serfs (gratuitus labor) to fortifications work. The establishment of the
Aulic War Council decided the principle that the border defense of the
Hungarian Kingdom and the Central European Habsburg Monarchy
for a long time be a joint undertaking directed from the Viennese
Habsburg Court, primarily by Austrian and German counselors.

Organization of the New Defense System in Hungary and Croatia

Although the Ottomans continued to occupy substantial areas in

Hungary (Flek in 1554, Szigetvr and Gyula in 1566) up to the

23
Gza Plffy, Zentralisierung und Lokalverwaltung: Die Schwierigkeiten des
Absolutismus in Ungarn von 1526 bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. in Die
Habsburgermonarchie 1620 bis 1740: Leistungen und Grenzen des
Absolutismusparadigmas, eds. Petr Mata, and Thomas Winkelbauer (Stutgart: Franz
Steiner, 2006), 279282.
24
Gza Plffy, Eurpa vdelmben. Haditrkpszet a Habsburg Birodalom magya-
rorszgi hatrvidkn a 1617. szzadban [In the Defense of Europe: Military
Cartography on the Hungarian Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 16th and
17th Centuries], 2nd ed. (Ppa: Jkai Mr Vrosi Knyvtr, 2000).
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 43

conclusion of a new peace agreement at Adrianople in 1568, the imple-

mentation of the new defensive strategy soon yielded serious results.
Its success was facilitated by Lazarus Freiherr von Schwendi,25 one of
the best commanders and military theoreticians of Europe at this time,
serving in the Hungarian theater of war between 1565 and 1568. He set
out to perfect the defense system with several reform proposals (1566,
1568, 1569).26 Especially significant was Schwendis reconquest of some
crucially important border castles in Upper Hungary27 (Tokaj, Szatmr)
from John Sigismund (Jnos Zsigmond, son of Johan Szapolyai and
Prince of Transylvania, r.15401571) and his reorganization of their
supply system. From the early 1560s onwards Upper Hungary had a
dual function: it served as a protective bastion not only against the
Ottomans but against the Portes vassal state, the Transylvanian
Principality created by Sultan Sleyman in the 1550s.28 Schwendis
reforms established an improved system for the logistical support of
the Hungarian border fortresses.
Through the cooperation of the Aulic War Council and the
Hungarians estates a new border defense system in Hungary and
Croatia, ruled by the Habsburgs, was thereby established by the end of
the 1560s. Its main element was a line of frontier fortresses extending
from the Adriatic Sea all the way to the Transylvanian. This chain of

25
Wilhelm Janko, Lazarus Freiherr von Schwendi, oberster Feldhauptmann und Rath
Kaiser Maximilians II. (Wien: Wilhelm Braumller, 1871), 3190; Roman Schnur,
Lazarus von Schwendi (15221583): Ein unerledigtes Thema der historischen
Forschung. Zeitschrift fr historische Forschung 14 (1987): 2746; Thomas Niklas, Um
Macht und Einheit des Reiches: Konzeption und Wirklichkeit der Politik bei Lazarus von
Schwendi, 15221583 (Husum: Matthiesen, 1995).
26
Eugen von Frauenholz, Lazarus von Schwendi: Der erste deutsche Verknder
der allgemeinen Wehrpflicht (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1939), 92160:
no. 57.
27
It must be emphasized that Upper Hungary in the sixteenth century (i.e. the thir-
teen counties in the northeastern territory of the Kingdom of Hungary) was not identi-
cal with the later so-called Felvidk (North Hungary) in the nineteenth century but it
was much larger than the present Eastern Slovakia. The territory of the present Slovak
Republic does not cover the same territory as the former Upper and Lower Hungary
(i.e. the ten counties in the northwestern territory of the Kingdom of Hungary). Thus
the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hungarian and Slovakian geographic concepts
can not be applied to the sixteenth century.
28
Gbor Barta, Az erdlyi fejedelemsg szletse [The Making of the Principality of
Transylvania], 2nd ed. (Budapest: Gondolat Kiad, 1984); Bla Kpeczi et al., eds.
History of Transylvania, 3 vols. (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland
Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press,
2001), vol. 1, 593646; Cristina Fenean, Constituirea principatului autonom al
Transilvaniei [The Making of the Independent Principality of Transylvania] (Bucureti:
Editura Enciclopedic, 1997); Papp, Die Verleihungs, 5390.
44 gza plffy

100120 variously sized fortresses was organizationally divided into

six so-called Border Fortress Captain Generalcies (Grenzgeneralat)
(see Map).29 They were under the command of border fortress captain
generals (Grenzgeneral/Grenzoberst) headquartered in the main for-
tresses or fortified cities. Beginning with the Adriatic and progressing
to Transylvania we find:
1. The Croatian and Adriatic Border Fortress Captain Generalcy
(kroatische und Meergrenze), the first one to be established, with its
command center initially at Biha and, after 1579, at Karlstadt;30
2. The Slavonian or Wendish Captain Generalcy (slawonische/win-
dische Grenze), with Varasd as its center, after 1578 known as the
Wendish-Bajcsavr Captain Generalcy.31
3. The Kanizsa Captain Generalcy (kanischarische Grenze), compen-
sating for the loss of Szigetvr in 1566, renamed the Captain Gener-
alcy across from Kanizsa (gegenber von Kanischa liegende Grenze)
after the loss of Kanizsa in 1600;
4. The Gyr Captain Generalcy (Raaber/raaberische Grenze), protect-
ing the residence and imperial city of Vienna;32
5. The so-called Captain Generalcy Defending the Mining Towns
(bergstdtische Grenze) along the Garam River, with Lva and, after
1589, rsekjvr as its command city;
6. The Upper Hungary or Kassa Captain Generalcy (oberungarische
Grenze), with Kassa as its command center.

29
Plffy, The Origins and Development, 3949; idem, Die Trkenabwehr in
Ungarn im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert ein Forschungsdesiderat. Anzeiger der philoso-
phisch-historischen Klasse der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 137, no. 1
(2002): 112114.
30
Gunther Erich Rothenberg, The Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 15221747
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960); Dragutin Pavlievi, ed. Vojna krajina:
Povijesni pregled - historiografija - rasprave [Military Border: Historical Review,
Historiography, Studies] (Zagreb: Sveuilina Naklada Liber, 1984); Milan Kruhek,
Krajike utvdre i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevstva tijekom 16. stoljea [Border Fortresses
and Defense of the Croatian Kingdom in the 16th Century] (Zagreb: Institut za suvre-
menu povijest, 1995); Karl Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat: Die Militarisierung der
agrarischen Gesellschaft an der kroatisch-slawonischen Militrgrenze (15351881)
(Wien-Kln-Weimar: Bhlau, 1997).
31
Franz Otto Roth, Wihitsch und Weitschawar: Zum Verantwortungsbewutsein
der adeligen Landstnde Innersterreichs in Gesinnung und Tat im trkischen
Friedensjahr 1578. Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereines fr Steiermark 61 (1970):
151214; Diether Kramer, ed. Auf Sand gebaut Weitschawar / Bajcsa-Vr eine steirische
Festung in Ungarn (Graz: Selbstverlag der Historischen Landeskommission fr
Steiermark, 2005).
32
Plffy, A csszrvros vdelmben.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 45

In addition to the six captain generalcies, an important position in

the defense system was taken by the fortress of Komrom along the
Danube. Straddling the major military highway, it was of critical impor-
tance for the defense of Vienna. It was also the command center for the
Danube flotilla and its captain general served directly under the Aulic
War Council. Szatmr, a newly modernized border fortress in the
northeast, center of the so-called Transtisza or Szatmr Captain Gen-
eralcy, played a special role in the defense system of Hungary by imped-
ing attacks out of Transylvania, i.e., whereas other captain generalicies
defended against direct Ottoman attack, the Szatmr Captain Generalcy
defended Habsburg-ruled Hungary against attack from a Christian
state vassalized to the Ottomans and ruled by Hungarian princes.33
The fortress system was clearly diversified in depth as well. Due to
geographic and strategic considerations the frontier fortresses differed
from each other, with every fortress having its own specific impor-
tance. The principal fortresses were massively enlarged, had garrisons
of 1,0001,500 men, and became the pillars of the defense system and
the centers of military administration. These key fortresses were fol-
lowed by the large fortresses with garrisons of 400 to 600 men, and
then by smaller stone or palisade fortifications with 100 to 300 soldiers.
There were also guard and patrol ports with only about a dozen sol-
diers, but they had important functions, too,34 such as the surveillance
of enemy detachments and the provisioning of equestrian messengers.
The guardhouses also could signal with cannon35 or with bonfire
(Kreidschuss- und Kreidfeuersystem) and thereby alert the larger for-
tresses and the people living in the general area.36
Another element of the frontier defense system was the District
Captain Generalcy (Kreisgeneralat). There were four of these Kreisgen-
eral, functioning within the Border Fortress Captain Generalcies,

33
Gza Plffy, Die oberungarische Grenzoberhauptmannschaft und Siebenbrgen
zur Zeit der Regierung von Stephan Bthory (15711586): Ein unerledigter Aspekt in
der Bthory-Forschung. Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1, nos. 12 (1997): 113126.
34
Imre Sznt, A vgvri rendszer kiptse s fnykora Magyarorszgon 15411593
[The Organization and Flourishing Period of the Border Fortress System in Hungary,
15411593] (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1980), 2346.
35
German Mrser zu Kreidschssen or Lrmmrser = Latin mortarium pro dando
signo seu rumore or bombarda ad sonum apta = Hungarian hrlv mozsr or hrpat-
tanty = Croatish glasnik and Turkish haberdar.
36
Vasko Simoniti, Vojaka organizacija na Slovenskem v 16. stoletju [Military
Administration in Slovenia in the 16th Century] (Ljubljana: Slovenska Matica, 1991),
169179.
46 gza plffy

supplementing them by dealing with military questions relating to the

estates: they were headquartered in the Banate of Croatia-Slavonia, in
Transdanubia, in Cisdanubia (extending from Pozsony to Gmr
County) and in Upper Hungary. They were in charge of the increas-
ingly outdated noble levies (insurrectio), of the troops of the counties
and of the free royal cities, and of contingents of the district captain
generalcy. The latter contingents, usually of 300500 men, were
assigned to various fortresses or private castles and thus participated in
the defense of the outlying areas. South of the Drava River they helped
in establishing a separate minor defense zone. The small castles along
the Glina and Kulpa Rivers between the Croatian and the Slavonian
border captain generalcies, and their 500 soldiers led to the formation
of a frontier defense subsystem in this area, the so-called Confines of
the Ban (Banalgrenze).37 Thus the unified military jurisdiction of the
Croatian-Slavonian ban (banus Croatiae et Sclavoniae) decreased
sharply after 1526 and was now split into two separate segments.38
The emergence of the district captain generalcies and their persis-
tence until the end of the seventeenth century testified to the power
and influence of the Hungarian political elite. The district captain gen-
eralcies partly counteracted the diminishing position of the estates in
the field of military affairs. For a long time the estates were squeezed
out of the central control of military affairs by the establishment of the
Aulic War Council and by the fact that Austrian and German officers
headed certain border fortress captain generalcies (Gyr, Croatian and
Slavonian, and fortress Komrom) as well. This reflected Hungarys
dependence on financial-military assistance from neighboring
Austrian provinces. But the office of district captain general could be
held only by those who were native Hungarians (nativi Hungari), i.e.,
by Hungarian aristocrats, since the district captain general was paid by
the war tax voted by the Hungarian estates at the diet. This was also
true for the bans position in Croatia-Slavonia. A foreigner could only
be named to it if he first received a Hungarian diploma of indigenatus.

37
Archiv des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (hereinafter cited as Archiv GNM
Nrnberg), Weltliche Frsten, Siebenbrgen ZR 7657, fol. 97103 (1588); StA Wien,
Kriegsarchiv (hereinafter cited as KA), Alte Feldakten (AFA) 1593/9/1,5 (Sept., 1593);
Kaser, Freier Bauer, 330333.
38
Szabolcs Varga, Die Vernderungen der militrischen Rechtssphre des Banus
von Kroatien in der ersten Hlfte des 16. Jahrhunderts. in Kaiser Ferdinand I: Ein mit-
teleuropischer Herrscher, eds. Martina Fuchs, Terz Oborni and Gbor Ujvry
(Mnster: Aschendorff, 2005), 303322.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 47

One such person was Ban Christoph Ungnad (1576/781583), who

had a Hungarian wife.39
Thus the border defense system against the Ottomans in Hungary
and Croatia corresponding to the system of government dualism
(central administrative agencies and the estates institutions40) con-
sisted of two captain generalcies which partially overlapped: the sys-
tem of the Border Fortress Captain Generalcy, dependent upon the
Aulic War Council, and the District Captain Generalcy, which had an
estates character.

Modernization of the Border Defense after 1577

The dual organization of the defense system remained unchanged until

the Ottomans were driven out of Hungary at the end of the seventeenth
century. For one-and-a-half centuries there had been no need to
change it radically, since the Ottomans did not alter their own strategy
in Hungary, and, the system worked quite well in spite of various dif-
ficulties. The defense strategy did undergo some alterations over time,
but its foundations were laid down so well that all they subsequently
needed was some modernization.
The first such modernization took place in 1577. The experience of
the previous two decades was reviewed and it was decided to remedy
identified shortcomings and discuss whether modification of the
defense strategy was needed for the future. This was done by a major
military conference (Hauptgrenzberatschlagung) convened in Vienna
in mid-August, 1577 and lasting for one-and-a-half months.41 The
minutes, consisting of eight hundred pages (surviving in ten copies),

39
Jnos Gyz Szab, Az egri vr fkapitnyainak rvid letrajza [The Short Life of
the Commanders of the Fortress Eger]. Egri Vr Hradja [Review of Fortress Eger] 17
(1982): 1719.
40
Plffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, passim.
41
Istvn Gecze, Hadi tancskozsok az 1577-ik vben [Military Conferences in
the Year 1577]. Hadtrtnelmi Kzlemnyek [Review of Military History, Budapest] 7
(1894): 502537, and 647673; Winfried Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung:
Studien zum Kriegswesen des innersterreichischen Territorialstaates (15641619)
(Wien-Kln-Graz: Bhlau, 1973), 6569; Kurt Wessely, Die Regensburger harrige
Reichshilfe 1576. in Die russische Gesandtschaft am Regensburger Reichstag 1576, eds.
Ekkehard Vlkl, and Kurt Wessely (Regensburg-Kallmnz: Laleben, 1976), 3849;
Gza Plffy, The Border Defense System in Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries. in A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, eds. Bla K. Kirly, and
Lszl Veszprmy (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland Lakes, NJ:
Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press, 2002),
118121.
48 gza plffy

vividly document the significance of the sixteenth century military

reforms in Central Europe as well as their shortcomings.42 This meet-
ing was of major significance for the military history of the early mod-
ern Habsburg Monarchy, since it discussed the basics of defense policy
and the most important questions about the border defense. It was also
a necessary conference because the Ottomans had taken advantage of
the peaceful interlude since 1568 to become well-informed about the
size and condition of the Hungarian and Croatian-Slavonian border
fortresses and their garrisons, had surveyed the penetrable points of
the defense system, and exploited opportunities for limited armed
incursion (raiding) whenever they could. Consequently, the two most
important questions examined at the 1577 conference were how to
strengthen border defense against such raids and how to use the border
defense system to take the offensive against the enemy.
There was a clash of two fundamentally differing views over these
two questions. While Lazarus von Schwendi took the position of active
defense, Captain General of Upper Hungary Hans Rueber urged an
anti-Ottoman offensive with the help of European allies. Although
Ruebers recognition of the superiority of Christian firearms and tac-
tics was right, in the given situation of the Habsburg Monarchy
Schwendis position was more realistic. He had a clear understanding
of European political and diplomatic relations, of the fundamental
shortcomings of the Habsburg armys logistical system, and of the
financial means of the Aulic Chamber (Hofkammer) in Vienna, all of
which considerations precluded driving the Ottomans back at this
time. The accuracy of his judgment of the situation was completely
verified by the events of the Long Turkish War (15911606).
Acceptance of the strategy of active defense required a reorganiza-
tion of the border captain generalcies so that, by building on favorable
natural obstacles as much as possible, they would become hermetically
sealed and strictly controllable zones. Measures undertaken in the
following years reaped the first results of a modernized defense

42
1) StA Wien, KA AFA 1577/13/2; 2) sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien
(hereinafter cited as NB Wien); Cod. 8678; 3) ibid. Cod. 8345; 4) ibid. Cod. 12660; 5)
Archiv GNM Nrnberg, Weltliche Frsten, sterreich ZR 7670; 6) Magyar Orszgos
Levltr [Hungarian State Archives], Budapest (hereinafter cited as MOL Budapest);
P 108, Esterhzy csald hercegi gnak levltra [Archives of Prince Esterhzy Family]
Repositorium 77, Fasc. N; 7) rseki Knyvtr [Archbishop Library], Kalocsa; Kzirattr
Ms. 49 (25238); 8) Stadtarchiv Retz; sine no.; 9) Stiftsarchiv Geras; Fons Pernegg Hs.
6/1; 10) Obersterreichisches Landesarchivs, Linz; Schlsselberger Archiv Hs. 71.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 49

strategy. By the early 1580s, the border captain generalcies were

organized into efficient zones against Ottoman incursions. Landscap-
ing in the Kanizsa border area was an especially remarkable imple-
mentation, one that drew on the recommendations of border fortress
inspections. The valley of the Kanizsa stream in the vicinity of the main
fortress was flooded by mill dams, crossing places were blocked, guard
posts of various sizes were built along the crossing places, and for-
tresses not suitable for the system were blown up. As a result, crossing
places were more efficiently controlled with the help of new castles and
guard houses within sight of each other, and new incursions were pre-
vented by the establishment of a continuous water defense system.43
The policy of active defense also required transforming the centers
of the Border Fortress Captain Generalcies into modern fortresses.
Examples include the transformation of Gyr into a fortress city
(Festungsstadt),44 the reinforcement of Kanizsa in the southwest, and
the fortification of Szatmr in the east. In the Croatian and Adriatic
Border Fortress Captain Generalcy and in the Captain Generalcy
Defending the Mining Towns two completely new fortress cities forti-
fied in the Italian style (trace italienne) were built under the supervi-
sion of Italian architects. In 1579 a regular hexagonal fortress was built
at Karlstadt (1579), at the confluence of the Rivers Kulpa and Korana
in Croatia, replacing Biha, (by then in a completely defenseless situa-
tion).45 By the end of the 1580s rsekjvr was completed on the right
bank of the Nyitra River, upon the design of Ottavio Baldigara.46

43
Jzsef Kelenik, A kanizsai vdelmi vezet s termszetfldrajzi adottsgai a XVI.
szzad 70-es veinek vgn [The Defense Zone around Kanizsa and its Geographical
Characteristics in the Late 1570s]. in Vgvr s krnyezet [Border Fortress and
Environment], eds. Tivadar Petercsk, and Ern Peth (Eger: Dob Istvn Vrmzeum,
1995), 163174; Plffy, Eurpa vdelmben, 2328.
44
Lajos Gecsnyi, Ungarische Stdte im Vorfeld der Trkenabwehr sterreichs:
Zur Problematik der ungarischen Stdteentwicklung. in Archiv und Forschung: Das
Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in seiner Bedeutung fr die Geschichte sterreichs und
Europas, eds. Elisabeth Springer, and Leopold Kammerhofer (Wien-Mnchen: Verlag
fr Geschichte und Politik, 1993), 5777.
45
Milan Kruhek, Karlovac: Utvrde, granice i ljudi [Karlovac: Fortification, Border
and People] (Karlovac: Matica hrvatska, 1995); Andrej mega, Karlstadt Karlovac.
Zur Frage der befestigten Idealstadt. in Militrische Bedrohung und bauliche Reaktion:
Festschrift fr Volker Schmidtchen, ed. Elmar Brohl (Marburg: Deutsche Gesellschaft
fr Festungsforschung, 2000), 6270.
46
Gyrgy Domokos, Ottavio Baldigara: Egy itliai vrfundl mester Magyarorszgon
[Ottavio Baldigara: An Italian Military Architect in Hungary] (Budapest: Balassi
Kiad, 2000), 3841, 4952.
50 gza plffy

The military conference of 1577 also brought about radical chang-

es in the uniform central control of the border defense system,
although this was for political rather than purely military reasons.
Following the conference the Aulic War Council transferred the
control of the Croatian and Slavonian captain generalcies to the Inner
Austrian (Styrian, Carniolan and Carinthian) estates, which had
disposed of an increasing move towards independence since 1564. It
was possible to take this measure because these territories, facing the
main Ottoman conquests along the Danube, were considered to be
flanking fronts by the central military leadership. Therefore the com-
mand of the southern two border fortress captain generalcies was
taken over by the newly established Inner Austrian War Council
(Innersterreichischer Hofkriegsrat) of Graz in January 1578.47 As a con-
sequence the command and administration of the defense system
against the Ottomans were divided in two until the beginning of the
eighteenth century.
Furthermore, the war conference of 1577 had systematically ana-
lyzed the most important aspects of military administration and logis-
tics. Examining each fortress in turn they assessed the state of
fortifications, the problems of war materiel and food provisioning, dif-
ficulties in providing pay for soldiers, problems of maintaining disci-
pline, the training of the Austrian nobility in the border areas, etc. It
was even considered (not for the first time) moving the Teutonic
Knights to Hungary.48 Not all the conferences resolutions were fully
implemented because of the increasing indebtedness of the Aulic
Chamber,49 but these deliberations did place the administration of the
border defenses and the supply of the frontier fortresses on a sounder
basis lasting through the seventeenth century. This was the most
important long-term result of the 1577 military reforms.

47
Viktor Thiel, Die innersterreichische Zentralverwaltung 15641749. Teil I: Die
Hof- und Zentralbehrden Innersterreichs 15641625. Archiv fr sterreichische
Geschichte 105 (1916): 4858, 96100, no. III (February 2, 1578); Schulze,
Landesdefension, 7377.
48
H[ans] v[on] Zwiedineck-Sdenhorst, ber den Versuch einer Translation des
Deutschen Ordens an die ungarische Grenze. Archiv fr sterreichische Geschichte 56
(1878): 403445; Wilhelm Erben, Die Frage der Heranziehung des Deutschen Ordens
zur Vertheidigung der ungarischen Grenze. ibid. 81 (1894): 513599.
49
Peter Rauscher, Zwischen Stnden und Glubigern: Die kaiserlichen Finanzen
unter Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II. (15561576) (Wien-Mnchen: Oldenbourg,
2004), 343354.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 51

The Sixteenth Century Military Revolution in Central Europe

The reforms of 1577 seem to support the conclusions made recently by

some Hungarian historians50 that build upon the models of Military
Revolution in Western Europe proposed by Michael Roberts and
Geoffrey Parker and argue for the existence of a Military Revolution in
Hungary and Central Europe.51 A number of American and European
military historians have sharply criticized the Roberts and Parker
models of Military Revolution, rejecting their claims as to what consti-
tuted revolution and how they had periodized military change.52
Jeremy Black, for example, sees the truly revolutionary changes in
European military affairs occurring only during the decades after 1660.
This later period was indeed more decisive in terms of quantitative
(size of forces and logistic support) and qualitative (armament, uni-
forms, engineering) effects. But the success of these later changes was
made possible by certain innovations made by the Habsburg Monarchy
during the fifty years after 1526. The foundations necessary for the
establishment of a standing army were laid at this time. The Hungarian
theater of war and the border defense system against the Ottomans
was a very important catalyst for military development in sixteenth-
century Central Europe.
It would be more accurate to talk about a series of military changes
and reforms at the end of the Late Middle Ages and the beginning of
the Modern Era. The first major military change took place in Central
Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century. Even though it
moved slowly, it was of such importance that it is not an exaggeration
to call it a military revolution. It would be a mistake to seek in this
period the changes involving the establishment of standing armies,
which took place only in the second half of the seventeenth century.

50
Jzsef Kelenik, The Military Revolution in Hungary. in Dvid, and Fodor, eds.
Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs, 117159; Domokos, Ottavio Baldigara, 1929;
Jnos B. Szab, A mohcsi csata s a hadgyi forradalom [The Battle of Mohcs and
the Military Revolution]. Part III, Hadtrtnelmi Kzlemnyek [Review of Military
History, Budapest] 117, no. 2 (2004): 443480; 118, no. 3 (2005): 573632.
51
Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 15501650. in idem, Essays in
Swedish History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 195225; Geoffrey Parker,
The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 15001800, 2nd
rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Brian M. Downing, The
Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early
Modern Europe (Princeton-New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992); David Eltis,
The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (New York: Barnes and Noble
Books, I. B. Tauris, 1995).
52 gza plffy

It would be just as much a mistake to see mature absolutist regulations

in Ferdinand Is political and centralization program. Rather, the
changes occurred primarily in administrative and technical matters
(where there were great changes between the end of the Late Middle
Ages and the end of the sixteenth century) and especially in regard to
force size. In the second half of the sixteenth century almost three
times as many soldiers served in the new border defense system against
the Ottomans (2022,000 men) compared to the defense system in
southern Hungary prior to 1526 (78,000).53
These numbers are impressive even in a European context. No other
country in Europe maintained such a large standing army over such
a long frontier and in so many fortresses in this period. This was true
for Poland, for Muscovy in the seventeenth century, for Venice in
Dalmatia, and even for Habsburg Spain in the struggle with the
Ottomans.54 In the case of the Spanish Habsburgs it was Mediterranean
naval warfare that predominated and the most innovation in this area
was the establishment of a standing marine infantry (tercio de la
armada).55 The approximately 20,000 Hungarian-Croatian border for-
tress troops was an impressive force size even in comparison with the
later standing armies given that the total population of the Kingdom of
Hungary at the end of the sixteenth century numbered only 1,800,000

52
Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society,
15501800 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1991); The Military Revolution
Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford
J. Rogers (Boulder-San Francisco-Oxford: Westview Press, 1995); Bernhard R. Kroener,
Das Schwungrad an der Staatsmaschine? Die Bedeutung der bewaffneten Macht in
der europischen Geschichte der Frhen Neuzeit. in Krieg und Frieden: Militr und
Gesellschaft in der Frhen Neuzeit, eds. Bernhard R. Kroener, and Ralf Prve
(Paderborn-Mnchen-Wien etc.: Schningh, 1996), 123; La Rvolution militaire en
Europe (XVeXVIIIe sicles), ed. Jean Brenger (Paris: Institut de Stratgie Compare-
Economia, 1998); Jean Chagniot, Guerre et socit lpoque moderne (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 2001), 275295.
53
Gza Plffy, Trkenabwehr, Grenzsoldatentum und die Militarisierung der
Gesellschaft in Ungarn in der Frhen Neuzeit. Historisches Jahrbuch 123 (2003):
130131.
54
M[ichael] E[dward] Mallett, and J[ohn] R[igby] Hale, The Military Organization
of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984), 452, 466; Hess, The Forgotten Frontier; Jerzy Ochmaski, Organizacja obrony w
Wielkim Ksistwie Liteuskim przed napadami Tatarw krymskich w XVXVI wieku
[Organization of Defense in the Great Principality of Lithuania against the Raids of
Crimean Tartars in the 15th and 16th Centuries]. Studia i Materiay do Historii
Wojskowoci [Studies and Documents of the Military History, Warsaw] 5 (1960):
348398.
55
Esteban Mira Caballos, Las Armadas imperiales: La Guerra en el mar en tiempos
de Carlos V y Felipe II (Madrid: Cartone, 2005).
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 53

persons.56 Not counting women and children, more than one per cent
of the population was under arms, and this was no less than what could
be seen at the turn of the eighteenth century. At that time the standing
army in the Habsburg Monarchy represented 1.25 percent of the popu-
lation and even in France the ratio was only 2 percent.57
Another very significant innovation was the establishment of the
Aulic War Council in 1556, for it meant that the royal councils preva-
lent in the Late Middle Ages had been replaced by a regular adminis-
trative body of experts. The War Council became the first central
institution of military affairs in Europe that met regularly. It is less well
known that even before its establishment, a number of military admin-
istrative positions were created in Vienna that were initially responsi-
ble for the staffing and support of the Hungarian and Croatian border
defenses; after the Habsburg standing army was established in the sev-
enteenth century these positions became independent sections and
specialized offices of the military administration,58 reflecting the course
of the later military revolution theorized by Jeremy Black.
The Chief Arsenal Officer (Oberstzeugmeister) was responsible for
the logistics of the border defense fortresses and the troops in the field
and for the supervision of the arsenals. This was a position created by
Emperor Maximilian I (14931519) in Innsbruck in 1503 when he
instituted his military reforms.59 During the reign of Ferdinand I the
holders of this office were stationed in Vienna.60 Their primary respon-
sibility was the organization of the provisioning of military supplies to
the Hungarian border defense system.61 After 1578 the Inner Austrian
provinces also had their own officer with this title (Innersterreichischer
Oberstzeugmeister) at Graz. The Viennese officer was responsible for
the supplies to the four mentioned captain generalcies from the Drava

56
Gza Dvid, Studies in Demographic and Administrative History of Ottoman
Hungary (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1997), 112.
57
Kroener, Das Schwungrad an der Staatsmaschine, 68.
58
Michael Hochedlinger, Austrias Wars of Emergence: War, State and Society in the
Habsburg Monarchy 16831797 (London-New York-Toronto etc.: Longman, 2003),
98150.
59
Gerhard Kurzmann, Kaiser Maximilian I. und das Kriegswesen der sterreichis-
chen Lnder und des Reiches (Wien: sterreichischer Bundesverlag, 1985), 151152.
60
StA Wien, Hofkammerarchiv (hereinafter cited as HKA), Niedersterreichische
Herrschaftsakten (NHA) W61/C/90/AB, rote Nr. 300/12, fol. passim.
61
Gza Plffy, ed. Gemeinsam gegen die Osmanen: Ausbau und Funktion der
Grenzfestungen in Ungarn im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Katalog der Ausstellung im
sterreichischen Staatsarchiv 14. Mrz 31. Mai 2001 (Budapest-Wien: sterreichisches
Staatsarchiv-Collegium Hungaricum Wien, 2001), 1112, no. II5b.
54 gza plffy

River to border of Transylvania; the Graz officer was responsible for

the Croatian and Slavonian generalcies.
The largest imperial, royal, and estate arsenals were established in
the administrative centers of the Austrian and Bohemian domains, in
Vienna, Graz, Laibach, Gorizia, Linz, Innsbruck, Prague, Brnn, and
Wiener Neustadt. Similar arsenals were established in the centers of
the frontier regions, such as Karlstadt, Varasd, Kanizsa, Gyr,
rsekjvr, Kassa, and Szatmr. Among the latter the Kassa arsenal was
the most noteworthy. Like the Innsbruck, Vienna and Graz arsenals, it
was a military workshop with a gun foundry, gunpowder mill, various
workshops and even a boat-building facility. In 1567 General Lazarus
von Schwendi recommended that a position be created for an officer to
be in charge of this arsenal. The Upper Hungary Deputy Chief Arsenal
Officer (Oberstzeugmeisterleutnant in Oberungarn) acted on behalf of
his chief in Vienna.62 The importance of the position was such that the
first appointee, in 1567, Adam von Wieznick, having shown his effec-
tive at Kassa, was promoted and transferred to Vienna.63
In the sixteenth century the late medieval armories (Rstkammer) in
the major political-military centers of the Habsburg Monarchy were
replaced by variously equipped imperial-royal and estate Zeughaus
that were the precursors of the later modern arsenals.64 This was a
major step forward in comparison with fifteenth-century practice and
testified to the enormous proliferation of firearms. The border for-
tresses were equipped with guns and harquebuses and the infantry
fighting the Ottomans were supplied with increasing numbers of har-
quebuses. Between 1552 and 1577 the number of rifles kept in the
Kassa arsenal increased greatly.65 Approximately 7580 percent of the

62
Gza Plffy, Kriegswirtschaftliche Beziehungen zwischen der
Habsburgermonarchie und der ungarischen Grenze gegen die Osmanen in der zweiten
Hlfte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Unter besonderer Bercksichtigung des kniglichen
Zeughauses in Kaschau. Ungarn-Jahrbuch (Munich) 27 (2004): 2831.
63
StA Wien, KA Sonderreihe des Wiener Hofkriegsrates, Bestallungen Nr. 151;
StA Wien, HKA NHA W61/C/90/B, rote Nr. 300/2, fol. 10501053; MOL
Budapest, E 211, Magyar Kamara Archvuma [Archives of the Hungarian Chamber],
Lymbus, Series II, Ttel 2, fol. 77.
64
Cf. Hartwig Neumann, Das Zeughaus: Die Entwicklung eines Bautyps von spt-
mittelalterlichen Rstkammer zum Arsenal in deutschsprachigen Bereich vom XV. bis
XIX. Jahrhundert. Teil I. Textband (Koblenz-Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 1992).
65
1552: StA Wien, HKA Hoffinanz Ungarn rote Nr. 3, 1552 Jan.Febr. fol. 4354;
1577: StA Wien, KA AFA 1577/13/2; Jzsef Kelenik, Szakllas puskk XVI. szzadi
magyarorszgi inventriumokban [Arquebuses in the Armor Inventories of the
Sixteenth Century Hungary]. Hadtrtnelmi Kzlemnyek [Review of Military History,
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 55

soldiers fighting the Ottomans in the great battles of the Long Turkish
War at the end of the century were armed with harquebuses.66
Improvements in siege artillery led to enormous changes in
Hungarian fortress construction. The strongest border fortresses of the
late medieval Hungarian frontier defenses (Temesvr, Nndorfehrvr,
Szabcs, Jajce, etc.) cannot be compared to the new fortresses and forti-
fied cities built in the second half of the sixteenth century in the Italian
style. Vienna, Gyr, Komrom, Szatmr, and the newly-built rsekjvr
and Karlstadt can be compared favorably with the most modern for-
tresses of the Netherlands, Italy, or Malta, as attested (with some criti-
cisms) by Daniel Speckle in his famous 1589 work, Architectura von
Vestungen.67 The older and smaller fortresses were still suitable for con-
trolling minor Ottoman incursions, like the Spanish guardhouses (pre-
sidio) in North Africa or the patrol ports in Malta, Poland, and
Muscovy.68
The increase in fortress building for the new defense system
in Hungary brought about the establishment of a new military archi-
tectural organization which deserves attention even by Western
European standards.69 During the 1550s and 1560s the Aulic War
Council employed several dozen, mostly Italian, military architects.70
Their activities were coordinated in the border fortress captain gener-
alcies by a Superintendent of Construction (Bausuperintendent).71

Budapest] 35, no. 3 (1988): 484520; Gyrgy Domokos, A kassai kirlyi hadszertr
fegyverzete s felszerelse a XVIXVII. szzadi inventriumok tkrben [Weapons
and Munitions of the Royal Armory of Kassa based on his Inventories in the 16th and
17th Centuries]. ibid. 110, no. 4 (1997): 680686.
66
Kelenik, The Military Revolution, 130154.
67
Daniel Speckle, Architectura von Vestungen (Straburg: Bernhart Jobin, 1589).
68
Hess, The Forgotten Frontier; Alison Hoppen, The Fortification of Malta by the
Order of St. John 15301798, 2nd ed. (Malta: Mireva Publications, 1999), 173186;
Stephen C. Spiteri, Fortresses of the Knights (Malta: Book Distributors Limited, 2001),
322331; Ochmaski, Organizacja obrony.
69
Cf. the French organization: David Buisseret, Ingnieurs et fortifications avant
Vauban: Lorganisation dun service royal aux XVIeXVIIe sicles (Paris: d. du CTHS,
2002).
70
Leone Andrea Maggiorotti, Gli architetti militari, II. Architetti e architetture mili-
tari, vol. II (Roma: Libr. dello Stato, 1936); Endre Marosi, Partecipazione di architetti
militari veneziani alla costruzione del sistema delle fortezze di confine in Ungheria tra
il 1541 e il 1593. in Rapporti veneto-ungheresi allepoca del Rinascimento, ed. Tibor
Klaniczay (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1975), 195215.
71
Tibor Koppny, A magyarorszgi vgvrak ptsi szervezete a XVIXVII.
szzadban [The Architectural Organization of the Hungarian Border Fortresses in the
16th and 17th Centuries]. in Hagyomny s korszersg a XVIXVII. szzadban
[Tradition and Modernization in the 16th and 17th Centuries], ed. Tivadar Petercsk
(Eger: Dob Istvn Vrmzeum, 1997), 155161.
56 gza plffy

After 1569 their activities were supervised from Vienna by a

newly designated officer, the Fortress Construction Commissioner
(Oberstbaukommissar).72 This office was held primarily by Austrian
noblemen who had seen previous service in the Hungarian and
Croatian frontier areas. They included Franz von Poppendorf, Niklas
Graf zu Salm und Neuburg, and Erasmus Braun. After 1578 the fortifi-
cations of the Slavonian and Croatian captain generalcies were con-
trolled from Graz.
Even in the sixteenth century there were differences in fortress
architecture specialization. Some, such as Ottavio Baldigara, Pietro
Ferabosco, and Dominico de Lalio distinguished themselves in the
design and overall direction of fortress construction while others, e.g.
Giulio Turco, specialized in the creation of detailed architectural
plans.73 Most of them were active in the actual construction phases.
The members of an Italian fortress-building family, the Angielinis from
Milan, the brothers Natale and Nicol and the son of Natale, Paolo
limited their activities to the preparation of maps of the frontier areas
since the Aulic War Council implemented a complete survey of the
Kingdom of Hungary during the 1560s. This effort is attested by the
seven surviving copies of a detailed map of the borderlands in Vienna
and five in Karlsruhe.74
This military cartography deserves serious consideration even by
European standards because it represents the earliest precursor to the
systematic eighteenth century military mapping activities in Central
Europe. The Hungarian and Croatian maps were prepared locally on
the basis of visits to all the border regions. The Ottoman conquests not
only contributed to growth in government affairs and military admin-
istration but also gave a substantial boost to the science of military
cartography in the monarchy. The Angelinis and the other architects
were the sixteenth century precursors of the military engineers and
military cartographers who became formally trained and specialized
during the second half of the seventeenth century.

72
StA Wien, KA Hofkriegsrtliches Kanzleiarchiv VI 6 (April 15, 1569).
73
Domokos, Ottavio Baldigara, 3052; Pter Farbaky, Pietro Ferrabosco in
Ungheria e nellimperio ausburgico. Arte Lombarda (Milano) 139, no. 3 (2003): 127
134; Mira Ilijani, Der Baumeister Dominico de Lalio und sein Kreis an der windis-
chen Grenze. in Siedlung, Macht und Wirtschaft: Festschrift Fritz Posch zum 70.
Geburtstag, ed. Gerhard Pferschy (Graz-Wien: Leykam, 1981), 369379.
74
NB Wien, Cod. 8609, fol. 2, fol. 3, fol. 4, fol. 5, fol. 6; NB Wien, Kartensammlung
AB 9.C.1; Landesarchiv Baden-Wrttemberg, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe;
Gebundene Karte und Plne Hfk. Bd. XV, fol. 1, fol. 2, fol. 3, fol. 4, fol. 5.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 57

There was also an increasingly independent organization for the

direction of building pontoon bridges and for the provisioning of food
supplies. In 1557 there was already an official who served under the
Aulic War Council and who was responsible for the pontoon bridges
over the Danube (Oberstschiff- und Brckenmeister).75 After January
1558 there was an independent official, the Chief Provisions Supply
Officer for Hungary (Oberstproviantmeister in Ungarn). The title was
changed in 1569 to Chief Military Provisions Commissioner for
Hungary (Oberstproviantkommissar in Ungarn) and this officer was
charged with arranging the provisioning of the border fortresses most
important for the defense of Vienna.76 After 1578 there was a second
such officer who was stationed in Graz; both of these officials came
from the Austrian nobility.
An important task of the military and fiscal administrations was the
provision of pay for the garrisons in the border fortresses and for the
troops in the field. The muster for the former was supervised from
Vienna by two Chief Muster Masters for Hungary (Oberstmustermeister
in Ungarn), while the Military Paymaster for Hungary (Kriegszahlmeister
in Ungarn) was responsible for the pay of all soldiers. The latter was
stationed in Vienna and was usually referred to as the Aulic Military
Paymaster (Hofkriegszahlmeister). Although the muster master and
paymaster were both subject to the Aulic Chamber in Vienna their
activities were also supervised by the military administration. Because
the duties of the Military Paymaster for Hungary were complex they
were shared by several regional or Land paymasters for Styria, Lower
Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Upper Hungary, etc.77 The centralization
of the military and fiscal affairs was in accordance with compromises
reached with the estates. The principal purpose of the arrangement was
to deliver the Aulic and estate support to the frontier defenses as rap-
idly as possible.
It is not unreasonable to ask why, in view of these significant military
improvements, the Long Turkish War at the end of the century resulted

75
Wilhelm Brinner, Geschichte des k. k. Pionnier-Regimentes in Verbindung mit einer
Geschichte des Kriegs-Brckenwesens in Oesterreich (Wien: Ludwig Mayer, 1878), 79,
611613, no. 1.
76
Istvn Kenyeres, A vgvrak s a mezei hadak lelmezsei szervezete a XVI.
szzadban [The Organization of the Food Supply of the Border Fortress Garrisons and
the Troops in the Field in the 16th Century]. Fons (Forrskutats s Trtneti
Segdtudomnyok) [Fons (Sources Research and Auxiliary Disciplines of History),
Budapest] 9, nos. 13 (2002): 179186.
77
Plffy, Der Preis fr die Verteidigung der Habsburgermonarchie, 3942.
58 gza plffy
the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 59
60 gza plffy

in major successes for the Ottoman forces, including the occupation of

Biha in 1592, of Eger in 1596, and of Kanizsa in 1600. The answer
again must be sought in the differences between the Ottoman Empire
and the Habsburg Monarchy in military and fiscal administrative
structure, army, and logistics.
Contrary to frequently expressed opinion the Ottoman Empire and
its military affairs did not start to deteriorate during the second half of
the sixteenth century. Even in the middle of the seventeenth century
the Ottomans were still an evenly matched opponent for any European
army.78 The Europeans developed more effective firearms, more mod-
ern fortifications, and improved maneuvers, but the Ottomans were
able to counter these with relative ease. The Ottoman Empire was still
well ahead of the Central European Habsburg Monarchy in territory,
population, and financial and natural resources. Thus it was much less
of a strain for them to maintain their system of fortresses in occupied
Hungary than it was for the Habsburgs.79 The Ottomans were still the
only ones in Europe who had a strong standing army highly experi-
enced in siege warfare. The total number of forces the Ottomans could
mobilize both nationally and also in the Hungarian theater of war was
substantially above those available to the Viennese military leadership.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, their independent logistic sup-
port organizations and their well-structured supply system made it
possible to mobilize their forces early in the spring and invade Hungary
at the beginning of summer.
In contrast the Habsburg military leadership had no standing forces
other than a few regiments and the garrisons of the Hungarian
and Croatian border fortresses. Because of the composite nature of
the Habsburg Monarchy,80 throughout the entire war the central

78
Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns
in Hungary, 15931606 (Wien: Verband der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften
sterreichs, 1988); Gbor goston, Disjointed Historiography and Islamic Military
Technology: The European Military Revolution Debate and the Ottomans. in Essays
in honour of Ekmeleddin hsanolu, vol. I, Societies, cultures, sciences: a collection of
articles, eds. Mustafa Kaar, and Zeynep Durukal (stanbul: Research Centre for
Islamic History, Art and Culture, 2006), 567582, etc.; Gnhan Breki, Contribution
to the Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries use of Volley Fire during the Long
OttomanHabsburg War of 15931606 and the Problem of Origins Acta Orientalia
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59 (2006): 407438.
79
Gbor goston, The Cost of the Ottoman Fortress-System in Hungary in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. in Dvid, and Fodor, eds. Ottomans, Hungarians,
and Habsburgs, 195228.
80
Cf. recently Winkelbauer, Stndefreiheit und Frstenmacht, 1. vol.; Plffy, The
Kingdom of Hungary, 5359.
 the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 61

administration had to depend for troops, pay and supplies, carts and
draught animals on subsidies granted by the German, Austrian,
Hungarian, and Bohemian estates. The slowness with which subsidies
of these were provided made the Christian forces practically immo-
bile.81 Thus it took less time for the Ottoman forces to get from Istanbul
or Adrianople to Buda than it took for the Imperial forces to reach
their encampments on the nearby Austrian-Hungarian border.
The principal thing the military development and revolution of the
sixteenth century accomplished in Central Europe was to stop the
Ottoman advances in the Kingdom of Hungary. Even this was possible
only by losing much of the Realm of St. Stephen and by mobilizing all
the available military and financial resources of the Habsburg domains.
Expelling the Ottomans from Hungary became possible only at the
end of the seventeenth century when the new (second) military revolu-
tion of the early modern era resulted in the first significant standing
army in the Central European Habsburg Monarchy.

81
Some examples from the Long Turkish War: Alfred H. Loebl, Zur Geschichte des
Trkenkrieges von 15931606, 2 vols. (Prag: Rohlek und Sievers, 18991904); Gza
Plffy, A ppai vr felszabadtsnak ngyszzves emlkezete 15971997 [The
Anniversary of the Liberation of the Border Fortress Ppa from the Ottomans, 1597
1997] (Ppa: Jkai Mr Vrosi Knyvtr, 1997); Zoltn Pter Bagi, Az 1595-ben
Esztergom ostromra rendelt csszri hadsereg szervezete s felptse [The
Organization and Structure of the Imperial Army to Siege of Esztergom in 1595].
Hadtrtnelmi Kzlemnyek [Review of Military History, Budapest] 113, nos. 23
(2001): 391444.
 THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN MILITARY IN THE REIGN
OF KING STEFAN BATHORY (15761586)

Dariusz Kupisz

In 1569 Poland and Lithuania concluded a full union on the strength of

which they shared sovereignty, a Sejm (parliament), currency, and for-
eign policy. They retained separate government offices, treasuries, and
armies. The state, henceforth named the Commonwealth of Two
Nations (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodow), comprised about 800,000
square kilometers in area and was inhabited by nearly eight million
people. Its borders stretched from Gdansk, Pomerania, and Greater
Poland in the west to the Smolensk region and the lands along the
Dnepr in the east. To the south the Commonwealth abutted upon the
Carpathians and the Dnestr River, and to the north it reached Estonia.
Within the borders of the Commonwealth could be found towns that
in present day serve as the capitals of five European states (Warsaw,
Vilnius, Kiev, Minsk, and Riga). In terms of territorial expanse in
Europe the Polish-Lithuanian state was surpassed only by Russia and
the Ottoman Empire and in respect to population was behind only
France, Spain, and the German Empire.
In 1576 Stefan Bathory acceded to the throne of the Commonwealth.
He possessed considerable experience at war, experience won in the
civil wars waged in Hungary and in conflicts with the Habsburg and
Ottoman empires. His barely ten-year reign left a clear mark on Polish-
Lithuanian military organization. The new ruler quickly perceived its
strengths and defects and carried out a whole range of changes and
innovations in regard to the organization of the armed forces. Not all
changes were of his making; a number of reforms were carried over
from the reign of Zygmunt II August, the last of the Jagiellonian kings,
while others had emerged from an evolutionary process, from the
Polish armys adaptation to certain aspects of modern warfare. But the
extinction of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1572 had significantly cur-
tailed the development of the armed forces. They were not in the con-
dition to defend the frontiers effectively against the Crimean Khanate
and Muscovy. In 1577 Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible occupied a large part
of Inflanty (Livonia), driving the small Polish-Lithuanian garrisons
from their castles. For the new ruler, King Stefan Bathory, it was clear
64 dariusz kupisz

that defeating this enemy and recovering the lost provinces required
greater military power.

Changes in the Organizational Structure of the Armed Forces

When Bathory took the throne the armed forces of the Commonwealth
relied first of all upon the levee en masse of the nobility and gentry
(pospolite ruszenie) and secondly upon mercenary forces. The pospolite
ruszenie originated in medieval knights service obligations, and its
foundation was the principle of nobiliary military service duty. In
Poland every nobleman (szlachcic, pl. szlachta) had to appear in person
for campaign with his own equipment and his own train (poczet) of
retainers. The numerical strength of the pospolite ruszenie depended
upon the number of landed proprietors in the districts participating in
the levee. The towns provided infantry and wagons for the pospolite
ruszenie in proportion to the number of their households. Practice in
Lithuania was similar, where the obligation to render military service
to the realm was owed by all holding district lands: the szlachta, Tatars,
cossacks and new colonist townsmen and peasants. The assessment of
military service obligations was carried out on the basis of land units
called services (dworzyszcza, zagrody), and so the Lithuanian variant
of the pospolite ruszenie was often called the landed military service
(suba ziemska). From 1566 every ten zagrody units had to provide
one fully-armored cavalryman; if someone held less land than this he
still had to appear for campaign according to his means, even on foot.
In the Kingdom of Poland the pospolite ruszenie was optimally about
50,000 men, although in practice the number of armed szlachta never
approached this.1 A register from 1567 showed around 28,000 suby
ziemskiej in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, of which 24,400 were cav-
alry and 3,600 were foot.2 But the Union of 1569 incorporated Podlasie,
Volhynia and Ukraine into the Kingdom of Poland, reducing the terri-
tory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by half; so in Bathorys reign one
could count at most several thousand Lithuanians obliged to serve in
the pospolite ruszenie.3

1
M. Kukiel, Zarys historii wojskowoci w Polsce (London, 1949), 29.
2
I. I. Lappo, Velikoe kniazhestvo Litovskoe vo vtoroi polovine XVI st. (Iurev, 1911),
579580.
3
M. Liubavskii, Litovsko-russkii seim (Moscow, 1900), 639640.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 65

The pospolite ruszenie was comparable in quality to the cavalry

mobilized from allodial and service conditional lands in Muscovy. But
it was not dependent in the same degree upon the organizing authority
of landlords and officials. In mobilizing for campaign the pospolite
ruszenie was grouped into territorial banners (chorgwie) under the
authority of the castellans (kasztelanowie), which were in turn joined
together in district and palatinate forces under the command of the
palatines (wojewodowie). In Poland the pospolite ruszenie could be mo-
bilized only by the king, with the agreement of the Sejm; it could not be
divided, and it had to be paid if it campaigned beyond the borders of
the realm. In Lithuania the suba ziemska could be divided into
smaller forces under commanders of the Lithuanian army, and in spe-
cial circumstances it could be called up without the vote of the Sejm.4
The pospolite ruszenie could be slow to assemble, undisciplined, and
easily politicized, so it was not suited for offensive war. In the sixteenth
century it was not advantageous to rely upon it too often and it was
seen as the last defense of the realm. It retained a certain military
value in the eastern palatinates, in Red Ruthenia, Podole (Ukr. Podilia),
Wolyn (Ukr. Volhynia), and Ukraine, which were often raided by the
Tatars and where there were fewer noble servicemen for defense. It was
at its most effective in Lithuania, called up by Zygmunt I Stary and
Zygmunt II August for their wars against Muscovy.
Already in the first half of the sixteenth century the Polish kings had
tried to reform the process for mobilizing the pospolite ruszenie and
substitute taxes for service. But the Sejm would not consent to this.
Stefan Bathory valued the Polish szlachtas predisposition for pospolite
ruszenie service, connected with their training in equestrian skills and
armed service from early childhood. At the outset of his reign he made
an attempt to reorganize the principles for convening and using the
pospolite ruszenie. At his coronation Sejm he observed that even issuing
three summons (wici) calling up the szlachta in arms at frequent inter-
vals was not enough to prevent violent antagonism. He tried to demon-
strate the senselessness of the rules prohibiting division of the Polish
pospolite ruszenie and the rules requiring that only the king could lead
the ruszenie. The Sejm shared some of his opinions on this but still
would not consent to new prescriptions, confident that the szlachta
assembling for campaign would make their own immediate decision in

4
K. Olejnik, Stefan Batory 15331586 (Warsaw, 1988), 109110.
66 dariusz kupisz

regard to the kings postulates. Bathory had not expected to have to

negotiate with the szlachta in wartime. Unable to alter the terms of
pospolite ruszenie service, he could not rely often on it in event of war
with Muscovy. He could avail himself only of the Lithuanian suba
ziemska, which yielded just 10,000 men when mobilized and was used
largely for support operations in his 15791581 campaigns.
The king reached the decision that it was better to present the Sejm
with measures for taxes to support a regular army. In general the mer-
cenary system widespread in western Europe was not as accepted in
Poland. Rather than taking on hire ready-made mercenary units
formed by military enterprisers, mercenaries were recruited abroad by
commanders nominated by the king.5 The mercenary contingent was
composed of standing detachments that were called up periodically in
wartime.
Lithuania had no standing forces. On the other hand in Poland in
15623 the Sejm called up a Quarter Army (wojsko kwarciane), main-
tained from a quarter of the net revenue from crown estates. The
organizational principles of the Quarter Army were confirmed at the
Lublin Sejm in 1569, when a special treasury at Rawa in Mazovia was
created to use the funds collected from the starostowie and stewards of
crown lands to pay for 3,000 horse and 1,000 foot.6 Although of unques-
tionable martial valour derived from many years service, the troops of
the Quarter Army were not numerous, and they had to remain stand-
ing in Ukraine and Podole to protect the southeastern frontier endan-
gered by the Crimean Tatars; they could not play a significant role in
the case of warfare on other fronts.
Stefan Bathory understood this perfectly well. Although his election
to the throne of the Commonwealth had been received with equanim-
ity in the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman Empire, the Tatars had still
attacked Podole and Red Ruthenia in April 1577.7 In order to secure
the southeastern frontier while preparing for war in Livonia the king
had to restore the Quarter Army, which had been reduced in strength

5
W. Majewski, J. Teodorczyk, Wojsko, in Polska w epoce odrodzenia. Pastwo,
spoleczenstwo, kultura (Warsaw, 1986), 295.
6
T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia ora polskiego 9631795 (Warsaw, 1981), 292;
Z. Spieralski, Wojskowosc polska w dobie odrodzenia, in Zarys dziejw wojskowoci
polskiej do roku 1864, t. 2, ed. J. Sikorski (Warsaw, 1965), 301.
7
L. Podhorodecki, Chanat krymski i jego stosunki z Polska w XVXVIII w. (Warsaw,
1987), 117.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 67

during the interregnum. In the summer of 1578 he stayed at Lviv

reviewing detachments of the Quarter Army. By the authority of the
Crown administration it was quartered in Ukraine and on the Dnester
and strengthened with additional garrisons in the main castles defend-
ing the realm from the direction of the Black Sea steppe (Kiev, Bila
Tserkva, Cherkas, Kaniv, and Kamianets Podilsk).8
The foundation of the armed forces of Poland and Lithuania during
their most important military conflicts had been a temporary hired
force supported by taxes voted by the Sejm. It was called into being
upon war alert and existed only for the duration of hostilities. There
was no shortage in the Commonwealth of men familiar with the
military arts and eager to take on military service either locally or
abroad. Sometimes soldiers were also hired abroad, especially in the
Reich.
During the sixteenth-century wars waged before Bathorys accession
to the throne Poland had maintained several thousand hired soldiers.
The record number of 19,400 was hired for pay in 1538 during Hetman
Jan Tarnowskis Chocim (Ukr. Khotyn) campaign in Moldavia. During
Zygmunt II Augusts war with Muscovy the Sejm had voted taxes
sufficient to hire 1012,000 men (15631566). At that time Lithuania
was in condition to pay 67,000 horse and 12,000 foot.9 The costs of
maintaining hired units were high, however, so they were discharged
from service at wars end, as was the practice in all other European
states.
Stefan Bathory managed to convince the szlachta to assume an
unprecedented financial burden for hiring more troops. The Sejm ses-
sions of 1578 and 1579 voted taxes for war against Muscovy which,
combined with other revenue sources, amounted to one million zotys
annually. Similar funding was provided in the next years. The greater
part of this money was earmarked for hiring troops. In 1579 the
Crown took on hire around 12,800 soldiers, 7,300 of them cavalry and
6,500 infantry, while Lithuania hired 9,500 (3,220 horse, 6,330 foot).
The next year Poland paid 10,000 mounted and 6,000 foot troops,
while Lithuania paid for 5,650 troops (3,300 horse and 2,350 foot). In
1581 the largest hired contingent of the entire sixteenth century was

8
K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, 112.
9
M. Plewczynski, Liczebnosc wojska polskiego za ostatnich Jagiellonow (1506
1572), Studia i Materialy do Historii Wojskowoci, 31 (1988), 4353.
68 dariusz kupisz

raised: Poland paid 22,000 troops (half cavalry, half infantry) and
Lithuania paid 5,000 men.10 While the Polish Crown was able to sig-
nificantly increase its contingent of hired troops, this gradually
exhausted the financial capacity of Lithuania.
Among the various kinds of hired troops one must distinguish
the court detachments established by special royal letter in 1576. The
court detachments comprised select heavy-armored cavalry (husarz,
s., husaria, pl.) and Hungarian-model infantry about 2,000 of the
former and 1,000 of the latter during the war with Muscovy. The per-
sonal example of the monarch departing for war had long induced
many representatives of the magnateria and szlachta to appear for ser-
vice in his train. Bathory managed scrupulously to avail himself of this
and before each campaign sent out lists urging them to join the cam-
paign army with their troops hired at their own expense. The hope of
winning the new kings favor was such that a great many private detach-
ments of hired troops and volunteers were always to be found in the
Polish and Lithuanian armies fighting Muscovy. In the Kingdom of
Poland Jan Zamoyski was the biggest contributor of private troops;
during the Polotsk operation he led 600 infantry while deploying 950
infantry and 1000 cavalry at Velikie Luki. In Lithuania it was the
Radziwill princes who led the way; they brought to Polotsk 1,800 horse
and 100 foot and mounted forces of similar size for the next two cam-
paigns. The private poczet trains from Poland and Lithuania in each of
Bathorys three Muscovite campaigns totalled about 15,000 troops a
third of the army.11
Already in the first months of his reign Bathory had been persuaded
that the small number of infantry was a major deficiency of the Polish
army. This had been felt most painfully in 1577 during the seemingly
endless blockade of Gdansk. Then the resumption of war against the
Muscovites in Livonia forced more attention on siege operations. In his
instructions to the provincial dietines preceding the Sejm in 1578 the
king praised the improvements made in the Polish and Lithuanian cav-
alries but complained there were not enough infantry. As a solution to
this he proposed the introduction of the kind of recruiting system

10
For a comparative study of troop strengths during Bathorys war with Muscovy,
see H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie podczas wojny inflanckiej 15761582.
Sprawy organizacyjne, cz. IIIV, Studia i Materiay do Historii Wojskowoci 17 (1971),
p. 102; pt. 2 (1971), 107108; 18 (1972), 39.
11
H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, cz. IIIV, 99, 109, 33.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 69

practiced in Hungary, Sweden, and Muscovy. Bathory thought that the

Sejm should accept responsibility for ordinances committing all cate-
gories of estates. However, the constitution was invoked in 1578 as
permitting the raising of recruits only from Crown settlements in the
Kingdom of Poland (recruiting in Lithuania would be introduced only
in 1595).12
The kings subsequent universals specified the Sejm constitution.
One recruit was to be levied from every twenty fields (any) of crown
estate. Each soldier had to purchase at his own expense a matchlock,
powder and shot, a saber, hatchet, and attire in the color (usually some
shade of blue) set by his captain (rotmistrz). In return the cultivation of
his share of an land would be exempt from duties and taxes. In peace-
time a soldier of this Select Infantry (piechota wybraniecka) would
stand under the supervision of his rotmistrz; in wartime he would be
sent on campaign, for which he would receive pay. The recruits were
formed into company detachments (roty) numbering several tens to
over four hundred men, according to the territorial system, i.e., accord-
ing to the realms division into palatinates (wojewodztwa). Experienced
infantry officers from the more esteemed elements of the szlachta were
to be hired as the commanders.
It soon became apparent that the szlachta and the holders of Crown
estates were distrustful of this new infantry formation because it
diverted their peasants from labor on the land. They ignored or delayed
the Sejms resolutions and so only a small number of recruits were
selected for Bathorys first Muscovite campaign. During the Velikie
Luki campaign in 1580 1,100 of them were raised, and 1,800 in the fol-
lowing year. Full strength (2,000 infantrymen from Poland and 500
from Lithuania) was reached only after Stefan Bathorys death. Even
though the piechota wybraniecka formation was not large it would
endure for 150 years and render significant service to the realm. It was
used on the battlefield, in besieging fortresses, and in the engineering
of fortified camps, fortifications, bridges, etc.13
The Zaporozhian cossacks, who had created their own unique force
structure on the southeastern frontier, could provide support for the
detachments of hired troops and Quarter Army troops. Cossack raids

12
For the Sejm Constitution and the royal universal establishing the piechota
wybraniecka in 1578, see: Wypisy rdowe do historii polskiej sztuki wojennej, tom 5,
Z. Spieralski and J. Wimmer (Warsaw, 1961), 4751.
13
J. Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej do roku 1864 (Warsaw, 1961), 139141.
70 dariusz kupisz

on the Ottoman lands and Crimean Khanate could exacerbate political

crises, raising the threat of war and providing pretext for Tatar retalia-
tory attacks on Ukraine. But a significant number of cossacks were
taken on royal pay for the first time to participate in the defense of
Poland in 1572. They were designated registered cossacks, to distin-
guish them from the cossacks residing in Zaporozhia. There were
scarcely 300 registered cossacks in the reign of Zygmunt II August. But
Bathory understood they could provide valuable support for the armed
forces of the realm. In 1578 he issued a universal expanding the regis-
ter. It was henceforth to comprise 530 cossacks turned over to the com-
mand of Michal Wisniowiecki, starosta of Cherkasy. Registered
cossacks were forbidden to make attacks on Moldavia or Ottoman or
Crimean Tatar territory, as those who made such provocative attacks
were to be dealt with as enemies of the king. During the war with
Muscovy registered cossacks were fielded under lieutenant Jan
Oryszowski and executed attacks on Starodub and Pochep. Several
separate detachments of cossacks outside the register, recruited by
Polish magnates, were used in diversionary operations on the border
with Muscovy.14
Another small supplement to the Polish army were the contingents
provided by vassals, the rulers of Ducal Prussia and Courland. The for-
mer was obligated to send on campaign 100 horse, but the new king
gave his approval for him to instead send 500 infantry to Polotsk. The
Duke of Courland usually provided 100150 infantry.15
Bathorys unquestionable achievement was the realms willingness
to shoulder the burden of huge financial and organizational efforts
over several years. In 1579 around 56,000 men were taken under
arms, of which 41,000 were soldiers deployed in the main theater of
war. In the following year mobilization efforts were somewhat greater
(56,000 men), with 48,000 troops assigned to the main theater of
war. During the final campaign in 1581 55,000 troops were raised,
47,000 of which were led against Muscovy. Never again would the
Commonwealth exert itself for the army on such a scale or for such
duration. Never again would so many foreign troops be hired.
Contemporary observers remarked upon the multinational character

14
M. Franz, Wojskowo Kozaczyny Zaporoskiej w XVIXVII wieku. Geneza
i charakter (Torun, 2002), 104106.
15
D. Kupisz, Poock 1579 (Warsaw, 2003), 132.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 71

of the army, comprised of Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Germans,

and Scots.16
The disparate composition and structure of the national army
demanded effective command and discipline. The highest authority
over all the armed forces in Poland and Lithuania was the king, assisted
by the hetmans: the Grand Hetman, Field Hetman, and Court Hetman.
The Grand Hetman functioned as minister of war and did not always
lead troops in action in person. The Field Hetman commanded the
Quarter Army or hired troops as representative of the Grand Hetman,
while the Court Hetman was called to the court troops. In the second
half of the sixteenth century the office of hetman was no longer for life
and the monarch changed commanders at each turn of campaign.17
Stefan Bathory was able to find suitable men for command. Throughout
his reign Mikoaj Radziwi was Grand Hetman in Lithuania, with his
son Krzysztof holding the position of Field Hetman. In Poland the
defense of Podole and Ukraine was directed by Field Hetman Mikoaj
Sieniawski, in place of the Grand Hetmans, who were leading the army
on the Muscovite front. During the first Muscovite campaign of 1579
the position of Grand Hetman was held by Mikoaj Mielecki; during
the second campaign the position was left unfilled, as Chancellor Jan
Zamoyski was then serving as the monarchs right hand. In 1581 the
king appointed Zamoyski as Grand Hetman, committing some blun-
ders in his appraisal of the service of this powerful magnate; he con-
ferred on Zamoyski hetman rank for life, which had legal precedent
under Polish conditions. The next hetmans, both Grand and Field,
were appointed for life as well, and not always to advantage. Assistance
in administrative, treasury, and organizational matters was provided
by other officials serving the king and hetmans: the Quartermaster
(Obony), the Custos (Stranik), and several field secretaries. Command
of the artillery and of various administrative matters connected with
the artillery was in the hands of the Starszy nad armata. Military disci-
pline was under the purview of a special board on military offenses,
formed under the Grand Hetman at the outset of each campaign and
comprising appointees representing each nationality and officers
enforcing their authority in camp. In the Polish army there was also a

16
R. Heidenstein, Pamietniki wojny moskiewskiej, edition of J. Czubek (Lww,
1894), 5657.
17
M. Plewczynski, Naczelne dowdztwo armii koronnej w latach 15011572,
Studia i Materiay do Historii Wojskowosci 34 (1991), 90.
72 dariusz kupisz

medical service, a circle of doctors and surgeons having been formed

for this during the war with Muscovy, non-existent before Bathorys
accession.18

Types of Troops and Innovations in Armament

The final years of Zygmunt II August and the reign of Stefan Bathory
were a period of significant changes in the organization and armament
of the Polish cavalry. In the years of the last Jagiellonian king all cavalry
units had a mixed character, i.e., were formed upon the example of the
hussar lancers (s. husarz, pl. husaria) and the cossacks. What deter-
mined whether a given company was cossack or hussar was the pre-
ponderance of one or the other type; for example, Filon Kmita
Czarnobylskis hussar company (1564) consisted of 140 hussars and 60
cossacks.19 From the beginning of his reign Bathory worked towards
uniform unit composition and during his Muscovite campaigns mixed
units appeared just sporadically.20 This was of tactical as well as organi-
zational advantage.
The traditional lancers in heavy armor had disappeared from the
battlefield and been replaced by hussars for charges upon the enemy.
On the basis of Bathorys 1576 universal the hussars became a separate
and independently functioning cavalry and remained closely associ-
ated with Polish military art down to modern times.21 They had evolved
from the Serbian racowie lancers who had been introduced into Poland
from Hungary and had originally served as light cavalry. By Bathorys
time, though, husarz lancers were using some protective armor in the
form of half-armor protecting the torso and arms and helmets of
szyszak style. The half-armor consisted of an articulated cuirass (or
plates connected by leather), or a solid cuirass atop an articulated lower
section, with the arms protected by chain mail sleeves or by plate mail
sleeves with a metal collar. The szyzsak helmet had a mantle covering
the back of the neck and a hanging nose-guard and cheek-pieces
protecting the face and at the same time providing perfect visibility.

18
K. Gorski, Historia jazdy polskiej (Cracow 1894), 53.
19
See Wypisy rdowe do historii polskiej sztuki wojennej, 2629.
20
An example of the persistence of a few mixed units: Wojciech Strzechowskis
company in 1580 comprised 108 hussars and 60 cossacks. Archiwum Gowne Akt
Dawnych w Warszawie. Akta Skarbowe Wojskowe, dzial 82, rekopis 5, p. 44.
21
J. Ciechowski, A. Szulczynski, Husaria (Warsaw, 1981), 18.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 73

The main offensive weapons were a lance some five meters long (hol-
low, for reduced weight), and a saber and koncerz sword. The lance was
employed for shock charge, used just once and then abandoned, as it
shattered upon striking the enemy, after which the hussar fought with
koncerz, a straight sword 1.2 to 1.4 meters long, the blade triangular or
quadrilateral in cross-section; it was designed mainly for thrusting.
The saber (szabla), modeled upon Hungarian and Turkish sabers,
served for close combat and was for slashing.22 In addition the hussar
had wheel-lock pistols holstered on his saddle. Attached to the back of
the saddle were the wooden-frame wings for which Polish hussars
were so famous.23
The old light cavalry of cossack formation (not to be confused with
Zaporozhian cossacks) was also transformed. Under Bathory there
were two types of cossacks: medium and light. The former were in
chain-mail shirts with rows of plates attached across the breast, with
the head protected by a szyszak helmet or a misiurka (a steel plate bowl
protecting the crown of the head, from which a chain-mail mantle
hung). The latter eschewed protective armor and resembled the
Circassian petyhorcowie serving in the Lithuanian cavalry. Both types
used the same weapons, i.e. sabers, pistols, spears, and often bows or
wheel-lock carbines.
Among the types of light cavalry were the petyhorcy, the Moldavian
companies, and the cossack strzelcy (Latin, sagittarii) using sabers,
long matchlocks, or bows. The hired mercenary Western European
arkebuzerzy were of an entirely different character; they wore half-
armor and carried rapiers and long arquebuses. Sporadically relied
upon were German rajtar cavalrymen equipped with half-armor, rapi-
ers and pistols. The former and the latter generally fought in close
order, mixed at will, but not that many of them were hired into the
Polish army. In the eastern theater of war the predominant tactics
emphasized rapid overwhelming shock from cavalry charging with
cold steel at which the hussars and cossacks excelled. It is no wonder,
then, that under Bathory the hussars comprised 85% of the Polish cav-
alry, with the cossacks constituting 10% and the Western European
cavalry the remaining 5%.24

22
Z. Zygulski, Bro w dawnej Polsce na tle uzbrojenia Europy i Bliskiego Wschdu
(Warsaw, 1975), 191.
23
J. Ciechowski, A. Szulczynski, Husaria, 104.
24
T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia ora, 319.
74 dariusz kupisz

The foreign contingents were hired abroad and organized according

to the structure prevailing abroad. Meanwhile the Polish and Lithuanian
cavalry were divided into companies of 150200 hussars or 100 cos-
sacks and light cavalry.25 Recruitment into these various formations
(hussar, cossack, light cavalry) was conducted according to the tradi-
tional poczet towarzyski system. The commander (rotmistrz) received a
list przypowiedni signed by the king, a document serving as a kind of
patent of nomination as well as royal authorization to form the detach-
ment. The rotmistrz then inquired after the most suitable and respected
men of his own district. The organization of the recruited detachment
was reminiscent of the medieval knights lance or craftsmens guild;
the masters were towarzysze, comrades, suitable men of exclusively
noble or petty noble descent, recruited to lead particular poczet trains
in the company, which trains were armed and equipped at the com-
rades own cost. The ordinary soldiers (pocztowi) of each train corre-
sponded to journeymen who were armed and equipped like a towarzysz.
The pocztowi tended to be of the poorer nobility, although it sometimes
happened they could be of plebeian origin. The towarzysze contracted
with the rotmistrz as to terms of their service and received their pay
from his hands. A typical company of hussars consisted of 25 towar-
zysze and five trains, that is, 125 rank-and-file troopers so each poczet
consisted of one towarzysz and five pocztowi. Every towarzysz held his
own service of servants attending to his horses and wagon. These
servants were not numbered in the detachment, however, and did not
join the company in battle. The rotmistrz was assisted by a lieutenant
(porucznik) chosen from among the towarzysze, who could replace
him in command if needed, and by an ensign (chory) serving as
standard-bearer.
At this time cavalry predominated in the Polish-Lithuanian army,
outnumbering infantry about two to one. The reasons for this were not
only the szlachtas traditional cultivation of the knightly condition
but also practical considerations. War was most often waged in the
eastern and southeastern parts of the realm, where the frontier was
vast and mostly lowland, requiring patrolling by large numbers of cav-
alry. Without a large and quality cavalry force it would have been dif-
ficult to fight such enemies as the Tatars, Turks, and Muscovites.

25
According to pay records for cavalry in 1579. Archiwum Gowne Akt Dawnych
w Warszawie. Akta Skarbowe Wojskowe, dzia 82, rekopis 7, pp. 3440.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 75

Already before Bathorys reign the infantry was considered a formation

auxiliary to the cavalry. However, the struggle with Muscovy over the
numerous castles on the northern frontier, along with the military
reforms undertaken by Ivan the Terrible, required a change in this.
Ivan the Terribles creation of a streltsy formation had increased the
firepower of the Muscovite army.26 For this reason Bathorys prepara-
tions for each of his campaigns against the tsar involved heavier
emphasis on the infantry, artillery, and engineering forces. True, infan-
try accounted for just 30% of his army on the campaigns of 15791581,
the larger part of the army consisting of cavalry from the Lithuanian
pospolite ruszenie or private trains. In the Polish units hired infantry
comprised about half the troops, though, and in his final campaign
against Pskov they significantly outnumbered the cavalry.27
During his war with Muscovy Bathory aimed at enlarging the infan-
try from all possible sources. It came to resemble a mosaic of various
formations. In terms of organization, armament, and tactics one
can distinguish Polish, Hungarian, German, and Scots formations. In
terms of recruitment the Polish infantry could also be divided into
troops raised on hire (zacina) and troops raised by selection
(wybraniecka).
Whereas the select piechota wybraniecka was raised from the peas-
antry, the Polish hired infantry consisted first of all of townsmen. It was
formed like the towarzysz system for the cavalry. Members of the
szlachta were its officers the szlachta being disinclined to serve in the
ranks. This reinforced the tendency to treat recruitment by hire into
the cavalry as a knightly tradition, in defense of the realm, with service
in the infantry considered as suitable for the socially plebeian and dis-
paraged by the szlachta estate. Bathory tried to recast both stereotypes
and tried to form separate infantry units from the szlachta. However,
for his last campaign against Muscovy barely 650 hired infantry from
the wealthier szlachta were raised.28
In terms of unit organization and armament there were no real dif-
ferences between the hired and select infantries. A company of Polish
infantry typically numbered 200 men and was divided into decuries.

26
A. V. Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily Russkogo gosudarstva v XVXVII vv. (Moscow,
1954), 48; P. P. Epifanov, Voisko i voennaia organizatsiia, Ocherki russkoi kultury
XVI, v., tom 1 (Moscow, 1979), 345.
27
H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, cz. IV, 104105.
28
H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, cz. IV, 81.
76 dariusz kupisz

Its command consisted of a captain, lieutenant, ensign, and 1820

decurions. There was a drummer or fifer. During the 15581570 phase
of the Livonian War each decury had contained eight musketeers with
muskets and sabers, one heavily armored pikeman or halberdier, and a
shieldbearer with a very large pavise. Guided by his own experience
and by the Hungarian model of infantry armament Bathory made
some important changes in the Polish infantry. He introduced for the
first time a standard infantry uniform a blue upan coat, cap, a cloak
with red lining, and green trousers. Of greater importance were his
changes to armament. The king ordered that every infantryman be
equipped with musket, saber, and a hatchet useful for sappers work.
He rejected full body armor, the pavise buckler, and the pike. As a
result of these changes Polish infantry equipment differed not at all
from the equipment the kings troops had used in Hungary and
Transylvania. Upon his coronation Bathory also brought in 600 hajduk
infantry, and their strength rose to around 3,000 over the course of his
struggle with Muscovy.29
Thanks to Bathorys reform the Polish infantry assumed a purely
musketeer composition upon the Hungarian model. Both formations
were equally effective on the defense and in the seizing of fortresses; in
battle on open ground they massed considerable firepower from their
ten-rank array. They were vulnerable to enemy cavalry but under
Polish conditions could reckon on cover and support from their exqui-
site cavalry.30
The hired infantry availed itself of both formations. Earlier in the
Livonian War Zygmunt II August had recruited a few companies of
German infantry. In 1576 600 German landsknechts were hired by
Bathorys order. Later still larger units were used 2,200 soldiers in
1579, 1,600 in 1581. They were hired by Bathorys order from
Brandenburg, Saxony, Pomerania, and Silesia and formed into special
regiments. They had larger officer and under-officer staffs, ranging
from colonel down to sergeants. The rank-and-file musketeers were
equipped with rapiers and arquebuses, the pikemen with rapiers and
long 5-meter pikes; the latter also wore protective half-armor and hel-
mets. Here Bathory introduced certain innovations of his own. In the
presence of a significant part of his cavalry he instructed his infantry

29
J. Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej, 142144.
30
T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia ora, 315.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 77

they need not fear the enemys cavalry because in preparation for his
war with Muscovy he had hired significantly more musketeers than
pikemen. By his order part of his German infantry were equipped with
small circular bucklers to provide some cover during attacks upon
Muscovite fortresses.
During his campaign at Gdansk (1577) the king had hired several
hundred Scots infantry, the Scots being renowned across Europe for
their bravery and endurance. The Scots were armed with muskets or
characteristic Scottish lances with a broad point, long double-edged
swords, and poniards. Most of them remained in Poland after the
Gdansk war and provided good service in the war against Muscovy.31
Bathory had inherited a good artillery park from Zygmunt II August,
so there was no need to make any bigger changes to this type of mili-
tary force. The main center of production and storage was originally
Cracow, where the arsenal and royal foundry were located. Later
foundries and arsenals were established at Lviv, Vilnius, and Tykocin.
In the course of his struggle with Muscovy Bathory wanted to have an
artillery park nearer the theater of operations; he turned Vilnius into
his main magazine and center for casting and repairs.
At the head of the arsenals stood cejgwarci (zeugmeisters, arsenal
masters) directing gunners and a whole range of craftsmen. A signifi-
cant number of guns were already being taken on expedition, for
example, 68 guns for the Pozwolska campaign of 1557, 100 guns for the
Radoskowicze campaign of 1567.32 Transport for such large artillery
contingents required a great number of wagons, horses, and oxen. The
transport of just one field gun firing cannonballs of five-funt weight
required six horses; its ammunition and powder required two wagons
pulled by twelve battle-horses. One of Bathorys useful innovations was
the introduction of so-called treasury teams maintained across the
realm for the use of the artillery. Transport by water was of advantage;
several dozen guns were moved by river on the 15791581 campaigns.
On each expedition were taken several thousand cannonballs, several
hundred powder casks, forty wagonloads of axes, and many wagon
loads of picks, fuses, tents, etc.33
Units of military engineers were part of the artillery contingent.
Initially they transported tools needed for fortifying camps or digging

31
J. Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej, 146.
32
H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, Cz. I, 97.
33
H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, Cz. II, 80.
78 dariusz kupisz

siegeworks.34 Later Bathory placed great emphasis on military engi-

neering. At his order Ludwik Wedel constructed a pontoon bridge at
Vilnius using boats sailed downriver or carried overland by wagon; at
the crossing site they were set in lines and connected by chains, and a
wooden deck bridge attached atop. This proved simple and firm enough
to be repeated again; a bridge was assembled on the Dvina at Disna
within a record three hours in 1579. Bathory hired a number of foreign
engineers, especially Italians, whom he employed in siegework, build-
ing gun emplacements, siege mining, etc. Bathorys Muscovite cam-
paigns were the first in Poland to be planned using maps. The king
employed a staff of cartographers who produced a range of plans for
besieging fortresses and recovered lands.
At that time soldiers received their pay but provisioned themselves,
either by purchasing from merchants accompanying the army on its
march route or foraging across enemy territory. In such a system cav-
alry generally managed without great difficulties, but the infantry often
went hungry. This became apparent during Bathorys Muscovite cam-
paigns. The king tried two remedies for this. The traditional remedy
relied on sending the cavalry out across the region for provender,
assisted by certain infantrymen from each unit and wagons from camp.
The newer remedy involved buying up provender by order of the king,
transporting it to the battlefield, and distributing it among the infantry
units in exchange for money deducted from their pay. But financial
and transport difficulties resulted in supply sometimes not sufficing.
It should be remembered that the last of the Jagiellonian kings had
recruited into royal service a corsair fleet (Flota kaperska) to combat
the blockade of Narva Ivan IV had set in motion. In 1570 construction
of a royal fleet began, although it was soon interrupted in the interreg-
num. During his Gdansk campaign Bathory had aimed at assisting his
corsairs, but they were beaten by the Danzigers and the Danes and did
not play any role in his new war with Muscovy.
Great political pressure from the szlachta forced Polish monarchs to
conduct wars and confirm treaties with the consent of the Sejm.
Bathory understood this fully and prepared for war with Moscow by
issuing universals explaining his military intentions by citing the
inflexibility of the tsar. Unlike his predecessors, though, he also con-
cerned himself with the printing-houses, which were publishing letters

34
T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia ora, 259.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 79

describing to reading society the progress in military operations.35 It is

not known whether he introduced censorship so that the propagation
of defeatist information about excessive losses should not spread.36

Military Art in the War with Muscovy, 15791582

The tactics used in the Commonwealth army in the second half of the
sixteenth century were closely connected with the character of the
army. Battles on open ground called for cavalry. The battle order
employed was more fluid than preferred in Western Europe; the cav-
alry was deployed in four ranks and the attack deepened by bringing
on second or third waves. The Polish cavalry at that time relied on tak-
ing the initiative this was considered one of its characteristics at this
time and for pressing upon the enemy with cold steel. Bathory was
already persuaded of its advantages during his Gdansk war in 1577.
German landsknecht and arquebusier infantry were unlikely to prevail
when attacked by Polish hussars. During sieges of enemy fortresses the
cavalry undertook raids deep in the enemys rear, beat back enemy
relief detachments, and sometimes supported the infantry in storming
fortified positions. In defensive operations the Polish army often
employed the Hussite tactic of fighting from behind a fortified wagon
camp, from which the cavalry could sortie for counterattack. However,
sieges of enemy fortresses often failed through bad luck. Various siege
methods were used, to be sure artillery bombardment, tunneling and
detonation of mines but the Commonwealth armies did not always
have the infantry strength and technical means to recover towns lost to
the enemy.
The tactics used during the Muscovy campaigns of 15791582 were
dictated by Bathorys strategic goals. The chief of these goals, impressed
upon the king by the szlachta, was forcing the tsar to sign a treaty of
peace and restore the provinces he had seized: Livonia and the Polotsk
region. However, the fighting in Livonia was a devastating war over
many years, with the Polish-Lithuanian army bogged down besieging
the many castles garrisoned by Muscovite troops. Some concluded that

35
The first of these was published on the day of the capture of Polotsk, The Taking
of Polack, 1579. An Elizabethan Newssheet, Journal of Bielorussian Studies 1 (1965):
1622.
36
For example, see the unsuccessful storming of Pskov, Dziennik wyprawy Stefana
Batorego pod Pskw r. 1581, published by J. Piotrowski (Cracow, 1894), 92.
80 dariusz kupisz

the most devastating blow that could be dealt the tsar would be an
offensive against Moscow deciding the matter in the open field, with
the Polish and Lithuanian cavalry demonstrating their tactical superi-
ority. But such a strategic plan had its faults. On the road to Moscow
was the powerful fortress of Smolensk, and the Muscovite garrisons in
Livonia in the Polish-Lithuanian armys rear could meanwhile threaten
Vilnius. It was finally judged that it would be better to strike at the
Muscovite territory bordering upon Livonia, cutting it off from
Moscow and forcing its fortresses to capitulate. Many suggested a
march upon Pskov, but the king realized that was precluded by its
greater distance from the territory of the Commonwealth. So the first
objective of attack was to be Polotsk (Belar. Polatsk, Pol. Poock), and
next were the Muscovite fortresses located to the north of it.37

The Polotsk Campaign in 1579

In early 1579 Ivan IV began concentrating his forces near Pskov and
Novgorod, reckoning that the kings army would attack Livonia and get
bogged down there in siege operations. He was strengthened in this
conviction in late February when Lithuanian Field Hetman Krzysztof
Radziwi struck in the direction of Dorpat with 2,000 cavalry.
Radziwis operation concluded by driving many of the Muscovites
from Livonia and gathering up great trophies in prisoners, guns, and
livestock. Another masterstroke was the decision to concentrate the
army at Swir, a small town to the east of Vilnius. Thanks to this Bathory
could defend the capital of Lithuania without revealing the direction of
his strike until the last moment; his army could march against Livonia,
Polotsk, or even Smolensk.
Meanwhile the king protected a flank of his planned march route by
placing several thousand troops in Livonian castles recently recovered
from the enemy, fortresses on Lithuanias border with Moscow and on
the road towards Smolensk. On July 17 he set out with the main army,
around 40,000 men, transporting his ammunition and provisions by
river as far as the Disna. He crossed it at the Dvina confluence without
encountering any challenges from the enemy. Up to that point the

37
O. Laskowski, Etienne Bathory roi de Pologne, prince de Transylvanie (Cracow,
1935), 387391; S. Herbst, Wojskowo polska i wojny w okresie 15761648, in Zarys
dziejow wojskowoci, 395396.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 81

campaign was complicated only by heavy rains that turned the road
into mire. But ahead of the army was a barrier of dense young forest
stretching for fifty kilometers, that is, to Polotsk itself; it was the result
of the tsars policy of securing occupied territory by isolating it from
Lithuania as a wilderness deprived or roads and inhabitants. The
Hungarian infantry screening the armys front had to labor to cut wood
and lay a road for the men, horses, and wagons of the army behind.
The first to reach Polotsk were the banners of Lithuanian light cav-
alry and the Hungarian units of Kaspar Bekiesz. Before Bathory
arrived, a strong reconnaissance force sent from Lithuanian Grand
Hetman Mikolaj Radziwi the Red seized Koziany, Krasne, and
Sitno. The fortress of Sokol was the only enemy hard point remaining
in the rear of Bathorys army, and its garrison was capable of threaten-
ing his lines of communicationbut he forbore from acting against it
so for the time being, not wanting to disperse his army while besieging
Polotsk.
The wooden fortress of Polotsk was built in three parts. On the
heights above the Polotas confluence with the Dvina a High Castle
(Zamek Wysoki) had been built. Just to its east, on somewhat lower
ground, a Musketeers Castle (Zamek Strzelecki) stood guard. To the
west across the Polota River stood Zapolocie. Most of the high walls
were fashioned from oak cells (izbica, Russ. gorodnia) filled with dirt,
and over thirty towers overlooked the water of the Polota and Dvina.
The Muscovite garrison, commanded by Petr Volynskii, numbered
6,000 men and had 38 guns.38
On 11 August Bathory appeared before Polotsk and on assessing
his position decided he needed to storm Zamek Wysoki. He did not
want to squander troops on storming Zapolocie or Zamek Strzelecki
because he calculated that capturing the fundamental fortified key-
point overlooking the other parts of the fortress would force the sur-
render of Polotsk.39 This plan was well considered but was undermined
through the insubordination of his troops. After that the command
was given for the German infantry deployed above the Polota and the
Hungarians to begin digging a trench around the fortifications of

38
S. Alexandrowicz, rda kartograficzne do wyprawy poockiej Stefana Batorego
roku 1579, in Od armii komputowej do narodowej (XVIXX w.), ed. Z. Karpus,
W. Rezmer (Torun, 1998), 3942; G. Saganovicz, Polackaja vajna 15631579 gg.,
Adradzeinnje Istoryczny Almanach 1 (1995), 79.
39
D. Kupisz, Poock 1579, 129.
82 dariusz kupisz

Zapolocie. In this situation the king was forced to change plans to

avoid mixing detachments and provoking discord among his multina-
tional army. The Hungarians of Kaspar Bekiesz encamped over the
Dvina opposite Zapolocie, and behind them camped the Lithuanians
of Mikolaj the Red Radziwi and Krzysztof Radziwi. Farther to the
northeast stood the kings camp, surrounded by Polish units, and at its
end, opposite Zamek Strzelecki, were positioned German infantry. In
this manner the fortress was surrounded by an arc of troops extending
east as far as the banks of the Dvina.
Zapolocie fell quickly, its Muscovite commander losing hope of
holding it and withdrawing his troops after setting it ablaze. The artil-
lery bombardment of Zamek Wysoki then commenced. It had little
effect, even though Bathory contrived to have the gunners heat their
shot. To be effective the heated cannonballs had to hit Polotsks wooden
walls. But they either overflew the walls or fell into the mire on the
slope below the walls. Therefore several attempts were made to set the
walls afire by running up volunteers. This was further complicated by
the rain falling incessantly from the start of the campaign. Nor were
Polotsks defenders idle; they attacked the volunteers creeping up to the
wall to set it ablaze by throwing huge logs on them and extinguishing
their fires. Some of them lowered themselves on ropes from the top of
the wall and, hanging in air, doused the piled tinder with water sup-
plied by others on the heights; and whereas our accurate fire drove
them off, through the entire course of the assault there was no lack of
brave men who like those before them had the courage to disregard the
danger and fill in fallen sections of the wall.40
In addition, the garrison at Sokol in the armys rear, strengthened by
reinforcements from the tsar, began ever-bolder attacks on food con-
voys moving along the Dvina. There were no other roads for provision-
ing, so hunger began to spread in the kings camp. The Germans,
stationed farther from the Dvina, suffered the most, but there was such
hunger among the Poles that some were forced to eat the carcasses of
their horses, which soon made them suffer from dysentery.
On 29 August the rain stopped and Bathorys soldiers managed to
set afire a corner of the Zamek Wysoki. To be sure, the Muscovite gar-
rison managed to beat back the first storm by volunteers from the

40
R. Heidenstein, Pamietniki, 60.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 83

Polish and Hungarian infantry, but they were not able to put out the
fire. The following day they surrendered. The twenty-day siege of
Polotsk had cost the kings army several hundred missing, not counting
those killed, wounded, sick, or captured by the Muscovite defenders.
But the king captured 38 heavy guns, 300 hook guns, 600 muskets, and
above all large food stores that significantly improved morale among
his hungry troops.41
The tsar had not managed to render his fortress enough help. He had
not expected that it would fall so quickly. He amassed 30,000 troops
near Pskov, but then dispersed them after disorienting Lithuanian
incursions in Livonia and the Smolensk region and the shock of a
Swedish attack from Estonia. He dispatched 5,000 soldiers towards
Polotsk, but their commander, Boris Shein, held them back in Sokol,
not daring to encounter Bathorys army in the open field.
Meanwhile the king kept part of his army occupied in repairing for-
tifications and filling in trenches while sending the rest against Turovl
and Sokol. The Muscovite garrison at Turovl burned their fortress
and withdrew to the east. Only Sokol offered resistance, holding
against Hetman Mikolaj Mielieckis corps. The German infantry set to
work digging mine galleries approaching the castle walls, and on 11
September guns brought down the Dvina and Disna fired some heated
shot; two of the fires they caused were extinguished by the defenders,
but the third, which struck part of the pine palisade wall, kindled a
strong fire there after going unnoticed for awhile. A storm assault anni-
hilated much of the 5,000-man Muscovite garrison. The culmination of
the campaign was the taking of Susha and Neshchedra by troops from
the new Polish garrison at Polotsk at the end of the year.
There was fighting in other regions, carried out by cavalry raids dev-
astating the enemys territory and absorbing his force. Filon Kmita
Czarnobylski invaded the Smolensk region, reaching Dorogobuzh.
Konstanty Ostrogski made an incursion from Ukraine into the
Chernigov region, while Maciej Debinski incessantly harassed the
Muscovite garrisons in Livonia and undertook long-range raids against
Pskov. Ivan IV, striving to hold Livonia at any price, fell back upon
defensive tactics and was in no position to undertake effective action
against the Polish-Lithuanian army.42

41
D. Kupisz, Poock 1579, 150155.
42
K. Olejnik, Stefan Batory, 170171.
84 dariusz kupisz

The balance sheet of Bathorys Muscovite campaign was closed with

the recovery of the Polotsk territory lost under Zygmunt II August. It
was apparent that this did not mean the end of the war, so only part of
the army was demobilized, with several thousand other troops sent
into winter quarters. Most of the equipment was held on the Disna in
magazines to be used in the next campaign.

The Expedition Against Velikie Luki in 1580

The recovery of Polotsk made it easier for Bathory to convince the

szlachta to vote taxes for continuing the war. The objective of his sec-
ond campaign was Velikie Luki, through which ran the shortest road
between Muscovy and Livonia. As with the campaign of the previous
year, he planned to direct part of his army to connecting operations in
Livonia with operations in Smolensk region. The main part of the
army, a little larger than in the previous year, would be equipped with
seventy guns and concentrated at Chashniki and Ula, from which
roads spread to Velikie Luki and Smolensk. Thanks to this the tsar once
again could be certain of the direction in which the Polish army would
march. Spies reported that the king was expected to march upon
Smolensk, so that region was reinforced. Part of the Muscovite army
was deployed in other border fortresses while corps of the field army
were stationed near Dorogobuzh, Pskov, and Toropets.
In mid-July 1580 Bathory was already at Chashniki, where he con-
ducted his first inspection of the army over several days. The strongest
impression on observers was made by the 6,000-man division of Jan
Zamoyski, arrayed in black in memoriam to the chancellors lately
deceased wife. In all 21,000 men were on display, showing that more
than half were still on their way to the muster point. Surprisingly, the
Lithuanians were the most delayed, though they had the shortest
march route. They joined the royal army near Vitebsk, and some fol-
lowed behind the main force joining it only at Velikie Luki itself.
At Vitebsk some 7,000 soldiers in a separate right column under
Jan Zamoyski moved ahead against Velizh, which they captured on
6 August.43 At the moment of Velizhs capitulation the king arrived with
the main army at Surazh, where two bridges across the Dvina were

43
R. Heidensteain, Dzieje Polski od mierci Zygmunta Augusta do roku 1594, trans.
M. Gliszczyski, tom 2 (Petersburg, 1857), 13.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 85

raised. Thanks to the Usviat River and its confluence the heavy engi-
neering equipment and artillery could be hauled by water for part of
the route, sparing the draught teams. On 15 August the vanguard of the
kings army accepted the capitulation of the fortress of Usviat. A hun-
dred kilometers remained until Velikie Luki, and woods and very
muddy marsh covered more than half the road.44 The march was fur-
ther complicated by the heavy burden of the guns, which had to be
unloaded from the river boats. The march tempo dropped from thirty
to just fourteen kilometers a day.
On 27 August 1580 units of the kings army began to take up posi-
tion around Velikie Luki, which was defended by about 6,000 men.
Velikie Luki comprised a large lower town (posad) on both sides of the
Lovat River, overlooked by a citadel on a low artificial mound. The
tsars subjects had burned the surrounding lower town and withdrawn
into the citadel, which was surrounded by a wooden and earthen wall
and the river. Defenders of Polotsk, mercifully deported by Bathorys
order, had recommended to the commandants of Velikie Luki that the
foot of the wall be covered with moist sod capable of absorbing the
heated shot fired by Polish artillery.
Bathory positioned most of his cavalry in camp to the east of the
citadel in order to repulse any subsequent Muscovite relief forces from
Toropets. The infantry and Jan Zamoyskis division immediately began
the siegeworks. Opposite the citadel walls they began to dig a trench
and set gabions filled with earth to protect the siege guns. Muscovite
soldiers undertook sorties against the siegeworks and bombarded the
Polish positions. On 1 September eighteen Polish siege guns opened
fire, but their shot sank into the earth foot of the wall or the turf below.
Just as at Polotsk bombardment alternated with attacks by volunteers
trying to set fire to the wall. Hungarian infantry were finally able to
place a gunpowder mine, and its detonation damaged one of the citadel
towers. On another side of the citadel Polish and Lithuanian troops
undermined other towers inadequately defended by flanking fire from
the rest of the fortress. After several days they managed to tunnel under
the wall. Around midnight on 4/5 September the alarm was rung
and the infantry took up positions to storm the fortress while the
cavalry stood directly at the gates to strike those trying to flee. This

44
K. Gorski, Druga wojna Batorego z Wielkim Ksistwem Moskiewskim,
Biblioteka Warszawska, t. 3 (1892), 9.
86 dariusz kupisz

persuaded the defenders of Velikie Luki to surrender on condition of

guaranteed free departure for Moscow.
However, there was great chaos the next day. During the plundering
of Velikie Luki fires still burning in the citadel blew up the powder
magazine and killed several hundred of the kings troops; and the king
was unable to prevent the slaughter of Muscovite defenders trying to
leave the citadel. Several sources assert that as a result of the unprece-
dented cruelty of the kings troops about 4,000 Muscovites perished.45
On the following day the king convened a council of war, which
decided to refortify Velikie Luki and garrison it with Polish troops (to
induce the infantry to undertake fortifications labor they were prom-
ised additional pay). The nearest forests provided sufficient lumber,
and the labor was astutely divided among the Poles, Hungarians, and
Lithuanians. The cavalry was directed to undertake action to provoke
the 10,000 Muscovite troops stationed nearby at Toropets under Prince
Vasilii Khilkov. During the siege of Velikie Luki Polish cavalry had
engaged in skirmishes with the enemy; now that the citadel was taken
there were such skirmishes every day, with detachments sent out for
forage and wood coming under attack by Muscovite Tatars.
Upon the kings command 2,500 select cavalry under Prince Janusz
Zbaraski were thrown against Toropets with the task of destroying or
driving back Muscovite forces. Near the Toropa River on 20 September
Zbaraski overtook the 4,000 Muscovite horse of Dmitrii Cheremisov
and Grigorii Nashchokin. Polish pickets had come under attack by
Muscovite Tatars while the boyars cavalry took up battle array across
the river; just then Zbaraskis main force arrived, rushing towards the
river bank in such an intimidating mass the Muscovite troops broke
and fled. Part of them took the road east, others fled northward towards
Toropets, while the Tatars, turning south, fell into a marsh. Because
twilight was approaching the retreating Muscovites did not take heavy
lossesjust 300 were killed and another 200 (with both voevody) taken
prisoner. Zbaraski did not attempt to capture Toropets, as reinforce-
ments had just reached its garrison. But he did send a patrol of
Hungarians there for reconnaissance. They reported back that the rest
of prince Khilkovs army was withdrawing to the east.46

45
J. Besala, Stefan Batory (Warsaw, 1992), 310.
46
O. Laskowski, Wyprawa pod Toropiec, Przegld Historyczno-Wojskowy 9
(1937), 6770.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 87

The expulsion of Muscovite forces from the Toropets region secured

Velikie Luki and restored operational freedom to the kings army.
Thanks to this the main royal forces, tormented by epidemic, could
return safely to Polotsk while other troops garrisoned captured for-
tresses and undertook other successful operations: Nevel, Ozerishche,
and Zavoloche were captured. The Zavoloche fortress stood on an
island in a deep lake; Chancellor Jan Zamoyski forced its Muscovite
garrison to surrender by building two pontoon bridges for a storm
assault by his infantry.47 Zavoloche overlooked the road leading from
Velikie Luki to Pskov, so Zamoyski stored his heavy equipment and
artillery there and placed it under guard by 900 Hungarians under
Jerzy Farensbach, who reconnoitred the road leading to Pskov. His
second-in-command Maciej Strubicz drew up a map of the terrain for
future campaigns. In late October Zamoyski finally returned to Polotsk
after stationing 7,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry in the border castles
and 9,000 cavalry in northern Lithuania.
The garrisons established in border fortresses in the course of the
Velikie Luki campaign did not sit idly but through the entire winter
made their force known against the Muscovite towns. In the south
Zaporozhian cossacks devastated the environs of Starodub and Pochep,
while in the north troops stationed in Livonia were engaged around
Dorpat. Filon Kmita Czarnobylski, in command of the garrison at
Velikie Luki, sent 1,000 horse on a long-range raid into the highlands
along the Lovat River; they first reached the fortress of Kholm and put
it to the torch, capturing there the tsars voevoda Petr Boriatinskii; then
they captured and destroyed Staraia Rusa, where a major saltworks was
located. Meanwhile Jerzy Zybryk, the commander of the Polish garri-
son at Zavoloche, took Voronets, abandoned by the tsars army, and
administered to its inhabitants an oath of loyalty to Stefan Bathory. His
force remained concentrated there to build a road supporting forward
operations for the next campaign.48
The territory occupied by the royal army in 1580 had great strategic
importance. It shifted the frontier to the north, and, above all, it
bisected the shortest lines of communication between Muscovy and

47
Diariusz obleenia i zdobycia Wielia, Wielkich uk i Zawocia ukasz
Dziaynskiego, in Sprawy wojenne krla Stefan Batorego, publ. I. Polkowski (Cracow,
1887), 269.
48
H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, cz. III, 134.
88 dariusz kupisz

Livonia. However, the enemy still held one wide salient running from
Velikii Novgorod to Pskov.

The Campaign Against Pskov in 1581

The costs of these two campaigns affected the attitude of the Polish
szlachta. Despite the necessity of continuing the war to the end, the
Sejm of 1581 stipulated this would be the last time it would vote such
high war taxes. The king therefore had to abandon long-term plans to
conquer Moscow and limit his goals to the rapid recovery of Livonia.
To finally cut Livonia off from Muscovy it made sense to occupy either
Pskov or Novgorod. Novgorod, however, lay too far beyond the kings
provisioning bases. Pskov, on the other hand, was nearer the Livonian
border, and the Swedes were active in Livonia, taking advantage of the
Polish-Muscovite wars to occupy castles previously held by Poland. It
was not permissible to turn over so much of the territory for which the
war had been fought, so it was appropriate to select Pskov as an objec-
tive, cutting off the last route linking Muscovy with the fortresses the
Muscovites maintained in Livonia.
This time, however, Ivan the Terrible easily guessed the direction of
the attack and prepared his fortresses for defense. There were already
signs of activity towards this end: in June 1581 30,000 Muscovite troops
under Prince Mikhail Rostovskii crossed the border into Lithuania
with the mission of ravaging the frontier lands on the upper Dnepr,
from Orsza to Mscislaw and exposing dislocations of Polish forces.49
In response Polish-Lithuanian forces made the most daring cavalry
raid into enemy territory the war had yet seen. Led by Field Hetman
Krzysztof Radziwi, the raids goal was to test reports about the con-
centration of large Muscovite forces near Rzhev, which had first-order
importance for a Polish operation against Kiev. Radziwi not only was
supposed to expose the strength of the enemys forces but to spread
terror among them and make it impossible for them to undertake
offensive action against the kings army.50
The Lithuanian hetman entered from Vitebsk on 5 August 1581 at
the head of about 3,000 horse. He moved towards Velizh and Toropets

49
Razriadnaia kniga 14751605, t. 3, ch. 1, ed. V. I. Buganov (Moscow, 1984),
183186.
50
K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, 245.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 89

on the Surazh. Near Pokrovskii monastery he was reinforced by units

of Smolensk wojewoda Filon Kmita following from Velikie Luki. This
increased the force to about 6,000 horse, which moved in commu-
nique, that is, without any train, carrying all their rations and equip-
ment on their mounts. After crossing the Mezha River they stepped up
the tempo of their march through terrain full of dense forest, marsh,
rivers, and lakes. On 20 August they defeated the first detachments
of Muscovites near the Shelona River.51 After twenty days march, on
25 September, Radziwis cavalry penetrated into the Rzhev region on
the Volga. The Muscovite troops grouped there (estimated at about
15,000 men) refused to give them battle.52 Radziwi therefore laid
waste the region, dividing his army into three parts so as to burn out
more territory and give the enemy the impression the hetmans force
was larger than it actually was.
Radziwi proceeded towards Zubtsov, where he discovered a col-
umn of Muscovite regiments, but they did not give battle, and so some
of the hetmans subordinate officers turned to burning the villages
within a five-mile radius. From this point Radziwi despatched
Lithuanian Tatar detachments on reconnaissance to Staritsa, where
the tsar himself was camped with his court and the diplomatic media-
tor Papal legate Antonio Possevino. The Lithuanian hetman learned
of the tsars presence at Staritsa but rejected Kmitas recommendation
that they strike Staritsa and take the tsar prisoner; he was afraid that
the tsar was guarded by too many troops. Soon after, though, it was
confirmed that only 700 musketeers were stationed at Staritsa. The
tsar fell into panic, seeing the fires from the surrounding burning
hamlets.53
After burning estates on the Volga the Lithuanians and Poles turned
northwest on 29 August and marched along the river, conducting
small skirmishes with enemy forces. Reaching the source of the Volga,
they turned towards Kholm, sending Polish pickets far to the east,
followed by the regimental guns. Kmita turned towards Velikie Luki
while Radziwi rushed along the Lovat towards Starai Rusa at Lake
Ilmen. There the last great engagement occurred, with the defeat of
1,500 Muscovite horse and the capture of their commander, Prince

51
V. Novodvorskii, Borba za Livoniu mezhdu Moskvoiu i Rechiu Pospolitoiu (1570
1582) (St. Petersburg, 1904), 250251.
52
T. Korzon, Dzieje wojen i wojskowoci w Polsce, t. 2 (Lwow, 1912), 58.
53
V. Novodvorskii, Borba za Livoniu, 252.
90 dariusz kupisz

Obolenskii. On 22 October Radziwi approached Pskov, already

placed under siege by the kings army.54
In the course of 78 days of constant marching and skirmish-
ing Radziwis cavalry had travelled a line more than 1,400 kilome-
ters long, demonstrating that their commander had earned the
honorable sobriquet Piorun (Thor). Radziwi had scored a signifi-
cant tactical success in terms of disorganizing and breaking up con-
centrations of half the Muscovite armed forces. The operation certainly
blocked the tsars plans to undertake an offensive against the royal
army besieging Pskov. Other operations on enemy territory oc-
curred, such as the August incursion by Kiev kasztelan Michal
Winiowiecki into the Seversk region, which culminated in the storm-
ing of Trubetsk.55
Meanwhile the main army of Bathory left Polotsk on 21 July 1581
and marched in two columns; the first, led by the king, passed the for-
ests extending along the Polota and Dryssa; the right wing, comprised
of Lithuanians, followed a somewhat twisting route, as the better road
led through Nevel. The artillery and engineering equipment were
transported on the Dvina to the Dryssa, and onwards to the upper
Dryssa and the Ushcha. From there they had to be carried overland
as far as Zavoloche, where they were reloaded onto boats and trans-
ported by the Velikaia River to Pskov. The kings army reached Pskov
on 24 August.
In contrast to the fortresses besieged in the previous campaigns,
Pskov, standing on the bank of the Velikaia, was surrounded by stone
walls 710 meters high and strengthened by 39 towers. Fundamentally
the fortress was formed from four fortified complexes, each of which
could be defended independently: the Kreml Citadel, the Dovmunt
Citadel, Middle Town, and Outer Town. Pskov had about 30,000 inhab-
itants who could assist the 9,000 soldiers of the garrison, who were well
provisioned with guns, powder, and food. The commanders were
Vasilii and Ivan Shuiskii. Pskovs powerful artillery consisted of forty
heavy guns and a great number of lighter caliber guns.56

54
K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, pp. 246247; J. Natanson-Leski, Epoka Stefan Batorego
w dziejach granicy wschodniej Rzeczyspospolitej (Warsaw, 1930), 9294.
55
Letter from M. Winiowiecki to J. Zamoyski, Brahin 8 October 1581, in Archivum
Jana Zamojskiego, kanclerza i hetmana wielkiego koronnego, publ. J. Siemienski, t. 2
(Warsaw, 1909), 6364.
56
D. Kupisz, Pskw 15811582 (Warsaw, 2006), 108115.
 the polish-lithuanian army, 15761586 91

The kings artillery consisted of just twenty heavy siege guns. His
infantry numbered 14,000 men. Although they did not have the kind
of numerical superiority that could guarantee success (a preponder-
ance of 5:1) there nonetheless was a chance they could break into the
fortress. The cavalry blockaded the roads leading to town while the
infantry commenced digging trenches on the southern side of the for-
tress. Here, at the corner of the walls running to the Velikaia River,
were two large towers less covered by fire from the rest of the fortress.
Good use of intelligence and good engineering skills made it possible
for the Poles to run several zig-zag trench approaches towards these
two vulnerable towers and to build a raised redoubt to protect nineteen
of the heavy siege guns. Bombardment of Pskovs walls soon began
from here, and despite the counterfire from the Muscovite guns two
breaches were blown in the walls and five towers reduced. On 8
September the kings infantry undertook a storm assault supported by
volunteers from the cavalry. In the course of a full days fighting the
kings troops took possession of the two breaches and both towers but
were still unable to break into the town, for the defenders had thrown
up a high embankment just behind each breach and positioned enough
infantry and artillery behind them to repulse every attack by the kings
infantry. They lost 863 men repulsing these attacks, while the Poles lost
about 500 men.57
Only bombardment and storm assault on several sides simultane-
ously could guarantee success, but the king did not have enough infan-
try or guns for that. Counterfire from the defenders had also defeated
the mining attempts directed by Italian engineers. In the face of heavy
losses and declining powder reserves (an unlucky accident had resulted
in the detonation of part of the powder stores) the kings units inter-
rupted active siege operations in late November. It was decided instead
to hold position under the fortress and tighten blockade in order to
starve the Muscovite garrison into surrendering. The king left the site
on 1 December to seek new taxes from the szlachta; command of the
forces blockading Pskov was passed to Hetman Jan Zamoyski. He
managed to maintain discipline in the camp even under the afflictions
of a harsh Russian winter and sorties by Pskovs garrison up to mid-
January 1582. Pskov had not fallen, but Ivan IV was in no position to
relieve it, and the tsar requested a truce.

57
D. Kupisz, Pskw 15811582 (Warsaw 2006), 108115.
92 dariusz kupisz

On the basis of the armistice signed at Yam Zapolskii Moscow

acknowledged its defeat and withdrew from Livonia and the Polotsk
region. The Commonwealth handed back Velikie Luki and withdrew
the kings army from Pskov. The majority of the kings troops were
withdrawn into Livonia to secure the fortresses abandoned by the tsars
garrisons. In this manner the strategic goal of the war was achieved
the recovery of the provinces lost in recent years. Essentially there was
a restored equilibrium, the expansion of Muscovy to the Baltic having
been checked (except that Sweden had exploited this to occupy
Narva).58 A century of Muscovite expansionist policy had been brought
to an end. The War of 15791582 marked the ascendancy of the
Commonwealth over Muscovy, which lasted until the mid-seventeenth
century.
Several positive accomplishments on Bathorys expeditions further-
ing the development of Polish-Lithuanian military art should be noted.
His reforms derived from certain improvements being discovered at
this time in both Eastern and Western European military practice, first
of all from solutions to certain technical, military engineering, and
siegecraft problems. Bathorys reforms placed great stress upon devel-
oping and modernizing the infantry and adjusting its armament to the
tactical demands of the Eastern European battlefield. The changes
which the king introduced in organization and armament for several
military formations proved durable. The Polish-Lithuanian state
achieved a force mobilization capability it had never had before.
Methodical and shrewd planning of operations was the foundation of
Bathorys campaigns. His campaigns forged a new officer cadre that
earned renown in the early decades of the next century. The cavalry
incursions devastating vast expanses of enemy territory became a
model for Polish military practice in later years.59 They dealt Muscovy
a powerful blow, laying waste nearly 400,000 square kilometers of her
territory. It was a pity that Stefan Bathory could not fully avail himself
of the value of the Polish cavalry on more extended diversionary oper-
ations upon the model set by Krzysztof Radziwi.

58
K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, 251.
59
S. Herbst, Wojskowo polska i wojny, 402403.
 GULIAI-GOROD, WAGENBURG, AND TABOR TACTICS IN
16TH17TH CENTURY MUSCOVY AND EASTERN EUROPE

Brian Davies

Observers of Muscovite infantry tactics in the late sixteenth century

(Giles Fletcher, Jacques Margeret, Samuel Kiechel) generally agreed
that commanders were reluctant to deploy infantry musketeers (streltsy
and cossack infantry) in the open field and preferred to place them
along opposing river banks, on river patrol boats, in ambush within
dense woods, or behind fortifications (earthwork, palisade, gabions,
guliai-gorod, or wagon tabor).1 Various reasons have been suggested for
this: that there was no real effort to support Muscovite shot with pike
in the sixteenth century;2 that the army had many heavy wall-smasher
(stenobitnye) guns already by the mid-sixteenth century, but compara-
tively few light mobile regimental guns to defend infantry lines and
squares before the 1670s; that even during the Thirteen Years War
streltsy and even foreign formation soldaty were unable to keep their
matches lit while on the march, get up high rates of fire, or attempt
the newer firing systems; and, possibly, that Muscovite infantry wanted
order in leading (Fletcher) or could not easily shift positions and
move about a battlefield, in part because they were commanded by
a limited number of officers.3

1
Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom:
Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-century English Voyagers, ed. Lloyd Berry and
Robert Crummey (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin, 1968), 186; Andre
Berelowitch and V. D. Nazarov, eds. Zhak Marzheret, Sostoianie Rossiiskoi imperii
(Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kultur, 2007), 149; Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare:
The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 14941660 (New York: Barnes and Noble/
Routledge, 1979); Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 162; A. K. Baiov, Istoriia
russkogo voennogo iskusstva. Tom I (Moscow: Fond IV, 2008, reprint of 1909 ed.)
2
Use of pike began only at the peak of the Troubles, when Skopin-Shuiskii brought
in western European mercenaries; it received further development with the formation
of foreign formation (inozemskii stroi) regiments formed for the Smolensk War and
the revival of inozemskii stroi service in 16461654 for the defense of the Belgorod Line
and Tsar Alekseis war against the Commonwealth.
3
Hellie, Enserfment, 163; Robert Frost, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
and the Military Revolution, Poland and Europe: Historical Dimensions. Volume One,
94 brian davies

It is difficult to determine what kinds of fortifications were used as

cover for infantry fire in particular operations or reconstruct their tac-
tical use. While there was a ramified lexicon of fortification terms,
these terms were used loosely and interchangeably, and apart from
some Polish military memoirs there are few detailed, non-stereotypical
accounts of the course of battles fought by Muscovite forces. There
were many terms for camp (stan, tovar, kolymag, kosh, oboz) and field
fortification (tyn, ograda, oseki, grad oboz, doshchatoi gorod, guliai-
gorod, shchit, gasar, tur, shanets);4 in some cases we have a clear idea of
what they looked like, in other cases we do not, we cannot be sure the
Russian and foreign sources are using them with any consistency, and
it does not help that modern historians have not always bothered to
differentiate them.5

The Guliai-Gorod Line

The kind of field fortification that has most seized the imagination of
historiansthe guliai-gorodis also the least understood, and may
have been used less often than the historiography has supposed, espe-
cially if the form in question is the guliai-gorod described by Giles
Fletcher. The guliai-gorod Fletcher reportedly observed near Moscow
in 1588/1589 was a double wall, straight or cremaillere, of prefabri-
cated wooden panels with firing embrasures, carried to the battlefield
by wagon, slid together on small wheels or sledge runners, and locked
together without the help of any carpenter or instrument because the
timber is so framed to clasp together one piece with another. The dis-
tance between the two parallel walls was about three yards, enough to
provide room for the infantry and smaller field pieces to fire and reload.
Because this form of guliai-gorod was designed to provide protective

ed. M. B. Biskupski and James Pula (New York: Columbia University, 1993), 27; Brian
Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 15001700 (London and
New York: Routledge, 2007), 134, 1367; Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, 185;
Carol Belkin Stevens, Russias Wars of Emergence, 14601730 (London and New York:
Pearson/Longman, 2007), 73.
4
F. P. Sorokoletov, Istoriia voennoi leksiki v russkom iazyke (Leningrad; Nauka,
1970), 194196, 198200.
5
Note for example that the index to E. A. Razins Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Tom
III, Voennaia iskusstvo manufakturnogo perioda voiny XVIXVII vv. (Moscow:
Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1961)the book that brought the guliai-gorod to the
attention of Western historianslists every reference to an oboz under the rubric
guliai-gorod.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 95

cover across the entire front of a field armys infantry, artillery, and
baggage train (cavalry would have been stationed on its flanks and
regrouped in its rear), it could be very long; Fletcher says it could range
in length from a mile to six or even seven miles. He considered it effec-
tive in providing Muscovite infantry fire cover specially against the
Tatar that bringeth no ordnance nor other weapon into the field with
him save his sword and bow and arrows.6
In 1591 Tsar Fedor is supposed to have directed Boris Godunov to
defend Moscow against the invading army of Khan Kazy Girei by sta-
tioning all available Moscow forces and artillery along a guliai-gorod
four kilometers long, just across the Moskva River, across from
Dereviannyi gorod, between the Serpukhov and Kaluga gates. The
14751598 Razriadnaia kniga entry for 1591 mentions no guliai-gorod
fortificationonly an oboz. The Nikonovskaia letopis describes it as a
grad oboz na kolesnitsakh.7 The Razriadnaia kniga does confirm
that voevoda M. I. Vorotynskii used a guliai-gorod to protect the Great
Corps (Bolshoi polk) at Molodi in 1572, routing Khan Devlet Gireis
Tatars through a combination of concentrated fire from the guliai-
gorod and a surprise sortie from behind it by German cavalry (Narva
reitary) led by Dmitrii Khvorostinin. We have no description of its
form or dimensions, however; it was unlikely to have been as long as
the guliai-gorod described by Fletcher, as the Great Corps and Vanguard
Corps defending the hilltops above the Rozhai River near Molodi
numbered only about 13,000, including 3,000 musketeers and a hun-
dred guns.8 In October 1606 Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii had a guliai-gorod
put up across from the Serpukhov gates to defend the vulnerable
Dereviannyi gorod section of Moscow against the forces of Pashkov
and Bolotnikov. Isaac Massa described it as a barricade of wagons.9

6
Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, 1856.
7
R. G. Skrynnikov, Boris Godunov (Moscow: Nauka, 1983), 6364; Razin, Istoriia
voennogo iskusstva. Tom III, 5253; V. I. Buganov, ed. Razriadnaia kniga 14751598 gg.
(Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 441; V. P. Zagorovskii, Istoriia vkhozhdeniia tsentralnogo
chernozemia v sostav rossiiskogo gosudarstva v XVI veke (Voronezh: Voronezhskii uni-
versitet, 1991), 210214; F. Laskovskii, Materialy dlia istorii inzhenernago iskusstva v
Rossii. Chast pervaia (St. Petersburg, 1858), 148.
8
Rk extract published in A. R. Andreev, Neizvestnoe Borodino: Molodinskaia bitva
1572 goda (Moscow: Mezhregionalnyi tsentr otraslevoi informatiki Gosatomnadzora
Rossii, 1997), 245250; Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 5455.
9
Isaac Massa, A Short History of the Beginnings and Origins of These Present Wars in
Moscow under the Reign of Various Sovereigns down to the Year 1610, trans. G. Edward
Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1982), 162.
96 brian davies

A colored Dutch drawing from 1607, from Massas Album Amicorum,

depicts a large oboz encircling Dereviannyi gorod and the position of
Tsar Vasiliis army; much of it does appear to consist of closely fitted
wooden panels with gunports. This could be a variant of Fletchers
great guliai-gorod, or it could be a great ring of gasary, mantelets with
gun-slits or gun-ports.10
Razin and Laskovskii maintain that the guliai-gorod was used as
early as 1522 at the Stand on the Oka, or in 1530, during one of the
early sieges of Kazan, and they find other references to its use in the
Istoriia Kazanskogo tsarstva and the memoirs of Samuel Maskiewicz.11
The kinds of works involved are vaguely described, though, or not
described at all. If we are to take Fletchers description as accurate, the
kind of guliai-gorod he describeda very long double wooden wall
covering the entire front of an army or several approaches to a bereg
or citywas probably used on only a few occasions, in defense of
Moscow or Kolomna, i. e., close to the site of its prefabrication. It is
difficult to imagine the two thousand 2.5 1.5-meter panels for a
double wall 1.5 kilometers long being transported farther afield in the
train of a polk or polk array, even given the notoriously large size of
Muscovite baggage trains.
Some writers have portrayed the guliai-gorod as a uniquely Russian
fortification. Others, such as Laskovskii, have speculated that it was
inspired by the tabor of war-wagons used on several occasions during
the Hussite Wars by Jan Zizka. But one should also consider the pos-
sibility that it was an elaboration upon the older practice of stationing
archers and gunners behind wheeled mantelets. At the sige of Polotsk
in 1563, Ivan IVs hired Italian engineers used mantelets (shchity) in
place of the gabion farci, as covers for the emplacement of gabions; it
would not have been a great stretch of imagination to subsequently
experiment with lines of chained mantelets as cover for infantry
positions.12

10
Reproduced in Chester Dunning, Russias First Civil War: The Time of Troubles
and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State
University, 2001), 315. On gasary (of which there were various types), see Laskovskii,
Materialy, 149.
11
E. A. Razin, Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Tom II, Voennoe iskusstvo feodalnogo
perioda voiny (Moscow: Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1957), 337; Laskovskii, Materialy,
148149.
12
Brian Davies, The Polotsk Campaigns of Ivan IV and Stefan Bathory: The
Development of Military Art During the Livonian War, in Baltiiskii vopros v XVXVI
vv., ed. A. Filiushkin (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010), 108.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 97

Mobile Guliai-Gorod Shields

There may have been another smaller, more mobile form of fortifica-
tion referred to as guliai-gorod, adapted to impulse tactics rather than
long unbroken line tactics. It is easy to get the false impression that the
Fletcher variant of guliai-gorod had some mobility even when chained
together, for he had called it a moving castle and the illustrations in
Razin imaginatively reconstructing the Fletcher variant show the pan-
els mounted on small wheels or sledge runners. But if we are to believe
Razins illustrations, the wheels and runners could be used only to slide
panels together, not to move the entire works out into the field, for they
were set parallel to the face of the panel. In other words the works were
mobile only in the sense that they consisted of prefabricated elements
carted to the field for assembly. But there are references applying the
term guliai-gorod to smaller works, multiple and separate and possess-
ing some mobility on the battlefield. Razin cites the Vremennik of diak
Ivan Timofeev (d. 1629?), who describes panels of roughly the same
dimension, each manned by ten streltsy, connected by chains but
linked together into smaller assemblies on wheels so they could be
moved a little bit, moving not far out from the wall, using draft ani-
mals placed within the assemblage.13 In 1609 the Tushino cossacks and
Polish-Lithuanian cavalry threatening Moscow were confronted on
Khodynka Field by Muscovite infantry and artillery within multiple
smaller guliai-goroda flanked by Muscovite cavalry. According to one
of the Polish combatants, Mikolaj Marchocki, these guliai-goroda con-
sisted of wide oak shields the size of tables, mounted on carts, and they
moved forward upon the Poles position. Three cossack squadrons
attacked them but were beaten back by their fire; Polish husarz squad-
rons then attacked, separating the Muscovite cavalry from the guliai-
goroda and then falling upon the guliai-goroda, breaking into some of
them and dragging off their guns. A counter-attack by Muscovite cav-
alry managed to throw back the Poles and recover the guliai-goroda,
however.14 To the extent that the guliai-gorod found employment in the
seventeenth century on operations outside central Muscovy it was
likely in the form of small moving redoubts of connected wheeled

13
O. A. Derzhavina, V. P. Adrianova-Perets, eds. Vremennik. Ivan Timofeev
(Moscow: AN SSSR, 1951), 202; Razin, Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Tom III, 5253.
14
E. Kuksina, ed. N. Markhotskii, Istoriia moskovskoi voiny (Moscow: ROSSPEN,
2000), 5253.
98 brian davies

mantelets or panels mounted on carts. The guliai-gorodin shields

used by Khmelnytskyis cossacks to cover their entrenching work
around Zbarazh in 1649 were probably of this type.15 An especially
vivid description of Muscovite use of mobile guliai-goroda in the
Thirteen Years War is provided by Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a partici-
pant in the great battle on the Basia River in 1660 but on this instance
the works encountered appear to have been a cross between tyn-gasary,
as described by Laskovskii, and large pavise shields. Scouts returned to
Hetman Czarnieckis camp to describe how the Muscovite army was
advancing w hulajgorodach, the whole army being engirded. Those
hulajgorody are built on a frame like a turnstile in the shape of the
stockaded wooden siege towers we call garlics and often use at corner
bastions with our fieldworks; that is, hollow logs are laced together in a
cross and fastened at the ends with iron clasps. They are carried by foot
soldiers in front of the battle ranks; as the army goes into battle, they
place them on the ground and stick their muskets through them; theres
no way to charge these things, no way to break in upon the enemy, for
the horses would be speared. Being behind those things, its as if an
army were behind a fortress, whence the name: hulajgorod.16 Judging
from Paseks description, these guliai-goroda were deployed according
to the principles of impulse tactics, i.e. at intervals on the field, as sepa-
rated hard points providing firepower supporting Muscovite cavalry
and infantry attacking between them. The Poles countered by slaugh-
tering the Muscovite troops moving in the open between the guliai-
goroda, causing such mounds of dead to pile up that coordinated action
among the guliai-goroda broke down.

The Tabor and Wagenburg

Most of the same tactical effects of the smaller guliai-gorod would have
been achieved more cost-effectively by placing infantry and artillery
within a tabor or wagenburg, a closed lager of wagons; and many

15
Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus. Volume Eight: The Cossack Age,
16261650, trans. Marta Olynyk (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies, 2002), 571.
16
Catherine S. Leach, ed. and trans., Memoirs of the Polish Baroque. The Writings of
Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a Squire of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania
(Berkeley: University of California, 1976), 8081; Jan Chryzostom Pasek, Pamietniki,
at www.scrid.com/doc/7804952/JAN-PASEK.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 99

instances of supposed use of the guliai-gorod may actually have been

misreported instances of the tabor. For as long as campaign armies
have had wagon trains they have also used wagon camps as fortified
cover against attack. The Han used rings of wagons to defend against
the Xiong-nu; the Germanic tribes used wagon lagers, according to
Tacitus; so did the Romans, according to Ammianus Marcellinus; the
Teutonic knights reportedly withdrew into a wagenburg at the battle of
Grunwald. But the wagenburg/tabor acquired new tactical significance
in the fifteenth century when combined with the gunpowder revolu-
tion, for infantry with firearms and pikesand eventually, heavier
pieces like hook-guns could be positioned within the wagons them-
selves to repulse attacks by light and even heavy armored cavalry. Small
cannons could be positioned within the wagon-ring or wagon-square,
at intervals between wagons or in corners; other infantry and cavalry
protected within the wagon-ring could be held ready for sortie.
The defensive tabor became a common practice across the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukraine, and Muscovy over the late 16th/
early seventeenth centuries. The tabor of haywagons employed at
Dobrynichi in 1605 supported such heavy volley fire by Muscovite
streltsy as to break the charge of the Pretenders cossacks and Polish
cavalry. The tabor was especially effective against the Tatars. Guillaume
le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan, who observed cossack operations against
the Crimean Tatars in the 1630s, testified, In the field, I have myself
observed units of at least five hundred Tatars several times, who
attacked us in our tabor, and even though I was accompanied by only
fifty to sixty Cossacks, the Tatars could do us no harm; nor could we
harm them, since they kept beyond the range of our firearms.17
Jan Zizka (13781424) and his Hussite armies are often considered
to have pioneered the adaptation of the wagenburg to the gunpowder
revolution by developing the vozova hradba, a wall or ring or quadri-
lateral of farm wagons chained together, the sides of the wagons some-
times reinforced and extended upwards with wooden panels with
firing-ports. The bulk of the Hussite forces would be sheltered within
the wagon-ring, perhaps with a few bombards, but the wagons them-
selves were crewed by 1020 soldiers, a mix of gunners, crossbowmen,
pikemen, and buckler-men. After repelling enemy attack the pikemen

17
Guillaume le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan, A Description of Ukraine, trans. Andrew
Pernal and Dennis Essar (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1993),56.
100 brian davies

in the wagons might descend to join the infantry and cavalrymen from
inside the wagon-ring in a sortie against the enemy. Zizka achieved
several considerable successes against the Empire by using such tabor
tactics on the defensive; his forces were more vulnerable when coun-
terattacking from out of their wagenburg.18 N. K. Dmitriev speculated
that the Russian word tabor derived from the Turkish tabur, but
Sorokoletov considers it orignated from the Hungarian and spread
throughout the Slavic-speaking world in the 15th century.19 It should
be noted that Zizkas disciplined military brotherhood called them-
selves the Taborites, metaphorizing their solidarity with the stronghold
on the Biblical Mount Tabor.
One can hypothesize the diffusion of Bohemian tabor tactics into
Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Poland,
and Muscovy, such tactics being especially well adapted to warfare on
the plains and steppe of Eastern Europe. Most studies of the diffusion
of new Italian military technology into Muscovy focus their attention
on Italian engineers and gun-casters invited to the courts of Ivan III
and Vasilii III (e.g., Aristotle Fioraventi),20 but much less has been writ-
ten about the indirect transmission of Italian technology through
Danubian Europe into Poland or Muscovy, or about the role of the
Danubian frontier as a laboratory for new expressly Eastern European
military innovations. In 1432 Sigismund, King of Hungary and future
Holy Roman Emperor, visited Siena and expressed such interest in the
new Italian designs for war-wagons and siege machines that he con-
vinced Mariano di Jacopo Taccole, author of the military engineering
treatises De Ingeneis and De Machinii, to take service with him.21 The
Habsburg domains as well as northern Germany served as conduits
into Poland-Lithuania of Italian military technological knowledge;
Frost characterizes the standard of Polish familiarity with Italian mili-
tary treatises as high already by the mid-sixteenth century.22
But what especially should be stressed is the even greater scale of
diffusion wagenburg/tabor tactics in the 15th and 16th centuries, for

18
Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 2003), 60; Razin, Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Tom II, 492499.
19
Sorokoletov, Istoriia voennoi leksiki, 198.
20
Michael C. Paul, The Military Revolution in Russia, 15501682, Journal of
Military History 68, 1 (2004), 3234.
21
Taccoles drawings of war-wagons and siege machines are reproduced on-line
at //brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/genscheda.
22
Frost, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Military Revolution, 25.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 101

they required less complex mechanics and were better suited to the
special circumstances of war in the east.
The Ottomans are generally considered to have been early and ear-
nest in embracing the gunpowder revolution, so it is not surprising
that they should be making effective use of firearms/artillery fire out of
a wagenburg position as early as 1448, at the second battle of Kosovo.
This was repeated at the Battle of Bashkent (1473), where they defeated
the Aqqoyunlu. The deployment of artillery and janissary infantry in
the center in a wagon lager, flanked and screened by light akinci cav-
alryor heavier sipahi cavalry, became the standard Ottoman order of
battle and was called Tabur cengi. On his 1514 campaign in Iran Sultan
Selim I crushed the Safavid Persian army at Caldiran by drawing Shah
Ismails cavalry into withering artillery and janissary fire from the
Ottoman tabur. Sultan Suleiman I owed much of his great victory over
the Hungarians at Mohacs in 1526 to the Tabur cengi: the Hungarian
armored cavalry was routed by artillery and infantry fire from the
tabur, after which his akinci cavalry encircled and massacred the sur-
viving Hungarians encircled and massacred. Tabur cengi tactics subse-
quently spread across much of the Eurasian Dar-al-islam. At the battle
of Panipat (1526) the Ottoman gunner Ustad ali-Quli is supposed
to have instructed the Mogul Emperor Babur in how to form a fortified
tabur of 700 wagons, with mantelets covering the intervals between
wagons.23
Kenneth Chase thinks the Ottomans learned wagenburg tactics from
the Hungarians in the 1440s and gave special training to their cannon-
eer corps so they could employ wagenburg tactics on a regular basis.24
Mesut Uyar and Edward Erickson go farther, showing that by the mid-
15th century the Ottomans had organized a special formation, the
Hearth of Artillery Wagoners (Top Arabacilari Ocagi) which had
charge not just of artillery transport but of forming of the Tabur cengi
battle order. Wagons for Tabur cengi combat were custom built, and by
comparison with the Hussite tabor, the Ottoman Tabur cengi relied
more heavily on firearm firepower: the Ottomans eliminated the use of

23
Christon Archer, John Ferris, Holger Herwig, and Timothy Travers, The World
History of Warfare (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2008), 183; Mesut Uyar and
Edward Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Ataturk (Santa
Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC Clio, 2009), 42, 48, 51, 56, 70, 74.
24
Chase, Firearms, 86, 229; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 13001560: The
Structure of Power (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 268270.
102 brian davies

pikemen in lager defense, stationed janissaries with heavier muskets at

the artillery and wagons, and deployed the rest of their janissaries with
lighter firearms in a formation several rows deep behind the guns,
wagons, and mantelets. The cavalry screen would retreat after provok-
ing the enemy to attack the center, upon which the Ottoman artillery
and heavier musketry would keep up fire to wear down and disorgan-
ize the attacking enemy. Then the janissaries, with light weapons,
began firing in volley by rotating the ranks. Finally, a counterattack
would then start when the enemy lost cohesion and heart.25 On some
occasions the Ottomans also used the tabur offensively as a slow mobile
fortress. The Transylvanian voivode Jan Hunyadi in turn used tabor
tactics against the Ottomans in Wallachia in the 1440s.26
From Hungary wagenburg/tabor tactics entered the Polish military
repertoryperhaps with the Hussite mercenaries hired by Wadysaw
II in 1433, and more probably in connection with the long history of
Polish military intervention in Moldavia (Pokucie). In his campaign
against Petru Rares in Moldavia, Polish Crown Hetman Jan Tarnowski
(14881561) is reported to have employed a few hundred Bohemians
to organize his train, and at the Battle of Obertyn (1531) he decisively
defeated a larger Moldavian army (suffering 256 casualties to the
Moldavians 7,00010,000) by deploying his forces within a quadrilat-
eral wagon camp, with artillery in the corners and hook-gunners sta-
tioned in the wagons.27 Tarnowski subsequently achieved significant
victories over the Muscovites and captured Starodub; he also authored
an interesting and original military treatise, Consilium Rationis Bellicae,
in 1558.28
Lazarus von Schwendi urged Emperor Maximilian II to counter
Ottoman tabur tactics in Hungary by deploying Imperial forces in their
own Streit-wagen protected by arquebuses and falconet guns.29
On comparatively flat, open terrain with little natural cover (woods,
hills, marshes) available, the defensive tabor was often a necessity; and
necessity could be turned to tactical advantage by massing firearm
fire along the inner edge of the wagon perimeter, especially when

25
Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, 5051.
26
Emanuel Constantin Antoche, Du Tabor de Jan Zizka et de Jean Hunyadi au
Tabur Cengi des Armees Ottomanes, Turcica 36 (2004), 114116.
27
Ibid., pp. 94, 99; Jan Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej do roku 1864 (Warsaw:
Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1978), 798.
28
An 1879 facsimile edition of this is available on-line through GoogleBooks.
29
Antoche, Du Tabor, 116.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 103

supported by a few hook-guns; for the hook-gun was the largest and
most powerful hand firearm available, had an average effective range of
400500 meters (and theoretical maximum range of 1,278 meters),
and fired a 34 ounce bullet with enough force (at least at closer 100
150-meter range) to penetrate a wooden plank 1015 centimeters
thick.30 The disadvantage of the 15th/16th century wagenburg or tabor
was that its tactical value was largely defensive; infantry sortying out
from a wagenburg were vulnerable (although cavalry counterattacking
from behind one were less so). By the late seventeenth century, judging
at least from Ottoman defeats like Szalankamen and Zenta, the wagen-
burg camp appears to have become more vulnerable because of the
greater number of regimental guns fielded by the Habsburgs and
Romanovs and used to cover closer-in attacks by dragoons.

The Wagenburg Convoy

The wagenburg had additional tactical value on the move as a convoy,

and larger army wagon convoys became more common in the second
half of the 17th century, especially for Muscovite armies crossing the
steppes of southern Muscovy and Ukraine. Beauplan writes of the
steppe between the Bucak Horde and Dnepr, Because of the danger
involved in crossing these plains, those Cossacks wishing to do so
travel in a tabor. In other words, they travel within a formation of their
wagons, which are arranged in two lines on their flanks, with eight to
ten in front and as many at the rear, and the Cossacks marching in the
middle carrying firearms and half-pikes, and scythes mounted on long
poles. The best horsemen ride surrounding the tabor, with a scout
placed a quarter-league ahead, another a quarter-league behind, and
another on each side to keep watch. Whenever Tatars are seen, these
scouts give a signal, and the tabor halts. If the Tatars are discovered
first, the Cossacks can always defeat them; but if the Cossacks are dis-
covered first, the Tatars surprise and attack them in their tabor.31
Muscovite military operations in the second half of the 17th cen-
turyrepresented the apogee of wagenburg convoy tactics. After 1655

30
Jozsef Kelenik, The Military Revolution in Hungary, Ottomans, Hungarians,
and Habsburgs in Central Europe. The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest,
ed. Geza David and Pal Fodor (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 125, 129.
31
Beauplan, Description of Ukraine, 56.
104 brian davies

operations on the less open, more densely populated terrain of Belarus,

Lithuania, and Livonia became strategically secondary to operations
on the open, comparatively underpopulated plains of Ukraine and
southern Russia: campaigns against the Poles, the Crimean Tatars, and
the rebel hetmans (Vyhovsky, Iurii Khmelnytskyi, Doroshenko) in
Ukraine, followed by the two great expeditions to rescue Chyhyryn
from the Turks (16771678), V. V. Golitsyns two marches upon
Perekop (1687, 1689), and Peter Is two campaigns against Azov (1695,
1696). These campaigns involved giving battle to large enemy armies
(the Ottoman armies besieging Chyhyryn numbered 45,000 men in
1677 and 70,000 men in 1678) and besieging, seizing, and occupying
enemy fortresses and towns (Lviv, Konotop, Azov, etc.), and so they
required much larger contingents of artillery and inozemskii stroi
infantry and often direct support from auxiliary regiments of Ukrainian
cossacks. The forces of Romodanovskii and Samoilovich marching on
Chyhyryn in 1678 reportedly totalled 80100,000enormous by the
standards of the time. Golitsyns 1687 expeditionary army is said to
have numbered 112,000 troops, 50,000 cossacks of the Hetmanate, and
20,000 train guards, carters and sappers.32
To reach their objectives these Muscovite field army first had to
cross a vast but sparsely populated plain, much of it uncultivated
steppe, devoid of forward magazines, and offering fewer opportunities
for foraging and contributions extortion than central Europe. This in
turn required that provisioning for much of the campaign come out of
the armys baggage train. Geza Perjes, calculating the bread require-
ments and carted animal feed requirements for an army of 90,000 men
and 40,000 horses, concluded that 8,000 wagons would be needed to
carry one months rations and fodder, and that just for the combat
effectives; the carters and draught animals for these 8,000 wagons
would have needed yet more vehicles, draft animals, and drivers to
carry their own provisions, bringing the train up to 11,000 wagons,
22,000 drivers and helpers, and 5070,000 draught animals.33 Hence
Golitsyns army marching on Perekop in 1687which still counted
largely on foraging to feed its horses and draught animalswas accom-
panied by a train of 20,000 wagons.34

32
Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 1623, 179.
33
Geza Perjes, Army Provisioning, Logistics, and Strategy in the Second Half of the
17th Century, Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 16 (1970), 1011.
34
Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 179.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 105

It therefore made sense for these larger armies to make tactical as

well as logistical use of their wagons by travelling in tabor/wagenburg
formation. Golitsyns 1687 convoy travelled in a vast wagenburg 1.5 kil-
ometers across and perhaps 5 kilometers in length; his 1689 expedi-
tioncrossed the steppe in six wagenburgs. This had its costsit raised
such a cloud of dust as to make the armys movement easy for enemy
scouts to follow, and it slowed the armys movement to about ten kil-
ometers a day. But it enhanced the safety of the infantry and artillery
marching within the formation, and, when halted for defense, provided
cover as compensation for their slow rates of fire. When the forma-
tionwas attacked it was possible to halt, unlimber some of the guns
and use them and covering infantry fire to support cavalry charges
driving back the enemy (hence Golitsyns troops were able to drive
back attacks on their columns by a large Tatar army at Chernaia Dolina
in 1689).35
Infantry and artillery marching inside a wagenburg and defensively
deployed in a halted wagenburg could offer more concerted and effec-
tive resistance than when deployed in open field, especially when the
wagenburg was smaller, permitting more effective command-and-
control. This was demonstrated to striking effect during most of V. B.
Sheremetevs 1660 drive against Cracow, which involved 19,200
Muscovite troops (of which 14,000 were inozemskii stroi), 20,000 of
Tsytsuras cossacks, twenty field guns, and 3,000 wagons. From 416
September Sheremetevs army sat in oboz outside Lubar, protected by
their wagons and a low earth wall, under repeated attack by the Polish
forces of Potocki and Lubomirski) and Crimean Tatars under nuraddin
Kazy Girei. On the night of 16 September Sheremetev managed to
extricate himself by sending peasant sappers into the woods to cut a
trail, which his army then followed, moving in a square wagenburg.
Part of this massabout a thousand wagons and seven gunswas cut
off and overwhelmed as it crossed a log road over the marsh, but the
rest escaped in the darkness. On 26 September Potocki and Lubomirski
caught up and attacked the Muscovite wagenburg from rear and flanks
just as it was ascending a steep hill. The Muscovite wagenburg lost
another eighty wagons and seven or eight guns, yet it held and pro-
ceeded on towards Chudnovo. Lubomirski was sufficiently impressed

35
Ibid., 180182.
106 brian davies

with their good order to have said, The Muscovites flee from us like a
wolf baring its teeth, not like a rabbit.36
The biggest disadvantage of the wagenburg convoy was that a patient
and numerically superior enemy force could follow it relentlessly
and run it aground, immobilizing it on terrain that was ultimately
indefensible. This was demonstrated at the end of Sheremetevs cam-
paign. On 27 September the Poles occupied the Chudnovo heights
above Sheremetevs camp on the Teteria River, training their guns
down on his position. Sheremetev was halted here for several days,
under constant artillery fire, on ground short of pasture for his cavalry;
Tatars encamped in the surrounding ravines prevented his troops from
venturing out for wood and water. He did manage to break out on
October 13, moving again in wagenburg, but muddy roads, flooded
meadows, and the absence of bridges allowed him to move just a few
kilometers, losing another thousand men before making camp again
on October 14 on the edge of the forest, the only available expanse of
dry ground. Here he was again put under bombardment, the Poles this
time firing their guns from an earth berm they had erected around his
position. It rained incessantly. His stores running low, unable to field
his cavalry in order to break out, Sheremetev finally surrenderedand
he and most of his army were taken into Tatar captivity.37
The predilection for wagenburg tactics in eastern European warfare
faded in the eighteenth century. By the time of the Russo-Turkish War
of 17681774 the Russian army no longer found such tactics necessary.
Improvements in artillery (especially the Russian lead in introducing
horse artillery, and the increase in the ratio of mobile regimental guns
to infantry), the adoption of the socket bayonet, the rifling of musket
barrels, and the prefabrication of swinefeather stakes and portable
chevaux de frise these innovations supported a shift in tactics by mak-
ing it easier for infantry to stand in open field unprotected by a wagon
tabor. To the extent that infantry still sometimes took cover behind
field fortifications, it was less likely now to be behind a long unbroken

36
Nikolai Kostomarov, Getmanstvo Iuriia Khmelnitskogo, Kazaki. Istoricheskie
monografii i issledovaniia (Moscow: Charli, 1995), 194196; Baiov, Istoriia russkogo
voennogo iskusstva, 160161; Antoni Hnilko, Wyprawa Cudnowska w 1660 roku
(Warsaw: Wojskowy Instytut Naukowo-Wydawniczy, 1931), 4951. See also Romuald
Romanski, Cudnow 1660 (Warsaw: Bellona, 1996), Patrick Gordon, then a lieutenant
of Lubomirskis dragoons, provides an interesting account of this campaign.
37
Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 145.
 guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 107

line such as that offered by a wagon lager or guliai-gorod, and more

likely to be in regimental or battalion squares behind multiple, smaller,
separated field fortifications (chevaux-de-frise, quickly-dug entrench-
ments, a few excavated artillery redouts): in other words, according to
the principles of impulse tactics rather than traditional line tactics.
Besides, the Ottoman defeats in the War of the Holy League suggested
that tabor positions were already becoming harder to defend by the late
seventeenth century as European armies brought more regimental and
field guns to the assault and gained experience in using dismounted
dragoons and grenadiers to storming tabor positions.38
The need to move troops and train in convoy under cover of large
wagenburgs had also been reduced by improvements in logistics (the
forward magazine system) connected with progress in frontier military
colonization and enhanced imperial political hegemony over subject
populations. It was no longer as necessary to convoy Russian armies in
vast wagenburgs across hundreds of kilometers of empty steppe or con-
tributions-resistant foreign territory, for the frontier of the Russian
Empireand thereby the territory subject to Russian military resource
mobilizationhad been extended much closer to the Black Sea, the
Northern Caucasus, and the Danube. It should be stressed that this was
achieved not solely by military meansby rebasing forces and build-
ing magazinesbut by exploiting political advantages and administra-
tive reforms allowing the Russians to exert tighter control over the
loyalties and military resources of non-Russian populations. The incor-
poration of Ukrainian forces into the Russian frontier Landsmilitsiia;
the liquidation of the Zaporozhian and Don Cossack hosts; the formal
incorporation of Left Bank Ukraine into the Russian Empire; the defeat
of the anti-Russian Polish confederations, and the first Russian parti-
tion of Poland; and the military colonization of southern Ukraine
(Nova Serbiia, Novorossiia) were all part of this process.
With the zone of resource mobilization and points of resource mag-
azining now shifted closer to the theaters of operations (the Crimean
peninsula, the Danube) the Russian army was able to move forces
faster, in multiple parallel columns, with smaller and less encumbering
supply trains, or sometimes just with knapsack supplies, counting
on reprovisioning from the magazines in Poland and Ukraine or on

38
Bruce Menning, Russian Military Innovation in the Second Half of the
Eighteenth Century, War and Society 2 (1984): 3133.
108 brian davies

plunder from the defeated enemys train.39 At Riabaia Mogila, Larga,

and Kagul (1770) large Ottoman-Tatar armies of 7080,000 men dug
in within heavily fortified camps were overwhelmed by much smaller
Russian forces under P. A. Rumiantsev, the Russians conducting sepa-
rate column attacks at several points to drive the Turks from their for-
tifications and then catching them in crossfire from the Russian
infantry squares and riding them down with their cuirassiers and
mounted carabiniers. At Kagul this resulted in 20,000 Turks killed and
2,000 or more captured, with the Russians losing just 364 killed or
missing and 550 wounded.40 These disproportionate Russian victo-
ries set a pattern sustained through the rest of the 17681774 war
and the 17871791 Russo-Turkish War. They could be said to confirm
the ascendance of Russia as the greatest military power in Eastern
Europe.

39
Menning, Russian Military Innovation, 3335.
40
I. V. Semenov, Chugun Kagulskii, ty sviashchen (iz istorii russko-turetskoi voiny
17681774) (Kishinev: Izd. Kartia Molodveniaske, 1970), 6869.
 THE FLODORF PROJECT:
RUSSIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL MERCENARY MARKET IN
THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Oleg A. Nozdrin

Muscovys Time of Troubles (15981618) quickly expanded beyond

the limits of a domestic crisis and became a European event inviting
intervention by a number of foreign powers and persons pursuing
their own contradictory interests and objectives. The prevailing confu-
sion encouraged various enterprising personalities, projectors, adven-
turers, filibusterers, and self-aggrandizers to come forward and offer
their solutions to Russias problems, complicating even further an
already entangled situation. Many of their recommendations, prescrip-
tions, and counsels ended buried in the chancellery archives. But there
were some projects that were actually implemented.
One such episode occurred late in the Troubles: the landing at
Arkhangelsk in summer 1612 of the hired mercenaries of senior com-
mander Baron Adrian Flodorf and Arthur Aston and James Hill,
offering their services to save Russia from the Poles. Initially buoyed
with enthusiasm, this company subsequently met with a cold reception
at the hands of the leaders of the Second National Militia, which
refused their help. After a years wait due to the closure of navigation
on the Northern Dvina and the referral of their proposal to the new
government of Tsar Mikhail, Flodorf took part of his company home
while another part, under Arthur Aston, remained. Astons soldiers
managed to participate in the defense of Kholmogory against brigand
cossack bands and later received the right to enroll in Russian
service.
The Arkhangelsk travails of these foreign mercenaries have been
examined in some detail by specialists curious about their character
and motives. The spectrum of opinion about their motive ranges from
the suspicion that they were an effort to realize an English project to
occupy the White Sea littoral to vaguer speculation that they reflected
the antagonism among multiple states seeking a sphere of influence in
110 oleg a. nozdrin

Russia.1 Less attention has been given to the backgrounds of the com-
panys leaders, their careers, their nature of their connections with each
other, and their previous and subsequent services. Closer examination
of these matters may clarify the event or even cast it in an entirely dif-
ferent light.
According to the documents the chief commander of the company
was Ondreian Floderan i Lit, senator of the Roman Caesar [i. e., the
Emperor at Vienna], and on this basis some commentators have iden-
tified him as of Austrian or German petty nobility. His actual identity
was more interesting.
Even the most detailed biographical dictionaries and gazeteers are
silent about the identity of Adrian Flodorf. Published collections deal-
ing with the establishment of Russo-Dutch contacts have nothing to
say about him. Yet in his own time he was an eminent personage.
The Flodorfs comprised a small circle in the aristocracy of the
Netherlands, connected by birth to the leading representatives of the
local nobility. Descended from the knight Rene van Vlodorp (c. 1290),
senior vassal of the counts of Geldern, the Flodorfs had by the late six-
teenth century made themselves influential seigniors holding many
estates and castles. Their lands were scattered along the frontier of the
historical Netherlands with Germany and they were able to slip off the
phantom control of the Emperor, the formal suzerain of the Lower
Rhine, unlike the other families of variant name (Flodorf, Flodroff,
Flodroph, Vlodrop, Vlodorp) with whom historians have confused
them. Their high status is confirmed by their privileges, which included
the right to coin their own money (like the free imperial barons the
Reckheims in 15551563).2
Openly Protestant in their sympathies, at times even extending pro-
tection to the most radical Anabaptists and Mennonites, the Flodorfs

1
G. Zhordaniia, Ocherki iz istorii franko-russkikh otnoshenii kontsa XVI i pervoi
poloviny XVII vv. Chast pervaia (Tbilisi, 1959), 302331; G. G. Frumenkov, Solovetskii
monastyr i oborona Belomoria v XVIXIX vv. (Arkhangelsk, 1975); O. V. Skobelkin,
Inostrantsy na russkom Severe v gody Smuty, Istoricheskie zapiski, vypusk
3 (Voronezh, 1998), 518; O. Ia. Nozdrin, Naemniki v Rossii nachala XVII vv.
Noblesse oblige. Voennye v traditisionnoi kulture Starogo sveta, Zhizn. Okruzhenie.
Nravy (Orel, 2004), 3945; Zh. Marzheret [Jacques Margeret], Sostoanie Rossiiskoi
imperii. Zh. Marzheret v dokumentakh i issledovaniiakh (teksty, kommentarii, stati),
ed.A. Berelovich, V. D. Nazarov, P. Iu. Uvarov (Moscow, 2007), 362363 passim.
2
Revue de la numismatique Belge. Publie sous les auspices de la Socit numisma-
tique, par R. Shalon, L. de Coster, C. Piqu. 4e Srie. T. I. (Bruxelles, 1863), 444445.
 russia in the international mercenary market 111

were inclined like other titled gueux (Beggars, Confederates) to sup-

port Prince William of Orange against the Catholic King of Spain,
Philip II. As a consequence they emerged among the victors in the
Revolt of the Netherlands, preserving their dominating position under
the bourgeois republic of the United Provinces.
The future commander of the company at Arkhangelsk was born
around 1580 to baron Villem van Flodorf and baroness Johanna van
der Fels. He received a name traditional in this dynasty, Adrian
Balthasar. After his fathers death in 1603 he inherited the bulk of his
estates with the title Imperial baron (free lord) Flodorf, Herr von
Leut, Well, and Rijckholt. Baron Leut (variously spelled Lotte, Lude,
Leuthe, Loyte, Louyt, Leudtz, Luyt, Loeuth, Leuth) was the most often
used part of his title.
On 10 August 1612 one of the foreign mercenaries present in
Pereiaslavl, the Scots captain James Shaw was asked by the bewildered
diak Savva Romanchukov to explain how, he, Ondreian Floderan i
Lit, who you say is a Senator of the Caesar, happens to come together
on the same business as Artur Aton and karanel Iakub Gil, men of the
King of England? Shaw answered, In those lands men are free and
travel from country to country on their own liberty. Adrian Flodorf
was in England and took counsel with them to travel to the Moscow
state for a good cause, of benefit to the Sovereign3 In fact the baron
was an enthusiastic traveler, having completed study (16021605) in
LAcadmie de Calvin, which later became the foundation of the
University of Geneva,4 and having visited Germany, Switzerland, and
Italy in 1609. At Venice and Mantua he acquainted himself with the
works of that first Palladio of the epoch, the classicist and architect
Vincenzo Scamozzi (15481616), who had rebuilt the castle of Well
according to the latest achievements in fortifications science.5
The times were dangerous not only for proponents of universal
architecture. The growing polarization among Lutherans, Calvinists,
and Catholics forced them to seek out political allies. In 1609 the death
of the intestate Johann Wilhelm, Duke of Cleves, sparked a war over

3
Marzheret, Sostoianie Rossiiskoi imperii, 282.
4
Album Amicorum Georgii Cragii, 16021605,/ The Aberdeen University Review
Vol. X, 30 (July 1923), 194195.
5
T. Temanza, Vite dei piu celebri architetti, e scultori veneziani che firorirono nel
secolo decimosesto. Vol I (Venice, 1778), 465; Vincenzo Scamozzi, Venetian Architect:
The Idea of a Universal Architecture. Villas and Country Estates (Amsterdam, 2003),
11, 98.
112 oleg a. nozdrin

the succession to Cleves and Julich involving several neighboring

principalities. Adrian Balthasar firmly adhered to the camp of the
Protestants placing their hopes on the pretender Johann Sigismund,
the Elector of Brandenburg. In 1611 Flodorf was placed in command
of a regiment in the army of Brandenburg.6
A crucial factor supporting the spread of the Counterreformation
was the military success of the Poles in Muscovy. After the defeat of
Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii the Poles had occupied the Kremlin (1610) and
King Sigismund IIIs son Crown Prince Wadysaw had been pro-
claimed ruler of Muscovy. The Polish occupation had neglected the
interests of Muscovite elites, had refused to accommodate to ortho-
doxy, and had devastated several towns and regions. This provoked an
open revolt leading to the formation of a First and then a Second
National Militia. But the occupation of Great Novgorod in 1611 by the
Swedes, former allies of Tsar Vasilii, had also discredited the idea of
seeking assistance from abroad. Despite the limited resources of the
militias every appearance of significant foreign military detachments
on Russian soil had brought risk and fear and had confirmed the worst
suspicions through sad experience.
England, considering itself the guarantor of Protestant liberty,
viewed with alarm the Catholic offensives in western and eastern
Europe. Economic interests tied England with conflicting Protestant
and Catholic powers, however, so England adhered to a calculated pol-
icy that would avoid losses to her maritime trade. Such a policy course
required gathering intelligence from the heads of diplomatic missions,
from commercial representatives, and from merchants, travelers, and
mercenaries. Among the latter informants based in the Hohenzollern
domains were the Englishmen James Hill, reporting to Lord Salisbury
from Koenigsberg in October 1611-February 1612, and Arthur Aston,
who arrived in Prussia and presented letters of recommendation to
Elector Johann Sigismund in April 1612.7
Thus the routes of the main figures of the Arkhangelsk expedition
intersected at the court of Brandenburg, which if not overtly support-
ing the undertaking was at least tacitly sympathetic to it. The arriving

6
A.C. Oelsnitz, Geschichte des koeniglich Preussischen ersten infantrie-Regiments
(Berlin, 1855), 51.
7
M. Jansson, N. M. Rogozhin, P. Bushkovitch, V. I. Buganov, M. P. Lukichev, eds.
England and the North: The Russian Embassy of 16131614 (Philadelphia, 1994), 191.
 russia in the international mercenary market 113

Britons were allowed to operate freely. Baron Leut and Rijckholt was
required to resign his commission in the Prussian army, however, and
his plan for rendering military assistance to Muscovy did not succeed
in gaining official support. The Elector was not prepared to break rela-
tions with Warsaw, as he hoped for its consent to unification with
Ducal Prussia and because he saw his own freedom of political maneu-
ver increasing the more King Sigismund III became mired in the
swamp of Muscovite politics.
Even more pragmatic was the position of the United Provinces.
When Adrian Flodorf turned to the States General in early 1612 for
permission to hire troops to assist Russia, he was turned down on
the grounds of Swedish-Danish relations, which meshed poorly with
the anti-Polish character of Flodorf s project. In declaring to the lead-
ers of the Second National Militia their intent to serve you, the boyars
and all the realm, in order to drive the Lithuanians from the state,
Flodorf and his lieutenants had to remain silent about the exploits of
the Swedes occupying the banks of the Volkhov. Their zeal to struggle
against your enemies to the death, eyes set upon your justice8 could
acknowledge only Polish-Lithuanian forces among Muscovys
enemies.
A similarly pacific policy was being conducted by James I (and VI)
Stuart, King of England and Scotland, due to the inadequacy of
Parliamentary subsidies, his own constant vacillations in sympathy, the
opinions of his favorites, pressure from court factions, the demands of
the merchant corporations, and delayed responses and half-measures.
Flodorf and his mercenaries did not receive from the King direct rec-
ommendations to the Russian authoritiesmerely a general letter
conferring free passage to other countries. A further reason for this
was the absence of a united legitimate government in Russia in the
summer of 1612.
Flodorf s ninety soldiers of fortune were a motley band. They
included the French colonel Jacques Margeret, who prudently remained
behind in Hamburg to await letters of reassurance from the Russians;
the Scots captain James Shaw, and lieutenant Johann von Pracht from
Prague. Sent with the Protestants to defend Russia was the fierce and
fanatic Catholic Sir Arthur Aston, as English Puritan propaganda in

8
Akty vremeni mezhdutsarstviia 16101613, izdannye pod nabliudeniem S. K.
Bogoisavlenskogo i I. S. Riabina (Moscow, 1915), 5455.
114 oleg a. nozdrin

the seventeenth century characterized him. He was taken into Russian

service and fought for Tsar Mikhail down to 1618, dispelling doubts
about the rigor of his religious fanaticism as well as the longstanding
myth that adherents of the Roman church could not find successful
careers under the first Romanovs.9
Besides Flodorf the Netherlands contingent within the company
comprised his nephew Captain Johan Christoph van dem Bilandt, a
member of the Bilandt baronial family,10 and a certain Obert Iakov,
kapitan (probably Everard Jacobs van der Neubourg, a company com-
mander in the Dutch army, whose discharge home from Russia in 1614
was requested by his brother-in-law Jan van de Walle, a burgomaster
well-known to foreign merchants in Moscow.11 The band also included
an interpreter, a fifer, a surgeon, two laundresses (one of them named,
a Margaret), a cook, two butlers, and other servants.12
Adrian Flodorf was accompanied to Arkhangelsk and back to the
Netherlands by his secretary Jan Danckaert. In spring 1614 Danckaert
unsuccessfully petitioned the States General (resolutions of 27 and
30 May) for a subsidy to publish his work on Muscovy. He did publish
in 1615 a book describing his impressions of Muscovy and dedicated
to the authorities of Geldern and Zutphen, the seat of the Hof van
Flodorf.13 It was republished under another title in 1652. Both editions
contained engravings, including a portrait of Grand Prince of Kiev
Vladimir I partly modeled upon a portrait of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich

9
This reference could be to either Arthur Ashton the Elder (c. 15711627) or his
son Arthur Ashton Jr. (15901649), both of whom participated in Flodorf s 16121613
expedition. Sir Arthur Ashton Sr. would later (16251627) serve as governor of the
American province of Avalon (the settlement of Ferryland, Newfoundland and part of
Labrador); he perished in 1627 at Buckinghams campaign at La Rochelle. His son was
a Royalist general, the governor of Oxford and the commandant of Drogheda in
Ireland; he was killed during Cromwells assault on Drogheda in the fall of 1649.
10
The Bilandts (Bijlandt, Bylandt), owners of the castle of Vell up to 1600, were con-
nected with the Flodorfs through Adrian Balthasars grandmother Katarina van
Bilandt. A representative of a collateral branch, I. K. van dem Bilandt was well received
in the Netherlands upon his return and figured prominently in affairs down to 1615.
Das Staatsarchiv Dusseldorf und seine Bestande. Bd. I. Landes und gerichtsarchive von
Julich-Berg, Kleve-Mark, Moers und Geldern, Hrsg. F. W. Oediger (Siegburg, 1957), 225.
11
V.A. Kordt, Ocherk snoshenii Moskovskogo gosudarstva s Respublikoi
Soedinennykh Niderlandov do 1631 g., Sbornik Russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva.
T. 116 (St. Petersburg, 1902), cccii.
12
Rossiisskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (RGADA, Moscow). F. 150.
No.3, 1613. l. 17.
13
M.A. Prins-Schimmel, R. Stenvert, Hof van Flodorf te Zutphen (Zutphen, 1997);
F. W. J. Scholten, De Hof van Flodorf, een kleine historie (Jaarverslag, 1991).
 russia in the international mercenary market 115

(another instance of the borrowing of available portrait cliches) and a

scene of the assassination of False Dmitrii I at the hands of rather
Brueghelian peasants. To Danckaert Russia had appeared a gloomy,
cold, savage and inhospitable country, and perhaps as a consequence
his work remained without a Russian translation.14
The fate of the Flodorf expedition might have affected his pessi-
mism. The mercenaries were politely but decisively shown the door.
Bad autumn weather only postponed the decision of the Council
of All the Realm to send the foreigners home as unneeded, a
decision approved by the new Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, elected 21
February 1613. On July 2, 1613 Baron Flodorf, detained at Kholmogory,
wrote the young tsar that he had changed his mind about entering
Russian service: Your Imperial Highness without doubt remembers
well how I, together with Sir Arthur Aston and Colonel James Hill,
overcoming the hardships of journey, were sent to this state with the
intention of most loyally and honestly rendering service to the
government standing at that time As a result of the journey to
this kingdom almost two years have already passed since we have
been in our native land. Meanwhile many of the people closest to me
have died, leaving me an inheritance, while my people at home are
receiving rumors and judgments that I must have already died, and
my kinsmen have therefore begun to divide my property amongst
themselves, and so I have suffered losses on both sides. Now that
the most advantageous time approaches for me to return home by
sea to my people, I turn to thee with my most faithful and humble
request that thou wouldst mercifully deign to permit me to return
home, and for that purpose order my passport returned and turn thy
merciful Imperial intention to the many various losses I have
suffered15
The tsar honored his request. A few weeks later the mercenaries left
Russia and returned to their homes. As subsequent events would show,
Flodorf did have grounds to complain about his kinsmen.

14
J. Danckaert, Beschryvinghe van Moscovien ofte Ruslandt, verhalende den eersten
standt des rikcks, en hare oorlooghen, rechten en godts-diensten mitsgaders, een wegh-
wijser, om te reysen door Moscovien, en de aenhoorige landen, stende en Revieren, na
Groot-Tataryen (tAmsterdam, 1615); J. Danckaert, Reyse, ofte Voyage, gedaen door
Moscovien ofte Rus-landt: Gestalt in twee deelen (Dordrecht, 1652). Page 19 of the 1615
edition and pages 3 and 125 of the 1652 edition mention the Flodorf expedition.
15
Marzheret, Sostoianie Rossiiskoi imperii, 304308.
116 oleg a. nozdrin

By the autumn of 1613 the Julicher Landstandt baron Leut had

taken command of a militia under Hohenzollern control and had pro-
voked a great scandal. Before his Russian journey he had won the good
favor of Countess Margaret von Pallandt. He was now vexed to learn of
her approaching marriage to the de facto ruler of Julich Count Karl von
Schwartzenberg, a Catholic. This offense to his person was com-
pounded by confessional hostility. In November Flodorf abducted the
bride and her mother and small suite on the way to the altar. Just when
the captive countess began to reciprocate her abductors blandishments
Flodorf unexpectedly took refuge in the Netherlands and sent the bride
home to fulfill her marriage obligations. This affair did not have bad
consequences for him, however. Already by 1617 we find the crown
prince of Brandenburg Georg Wilhelm receiving Flodorf with friend-
ship and consigning his past deed to oblivionwhich forced the retire-
ment of the disgraced Schwartzenberg.16
Adrian Balthasar Flodorf governed his life according to the code
of mercenary honor. Unbound by any formal obligation to Russia this
respected servant of Tsar Mikhail entered into correspondence
with Swedens King Gustav II Adolf in 1614, discussing ways to use
petards more effectively to take fortresses.17 Gustav Adolf found such
information useful in preparing his siege of Pskov. This exchange of
correspondence continued down to Gustav Adolf s death in 1632
and Flodorf became one of the kings trusted advisors on northern
European affairs.18
Around 1620 Flodorf married Baroness Isabella van Dorth to Dorth
(15951652), adding castle Dorth to his family property; he entered

16
J.J. Dodt van Flensburg, H. J. Royaards, Archief voor kerkelijke en wereldsche
geschiedenissen, inzonderheid van Utrecht (Utrecht, 1839), 292; J. S. Ersch, Allgemeine
Encyclopadie der Wissenschaften und Kunste in alphabetischer Folge von genanten
Schriftstellern bearbeiter (Leipzig, 1818), 67; C. Stramburg, A. J. Weidenbach,
Denkwurdiger und nutzlicher Rheinischer-Antiquarius. Von einem Nachforscher
(Koblenz, 1870), 539.
17
Generalstaben Sveriges Krig 16111632. Band I. Danska och Ryska Krigen
(Stockholm, 1936), 619.
18
See Flodorf s 12 January 1615 letter to the king and Gustav II Adolf s 10 May
1625 missive to the United Provinces mentioning Baron Leut and Vell. Schreiben
Konig Gustav Adolphs an die General Staaten ver Vereinigten Niederlande, vom
10 May 1625, Patriotisches Archiv fur Deutschland, Hrsg. F. C. Moser (Leipzig, 1787),
56; O. Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia. Until the
Establishment of the S. congregatio de propaganda fide in 1622. Volume II (15831622)
(Oslo, 1980), 532.
 russia in the international mercenary market 117

Danish service, assisting Ernst Mansfeld against Tilly in 1625,19 partici-

pated in the founding of Dutch colonies in America,20 and became rec-
ognized as an expert reworking plans for the Swedish annexation and
mapping of Ingermanland.21 Gustav Adolf highly valued the services of
his general-quartermaster Flodorf and granted him the title of Count
on 15 May 1630.
The kings decree lists Flodorf s professions as skilled engineer,
miner, pyrotechnician and fireworks-master, guncaster, powder- and
saltpeter-master, artillerist, fortifications engineer, and intendantthe
specializations essential to the successful conduct of war in the seven-
teenth century.22
In 1634 the infantry regiment of Adrian Balthasar Count van Flodorf
Baron Leut was taken into the army of the United Provinces, and in
1648 his name was acknowledged in connection with the Treaty of
Westphalia ending the Thirty Years War. His sumptuous and intem-
perate lifestyle eroded his familys financial condition, however. After
his death in 1656 his eldest son Villem Adrian Count van Flodorf
Baron Leut, Dort, and Darvelt had to sell off part of his property to
settle his fathers debts. The later Flodorfs pursued more peaceful
careers as high-ranking military and court administrators in the
Netherlands and in neighboring German states; two of them, the bar-
ons Huyssen and Tuyll van Serooskerken, flourished in Russian service
in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Mercenaries appeared wherever their services were in demand.
Sometimes that demand had to be manufactured. It is entirely under-
standable that Flodorf s detachment should include soldiers earning
livelihoods according to their own professional habits regardless of
the calculations and intrigues of distant European capitals. It is also

19
J. O. Opel, Der Niedersachsis-danische Krieg (Berlin, 1878), 604; P. W. Guthrie,
Battles of the Thirty Years War (London, 2000), 139.
20
J. F. Jameson, Willem Usselinx: Founder of the Dutch and Swedish West India
Companies (New York, 1887), 178.
21
C. hlander Bidrad till knnedom om Ingermanlands historia och frvalting. Bd. 1
(16171645) (Uppsala, 1898), 38.
22
General fver artilleriet, erhll i uppdrag att ifrn Nederlnderna 1614 hemta
ngra ingenirer, minerare, petarderare, fyrverkare, stuckgjutare, verkmstare, krut-
mamakare, salpetersjudare, grosmeder uch audra sdana embetsmn, frskte att lyfta
Ingermanland och karelen Cit.op.: B. Schlegel, C. A. Klingspor Den med skldebref
frlnade men ej riddarhuset introducerade svenska adelns ttar-taflor.
(Stockholm,2006), 7577.
118 oleg a. nozdrin

possible to discern in the actions of mercenary commanders diver-

gences from the goals they publicly proclaimed. For Baron Flodorf the
expedition of 1612/1613 may have been a strategic reconnoiter that
convinced Protestant states Russia had the ability to settle its fate on its
own as the Muscovite chroniclers of the 17th century subsequently
proclaimed for their country.
 FOOD AND SUPPLY:
LOGISTICS AND THE EARLY MODERN RUSSIAN ARMY

Carol B. Stevens

Warfare depended on the practical art of moving armies and keeping

them supplied,1 in early modern Europe as much, if not more, than in
later eras. The 163031 campaign of Gustavus Adolphus in the
Germanies and the importance of the Spanish military corridors to its
Army of Flanders are but the most obvious examples of that statement.2
The temptation remains, however, to categorize the period broadly as
one during which armies lived principally off the land.3 Debates about
such contentions have revealed much. First, the early modern era was
one in which military supply meant, clearly and overwhelmingly, the
provisioning of food and fodder for armies. Feeding tens of thousands
of men, the horses they rode and that pulled their carts, was the most
demanding of supply functions, by comparison, for example, with sup-
plying weaponry, the munitions and expertise needed to keep it func-
tioning.4 Secondly, generalizations about supply in early modern
Europe assume a unity of military behavior across the continent and
have served to conceal differing military goals, organization and theat-
ers across the continent in important ways.5
The following is an examination of Muscovite logistics for the early
modern period. The Muscovite army typically fought in a very differ-
ent theater of war from west Europeans. The sparsely populated,

1
Martin Van Creveld, Supplying War. Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton 2nd
Edition (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1.
2
Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus. A History of Sweden, 16111632 (London:
1958) and Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 15671659 2nd
edition (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 2004), for example.
3
Creveld, Supplying War, 3738.
4
See, for example, G. Perjs, Army Provisioning, Logistics, and Strategy in the sec-
ond half of the 17th century, Acta historica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae no. 16
(1970): 151 and a long line of discussions stemming therefrom, including Erik A.
Lund, War for the Every Day: Generals, Knowledge, and Warfare in Early Modern
Europe, 16801740 (Greenwood Press: 1999).
5
John A. Lynn, ed., Feeding Mars. Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages
to the Present (Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), for a variety
of counter examples.
120 carol b. stevens

agriculturally unproductive lands of eastern Europe offered much less

food and fodder for military supply than the rich and populated lands
of central France; living off the land was not as easy. The different
organization and goals of Muscovite and other east European armies
until the eighteenth century predicated somewhat different supply
needs; in particular, until after 1700 most of the Muscovite army gath-
ered seasonally only to return home at the end of the campaign season.
Finally, there were the different economic and bureaucratic character-
istics of Muscovite society. These topics have been studied only in
rather modest ways.6 This essay attempts to examine that which we
know in order to identify the Crowns principal supply concerns in the
early modern period.
It must be acknowledged that, for Muscovite military men as for
others in early modern Europe, plunder, pillage and living off the land
were important sources of food and fodder throughout the period.
What Muscovites meant by this was not always the same as west
Europeans; the difference was predicated in part by the fundamental
structure of their military. That is, Muscovite forces from early on were
predominantly composed of rapidly moving cavalry; they periodically
mustered to undertake cross-border cavalry raids and counter-raids.
Such activity long remained a staple of Muscovite warfare. One could
point to 15th-century raids on border territories of the Khanate of
Kazan, raids into Lithuania in the 1480s and 1490s; in tandem with
campaigns by larger armies, raids were also part of Muscovite strategy
against Lithuania again in the 1530s.7 Raiding remained a staple of cos-
sack life along the southern and southeastern frontiers into the seven-
teenth century and beyond. It is not easy to ascertain exactly what
kinds of support such activities drew upon, since much of it remained

6
In English, Dianne L. Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 14621598, The Slavonic and
East European Review Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jan., 1993): 3565, and Carol B. Stevens, Soldiers
on the Steppe (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996) explicitly study
some aspects of food supply; Brian L. Davies, esp. Warfare, State, and Society on the
Black Sea Steppe, 15001700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), and Peter B.
Browns work on the Thirteen Years War both deal with the subject as a matter of
course; contemporary Russian-language studies do so only in very limited ways. See
for example A. V. Malovs excellent Moskovskie vybornye polki soldatskogo stroia v
nachalnyi period svoei istorii, 16561671 (Moscow: Drevnekhranilishche, 2006).
7
M. M. Krom, Starodubskaia voina, 15341537. Iz istorii russko-litovskikh otnoshe-
nii (Moscow: Izd. Dom Rubezhi XXI, 2008), 18; Iu. G. Alekseev, Pokhody Russkikh
voisk pri Ivane III (St. Petersburg: Izd. St. Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 2007), 28, 44.
But raids turned back in the absence of fodder for foraging. Ibid, 37.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 121

outside the scope of record keeping. From what we can tell, however,
military men to a certain extent lived off the land as they moved; in the
sparsely populated and agriculturally underproductive territories in
which they typically moved, however, this was rarely enough. Still,
Muscovites traveled light in the fashion of their Tatar adversaries to
the south. Habits that permitted a Muscovite to carry his food, and
what he needed to prepare it, on a single horse were described some-
what incredulously by Sigismund von Herberstein as late as the first
part of the sixteenth century.8 During and after fighting, cavalry-
menfurther restored themselves with plunder, pillage, and, if victori-
ous, booty.
Cavalry raids were hardly the Muscovite armys only activities. In
the mid-late 15th century, for example, Ivan III sent armies of signifi-
cant size against the city of Novgorod; he fought field battles and staged
other large demonstrations of military force. If major field engage-
ments were rare during the Russo-Lithuanian war of the early 16th
century, there were still major incursions by quite large armed forces
on both sides. Historians have argued persuasively that some of these
armies numbered as many as 30,00040,000 men.9 Border fortresses
and defenses against steppe raids were being put in place, and Muscovy
made use of artillerylargely but not exclusively in fortress settings.10
In such circumstances, traveling light and living off the land alone, as
raiders did, was implausible. Methods to compensate for the large army
numbers, Russias low population density, the changing availability of
items at different times of year, and the rather different need to stock
fortifications were needed.
Supply arrangements for larger armies on the move for longer time
periods appeared broadly related to those used by cavalry raiders. That
is, the predominantly cavalry army still relied upon its members indi-
vidual endeavors to meet their own needs. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century cavalrymen brought supplies from home for longer campaigns:
food, sometimes fodder, certainly extra horses, weapons, arrows, and
the men and carts to convey and protect them. That such arrangements
were at all viable depended on short, largely seasonal campaigns by

8
Sigismund von Herberstein, Sigmund, Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii,1557
Ed Bertold Picard; Trans. J. B. C. Grundy (New York: Barnes & Noble,1969), 7980.
9
See A. N. Lobin, K voprosu o chislennosti vooruzhennykh sil Rossiiskogo gosu-
darstva v XVI v, Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana 12 (2009): 4578.
10
The presence of artillery is recorded on the battlefield in the 1480s.
122 carol b. stevens

men who returned to their homes and lands for at least some part of
the year, a fact that persistently distinguished Muscovite armies from
their west European counterparts. Living off the land as the army
moved continued to be important, especially for fodder. Limited
agricultural resources, however, restricted the ability of men to feed
themselves by foraging, especially when large numbers of men traveled
together, or when contingents moved in the late fall or early spring, as
they frequently did. It was still assumed that victorious armies would
pillage, plunder, and collect what booty they might from the defeated
enemy.11
In fact, these arrangements were not a simple extension of the sup-
ply practices practiced by raiders. Individuals going on a longer cam-
paign needed more supplies than raiders, and there were more of them.
Similarly, larger numbers decreased the amount of time military men
could live off the land in a particular region and increased the collec-
tive impact of foraging or pillaging. Each of these realities carried mili-
tary impacts. Any significant baggage train represented an unwieldy
addition to rapidly moving cavalry contingents. Pillaging and living off
the land became increasingly punitive for the subject population. The
requirement of more supplies for more individuals greatly increased
the possibility that an army might be crippled by dearth. The presence
of artillery and occasional infantry placed new demands on an army
relying upon self-supply.
That the Muscovite court was aware of such issues is suggested by its
intervention in supply matters. One clear concern was that military
men have access to adequate supplies prior to leaving home. By far the
most common source of military food supply and weaponry remained
the land and wealth of members of the cavalry. The development of the
pomeste system, whereby an elite cavalryman was awarded the use of
(tenanted) land in return for military service, may have broadly
reduced military reliance on booty and reinforced the cavalrys ability
to supply itself with weaponry, food, and forage for military campaigns.
But, military supply was not the expressed or primary purpose of
the arrangement, as it evolved after 1500.12 Nevertheless, the pomeste

11
Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 5354; Krom, Starodubskaia voina, 45; E. A. Razin,
Istoriia voennogo iskusstva vol. 2 (Moscow: Voennoe izdatelstvo ministerstva oborony
SSSR, 1961), 310, 31216.
12
More than three decades ago, Richard Hellie ably argued that early restrictions on
peasant movement were unlikely to have been purposefully directed to this end.
Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change (Chicago: 1971), 8485.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 123

system, and its productivity as measured by peasant tenants on the

land, remained an important element of the way in which Muscovites
thought about military supply, and it will be touched on as relevant
here. However, the development of the system in its entirety has been
elaborately discussed elsewhere and is beyond the scope of this essay.
There were other, unsystematic interventions that bolstered and
checked the availability of military supplies to those leaving home to
fight. Military musters from the mid-15th century may have recorded
cavalrymens preparedness, counting available mounts and weaponry
before their departure for the front.13 Individual servicemen received
direct support. The crown paid money derived from cash taxes, or
grain harvested from demesne land, to help selected warriors. Others
received direct gifts of grain or prepared foods. Thus, the Grand Prince
offered food (flour and meat), apparel, and arrows to those standing
guard against raids from Kazan during a long winter in 1469.14
However, the intent of such awards was not always so clear as in this
last case. Gifts (of grain, cash and other items) were forms of remu-
neration, and not always directed at military supply per se. Gifts of
food, however they might be used, were also bound up with the sym-
bolic notion of feeding from the Grand Princes table, and might have
political rather than any direct military significance.15
Of particular concern were the anomalous members of the military,
those who had no access to agricultural land to supply themselves,
and therefore lay outside the usual arrangements of military supply.
Cossacks, temporary foot soldiers, and peasant labor fell into this cat-
egory, as did most artillerymen. Some were offered supplies in kind by
those that hired them (a town, for example), but more often such men
were hired for cash and required to supply themselves, first by buying
from local markets and then by foraging and purchases in the field.
Economic growth at the end of the 15th century had bolstered the
trade in foodstuffs, but such dependence on commerce and cash none-
theless remained unreliable. The transport of foodstuffs for such troops
posed further questions (see below).

13
A. V. Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily Russkogo gosudarstva: v XVXVII v.v. s obra-
zovaniia tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva do reform pri Petre I (Moscow: Voennoe
izdatelstvo, 1954), 3435; Alekseev, Pokhody, 49.
14
Gustav Alef, Muscovite Military Reforms in the second half of the fifteenth cen-
tury, FzOG vol 18 (1973): 77.
15
Kondratieva, Tamara, Gouverner et Nourir. Du pouvoir en Russie XVIeXxe sicles
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), 3139, 5155.
124 carol b. stevens

The crown also evinced concerns about the army once it was on the
move. Baggage trains attracted particular attention. Especially when
cavalry troops were accompanied by artillery and by temporary groups
of foot soldiers and laborers, the volume of supplies, artillery require-
ments, and men on foot threatened to generate a large, slow baggage
train. Some of these issues were resolved by putting foot soldiers, artil-
lery and supplies onto boats, built or contracted by the crown; these
troops were known as sudnaia rat. The arrangement allowed the cav-
alry to travel overland at speed with a smaller baggage train; supplies
and materiel for later use could be transported with the more vulner-
able infantry and artillery by water. When river travel was impossible,
campaigns were timed to make overland transport more efficient; for-
eign visitors noted that peasant labor prepared roads ahead of the army
for the movement of guns and supply trains.16 While riverine transport
apparently required individual servicemen to place their supplies
jointly on the same barge, over land the responsibility for guarding,
directing, protecting and driving supply carts apparently remained
largely individual.
Additional supplies for the army, once it was on the move, were also
a matter for concern. Thus, soldiers protected the approach of food
sellers to the army as it marched. In this way, commerce in foodstuffs
was enlisted to supply the troops, especially along established trade
routes; there is no clear record, however, of the Crown contracting sup-
pliers to provide for its men in this era.17 The military implications of
requisitioning and living off the land were clearly recognized. In Ivan
IIIs campaigns, particularly against Novgorod in 1477, food supply
was an element of tactics. Ivans forces were explicitly positioned in
such a way as to deny food supplies to the besieged city. After some
time in position, half of each Muscovite army unit was released in turn
to forage for food and fodder. While a logical response to the depletion
of personal supplies, this undeniably deprived the locals and terrorized
the rural population. Otherwise, pillaging and requisitioning within

16
Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 28: Pososhnye liudi were the workforce for building
roads, bridges, fortressessometimes even siege forces, taken at the rate of 2 or 3 from
towns and fields per warrior. They moved artillery, big guns, materiel, and built defense
works on towns.
17
Trakhaniots Description of Russia in 1486, ed Robert M. Crosky and trans.
E.C. Ronquist, Russian History / Histoire Russe Vol. 17 no. 1 (Spring 1990): 64; Alef,
Muscovite Military Reforms, 86; Razin, Istoriia voennogo iskusstva, 307; Alekseev,
Pokhody, 32.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 125

the boundaries of Muscovy by Muscovite military men were discour-

aged. And the Tatar allies of Muscovite troops were offered gifts rather
than being allowed to pillage Russian populations, even when the latter
were Muscovite enemies.18
Despite such interventions, as long as fast moving cavalry remained
the backbone of the army, the army largely supplied itself from its own
lands, then from foraging and plunder. The Crown limited itself to
irregular additions to the supplies of military men before they left for
the front, to some regulation of supply once the army was on the march,
and to limited management of military baggage trains.

Throughout the sixteenth century, the continuing centrality of heredi-

tary landholding cavalry to the Muscovite military endeavor dictated
that individuals providing for their own military needs remained the
general expectation. If this was obviously true among local raiders
whose ongoing small wars interrupted relations with Kazan, activities
along the southern frontier, and along the Muscovite-Lithuanian bor-
der,19 it also remained the dominant model when the army went on
longer campaigns or set sieges. In 1553, Richard Chancellor was among
the first, but certainly not the last, to observe that Russian military men
provided for themselves without help or support from the crown.20
This broad observation, however, conceals some significant altera-
tions to Muscovite supply and logistics. Among the more important of
these was a much more systematic concern about the predictability of
military supply that accompanied an army leaving on campaign.
Increasingly regularization and control of supply reflected a broader
growth in the Muscovite statethe development of a central chancel-
lery system and its record keeping system, the greater systematiza-
tionof taxation, and so on; thus for example the Military Chancellery
would be joined in this era by a number of other chancelleries that
governed military affairs. The changes to military supply in this period,
then, often reflect a series of developments, individual elements of
which had been present for some time. In many respects, in the last

18
Alef, Muscovite Military Reforms, 77, 81, citing PSRL VI, 19293; Razin,
Istoriia, 307.
19
Krom, Starodubskaia voina, 18, 94; his Mezh Rusiu i Litvoiu: zapadnorusskie
zemli v sisteme russko-litovskikh otnoshenikontsa XV-pervoitreti XVI v. (Moscow:
Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1995), 131, 229; Razin, Istoriia, 32025.
20
Chancellors Voyage to Muscovy (Edinburgh, 1956), 57.
126 carol b. stevens

two-thirds of the sixteenth century, Muscovy used its new abilities to

expand significantly the capacities of a predominantly self-supplying
military system.
Among the more significant regularizations was that of the relation-
ship of pomeste (and other) landholding to military supply. From 1556,
the Muscovite court decreed that every 100 chetverti of estate land
owed one fully provided cavalryman to the army, with two horses if
hewas departing on a long campaign. They were required to provide
their own stores, sufficient for 34 months campaign, carried on their
own horses and carts, and sent ahead to a mobilization point.21 These
efforts could be subsidized by cash payments from the crown, in
amounts dependent on rank; a landholder bringing more than the
required number of men to a muster might receive a payment for doing
so; the Crown also provided a considerable number of weapons (bows-
and-arrows, battle axes, sabers). There was less immediate discussion
about the provision of food and forage at musters. Efforts to restrict the
flight of peasants from the lands of military servicemen, however, had
a clear and much-discussed political dimension, but also a demonstra-
ble relationship to the inability of servicemen to sustain themselves at
home or on campaign, especially during economic devastation of the
last decades of the sixteenth century.22
More visible was the impact of adding permanent, paid, and trained
infantry regiments, the streltsy, to the army at mid-century. As the
numbers of infantrymen (and artillery) grew thereafter, they some-
what altered the composition of the army and required more serious
attention to provisioning by the Crown. The growth of the chancellery
system placed many aspects of the support of new musketeer troops
under the Strelets Chancellery. Whilst the army was on campaign, its
efforts were coordinated with the Cannoncasting, Foreign Mercenaries,
and other chancelleries by the Military Chancellery.23 At home, the
strelets tax was levied largely on agricultural land to support the troops
year round. The tax did not reflect the development of new eco-
nomic resources to support the military, but it did instead help the

21
Davies, Warfare, 51.
22
Alexander Filjushkin, Ivan the Terrible. A Military History (London: Frontline
Books, 2008), 2527; Hellie, Enserfment, ch. 5. Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 80, dis-
cusses the arms brought to muster by cavalrymen.
23
Pavel O. Bobrovskii, Perekhod Rossii k reguliarnoi armii (St. Peterburg: V. S.
Balashev, 1885), 64.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 127

government make a larger share of the countrys resources available to

the troops. Payments from the Crown thus covered daily living
expenses throughout the year, including food, for the streltsy who
acted as palace guards, garrison soldiers, or campaign infantry; they
also received weaponry and uniforms.
While on distant campaign or defending border fortresses, however,
the streltsy were an acute instance of a growing supply and logistical
problem confronting the Muscovite army. That is, in Muscovys envi-
ronmental and economic circumstances, long campaigns or fortress
sieges with numerous troops required access to additional supplies
beyond those carried by the self-supplying cavalry. In particular, the
streltsy did not share the landed cavalrys access to agricultural land,
carts, horses, and servants to convoy their supplies with the army. More
generally, foraging for and requisitioning other food grew less reliable
as numbers grew and was, in any case, more difficult for infantry than
cavalry troops. Where merchants and sutlers did attend the army, any
significant shortage drove food prices beyond the reach of many.
Furthermore, some of Muscovys military destinations (Kazan, Crimea,
Lithuania) lay beyond the limits of what a supply train could carry.
Two particular efforts, which bolstered the volume of food supplies
available to the streltsy in particular and the army in general while on
the march, came into more frequent use in the sixteenth century. Along
the southern frontier, for example, fortresses (some of which stock-
piled local supplies) had stood for some time as a first defense against
Tatar attack. When a string of fortresses and a more coordinated
defense against Tatar attack was created, the largest towns established
state granaries.24 These were not always systematically stocked, nor
were the methods used innovative except in volume. However, they
were filledoften generouslyby local grain levies carted in by the
taxpayers, sometimes by purchases on the local market, or even contri-
butions from Crown demesne land. Their primary purpose was to pro-
vide siege supplies to local defense forcesstreltsy and Cossacks
among othersbut they also acted as an emergency resource for local
residents, or even as supplies to campaign troops that had been sent
southward to defend the border.25 Similarly, during the Livonian War

24
The Crown under Ivan IV created the zhitnyi prikaz.
25
A. Baiov, Kurs istorii Russkago voennago isskustva, vyp. 1. Ot nachala Rusi do
Petra velikago (St. Petersburg: 1909), 7981, describes these forces.
128 carol b. stevens

(155883), border fortresses along the western frontier similarly devel-

oped generous stockpiles. The largest fortresses had city commandants
(gorodovoi prikazchik) who shared responsibility for defense manage-
ment with the town viceroys; stockpiled materials included provisions,
forage for horses, as well as gunpowder and shot. Their primary pur-
pose was to provide siege supplies for the garrison (again, including
streltsy), but they could also re-outfit passing Muscovite troops, who
usually purchased their stocks either from food allowances or with
their own cash. Fortresses so provided drew astounded comment
from their conquerors when Russia lost control of them toward the end
of the Livonian war; the defenders private stocks may have augmented
some of the supplies found there.26
Similarly, Muscovy began to make use of forward magazines, for-
tresses with supplies used to restock military contingents that had
passed beyond the reach of friendly border fortresses. Among the ear-
lier examples is the fortress of Vasilsursk, which was built on the fringes
of the Khanate of Kazan in the 1520s. The first use of Vasilsursk as a
supply depot, stocked by the Crown in familiar ways, was not crowned
with success. The Muscovite cavalry, following an overland track
toward the Khanate, was harassed by Tatar contingents and arrived
without most of its supplies. Some food and materiel were issued to
them from Vasilsursk, but additional river shipments, needed to main-
tain stocks, were capsized by heavy spring rains.27 Nevertheless, for-
ward supply magazines along river routes, as appropriate to a particular
campaign, become a staple of Muscovite logistics. Similar arrange-
ments were also used by such well-regulated and well-provided entities
as the Ottoman army when operating in western Eurasia. Indeed, the
Turkish attack on Muscovite Astrakhan in 1569 self-destructed in large
part because the Ottomans proved unable to provide riverine support
to their troops.28 In Muscovy, however, no string or road of magazines
appeared to supply campaigns departing the frontier in a particular
direction.

26
Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 51; Heidenstein, 120; Epifanov, 120; N. E. Nosov,
Voenno-administrativnye obiazannosti gorodovykh prikazchikov, Ocherki po istorii
mestnogo upravleniia russkogo gosudarstva pervoi poloviny XVI veka (Moscow,
Leningrad, 1957), 9394; T. I. Pashkov, Mestnoe upravlenie v Russkom gosudarstve per-
voi polovine XVI veka (Moscow: Drevnekhranilishche, 2000), 102.
27
Razin, Istoriia vol 2, 355.
28
Halil Inalik, The origin of the Ottoman-Russian rivalry and the Don-Volga
canal, Ankara niversitesi Yll I (194648): 6191.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 129

Within these arrangements, the commitment to supply (and pay)

the streltsy, its new permanent troops, year round, at war or in peace,
remained a significant exception in an army largely composed of self-
supporting cavalry. As the number of streltsy grew, honoring this
promise overlapped and competed with the Crowns other, larger, but
more intermittent and emergency-oriented supply commitments.
Especially in a wartime context, the needs of the streltsy did not receive
exclusive attention. Instead, fortresses stockpiled with grain and other
supplies and baggage train supplies (discussed below) provided sup-
port first, but by no means exclusively, to the streltsy or any other par-
ticular part of the army; almost all supply arrangements were at least
occasionally extended to all members of the military for purchase or in
emergencies.
A separate issue, important in this context, was the size and effec-
tiveness of the baggage trains accompanying the Muscovite army, par-
ticularly as the numbers of troops on campaign grew to nearly 40,000.29
We have little direct information about the size of Muscovite supply
convoys in the mid-16th century. Isolated comparisons from the six-
teenth-century suggest that the Muscovites, despite growing artillery
and infantry numbers, could compare favorably with their Tatar coun-
terparts. A Tatar order of 1501, for example, mandated one cart per five
men. A poorly attributed number from a Muscovite campaign of 1564
suggests an average of 34 men per cart, including presumably artillery
and other vehicles. Furthermore, Muscovite baggage trains appear
generally to have lacked the lengthy tail of families, sutlers, armorers
and others who followed armies in the west.30 However, when large
numbers of courtiers and the tsar himself joined the army, the equation
sharply changed. The armys approach to Polotsk in 1563, for example,
was overburdened with a huge baggage train, nearly equal in numbers
to the army. Its movement bogged down on muddy roads in exces-
sively close quarters. This case was surely unusual; not only was the
army quite large (about 31,000 fighting men), but the campaign was a

29
Lobin, K voprosu o chislennosti, 77, says no more than 60,000; but also see
Hellie, Enserfment, 27071.
30
Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 48; L.J.D. Collins, The military organization and
tactics of the Crimean Tatars during the 16th and 17th centuries, in VJ Parry and ME
Yapp, eds., War, Technology, and Society in the Middle East (London: Oxford University
Press, 1975), 258; Carol B. Stevens, Women and War in Early Modern Russia, in B. C.
Hacker and M. Vining, A Companion to Womens Military History (Brill: forthcoming),
typescript.
130 carol b. stevens

highly symbolic one in which the court and its riches would have
joined the baggage train. It was also burdened with siege army provi-
sions and heavy artillery, which nevertheless reached the front in a
timely fashion despite heavy military traffic.31 By contrast, West
European armies of the mid-sixteenth century recorded 615 men per
cart, while the size of Ottoman supply trains operating in Eastern
Europe was legendarily large.32
In the absence of more concrete information, it is difficult to do
more than speculate about baggage train size and its implications. If
Muscovite baggage trains were indeed less compact that those of west-
ern Europe, it is possible that supplies sent forward by individual cav-
alrymen were not effectively consolidated but still remained largely in
the hands of personal baggage slaves and others who brought them to
border muster points. In other circumstances, the inclusion of a guliai
gorod would have slowed and greatly swollen the baggage train of an
army using it, if it traveled overland. The portable fortress of the guliai
gorod (connecting lengths of wooden wall behind which the military
could shelter on an open battlefield) was much beloved of Muscovite
commanders, although the frequency with which it was used has
recently been questioned.33 It is also worth considering that Muscovite
campaign routes, especially those passing through uncultivated lands
and unsupported by river traffic, increasingly required that the army
carry the maximum amount of supplies with it. Apparently, however,
the size of baggage trains generated recurring concern only in the fol-
lowing century, if then.
The orderly movement of supplies across the countryside drew the
Crowns attention. Supplies provided by individual cavalrymen for dis-
tant or lengthy campaigns and during sieges were increasingly explic-
itly linked to institutional arrangements. For ordinary cavalry, those
supplies sent ahead to muster points were now more systematically
organized into a baggage train by the Military Chancellerythey were

31
Sergei N. Bogatyrev, Battle for the Divine Sophia? Ivan IVs Campaign against
Polotsk and Novgorod, The Military and Society in Russia, 14501917 eds. Eric Lohr
and Marshall Poe (Leiden, 2002), 326; R. G. Skrynnikov, Rossiia posle oprichniny
(Leningrad: Izd. Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1975), 46; K. V. Petrov, Kniga Polotskogo
pokhoda, 1563 (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsionalnaia biblioteka, 2004), esp. 5863.
32
Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 48.
33
Brian L. Davies, Guliai Gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th17th
century Muscovy and Eastern Europe, in this volume.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 131

escorted by soldiers and shipped on carts and with drivers belonging to

the postal system (iama). Once beyond the borders, the main baggage
train was systematically and sensibly divided, so that a particular regi-
ments supplies followed its own units path to the general meeting
point. By the mid-sixteenth century, there were more specialized offic-
ers put in charge of organizing the artillery and choosing campsites
(such camp sites were reportedly extensive, to allow horses to graze
freely). Special officers also took charge of military transportation.
As before, pillaging and requisitioning within Muscovite borders
remained out-of-bounds. However, since the horses, in particular, had
to live off the land, a special command (under a kormovshchik) was
detailed in enemy territory to supervise the collection of fodder.34
At least occasionally, sutlers and merchants provided grain and pre-
pared foods to the troops under contract, either at fortresses or in the
field. Within Muscovy, the crown attempted to control prices on food-
stuffs for the military. A workforce for building roads, bridges and for-
tresses was drafted from among the peasantry and the townspeople;
they also moved artillery, big guns, materiel and reinforced urban
defenses.
The Crowns growing ability to gather and disburse supplies had
other military significance. The Don Cossacks long (if intermittent)
alliance with the Muscovite crown was fueled by shipments of cash,
food, and powder, much of which materiel derived from the same taxes
and resources that fed into granaries and stockpiles.35
Renewed campaigns against Kazan in the middle of the century
(1549, 1550, 1552) offer some indications of how these changes worked
in the field. In the expectation that the armys horses, if not its warriors,
would have to live off the sparsely populated countryside, the army in
1552 left Muscovy from several different mobilization points on the
south-southeastern side of Muscovy, and the cavalry departed over-
land along three (and as it approached Kazan, two) quite separate
paths, only converging into a single unit as the border was crossed.36
The artillery and infantry forces (and a substantial number of supplies)
traveled in a state fleet, meeting up with the cavalry nearer Kazan.

34
Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 48, 51; Baiov, Kurs istorii, vyp. 1, 79; A. V. Chernov,
TsGADA kak istochnik po voennoi istorii Russkogo gosudarstva do XVIIIv, Trudy
MGIAI vol. 4 (1948): 154.
35
Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 28; Bobrovskii, Perekhod, 64, 82.
36
Smith, Muscovite Logistics, 3738; Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 35.
132 carol b. stevens

Although the use of river transport for supplies and forward magazines
were quite common by this time, the duration of campaigns made
them vulnerable. Campaigns in 1547 and 1550 had foundered on the
loss of river-shipped supplies due to an unseasonable thaw on the
Volga (or perhaps ill-judged timing).37
In anticipation of the campaign of 1552, however, a major staging
basea pre-fabricated fortress at Sviazhskhad been built, quite close
to the town of Kazan itself. Substantial amounts of food and military
supplies arrived there ahead of any military confrontation; these sup-
plies derived from demesne land harvests, from purchases financed by
taxation, and from individual sources of supply. This stockpiling was
similar to that routinely carried out in the southern frontiers for-
tresses, but on a grander scale. As it happened, the troops arriving
overland did not fare particularly well; it took a substantial five weeks
for one group of overland forces to meet the others, and the cavalry-
men arrived very hungry at the rendezvous point. The ordinary caval-
rymans diet of tolokno (an oaten flour) and sukhari (hard tack, biscuit),
did not require extensive milling or baking before use; if not the most
appetizing, supplies of this kind were abundant when the armies met.
Later, as the armies moved through Cheremis lands, they were also
met by numerous (if expensive) sutlers with more diverse and attrac-
tive goods.38 In this case, the supplies left at Sviazhsk proved useful
later, when Muscovite armies already surrounded Kazan. When barges
carrying supplies to the siege site near the city were swamped by rain,
the troops were restocked from Sviazhsk, and still more supplies were
brought downriver from Moscow. Further shortfalls in private supply
were opportunely made up by the sack of the nearby town of Arsk, not
long before Kazan fell. Such pillaging remained perfectly acceptable
outside of Muscovite borders, although not within them. The 1552
Kazan campaign was in other respects logistically successful, too, as
bridges, artillery towers, guns and materiel were brought up to the city
walls expeditiously and effectively.39

37
A. V. Dulov, Geograficheskaia sreda i istoriia Rossii, konets XV-seredina XIX v.
(Moscow: Nauka, 1983), 201, indicates that the raspustitsa undermined the 1550
campaign.
38
Baiov, Kurs istorii, 78; Jacques Margaret, The Russian Empire and the Grand
Duchy of Muscovy trans. and ed. Ch. Dunning (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1983), 5051.
39
Razin, Istoriia, 355; AN SSSR II, Istoriia Tatarii v materialakh i dokumentakh
(Moscow, 1937), 114, 120, 123.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 133

As in other ways, the subsequent Livonian War (15581582) proved

an acid test for Muscovys efforts in military supply. During the pro-
longed conflict against a background of domestic turmoil, Ivan IVs
government did what it could to provide Russian troops by stocking
forward magazines with state supplies from taxes, demesne lands, and
purchases. The musketeer troops were issued grain as a matter of prior-
ity, in part from granaries in towns along the frontier replenished from
government stocks and fed by local taxes in kind; hungry cavalrymen
later had access to the same stores.40 The forward fortresses between
the Dniepr and the Dvina were reportedly well stocked even quite late
in the war. The presence of sutlers near troop concentrations was
encouraged; there are examples of food supplies being contracted for
the troops and of controls imposed on food prices near the front.41
But these efforts achieved only occasional success during the
Livonian War. For a significant part of the conflict, living off the land
grew increasingly necessary.42 In and of itself, this was not only accept-
able to Russian authorities but deliberately encouraged. The Russians
plundered and pillaged around Dorpat (1558) and Fellin, near Riga
and Helmet (1560). The armys Tatar units were set to raiding and pil-
laging in order to intimidate the local population. But economic
decline, the continuing demands of the war, peasant flight, and difficul-
ties in Muscovy proper increasingly limited cavalrymens abilities to
support themselves in a war whose character ill suited their strengths.
Not only did it thoroughly undermine their ability to support them-
selves from their lands, but they also lacked taxation and other govern-
mental resources, or trade to support them. Within Muscovy, these
problems resulted in increasing restrictions on the movement of

40
Grala, Hieronim, et al., eds. Pamiatniki istorii vostochnoi Evropy. Istochniki XV
XVII vv. Vol. 3: Dokumenty Livonskoi voiny: podlinnoe deloproizvodstvo prikazov i
voevod, 15711580 (Moscow, Warsaw: Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1998), pt. 2 no. 25,
pp. 9697; no. 38, pp. 10809; part 3, no. 24; Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 35. The gra-
naries, however, did not always contain the grain that they were expected to. Pamiatniki
istorii vol.3 part I no. 40 p. 113.
41
Reingold Geidenshtein, Zapiski o Moskovskoi voine, 15781582. Perevod s lat-
ynskogo (St. Petersburg: Izd. arkheograficheskoi kommissii, 1889), 119120;
Bobrovskii, Perekhod, 82; Pamiatniki istorii, vol. 3 pt. 1, p. 19; part 2/2, p. 9697, 108
09; vol. 3 part 3, no. 24.
42
Johannes Renner, Livonian History 15561561 trans. J. S. Smith and W. Urban
with J. W. Jones. Baltic Studies vol. 1 (Lewiston NY, Queenston, Ontario, Lampeter,
UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 45, 96, 160, 163, 121; Pamiatniki istorii, vol. 3 pt. I,
pp. 15, 18, 21.
134 carol b. stevens

peasant labor toward the end of the century. In Livonia, there was
shortfall among the troops, little support coming from home, and not
enough state grain in the right places to provide emergency support.43
It might be argued that by the late sixteenth century the Muscovite
Crown could access resources well enough to provide episodic mili-
tarysupport. Under duress it could stock individual fortresses or pro-
vide for intermittent and emergency situations, often on quite a large
scale. Similarly, under optimal conditions, such as the 1552 campaign
against Kazan or the 1563 campaign against Polotsk, Muscovy could
successfully support a fairly brief targeted campaign. The strelets troops
survived. Overall, however, the prolonged demands of the Livonian
War underscored the military difficulties inherent in fighting in the
Livonian theater with a seasonal cavalry army. Among many other
problems, that cavalry was incapable of supporting itself during a pro-
longed and economically debilitating conflict; Muscovys supply sys-
tem, despite the arrangements targeting the streltsy, was essentially
designed to bolster and supplement self-supporting cavalry, and it was
not effective in doing so during a prolonged encounter.

The subsequent descent into the Time of Troubles led to a gradual but
massive collapse of the states structures, including those for the recruit-
ment and maintenance of the military. As various groups contended
for power, their armies paid salaries to infantry and mercenaries in
cash when they could, but also relied heavily on the hereditary cavalry
and the continuation of individual supply despite the flight of peasant
labor from central Russia; finally they awarded local requisition rights
to Cossack and other fighters when other options failed. Militarily
speaking, the era demonstrated clearly to all participants that self-
supporting cavalry were no longer efficient nor effective troops.
As is well known, political realities dictated that the army, like the
state, at least appear to rebuild after the Time of Troubles on the ideal-
ized model of what had existed before 1600. Self-sustaining cavalry,
therefore, for political reasons and well as economic ones, at least pur-
portedly remained at the center of the Muscovite military model

43
Geidenshtein, Zapiski, 70; Pamiatniki istorii, Pt. I and Pt. 3 #24; Renner, Livonian,
3738; The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia,
15641579 J. L. I. Fennell, ed., (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press,
1955), 11415, 13839; The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow ed. and trans. J. C. Smith,
J.Eichhoff and W. Urban (Madison: Baltic Studies Center, 1988), 88.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 135

during the restoration. Issues connected to the recovery of the heredi-

tary cavalry forces, both as a social group and as a military force, devel-
oped into disputes over peasant movement that ended in the formal
enserfment of the Russian peasantry in 1649.
At the same time, however, Muscovys rulers clearly recognized the
need for serious military reform. Just before the Smolensk War (1632
43) Muscovy introduced new-formation troops on a west European
modelpaid, trained troops with a more ramified officer structure and
a dominant infantry. From that point onward throughout the seven-
teenth century, Muscovy struggled with economically, politically, and
militarily satisfactory ways of reconciling the character and require-
ments of these troops with the rest of a very numerous armyin mat-
ters of supply as in other issues. What gradually emerged, amidst
considerable vacillation and indecision about the goals of military
reform, was a complex network for the extraction of food resources;
the system was flexible, in that it was capable of delivering large quanti-
ties of food to changing destinations, and productive, in that it gener-
ated adequate and sometimes generous quantities of supply. The
support it offered was largely seasonal and intended to maintain pri-
marily selected troops, but it sustained Russias large army while active
on several fronts.
The issues in military supply raised by the Smolensk War were quite
varied and, in some cases, new to the Muscovite establishment. The
single most important factor was that the war was envisioned (and car-
ried out) as a prolonged siege. However, the largest single contingent of
the army was still the hereditary cavalry. The three or four months of
supplies they were supposed to bring with them could hardly be
expected to last the siege, especially as regards fodder. Meanwhile, the
Crown was also committed to the full-time support of the new forma-
tion troopsEuropeans and Russians alikewho constituted more
than a third of the army. This commitment included rations money for
the purchase of food and fodder while the soldier was on active duty.
Cossacks and a few troops without land to supply themselves were also
dependent on cash payments. However, for very large numbers of men
over a prolonged period, neither purchasing, foraging, nor pillaging
were likely to be productive (since the Poles had been in situ for some
time) or helpful (since the Russians were, after all, fighting to include
precisely the nearby population within their borders).
Some of the devices used were very familiar. The fortresses of
Mozhaisk and Viazma were stocked with supplies for departing troops.
136 carol b. stevens

The fortress of Dorogobuzh on the Dniepr, once captured from the

Poles and linked to the Russian siege camp by pontoon bridges, was
an ideally positioned forward magazine until it was raided and its
stores destroyed by the Poles. Controls over the baggage trains, market
and pricing controls, supervision of requisitioning and foraging had
all been used before. The new formation troops were outfitted with
weaponry and the army generally with light artillery from the states
armories; the arrival of the heaviest siege guns was seriously delayed
by distance, road conditions, and weight, but did belatedly arrive in
March of 1633.
However, the uniquely difficult issue at Smolensk was how to collect
and transport very large quantities of supplies to the front for regular
purchase by the new formation troops, in particular. Three arrange-
ments were put into use. Nearby villages were assigned the task of
delivering (their own) foodstuffs to particular regimentsa form of
controlled requisitioning. Secondly, a new tax, nemetskii korm, was
levied by a new chancellery; its assessment and collection process was
not greatly dissimilar from that used for the existing strelets tax.44
However, this collection was assessed and delivered largely in the form
of prepared food (hardtack, flour, salt pork), which put less pressure
the armys facilities for preparation (mills, ovens, etc). But the enor-
mous quantities so generated could not plausibly be delivered only by
the taxpayers or by local postal carts, although both were recruited to
the effort. In the end, the government of Mikhail Fedorovich placed
unusually great responsibility on Muscovys commercial network. It
contracted with sutlers to buy, deliver, and sell (at a set price) signifi-
cant additional foodstuffs to the army in its Smolensk camp. These
same sutlers were also charged with the delivery of some of the provi-
sions yielded by nemetskii korm.45 In terms of net collections, these tax
efforts were successfulthey yielded amounts that should have fed the
entire army, even for those who should have brought food from home.
On the other hand, delivery of the food suffered from significant delays
(as did the siege guns). By the time that supplies arrived, not only the
new formation troops, but also the self-supplying cavalrymen, were in
immediate need, and the purchase of food supplies had to be opened

44
Davies, Warfare,72.
45
E. D. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina, 16321634 (Kiev: Universitetskaia Tip.,
1919), 197, 202210, 212, 21832; Akty Moskovskogo gosudarstva (St. Petersburg:
1890), vol. I nos. 202, 501.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 137

beyond the target population to the military at large.46 These and

related supply issues47 played a role in Muscovys failure at Smolensk.
And the failure of the military effort at Smolensk led to the dismissal of
many new formation regiments and redirected further reform.
The prototype for nemetskii korm, those systematic arrangements
intended to supply Muscovite streltsy, had been re-established in 1613
following the Time of Troubles. Its resemblance to later efforts to sup-
ply the new formation troops is obvious. However, the Musketeers
Chancellery surpassed the efforts of the Chancellery for Foreign
Provender (Prikaz nemetskikh kormov)48 because the musketeers grain
(streletskii khleb) was a national tax, which in principle provided wages
and regular food supply to the streltsy year round, in war or in peace.
The benefits did not extend to the entire army, of course; the musket-
eers were supposed to be its only clients. Tax payments came from both
agricultural and urban lands, either in cash or in kind; in the seven-
teenth century, in at least some locations, payments in kind began only
in the 1630s and thereafter were frequently (but not exclusively) so lev-
ied during war years until the 1670s, when there were a number of
changes to the tax and its collection.49
Because it was intended to provide a regular, year-round supply,
rather than emergency provisions or special campaign needs, musket-
eers grain collections represented a renewed attempt at regular mili-
tary food supply in Russia. The system paid out actual grain or prepared
foodanything from 160800 lbs. of various cereals per musketeer.
Again, because conditions in Russia, especially when troops were on
the move, could not guarantee the availability of adequate or reasona-
bly priced grain on the market, these grain payments could be more
effective than salaries or food allowances paid in cash. When grain
allowances were issued in prepared form, as tolokno or hard tack, as
they sometimes were, the arrangement overcame the necessity of car-
rying mills, ovens, and the other impedimenta of preparation.50 The
strelets tax became increasingly systematic as the century wore on.

46
Davies, Idem.; Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 137; Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina,
212214ff; Akty Moskovskogo gosudarstva (St. Petersburg: 1890), vol. I nos. 202, 501.
47
When the Russian siege camp was surrounded by the Poles, Russian cavalrys
opportunities to forage were also eliminated.
48
Translation as in Davies, Warfare, 73.
49
P. Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo (St. Petersburg: 1905), 9394.
50
Shein did send for bakers, however. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina, 209, 21516.
138 carol b. stevens

Thetax was more regularly and universally collected; systems for gath-
ering, processing, storing, and transporting the grain became more
reliable; the assessment rose.
Nevertheless, it was not a notable success as a targeted supply sys-
tem. Firstly, the numbers of streltsy had expanded very quickly even in
the sixteenth century, while, for a variety of reasons, the tax continued
to be gathered from a relatively static population. By mid seventeenth
century, the tax was grossly inadequate to its original purpose. By this
time, furthermore, the streltsy themselves were no longer Muscovys
crack troops. Failure to pay the musketeers and their increasing use as
a policing force then continued to undermine their usefulness as cam-
paign troops. Alternative payments, from customs or other sources,
trading privileges, or small plots of land supported them instead of
annual salaries. When the tax was reorganized in 1672, the substantial
sums of cash and grain collected were sent to Moscow and rerouted
into a variety of other uses, including stocking granaries and paying
effective troops departing for the frontier. What had once been
intended for targeted year-round supply was annexed, among other
things to seasonal military use by the army at large. Meanwhile, mus-
keteers stationed in the provinces made shift for themselves and relied
increasingly on local grain collections of various sorts.51
Many of the supply problems of earlier wars reappeared early in the
Thirteen Years War (16541667). Despite the well-established military
shortcomings of the hereditary cavalry troops, the Crown was forced at
the beginning of the war to put those troops in the field in significant
numbers. For such men, who were still bringing food from their estates,
reliable supply remained a serious problem. At first, the Crowns reac-
tion to supply questions was essentially unchanged. Some cash supple-
ments were paid; some adjustments were made at military musters; the
Military Chancellery reserved its increased, if not innovative, involve-
ment in supply matters to mitigating problems at the front. Thus, the
Crown was increasingly involved in all supply shipments: carts were
commandeered from the postal system, tax relief was offered to peas-
ants for carting goods, and systematic labor drafts built ever more
barges for forward shipments. Border fortresses and advance maga-
zines were stocked. Maintaining riverine passage for supply boats

51
Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo, 9899.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 139

remained an important military consideration.52 Attention to the trans-

portation and stockpiling of supplies, however, was neither new nor in
itself adequate to forestall shortages, especially among self-supplying
cavalrymen. Military men reported to their regimental headquarters
that their supplies had been stolen; many reported running out of sup-
plies and requested permission to leave the regiment to buy supplies in
more distant towns where locals put up a spirited defense against the
depredations of hungry cavalrymen; there were regulations to control
price gouging and bans on the sale of foodstuffs to enemy troops. As a
last resort, regimental authorities sometimes issued hard tack from
state granaries or increasingly regular local collections.53
Meanwhile, renewed investment in new formation troops, begun in
the late 1640s and early 1650s, accelerated as Muscovy entered the war,
especially from 1658. Given the costs involved in sustaining such
troops, the army made them, almost immediately and entirely, into
seasonal troops like the rest of the forces. The only enduring exceptions
were two large regiments of select infantry and a small number of
streltsy and foreign officers. Otherwise, new formation infantry draft-
ees were often discharged in peacetime; salaries and other supports
were either stopped or cut when troops were not at the front; some
men were given small parcels of land to support themselves. The
Crowns interest in their supply, as with other troops, applied only to
their activities while on active duty, and that, too, was at first routinely
dealt with even as their numbers (and cost) escalated. Government
grain was shipped to sale points; merchants contracted to deliver grain;
enterprising locals visited towns near the front to judge where they
might get the best price for their goods. In some places, the proceeds of
local tax collections were placed on the market; elsewhere, in-kind
taxation fed stockpiles in granaries that filled a variety of regional
demands.54

52
Peter B. Brown, Biting Off More than They Could Chew, typescript of paper
delivered at AAASS, Nov. 2006, pp. 2,4,5, 9, 12, and ff.
53
RGADA, f. 210 (Razriad) Belgorodskii stol, stolbets 819, list 46; Ibid, Prikaznyi
stol, stlb. 589, ll. 85, 488516; AMG II ## 906, 921, 1036; F. I. Kalynchev, Pravovye
voprosy voennoi organizatsii Russkogo gosudarstva vtoroi polovine XVII veka (Moscow:
1954), 12425.
54
AMG, vol. II, nos. 627, 799, 1048; AMG, vol. III, nos. 77, 191, 320, 377, 445, 461,
472; Kalynchev, Pravovye, 126; RGADA f. 210 Prikaznyi stol, stlb 589, ll. 1315;
Stevens, Steppe, 5354.
140 carol b. stevens

Two things conspired to bring about a significant change in the

organization of and interest in supply. First, supply concerns about the
militarily preferable new-formation troops peaked as the numbers of
such men (on duty, paid, armed, clothed, and offered food allowances
by the Crown) grew to 5060,000 by 1663. Secondly, Muscovy had
debased its coinage since the beginning of the war to help pay for the
fighting; by the early 1660s, inflation was rampant, and trade in grain
and other commodities had diminished drastically. In the capital,
Muscovites rioted; on the front, the inability of soldiers to buy food at
inflated prices spurred a number of foreign officers to request permis-
sion to leave the army.55
Accelerating concern over military supply was signaled by the
appearance of a Grain Chancellery (Khlebnyi prikaz, or Prikaz khleb-
nogo sbora, 166383) at the national level and by the addition of a
Grain Department to the Military Chancellery, both in 1663. We know
little about the Grain Chancellery, since most of its records have disap-
peared. Among other things it apparently provisioned infantry troops
on campaign from escheated, confiscated, and court lands.56 The activ-
ities of the Grain Department of the Military Chancellery, however, are
very well documented. It immediately launched new annual (or near
annual) in kind collections of cereals from the military-administrative
regions under its control; at first, these were Novgorod and Belgorod;
later Sevsk and others would be added. The new taxes (eighth grain)
did not draw upon the same lands that paid musketeers grain tax, but
at least in the south used and augmented the emergency granary sys-
tems that had existed there since the previous century. Taxpayers
carted the tax to one of four designated depot-granaries, whence the
grain was shipped onward to a variety of military destinationsfor
distribution or sale to new formation troops from the Belgorod region,
to the Don Cossacks, and other points. The annual tax was bolstered
on several occasions by emergency levies of additional grain. The new
regional organization was surprisingly effective in collecting a great
deal of grain and extending the still relatively ineffective military trans-
portation system; in terms of volume alone, for example, the south

55
Hellie, Enserfment, 196; AMG, vol. II nos. 921 and ff.
56
See Tsentralnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drvenikh aktov SSSR. Putevoditel Tom I,
on http://guides.rusarchives.ru/browse/gbfond.html?bid=147&fund_id=289472.
06/25/09.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 141

generated enough grain to pay all of the new formation troops origi-
nating in the region. In practice, there were other demands on the sys-
tem, such as payments to Don Cossacks and support for garrison
troops in the war zone.57 That is, like its predecessors, the Grain
Department did not feed any troops completely or exclusively. However,
it amassed new food resources for the front and quite flexibly distrib-
uted its collections in response to a variety of regional requirements,
some of them well established and others emerging on an emergency
or ad hoc basis.
In an economy with limited commerce and limited amounts of
money in circulation, the Grain Chancellery and the Grain Department
mobilized significant resources in a way that mitigated some supply
problems for the Muscovite army at the front. It did not, however, con-
front directly the difficulties of continued seasonal and individual sup-
ply. Indeed, the taxation system that supported the Grain Department
in the Russian south exacerbated them. Small estates and farms in
southern Russia not infrequently paid local grain taxes, even as a male
member of the family also served in a local fortress or even as part of
the campaign forces. Such a combination endangered the viability of
both the tax that supplied the front and the servicemens already doubt-
ful ability to supply himself for a campaign from his own land.
Furthermore, neither musketeers grain, nor any system instituted
during the Thirteen Years War, developed into a national system sup-
porting all troops. The reasons for this may be connected to the grow-
ing size of the Muscovite military. That is, the total number of Muscovite
military operatives remained relatively steady (95130,000) from the
1580s into the 1660s. However, from the late 1660s to the turn of the
18th century, the size of the military forces fighting in particular battles
or campaigns more than doubled. The reasons for this sudden and very
rapid expansion is not difficult to guess, since it coincides clearly with
the threatening entry of the (very large and well-supplied) Ottoman
army into the contest over Ukraine in the late 1660s, the related
Andrusovo armistice between Muscovy and Poland in 1667, and the
so-called Doroshenko campaigns. Muscovite armies intervening in
Doroshenkos Ukraine still relied heavily on foraging, personal efforts,
and commercial initiative. But, they were also supplied by the growing
field supply network. In its efforts during this period to supply troops

57
Stevens, Soldiers, Table I, p. 167.
142 carol b. stevens

leaving the region and to stock Ukrainian garrison towns, the system
very nearly collected adequate quantities of food. Although that food
was delivered to a variety of destinations with some flexibility, failures
of supply were frequently due to distributional problems; the organiza-
tion of transport was stretched beyond its limit.58
However, the prolonged conflict over Ukraine sparked an effort at
broad reform in Muscovy over the period between 1678 and 1682. In
military terms, the reforms accomplishment was to abolish the cen-
trality of the hereditary cavalryman from the Muscovite army. The
result was an army organized overwhelmingly in west European regi-
mental fashion; hereditary cavalrymen in the older formations were an
increasingly negligible percentage of the troops. In order to retain the
large size of the army, however, the reform retained the seasonal char-
acter of military assignments. Military service was envisioned as last-
ing for a campaign season or a campaign, followed by a return to
personal lands or households for the winter months or during peace-
time. Only the same few troops were permanent, paid soldiers. Because
of the new character of the army, the demand for military supplies in
the field and in garrisons increased. Accompanying fiscal reforms
rationalized taxation and accounting, but did not improve the Crowns
financial situation as intended.
Food supports, in particular, required the mobilization of many
more resources even as the Russo-Turkish War (167881) was ending.
In the 1680s, regional organization by military-administrative district
was replicated throughout the country, and cooperation between
regions increased. As on previous occasions, these efforts were remark-
ably successful in collecting appropriate amounts of resources. In 1686,
in preparation for the first Golitsyn campaign against the Khanate of
Crimea, the extended grain collection system in eight months amassed
amounts of food very nearly adequate for the whole army on the march
by simultaneously calling on all of its grain mobilization resources
an on-demand levy, ordinary taxes, and its granary stockpiles.
Transportation to the border also drew on all existing sources: some
households paid for and drove carts or built river barges that carried
the supplies to muster points and border fortresses by spring 1687; the
postal system also contributed carts; horses were retrieved from house-
holds that had held them, fed by an in-kind fodder collection, and sent

58
Stevens, Soldiers, 11011; Davies, Warfare, 17374.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 143

southward. Arms and ammunition stored in regimental headquarters

were tested, repaired, and sent forward to muster points. Skilled men
and materiel followed.
In other respects, the system was less than impressive. Given other
demands on the grain supply, the Crown decreased the food allow-
ances of those men who had land and labor to help support themselves.
Concentrating so many supplies and men on the southwest frontier
was more time consuming than expected; one commander sent his
troops home so that they would not use up their supplies before the
rest of the army appeared. The troops eventually departed two months
later than expected. Military transports to and just beyond the frontier
were also stretched thinavailable supply barges were seriously over-
loaded because there were not enough of them.
These events might not have been so significant, but for two crucial
problems. Given the volume of food and materiel collected for the
campaign, the baggage train that carried it all toward Crimea achieved
mammoth proportionson the order of 20,000 carts. There were
apparently no serious efforts to curtail its size. For example, despite a
suggested limit of two carts each, many of the courtiers with the army
swelled the baggage train by traveling with three to six carts each
some enclosed, others for fodder, and so on.59 Despite previous experi-
ence, the army made little use of riverine transport, nor did the army
split into smaller contingents. Other armies of the period, with smaller
baggage trains and in different environments, covered about twelve
miles a day; Golitsyns did barely more than half that, in part because
it traveled in close formation to forestall Tatar attack. Between late
departure and slow progress, the army reached Konskie Vody only in
mid-June; the weather was hot, the steppe dry. Secondly, Golitsyns
army carried little or no fodder for its horses, expecting to collect it at
every stop. This was standard practice, and it is indeed hard to imagine
how fodder might have been carried for larger distances. The combina-
tion proved lethal. The Tatars deprived the Muscovites of steppe grass
(and clean water) by the simple expedient of lighting it, and the mas-
sive expedition was forced to turn back. A second campaign in 1689
also returned prematurely, again for lack of fodder and water, even
though it left earlier and made greater use of river transport and

59
See, RGADA f. 210 Moskovskii stol, stolbets 706 stolpik 2.
144 carol b. stevens

forward magazines.60 Muscovy entered both campaigns after a massive

organizational effort and the successful mobilization of apparently
adequate resources. However, in its attempt to supply a very large army
crossing the open steppe, the transport and maintenance of supplies
a pressing difficulty even in less demanding circumstancesproved its
Achilles heel.
The campaigns against Crimea represented massive single efforts at
Muscovite army supply in the pre-Petrine period; in organizational
form, they would be significantly echoed by Peter Is early campaigns
against Azov.61 Thereafter, Peters efforts to change the army would
require the gradual re-structuring of the entire supply system.
Gradually, the Russian army moved to a year-round supply system for
a large standing army. Forged in the midst of the Northern War, in its
early years that supply system seemed considerably less successful in
mustering resources and organizing distribution than those of the
seventeenth century.

Throughout the early modern period, Muscovite military supply was

shaped by the character of the Russian army and the economic and
natural environment in which it functioned. For most of the period,
hereditary cavalrymen, who were charged with supplying themselves
for military service, dominated the army both politically and numeri-
cally. It was broadly assumed that shortfalls in their supply would be
made up through foraging, local purchase, and pillage. However, the
low population density of western Eurasia, its sparse agriculture, and a
correspondingly underdeveloped market in grain and other foodstuffs
were incapable of supporting large armies by these means alone. As the
size of the armies on individual campaigns grew, therefore, the
Muscovite crown increasingly involved itself in military supply. Its goal
was primarily to augment the volume of supplies available to its armies
while they were in action. Initially, that is prior to Ivan IV, this gener-
ally took the form of gifts of cash and food (or land), baggage train
arrangements that maximized the available provender, and a variety of
ad hoc measures.

60
See, Stevens, Soldiers, 11421; Stevens, Why Seventeenth-century Muscovite
Campaigns against Crimea Fell Short of What Counted, Russian History/Historie
Russe vol 19, no. 14 (1992): 487504.
61
Peter, too, had courtiers who embarked on campaign accompanied by numerous
carts; RGADA f. 210 Belgorodskii stol, stolbets 1561.
 logistics and the early modern russian army 145

From Ivans time onward, however, the Crown exerted itself to

rationalize the supply process, expand those measures already in place,
and apply its new organizational abilities to make more resources avail-
able to the military. These efforts focused in particular on revenue and
food collection, and then on stockpiling of food and other supplies in
border fortresses and occasional forward magazines to extended the
reach of army supply. New infantry troops, the streltsy, were originally
intended to have peacetime access to these resources.
By the seventeenth century, however, the size of Muscovite armies,
and their changing goalsrequiring longer campaigns, more siege
warfare, and fortress defensemade military supply increasingly
problematic. In an even more pronounced fashion, the Crown focused
its efforts on organizing the collection of new monetary and in-kind
resources to support army action in the field. With a degree of organi-
zational innovation (that is, the creation of regional collections and
then their coordination), the supply network by the 1680s was success-
ful in mobilizing new volumes of supplies. It also developed a flexible
system of moving those supplies to the appropriate border points. Even
excluding the particular logistical shortcomings of the Golitsyn cam-
paigns, however, the system was regularly plagued with difficulties in
moving supplies beyond those points.
Muscovys primary focus in military supply, in-kind resource mobi-
lization, was a logical one. The French army of the late seventeenth
century was supplied from four sources: cash (and credit) from the
state treasury, personal expenditures by regimental commanders, lev-
ies in kind from populations outside of the French borders, and con-
tributions.62 Such resources were available to Muscovy in comparatively
limited amounts. One of them, commanders expenditures, was quite
uncommon.63 Hence, Muscovys (reasonably successful) organizational
effort to collect food in kind. However, some attendant logistical mat-
tersthe transportation of supply beyond the borders, baggage train
size and organization, fodder supply, and the logistical expertise to
manage themremained problematic. Attempts to remedy these by
established means, such as in-kind collections and labor drafts, did not

62
John A. Lynn, Food, Funds, and Fortresses, in his, ed., Feeding Mars, 137160.
63
Sheremetev did pay for his troops during the 1670s. Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii
Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii sobrannye i izdannye Arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu
(St. Petersburg, P. A. Kulish, 1863- and Hague: Mouton, 1970-), vol. 4 # 77.
146 carol b. stevens

resolve the particular problems posed by the terrain and the demogra-
phy of the west Eurasian theater. Supplying large and distant campaigns
remained formidable, if not crippling, problems in military supply.
Nonetheless, Muscovys limited system, supported by private supply,
the market, and foraging, sustained in the breach a very large army for
much of the seventeenth century. Only in Peters time, at great cost to
the contemporary soldier, was a more regular and permanent supply
system instituted.
 CRIMEAN TATAR LONG-RANGE CAMPAIGNS:
THE VIEW FROM REMMAL KHOJAS HISTORY OF SAHIB
GEREY KHAN1

Victor Ostapchuk

In terms of military prowess, longevity, and historical impact, the

Crimean Khanate (1440s1783) was the most successful of the Ching-
gisid successor states to the Mongol Empire in the West (the Ulus
Juchi). One of the greatest claims to fame of the Chinggisid states in
general was their manner of waging war. Thus in their initial advance
through most of Europe Mongols and Tatars were able to inflict an
uninterrupted sequence of crushing defeats upon every army or state
that stood in their way. Even in the 14th-16th centuries, that is, roughly
until the effective introduction of gunpowder weapons, the Tatars were
overwhelming in their military prowess. Certainly until the 16th cen-
tury they won many more battles than they lost. Even with the intro-
duction of gunpowder weaponrymuskets and cannonsit would
still be a long time before the Tatars were no longer a force to be reck-
oned with. Despite the clear achievements of the Mongols and Tatars in
the art and science of war, there are many aspects that elude us. Aside
from prowess in actual combat, they were masters at the technique of
long-range campaigns. To give an extreme example, the western cam-
paign of 12211223 led by the Mongol generals Jebe and Subedei in
which a relatively minor force of about twenty, thirty thousand men on
what was basically a reconnaissance mission, rode nearly fifteen thou-
sand kilometers, winning more than a dozen major battles, usually
against superior numbers. James Chambers, the author of a book on
the Mongol conquests, has called this campaign the most outstanding
cavalry achievement in the history of war.2
Of course the Crimean Khanate and its military were much differ-
ent entities than the initial Mongol Empire and its war machine.

1
This chapter originally appeared in Festschrift in Honor of Eleazar Birnbaum, ed.
Virginia Aksan (Cambridge: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures,
Harvard University, 2005) = Journal of Turkish Studies 29 (2005): 271287 and is
reprinted here with the authors revisions and permission.
2
James Chambers, The Devils Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe
(New York: Atheneum, 1979), 17.
148 victor ostapchuk

Nonetheless, the Tatars of the Crimea too were masters of long-range

military expeditions. And though their forte in mounting long-
range expeditions were those that took them across the Black Sea
steppes and into Muscovy or into the Ukrainian lands of Polish-
Lithuania, they also carried out operations in less familiar territory
not only in the Caucasus but, at the behest of the Ottomans, in central
Europe on the Hungarian and in Eastern Anatolia on the Iranian
fronts. All such expeditions required skill in organization, some knowl-
edge of paths and of hostile territory, ability to survive in difficult envi-
ronments, and so forth. They were not always forays by nomads greedy
for plunder and often seemingly well-planned and carefully executed
military operations. Thus far we have only a superficial knowledge of
how the Crimean Tatars mounted their long-range campaigns. Much
of what we think we know is based on scant evidenceoften one or
two testimonies of contemporaries whose information was not neces-
sarily gained firsthand.
Here we would like to bring to the fore data on Crimean Tatar mili-
tary expeditions preserved in the sixteenth-century chronicle of
Qaysuni-zade Mehmed Nidai, better known as Remmal (the Geo-
mancer, the Astrologer) Khoja, Tarih-i Sahib Gerey Khan, or The
History of Khan Sahib Gerey. Unfortunately, because most of the
archives of the Crimean Khanate have perished, we have no chance to
gain as good an understanding of the Crimean military as we, for
example, do have for gaining an understanding of the Ottoman mili-
tary concerning which tens of thousands of documents and registers
survive.3 Instead, we are for the most part forced to glean data from
narrative sources relating to the khanate, of which also relatively
few are extant. Fortunately, the chronicle on which we will be focusing
here and which we consider as being one of the great works of six-
teenth-century Ottoman historiography (we say Ottoman because
the author was an Ottoman and the language of the chronicle is
Ottoman Turkish), is a very rich source on the Crimean military and

3
A noteworthy example of the possibilities that the Ottoman archives provide for
study of the Ottoman military campaigns is Caroline Finkel, The Administration of
Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 15931606, Vienna: VWG,
1988) /=Beihefte zur Weiner Zeitschrift fr die Kunde des Morgenlandes, ed. Arne A.
Ambros and Anton C. Schaendlinger, vol. 14/. This work also contains a section based
on Ottoman archival materials devoted to Khan Gazi Gereys expeditions in central
Europe.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 149

also other topics. Although the chronicle of Remmal Khoja has been
known to scholars since the 19th century,4 only in the past generation
have scholars begun to more fully appreciate its value. It was published
by zalp Gkbilgin in 1973, a useful text and translation edition albeit
with frequent misprints and mistakes and with only a rudimentary
commentary.5 In the same year Gkbilgin published a monograph on
the political history of the Crimean Khanate during the reigns of Sahib
Gerey and Devlet Gerey which for the reign of the former khan is
largely based on Remmal Khoja and in which the value of his chronicle
as source on the Crimean military becomes evident.6 However it was
Halil Inalcik who in a seminal article on the politics of the Crimean
Khanate has given us the hitherto most complete presentation of the
excellence of Remmal Khojas Tarih as a historical source.7 Moreover,
although Inalciks article is primarily devoted to Crimean politics, he
also pays attention to military matters, particularly Sahib Gereys
Ottoman-style musket-armed troops and field artillery (the Crimean
army can be divided into two partsthe smaller one, a force of musket
bearing infantry and begs (ich oglan, ichki begleri) attached to the khan
and the larger one, the nomadic tribal cavalry of the aristocratic qarach
begs). Here we will mostly concentrate on other aspects Crimean mili-
tary operations, especially non-combative aspects of campaigns, such
as organization, travel, protocol, and ritual. Of interest will be informa-
tion on daily life. We will dwell less on those aspects already covered by
nalck and instead refer the reader to his work. Although our knowl-
edge of the Crimean Tatar military is still not very advanced, there
have been some noteworthy contributions on it. Aside from the work

4
For example, V. D. Smirnov knew it but used it somewhat superficially on Sahib
Gerey and did not use it as a source on the structure and workings of the Crimean
Khanate (V. D. Smirnov, Krymskoe khanstvo pod verkhovenstvom Ottomanskoi Porty
do nachala XVIII veka [St.-Petersburg: s.n., 1887], XII, 422, 425).
5
Tarih-i Sahib Giray Han (Historie de Sahib Giray, Khan de Crime de 1532 1551),
ed. zalp Gkbilgin (Ankara: Baylan Matbaas, 1973) (henceforth Tarih).
6
zalp Gkbilgin, 15321577 yllar arasnda Krm hanlnn siyas durumu
(Ankara: Servin Matbaas, 1973). Being devoted primarily to politics and interna-
tional relations, Gkbilgin does not devote much attention to analysis of military
aspects, though his extensive direct citations from Remmal Khoja contain much infor-
mation on the military.
7
Halil Inalcik, The Khan and the Tribal Aristocracy: The Crimean Khanate under
Sahib Giray I, Eucharisterion: Essays Presented to Omeljan Pritsak on His Sixtieth
Birthday by His Colleagues and Students (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research
Institute, 1980) = Harvard Ukrainian Studies 34 (19791980): 44566.
150 victor ostapchuk

of nalck, we would like to mention two other studies that deal with
the Crimean Tatar military: the work on Mehmed Gerey I by V. E.
Syroechkovskij based on the published materials of the Muscovite
posolskii prikaz (foreign office)8 and the study of Crimean Tatars raids
on the northern countriesPoland-Lithuania (i.e., mainly Ukraine)
and Muscovyby Leslie Collins based on Polish, Russian, and other
non-Ottoman sources.9
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to devote a few words to
Crimean Khan Sahib Gerey (15321551) and to Remmal Khoja and
his chronicle. Sahib Gerey was the third son of the great Mengli Gerey
(reigned intermittently between 1466 and 1476 and then 14781514)
to become khan of the Crimea. Between 1521 and 1524 Sahib Gerey
ruled over the Khanate of Kazan. Sahib Gereys long rule in the Crimean
Khanate was characterized by an assertion of the authority of the khan
and by an attempt to limit of the power of the four main Crimean
tribes, the so-called qarach, and of the Nogays who were based in the
steppes outside the Crimean peninsula. Most of the years between his
khanship in Kazan and the Crimea, Sahib Gerey spent at or near the
Ottoman courthe went on the hajj and even participated in
Sleymans campaign against the Habsburgs in 1532. Thus he knew
the Ottoman state and society quite well and it served as the model for
his vision of the Crimean Khanatea strong state centralized around
the authority of the Khan in the manner of the Ottoman sultanate.
Remmal Khoja, a well-educated Ottoman erudite, joined Sahib Gerey
when he departed Istanbul for the Crimea in 1532 and served as his
astrologer, physician, and close advisor throughout his reign.10 His
chronicle is based largely on what he witnessed himself; that which is
not based on his own eyewitness testimony can be assumed to
come from other participants in the events. In comparison with most
other chronicles devoted to the Crimean Khanate, whether Ottoman
or Tatar, the Tarih is outstanding for its authors preference to give a

8
V. E. Syroechkovskii, Mukhammed-Geraj i ego vassaly, Uchenye zapiski
Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 61 (1940): 371.
9
L. J. D. Collins, The Military Organization and Tactics of the Crimean Tatars
during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, in War, Technology and Society in the
Middle East, eds. V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford
University Press 1975), 25776. This study also gives references to other authors who
have dealt with the Tatar raids.
10
The above comments on Sahib Gerey and Remmal Khoja are mostly based on
Inalcik, Khan and Tribal Aristocracy.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 151

relatively clear narration of events and provide concrete details, rather

than to encumber his work with a display of high-flown style and rhet-
oric. The Tarih is a veritable mine of information not only on Crimean
politics, institutions, and military, but also on the daily life of the peo-
ples of the khanate and even of its neighbors (particularly the peoples
of the north Caucasus region) and on geographic conditions as well. As
to Crimean military affairs we note here that to a great degree cam-
paigns take center stage in the Tarihapproximately two thirds of the
work is devoted to narrations of campaigns: preparation, organization,
travel to and from a given theater of action, combat itself, and other
activities related to the given campaigns, such as ceremonies and cele-
brations. In large part information on Crimean politics, institutions
and even daily life in general is to be found within of Remmal Khojas
relations of military activities.
To gain an appreciation of the rich tapestry of Crimean Tatar mili-
tary endeavors during the reign of Sahib Gerey as presented in the
Tarih it would be useful to retell some of Remmal Khojas accounts of
Tatar campaigns. Lack of space precludes such an approach and, in any
case, reference to zalp Gkbilgins text and translation edition can
provide sufficient access to the chroniclers presentation of these
endeavors. Here the goal is to give a more analytical survey of some of
the features of the Crimean Tatar war machine, i.e., more of an outline
of the anatomy of Crimean Tatar military campaigns with reference
to their physical environment. We seek to cull concrete data on mili-
tary affairs preserved in the Tarih. In a topic with such a thin data base
every concrete and well-attested detail is important. Significant to us is
not just information that gives a new picture of some aspect of Tatars
at war, but also information that might be essentially the same as that
given by other primary sources. This is so because often our sources of
concrete information on the Crimean Khanate, for example, travelers
such as M. Litvin, dAscoli, and Beauplan, while being contemporaries
and to some extent observers, also collected data from other observers,
data which may have been either common knowledge or untrue rumor.
Moreover, these travelers were in any event outsiders to the khanate.
Often their testimony on a given aspect of Tatar life is the only such
and this testimony could just as easily be false, relate to a one-time or
rare occurrence, or be concerned with a phenomena restricted to a cer-
tain time and/or place. Of course we tend to trust the veracity of these
authors, given the lack of better alternatives and, relying on the tradi-
tional nature of Tatar society, we hope that their picture can be applied
152 victor ostapchuk

to other periods. This potential problem can apply to information

given in the diplomatic papers of the posolskii prikaz, for example
reports by Muscovite envoys.11 When a completely original, independ-
ent source such as the Tarih that stems from within the khanate gives
information that supports or is practically identical with that given by
sources stemming from beyond the khanate, the result may at first
seem not as interesting as data that is new and unprecedented. However,
such repeated data is, in fact, more valuable as it allow us to begin to
construct a historical edifice rather operate according to single facts.
Hence to isolate concrete and, we hope, authentic details concerning
events and daily life of the khanate is of prime importance. Meanwhile,
at this still not very advanced stage in the study of the Crimean Tatar
military we will avoid making generalizations on the nature of the
Tatar military. Because of limitations of space, fuller comparison of the
data in Tarih with that in the other sources will have to been made in
another place. In other words, the main aim here is to probe the Tarih
for concrete data and provide a sampling of the wealth of its informa-
tion which can be a basis and stimulus for further work on this and
other sources on the Crimean Tatar practice of war.
All in all nine campaigns are described in the Tarih. To give
the reader a notion of the course of these events and to make later
references to them below more intelligible we give the following
synopses12:
1. Moldavia, 1538: This is the same campaign as the one personally
headed by Sultan Sleyman the Magnificent to suppress and depose
the disloyal Moldavian voyvoda, Petru Rare. One of the results of
this expedition was the detachment of southern Bessarabia, or the
Bujaq, from Moldavia and occupation of zi, or Ochakiv, by the
Ottomans. Sahib Gerey is ordered to join the expedition and indeed
he participates with the Crimean Tatar forces, but not before
rebuilding the fortress at the Isthmus of Perekop (Or Agz or simply
Or, the Ditch) so as to protect the Crimea from the threat of a
Nogay invasion in his absence. Remmal Khojas account gives few
concrete details of Sahib Gereys actual military contributions to

11
For example, that which is the basis for Syroechkovskii, Mukhammed-Geraj.
12
We only include larger expeditions. The chronicle also covers smaller operations
and skirmishes, for example, in the struggles of the khan with Islam Gerey and Baqi
Beg.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 153

this Ottoman campaign aside from telling us that he aided in the

search for the rebellious voyvoda and giving the approximate route
he following in this search. He provides much more information
about the preparations and journey to and from Moldavia as well
as of a meeting there between the Crimean khan and the Ottoman
sultan.13
2. Circassia, 1539: In response to attacks by the Circassians against
Muslims near Temrk, Sahib Gerey mobilized his forces, crossed
the Straits of Kerch and set off to punish the Circassians. Along the
way the khan encounters Qansavuq, chieftain of the Janey Circas-
sian tribe. The khan intends to punish him severely for not control-
ling the offending Circassians responsible for the raids near Temrk
(according to the chronicle, Qansavuq was an Ottoman vassal, and
in exchange for stipends and symbols of investiture from the Porte,
he was to keep the local Circassians in control). However, Qansavuq
manages to save himself by offering to supply a significant number
of slaves to the sultan, khan, and Ottoman beg of Kefe. Although an
expedition into the high Caucasus is unsuccessful in reaching the
offending Circassians (see below), on the return trip Sahib Gerey
allows his forces to acquire captives from among the Circassian
population.14
3. Krel/Krel15 (northwestern UkraineGalicia or Volhyniaor
Belarus), winter 15391540: A campaign led by Sahib Gereys son,

13
Tarih, 2531. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 1417.
14
Tarih, 3545. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 1819.
15
At first, during the process of deciding where exactly the expedition is it to go,
Muscovy, or Moscow itself are named as one of the potential targets (Mosqov memle-
ketn chapub Rusun tahtgahna erb) and again once the expedition is underway, the
operation is referred to as Rus aqn and it is said that the Tatars have reached a place
near the Rus frontier (Rus serhadd). However there is no clear indication that this
frontier was crossed and that Muscovy was entered. Instead the Tatars seek informa-
tion from captured informants (dil) so as to learn the location of a certain Krel or
Krel (Grel according to Gkbilginin the original KWRL)a person. a people, or
a place. Gkbilgin does not attempt to identify this word and considers the raid as
being mounted against Muscovy. However, Krel/Krel most likely stems from the
Ruthenian version of the common word for king, korol (kral, originally from Karol
[Charlemagne]). The late Iaroslav Dashkevych, has connected this to the Galician
Kingdom (Galicia-Volhynia), whose rulers had the title of korol (Iaroslav Dashkevych,
Monholske / iranske / tiurkske kerel: Etymolohiia ta semantyka etnotoponimu
(XIII-XIV st.)., V. Skhodoznavchi chytannia A. Krymskoho: Tezy dopovidei mizhnarod-
no naukovo konferentsi: Kyv, 1012 zhovtnia 2001 r. (Kiev: Instytut skhodoznavsta
Akademi nauk Ukrany, 2001), 8586). Since Volhynia was then in the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania, perhaps Krel/Krel came to designate the latter? We also note that the
154 victor ostapchuk

Emin Gerey, but under the oversight of his tutor (atalq), a certain
brahim Pasha, aimed at raiding one of the northern countries for
captives. The campaign is successful in capturing substantial booty,
particularly captives, but there is a disastrous return trip because of
extreme winter conditions and an attack by the Nogays (for details
see below).16
4. Muscovy, 1541: On the urging of the renegade Muscovite prince
Semeon Belskii, Sahib Gerey mounts an expedition hoping to cross
the Oka and strike deep into Muscovy. The chance of success seems
quite high, because Belskii promises to show the Tatars a shallow
ford of the Oka River while the defending Muscovite forces, not
knowing where the Tatars plan to cross, distribute their forces
among the many possible fords. However, because of a well-founded
mutual mistrust between Sahib Gerey and Baqi Beg, chieftain of the
Mangt branch of the Nogays, neither of them dares to be the first
one to cross the Oka for fear of betrayal and attack by the other. In
the meantime the element of surprise is lost and the Muscovites,
finding out the location of the Tatar army, bring sufficient musket-
bearing and artillery forces to the intended fording site and thwart
the Tatar incursion. On the return trip the Tatars obtain some cap-
tives for enslavement (esir, captive, slave).17
5. Circassia (Janey tribe), 1542 (?)18: Janey chieftain Qansavuqs failure
to deliver annual supplies of slaves and other violations leads Sahib
Gerey to mount another Caucasian expedition. Attempts by Qansa-
vuq to allay the anger and determination of the khan by sending
messengers with a promise to definitely deliver plentiful captives is
rejected by the khan. When Sahib Gerey proceeds into the moun-
tains the Circassians launch a night raid against his force. However
the Circassians are defeated and the Crimeans return with a great
number of captives.19

Ottomans and Crimean Tatars frequently referred to Ruthenians (Ukrainians and

Belorussians) also as Rus; in fact, it seems that to them Rus was more of a designation
for East Slavs rather than just the Muscovites. In other words, a raid on Rus did not
necessarily mean a raid on Muscovy.
16
Tarih, 4651. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 1920.
17
Tarih, 5666. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 2022.
18
In general Remmal Khoja gives very few dates. Here we follow the dating estab-
lished or assumed in Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu. More work with other sources is
needed before the dates of some of the campaigns described the Tarih can be more
firmly established.
19
Tarih, 7282. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 2426.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 155

6. Qabarda (Qabartay), 1544 (?)20: Elbozad, a Qabardinian chieftain,

whose own tribe rose up against him, arrives at the court of Sahib
Gerey with a plea for help in suppressing and punishing the rebels.
Sahib Gerey consents and this time travels to the Caucasus by land
(Perekop/Orthe DnieperAzaq at the mouth of the Donacross
the Kuban steppes). The key tactic in this campaign is to arrive
at the fields of the Qabarda (Qabartay mezralar) during the harvest
time (oraq zaman) when most of the Qabardinians would be out
on the fields collecting the harvest and thus easier to capture. How-
ever, the Crimean forces arrive too early so this tactic is not fully
successful. A night attack by the Qabardinians also proves unsuc-
cessful (see below)the Tatars prevail and return to the Crimea
with a great number of captives.21
7. Astrakhan, 1545: Yagmurji, who seized the Astrakhan throne,
attacks a caravan on its way from Kazan to the Crimea. The wronged
merchants come to Sahib Gerey to complain. Outraged by this
interference with trade between Kazan and the Crimea, Sahib Gerey
mounts a full-scale campaign to Astrakhan. Astrakhan is seized
thanks to Sahib Gereys field artillery and musket-bearing troops.
Yagmurji flees while part of his retinue and entourage is taken to the
Crimea with the promise that they will not be harmed.22
8. Nogays, 1546: Basically a defensive expedition mounted into the
steppes north of Perekop/Or to preempt a planned Nogay attack
into the Crimean peninsula. In a great battle the Crimean Tatars
prevail thanks to cannon and musket fire as well as a vicious man-
to-man saber battle (see below). The result is a massacre of the
Nogay forces (the so-called Nogay Qrgn).23
9. Circassia, 1551: The Ottoman Porte orders the khan to go against
the Circassians again, but this time the true motive is to get him out
of the Crimea and thereby more easily remove him from throne and
install a new khan, Devlet Gerey (the official reason for the cam-
paign is complaints from pilgrims returning from Mecca that they
were attacked by the Circassians). As in some of the previous Cir-
cassian campaigns, Sahib Gerey enters the mountains in an attempt
to capture the leaders of the Circassians responsible for these alleged

20
See n. 17.
21
Tarih, 8396. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 2627.
22
Tarih, 97105. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 2728.
23
Tarih, 10613. See also Gkbilgin, Krm siyas durumu, 29.
156 victor ostapchuk

violations. The expedition includes an incident in which the place

where a Circassian leader is hiding is fully surrounded yet he man-
ages to escape which causes the khan to vent his wrath on his com-
manders. Eventually the Tatars catch up their foes with and attack.
The result is a great number of captives. However on the return trip
Sahib Gerey is abandoned by his troops, put in a dungeon in the
fortress of Taman, and killed there.24
Almost all of these military campaigns are portrayed by Remmal Khoja
as being initiated or provoked by outside forcesby the order of the
Ottoman sultan (or at the suggestion of the Ottoman beg of Kefe),
aggression or potential aggression by neighbors or subjects of the
khanate, complaints by parties in neighboring lands against their rivals
there. Only one is presented as being mounted purely by the initiative
of the khanin the winter of 15391540 Sahib Gerey proclaimed to
the Crimean begs let us this year not be deprived from making raids
(aqn) and from the meritorious act of holy war (gaza) and then sug-
gested either to cross the Straits of Kerch while it was still frozen or to
make a raid to the north.25 Indeed in our chronicle the discussion of
the Crimean Tatar expeditions, gaza or holy war rhetoric is frequently
used. In our opinion, references to gaza were not necessarily interpola-
tions by our Ottoman author. Even if the degree of Tatar religiousity
was not great, references to gaza can be connected with Tatar aware-
ness of and receptivity to this powerful justification or excuse for wag-
ing war. In addition, judging by the frequent mentions of captives
throughout the work and the receptiveness of the Tatars to the pros-
pect of enslaving members of the population of areas targeted by their
raids, it is not unreasonable to assume that often the greater motivation
behind a campaign was not so much the given external reason, but the
desire to acquire valuable slaves (for more on esir see below).
On several occasions statements made by Sahib Gerey provide some
interesting information on optimal campaign times. While other
sources stress winter being a favorite time for Tatar raiding expedi-
tions,26 surprisingly, in the Tarih winter is mentioned only once in this

24
Tarih, 12143.
25
Tarih, 46.
26
E.g., Guillaume Le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan, Description dUkraine qui sont plu-
sieurs provinces du Royame de Pologne contenues depuis les confins de la Moscouie,
jusques aux limites de la Translivanie, Rouen, 1660, 4146 (Ukrainian translation: Opys
Ukrany, kilkokh provintsii Korolivstva Polskoho (Kiev: Vydavnystsvo Naukova
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 157

context. Mentioned more often as an optimal campaigning time is that

of the harvest. Thus, during his proposal to the Crimean begs to mount
a campaign in winter 15391540, Sahib Gerey says: in this land
(vilayet) there are two times for a raid: one of them is harvest time
(oraq zaman) and the other is winter (qsh eyyamdur). Prior to the
1538 Moldavian campaign Sahib Gerey partly explains why the harvest
was a good time for a campaign in his written reply to Sultan Sleymans
mobilization order: in the second month (i.e., starting from a months
time from nowV.O.) [and] during the time of the harvest we too will
cross the Dnieper River (zi Suy) and move towards Aqkerman
because if the harvest time does not yet arrive the army will suffer
hardship.27
For the actual mobilization of forces, typically the khan ordered that
throughout the realm proclamations or calls to arms (nida) be made in
which the time and place of assembly are specified. In most cases it was
also stated that each warrior was to bring three months provisions
(azq or zahire). The time limit for mobilization to be completed varied
from five, ten days to one month. In some cases a specific day of the
month by when the troops were to report was mentioned (for example,
the fifteenth of the month).28 In campaigns directed at the northern
countries as well as against the Nogays naturally the point of assembly
was at the Isthmus of Perekop. However, though in the Moldavian
campaign the initial rallying point was Or where Sahib Gerey first
reconstructed the fortress, the ultimate rallying point was the left bank
of the Dnieper River. One would assume that the site of assembly was

Dumka, 1990), 5862; English translation: A Description of Ukraine, tr., ed. Andrew
B. Pernal, Dennis F. Essar (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1993),
4853. Note that the Ukrainian edition has an excellent commentary, much superior
to that in the English edition. However the latter has a more complete treatment of
Beauplans maps and includes a boxed set of reproductions of them.
27
Tarih, 26, 46. Naturally the harvest is the time of most plentiful food supply in
agricultural societies and this was a factor to be considered when campaigning over
long distances with large forces (cf. Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4648). This information
provided by Remmal Khoja raises some questions: Taken literally it implies that in
summer campaigns the Tatars were dependent or at least reliant on the produce of
peasants. Or perhaps it is a reference to the time of optimal availability of fodder for
horses? However, note that grass and grains mature at different times and by the har-
vest time steppe grasses have long since dried away. What are the implications of infor-
mation on winter campaigns? Did the Tatars move faster because of the rivers being
frozen? (And therefore need less food and fodder by virtue of the presumed short time
of such expeditions?) Obviously this point needs further investigation.
28
Tarih, 26, 36, 57, 72, 84, 98.
158 victor ostapchuk

on the Ql Burun peninsula (Kinburnska kosa), that is, opposite the

fortress of zi (Ochakiv)this was a common place of crossing the
Dnieper when traveling to Moldavia, though the Tarih does not specify
the site as such. On the eastern campaigns there were two different
routes. When the mainland was followed (the campaign to the Qabarda
and to Astrakhan) Perekop/Or was the place of assembly. On the other
Caucasian campaigns the Straits of Kerch were crossed, though in the
proclamations as Remmal Khoja cites them, Kerch itself is not speci-
fied as the place of assembly.29
The mobilization proclamations applied to both the forces of the
Crimean tribes located throughout the peninsula (often outside the
peninsula as well) and to the khans own troops the core of which were
salaried musket-bearing Ottoman janissaries and local Crimean
recruits. Regarding the tribal forces, only on two occasions was the
scale of the mobilization indicated in the call to arms. In the 1542
Circassian campaign whose main goal was to obtain captives for
enslavement, Sahib Gerey warns the great begs (ulu begler), that is, the
qarach begs (chieftains of the four main Crimean tribes), to bring
only select men (yarar nkr ve erenlerden ihtiyar, suitable retainers
and choice men) and not to allow the common subjects (reaya) to
be deceived into joining the campaign, for the Circassians are a
paltry people (garet edejegimz Cherkes azdur) and thus too large a
force might end up short of booty.30 On the other hand, for the
Astrakhan campaign a full mobilization was made and the yarlq or
order issued by the khan is quoted as saying, no doubt with some exag-
geration, that no one is to remain in the land (i.e., the CrimeaV.O.),
the entire people (or army, halq) is to go on war footing (sefer ayagn
edb), and if there is anyone who is not at the khans side after Or
Agz, his property is to be raided and his head struck down. Thereafter
the khans divan or council adjourned and proclamations were made in
all corners of the land that if any male between age fifteen and
seventy failed to join this campaign they would face severe capital
punishment (muhkem siyaset).31 As to the troop totals that went on

29
On one occasion, the campaign against the Circassian Janey tribe in 1542, it
seems that the Crimean forces assembled near Kefe (Caffa) at Sar Gl (Yellow Lake),
Tarih, 73. In the other cases it is only said that in so many days the forces are to set out
for Kerch.
30
Tarih, 72.
31
Tarih, 9899.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 159

campaign, the khans troops varied between 200 and 1,000 for the
musket-bearing infantry and 10,000 for all the khans forces including
begs attached in service to him, while the tribal forces, if Remmal
Khojas figures are to be believed, numbered between several tens of
thousands and 250,000.32
As to the actual preparations, being a close aid of the khan, Remmal
Khoja focuses more attention on the preparations of the khans
forces rather than those of the tribal cavalry. Inalcik has already focused
on the khans Ottoman style units and their effectiveness in battle
janissaries and local Crimean musket-bearers (tfengchi), field artillery
(zarbuzan), and wagons carrying various necessities for a campaign
(zarbuzan arabalar or top arabalar, field-artillery wagons or simply
artillery wagons; jebehane arabalar, munitions wagons; matbah
arabalar, kitchen wagons; zahire arabalar, provisions wagons).33
Like the Hussites, Hungarians, Ottomans, Cossacks and others, so too
the forces directly under the command of the Crimean khans (as
opposed to the tribal forces) adopted the powerful defensive field-tac-
tic of the wagon-camp or Wagenburg, which allowed a force armed
with gunpowder weapons to withstand an attacking cavalry force many
times its size.34
The Tarih has a wealth of information on various aspects of Crimean
Tatar military operations both combative and non-combative beyond
the initial stage of preparationstravel and camping, intelligence gath-
ering, search and destroy missions, plundering expeditions, battles,
and even fortress construction. Enhancing the value of Remmal Khojas
accounts is his frequent attention to geographic environments in which
these operations occurred. Aside from aspects of human geography
in this context movement and survival in faraway and often hostile
environmentsas will be seen below, our chronicle often gives appar-
ently authentic and rare details of physical geography and it also reveals
a subjective aspectthe perception and conceptualization of geogra-
phy and environments.
Here we can only give a sampling of such data. Remmal Khoja pro-
vides ample information on river crossings by the khanates forces.

32
Inalcik, Khan and Tribal Aristocracy, 459; Tarih, 49, 61, 73, 100.
33
Tarih, 26, 36, 74, 92.
34
Inalcik, Khan and Tribal Aristocracy, 459461. On its effective use by the
Zaporozhian Cossacks see Beauplan, Description dUkraine, 4751 (Ukrainian
translation, 6365; English translation, 5657).
160 victor ostapchuk

We must remember that the East European steppe zone, that is, the
Desht-i Qipchaq, was not simply a monotone expanse of flat and rolling
plains in which one roamed with ease to and fro; to a significant degree
it was a patchwork of great fields divided by gullies and, above all, riv-
ers, some of which are large and not easy to cross. Thus fording such
great rivers as the Dniester, Dnieper, Don, and Kuban by a significant
force meant mounting a careful operation usually lasting a day and a
night or longer. In addition, to reach the Caucasus region usually
meant crossing the Straits of Kerch. In various degrees of detail, the
Tarih describes a total of eleven different crossings of rivers or straits
by Crimean forcesone at the Dnieper, Dniester, and an unnamed
river in the Caucasus, two across the Kuban River, and five across the
Straits of Kerch. There is also a description of an unsuccessful attempt
to cross the Oka River in Muscovy. In the case of the Straits of Kerch,
boats or ships supplied by the beg of Kefe were used. In the other cases,
even at such a wide river as the lower Dnieper, rafts were constructed
(sal bagla-). The exact utilization of the rafts is not specified, but it is
assumed that, as other sources indicate, the Tatars placed their equip-
ment and supplies on the rafts while the horses swam alongside, pos-
sibly with their owners on them or only holding onto their manes.35
Each unit of the army would cross together. The khan is depicted
as being in charge of the crossing operation, actively directing it
deciding when to cross and the order in which the units were to cross;
when the time came to begin the operation he gave the permission (the
term used is ijazetpermission, permit) to begin the crossing. The
forces of the four main tribes, the qarach, crossed first, one after
another. Often the Shirin or the Barn tribe were the first to go across.
In all cases the khan went after all the main forces had crossed. For
some of the crossings it is said that the khan had his tent pitched on
high ground from which he could observe the operation.36 The length
of the operations could last a day and into the night (Straits of Kerch in
the 1539 Circassian expedition), a day and a night (the Don in the
Astrakhan expedition, Straits of Kerch in the 1551 Circassian expedi-
tion), a day and a half (Straits of Kerch in the 1542 Circassian expedi-
tion), and on one occasion three days (the Dnieper in the 1538
Moldavian expedition). On a crossing of the Kuban River near Temrk

35
Beauplan, Description dUkraine, 5054 (Ukrainian translation, 6768; English
translation, 6061). See also Collins, Military organization, 267.
36
Tarih, 37, 124.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 161

an interesting detail is given: the khan had scribes placed at each end of
the crossing and they counted the number of men in each unit (taife)
as it crossed. Altogether 40,000 men were written down (qaleme
aldlar), which suggest that registers or defters with the names of the
men were compiled.37 During a forced march in the Caucasus moun-
tains in pursuit of the enemy, the khan decided to ford a large river in
the night. He ordered a large fire to be made to illuminate the crossing.
As his force crossed the river he spread out his prayer rug and sat
observing the operation.38
Remmal Khoja provides very detailed descriptions of how the
Crimean army camped while on campaignwhere various forces were
arranged in relation to the khan, how the Wagenburg was formed with
the arabas chained to one another, and how the musket-bearing troops
guarded the khans station and patrolled around it all night, serving in
shifts (nbetle).39 As Inalcik has already discussed this point we do not
further elaborate on it here and refer the reader to his study.40 But we
would like to point out another example of Remmal Khojas ability for
providing realistic scenes from the daily life of campaigns. Describing
how a special force (see below) during the 1539 Circassian expedition
settled in for the night in a deserted Circassian village the author gives
us the following very human picture: here and there [the men] have
lighted fires. Some of the gazis are busy telling stories, others chant the
Koran (telavet), yet others occupy themselves in prayer (ibadet).41
As to actual combat, in comparison with the information that he
provides on other aspects of campaigns, Remmal Khoja is not very
forthcoming. In general in his work there is a bias in favor of the
Crimean sideserious defeats of the Crimean army in battle are not
reported and one wonders if indeed it was always so victorious.42 At
most there is a tough fight, but in Remmal Khojas rendition, the Tatars

37
Tarih, 38.
38
Tarih, 126.
39
Tarih, 26, 74, 92.
40
Inalcik, Khan and Tribal Aristocracy, 460461.
41
Tarih, 3940. Cf. a similar scene in the 1542 Circassian campaign, Tarih, 77.
42
Reluctance to report defeats suffered by ones own side can be seen in many
Ottoman chronicles. For example, in their accounts of battles between Ottoman naval
forces and the Cossacks in the Black Sea only those in which the Cossacks were sup-
posedly defeated are reported, which leads the reader to believe that the reverse situa-
tion did not occur, which from other sources we know was not so. See Victor
Ostapchuk, The Human Landscape of the Ottoman Black Sea in the Face of the
Cossack Naval Raids, Oriente Moderno, n.s., 20 (2001): 2395, esp. 8994.
162 victor ostapchuk

always come out on top. Nonetheless in the few accounts of battles

that he gives, one-sided though they may be, there are apparently
authentic details that reveal the art and method of combat as well as its
vagaries and fickle nature. In the 1544 expedition against the Qabarda,
the Qabardinians decided to make a night attack against the Tatar
camp. The khan and his forces was well-defended by a wagon-camp,
which included constant sentry patrols armed with musketshere
we have a clear example of the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons
and wagon-camp tactics, for the Qabardinians realized that to attack
the khans camp would be futile. And so they decided to mount a sur-
prise cavalry attack on the camp of the Tatar tribal forces. However the
battle as described by Remmal Khoja was decided as much by acciden-
tal factors as by weapons and tactics: in the fury of their attack the first
waves of Qabardinians attackers was trampled under the hooves of
the horses of the succeeding waves. As to weapons, it was the Tatar
arrow-fire that is mentioned as killing or repelling the remaining
Qabardinians attackers.43 In a battle with the Nogays in 1546 we can
see the advantages over cavalry that fire by field-cannons and muskets
gave. A charge by two units of Nogay cavalry, totaling seven thousand
men (each Nogay with two horses to combine speed and endurance),
at first brings confusion and near panic to the Crimean force. However,
in the last moment Sahib Gerey manages to arrange his own forces in
a row facing the approaching enemy and fire a blast with forty field-
cannons (darbuzan / zarbuzan) and follow up with a volley by his mus-
ket-bearing troops. This combination brought great disorder and dam-
age to the enemy. However here gunpowder weapons are not presented
as necessarily being decisive in the outcome of this battle: at this point
from several directions the Crimean cavalry swept down upon the
Nogays. Remmal Khoja informs that the battle was too close for arrow
fire, and had to be decided by saber (qlch) fighting.44 Here we stress
that in the 1544 and the 1546 examples mentioned here, while the great
importance of gunpowder weapons is evident, in neither case is the
battle won only by virtue of their utilizationat least in the eyes of
Remmal Khoja disorganization or ill-fortune of the enemy and tradi-
tional arrow fire and saber fighting also played an important role in the
outcome.

43
In typical fashion our chronicler informs us that not even single Tatars nose was
bloodied, Tarih, 9192.
44
Tarih, 112.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 163

However Remmal Khoja is much more forthcoming about special

missions, particularly in the Caucasus Mountains where it was usually
necessary to seek out an enemy that knew well how to use the terrain
as a sanctuary. Perhaps because mountain warfare posed a greater
challenge to the Tatars who where for the most part folk of the steppe,
when relating the Caucasian campaigns Remmal Khoja takes less for
granted and instead goes to greater lengths to describe the unfamiliar
and awe-inspiring alpine environment and the difficulties of operating
in it. This is in contrast to operating in the steppe, which presumably
was more familiar to the author and/or the reader and so did not
require as much explication. Thus, in Sahib Gereys first Circassian
campaign (1539), we are presented with a graphic description of the
hardships encountered by a Crimean force that entered the zone of the
Caucasian peaks in the vicinity of Mt. Elbrus (Elbruz), which Remmal
Khoja informs the reader, is the greatest mountain in the world after
the mythical Mt. Qaf. He adds that the snows on and around Mt. Elbrus
have never melted since the origin of the world and its snowfields
stretch half way to the province of Shirvan in the Transcaucasus. Below
the snow is a zone where the trees will not grow and below that a forest
so thick that not even a bird can fly or wild ass move through it. Below
that, as one descends towards the open country (sahra) one must pass
for three days through mountains and valleys which can be traveled
only by one road. Having made their way into this mountain region the
Tatar forces captured an informant and sought to learn where their
Circassian foes had gone. This captive promised to lead them to a place
near the source of the Kuban River where he claimed the fully armed
and fully equipped Circassians were in their stronghold (which accord-
ing to the informant included a ditch implanted with sharp pointed
stakes). After some hesitation Sahib Gerey decided to make an ascent
to this stronghold and to this end he selected a special forcefrom
every unit (qosh) two men with one horse per manwhile the rest of
the army was to remain encamped where it was. With this special force,
which in the words of Remmal Khoja, amounted to eleven thousand
men, the khan entered the high mountains. The terrain was so steep
and narrow that the Tatars could only proceed in single file. Below
them were precipices. Remmal Khoja notes that if a man slipped and
fell he would break into a thousand pieces; Sahib Gereys entourage
informed the khan that since the time of Timur no one has been able
to pass through this area (here we might add, no one aside from the
local mountain folk). The force proceeded for several more days until
164 victor ostapchuk

it was utterly exhausted, its food supplies dwindled, and doubt set in as
to the correctness of the route laid out by the informant. Several hun-
dred horses and several scores of men had fallen into the abysses. With
the force and its commanders demoralized and confused, the khan
finally announced that those who wished to return may, but that he
would remain in the mountains through the winter. However, his advi-
sors talked him out of this folly. The argument that they presented to
the khan puts in a nutshell why throughout history lesser mountain
folk have been able to endure in the face of the superior might of neigh-
boring states and empires: Oh, our padishah! These [Circassians] are
a tribe [that amounts to only] a handful and they have no chance to
oppose you. What worth is it to pay attention to them? Right now
time is tight and it is correct to turn around and with good fortune set
off for your countryfor this Circassian people (Cherkes taifesi) are a
naked people (i.e., impoverishedV.O.).45 Deciding that such an
enemy was not worth the risk and suffering that this expedition had
brought and that such exertion was even beneath his dignity, Sahib
Gerey found comfort in these words and after a two-day rest on the
third day with his special force began the descent from the mountains
to return to the Crimea. To compensate for the lack of military success
of his special mission in the mountains, on the return trip the khan
allowed his men to console themselves with an all-out foray for cap-
tives amongst the Circassian civilian populations, which resulted in the
capture of droves of slaves.46
Although in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries raids into the
northern countriesMuscovy and the Ukrainian lands of Poland-
Lithuania were probably the most common Crimean Tatar military
operations (usually with the purpose of obtaining captives, also to
enforce payment of tribute or gifts, and sometimes also with politi-
cal aims in mind), the Tarih provides relatively little material on such
undertakings. The only example of an expedition mounted purely with
aim of seizing captives in the north was the campaign of the winter of
15391540 headed by Emin Gerey, son of the khan, into northwestern
Ukraine.47 The picture presented by Remmal Khoja is similar to that

45
Tarih, 43.
46
Tarih, 44. The accounts of the other three expeditions to the Caucasus region also
contain excellent material on the nature of military operations there.
47
At least officially, the campaign against Muscovy in 1541 did not seem to be pri-
marily aimed at gaining esir, though on the way north a proposal is made that esir be
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 165

given in other sources: First of all, to save energy for the actual opera-
tion at the destination, the Tatar army moved slowly on its journey to
enemy territoryin this expedition the frontier was reached in twenty
five days.48 Once the border of the target territory was reached, Emin
Gerey designated a raiding party (chapgul) of unspecified size, with
two horses for each man.49 The raiding party was to return to the main
force within a set number of days (here ten days). Meanwhile the com-
mander, Emin Gerey together with his milk brothers (emeldesh) and
retinue (hass nkrleri)two thousand men totalstayed behind,
though they too mounted their own operations locally raiding villages
in the vicinity.50
This same northern campaign of the winter of 15391540 provides a
good example of the dangers of the steppe. On the return from success-
ful raids, laden with booty, Emin Gereys force was caught in heavy
snows and extreme cold. The conditions were so bad that, in the words
of Remmal Khoja, from morning until night they could [only] pro-
ceed the distance of three arrow shots. After a said forty days of travel
they managed to emerge from the border zone, but were completely
exhausted and unable to move any further. It was necessary for Emin
Gerey to choose one hundred men and push ahead with them to the
Crimea to obtain a rescue mission, leaving the main force (and its
booty) behind. In the meantime another danger of the steppe took its
toll: as the hapless main force reached the Dnieper River, the Mangt
Nogays led by the khans great enemy, Baqi Beg, took advantage of its
weakened condition and attacked and plundered it. Though the party
was eventually relieved by fresh forces from the Crimea, according to
Remmal Khoja four to five thousand men perished from the cold
alone.51

captured before crossing the Oka, which Sahib Gerey rejects. A reason why few raids
against the northern countries are recorded in the Tarih may be that such operations
were mainly the prerogative of the Crimean tribal forces and of the steppe Nogays,
rather than of the forces of the khan to which the Tarih allots the most attention.
48
Tarih, 49. Cf. Beauplan, Description dUkraine, 42 (Ukrainian translation, 59;
English translation, 4849); Collins, Military organization, 266.
49
Remmal Khoja does not articulate the reason there were two horses per man, but
as is known from other sources, the extra horse was so that there would be a fresher
mount for greater speed, which could also act as a pack-horse on the return trip, that
is, for carrying booty. Cf. Collins, Military organization, 26768.
50
Tarih, 50.
51
Tarih, 5051. While such cavalry raids are commonly known by the term chapgul
(from chap-, to gallop; to raid), in the Tarih the term does not only apply to raiding
expeditions by horsemen, but also to special missions of the khans infantry and wagon
166 victor ostapchuk

We have already made several references to the Tatars capture of

booty in general and especially humans as chattel, which is referred
to as esir in the Islamic sources (from this the Slavic word iasyr).
The importance of the slavery institution in pre-modern Islamic socie-
ties, especially in the Ottoman Empire and for the Crimean Khanate,
is beyond a doubt. The Ottomans were to a great degree dependent on
slaves as laborers in craft production and agriculture, agents in com-
merce and domestic servants, and of course as soldiers. The Tatars
also relied on slave labor, but it seems that their main interest was in
the veritable business of capturing slaves for the vast Ottoman slave
market.52 We now know that there were significant sectors of the khan-
ates economy besides that connected with the capture and selling of
slaves and that the old view that the khanate was a purely parasitical
plunder-based entity is not true. However, this does not mean that we
should try to minimize the importance of slavery for the khanate.
For some time historians have been aware that slavery in Muslim soci-
eties was not always an abject condition, that the status of slaves was
regulated by law, that slaves had a chance to obtain their freedom,
and that the status of a slave of the sultan or of a wealthy master could
entail substantial or even great privilege and social status. This being
said, it is hoped that today we can be even more open-minded about
slavery in the Ottoman Empire as well as in the Crimean Khanate. That
is, being ever conscious of the fact that societies of the past had their
rules and moral systems that could be quite different from that of our
societies in this century, we need not conceal from ourselves and our
readers aspects which were clearly unpleasant. Yes, it is undeniable
that the capture and transport of humans by Tatars was frightening and
cruel, though after a captive was sold into slavery his or her fate could
vary. Hopefully the days when historians could condemn and distort
the entire historical existence of the Crimean Tatars on account of their

forces. Thus in the Astrakhan expedition an advance expeditionary force with wagons,
field cannons (zarbuzan), and janissaries was sent ahead to Astrakhanits mission is
called a chapgul, Tarih, 102. In the 1551 Cherkes campaign, a special force sent on a
mission that consisted of 1000 musket-bearing men and 20 zarbuzans is called a
wagon chapgul(araba chapgul), Tarih, 12526.
52
On slavery in the Ottoman Empire, including the Crimea see Halil Inalcik,
Servile Labor in the Ottoman Empire, in The Mutual Effects of the Islamic and Judeo-
Christian Worlds: The East European Pattern, eds. Abraham Ascher, Tibor Halasi-Kun,
Bla K. Kirly (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn College Press, 1979), 2652.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 167

raiding activity are gone forever and we can present the realities of
the past not with ill intent but simply with the aim of understanding.
Being the product of his age and its ethos, Remmal Khoja is an excel-
lent source on the Ottoman and Tatar attitudes towards enslavement.
He makes no attempts to conceal the keen interest of the Tatars in
capturing humansunabashedly he speaks of the great numbers cap-
tured and after each successful operation he conveys the great satisfac-
tion that acquiring slaves gave to the Tatarsthe heart of the people
(or troopsV.O.) was joyous and happy is a typical refrain.53 Before
claiming his share the khan tried to make sure that the troops and their
commanders received sufficient portions of captives and other booty.
Often officials and notables in the Crimea who did not attend were
given a share of the bounty as well.54 Clearly the khan took measures
to see that his subjects were satisfied in this regard, even if his own
gain might be diminished. If an expedition was a military failure, it
seems that in the minds of the Tatar warriors this could be offset by the
capture of sufficient slaves; conversely, without enough captives a mili-
tary victory could seem hollow.55 Without a doubt the basis for the
positive emotions connected with acquirement of captives was that
each captive represented a substantial material reward; to gain several
captives could mean rising from poverty to solvency or from solvency
to wealth.
Despite the great enthusiasm for slaving expeditions, the Tarih
relates situations that show that this activity was bound by regulations
imposed by the khan. In general, operations to capture slaves could not
be commenced without the permission of the khan (ijazet).56 On the
return from Moldavia Sahib Gerey forbade his forces from taking cap-
tives, presumably because the Moldavians were subjects of the Ottoman
sultan. This was in spite of protests and claims by the Tatars that the
poor who had gone into debt in order to be able to join the campaign

53
Halqun gnl shen ve shadman, Tarih, 80, see also 44, 12829.
54
Tarih, 44, 80, 12829. Nor does he have any inhibitions relating to cruelty by the
Tatars toward their enemies: on occasion torture or execution of captured warriors,
wrongdoers, or even simple captives are mentioned or even described. In practically all
cases the cruelty is not necessarily wanton, but rather serves a purposeeither to set
an example, to punish, or for reasons of revenge etc., Tarih, 78, 93, 127.
55
A clear case of the former situation is the 1539 Circassian expedition; the success-
ful Moldavian expedition of 1538 might have been considered a failure had Sahib
Gerey not allowed the Tatars to raid for cattle on the way back (see below).
56
Tarih, 63, 89.
168 victor ostapchuk

would not have a chance to repay their debts if they were barred from
the opportunity to plunder and seize humans.57 On the way to Muscovy
in 1541 the khan ruled out any capture of humans before the military
objective was achieved.58 In the 1544 Qabardinian expedition there is a
different situation connected with captive-taking: When a nkr of
Emin Giray robbed a lowly man (referred to as a faqir) of his slave,
Sahib Gerey was supposedly so outraged that he did not rest until
the guilty nkr was located and the slave returned. The offending
party was then subjected to a humiliating public punishmenthe was
chained by his neck to an artillery wagon and whipped at every stop
along the way back to the Crimea. The khan made it a point that all the
army saw this spectacle and what would happen to anyone who dared
to steal someone elses slave.59
In his presentations of Crimean Tatar military endeavors Remmal
Khoja pays no less attention to protocol, ritual, ceremony, and festivi-
ties than he does to concrete military actions. His frequent and lengthy
descriptions of solemnities and festivitiespublic prayer, troop dis-
plays, parades, celebrationsare an indication of their importance to
the Ottoman and Tatar mentality (in this respect probably they were
no different than other peoples of the age) and these activities can be
considered integral components of a campaign. Thus when in 1539
Sahib Gerey set out from his capital Bakhchesaray against the Circas-
sians, we are given a description of a splendid spectacle: The royal
grooms saddled the khans horses with jewel-encrusted saddles and
dressed them in gold-plated harnesses. The horse-tail standards (tug)
were planted and the flags (sanjaq) unfurled. Meanwhile the streets
were lined with spectators as Sahib Gerey, having bid farewell to his
harem, emerged from the main gate of his palace in ceremonious dress
and girded with a saber. He turned in the direction of Mecca and
prayers were said and then for a final time before setting out he turned
in the direction of the palace gate. Throngs of people chanted prayers
as he and his entourage and escortservice begs (ichki begleri) and
janissarieswith the flags above them and their extra horses following
behind rode away on their gaza-bound journey.60

57
Here a compromise was effectedSahib Gerey permitted limited capture of
cattleone head from each flock, Tarih, 31.
58
Tarih, p. 63.
59
Tarih, 9394.
60
Tarih, 3637.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 169

Similarly, before Sahib Gereys son Emin Gerey set out on the cam-
paign of the winter of 15391540 to the Ukraine, Remmal Khoja
describes a series of solemn ceremonies and festive events. First, upon
granting his son permission (ijazet) to lead the campaign, the khan
dressed him in a rich ceremonious robe (the khilat ceremony), girded
him with a gilded sword, and proceeded to give him advice (nasihat)
on how to act during the coming expedition (maintain discipline,
inspect the army wellboth its vanguard and its rear, and of course,
always be courageous). Thereupon a gathering (mejlis) was called.
Pitchers of mead that gives pleasure to the heart were brought out.
No doubt with intended humor, Remmal Khoja tells us that at this
point those who did not drink withdrew from the convivial gathering
(sohbet). Then the musicians took up their sazes (lute-like instruments)
and playing and dancing commenced. People of delight and amuse-
ment rushed into the gathering. Amidst the merriment, the khan cer-
emoniously presented to the gathering his three sons, from the
youngest aged seven, Adil Gerey, to the oldest, aged twenty-two, Emin
Gerey. Gifts were distributed to all as the gathering lasted the entire day
and into the evening. The next day a similar gathering (sohbet) was
organized with further spectacles of sumptuous merry-making and
intoxication. As this was the eve of his departure, at one point Emin
Gerey asked the khan for permission to retire for the night. Upon his
departure the party continued through the night until the morning.61
In the case of Sahib Gereys own campaign against Muscovy in 1541
Remmal Khoja gives a different picture of the eve before departure:
after seeing to all the necessary preparations the khan retired to his
special room for solitary prayer and meditation (halvet hanesi) and
bowing spent the entire night there. With the arrival of morning he
performed the morning prayer (sabah namaz) and emerged from his
prayer chamber to bid farewell to the palace women. Thereupon he
made a festive departure with a fanfare parade similar to that of the
1539 campaign.62
There are scenes of celebration and ceremony on other types of
occasions. Arrival of the army at friendly fortresses along the way was
occasioned by a display of public rejoicing, so-called shenlik, which
usually included a demonstration of cannon and musket fire by the

61
Tarih, 4748.
62
Tarih, 5961. On the eve of the departure for the 1539 Circassian campaign Sahib
Gerey likewise spent the entire night in his prayer chamber, Ibid., 36.
170 victor ostapchuk

fortress garrison.63 Victory in battle was, of course, another occasion

for great celebration. Thus, on repelling the night attack of the Qab-
ardinians mentioned above the Crimean army spent the rest of the
night in celebration (shenlikler etdiler).64 Finally, the return from cam-
paign was also occasioned by great celebrations, often lasting several
days, which included banquets, readings of a celebratory work devoted
to the triumphant course of the campaign (gazaname, zafername), gift-
giving, khilat ceremonies, and distribution of captives amongst the
elite of the khanate.65 In describing the celebrations after the Astrakhan
campaign, Remmal Khoja makes the social and psychological utility of
such events evident: the meals were prepared and a general specta-
cle (grnsh-i amm) was made. The ulema and the pious and the rich
and the poor (bay u geda) and the townsfolk and the strangers (garib)
and the prayer-leaders (imam) and the preachers (hatib) all came, and
the spectacle was filled with people. All the people offered prayers and
eulogies (sena). Remmal Khoja goes on to mention Koran readings
and attendance of the convocation mosque (jami-i sherif) and how
when the spectacle began to disperse each person was in his own world
of tranquility, happiness, and delight.66 Here Remmal Khoja, idealiza-
tions and exaggerations aside, conveys the consolidating and integrat-
ing role for the society of such celebrations involving its high, middle,
and lower orders.67 The importance in Crimean Tatar society of the
khans personal participation in public occasions is also evident in a
comment by the Habsburg ambassador to Muscovy, Sigismund
Herberstein, on Sahib Gereys predecessor, Saadet Gerey: Being
beholden to the Turkish (i.e., OttomanV.O.) custom, Sadakh Gerey,
contrary to the mores of the Tatars, very rarely appeared in public and
would not show himself to his subjects. For this reason he was expelled
by the Tatars.68
In this survey of Tarih-i Sahib Giray Khan as a source on Crimean
Tatar campaigns we have restricted ourselves to giving a sampling of
the relevant information contained in this chronicle. There are other
military activities on which the chronicle has information as well as

63
Tarih, 85, 88.
64
Tarih, 92.
65
Tarih, 3031, 4445, 8182, 9596.
66
Tarih, 105.
67
On the importance of spectacles (grnsh) see also Tarih, 32.
68
Sigismund Gerbershtein [Herberstein], Zapiski o Moskovii, tr. A. I. Malenina and
A. V. Nazarenko (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1988), 184.
 crimean tatar long-range campaigns 171

subtleties and problematic points of Remmal Khojas work which we

have not discussed because of the lack of space. To gain a full apprecia-
tion of the data in this chronicle would require a larger study that
would also provide a comparative perspective from the point of view of
other sources and other areas. We would like to add an observation on
the relative usefulness of chronicles and archival documents. It is
regrettable that so few documents or registers (defters) exist for our
topic, materials that would give us a multitude of names, dates, num-
bers, organizational units, and so forth. However it is also the case that
bureaucratic documents or registers rarely allow an individual of the
caliber of Remmal Khoja to convey the information that his curious
and perspicacious mind and eye for detail have gathered. With the help
of chronicles such as Tarih-i Sahib Gerey Khan we have, despite inevi-
table distortions and blind spots, the opportunity to gain an authentic
and fascinating view of the workings of a society that has largely
remained concealed, a view that no amount of archival documentation
can provide us with. Despite the scarcity of documents, as is evident
from the Tarih, thanks to narrative sources we have the possibility to
gain a rather precise picture of various aspects of the successor khan-
ates of the Ulus Djuchi.
 THE SIEGE OF AZOV IN 1641:
MILITARY REALITIES AND LITERARY MYTH*

Brian J. Boeck

The siege of Azov in 1641 is a remarkable event in military history that

has been neglected by historians in the west and studied primarily
through the prism of literary myth in Russia. The success of a small,
irregular force in defending a fortress against a huge, well-equipped
Ottoman army is unparalleled in the history of early modern warfare.
This triumph of tenacity and audacity over military might was cele-
brated in the first of many works of Russian literature devoted to the
Cossacks. Because the history of the siege became so closely inter-
twined with literary invention, this article is a preliminary attempt to
untangle military realities from literary myths. It will also evaluate the
conflicting, fragmentary accounts of the siege that are available in
Russian diplomatic records.
The fortified city of Azov, situated near the mouth of the Don River,
was for over two centuries the northernmost Ottoman outpost in the
Black Sea steppes.1 A vital transit point on the Silk route in the Middle
Ages, the city remained in Venetian hands until it was conquered by
Ottoman forces in 1476. Although its importance as a Eurasian trading
emporium declined, Azov functioned as a regional center connecting
the pastoralist economies of the steppe to the Ottoman core. The size of
the Ottoman garrison at Azov fluctuated but rarely exceeded a few
thousand troops. Internal troubles in the Ottoman Empire and con-
flicts with the Crimean Tatars further weakened the vulnerable garri-
son.2 In June 1637 an expeditionary force of Don and Zaporozhian

* An earlier version of this paper was presented in November 2006 at the 38th
National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies in Washington, D.C. I would like to thank Serhii Plokhii for the insightful com-
ments that he provided as discussant on the panel.
1
For the early history of Azov, see M. Cavid Baysun, Azak, in Islam Ansiklopedisi
(Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 1940), 8589; David Goldfrank, Azov, Russian Relations
With, in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (Gulf Breeze: Academic
International Press, 1976), 219223; Mihnea Berindei and Gilles Veinstein, La Tana-
Azaq, in Turcica Revue D etudes Turques VIII (1976), 110201.
2
On Ottoman Azov and its garrison see Alan W. Fisher, Azov in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries, in Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas 21, no. 2 (1972):
174 brian j. boeck

Cossacks took the fort after tunneling under and exploding a key sec-
tion of its walls.
The Don Cossacks were a multi-ethnic military brotherhood allied
with Russia.3 In exchange for cash, weapons and supplies they pro-
tected Russian diplomats, collected information on developments in
the Black Sea region, and conducted raids against the Ottomans and
their Tatar allies. The Cossacks acknowledged an allegiance to the tsar
but elected their own leaders, governed themselves without govern-
ment interference, and conducted independent relations with other
frontier communities. On the eve of the siege the Muscovite govern-
ment neither vigorously supported the Cossacks nor intervened deci-
sively to disrupt their siege preparations.4 Russian diplomats attempted
to convince their Ottoman counterparts that the tsar had no influence
over the Don Cossacks, while secretly providing the Don Host with
limited financial assistance and access to supplies.
Due to a serious and most curious lacuna for 1641 in the major
archival collection in Russia dedicated to Don Cossack affairs, modern
accounts of the siege rely heavily on a literary work, the so-called
Poetical Tale of the Siege of Azov.5 This text has beguiled generations of
Russian readers with its vivid accounts of the sights and sounds of bat-
tle, clear narrative structure, feel for the fog of war, and clever verbal
duels between Christian Cossacks and their Muslim adversaries [see
the appendix]. In a recent study, however, I argued that the Poetical
Tale represents a second-hand, literary reworking of other texts and
eyewitness accounts by someone in Moscow.6 Rather than originating

161174. For the Cossack conquest of Azov and events of the 1630s, see I. F. Bykadorov,
Donskoe voisko v borbe za vykhod v more 15461646 (Paris, 1937) 689, 8994.
3
On the Don Cossacks in this period, consult N.A. Mininkov, Donskoe kazachestvo
v epokhu pozdnego srednevekovia (Rostov-na-Donu: 1998).
4
Bykadorov, Donskoe voisko v borbe za vykhod v more, 95106; Mininkov, Donskoe
kazachestvo, 173179, 375392.
5
Even a competent recent analysis by a talented young Russian historian uses testi-
mony from the poetical tale to try to reconstruct the stages of the siege. See O. Iu. Kuts,
Azovskaia oborona 1641 g.: istochniki i khod sobytii, Ocherki feodalnoi Rossii
(Moscow: Alians, 2006) 111176. Since I plan to address the Azov tales in depth in a
future publication, in this article I will refrain from polemics about the reliability of the
tales for reconstructing the stages of the siege. On the tales, see A. S. Orlov, Istoricheskie
i poeticheskie povesti ob Azove (Moscow: 1906); A. N. Robinson, Poeticheskaia povest
ob Azove i politicheskaia borba donskikh kazakov v 1642 g., Trudy otdela drevne-
russkoi literatury, VI, (1948) 2459.
6
For evidence that the text originated in Moscow, see Boeck, Shifting Boundaries on
the Don Steppe Frontier: Cossacks, Empires and Nomads to 1739 (Ph.D. diss., Harvard
 the siege of azov in 1641 175

in a Don Cossack milieu, the text most likely came into existence in
Russian diplomatic circles. Multiple manuscripts of the Tale remain
unpublished and its archival antecedents remain poorly studied. Until
painstaking analysis of all versions has been completed, this very
important work of seventeenth-century literature should be disquali-
fied as a source for historical analysis.7
Three groups of hitherto under-appreciated sources in Russian pro-
vide important information on the events of 1641. 1) The Cossack
report to the tsar concerning the siege. In spite of the assertions by
Russian scholars that the Cossack report about the siege has not sur-
vived, its contents can be partially reconstructed from documents that
liberally quote its contents. Sections of the report to Moscow on the
siege are repeated verbatim in two archival documents.8 In addition,
the report was used to produce an early composite narrative (skazanie)
of the events of the siege.9 2) Eyewitness reports and testimony recorded
during the siege. In addition to the documents published in the nine-
teenth century,10 the records of a Russian embassy to Istanbul that left
Moscow in May 1641 and returned after the siege contains testimony
from both ordinary and well-connected Ottoman informants.11 3)
A description of the Don region prepared for Tsarevich Aleksei Petro-
vich, the son of Peter I, after the conquest of Azov in 1696. This text is
attributed to Cornelius Cruys, a naval expert from Holland.12 While it
has never been critically scrutinized as a source on the events of 1641,
it contains unique information about the Ottoman siege force and does

University, 2002), pp. 570582. I presented additional argumentation for this view
in The Azov Tales in Russian Culture (unpublished paper) delivered to the Early
Slavists Seminar, Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University, October 1999.
An article in Russian that summarizes my views appeared in S.F. Oreshkova ed.
Osmanskii mir i osmanistika: sbornik statei k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia A.S.
Tveritinovoi (19101973) (Moscow, 2010), 314324.
7
For a model example of the kind of study that the Azov tales require, see Daniel
Clarke Waugh, The Great Turkes Defiance: On the History of the Apocryphal
Correspondence of the Ottoman Sultan and its Muscovite and Russian Variants
(Columbus: Slavica, 1978). In particular Waughs discussion on pages 8689 is impor-
tant for any future study of the milieu in which the Azov tales emerged.
8
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov [hereafter RGADA], f. 89, kn.
14, ll. 3841ob; RGADA, f. 89, 1641, d. 4, ll. 17.
9
RGADA f. 159 op. 1, d. 28, ll. 14.
10
For published documents, see Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka [henceforth
RIB], (Saint Petersburg: 1906) volume 24; N. A. Popov, ed., Akty moskovskago gosu-
darstva [henceforth AMG], (Saint Petersburg: 1894) volume 2.
11
RGADA f.89, 1640, d. 1, chast 1.
12
Cornelius Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, Azovskom more, Voronezhe i Azove, in
Otechestvennyia zapiski, no. 55, chast XIX, (1824): 169203, 471494.
176 brian j. boeck

not merely repeat information from Russian accounts. Future studies

may even determine that its information derives from European diplo-
matic reports and/or Ottoman (possibly Moldovan) accounts, but for
now it should be taken into consideration as a text that both corrobo-
rates and supplements other sources.13
Azov consisted of a medieval fortress constructed by the Venetians
in the fourteenth century and two fortified later additions. One was
built of stone, while the other consisted of earthen bulwarks.14 On one
side it was adjacent to the Don River, while on three sides it faced a flat
plain. Built in the era before artillery became predominant, it appeared
unimpressive to a Muscovite official who inspected it before the siege
and pronounced that it was not strong and quite thin.15 The fortifica-
tions were made of local stone and were covered at their base with lay-
ers of clay and earth. A Muscovite bureaucrat estimated the length of
the fortifications to be over 1000 meters and noted that the land walls
were surrounded by a ditch over 8 meters wide and 3 meters deep.16
The sizes of the respective military forces have never been precisely
determined, but it is clear that Ottoman officials mounted a major
effort to re-conquer Azov from the Cossacks. All three groups of
sources concur that the Ottoman force was massive and that it was
comprised of regulars (Janissaries, Sipahi cavalry forces), irregulars
and nomads. The Cossack report claims an Ottoman invasion force of
over 240,000 individuals, which, if reliable, would rank among the
most massive armies ever assembled by the Ottomans.17 Greeks with
connections to the Ottoman court and Moldovan principalities num-
bered the entire force at 150,000.18 According to Cruys the Ottoman
force numbered 50,000 Tatars, 10,000 Circassians, 20,000 Janissaries,
20,000 sipahis and a greater number of Moldovans and Wallachians.19

13
In my opinion the Cruys text is too specific to derive from oral tradition as Kuts
suggested (Azovskaia oborona 1641 g. p. 112 and p 163 note 152). It includes names
of Ottoman officials, precise numbers, and even descriptions of the situation in the
Ottoman ranks. It also displays heightened attention to Moldavia and Wallachia. See
especially Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 197, 200, 476.
14
Descriptions are from RGADA f. 89, 1637, d. 1, ll. 35859. See also I. V. Volkov,
Azovskaia krepost glazami Evlii Chelebi i russkikh voennykh topografov XVIIXVIII
vv., in V. E. Maksimenko, ed., Istoricheskaia geografiia Dona i Severnogo Kavkaza
(Rostov-on-Don: 1992), 8394.
15
RGADA, f. 89, 1637, d.1, l. 358.
16
RIB, 24: 263.
17
RIB, 24: 367; RGADA, f. 89, kn. 14, l. 39.
18
RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast 1, l. 107, l. 140.
19
Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 190191.
 the siege of azov in 1641 177

This would suggest that the forces mobilized for the Azov siege could
have roughly paralleled the 100,000 mobilized for the siege of Bagdad,
which also had a 1:2 infantry to cavalry ratio.20
Estimates for the number of Cossack defenders of Azov tend to fall
within a narrow range. There appears to be no compelling reason for
discounting the figure of 5,367 Cossack defenders contained in one of
the documents derived from the lost Cossack report, since other wit-
nesses estimated their numbers as between 3,000 and 6,000.21 Cruys
provides the smallest number (1,400 men and 800 women who took
part in battle), but this number probably derives from a source that
reflects only the last and most desperate phase of the siege.22 In spite of
the discrepancies, it is absolutely clear that the Cossack defenders were
outnumbered by a ratio of 10:1.
The siege lasted more than three months. According to the Cossacks
their defense of the fort spanned from June 7, 1641 to September 26,
1641.23 This accords very well with the Ottoman pattern of mobiliza-
tion, which provided for a formal beginning of the campaign season in
May and its end in late October.24 Some rear-guard Ottoman forces
probably remained in the vicinity of Azov until early October to guard
the retreat of the land forces. Although Ottoman forces arrived in the
vicinity of Azov and began to surround the fort in early June 1641,
major military operations did not begin until later in the month. The
diplomatic reports note that more than 40 galleys were equipped to
transport men and materials, while the rest of the forces marched by
land.25 This accords well with Katib Chelebis description of a typical
Ottoman fleet consisting of roughly 40 galleys and 6 larger vessels with
a crew of roughly 15,000.26 Due to silting in the mouth of the Don

20
Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare 15001700 (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University, 1999), 36.
21
The precise figure is from RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 3ob. For 3,000, see RIB,
24: 230. For 56,000, see RIB, 24: 219. Greeks in Istanbul heard from Ottoman inform-
ants that there were 4,000 Cossacks defending Azov. RGADA f.89, 1640, d. 1, chast 1,
l. 199. Another report places their number as 4,500. RGADA, f. 89, 1641, d. 4, l. 17.
22
Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 191. The presence of women is confirmed by Kuts
Azovskaia oborona, 158.
23
RGADA, f. 89, 1642, d. 1, l. 22; RIB, 24: 260.
24
Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 21.
25
RGADA, f. 52, 1641, d. 12, l. 2, 15; AMG, 2:121.
26
Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 23. For similar figures, see AMG, 2:121 and Cruys,
Rozyskaniia o Done, p. 190. For reports of 50 and 60 galleys, see RGADA, f. 52, 1641,
d. 12, l. 2 and RGADA, f. 52, 1641, d. 13, ll. 78.
178 brian j. boeck

River, the Turkish galleys had to dock several miles from the fort.
Smaller boats were used to ferry men into position, but enormous
amounts of artillery, projectiles, and gunpowder had to be moved into
place using horses, camels, and teams of oxen.27
A clear chronology of the siege does not emerge from these frag-
mentary sources. Very little news escaped from the fort while it was in
the Ottoman siege stranglehold and the reports written after the con-
clusion of military operations are not always precise about the chrono-
logical order of the events they mention. Ottoman forces made at least
two major attempts to storm the fort during the early part of the siege,
but in each case took large numbers of casualties. Artillery bombard-
ment began in late June and lasted for over a month.28 Bombs and mor-
tars (iadra ognennyia chinenyia) were fired to provide cover for the
construction of a massive earthen rampart.29 This rampart was then
used as a platform for over two weeks of cannon fire (probably in July
1641). According to the Cossacks, 700 to 1,000 shots were fired every
day and other eyewitnesses also mention incessant firing from morn-
ing to night.30
The result of the bombardment was the leveling of all but one sec-
tion of Azovs outer walls.31 Eight of eleven towers were destroyed or
damaged.32 When the Ottomans filled in parts of the ditch with dirt
and debris and captured the outer ring of fortifications in the last days
of July, the Cossacks retreated to the medieval fortress.33 After the
Ottomans pounded its walls with their artillery, the Cossacks hunkered
down in what they called a fourth, earthen fort and in fortified,
underground bunkers.34
By early August 1641 the Ottoman army started to exhaust its sup-
plies of lead, projectiles, and gunpowder, ending the first phase of the
siege. According to diplomatic reports, on August 9 the Pasha of
Silistria, who led that attack, wrote to Istanbul requesting additional

27
RIB, 24: 219; Cruys Rozyskaniia o Done, 191.
28
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 1ob-2.
29
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 2-2ob; RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast 1, l. 107;
RIB, 24: 229.
30
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 2; AMG, 2:121; RIB, 24: 228.
31
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 2; RGADA, f. 89, 1641, d. 4; RIB, 24: 261, 288.
32
RIB, 24:263.
33
A. A. Novoselskii, Borba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s Tatarami v pervoi polovine
XVII veka (Moscow: 1948), 287. See also AMG, 2:123.
34
RGADA, f. 89, 1642, d. 1, l. 22; RIB 24: 260, 369. For important new information,
see Kuts Azovskaia oborona, 160.
 the siege of azov in 1641 179

men and materials.35 For several weeks there was a lull in the fighting.
Two groups of sources note that negotiations were conducted between
the Cossacks and Ottoman officials. In their report to Moscow, the
Cossacks highlighted that they had rejected Turkish offers of up to
1,000 gold talers per Cossack defender and spurned much treasure
offered in exchange for abandoning the fort.36 Cruys mentions that
Ottoman negotiators promised to pay the Cossacks 12,000 gold coins
on the spot and to deliver as many as 30,000 after their retreat.37 These
events gave the Cossacks an opportunity to rest, recuperate and regroup
before the final assaults. After supplies and reinforcements arrived in
September 1641, the Ottoman forces attempted a final assault, but
again sustained major casualties.38
During the various stages of the siege, the Cossacks were able to
inflict large numbers of casualties upon the Ottoman camp. They suc-
cessfully employed undermining, claiming to have dug 17 tunnels
under the enemy forces.39 Early in the siege they detonated explosives
in tunnels under the Turkish forces causing the loss of more than 1,000
Janissaries.40 When the Ottomans captured the outer circuit of fortifi-
cations, the Cossacks detonated powder magazines in that section of
the fort to turn this achievement into a Pyrrhic victory.41 They also
conducted frequent sorties from the fort against the Ottoman camp.
The Cossacks themselves reported savage fighting in the trenches in
which small-caliber firearms were used to decimate enemy forces (they
claimed nearly 20,000 killed).42 During a late stage of the siege terror
was sowed among the Ottoman ranks when a Cossack defector
crossed over and reported the existence of three additional tunnels
filled with explosives under the Ottoman camps.43 He directed them to

35
RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast 1, l. 108, ll. 141142. This request is echoed
in Cruys Rozyskaniia o Done, 198.
36
RIB, 24: 368. For treasure, see RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 2. See also Kuts
Azovskaia oborona, 157158.
37
Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 194.
38
Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 196197. See also Kuts Azovskaia oborona,
167170.
39
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 2ob; RGADA, f. 89, kn. 14, l. 39ob; RGADA, f. 89,
1641, d. 4. On the eve of the siege the Cossacks were already planning to employ tun-
nels in their defense of the fort. See RIB 24: 21819.
40
RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast 1 l. 294. Cruys notes that 2000 Janissaries
were lost. Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 192.
41
Novoselskii, Borba Moskovskogo gosudarstva, 287.
42
RGADA, f. 89, 1641, d. 4, ll. 17.
43
RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast 1 ll. 145146.
180 brian j. boeck

one tunnel, but the two others could not be located. Whether or not
this was calculated psychological warfare aimed at demoralizing the
siege force, according to Ottoman witnesses it caused many Ottomans
to flee in terror (ustrashas otoshli). In spite of plans to winter in
Crimea and resume the siege, the Ottomans began a hasty retreat start-
ing in late September 1641.44 The literary tales would later explain this
retreat as the result of divine intervention, but logistics hint at more
material reasons. The dearth of provisions and the dearness of victuals
hastened the end of the campaign season.45
All three groups of sources provide figures for Ottoman casualties,
but once again there are discrepancies in the numbers. The Cossacks,
citing the accounts of individuals who were captured during sallies and
testimonies of casualties blown into the fortress during explosions in
the Ottoman camp, claimed that 20,000 were killed in the early stages
of fighting.46 Those captured during the Ottoman retreat gave a total
figure of 70,000 that supposedly came from counts (smety) by Ottoman
officials.47 Russian diplomats in Ottoman lands were quoted figures
for losses ranging from 30,000 to 50,000.48 Curiously, Cruys provides
the most precise numbers: 8,000 Janissaries killed during the siege
and 3,000 during the retreat, 3,000 Sipahis, 20,000 Moldovans and
Wallachians and 7,000 Tatars.49 Cossack losses numbered roughly
3,000.50 One witness reported that by early August only about 1,000
Cossacks were still engaged in fighting.51 Conservative estimates would
suggest that the Cossack defenders of Azov lost half their comrades,
while the Ottoman force experienced losses of at least a third of the
men who were sent against the fort.
All sources indicate that the siege resulted in the demoralization of
the Ottoman invasion force. Cossacks described an ignominious
Ottoman retreat: They returned to their galleys utterly shamed and

44
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 33ob.
45
Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 196.
46
RGADA, f. 89, kn. 14, l. 39ob. See also Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 200; RIB, 24:
287.
47
RIB, 24: 2856.
48
RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast 1 l.220, l. l07, l. 139. For 20,000 see RIB, 24:
286287.
49
Cruys, Rozyskaniia o Done, 200. On the loss of 6000 best people in Ottoman
ranks, see Novoselskii, Borba Moskovskogo gosudarstva, 286.
50
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 3ob.
51
Many Cossacks were also reported to have died from their wounds. AMG, 2:123.
 the siege of azov in 1641 181

humiliated (sramom i pozorom poshli v katorgy).52 The words of the

Ottoman participants of the campaign, as reported by Russian diplo-
mats, are remarkably similar: We have never experienced such
unheard of shame; Such a great victory and such great damage has
never been inflicted on us by anyone.53 Perhaps the greatest compli-
ment paid to the Cossack contingent, especially in light of recent
events, is the claim by Ottoman officials that a small, ill-equipped force
(malye, khudye liudi) caused the Ottomans as much damage and dis-
tress as their bitter Shiite Safavid rivals in Bagdad.54
Azov remained invisible in the annals of early modern military his-
tory because it was too distant from the heart of Europe to attract
major attention from military strategists at the time and too disgrace-
ful for Ottoman historians to cultivate in official memory. Only Russian
contemporaries recognized the significance of the siege. In an enthusi-
astic attempt to narrate how a small Cossack force prevailed over the
great, awesome, undefeatable forces of the Turkish sultan, an
unknown clerk working in Moscow in the mid-seventeenth century
displaced key documents and penned a literary text that replaced key
incidents with rhetorical bravado and Russian bluster. Consequently, it
will take years of following his trails and analyzing his tales to properly
distinguish military realities from literary myths.

Appendix One: Provisional Translation of The Poetical Tale of the

Siege of Azov

This translation is based upon the text edited by Natalia Vladimirovna

Ponyrko and published in N. V. Ponyrko, ed., Voinskie povesti Drevnei Rusi
(Leningrad: 1985). In preparation for a larger study of the tales and their tex-
tual tradition, I have also consulted a number of manuscript versions of
the text in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In a few cases variants from other
manuscripts have been included here in curly brackets:{ }. A limited number
of editorial interpolations, which I have used mainly to make the text more
coherent for a non-Russian audience, have been included in box brackets: [ ].

In the year 7150 [1641] on October 28th, a delegation to Sovereign,

Tsar, Grand Prince and Autocrat Mikhail Fedorovich of All Russia

52
RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 3ob.
53
RGADA f.89, 1640, d. 1, chast 1, ll. 142, 149.
54
Nyne de nam Azov pushche i toshnee Bogdata stala. RGADA f.89, 1640, d. 1,
chast 1, ll. 143.
182 brian j. boeck

arrived in Moscow from the Don and the city of Azov. It was composed
of Ataman Naum Vasiliev, Esaul Fedor Ivanov and 24 Cossacks who
were besieged in Azov by the Turks. They brought a report of the siege.
In their report it is written:
In the year 149 [1641] on June 24th the Turkish Tsar Ibrahim Sultan
sent against us Cossacks his four pashas and his two colonels. The
pashas were named Kapitan, Mustafa, {Husein, and Ibrahim}. To lead
and oversee them in place of himself, he [the sultan] sent a close associ-
ate of his secret council, his loyal servant, Ibrahim the eunuch, who
was to inspect their battle and martial skills as the pashas and colonels
undertook to campaign against Azov. Together with these pashas the
Turkish tsar sent against us his united forces and Muslim army, gather-
ing together against us all twelve of his subject lands and all of his
enrolled military forces. According to his records, he sent from across
the sea 200,000 fighting men, not including ordinary people from Kaffa
and the areas along the sea, whom he assembled on this side of the
[Black] sea together with all of their Crimean and Nogai hordes. They
were sent with shovels and spades to bury us alive and heap up a great
mountain as they do to people with their forces in the towns of Persia.
With our deaths they intended to gain for their Turkish tsar eternal
glory and subject us Christians to eternal reproach. The forces thatwere
gathered against us included many countless thousands of ordinary
people, such that their numbers could neither be counted nor recorded.
The Crimean tsar arrived later to assist them and brought his brother
the naradyn and Krim Girei the tsarevich and kalga, with his Crimean
and Nogai hordes and Crimean and Nogai princes and nobles, who
numbered 40,000 not counting volunteers. Also together with the
Crimean tsar there were 10,000 [Caucasian] mountain princes and
Circassians from Kabarda. With the pashas there were also two German
mercenary colonels and their 6,000 soldiers. Also together with the
pashas there were many German [Northern European] city-takers,
wise siege and undermining experts, and famous engineers from many
states: from Greece, Spain, the great Venice, Stockholm and France.
These were explosives experts who know how to make all kinds of siege
engines and mortar bombs and various other cunning things. At Azov
their artillery consisted of 120 big, battering cannons. The cannonballs
were great in size: 36 pounds, 55 pounds, and 72 pounds per ball. They
also had all kinds of small ordinance, cannons and guns. There were
674 cannons, not including large caliber mortars, which numbered 32.
Their entire artillery was chained down for they feared that during
the sorties we would come out and capture it. Together with the pashas
 the siege of azov in 1641 183

all kinds of military forces were amassed against us from various

lands and faiths belonging to the Turkish tsar and from other lands: 1.
Turks 2. Crimean [Tatars] 3. Greeks 4. Serbs 5. Arabs 6. Hungarians
7. Moldovans 8. Bosnians 9. Albanians 10. Wallachians 11. Romanians
12. Circassians 13. Germans. Altogether there were (according to their
records) 256,000 military men, not including the German masters,
ordinary people, and volunteers. The Turkish tsar prepared to attack us
Cossacks across the sea for exactly four years and in the fifth year he
sent his pashas and the Crimean tsar against Azov.
On June 24 before noon the pashas approached the city with the
Crimean tsar and surrounded it with all of their great Turkish forces.
All of our empty fields were strewn with their Nogai hordes. In an hour
what once was barren steppe became like a dark, impenetrable forest
due to their multitudes. From their massive forces and the galloping of
their horses, the land under Azov caved in and the waters from the
river Don washed over the banks and flooded the meadows. The Turks
began to stake their Turkish tents on our fields. Their chambers, great
dwelling places and palaces of fabric [were] like tall and terrifying
mountains covered in a blanket of white. In their regiments a great
blaring began from huge horns and great fanfare emerged from their
regiments. A great and unheard of howl emanated from their strange
Muslim voices. After that, in their regiments there was great cannon
and musket fire as if a great and terrifying storm hung over us, [just]
like awesome thunder and terrible lightning comes from the clouds
and the heavens. From their shooting, fire and smoke billowed to
the sky. Our fortifications shook from their fiery shooting [artillery
charges]. The sun went dark on that day and the moon turned blood
red. It was as if a dark void had swallowed everything.
We began to be very terrified of them at that time and it was both
disturbing and marvelous to witness their organized, Muslim arrival.
The human mind cannot comprehend what it was like for us to hear of
such a great, terrifying, and united army, much less for someone to see
[it] with his own eyes.
They began to arrange themselves less than 500 yards from the Azov
fort. Their Janissary captains approached us and the fort in disciplined
formations in huge, great regiments. Their standards are enormous
and indescribably black. Their brass tympanums thundered and their
horns blared and they were beating upon huge, unheard-of drums.
Their twelve Janissary captains besieged us forcefully coming up as
close to the fort as possible. They formed a circle all around the city
that was eight rows deep, occupying the area from the River Don to
184 brian j. boeck

the sea hand to hand. The wicks of their musket-locks blazed like burn-
ing candles. In each captains regiment there are 12,000 Janissaries.
They are all equipped with firearms and each wears on his head a gold
helmet. All of their outfits are of the same reddish color, which is
[brilliant] like a sunrise. They all have long-barreled Turkish arque-
buses with lock mechanisms, and each wears on his head a pointed
metal helmet [shishak]. When seen together [in multitudes these hel-
mets] appear like a constellation of stars. Together with them in lines
stood the two German colonels with their soldiers, and in each regi-
ment there are 6,000 soldiers.
The same day that the Turks arrived near the city, in the evening the
pashas sent their Turkish translators of Muslim, Persian, and Hellene
tongues with the first captain of the Janissary infantry to talk with us.
And the Janissary captain began to speak the word of his Turkish tsar
and of his four pashas and the Crimean tsar, speaking eloquently:
O people of God the heavenly tsar! No one forced or sent you out
into the deserts, [yet] you fly without fear like soaring eagles and prance
in the deserts like ferocious lions, you free and fierce Cossacks of the
Don, our near neighbors of erratic character, evil desert-dwellers,
unrighteous murderers and merciless bandits! Your eyes are insatiable.
How is it that for ages you never fill your greedy stomachs? Against
whom have you committed such offenses and horrible rudeness? You
have encroached upon the great and exalted right hand of the Turkish
tsar. Can you actually be called in Rus holy Russian champions? To
where can you outlaws now flee from his {awesome} hands? {Can you
fly like birds out of Azov?} You enraged Murat Sultan his highness the
Turkish tsar. First you murdered the Turkish ambassador Thomas
Cantakuzenus on the Don, killing him together with all the Armenians
and Greeks. You also took from our tsar his favorite hereditary hold-
ing, the famous and beautiful city of Azov. You attacked like vicious
hungry wolves and did not spare any man, neither young nor old,
slaughtering all to the very last one. In doing so you acquired for your-
selves the accursed name of beasts.
You dispossessed the city from the Sovereign Turkish tsar and his
Crimean and Nogai horde by your felonious thievery. His Crimean
horde is his great and awesome defense from all sides. Secondly, you
took away his harbor, and in doing so closed off the city from the blue
sea. You did not allow the sultans ships or galleys to pass into any of the
towns on the sea. In committing such a horrible rudeness, why are you
waiting for your end in the city? Abandon the Turkish tsars possession
 the siege of azov in 1641 185

this night without delay. Whatsoever silver and gold you have in the
city you may take with you from Azov without fear to your Cossack
towns and to your comrades. While you retreat we will not molest you.
But if you do not leave Azov this night, tomorrow you will not be left
alive by us.
Who can shelter or stand up for evildoers and murderers such as you
[and save you] from the Eastern Turkish tsars powerful hands and his
great, awesome, undefeatable forces? Who can stand against him? He
has no equals or peers in greatness and power on this planet! He only
answers to God above and he is the only true protector of Gods grave
[Translators Note: An impious reference to the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem]. [All of] this is by the will of God because he [the Turkish
tsar] alone is chosen of all tsars. Save your lives this night. Dont choose
to die a terrible death at the hands of the Turkish tsar. He, the great
Eastern Sovereign, the Turkish tsar, is never a murderer of yourbrothers:
felons, Cossacks and bandits. For him it is fitting to defeat a great tsar
who is equal to him in honor. Your bandit blood means nothing tohim.
If you sit through this night in Azov in spite of such a merciful
speech and commandment, tomorrow we will take the city of Azov
with you in it and will take you felons and bandits into our hands like
little birds and subject you felons to terrible and cruel tortures. Well
smash your bandit bodies into tiny pieces! Even if there were 40,000 of
you felons in Azov, we have over 300,000 on our side. There arent as
many hairs on your heads as there are Turkish forces near Azov. You
yourselves, stupid felons, see with your own eyes the sultans great and
immeasurable forces and how they have covered your whole great
Cossack steppe. Not even from up on high could your eyes see the far
end of our forces. Not even a soaring bird could fly over the length of
our amassed forces, for it would be so terrified by our multitude that it
would fall from on high to the ground.
We also give notice to you felons that from your powerful Muscovite
kingdom there will be no help or relief to you. What are you stupid
felons hoping for? Grain supplies from Rus will never be sent. If you,
people of God, free and fierce Cossacks, would like to serve our tsar, his
highness Ibrahim Sultan, present your guilty bandit heads to him and
make obeisance to enter his eternal service. Our sovereign the Turkish
tsar and his pashas will forgive all of your previous Cossack rudeness
and the present taking of Azov. He will reward you with great honor.
He will enrich you with many countless riches, and set up for you
Cossacks great quarters in his capital in Tsargrad forever. Hell place
186 brian j. boeck

on all you Cossacks his golden brocaded garments and will give you
symbols of distinction with his imperial seal on them. People of all ages
in his realm and in Tsargrad [Constantinople] will bow before you.
And your Cossack glory will forever be proclaimed in all lands from
east to west. For eternity all Muslim and Persian hordes will call you
holy Russian champions, because you did not fear- with your small
numbers, 7,000 such terrifying, great, and undefeatable forces of the
Turkish tsar: more than 300,000 recorded servitors.
You have awaited [our] regiments. How much greater, stronger,
more populous, and wealthy is the tsar of Persia- the ruler placed by
God over Persia and wealthy India in comparison with you! He has
many hosts like our sovereign the Turkish tsar, but indeed he never
makes battlefield stands against the Turkish tsar and does not sit
[besieged] with his Persian people in his cities against our forces
because he knows our ferociousness, fearlessness, and pride.
Our Cossack answer from within the Azov fort to the Turkish inter-
preters and to the Janissary captain [was]:
We see all of you and have known of you for a long time. We meet
up with you frequently on the sea and across the sea on dry land. We
are familiar with your Turkish forces. For many days we awaited the
arrival of guests such as you in the vicinity of Azov. Has Ibrahim your
Turkish tsar taken leave of his senses and sanity? Or did his silver and
gold cease to arrive from across the sea that he sent his four pashas
against us in order to [bring] him bloody Cossack coats as trophies?
And they say that against us together with them there is a Turkish force
that according to his records is 300,000 strong. We ourselves see and
know that there truly are such forces [amassed] against us: over 300,000
military men, not to mention ordinary people. And your Turkish tsar
hired from four lands six thousand German soldiers, and many wise
sappeurs, and gave them a great treasure. And you Turks have long
known that up to now nobody has taken trophies from our outfits
without paying a dear price.
Even if the Turkish tsar succeeds in capturing Azov and all of us with
his great Turkish forces and mercenary forces, it will be by German
intelligence and martial skill, but not by his tsarist gallantry and knowl-
edge. By capturing us Cossacks in Azov he will not add much honor to
his tsarist Turkish name. He will not erase and efface our Cossacks
names and nicknames and will not empty the Don by lopping off our
heads. And to repay you for our deaths brave lads from the Don will all
hasten to Azov and your pashas wont be able to escape across the sea.
And if only God will deliver us from [the sultans] strong hands, and we
 the siege of azov in 1641 187

manage to sit through this siege in Azov against such great forces
300,000 men with our small numbers, for there are only 7,590 armed
and select Cossacks in Azov, it will be shameful for your Turkish tsar
and he will suffer eternal humiliation and disgrace in the eyes of his
brothers, all the emperors. He haughtily titled himself as if he were
above all earthly tsars, but we are godly people who place all our hopes
in God and the Mother of God, Our Lady, and in others who are pleas-
ing to God and in all our brothers and comrades, who live in the towns
along the Don.
We are by nature bondsmen of the sovereign tsar of the Christian
Muscovite tsardom. Our eternal name is great and fearless Cossacks of
the Don! Well fight with the Turkish tsar, who is no better than a poor,
hired swine herder. We consider ourselves free Cossacks. For where
great hosts are, there many corpses will fall! After all we are {godly
people} and not like those of the Persian Shah. Although there are not
many of us besieged, only 7,590, because of Gods assistance were not
afraid of your great 300,000 strong Turkish force and your various
kinds of German skills. God works against the proud Muslim Turkish
tsar and his pashas because of his lofty words. Your Turkish tsar is no
better than a stinking cur, but he equates himself with God above in his
royal titulature. Has he, vulgar Muslim, pagan cur not yet pronounced
that God is his junior assistant? His perishable, worldly wealth raised
his hopes and his father Satan raised his pride to the heavens, but for
this God will cast him from upon high into the abyss for eternity. From
our meager Cossack hands shame will forever accrue to your Turkish
tsar. Where now his great hosts howl and celebrate in our fields, tomor-
row instead of fanfare many corpses will fall by our Cossack hands. For
our Christian humility, God will make us appear before you dogs like
raging lions. For a long time blue-grey eagles and black ravens have
been flying over our fields and screeching and crawing awaiting you.
By the Don brown foxes howl. [Translators Note: A literary reference
to the Zadonshchina]. All cry out awaiting your Muslim corpses. Ere
this we fed them your heads when we took Azov, and now they again
desire your flesh and we will feed them their fill.
We didnt take Azov by banditry or felony, nay, we took it by our own
cunning and gallantry as an experiment to see how his Turkish sub-
jects would fare against us in a siege. We occupied Azov with small
forces, dividing purposefully in two with our comrades to test once
more and inspect your Turkish knowledge and tactics! For we will use
everything against Jerusalem and Tsargrad [Constantinople]. We will
take Tsargrad because it was formerly a Christian empire.
188 brian j. boeck

You Muslims frighten us with statements that from Rus well receive
neither grain supplies nor reinforcements, saying that supposedly from
the Muscovite state such has been written to you concerning us. We
know good and well without you, dogs, what kind of cherished people
we are in the Muscovite State in Rus and for what we are needed there,
we know our place. The Muscovite State is populous, great and
immense, and shines brightly among other states and Muslim, Persian,
and Hellene [Pagan] hordes like the sun in the sky. But in Rus we are
not even regarded as stinking dogs. We flee from the Muscovite state to
escape unceasing labors and unfree servitude, from the Sovereigns
Boyars and nobles. Having fled and settled in untraversed deserts we
fix our eyes {on Christ, the heavenly} God. Who is there [in Muscovy]
to grieve for us? Everyone there would welcome our end. We have
never received grain supplies or reinforcements from Rus. The heav-
enly lord feeds us brave lads in the fields by his mercy {day and night}
with wild beasts and fish from the sea. We eat like the birds of the heav-
ens: we neither sow, nor reap, nor fill up granaries. Thats how we dine
by the side of the blue sea. We appropriate silver and gold from you
across the sea. We take and choose our beautiful and beloved brides
from you.
We took Azov by our own volition, not by the Sovereigns orders, for
the sake of our Cossack glory and because of your fierce and haughty
vainglory. Because of this the sovereign is very angry and vexed with
us, his far-away bondsmen, and we greatly fear being put to death by
the Grand Sovereign for taking Azov. Our sovereign, the great, just,
most illustrious Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all
Russia, autocrat and possessor of many states and hordes, holds many
Muslim tsars in eternal servitude and they serve him, the Grand Prince,
like [others serve] your Ibrahim, the Turkish tsar. Only he our great
sovereign, illustrious and just tsar adheres to the traditions of the holy
fathers and does not desire to spill your Muslim blood. He is wealthy
enough from the revenues granted to him by God from his tsarist pat-
rimonies and tribute without your foul, stinking Muslim, dog riches.
If only the sovereigns command were given and if he [the Great
Sovereign] desired to spill your Muslim blood and the destruction of
your Muslim cities, due to your Muslim insubordination to him the
Great sovereign, and if he our grand Sovereign only gave the order
for just his frontier [forces] to move against you and all Muslims, a
legion of thousands of the sovereigns Russian people could be amassed
together from that frontier alone. The sovereigns Russian border-
ers will match you in cruelty and rapacity, raging like fierce untamable
 the siege of azov in 1641 189

lions and will want to brutally eat your living Muslim flesh. But he
[the Sovereign] holds them back with his exalted hand and does not
allow them that tsarist prerogative. In all the frontier towns by the tsars
orders they are held back by the Sovereigns officials under penalty of
death. Your Ibrahim Tsar could not find shelter even in his mothers
womb from the tsars hand and the cruel hardheartedness of the sover-
eigns people, for they would rip her womb open and place him before
the countenance of the sovereign. Neither would the Black Sea defend
the Turkish tsar from the Sovereigns hands and his exalted right hand.
It wouldnt hold back the Sovereigns people! In one summer Jerusalem
and Tsargrad would come into his posession as before, and in you
Turkish cities not one stone would be left standing by the deeds of
Russian martial skill.
You call upon us with the Turkish tsars words to serve him the
Turkish tsar and promise us great honor and multitudinous wealth.
But we are godly people and bondsmen of the Sovereign Muscovite
tsar and are called from baptism Orthodox Christians. How can we
serve the infidel Turkish tsar? We do not want to abandon the illustri-
ous light of this world and the next one and descend into the dark abyss
of hell! We will indeed be useful servants to the Turkish tsar. As soon
as we sit through this siege against you in Azov, we will pay him a visit
in Tsargrad across the sea. Well take a look at Tsargrad and inspect its
construction. There well have talks about all kinds of things, just so he
will learn to love our Cossack speech!
Well begin to serve the [Turkish] tsar with our Cossack arque-
buses and our sharp sabers. But now we dont have anything to say to
your pashas or to anyone. As your pagan Muslim ancestors did unto
Tsargrad by taking it, when they killed the sovereign Christian tsar
pious Constantine, slaughtered many thousands upon thousands of
Christians in the city, stained the threshholds of all the churches with
our Christian blood, and eradicated to the very end the whole Christian
faith, so should we do unto you according to your example. We should
take Tsargrad from your Muslim hands, kill in revenge your Turkish
Tsar Ibrahim together with all of his pagan Muslims, and spill your
impure Muslim blood. Only then and there will we make peace with
you, but now we are resolute that we dont have anything else to discuss
with you.
Tell your pashas what you have heard from us. We Christians can-
notmake peace with or trust Muslims. A Christian swears upon his
Christian soul and will stand firmly upon that forever. Your brother,
the Muslim, swears by his Muslim faith and Tatar way of life, but
190 brian j. boeck

your Muslim Tatar faith is as reliable as a rabid dog; therefore your

brother the Muslim dog cannot be trusted! Well be glad to show you
hospitality in Azov tomorrow using that which God has sent. Go with-
out delay to your stupid pashas and dont come back to us again with
such stupid talk. To try to deceive and entice us is just a waste of time!
If subsequently anyone else comes from you to us with such stupid talk,
he will be killed by us along the walls. Go ahead and attempt to accom-
plish what you were sent here for by your Turkish tsar.
We took Azov from you by virtue of our own brave heads with few
people, yet you advance to seize it from our Cossack hands with your
Turkish heads and numerous forces. God will help one of us. You will
lose many thousands of your Turkish heads at Azov and for eternity
you will never take it from our Cossack hands. Do you truly think the
Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of all
Russia, autocrat, would take Azov away from us and award it to you
dogs? He can do as he wills.
When their interpreters and captains returned to their Turkish
forces to their pashas, in their regiments at that moment a tumult
began in their camp. They began to blow huge bugles and assemble
their regiments and forces. After the bugles called in unison, they
began to beat great [bass drums] and kettledrums, horns and cym-
balsbegan to play very plaintively. All night till morning they organ-
ized themselves into their regiments and fell into line. When it was
already the first hour of daybreak the regiments began to advance from
their encampments. Their standards and banners unfurled in the
steppe like flowers of many colors. From the huge horns and drums
there was a marvelous and terrifying sound.
The two German colonels with soldiers attacked first and after them
the entire formation of Janissary infantry [which was] 150,000 strong.
Then the entire horde began to attack together as infantry. They
screamed bravely and savagely in their first assault and pointed all their
standards at us, covering with them the whole city of Azov. They began
to chop at the walls and towers with axes, and ascend onto the walls
with many ladders.
At that moment we began to shoot at them from within the city,
whereas before that we had been silent. In the fire and smoke it was
impossible to see one another as on both sides there was only smoke
and thunderous fire. From the shooting fire and smoke billowed up to
the sky. It was like a terrible storm in the heavens when there is thunder
and lightning! Our secret tunnels, which we advanced beyond the
 the siege of azov in 1641 191

town for the time of their assault, didnt hold up under their numerous
unspeakable forces. They all collapsed. The land did not sustain their
forces. In those collapsed tunnels many thousands of Turkish forces
were killed by us. We brought forth our entire artillery to those trenches
[and fired at] them with splinters and iron pellets. We killed along the
wall of Azov during the first assault on that first day 6 Janissary cap-
tains, [and the] 2 German colonels with all their 6000 soldiers. In that
day we issued forth and during the sally we took the great standard of
their Turkish tsar. His pashas and colonels assaulted that first day all
day with all their forces until evening and sundown. That first day by
the city besides the 6 Janissary captains and 2 German colonels, 23,000
men were killed, not including the wounded.
On the second day at the bright light of dawn the pashas again sent
to us their interpreters to allow them to retrieve their battered corpses,
which were killed along the walls of the city. They offered us for each
dead Janissary captain a golden coin and for the colonels 100 silver
talers. But we as a Host did not permit this, taking neither gold nor
silver for their fallen. Well never sell dead bodies. Your gold and silver
is not dear to us, only eternal glory is dear to us! We were just in the
first stages of toying with you dogs along the walls of Azov. We were
only cleaning out our weapons. All of you Muslims will get the same
from us. We dont have anything else with which to welcome you, after
all its a siege!
On the second day there were no battles with them. They gathered
their dead bodies the whole day until evening. They dug a ditch, a deep
trench, over a mile from the city for the bodies and covered them with
a huge mound and placed on them many Muslim markers and wrote
on them in many different languages.
After that on the third day they again came to the city with all
of their forces. Only now they halted far from us and there was no
assault. Their foot soldiers on that day began to erect a tall mountain, a
great earthen rampart much taller than the fort of Azov. With that
high mound they wanted to cover and bury us in Azov with their great
Turkish forces. They advanced that mountain towards us in three days,
and seeing that high mound, mount of our eternal misfortune, and
[anticipating] that from it our deaths would result, we asked for mercy
from God and for help from the most pure Mother of God and pleaded
for intercession at the Forerunners [John the Baptists] image. Call-
ing on the help of the Muscovite miracle-workers and exchanging our
last goodbyes before the grave with one another and all Orthodox
192 brian j. boeck

Christians, we went out from the city with our small retinue of 7,000 to
engage in open battle their 300,000 men.
Lord, creator of heaven and earth, heavenly tsar, deliver not the
creation of your hands to the infidels. We see savage deaths from their
forces confronting us. They want to cover us alive with a great moun-
tain, seeing our futility and helplessness [now] that all Orthodox
Christians have abandoned us in these deserts fearing the terrible
countenances of their great Turkish forces. We, poor ones, have not
lost hope in your sovereign mercy and your great generosities are well
known to us. With your divine assistance we are dying for the Christian
faith and we fight against large forces of 300,000 men for the sake of
Gods churches and for the whole Muscovite state and for the tsars
name.
Placing upon ourselves icons reserved for the dead, we went out to
do battle with them and in unison cried out: God is with us! Wise up
heathens and submit yourselves to us since God is on our side! When
the infidels heard from our mouths that God is with us, truly not one
was able to stand his ground. They all ran from that great mountain. At
that hour we killed many thousands of them and during the sally by
that mountain we took 16 Janissary standards (alone) and 28 barrels of
gunpowder. We then dug under their huge mountain, spread their
powder all around and killed many thousands of them with it. Our
underground explosions catapulted to us 1,400 live Janissaries into the
city.
{In their army there began to be a great quarrel and commotion
among them. The Turkish pashas began to yell at the Crimean tsar that
he doesnt assault with his Crimean horde. But the Crimean tsar said to
the pashas and Turks: We are familiar with Cossack character and
customs. With assaults we will never take them. In sieges Cossacks are
cruel and hard hearted. Under the sun such people are unheard of and
unseen! Should we really give for each Cossack head 1,000 of ours?!}
{By order of the pashas the city-takers, with the Janissaries and their
entire host and with the ordinary men,} advanced another mountain
behind the first. It was bigger and in length was as long as three arrow
shots and in height was much taller than Azov. Its width was wider
than two stone throws. Atop that mountain they placed their whole
artillery and cannons, and brought their whole infantry of 150,000
onto that mountain. They also ordered the Nogai Horde to dismount
from their horses and join them. Then from that mountain they
began to pound Azov with their artillery unceasingly day and night.
 the siege of azov in 1641 193

Their cannon fire caused terrible thundering: fire and smoke billowed
up to the heavens. For 16 days and 16 nights their artillery never
silenced, not for a single hour! At that time we had no respite from the
firing of their cannons neither during the day nor at night. All of our
fortifications collapsed. All the walls and towers, the church of the
Forerunner and all of the living quarters to the very last ones were
beaten down to their foundations and our whole artillery was smashed
to pieces. In the whole city of Azov only the Church of Nicholas the
Miracle-Worker remained [unharmed], because it was situated much
lower near the sea below the cliff.
We all hunkered down against them in bunkers and could not
even look out. At that time we constructed great chambers in the
earth and made for ourselves large, secret dwelling places under
them and their ramparts. From our secret dwellings we advanced
28tunnels [undermines below their camp] and with them we achieved
great relief for ourselves. At night we went out against their Janissary
infantry and killed many by those means. With nighttime sorties
weinflicted great terror and caused great losses in their ranks. After
that the Turkish pashas seeing our tunneling expertise and siege skills,
dug against us from their camps and tabors, seven tunnels of their
own,desiring to reach us with them in our bunkers and crush us with
their great forces. By the grace of God we guarded against their tunnels
and under them we made our own tunnels and packed them with gun-
powder and blew up their tunnels killing many thousands of their
Turkish people. From that moment their tunneling expertise was spent.
They wearied of all those tunneling tactics. Altogether there were 24
assaults on the fort by all their forces. There was never such a brave and
cruel attack as the first, for then we even fought hand to hand with
knives.
They began to toss fiery balls {grenades and bombs} into our trenches
and all kinds of German siege devices. With these they put greater
pressure on us than with the assaults. They killed and burned many of
us. After those fiery balls, devising against us with their minds, they
put aside all their wise devices and began to overpower and engage us
in open battle with their forces. They began to send in each assault
every day 10,000 Janissaries, attacking all day till nightfall. As night
approached another 10,000 would approach to relieve them, and these
would attack all night till dawn. Not even for an hour would they give
us respite! They would fight with rotations day and night to over-
powerus through exhaustion. From their evil cunning skills and from
194 brian j. boeck

sleeplessness and from our heavy wounds and from all kinds of brutal
siege deprivations and from the foul stench of rotting human corpses,
webecame aggravated and were broken down by all kinds of savage
diseases that occur in sieges. But our small retinue held together for
there was no one left to relieve us. Not for a single hour did they allow
us to rest!
At that time, suffering and fearing loss of our lives in Azov, we lost
hope for any relief from human intervention. We only expected help
from God upon high. We would run, poor souls, up to the image of our
helper the Forerunner and before it, our radiant light, we would weep
bitter tears:
Lord, light, our helper, forerunner of Christ, John! By your volition
we destroyed the snakes nest and took the city of Azov, killing in it the
idolaters and torturers of all Christians. We expelled impurity from
your lights house and from the church of Nicholas the Miracle-Worker,
and adorned it with miracle-working images from our sinful and
unworthy hands. From that time singing before your images has not
ceased. Have we somehow angered you, fonts of light, so that you wish
to once again enter Muslim hands? We placed our hopes on you, fonts
of light, and, leaving our comrades, sat besieged. Now we see our vio-
lent deaths from the Turks. They have worn us out with sleeplessness,
{for fourteen days and fourteen nights} they tortured us unceasingly.
Our legs buckle under us and our hands which defend us no longer
serve us. From exhaustion our mouths no longer can speak, from the
unceasing shooting and firing against them with gunpowder our eyes
have been burned. Our tongues no longer turn to yell at the Muslims.
Such is our weakness that we cannot hold weapons in our hands. We
regard ourselves now as corpses. In two days, we fear, we wont be
sitting besieged. Now we, poor souls, must part from your miracle-
working icons and from all Orthodox Christians. Well never again set
foot in Holy Rus. We, sinful ones, will die in these deserts for your
miracle-working icons, for the Christian faith, for the name of the tsar,
and for the whole Muscovite state.
We had already started, {atamans, Cossacks, brave lads, and the
whole great Don and Zaporozhian fierce Host} to say our final
good-byes.
Pardon us, your sinful bondsmen, sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince
Mikhail Fedorovich of All Russia, autocrat. Order, Sovereign, that our
souls be commemorated [in prayers]. Pardons us lords, ecumenical
patriarchs. Pardon us lords all reverend metropolitans. Pardon us lords
 the siege of azov in 1641 195

all archbishops and bishops. Pardon us archimandrates and hegumens.

Pardon us, lords, archpriests, priests, deacons, and all junior deacons of
the Church. Pardon us, lords, all Orthodox Christians, commemorate
in prayers our sinful souls and those of our righteous parents. We have
not brought shame upon the Muscovite state. We poor souls resolve
not to perish in trenches, but to gain glory with our deaths.
{In order not to die in bunkers and to attain eternal glory in Rus
upon our deaths,} we took our miracle-working icons of the Forerunner
and Nicholas and went out with them to sally against the Muslims. By
the grace of God, these icons, and by the prayers of the pure Mother of
God, and {by the intercession of heavenly forces, and by the help
of those pleasing to God, John and Nicholas the Miracle-Worker,} dur-
ing that sally we killed many Muslims, over 6,000, by coming out sud-
denly. Seeing that Gods grace was upon us and that they were not able
to overpower us by any means, the Turkish people no longer sent
their Janissaries to attack us. From our misfortunes and our deadly
wounds and exhaustion, we rested in those days {and lay around as
if dead}.
After that battle, having waited three days, they again sent to us their
interpreters to yell that they need to talk to us, but we did not speak
with them because our tongues could not move in our mouths from
exhaustion. So the Muslims devised to toss to us their yerlyks [letters]
on arrows. In their yerlyks they wrote that they request from us the
empty and devastated city of Azov, and that they would give for it a
ransom of 300 talers of pure silver and 200 {Arabic} gold pieces to each
brave lad. Our pashas and colonels swear by oath of the Turkish tsar
that during the retreat they wont touch you in any way. Take the silver
and gold and return to your Cossack towns to your comrades, just
hand over Azov to us empty.
We wrote back to them: Your currish silver and gold is not dear to
us, we have much of our own in Azov and on the Don. We brave lads
hold dear our eternal glory throughout the whole world, so your pashas
and Turkish forces do not frighten us. From the outset we told you:
Well give you a chance to get acquainted with us and leave a lasting
impression forever in all your Muslim lands. So you can tell your stu-
pid Turkish tsar, upon returning from us across the sea, what its like
to try to attack a Russian Cossack. For all the bricks and stones you
crushed in the city of Azov, we took as many of your Turkish heads
[in retribution] for spoiling Azov. With your heads and bodies well
rebuild Azov better than before. The glory of our brave lads will
196 brian j. boeck

resound for ages throughout the world [now] that well build a city
from your heads. Your Turkish tsar brought upon himself shame and
reproach for all ages. Well start to take from him each year six times as
much. After that they eased up, there was no further attack. They took
reckonings of their forces that many thousands had perished during
the siege.
During the siege we, sinners, engaged in fasting and great prayer,
and observed corporal and spiritual purity. Many of us who took part
in the siege saw in dreams and day time visions a beautiful radiant
woman {in purple vestments} standing in the air amidst Azov and oth-
ers saw an aged man with long hair in bright vestments looking down
on the Muslim regiments. The Mother of God did not hand us over
into Muslim hands. Clearly giving us help, speaking aloud to many of
us in a sweet, tender voice, she said:
Be brave Cossacks, do not fear. For this city of Azov has been des-
ecrated by the evil faith of the unrighteous Hagarenes and through the
callousness and viciousness of the impious the home of the Forerunner
and Nicholas has been defiled. Not only has the land in Azov or the
thrones [of holy ones] been defiled, but also the air above became dark.
They engaged in a vile trade here: separating husbands from their law-
ful wives, and sons and daughters from fathers and mothers. From
their weeping and sobbing the entire Christian land moaned in grief,
and what [became] of the pure young girls, widows, and infants my
mouth cannot speak, seeing their desecration. God heard their prayers
and weeping, and seeing the creation of His hands, Orthodox
Christians, dying evilly, he gave you vengeance against the Muslims.
He delivered this city into your hands. Let not the impious say Where
is your Christian God? Dont worry, brothers, divorce your fears from
you, for the Muslim sword shall never harm you. Put all your hopes in
God. Accept the imperishable crown from Christ, and God will accept
your souls and you will enter the fellowship of the kingdom of Christ
forever.
Many atamans and Cossacks saw that from the image of John the
Forerunner many tears flowed from his eyes during all attacks, and in
the first day during the siege they saw an icon lamp full of tears from
his image. During our sallies from the city all the Muslims, Turks,
Crimeans, and Nogais, saw a brave young man in military clothing
with an unsheathed sword going into battle and cutting down multi-
tudes of Muslims. We did not see this with our own eyes, only in the
morning by [looking at] the corpses did we know that this was the
work of God and not of our hands. The Turkish people were sliced in
 the siege of azov in 1641 197

half. Victory against them was sent from heaven, and they asked us
about this multiple times, [saying]: Tell us, Cossacks, who among you
goes out from Azov? We told them concerning that matter: Those are
our commanders who go out.
Altogether we sat besieged by the Turks in Azov from June 24, 1641
to September 26, 1641, in all 93 days and nights. On the night of
September 26, four hours before dawn, the pashas, Turks, and the
Crimean tsar with all their forces rose up in confusion and with trepi-
dation ran away from Azov. Not chased by anyone those accursed ones
retreated to their eternal shame. The Turkish pashas returned home by
sea, the Crimean tsar went away to his horde, the Circassians went to
Kabarda and the Nogais went to their tribes and pastures.
When we heard of their retreat from camp, 1,000 of us Cossacks
attacked at that time their tabors [camp wagon trains]. We took in their
camps at that time 400 Turks and Tatars as tongues [informants]. We
also found 2,000 sick and wounded. Under interrogation and torture
those tongues testified in unison about why the pashas, Crimean tsar
and all their forces ran away at night from the city: On that night
beginning in the evening we experienced a terrible vision. In the heav-
ens above our Muslim regiments a great and terrible storm cloud was
approaching from Russia from your Muscovite Tsardom. The cloud
halted across from our camp. In advance of it two dreadsome young
men [Archangels Michael and Gabriel] glided through the air with
unsheathed swords threatening the Muslim regiments. At that moment
we recognized them. That night the dreadsome Azov commanders in
military dress went out to do battle and they sliced us, armor and all, in
two. Because of that horrible vision we ran away from our camps aban-
doning the pashas and the Crimean tsar.
That evening we Cossacks also experienced a vision: Along the
Muslim rampart where their artillery stood, two old men of venerable
age were roaming about. One of them was clothed in the outfit of a
prelate and the other one in a fuzzy hairshirt [Saint Nicholas and John
the Baptist]. Pointing in the direction of the Muslim regiments, they
told us: Cossacks! The Turkish pashas and Crimean tsar have run
away from their camps. Christs victory against them by Gods forces
was sent from heaven above.
The tongues also told us concerning their casualties that by our
hands at Azov according to their counts 96,000 Murzas, Tatars, and
Janissaries, had been killed. There were only 7,367 of us Cossacks in
the siege and those of us, bondsmen of the sovereign, who are still alive
all are wounded from the siege. There is not a man among us who is in
198 brian j. boeck

one piece or who did not spill his blood sitting in Azov in Gods name
for the Christian faith.
Now we, the whole Don Host, beseech the mercy of the Tsar and
Grand Prince Mikhail Fedorovich of All Russia that he reward us, his
servants, who experienced the siege and those of us who live in the
fortified towns along the Don, and that he order his hereditary hold-
ing, the city of Azov, to be received from our hands for the sake of the
radiant icons of the Forerunner and St. Nicholas, because the radiant
lights prefer this place. With the fort of Azov the Sovereign will secure
his frontier from war, and when his forces occupy Azov Tatar attacks
will cease for eternity. We, his bondsmen, who remain behind after the
siege are now all maimed and crippled old men. We are no longer fit for
battles and military actions. We have all promised before the image of
the Forerunner to be shorn into his monastery and accept the monastic
life. We will offer prayers for the sovereign for eternity. Not by our
bravery and martial skills, but through our faith and the sovereigns
exalted defenses, God defended us from such great Turkish forces.
If the sovereign does not reward us, his far away bondsmen, and
does not order the city of Azov to be accepted, we will abandon it shed-
ding many tears. We, sinful ones, shall raise high the icon of the
Forerunner and go with it, our light, wherever he orders. Well shear
our Ataman before the {Forerunners} image and make him our hegu-
men. The esaul [second in command] will be shorn and become our
superior. We poor ones, although we are all weak and decrepit, will not
betray the Forerunners image, and will die to the last man. The Lavra
of the Forerunner shall be forever glorified.
And after that it was reported by those atamans and Cossacks that
they need in Azov to defend against [another] siege 10,000 men, 50,000
puds of supplies of all kinds, 20,000 puds of gunpowder, 10,000 mus-
kets, and the cost of all those things will amount to 221,000 rubles.
In this 150th year [1642] as a result of the diplomatic entreaties of the
Turkish Tsar Sultan Ibrahim, he, our Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince
Mikhail Fedorovich, ordered the Don atamans and Cossacks to aban-
don Azov.
 THE GENERATION OF 1683:
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND GENERALSHIP IN THE
HABSBURG ARMY, 16861723

Erik A. Lund

The conceit of everyday history is that it is the normal that is

important rather than the exceptional. In social history it is linked with
a view from below that is not always very helpful. In military history, to
the extent that it has been tried, it seems to me an unquestionably valu-
able tool. War focuses human attention. We know far more about it
than about any comparable historic activity. It attracts journalists, giv-
ing us a remarkable day-by-day account unmatched for any other
human activity except courting. And as more orthodox everyday histo-
rians have argued, there is much to learn. The Eighteenth Century
account emphasizes stealing a march on the adversary by manoeu-
vre. Contemporary generals put so much weight on this measure of
success that they often avoided battle entirely if they were behind a
march. However, beginning in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, this
came to be condemned as cowardice and a failure of imagination.
Military historians are always prone to being social critics. It certainly
was not British historian Correlli Barnett who invented the idea of the
audit of war, of war as a measure of a societys fitness and even right
to exist, and for the national-liberal social critic, history has a direc-
tion. Dodging decisive battle was a symptom of fear. And no insight-
ful general could be unaware that he would win or lose depending not
on military circumstances, but on whether or not he was on the side of
history. The artful dodging of manoeuvres is as much a symbol of
obsolete politics as ballet companies in an age of rock.
This is probably not the mainstream of practical military history,
and it will certainly not stand scrutiny as the model of a serious profes-
sionals practice. What matters here is indicated by the French spell-
ing of the word manoeuvre that we still sometimes use up in the
Canadas. Manouvre is not ballet. It is work of the hand. Armies won
marches by their everyday practice, by cutting hay, digging, survey-
ing, and with carpentry. Successful generalship was successful man-
agement of existing resources, above all of skills. And as it drew on
existing skillsets it gave them back in a positive feedback relationship.
200 erik a. lund

I propose to understand that process as an economy of knowledge, but

that may be contentious. It suffices to say that Central European war-
fare in the eighteenth century needs to be understood in terms of the
everyday practice of war.1
The thesis on which this chapter is based was originally written to
answer a claim in the history of science, that there was a Scientific
Revolution in the late 1600s that came to an end sometime around
1700. Various explanations have been proposed. The literature, and its
implications for all kinds of social praxis, is enormous. That said, the
approach found little support from wiser advisors, and a new focus
emerged. I write here about the skills of the everyday of war, their con-
tinuous acquisition by new recruits, and I suggest the possible social
implications. Hopefully, it will lead to a clearer understanding of both
the praxis of war and of the transformation of European society dur-
ingthe long eighteenth century.
If it also suggests a revision of our conventional understanding of
the social dimensions of the Scientific Revolution, well, you cannot
blame a boy for trying.

I: The Generation of 1683: The Prosopography of Military Skill

We know a great deal more about generals than about common sol-
diers. We even have a prosopographic study of the French general
officer corps by Andre Corvisier. Corvisiers work is quite valuable.
It tells us quite a bit about France, as well as about French generals.
However, it is not clear that his conclusions can be extended to Central
Europe. If it can, we can also put new questions to the study, ones
unique to Central Europe. Particularly, to the extent that generals are
technocrats, we can hope to use it to understand whether or not Central
Europe did lag Western in technological development. That might be
interesting in its own right. The journalistic consensus in English in
the years before 1914 was that the Habsburgs were peculiarly anti-
progress, and one still encounters this thesis in the historiography.
From here it is a short road to arguing that the Habsburg officer corps
lacked progressive skills; and to the extent that this lack was made up,
that it was made up by Protestant western Francophones. It has also

1
Andr Corvisier, Les gnraux de Louis XIV et leur origine sociale. XVIIe Sicle
4243 (1959): 2353.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 201

been claimed that Maria Theresia inherited a superannuated general

officer corps from her father due to the same or different dysfunction.
And the whole technocrat thing is surprisingly controversial. It has
been argued, and more insidiously, that aristocrats inherently have no
useful skills, and so any institution dominated by them will be empty
of skills. To the extent that the conduct of war requires skills, they must
have been carried by the rising middle class. More vulgarly, all engi-
neers and artillerists must have been bourgeois. A study of officers who
received the rank of general (for various reasons excluding Major-
General) from the Holy Roman emperor between 1686 and 1723, with
special emphasis on those born in 166066, refutes these claims.
(I doubt that it will cast much light on matters of ethnicity, which are
often of some concern to Central Europeanists.)
The choice of period, and the singular importance of the smaller
cohort is the mobilization of 16813. An avalanche of work on the rise
of the military-fiscal state emphasizes the transition from occasional
military mobilization to standing armies, and this was the Habsburg
moment. These were the years in which this army got big, and never
afterwards did it get as small as it typically was even in wartime before
1681. It seems to me that it therefore needs attention from anyone
interested in the role that skills and knowledge acquisition play in his-
tory. Armies really do teach trades; but we must also beware of this
expansions role in motivating changing rhetorical strategies.
A study from above calls class into focus. It may, indeed, seem the
key question here It sometimes seems like classic analysis starts with a
three-fold class structure and then maps the data to it. Is the threefold
division a real thing, or a heuristic? There is a growing consensus for
heuristic. We need to talk about wealth and patronage networks before
we can get to more complex social categories, and contemporary
informants are sometimes the most untrustworthy of all. Telling the
truth (as one sees it) about a contemporary can be unrewarding and, in
an age of dueling, even dangerous. We need to follow the money trail
in some way, and since the direct financial trail is deliberately obscured,
I will focus on money-making skills, instead.2

2
Particularly valuable for composing this section were: Claudio Donati. Lidea
di nobilt in Italia: secoli XIVXVIII (Rome: Laterza, 1988); David Parker, Class and
State in Ancien Rgime France: the Road to Modernity? (London: Routledge, 1996); the
essays collected The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
2 vols., ed. Hamish M. Scott (London: Longman, 1995), 1: 2224; D.D. Bien, La
202 erik a. lund

Or to put it another way, when the numbers are crunched, generals

were noble because they were generals. So what, by this studys defini-
tion, was a general? The highest-ranking army officers, is the idea
implicit in the Generallistens careful list of seniority, but needless to
say, complexities and ambiguities abound. Above all, officer ranks may
be treated as patronage awards and private property, and we should not
expect the change from military entrepreneur to uniformed servant of
the state to be uniform across all branches of the military. All generals
(at least that I have identified) were also colonels of regiments, which
they certainly disposed of as private property. Some military titles
belong to the feudal regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, from the
Marshal of the Empire (hereditary in the Electoral House of Saxony)
to the General Lieutenant. These are not generalships. Neither are
those held by chaplains, doctors, and accountants, nor are the admiral-
ships, and the title of Oberst, when it pertains to artillery and engi-
neer service is not necessarily commensurable with being a real colonel-
proprietor, although it is not necessarily an inferior status.3
So much for the obligatory warning about exceptions: what are the
networks active here? Not surprisingly, many successful general offic-
ers were already potent local brokers of patronage. The Grand Duke of
Tuscany, Dukes of Modena, Mantua, and Savoy, the Pope, German ter-
ritorial rulers, notably Baden, the Czech and Hungarian magnates, and
allied monarchs can all be identified as heads of patronage networks.
Whether the Dukes of Lorraine belong to any of the above categories is
unclear, but this was the most powerful network of all. To an intriguing
degree, these families formed a well-defined group of direct Habsburg

raction aristocratique avant 1789: lexemple de larme, Annales E.S.C. 29, 1 (1974):
2348; and Istvn Dek, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the
Habsburg Officer Corps, 18481918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); for fuller
references, see Erik A. Lund, War for the Every Day: Generals, War and Science in Early
Modern Europe, 16801740 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999).
3
The Generallisten is a comprehensive, handwritten list of Habsburg generals by
quasi alphabetical/seniority order, held at the War Archives of the Austrian State
Archives; discussions of family interests in regiments will be found in Thomas
Barker, Military Nobility: The Daun Family and the Evolution of the Austrian Officer
Corps in Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy: Essays in War, Society, and Government in
Austria, 16181780, by Thomas Mack Barker (New York: Columbia University Press,
1982): 3442; and Christopher Duffy, The Army of Maria Theresa (Newton Abbot,
U.K.: David & Charles, 1977), 246; for an admiral-general, Louis de Pesme, Seigneur
de Saint Saphorin (16681735), see Theo Gehling, Ein europischer Diplomat am
Kaiserhof zu Wien: Franois Louis de Pesme, Seigneur de Saint-Saphorin, als englischer
Resident am Wiener Hof, 17181727 (Bonn: L. Rhrscheid, 1964).
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 203

clients and natural marriage partners. Notwithstanding that they often

opposed their nominal Imperial overlord, their place in court circles
was too valuable to give up.4
To the extent that the Habsburgs relied on the limited circles of the
high nobility for their commanders and marriage partners, they might
be seen as narrowing their talent search excessively. In short, inbred
upper-class twits make poor generals. There is, however, a failure of
prosopographic imagination here. There were far fewer nobles than
Europeans in general; but there were many, many nobles eligible to
serve, and we find the King of Portugals brother adjacent to the cohort
(he only reached colonels rank before being invalided), and the Duke
of Monmouth offered a place in it. Putting egalitarian prejudices aside,
the Habsburg recruitment pool was far larger than the pool of West
Point graduates available during the U.S. Civil War.5
A profile of the general officers who received Habsburg patronage
between 1686 and 1723 demonstrates some interesting features of old
regime Europe. To begin with, the old shibboleth about the Habsburgs
employing a cosmopolitan mercenary officer corps does not hold up.
The profiles regions of origins map the familys self-proclaimed his-
toric role well enough. To start with Germany-Bohemia, we find its
lesser nobility prominent in the army, as we would expect of the army
of the Emperor and King of Bohemia. Czech historiography is pro-
foundly interested in the question of whether Czech elites resisted or
cooperated with Habsburg rule, but that is not the issue here, and in
my sample I do not take an extraordinary effort to distinguish Germans
and Czechs. I do make some effort to identify an Austrian component
to the so-called aulic nobility. Families such as the Starhembergs,

4
Regarding Badens generals, see Christian Beese, Markgraf Hermann von Baden
(16281691): General, Diplomat, und Minister Leopolds I (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,
1991); Philipp Freiherr Rder von Diersburg, Des Markgrafen Ludwig Wilhelm von
Baden Feldzge wider die Turken (Karlsruhe: Fr. Mllerschen, 1839). Mantuan
(Gonzaga) generals see ADB, 9: 386. For Modenese (Este) generals see Thomas Barker,
Military Intellectual and Battle: Raimundo Montecuccoli and the Thirty Years War
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 35; and John Stoye, Marsiglis
Europe, 16801730: The Life and Times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Soldier and
Virtuoso (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994):1011.
5
See K.k. Abtheilung fr Kriegsgeschichte des k.k. Kriegsarchiv. Feldzge des
Prinzen Eugen 21 vols. (Vienna: k.k. Generalstabes, 18761891): 1: 7398; 16: 101, 249;
Bryan Bevan, James, Duke of Monmouth (London: R. Hale, 1973), 184; Constantin
Wurzbach Biographische Lexikon des Kaiserthums sterreich. (Vienna: K.K. Hof,
18561891), s.v. Liechtenstein; for a contrary opinion, see Barker, Military, 38,
412.
204 erik a. lund

Auerspergs, and Khevenhllers benefitted from having family lands

proximate to the Habsburg court at Vienna, but we need to be alert to
the possibility that they engineered this. Friedrich Heer made much of
the distinction between the relatively small number of North Germans
recruited in Vienna and the larger number from regions close to the
emperor, but people and families are not nailed in place, and it is much
harder to identify the place that noble families are of than some
imagine. The case of the Liechtensteins, who could today as easily be
Frisian Lowlanders as Alpine uplanders is only the most egregious in
this sample.6
After the German-speaking lands, Italian areas were the most
important areas of Habsburg recruitment. So-called Reichsitalien
(roughly speaking, the regions north of the Papal Marches) made the
larger contribution, whether because of its constitutional position or
because lines of patronage worked that way, or because these are two
ways of saying the same thing. Contrary to the fears and fantasies of
Italian nationalist historians, these connections weighed as practical
matters and as issues of principles on families such as the Maffeis,
Malaspinas and Pallavicinis. A more difficult question is the alleged
declining militancy of Italian nobility during the 1700s, something that
still may be, in spite of Hanlons brilliant research, an artefact of sample
selection. In an obsolete historiography, it was important that many
Italian nobles qualified themselves as members of an urban patriciate
because we could then call them middle class. This is no longer our
understanding.7

6
Volker Press, sterreichische Gromachtbildung und Reichsverfassung,
Mitteilungen des Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung, 98/12 (1990): 139
40, 143; Barker, Army, 5267; Friedrich Heer, The Holy Roman Empire trans. Janet
Sondheimer (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968; reprinted London: Orion, 1995):
203, 22730.
7
Gregory Hanlon,.The Decline of a Provincial Military Aristocracy: The Case of
Siena, 15601740, Past and Present 155 (May, 1997): 64108; and ibid, Twilight of a
Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 15601800 (New York :
Holmes & Meier, 1998); On Reichsitalien, see Karl Otmar, Freiherr von Aretin, Das alte
Reich, 16481806. Vol. 1, Fderalistiche oder hierarchische Ordnung (16481684)
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993), 935; for patriciates and country nobility, see Donati,
34450; Daniel Klang, Tax Reform in Eighteenth Century Lombardy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977), 56, 268, 3940; Jean-Michel Thiriet, Comporte-
ment et mentalit des officiers autrichiens au XVIIIe sicle, Mitteilungen des sterrei-
chischen Staatsarchiv 33 (1980): 130; Eric Cochranes unforgettable but overdrawn
Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 15271800: A History of Florence and the Florentines
in the Age of the Grand Dukes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973) can now be
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 205

Recruitment from the Papal States shows the expected pattern of

Papal patronage. A large number of men with Roman connections
joined the Imperial service during the papacy of Innocent XI (r. 1676
1689), including currently the most prominent Habsburg general of
the period apart from Eugen himself, Major-General Count Marsigli.
The number then fell off dramatically when the office reverted to a less
pro-Imperial policy direction, a change that may well explain Marsiglis
career.8 Southern Italys Spanish connections, briefly broken during the
170112 period, would be resumed in 173548, but the break in the
Milan-Naples connection may well explain Hanlons findings.9
French names are more common in Imperial service as Italian,
hence claims about technology transfer and mercenary service.
Actually, the majority of Francophones (identified both by name and
language of choice) in Imperial service came from old Lotharingia, the
borderlands between France and Germany. And several ostensibly
French mercenary officers, including the various Bussy-Rabutins and
Bonnevals trace family histories of Habsburg service that might go
back to Burgundian times. Given that most of the residual French
officers, as opposed to ethnic French, are unidentified, it may well be
that General of Cavalry Marquis Philippe Langallerie de Gentil (1656
1717) is the only officer of lieutenant field-marshals rank or above who
served in the Habsburg army without long-standing ties to the Imperial
court in this period.10 Above all, the French language and borderland
culture should not be seen as foreign in Vienna until such time that
the borders were drawn that way.
Unlike the Habsburg dynasts other servants, his Hungarian vassals
followed him as King of Hungary, a constitutional position that made
them unique among his generals, although the politics of Hungary are
probably more important than the constitutional details. In particular,
the Rkczy rebellion means that this sample reflects a Magyar civil
war, and it should not be taken as representative of earlier or later pat-
terns of Magyar service to the Habsburg dynasty. It also complicates

corrected from Jean-Claude Waquet, Le Grand-Duch de Toscane sous les dernier

Medicis: Le systme des finances et la stabilit des institutions dans les ancien tats ital-
iens (Rome: cole Franaise de Rome, 1990), 90.
8
See the Kriegswissenchaflichen Mmoiren collection at the Austrian War
Archives (hereafter KWM) 9/108 (taken from the war archives of Venice, or hereafter
ABV), KWM 16/35 (ABV); Stoye, passim.
9
Hanlon, 90108.
10
For fuller biographical details, see Lund, War.
206 erik a. lund

consideration of the Military Border, as does the insistence in seeing

the area through an ethnic-nationalist prism, and, apparently, the still-
incomplete state of historical research on the subject. (The Military
Sea Border and river slaves play a much larger role in the narrative
of these wars than they do in the studies so far published.)11
Between 1687 and 1723, 427 men were promoted to general officers
rank in the Imperial service, or were offered general officers rank upon
volunteering for the Imperial service. Detailed biographic research was
confined to the 271 officers who achieved the rank of lieutenant-field-
marshal, although the 189 officers who achieved the terminal ranks of
colonel or major general are tested where possible for homogeneity
with the larger sample where documents allow.12 Since it turns out that
the most important reason for failure to make the transition to
Lieutenant-Field-Marshals rank is premature death and political vicis-
situde, it seems reasonable to exclude them.13 Also omitted from the
sample were electors and ruling dukes, and a number of Spanish gener-
als whose appointments appear to have been honorary or were termi-
nated by a Spanish amnesty in 1725. The remaining sample included
125 terminal lieutenant field-marshals, 74 terminal generals, and 72
terminal field marshals; with 137 Germans, 10 identified Czechs,
27 Italians,14 10 from predominately Italian families with Spanish and/
or German connections, 16 Hungarians, 5 with Slavic names, 21 French
(as discussed above), 16 identified ethnic French, 10 Scots or Irish,15

11
Aside from standard treatments of Habsburg history and the Military Border
more fully cited in Lund, in this era, I would single Ivan Parvev, Habsburgs and
Ottomans between Vienna and Belgrade (16831739) (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995), and Thomas Mack Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent: Viennas Second
Turkish Siege and Its Historical Setting (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1967).
12
Corvisier identified the origins of 164 of the 276 lieutenant generals born in
France of Louis XIV. Eight were bourgeois or of the nobility of the robe, 13 of recently
ennobled families, 43 descended from families ennobled in the last two hundred years,
42 from houses ennobled in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and 72 were of
families that traced their nobility back before 1300. (Corvisier, Gnreaux, 37).
13
Of the 43 terminal colonels and major generals whose final fates can be identified,
39 left service within ten years after their promotion; 21 terminal major generals and
colonels of this period were immediate family of Imperial officers holding the rank of
lieutenant-field-marshal or higher, and 10 were of the higher nobility; see also
Corvisier, Generaux, 42.
14
Italians in the sample include 6 Milanese, 3 Neapolitan, 3 Piedmontese,
2 Bolognese, 1 Modenese, 1 Veronese, 1 Udinese; the Veterani were Counts of Mont-
calvo, but which Montcalvo is unknown.
15
Including individuals from families generations removed from the British Isles.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 207

2Spanish, 5 Swiss, 3 Polish, 1 Dutch, 1 Portuguese, and 7 of indetermi-

nate national origin. By birth these 271 officers include 47 of the high
nobility, including 3 dukes, 18 marquises, and 2 landgraves, 10 Frsten,
14 princes; 185 of the middle nobility, comprised of 116 Reichsgrafen,
Grafen, and counts, 17 barons, and 49 Freiherren; and lesser nobility
comprised of 3 dons, 3 knights, 34 untitled nobles; and 4 carrying nei-
ther title nor particle. Ninety-six of 271 generals can be identified as
pre-1600 nobility, while an additional 14 carry titles not generally
granted to recent nobility. Three belonged to families which were
clearly ennobled after 1600, 12 received unambiguous personal nobil-
ity, and 123 have titles of unknown age and provenance. Only one indi-
vidual is identified by explicit biographical tradition as an ennobled
member of the Third Estate, General Freiherr Christoph v. Brner
(d.1711), but the evidence is third hand and anecdotal.16
Thirty percent of the entire sample had family members who were
proprietary colonels and colonels-commandant during the Thirty
Years War,17 while 12 percent had relatives who received the Military
Cross of the Order of Maria Theresia in the Seven Years War. One
artillerist has been quoted as saying that an ancestor had commanded
the artillery of Vienna during the siege of 1527.18 Continuity dropped
off during the Napoleonic wars, but picked up for the fighting of 1848/9
and later colonial conflicts.19
Another biographical pattern emerges from an age sort. Even though
the youngest general of the sample (General Frst Krolyi Jszef
Batthyny [16971772]) is separated from the oldest (Saxon Field
Marshal Count Sigmund Joachim v. Trauttsmandorf [16201706]) by
77 years, members of a Generation of 1683 dominate the group.20
While there are other clusters, particularly in 167685, it remains the

16
Old titles are prince, marquis, and duke.
17
This figure is based on a survey of regimental patents in Alphons, Freiherr von
Wrede, Geschichte der k. und k. Wehrmacht 5 vols. (Vienna: Braumller, 18981905;
reprinted Starnberg: LTR, 1985): volumes 13: passim. Given the editorial difficulties
of working with Wredes text, the actual figure may be higher.
18
Field-Marshal Johann Martin Gschwind v. Pckstein, Herrn der Pckstein,
Posseldorf, and Laabeck (16551721); the name is spelled Geschwind in some docu-
ments, but is more usually given as Gschwind. Gschwind v. Pcksteins artillerist
great grandfather is noted in Wrede, 4: 6789.
19
Jaromir Hirtenfeld, Der Militr-Maria-Theresien-Orden und seine Mitgleider
2 vols. (Vienna: K.k. Hof-, und Staatsdruckerei, 1857), 1: 32748; 2: 13631718,
176374.
20
See Wurzbach, 42: 812.
208 erik a. lund

case that more than one-fifth of all the officers who were promoted
general in the Imperial army between 1686 and 1723 were born in
16615, and when the outliers of 1660 and 1666 are added, the total
rises to more than a third. Being born at the right time counts for a lot.
In particular, we can probably set aside the idea that Charles VI
bequeathed an aging officer corps to Maria Theresia because he was
indulgent, or that the new ruler dispensed with it because she was vig-
orous. We are seeing a demographic bulge born of the huge military
expansion of 1683 work itself out. Looking at the younger members of
the sample shows that Maria Theresia had little to complain of in some
of the men mentored by the Generation of 1683. Marshals Khevenhller,
Count Otto Ferdinand v. Traun u. Abensberg (16771748) and Count
Jszef Esterhzy de Galantha (16821748) had fine wars, and a case
may be made for Neipperg.21
So what does a general officers life look like, by the numbers?
Unexpectedly, average age at death is just under the average adult life
expectancy. Average age of promotion to general is 41, but excluding
officers promoted general before the age of 30, who presumably had
some pull, it goes up to 46.
Unexpected evidence of a correlation between technical competence
and promotion can be found in the careers that broke the demographic
patterns. Bearing in mind the need to distinguish between officers
employed by the artillery and fortress offices and thus as engineers per
se, and those known as engineers, we have a very significant deviation
from the statistical norms for officers with a reputation, or, better yet,
(field) employment, as engineers. An engineer on the command track
could expect promotion to general at 37, as opposed to 44. (Officers
with backgrounds in engineering and the artillery were being pro-
moted to the highest ranks of command centuries before Vauban.)
Military historians have long asserted, perfectly correctly, that there
was no reason for this not to be so, and inferred much from the clearly
incorrect thesis that engineers did not become generals, or were passed
over for promotion when they became generals. It is true that the very

21
The above passage is based on the Generallisten; and for regimental patents for
new regiments see the Alte Feld Akten collection at the Austrian War Archives, cited
hereafter following the convention established in the old Austrian official histories
(AFA 1683 [Trkenkrieg]: 13, passim); nine field marshals entered their seventies in
the 1730s, of whom at least five were still active, including Eugen himself.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 209

highest of blue bloods preferred to be colonels of regiments at 23 and

generals of cavalry at 25, but the predictors of that career trajectory are
hardly difficult to discover. If one is the nephew of the Duke of Lorraine,
one will have a career better compared with the nephew of the Duke of
Baden than with a baron on the make.22
At the same time, we can pitch our expectations too high. One may
seek evidence of early military academies and be disappointed by
their absence. I do not think that terribly significant. The generation of
1683 was not educated by a formal structure intended to feed a large
standing army, because there was no such army. They were educated
to supply family dynasties of courtiers, which incidentally included
generals. The flourishing scientific dynasties of the era such as the
Bernoullis shows that this could work for mathematics as easily as poli-
tics, and any number of specific examples from the Habsburg officer
corps show that it worked there, too.23

22
Nearly automatic promotion was guaranteed at least during the War of the
Spanish Succession. AFA (Rmisches Reich) 1708: 1/2 lists 24 officers promoted that
year from lieutenant colonel to full colonel. Twelve were generals by 1723; neverthe-
less, a modern concept of up or out promotion was emerging in some minds (AFA
1702 (Italien):13/31); Schemes for promotion by merit express a certain bitterness (for
example, KWM 7/11, Essay de Projet pour mettre la militaire de Sa M. sur un pied
plus avantageux; but the justice of seniority schemes was generally, if reluctantly,
admitted. See Corvisier, Generaux, 346; and Claudia Opitz-Belakhal, Militrreformen
zwischen Brokratisierung und Adelsreaktion: Das franzsische Kriegsministerium und
seine Reformen im Offizierskorps von 17601790 (Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1994): 12
and following.
23
Debates over the best way to educate young officers were endemic to military
circles as they were in every other profession in the eighteenth century; a clan of mili-
tary engineers might be all in favor of a rational education (Colonel Count Friedrich
Wilhelm v. Schmettau, Mmoires raisonns [Berlin: n.p., 1789], 196227); and with
reason (Douglas Wm. Marshall, The British Military Engineers 17411783: A Study
of Organization, Social Origins, and Cartography [Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan,
1976], 83100); but noble families were less convinced (Friedrich Gatti, Geschichte der
k. und k. technischen Militr-Akademie, 2 vols. [Vienna: W, Braumller, 19011905],
1:30150). And there was a case for home education, for which see Steven Shapin,.
ASocial History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994): 13842; for examples, see Stoye, Marsigli, 820;
and Franz A.J. Szabo, Kaunitz & Enlightened Absolutism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 1113; Eugen and Louis XV are only two well-born princes
who preferred math class to Latin, (Derek McKay, Prince Eugene of Savoy [London:
Thames and Hudson, 1977]: 10; Jean-Franois Chiappe, Louis XV [n.p.: Librairie
Acadmique Perrin, 1996], 324); in a more practical way, here is the first member of
the Browne clans hiring pitch for a kinsman: [He] knows the country of the Moselle
and the Meuse better than the inhabitants themselves. AFA, 1708 (Rmisches
Reich): 6/20).
210 erik a. lund

The correlation between promotion and technical accomplishment

becomes the more striking the more we know about the officer. At least
sixteen officers listed in the Generation of 1683 served in technical
capacities, including artillerists, engineers, and staff officers where this
clearly including cartographic duties.24 This list includes three Italians,
one Swiss, three French; two Protestant, five Catholic Germans, and
three Germans of unidentified religion. Two individuals, a general and
a lieutenant-field-marshal bear patronymics, usually taken to indicate
familial non-noble origins, but the correlation here is markedly weak.
The technical corps of the Habsburg army during the War of the
Spanish Succession was not bourgeois, Western, Huguenot, or Fran-
cophone. If anything, it was still Italian, although there were plenty of
Germans.25 Charles-Louis (?) de Goulon (b. 1640), supposedly the
typical example of the Hugenot background of the Habsburg technical
corps becomes instead a spectacularly isolated figure.
Finally, technical activity is only one measure of the intellectual
character of the officer corps. Military intellectuals are usually identi-
fied as rare birds. Is this the case? It is not. The court promoted learn-
ing. Leopold I sponsored central Europes first modern academy of
science and learning, the Academia Caesaria Leopoldina (Carolina)
Naturae Curiosorum of Schweinfurt. Other Habsburg rulers of the era
courted men like Leibniz and Scipione Maffei, and the case of Count
Marsigli has been celebrated recently. We need a study of the Schmettau
family, but the biographies of Marsigli, and Chevalier Johann de Baillou
(16841758) are well known. Presenting oneself to the court as a scien-
tist (or, more accurately, virtuoso) could be a good career move.26
Taking this into account, and considering literary remains, we
have from this period Field Marshals Jean Phillippe Eugne Count
Mrode de Westerloo (16741732), Louis-Joseph Count de Bussy
Rabutin (16421717), Schmettau, Lieutenant Field-Marshals Marquis
Ferdinando Maffei (16621737), Veterani, Freiherr Hermann Carl v.
Ogilvy (16791751), Count Wallis, George Ulysses v. Browne (fl.
16991730). Khevenhller and Harsch wrote a treatment of artillery,

24
For fuller details, see Lund, War.
25
This is based on a running count of engineers named in archival documents.
26
Of general interest is Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and
Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994);
someone not burdened by a century of Weberian and Mertonian theorizing is Oskar
Teuber, Die sterreichischer Armee von 1700 bis 1867 with illustrations by Rudolf von
Ottenfeld (Vienna: n.p., 1895; reprinted Graz: Akademische, 1971): 276.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 211

a surprisingly common activity for chiefs of artillery. It appears that

the selection of known competing infantry and cavalry drills from the
1720s is very incomplete. General Marquis Philippe Langallerie de
Gentil (16561717) produced a theological memoir, although on
the evidence it was more likely religious mania than argument. Lieu-
tenant Field-Marshal Prince Claude-Lamoral de Ligne (16851766)
asserted the rights of his house to the succession of the Duchy of
Lorraine in a genealogical treatise. Prince Eugene appears as the public
patron of science in the biographical tradition. Unpublished memoirs
and papers of a less literary style also survive from many other officers,
as does a voluminous literature of pamphlets derived from letters,
many intended for public consumption.27
In summary, in an era before military periodicals, staff colleges, and
other organs of military intellectual discourse, and bearing in mind the
loss of documents over time, 18 of 271 officers (14 of 24 in the
Generation) left substantial literary remains. With a certain amount of
hand-waving, one gets to a rough estimate of 6 per 10,000 active mili-
tary intellectuals out of total strength, concentrated in certain branches
of the officer corps, assuming that the high participation rate of the
Generation is an artefact, which I do not believe it is.28 Extending to
technical officers, the minimum intellectual community within the
Imperial officer corps rises to 1 percent, 1.7% for nobles. Again, this is
a minimum count. After connections, technical skillsets are the best
rewarded attributes by promotion.

II. War: The Economy of Knowledge

The art of war, however, as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so in the
progress of improvement it necessarily becomes one of the most compli-
cated among them. The state of the mechanical arts, with which it is nec-
essarily connected, determines the degree of perfection to which it is
capable of being carried at any particular time.29

27
See Alexander Balisch, Die Entstehung des Exerzierreglements von 1749: Ein
Kapitel der Militrreform von 1748/9, Mitteilungen des sterreichischen Staatsarchiv
27 (1974): 170194; and further, Lund.
28
One artillerist (Lffelholtz-Colburg); one engineer (Harrsch); two chiefs of staff
(Starhemberg and Zum Jungen); one memoirist (Maffei); and two virtuoso/collectors
(Schlick and Prince Eugene).
29
Adam Smith, Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), Part 2: 219.
212 erik a. lund

Without intending to do so, Adam Smith helped bequeath an extraor-

dinary picture of eighteenth century warfare in which police-cordoned
groups of near-prisoners wander across the countryside, fed by regular
bread deliveries, until finally a field suitable for a hundred-thousand-
man-minuet can be found, whereupon they will win battles by an exhi-
bition of superior ballet skills. That is not what he is talking about. As
another authority, the Marshal de Saxe, said, technical praxis of war is
the foundation of [the] science.30
Truths unspoken may first be heard as gasps of joy, or so I have
heard, so we might start with the hobbies and pleasures of the officers,
the one thing we can be certain even the laziest of officers did. They
were, as we know, inveterate hunters. And, as always with sports, those
will be at risk of having simple pleasures hijacked for didactic purposes.
The eighteenth century version of George Will on baseball is the author
of a Gentlemans Recreation, who explains, typically for the age, that
the gentleman was not just in it for the thrill of the chase, but for sci-
ence. When the writer lays out how riding leads to a grasp of the lay of
the land, and how that leads to a better knowledge of geometry, botany,
astronomy, even the experimental method, we are free to suspect
vaporing. Astep-by-step progression that develops from geometry les-
sons towards the thrill of the chase is not persuasive. But when he turns
from stags to a demonstration of how these skills can help us appraise
an estate, we have to pay attention. Improvement is one thing, making
money in real estate quite another. And we do learn how to estimate
the size of fields, calculate the value of a woodlot, detect drainable wet-
land, and notice over-cultivated land. And the eye that can survey an
estate is an eye that may come handy on campaign.31
The first and fundamental point is that the most important, most
time consuming tasks of an eighteenth century officer were laying out
camps and finding forage. Leaving the first aside, the second cannot

30
Maurice, Comte de Saxe, Reveries, Or, Reflections on the Art of War (London:
J.Nourse, 1757; reprinted Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971), iii.
31
Richard Bloom, The Gentlemans Recreation in Two Parts: The First Part Being an
Enclcyclopedia of the Arts and Sciences; The Second Part Treats of Horsemanship,
Fowling, Hawking, Fishing, Hunting and Agriculture (London: S. Rotcroft, 1686); for a
somewhat more recent take on this, see Roger B. Manning, Unlawful Hunting in
England, 15001640 Forest and Conservation History 38 (January 1994): 1623; For
what may or may not be a continuation of this kind of thinking, Horace Kephart,
Camping and Woodcraft (New York: Macmillan, 1917; Twenty-first printing, 1962), 2:
195200. It may admittedly be argued that Civil War-era huntin and fishin folks were
a great deal more scientific than their grandparents.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 213

possibly be emphasized enough. Grass was gasoline. Armies needed it

for cavalry horses, and for meat and draft animals, and for earthmov-
ing and communications. It was key to intelligence and security.
It yielded construction timber and roads. Reinforcements, artillery,
food, ammunition, weapons, armor, tools, cauldrons, tents, blankets,
maps and bridges all were what they needed to be and where they were
needed, because the resource of grass was managed effectively. And
while grass seems to be a unitary concept, the landscape of early-
modern Europe produced fodder in a bewildering variety of species,
nutritional content, and states of preparation depending on soil, sea-
son, topography, and geography.32 An army that mastered a landscape
could extract an amount of fodder proportional to its agricultural skill-
base. This was usually an invisible skill. Generals could safely assume
that an officer could tell one plant from another, and that a random
soldier in the ranks could mow a field. That does not mean that these
skills were to be taken for granted.
A distinction between officer and soldier slipped into the discussion
of the economy of knowledge above, which will require some further
discussion. It is not actually so obvious that a general will require the
botanical knowledge that the officer class of the day so notoriously cul-
tivated. Perhaps a scythe-swinging soldier was enough. On these
grounds I might rest on the careful guidance that forestry and range
handbooks give. They assume that botany matters. Perhaps again we
dismiss this as a product of a scientistic age. Thus we can stick by an
ideological claim about which social class does the productive work,
and which one parasitizes.33 I will rest on the experience of eighteenth
century war, when the same army might be called upon to forage on
the artificial meadows of Flanders, the boggy mountain pastures of
Savoy in the next, and on the vast floodplains below Belgrade in
another. Surely some level of theoretical abstraction is necessary.34

32
See for example ([United States Department of the Army], Field Manual 257:
Packing: A Guide to the Care, Training, and Use of Horse and Mules as Pack Animals
[Reprinted Flagstaff, Ariz.: Northland, 1989]), 16.
33
Stephen Finney Mason, A History of the Sciences, rev. ed. (New York: Collier,
1962), 1418.
34
Several recent studies have argued for the importance of links between craft
knowledge and early science. See Pamela H. Smith, Business, 24855; William Eamon,
Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 812, 92; and Shapin, Truth:
35561.
214 erik a. lund

Our modern reading of Adam Smith is that the everyday practice of

old regime warfare was an unchanging trade of arms, limited by stag-
nant technology and the nature of rank-and-file eighteenth century
soldiers. I would argue the contrary, if only to make the point that
Napoleonic norms cannot be projected backwards to 1700. Military
practice, because based on everyday skills, was subject to change over
time as the economy of Europe grew, in part because of the armys role
as a producer of embodied knowledge as well as a consumer. Implicit
in this myth is the consequence of stalled technological progress. This
presumption is incorrect. Artillery changed most visibly, but we should
not miss the potential importance of sieges as industrial locations.
Other changes were implicit in the landscape. When we wonder at
how different were Napoleons campaigns from Eugens, we have to
apply our historical imaginations to get at their everyday extent. Army
march routes transformed themselves under soldiers boots into turn-
pikes and macadam roads, and beside them spread the potato fields
of transalpine central Europe and the maize fields of Italy. The influx
of cheap American leather signals better boots. Alfalfa and clover
meadows sprang up everywhere with capital investment in field drain-
age. The Napoleonic greatcoat made what was, as far as I can tell, an
unremarked appearance on soldiers backs in the last quarter of the
century, probably transforming war quite as much as anything.35
How did these skills reach the army? Certainly they did not come
through an elaborate training apparatus. A raw recruit worth no
more than a day laborers wage was not going to be sent to Horse
Driving School. What would happen was that as manpower shrank
away, a likely man would end up in charge of one of the wagons because
there was just no one else. This was a skills lottery. The winners were
those who did not catch a bullet, did not get dysentery. When everyone
else was used up, when siege guns and ammunition wagons had to be
moved, a young men (and women, even if camp followers were not
officially soldiers) got the opportunity to learn a useful skill. And driv-
ing is more than a matter of holding the reins. It comprises dealing
with bogged down vehicles, broken axles and, above all, sick horses.
Every gun carriage had a toolkit, because when two tons of gun were
tipped in a ditch with only human backs to get it out, every resource of

35
Regarding changes in warfare 17001800, see Jeremy Black, European Warfare,
16601815 (London: University College of London Press, 1994), 3360.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 215

human ingenuity was needed. This was the means by which the army
manufactured the skills it needed, because the early military-fiscal
state certainly could not afford to pay for them.36
If we place due emphasis on wealth and social climbing, we can see
that this was not just a matter for the rural proletariat. Nobles aspired
to be hunt masters or dike wardens. They invested in roads, estates,
canals, even well-managed gardens. This is why I believe it reasonable
to see them as a managerial class, and to see those managerial skills as
tied to military careers And since each regiment and branch of the
army was a militarized version of a civilian institution (cavalry regi-
ment as county hunt on the march, the artillery train, as mobile artisa-
nal workshop, an infantry regiment as parish corve in arms), we can
see executive officers developing wide or specialized skillsets depend-
ing on circumstance. The cavalry foraged and raided, and above all
encompassed the terrain, much as a land surveyor or property specula-
tor might do. The infantry built and worked, like a civil engineering
concern. Artillerists moved heavy loads across country with the least
possible investment of effort, and maintained the complex machinery
of the caissons.37)
And all of this had its characteristic violence, the everyday, or little
war. Battle-centered narratives omit this, to the extent that a serious
critique of premodern war is that its practices are self-evidently stupid
(a claim given serious weight by the early campaigns of the First World
War.) I am going to reject this critique and turn to the received view
of contemporary theorists.38 Readers familiar with military history will
not be surprised to hear that the received view places less emphasis on
fire tactics, more on shock, and especially on cavalry shock, than do
modern historians, that it embraces supposedly unaimed volley fire

36
For a rare secondary source that takes on these issues, see Dorian Gerhold, Road
Transport Before the Railways: Russells London Flying Wagons (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993, 689).
37
For the complex mechanism of the caissons, see the exploded diagrams in Charles
William Rudyerd, A Course of Artillery at the Royal Military Academy as Established by
His Grace, the Duke of Richmond, Master General of His Majestys Ordnance (Ottawa:
Museum Restoration Service, 1970).
38
Discussions of the weaknesses of the received view can be found in Michael
Howard, Men against Fire: The Cult of the Offensive in 1914, in Makers of Strategy
from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1986), 51214, 51922, 527; and Shelford Bidwell and Dominick
Graham, Firepower: British Army Weapons and Theories of War 19041945 (London:
G. Allen & Unwin, 1982), 167, 2637, 6770.
216 erik a. lund

over sharpshooting, and has a taste for halberds and grenades.39 They
may be more surprised to see the received view defended. And yet to
my mind, a serious concern for everyday practice entails defending the
received view. Let us look at the fundamentals, beginning with cavalry
and infantry.
The Emperor Leopold and his sons were served by up to 37 cavalry
regiments of cuirassiers, dragoons and hussars. They were organized
administratively into regiments of twelve regular and one carabinier/
grenadier companies, but tactically into two-company squadrons. The
individual skills of the members of these regiments were the key issues.
A cavalry regiment, for example, had only two listed command per-
sonnel, while companies had each another three, and squadrons com-
mands were improvised on the spot. Yet every regiment had to have
four book-keepers, a chaplain, 3 surgeons, and a wagon master; and
the companies a book-keeper, surgeon, and another 3 technicians, in
all 41 command personnel to 48 skilled technicians, plus numerous
but unspecified numbers of assistants out of a book strength of no
more than 1068 men, but usually much less, with carabiniers and gren-
adiers typically stripped out and formed into separate corps.40
The heavy cavalry wore heavy armor (contrary to a persistent error
in English-language military historiography). And since armies could
no longer spare resources to provide troopers with multiple mounts,
horse quality was very important. It was not the management of equine
resources that led to the distinction between cuirassier and dragoon,
since the value of the dragoon has been as obvious for as long as there
has been cavalry, but it did complicate things. Cuirassiers were for
charging, but charging was very useful on the battlefield. Dragoons
were for dismounted duties off the battlefield, but there was no limit to

39
Paddy Griffith has achieved great notoriety defending the received view, begin-
ning in Forward Into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo into the Near Future (rev. ed.
Novata, Cal.: Presidio, 199); in my defence, I am agreeing with Marshal de Saxe, and
Viscount Wolseley, as well as assorted obscure sages rather than with Griffith
(Mmoires, 1925; Garnet, Viscount Wolseley, The Soldiers Pocket-Book for Field
Service, 5th ed. [London: Macmillan, 1886]; Charles Blair Mayne, Infantry Fire Tactics
for the Canadian Militia [Toronto: Canadian Military Institute, 1890]; and Michael
Frederic Rimington, Our Cavalry [London: Macmillan, 1912].
40
Feldzge, 1: 210, 211, 221, 393; Austro-Hungarian General Staff, _sterreichischer
Erbfolgekrieg 17401748 9 vols. in 10 parts (Vienna: W. Siedel & Sohn, 18961905):
Vol. 1, Part 1: 406; Raimundo, Conte Montecuccoli, Aforismi DellArte Bellico [Milan:
Fratelli Fabbri, 1973], 9); more accessible is David Chandler, The Art of Warfare in the
Age of Marlborough (London: Batsford, 1976): 357.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 217

the number of cavalry that could be used for these. Thus cuirassiers did
dragoon work, and dragoons charged with cuirassiers. Equipment got
in the way of both expedients. Cuirassiers were not shoed for walking
(neither were dragoons, often), and dragoons felt the lack of armor,
which was why cavalry sometimes took off their boots to fight, and
cavalry brigades were organized with a squadron of dragoons backing
up cuirassiers.41
Dragoons are defined by their muskets rather than their boots,
because situations that actually called for fire rather than shock action
occurred largely off the battlefield. That said, the same could be said of
the shotguns that gave the carabineers their names. Tasks such as bar-
ricade clearing and ambushes, cavalry raids and defenses, and every-
day reconnaissance required flexibility.42 Every army in the field kept
its cavalry constantly busy riding deep into the enemy rear and in
defensive patrols against these raids. They deployed the daring hearts
who, trusting to a good horse and a knowledge of woodcraft, torment
the enemy, whether in camp, bivouac, [or] on the march.43
The successful raiders brought back reports of terrifying and stereo-
typical sameness, so many men killed, so many horses or other stock
taken, so many contributions exacted, and perhaps a few prison-
ers taken. A French force is overrun in quarters in a small German
town by a major leading 60 cuirassiers and 30 hussars: 160 Frenchmen
are killed and many horses taken. (Marshal de Saxe recommends
stampeding the horses with pistols fired in the air.) And while this
sounds like rustlers in action, the men who file these reports are the
sons of Electors and noble scions of the Malaspina as well as rough
border nobles. Perhaps the skills of a rustler were less alien to the grand
noblesse than they liked to pretend. On defense, cavalry commanders

41
Raimundo, Count Montecuccoli, Concerning Battle, trans. Thomas Mack
Barker, in The Military Intellectual and Battle: Montecuccoli and the Thirty Years War,
by Thomas Mack Barker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 73; John
Charles Roger Childs, The Nine Years War and the British Army, 16881697: The
Operations in the Low Countries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991): 86,
202; on weapons, see Chandler, Art, 33; Feldzge, 1: 214, and Graphische Beilagen,
Table IV, item 15a; Wrede, 2: 111, 11317 John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Sicle: The
French Army, 16101715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 498500;
Wolseley, 70; Rimington, 53.
42
Archduke Charles of Austria, Grundstze der hhern Kriegskunst fr die Generle
der sterreichischen Armee (Vienna: n.p., 1806; reprinted Osnabrck: Biblio-Verlag,
1974), 747.
43
Rimington, 7.
218 erik a. lund

group their men in easily defended blockhouses to cover their picketed

horses with fire.44
The Emperors hussars, of whom there were never enough, were
especially useful: schooled by life on the military border, and uniquely
valuable in the role. Only the Cossacks and Walachians could compare,
and the French were only too glad when Paul Dek defected to them
with an entire hussar regiment. Whether they were as useful once their
range-bred horses died is an interesting question.45
Cavalry cleared the way for the march of armies, brought in its for-
age, and waged a constant attritional struggle aimed at the enemys
exposed logistics. Above all, they warred for fodder, hopefully brought
in by locals, but by troops if need be. A horse put out to grass at light
work for a few hours a day requires at least one pound of dry forage, or
two of green per hundred pounds of weight each day, including leg-
umes, grain, clover or alfalfa, as well as grass. Draft or plow animals, or
those ridden for more than a few hours a day, required all this plus
additional fats, proteins and sugar, depending on the season. Animals
that are kept from grazing by their duties (like the horses of the train)
need concentrated feeds as a matter of course. In no case will a working
horse prosper on a diet of grass or grass hay alone. Speed of movement
was a prime factor in logistics, and the records of an English hauling
concern reveal what the costs of that could be. At the time of the
Napoleonic wars, it fed its heavy draft horses each daily two pecks of
oats, just under 0.3 pecks of beans, and four trusses of hay, amount-
ing to 14 pecks hay, 1.75 pecks beans, and 1.75 hundredweights of
hay, per week (and eight tons of fodder over a year. What was fed to
the horses involved in the Great Convoy of Lille in 1708 is less clear,
although eight pecks oats, one peck beans, 1.5 cwt. of hay a week might
be closer to the case. The more that could be fed, the better.46

44
Feldzge, 3: 300, 4: 258; 7: 2256.
45
See, for one instance, Friedrich Wilhelm, Graf von Schmettau, Mmoires raison-
ns, 2401; AFA (Acten Des Karlstdter Generalitt) 1705: 8/6; Feldzge, 1: 272, 404
5, 664; 20: Anhangen 22B; E, Vol. 1, Part 1: 40405, 410412; Part 2, Anhangen 12.
46
Gerhold, Road Transport, 12831, 272; Friedrich Wilhelm, Graf von Schmettau,
Mmoires secrets de la guerre de Hongrie pendant les campagnes de 1737, 1738, et 1739
avec les rflexions critiques (Frankfurt: n.p., 1771): 3, 23, 34, 44; 23; on financial consid-
erations, see The Operations of the British and the Allied Armies, During the Campaign
of 1743 and 1744, Historically Deducted, by an Eyewitness (London: M. Cooper, 1744),
49; Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. s.v. Farming; KWM 6/141;.[Swampy mead-
ows] are easily discovered by their aspect which offers a rank grass, among which is
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 219

It was providing it that was the challenge. Fiascos were not uncom-
mon, when forage would have cost less if paid for.47 A mirror of
princes prepared in the mid-1700s explains that a general must apply
reconnaissance to discover whether forage is green or dry whether
it is generous or easy and after having made an evaluation of its
quantity, divide it into the number of days the army is resting. Field-
Marshal Garnett, Viscount Wolseley, predictably, gives a more encyclo-
pedic discussion, explaining that Turkish green fodder is less nutritious
than others, that gram should be split, bruised and soaked before being
issued to horses, that elm leaves are an acceptable forage, and that salt
should be added in hot weather, amongst many other observations.
(Wolseleys reputation is not unfounded.).48
Every writer on cavalry service warned that where good forage was
found, the enemy would be, too. Just as agriculture belongs to daily life,
this was the routine of war, a daily succession of roadblock, encounter,
and ambush. If eighteenth century war is to be understood, it is in sol-
diers scything down the green under a haying sun amidst stands of
muskets, watched by friends mounted and sweating in their armor as
they waited for the warning shots, followed by fleeing pickets bursting
through woodlots and over fences, drawing pursuers in range for a
hasty countercharge or fusillade. It is hard to imagine a mode of war-
fare that more totally engaged the skills of a yeoman brought up in the
saddle at the county hunt, of the amateur naturalist, or the private
soldier recruited from amongst the idling youth of the county, waiting
on the stoop of the parish church for some landowner to ride up and
offer them day hire.49

often seen a green and yellow moss. It may be here remarked, that plants are an indica-
tion of the nature of the soil, as well as the depth of water, and its constant presence
(J. S. MacAulay, A Treatise on Field Fortifications, and Other Subjects Connected with
the Duties of the Field Engineer [London: J. Fraser, 1834): 255]; Ludwig Andreas, Graf
Khevenhller, Idee vom Kriege Mitteilungen des k. und k. Kriegsarchiv Neue Folge,
78 (18931894): 286441, 319397: 1:346.
47
The Operations of the British and the Allied Armies, During the Campaign of 1743
and 1744, Historically Deducted, by an Eyewitness (London: M. Cooper, 1744), 49.
48
La Grande Tactique lusage de S.A.R. ie Monseigneur le Prince de Piedmont,
Chevalier Papacin[o] dAnton[io] (1772), vol 1, p. 173; Wolseley, 86.
49
A sojourn in the country is never more agreeable than when we see the woods,
the meadows, the streams taking new aspects under our hands. Satisfied with the
grand proportions that I found in my garden I have been careful not to break it; I have
sought to earn my merit in a different way. I began by making a second courtyard and
pulling down a portion of the main building that did not please me; I narrowed the
moat, filled in part of a pond, and by new plantations and vistas through the old ones
220 erik a. lund

The Habsburgs recruited infantry in their crown lands, the national

lands of Belgium and the Milanese, the Protestant cantons and
Hungary. Regiments were of 2,0002,500 men, divided into 16 regular
companies, each with at least four wagons, and one grenadier, but bri-
gaded battalions were the fundamental tactical units, regiments merely
administrative entities. Regular companies usually fought 4 to a bat-
talion, while the grenadiers were assembled into ad hoc corps. With
53 officers, 352 assorted NCOs, 120 grenadiers, 100 men detached to
the regimental artillery, 130 men in the colonels, captains and color
guards, 34 pioneers, and at least 68 teamsters, there were only 1,363
actual private soldiers in a regiment. The battalion in practice emerged
as a lean fighting institution ideally of 4500 men, but as low as 200 by
mid campaign, while the grenadier and carpenter, or pioneers corps
(less written or sung of in English, since they built bridges and roads
rather than assaulting the palisades, but no less elite) varied in size with
the army.50
Eighteenth-century infantry are the locus of the dispute between
received and modern view. The vision is of men practically locked in
a coffle, marching from battlefield to battlefield to give slow and inac-
curate fire form near-useless muskets. In reality their more routine
duties were the same as those that any fit, strong and employed man.
It was weighted, especially after detachments, towards everyday labor,
because it was usually the grenadiers who were first on the scene to
fight skirmishes, but weapons were the predominant influence on their

with diversities of tone, I began a new approach which hundreds of workmen carried
out in a manner that proved I was right (Field Marshal Charles-Joseph, Prince de
Ligne, Memoirs, Letters, and Miscellaneous Papers, 2 vols, ed. and trans. Katharine
Prescott Wormeley; with Introduction and Preface by C. A. Saint-Beuve and [Albertine,
de] Stal-Holstein (Boston: Hardy, Pratt, 1902), 1: 258). Ligne credits his father, a
member of the sample, with similar efforts (1: 257); Foraging is an action of great
importance and danger.. Of danger, by reason of the enemies endeavours to set
upon the guards and convoys of foragers (John Cruso, Militarie Instructions for the
Cavallerie [Cambridge: n.p. 1632; reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1968], 78);
Khevenhller, Idee, 8: 3904; KWM 6/44 Arta Della Guerra, Sergente Maggiore di
Battaglia Andrea Majorovich (1730) (ABV); Corvisier, Les gnraux, 245; Saxe, 52.
50
Feldzge, 1: 2068, 281, 685; Supplement-Heft, 6; Wolseley, 28 Schmettau,
Mmoires secrets, xviii; Wrede actually lists grenadier and pioneer corps (2:76 and ff.);
also see Chandler, Art, 834; for carpenter corps, see Charles V, Duke of Lorraine.
Kriegstagebuch Karls von Lothringen ber die Rckeroberung von Ofen, 1686, in
Lotharingiai Kroly hadinaplja Buda visszafoglalsrl, ed. Karolay Mollay, (Budapest:
Zrinyi Katonai Kiad, 1986), 38991. This linguistic tick may help in reading colonial
American history, where references to carpenters sometimes seems in danger of
being misunderstood in a more restrictive sense of referring to home builders.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 221

recruitment, training, and organization. In particular, it was over this

period that the pike, the immemorial weapon of the European infan-
try, was (largely) replaced by the smooth-bored, muzzle-loading,
socket-bayonet-equipped musket. Because this weapon was so far infe-
rior to the rifled, breech-loading small arms of 1900, and because
numerous precursors to this climax of gunpowder technology existed,
it seems that something was deeply wrong with eighteenth century
infantry warfare.
This is simply not true. The smoothbore musket was an excellent
weapon. Nor were the peculiarities of contemporary tactics and drills
technologically determined. Early eighteenth-century infantry maneu-
ver and firing drill was virtually identical to that of the nineteenth cen-
tury and need not imply inhuman discipline. Above all, it is necessary
to understand that there were then three important infantry duties: the
control of ground by fire; the giving of attritional fire to prepare for the
taking of ground that could not be controlled by fire by assault; and
assault and defense against close assault. In the latter, infantry attackers
must actually reach the ground in question by crossing open, fire-
swept ground. This is a question of terrain, and will obviously vary
greatly from North Africa to Afghanistan to the enclosed and ordered
terrains of Europe, and also one to some extent under the control of the
attacker, who can choose to make a night attack or prepare a smoke
screen by methods modern or ancient. And attackers moving quickly
across the terrain are not going to be able to shoot their way in very
effectively. The objective is bayonet range, because if you do reach bay-
onet range, the defenders will run away, and stop shooting at you, pref-
erably speeded on their way by your pursuing volleys.51
How does this come to happen? Smoothbores are inaccurate, slow-
firing and short ranged. A battalion of musketeers was probably less
deadly than a single heavy machine gun but that is a very relative com-
parison. Properly used, more than enough bullets will go home to
stop any infantry attack. The catch here is that they are not used prop-
erly. If an attack on a well-chosen defensive position succeeds, it is
because the defenders have been prepared for it, most notably by the

51
Peter Krenn, Paul Kalas, and Bert Hall, Material Culture and Military History:
Test-Firing Early Modern Small Arms, Material History Review, 42 (Fall, 1995) : 106.
Wolseley, 358; Howard, Men against Fire, 5216; Mayne, 10; Chandler, Art, 1145;
Christopher Duffy, The Wild Goose and the Eagle: The Life of Marshal von Browne,
170557 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964): 1011.
222 erik a. lund

preparatory fire of the attackers themselves. Hurt, tired and scared,

they mishandle their weapons and their fear is compounded when the
attacker comes on, seemingly unscathed by fire. They break (or not, if
the attacker breaks first). The effectiveness of the weapon is not at issue,
unless it is too short to be wielded in a close fight with the half-pikes
and halberds of the steady veterans defending.52
This digression from everyday warfare to battlefield practice is nec-
essary, because we are constantly comparing early modern with mod-
ern infantry. Modern infantry does do the same work as early modern.
It controls ground and takes it, but it is not a weapon of control by fire.
(Or, rather, it is, but it does its controlling with organic supporting
arms such as SAWs and mortars.) The modern infantryman carries an
assault rifle for a reason. It is for assault. Early-modern infantry, lack-
ing machine gun detachments, needed their muskets for assault and
control, and that meant tactical compromise. The first compromise is
range. The climactic performance for the personal infantry weapon
was achieved by the bolt action artificial-propellant rifles of 1914,
which yielded a grazing range of 600 yards, a somewhat less-than-use-
ful technical perfection on European terrain, although much loved by
Pathan militia. In Europe, you can get away with 300 yards. This great
grazing range was given by high muzzle velocity that created dead
ground. While good for controlling ground at longer ranges (and thus
dealingwith artillery threats and other high-powered rifles), the rifle
of 1914 was limited in attacking entrenchments, which requires a high
plunging angle at a reasonably close range and dispersal. This was
entirely unsatisfactory in 1700, and actually did not work out that well
in 1914. Low-velocity muskets are, by contrast, so easy to use in high
trajectory fire that they are potentially nearly as effective for indirect as
for direct fire. In a perfect world, there would still be better choices
than the smoothbore black powder musket. In a world that could not
afford standardized cartridges or regular musketry practice, they were
the best available compromise. Nineteenth century-style target ranges
were bigger than many Eighteenth century noble estates, and govern-
ments did not have that kind of money. There were alternatives. People

52
Krenn, Kalas, and Hall, 102, 105. Mayne, Infantry, 610; Wolseley, 170; a musket
200 cm. long with bayonet fixed, and weighing some 5.5 kg, heavy by modern stand-
ards, was still about 50 cm. shorter than halberd or half-pike, and considerably more
cumbersome, but not completely outclassed (Feldzge, 1: 224).
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 223

knew this. Inner Eurasian warfare combined light cannons with shot-
guns. Aghans used jezails. Rifles were widespread. But smoothbores
worked in sieges.53
This is all a little abstract, much like the theory of rifle ballistics with
which the militaries of the Edwardian age bored us. Imagine a more
concrete case, an army that has come up against an enemy blocking
position along a minor river. A brigade-sized flying wing holds the
town on the far bank where the ferry is based. The vanguard com-
mander diverts his troops down the little river valley, fringed on both
sides by trees and bushes and on the enemys side by a natural levee, to
seek a cattle ford.
The country roads lead them to a 30-yard narrows where a rill enters
the river on the far bank, breaching the natural levee. The enemys staff
officers have already found it, recognizing a long line of treetops on the
far bank as a sign of a road and have sent a detachment of dragoons
down a drove path, expecting it to meet that road at a crossing point.
Their instincts for the terrain are right, and in a situation where time is
short, they now have a guard on this crucial ford just in time. The dra-
goons hunker down behind the levee, protected against direct fire from
the far bank but ready to enfilade pontooners assembling a bridge in
midstream or a direct assault crossing by the carabiniers, grenadiers
and pioneers of the attacking van. The crossing could be made by rapid
assault, at the cost of valuable lives. The dragoons are at little risk, at
least veterans who know when to withdraw. Guessing all this, the gen-
eral commanding the attacking van sends a battalion marching down
the road, and it forms up on a small water meadow on the riverbank.
There is nothing but river and riverbank to aim at, but the officers
know their business, using their half-pikes to dress the muzzles of
the muskets, platoon by platoon. A first platoon volley: experienced
eyes notice foliage flying well behind the levee, and the muskets are

53
U.S. Infantry School, Infantry in Battle, 2nd ed. (Washington: Infantry Journal,
1939), 221.War Office, Musketry Regulations, 2 vols. (London: HMSO, 19101914),
5683; also useful is the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, s.v. Rifle, and Machine
Gun; discussion of problems with gunpowder and cartridges is still limited in second-
ary sources. See Jenny West, Gunpowder, Government and War in the Mid-Eighteenth
Century (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1991), 16880. For work in Vienna, see
KWM 13/31 on testing; KWM 13/67 on manufacturing; KWM 13/30, an intelligence
report on French techniques; and KWM 13/29 Invenzione delle pulve, e cannone on
Venetian theoretical work.
224 erik a. lund

adjusted up. A second volley raises plumes of dust and water on the
river side. The third platoons muzzles are brought down a little. The
third volley will bring fire steeply down behind the levy, something
that the dragoons know well. Having bought such delay as they can,
they withdraw to their picquets, remount, wait for a moment for too-
brave scouts to come up the drove path in case there is a chance for a
quick sabre charge, and then depart. Behind them, the pontooners
force their blunt-ended boats across the stream and drag a cable across
the stream. There will be a bridge soon, and the van will cross in force
before an hour is passed. Has a march been gained? It comes down to
execution, and the smoothbore musket is a vital tool.54
If it has stolen a march, chances are that the campaign will end in a
victorious siege rather than a battle. And just as the organization and
equipment of the cavalry was shaped by the little war of marches and
forages as much as by battle, the infantrymans trade was the siege.
Fortress warfare in the gunpowder age focused on the baroque com-
plexities of artillery fortifications, but the work of overcoming them
was work of the hand. Infantry supported the artillery with musket fire,
shooting down carefully laid-out sightlines that vitiated their weapons
accuracy issues, dug trenches, hurled grenades, and, ultimately, wielded
bayonets. But they also used spade, axe, pick and draft horse. This work
lay behind the engineers triumph of method, and the field generals
more vulgar intensive assault alike.55

54
This hypothetical draws, in part, from Childs, Nine Years War, 32, 45; Schmettau,
Mmoires raisonns, 2405; Siegfried Fiedler, Kriegswesen und Kriegfhrung im
Zeitalter der Kabinettskriege (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe, 1986): 133; Louis-Hector,
Duc de Villars,. Mmoires 6 vols. (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 18841909), 1:20, 257,
489, 712, 1512; 2: 78, Chandler, Art, 11021; Saxe, 72; David G. Chandler, ed.
Robert Parker and Comte de Mrode-Westerloo: The Marlborough Wars (London:
Longmans, Green, 1968): 1921; Khevenhller, Idee, 8: 348 and ff.; Barker, Double
Eagle, 248; Jean Martin de La Colonie, The Chronicles of An Old Campaigner (London:
J. Murray, 1904): 327; Schmettau, Mmoires secrets, 2424.
55
All discussions of early modern siege warfare begin with Christopher Duffys
Siege Warfare, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979); and Ibid, Fire and
Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare 16601860, (Newton Abbot: David & Charles,
1975); some other useful works are Hartwig Neumann, Festungsbaukunst und
Festungsbautechnik: Deutsche Wehrbauarchitektur vom XV. bis XX Jahrhundert
(Coblenz: Bernard & Graefe, 1988); Jean-Denis C. G. Lepage links the theory of forti-
fication to strategy through an examination of specific works (Vauban and the French
Military under Louis XIV [Jefferson, N.C. and London: McFarland, 2010]); while Jamal
Ostwald focuses on siege technique (Vauban under siege [Leiden: Brill, 2007]). A grab
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 225

We generally think of fortresses as mechanisms that allow small

numbers of troops to oppose larger numbers, which is fair enough; but
the labor demands of fortress warfare were perfectly capable of expand-
ing to meet the supply. The Head of Flanders might not be able to take
an army in garrison, but Lille and Vienna could. And it was hard for
there to be a garrison too large for the situation. Improvised fortifica-
tions could be thrown up in front of notorious weak spots, mills and
strongly built houses incorporated. It was supply that was the key issue.
Food and water, of course, but the garrison of Vienna used up its sup-
ply of 80,000 grenades in less than three weeks (fortunately, the city
had the industrial base to fall back on.) Early-modern fortresses were
weapons whose utility depended on the strength and skill with which
they were used as well as upon their design. Men either had, or learned,
the arts of construction, from carpentry to stonemasonry to trenching.
They knew how to dig clay and loam and make retaining walls and
canals, to manipulate the excess water that burdens Europes rainy
climes. In peacetime they drained fields, watered hay, floated boats and
built follies on noble estates. In wartime, they dug ditches and built
retaining walls and improvised dams and sluices; building abatis, tying
fascines, laying corduroy roads. All of these are trickier arts than they
seem at first glance, and the result could be spectacular: Lille was pro-
tected as much by its great inundation, where rowboats fought their
own little battle, as by its walls. Mons was entirely surrounded by great
abatis during its sieges. The fortress was Cadmaean, growing from the
black earth like the men who defended it.56
There is an issue of direction, too. Too often one reads of an execu-
tive like Louis XIV dawdling at a siege while his engineers did the
real work, when in fact sieges required general management as well as
engineering. The French siege of Mons in 1691, for instance, succeeded
because the sluices at Cond had been used for months to reserve
water to backflood the Haine, allowing the siege train to ascend that
river long before the grass ripened and large-scale road movements

bag of conveniently accessible accounts of sieges includes Robert John Stoye, The Siege
of Vienna (London: Collins, 1964); R. LEstrange, An Historical Description of the
Glorious Conquest of the City of Buda (London: R. Clevell, 1686); and Jacob Richards,
A Journal of the Siege and Taking of Buda (London: M.G. Gilliflower and J. Partridge,
1687) as well as others noticed here.
56
Barker, Double Eagle, 256.
226 erik a. lund

were possible. It was Louis XIV who directed this, admittedly at

Vaubans advice, but it was still the king, and only the king, who could
make decisions at this level, and later in his career he showed what he
had learned by reminding his generals of the importance of the water
of manoeuvre, and telling them where it had to be held. Was a key
approach route kept under artificial flooding? Was enough water
being held back to run the grain mills in the event of siege? Mons was
difficult and critical because its hydraulic geography is so choice. The
garrison controlled key reservoirs and sluices, so that even with the
brilliant French strategy, the infantry had, in the end, to haul the sup-
plies of the siege five miles overland. Once under French control, the
gap lay in the Allies direction. It was armies from the north that had to
come down off the tableland into a current-swept bottom, and that was
why Mons only fell in 1709, and that after the Allies had been forced to
fight a very difficult battle at Malplaquet.57
The routine work by which infantry and their officers (never mind
engineers and artillerists) made sieges seems faintly incredible in

57
The French official history of the War of the Spanish Succession (Franoise
Eugne de Vault, and [J. J.] Pelet. Mmoires militaire relatifs la Succession dEspagne
sous Louis XIV 11 vols. and 2 vol. Atlas [Paris: Imprimrie Royale, 18351862]) is a
gold mine of letters on the subject of water control. For example, Mmoire de M. de
Guiscard, de 18 Aut 1703, sur de quil trouve propos de faire pour rtablissement
de la ligne du pays de Waes et la sret dudit pays (3: 772775), Mmoire de M. de
Regemorte; 9 Mars, 1707 (7:445453); Lettre de M. de Puysgur contenant un dtail
de la position gnrale. Du camp de Saulchoi, 20 septembre, 1708 (8: 441); Louis XIV
to Marshal Villars, 20 July 1709, (12: 61); in the last, a cautious old Louis tellingly
proves more prescient than the enfant terrible Puysgur. Modern discussion pays less
attention to this, and Janis Langins would take a dissenting view on the importance of
water control (personal communication, as the matter does not come up in his indis-
pensable book. (Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from
Vauban to the Revolution [Cambridge, Mass., and London: The MIT Press, 2004]); but
I find limited comfort in Antoine Picon, LInvention de lIngenieur Moderne: Lcole des
Ponts et Chausses, 17471851 (Paris: Presses de lcole des Ponts et Chausses, 1992),
57; Details of the siege are from Roger Rapaille, Le Siege de Mons par Louis XIV en 1691
(Mons: Editions du Renard Decouvert, 1992); John Childs, The Nine Years War and the
British Army, 168897: The Operations in the Low Countries (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1991), 156178 provides the overall strategic picture; geographic
details are drawn from the 1:50,000 topographical map Mons, 1992 in the Topografisches
Atlas Belgi/Belgique: Atlas Topographie (Bruxelles: Institut Gographique Nationale/
Editions Lannoo, Tielt, 1992); the contemporary or near-contemporary Siege of
Mons, 1709 in Feldzge 11, Graphische Beilagen, Tafel I); Fortresses and cities of the
Netherlands, including Mons and Lille in Feldzge 1, Graphische Beilagen, Tafel V, A;
and Jean-Louis Van Belle, Plans indits de places fortifies: XVIIeXVIIIe sicle
(Louvain-la-Neuve: Editions Ciaco, 1993), 71; an illuminating print of Siege of Mons,
1709 can be found in the unpaginated atlas supplement to Vault.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 227

retrospect, yet it fit precisely into the mental universe of the average
soldier. Most of them came from the more well-to-do rural working
classes, from families that had more sons than draft horses or land for
them to work. (Because the state was only strong enough to mandate
that conscription happen, and haplessly received what the commune
would give it.) It is said that the army makes men out of boys. I suspect
that this is what the commune intended. Hands it could not train or
develop were turned into men, or corpses.58
This hierarchy of skills was seen, and recognized, in the army. We
can see this for the Turkish War of 173739 thanks to the papers pre-
served by the Schmettaus, who fought (and lost) a key battle for the
dynastic succession against the supporters of Duke Francis Stephen of
Lorraine that was nearly as crucial to the outcome of the war as the
actual campaign against the Turks. We know that at one point, Major
General Graf Leopold v. Salm-Hoogstraaten oversaw the erection of
a 50-kilometer abatis, using a draft of five men from each battalion,
about 1,000 men, and the carpenters of the army. Not surprisingly,
it took many weeks to finish. The resources sound so prosaic. The
literature is full of references to the carpenters of the army. Until
one renovates a house and actually has to pay one, carpentering
seems such a quotidian skillset, but any time one walks or drives an old
logging road, one can see the corduroys and trestle bridges built by
teams of fewer than 50 men, often in a few hours of work, with little
more than the tools one finds specified in a Carolingian capitulary
(augers, axes, handsaws and horses), or as Saxe expands the list, cord-
age, cranes, pulleys, windlasses, saws, hatchets, saws, mattocks, and
shovels. Schmettau frequently compares Salms wasteful use of human
resources to his own preference for having regular soldiers and militia
do most of the work, while saving finishing touches for pioneers, but
Salm might have been right in the long run. The army always needs
new pioneers. It is precisely in a dispiriting, attritional war with no vic-
tory in sight that one should be laying away resources for the future by
putting ordinary soldiers to work alongside pioneers. Besides, war was
not the only thing that the property-holding class did, and the Salms
were lumber barons in the Jura. There are uses for skilled fallers that go
beyond war.59

58
Andr Corvisier, Larme franaise de la fin du XVIIe sicle au ministre de Choiseul
2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 19641: 463499).
59
Saxe, 26; Schmettau, Mmoires secrets, 411, 9, 126, 195, 224.
228 erik a. lund

III: Generals as Virtuosi: War and Engineering in

Theory and Practice

In the spring of 1635, the president of the Court War Council, Field
Marshal Count Gallas v. Gallenstein, warned his emperor that Colo-
nel Alessandro Borres was being actively recruited by the Spanish
Habsburgs. This experienced engineer was so vital to the army that
his master should consider allocating the next available regiment to the
Tuscan veteran.60 The warning was in vain. Borres soon passed into
Tuscan service as chief of staff to Prince Matteo di Medici, warring for
Galileos honor against the Pope. He was for several years military gov-
ernor of Galicia, and met his death in desperate fight while serving
with the navy of Venice.61
We might take these as various signifiers of the passage from olden
to modern times, since surely by the time of the Napoleonic wars, a
figure like Borres was unimaginable. Engineers were organized into
self-standing regiment-style corps of engineers, sometimes with their
own troops to command, and serious responsibilities left them little
time to play at being regimental proprietor. When a siege was to be
conducted, the task was left to the corps. If a coastal or Danubian city
were the target, the navy would be called in. Members of the corps did
engineering, not whatever it was that general staffs did. All this is true
enough, but this era and this chapter straddle the transition, and try to
make sense of it in its own terms. We will encounter engineers as chiefs
of staff, naval officers and provincial governors, and see that their skills
were actually quite appropriate to these situations.
To some extent, the problem is the relaxed way we use the phrase
military engineer. In its strictest context, a military engineer works
on military things. The distinction flows from the rise of civil engineer-
ing, so we would imagine the military engineer as doing the strictly
military things we have sliced away from the civil engineers job
description: in short, building fortresses. The immediate problem is

60
In one of the most frequently quoted comments on early Habsburg engineers,
Gallas said of Borres that er eine experimentirter Ingenieur ist. Though he used nei-
ther good spelling nor good grammar, Gallas was much quoted down the years as
evidence of the high esteem in which either engineers or Borres were then held. It is
here cited from an unpublished Austro-Hungarian staff study, KWM 28/1334,
Kriegsbauwesen in 16. Jahrhundert, pp. 45.
61
The life of Borres followed here is from Johann Heinrich Zedler, and Carl Gnther
Ludovici, eds. Grosses vollstndiges Universal-Lexikon (Halle: J. H. Zedler, 17321750;
reprinted Graz: Akademisches, 19611964), s.v. Borres.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 229

that armies also need bridges and roads built and land surveys. Thus
the distinction between military and civil engineer becomes one of
employer. Yet Alessandro Borres had many employers. And, taken in
its broadest sense, engineering training includes the ability to draw a
decent map, a highly desirable component of any generals skill sets.
Generals would also be a great deal better at their jobs if they could
estimate the role of a fortress, find a suitable place to launch an assault
bridge, or even lay out a road. The better the engineer, the better the
general, it might seem, and many armies organized their military edu-
cations around this principle in the next century, until the rise of the
General Staffs, which, it seemed to me, privileged cavalry training.
If every general was supposed to be an engineer (a big if, I accept),
what is going on with the rise of engineer corps in the course of the
high Enlightenment? I think that in the end the answer is politiciza-
tion. The Enlightenment brought less change than big government and
permanent institutions, and that is why the engineers got their corps,
and, incidentally, were drawn into the politics of a new kind of govern-
ment. (To the extent that bureaucracy really did overtake courts in this
period.)
The story is actually well told by looking at the classic example of a
strategically necessary yet frequently marginalised military asset, the
Danube flotilla. In some wars, the flotilla was vital. In others, it was
irrelevant. In a perfect world, it would have sat ready for action in the
Vienna arsenal down through the long decades of the ancien regime. In
practice, it kept disappearing and reappearing. The trace is not entirely
clear, but I suspect that this is because of the interplay of finance and
strategy. When the Spanish Succession compelled the creation of a
Habsburg navy in 1707, where else was it going to get shipwrights,
matelots, and naval stores? By the same token, when the navy was less
necessary than a river flotilla, it was marched back to Pannonia in
1737. The next step is less clear, but it seems that when the theatre of
war moved to the Rhine, Po and Elbe, the flotilla became a pontoon
regiment, and finally emerged as one of the institutional parents of one
of modern Austrias greatest military institutions, the Pioneers. And
since this institutional trajectory is traced through individual careers,
we can say that Borres trajectory lasted a little longer than one might
suppose.62

62
Feldzge 9:191; and later a larger navy, albeit of transports and converted
transports (Guillame de Lamberty, Memoires pour servir lhistoire du XVIIIe sicle,
230 erik a. lund

Then there is the artillery, shaped in the English-language historiog-

raphy by the British experience. On 26 May 1716, the British Army
gained a new corps, the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and so the Royal
Artillery claims that it is the newest of the three battlefield arms, that
1716 is a complete break with the past. Similar narrative simplicity
ought to be harder to come by in the army of the Old Reich, but insti-
tutionalization requires heroes and innovators, and one can find the
same claims repeated again and again through the centuries, so that
1740 seems identical to 2000. That said, it is always good to have one
special hero, and the Habsburg artillery has that in Prince Wenzel v.
Liechtenstein (16961772). Liechtenstein is an especially fortunate
name because he manages to be the senior of the French hero, Gribeau-
val. Austria must have been more progressive than France! (The shal-
lowness of all this is suggested by indications that the Venetians beat
both by a generation. Surely Venice was not more progressive than a
nation state?) The amazing thing is that all this talk about founders
ignores the appearance of the field artillery battery as a formal tactical
unit, which appears to have occurred without any historiographic
notice in the last years before the Napoleonic wars. We have created
our heroes, force the story into a mold of technical innovation, and
missed the changes that mattered on the battlefield.63
If the nature of the (field) artillery officer changed over the last half
of the 1700s, and I think that it did, we might do well to learn what a
gunner did in 17001750, or thereabouts. And we should, because
we know a huge amount about it. Military enthusiasts tend to have
visual imaginations, and gunner apprentices produced sketchbooks

contenant les Ngociations, traitez, resolutions, et autres documents authentiques concer-

nant les affaires Dtat, 14 vols. (The Hague: H. Scheurleer, 172440), 8: 249.
63
Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview,
1992), 123 and ff.; Fiedler, 159; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military
Innovation and the Rise of the West, 15001800, 2d. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996): 910; Paddy Griffith, The Ultimate Weaponry (London:
Sidgewick and Jackson, 1991), 126, explicitly compared to Chandler, Art, 1412; On
Liechtenstein see Wrede, 4: 43, 56 and ff.; Manfred Rudersdorf, Josef Wenzel
von Liechtenstein (16961772): Diplomat, Feldmarschall und Heeresreformer im kai-
serlichen Dienst, in Liechtenstein: Frstliches Haus und staatliche Ordnung: Geschichtli-
che Grundlagen und moderne Perspektiven, ed. Volker Press and Dietmar Willoweit
(Vaduz: LAG, 1987), 366; and Gernot Heiss, Ihro kaiserlichen Mayestt unserer ganzen
Frstlichen Familie aber zur Glori: Erziehung und Unterrichten der Frsten
Liechtenstein im Zeitalter des Absolutismus, in Der ganzen Welt ein Lob und Spiegel:
Das Frstenhaus Liechtenstein in der frhen Neuzeit, ed. Evelin Oberhammer, (Munich:
R. Oldenbourg, 1990); Wolseley, 478.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 231

that sometimes rose to the status of works of art. We have many of

them still today, archival and not. And as these are school workbooks,
we can follow the course of the gunners instruction. And we learn
here that the artillery train was not a branch of the army, but a projec-
tion of the arsenal. There might only be one artillerist per thousand
men (establishment) of infantry and cavalry, because these men were
expert riggers and Master Collarmakers and, above all cartwrights.
The focus is on moving the guns, and it had to be. In October of 1740,
the Habsburg House artillery employed only 800 men and held 4,165
guns. There was no shortage of materiel. What limited the artillerys
use was the states capacity to move it to where it would be useful. The
tradesmen/officials of the Artillery Office or the Horse Office were
there to take charge of large and small wagons and mobile foundries
and smithies, not to load guns and point them at the enemy. Actually
shooting them could be left to the infantry, who were happily given 2-
to 6-pounders to play with as they liked. Any gun that could be drawn
by 4 horses hardly counted as artillery.64
Battery pieces were big. They could turn up on a battlefield under
the direction of an expert artillerist with the skill to bring up the guns
and put them to use, but this was hard with weapons that could weigh
from 1,800 to 5,000 kilograms, and require as many as 26 horses to
shift. These guns were for killing fortresses, which could not run away.
And in spite of that, getting guns where they were needed could be a
major operation of war. The Grand Convoy that supplied the where-
withal for the 1708 siege of Lille comprised: 80 guns of great caliber,
each pulled by 26 horses; 20 mortars, each with 16 horses; and 4000
wagons with 4a total of 18,000 horses. In one sense, this is what trav-
elled from Brussels to Lille, but, the military analogy is with Bomber
Command. In some sense, it visited a city in Germany every night. In
another, moving a squadron from one East Anglian airfield to another
was a challenge. Given the difference in national scales, Bomber
Command and a major siege train were directly comparable organiza-
tions. Taking reliefs into account, there were not 18,000 horses in the
convoy, but up to 60,000 horses available daily, probably over half the
total number of workhorses in the Austrian Netherlands. The convoy

64
Feldzge, 1: 458; 10: 6071, 80; 18: 267; E, vol. 1, part 2: Anhangen XIII; Francis
Duncan, History of the Royal Regiment, 2 vols. (London: J. Murray, 1879), 1: 48.
232 erik a. lund

could expect thirteen breakdowns an hour, and needed repair staff on

this scale. The load was more than roads could bear. When documents
speak of bringing the convoy along we should imagine the roads
literally built and rebuilt underneath of it. Puysgur, brilliant and
wrong, thought that it could never work, that it would be quite suffi-
cient to just offer a bounty for every horse brought across French lines
to stop the Grand Convoy in its tracks. It was the military genius of
Eugene, Marlborough and the Council of Regents to see that the
resources of the Netherlands were up to the task. My rough estimate is
that the Grand Convoy represented 10 percent of total army strength
and its annualized budget was close to 7 percent of the Habsburgs
maximum total annual state income of 27 million fl. By itself this was
over half the three million fl. available in total at the crisis of 1740.
The actual manpower was 260 administrators, 960 skilled tradesmen,
journeymen, and apprentices, and 8,000 skilled laborers. When
we consider just how much more organized, efficient and rapid were
Saxes 174448 campaigns, we begin to imagine the impact of such
operations on European society and the changes over those forty
years.65
This effort speaks to an administrative genius, not something that
we normally associate with the great captains of history, but important
nonetheless. The better we capture generals lives, the more adminis-
tration we find. General administrators are not well studied, but thanks
to the trove of Stratico papers in the Vienna War Archives, we have a
fairly exact picture of the life of a central European (or in this case,
Venetian) artillery office director. Two generals of the Generation of
1683, served as the chiefs of artillery offices, enough to see this as a
typical career trajectory, especially when one of them, Max v. Starhem-
berg, belonged to an aulic family better known for giving the Empire
courtiers and chiefs of staff.

65
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, Letters and Dispatches From 17021712,
5 vols., ed. George Murray (London: J. Murray, 1845), 2: 127; horse totals estimated
from Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th18th Centuries, 3 vols. trans.
Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 1: 337; breakdown estimates from
Gerhold, Road, 56, 83; details of the Grand Convoy from AFA 1708 (Niederlanden):10/59;
13/2; Vault, 8: 441 (Lettre de M. de Puysgur contenant un dtail de la position gn-
rale); financial and manpower estimates from E, vol. 1, part 2: 5889; Feldzge, 1:
696; and Jean Berenger, Finances et absolutisme autrichien dans la seconde moiti du
XVIIeme sicle (Paris: Champion, 1975).
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 233

Antonio Stratico was chief of the Venetian artillery for at least

20 years. Despite that, he is the least known of four distinguished sons
of Zara in Dalmatia. Taking his brothers birth dates as a frame, he was
born between 1725 and 1745, and his annual reports begin in 1772,
ending with the Republic. Count Stratico conducted regular inspection
tours of fortress artillery parks, issued an annual survey of the guns
themselves, and evaluated artillery personnel. He had general over-
sight of the war equipage for the Venetian armed forces, il armata di
Venezia, procuring war materiel, and originated the requirements for
equipment holdings, a task hard to distinguish from strategic planning.
He published regulations for the artillery corps, and updated the war
plan. He made recommendations for technical changes, especiallyin
the critical area of naval gunnery, and for most of his life fussed over
a never-to-be-published general theoretical study of the artillery,
the Opera dArtigliere. Unlike many works of its ilk, it focused on the
guns, and Stratico never got very far as he tinkered with various con-
temporary approaches to fluid dynamics in attempt to model the
explosion in the breach.
This is where the family connection shows the most resonance.
Simone Stratico (17341824) was Inspector General of Roads and
Bridges in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, and was equally interested
in practical fluid dynamics. This is a subject of enormous interest for
the design of bridges, viaducts and ships. Another Stratico brother, an
academic mathematician, worked on the theory of fluid dynamics. The
fact that it did not lead anywhere is as enormously sad as our last vision
of old General Stratico, lowering and folding the colours of the Republic
one last time in 1797. Perhaps there will be a published edition of his
(and many other) manuscripts in the Military Scientic Memoirs collec-
tion of the Vienna War Archives some day.66
How was this mindset formed? The workbooks open with diagrams
lifted from Euclids Elements, exercises in learning to draft as much as
geometry. They are followed by drawings of the guns, since young
artillerists need to know what a trunnion is, and more importantly,
because they need more practice before the key task to follow. For the
meat of their education is a masters class in technical drawing, a long

66
KWM 13/515, 77, 79; 83; and 16/15 cover most of Straticos work. All were
removed from the War Archives of the Republic of Venice, although now that I have
brought attention to them, they may be repatriated to Italy. Lives of the Straticos, see
further Enciclopedia Italiana, s.v. Stratico.
234 erik a. lund

series of problem sketches of the caisson (gun carriage). Here is the

meat of the matter: a bewildering array of nails, nuts, bolts, braces and
fasteners, illustrated with an ever-growing technical virtuosity. The
caissons of 1750 are vastly complicated mechanisms, as (I finally real-
ized looking at these incredible drawings) they had to be, in order to
take the stresses imposed on them. When after this there comes a mis-
cellaneous section on pontoons, mobile powder mills, then a discus-
sion of surveying, it is almost like saying that a young man who knows
this much about building and maintaining a good caisson can do any
job in engineering. (Although to my mind a final word on surveying
was also opening a door on the kind of life these young men would
have if they were successful at their job and won promotion, office
and fortune.)67
Now, one of the great mysteries for the amateur historian of
the modern tank, machine gun, and like wonders of military technol-
ogy is just how many people came to invent them in years past.
Eighteenth century Artillery Office clerks were often given an auto-
matic rejection list that specifically included machine guns and tanks.
Some might see this as evidence that established institutions are dams
against the onset of innovation. Some inventors (Montalembert is
probably the great Eighteenth century example) seemingly came to rel-
ish rejection. But they are a tiny, tiny minority. A mass analysis shows
most of these inventors presenting their drawings as evidence of their
technical abilities and qualifications for employment. Invention, and
engineering skills came early to war. One of the earliest known offi-
cialHabsburg field marshals is a chief military architect, and he is a
member of one of the greatest families of Italian immediate nobility.
Oberstriegsbaumeister Manfredi Sforza Marquis di Corte Maggiore
Pallavicini died in 1588, but he is hardly the last Pallavicini of the grand
nobility to take an interest in technology. Ginaluca Pallavicini (proba-
bly not a direct descendant, but still a relative) was still inventing away
in the 1750s. Armies needed mechanical engineers who could build

67
Rudyerd contains 8 drawings of guns in total; but 21 projections of a 24-pounder
carriage alone, with 200 plane drawings and projections of components, including 17
different kinds of nails for different uses, shown in Plate 51; KWM 13/47, 48 and 49 are
similar, but prettier works (mainly because of the limits of reproduction); KWM 13/51
Sur lArtillerie, (2 vols.), [Lieutenant Colonel] Ano Turpin (1727) appears to be a full
discussion of these subjects, although I did not have time to read it in the archives, and
Turpins name is also attached to a work dated in the 1770s, although I am inclined to
accept the earlier date on stylistic grounds.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 235

caissons and wagons that were lighter, required less maintenance,

and could sustain higher speeds, and they needed administrators
who could direct field parks. The crux of artillery operations lay in get-
ting the guns to the siege, and the man in charge simply could not be
too wellborn or too well educated when it came to persuading mayors,
bishops and Lords-Lieutenant.68
With the Whig narrative firmly in place, it is hardly surprising that
the history of the Habsburg corps of military engineers puts the 1748
Reglement fr das Ingenieurs-Corpo at its heart. Surely this is the
moment when Maria Theresia recognized the usefulness of military
engineers and finally made them noble officers on a par with the
spoiled brats of the cavalry? It is not. We have similar documents dat-
ing decades earlier. They just do not mark the decisive transition to
institutional permanence. And in some ways it is a very pre-modern
document, in that the corps is the same kind of patronage arrangement
increasingly seen as backwards in the rest of the army. In effect, the
engineers are to become a regiment, just like the Savoy Cuirassiers,
contributing to, and benefitting from, the patronage of Prince Charles
of Lorraine. The military engineers, who spent a staggering 10 percent
of the military budget of the Austrian Netherlands (361,000 fl.), cer-
tainly had patronage to share, but there is more going on. In 1758, a
promising young military engineer, the then Major v. Elmpt, began his
analysis of the proposed renovation of the fortress of Arad with all the
sententiousness of youth.69
Fortresses are concomitant to war, which princes might wage for vari-
ous reasons On the defensive, the invading army must take into
account the garrison, and upon defeat, they are a refuge for armies, and
especially allies [?]. On the offensive, they serve as [operating] bases
of the enterprise, as magazines, and as strong points, and for intimidat-
ing vassals70
Pomposity does not conceal Elmpts problem. How could one rede-
signArad without knowing how it was to be used? The engineers task

68
Invention in the archives, see KWM 13/20, 21, 33, 39, 40, 41; for Manfredi, see
KWM 28/1334 Kriegsbauwesen in 16 Jahrhundert, p. 5
69
See KWM 12/130 (1748); earlier version, see Feldzge, 17: 267; Johann, Graf
Browne, Trkenkrieg, welcher im Jahr 1737 angefangen und im Jahr 1739 mit dem
Belgrader Frieden sich geendiget hat, 1738, Appendix W. W. Microfilm of original
document provided by the library of Louisana State University, Baton Rouge.
70
KWM 12/29, Gedanken uber die Festungen und Richtigen Gebrauche dersel-
ben, Major v. Elmpt, Introduction.
236 erik a. lund

was a strategic one. And perhaps it was more than strategic. In the
1749 official review of the problem of defending Lombardy defence,
Gianlucca Pallavicini had his moment to shine. Could the indigenous
resources of Imperial Lombardy suffice in its own defence, or were
major diplomatic concessions to Savoy the only hope? Some said that
no financially practical national Lombard army could resist potential
threats. Pallavicini argued that if it were possible to build an adequate
fortress at Pizzighettone, a satisfactory north Italian balance of power
was in sight. Not, admittedly, on the current provincial defense budget,
but then a major increase in that budget was on the table. A land tax
reform had been limping through the political process for years. It was
controversial in the Milanese, in danger of being killed in Vienna,
Fortunately, through the magic of new caissons that would sink the
foundations of the new works at Pizzighettone deep in the Adda,
Pizzighettone could be fortified, and the new tax would suffice to
defend the Milanese, justifying the political effort to pass it. Whether
or not this argument was decisive, the new tax was finally instituted. It
did not defend the Milanese (the Diplomatic Revolution did that), but
it probably helped bring about the French Revolution.71
And yet there was more. Who, besides a grandee, was Pallavicini?
The short answer is that he was one of Austrias great admirals, seem-
ingly the ultimate exotica. There have been many Austrian navies, for
they come and go, seemingly with the fashions, and Admirals do not
even rate on the Generallisten. Habsburg naval strategy could some-
times dream big, but even at its peaks it was mostly harbor defense.
There is probably a great deal more to say about Military Sea Border, in
this case the Sea Border and piracy, and the deep rhythms of
Mediterranean history, but I want to focus on Pallavicinis crowning
moment as a military officer, when a new Turkish war required the
recreation of the Danube Flotilla, and, lacking one, young Admiral
Pallavicini moved the Habsburg Navy across the Semerling Pass to
become that flotilla.72

71
See KWM 8/191c (and more generally this entire dossier); also P. G. M. Dickson,
Finance and Government under Maria Theresia, 17401780 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon,
1987): 2: 23, 102, 119; Daniel Klang makes the best claim for the Milanese reforms
importance (Klang, 245, 40).
72
See KWM 12/36. 72; for a review of the literature and a brief discussion of naval
developments 15001797, see Lawrence Sondhaus, The Habsburg Empire and the Sea:
Austrian Naval Policy, 17971866 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press,
1989), xixvi, 25; Ugo Cova, Trieste e la guerra di corso nel Secolo XVIII, in
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 237

This navy was by no means small. At some point in the early 1730s,
it included 21 ships and 22 galleys, with a lieutenant colonel, 3 majors,
2 captains, 26 officers, 82 bas-officiers, and 698 marinare, the offic-
ers having enough spare time to produce a small amount of staff
planning and intelligence digests. The manpower was self-evidently
inadequate to the tonnage. There were half-baked conscription
schemes, a half-pay list, and arrangments to bring in Mateloten from
Hamburg and Bremen in lieu of war taxes. (The latter were almost cer-
tainly dockyard riggers rather than sailors, although they probably
started out as sailors.) Pallavicini seems to have commanded the flotilla
for a year or two and then gone on to his reward, a staff appointment in
Italy. He was succeeded by a Swiss soldier named Diesbach, not the
first Swiss in that office, a coincidence probably worth someones track-
ing down, and which might lead to the Imperial salt monopoly.73
Whatever, what matters here that on 12 July 1, 1744, the Habsburg
main army under Prince Charles of Lorraine made two effectively
simultaneous assault crossings of the Rhine into Alsatia, threatening
the French with complete strategic catastrophe and changing the
course of the Wars of the Austrian Succession. The change was not
what Charles might have hoped, since Frederick the Great rejoined the
fight, and it briefly seemed that it was Charles who was doomed.
Instead, a new bridge was launched, and the entire Imperial army
crossed to the left bank of the Rhine between sunrise and sunset of a
single day.74 Former Habsburg staff officer, now Frederick the Greats

Mitteilungen des sterreichischen Staatsarchiv 29 (1976): 1436. For Uskoks in the ear-
lier period, see Ekkehard Eickhoff, Venedig, Wien, und die Osmanen: Umbruch in
Sdosteuropa, 16451700 (Munich: G.D.W. Callwey, 1970), 8394; Franz A.J. Szabo,
Unwanted Navy: Habsburg Naval Armaments under Maria Theresa, Austrian History
Yearbook 1718 (19812), 57.
73
Karl Gogg says the navy lasted from 17191738 and gives rather higher man-
power totals of c. 2000 men (sterreichs Kriegsmarine 14401848 [Salzburg: Bergland,
1972]: 301); see also Jean Berenger, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 12731700,
trans. C.A. Simpson (London: Longman, 1994), 170; and for what survives in the
archives, see KWM 16/2, 7; also KWM 15/7, Memoire qui contient les difficulties de
former pour cette campagne un Armament sur la Danube, et les moyens quon peut
encore employer pour avoire une Escadre de Vaisseaux de guerre en cas quon trouve
necessaire (1737); Browne, Trkenkrieg, 1738, Appendix M. M. M.
74
E, 5: 499504; quote is from William Coxe, and Franz Hartig. History of the
House of Austria 3rd ed. 4 vols. (London: H. G. Bohn, 18471853): 3: 302; Charles
army crossed and recrossed with a train of 108 guns, 284 carts, wagons, and trucks,
and 1,918 horses (Wrede, 4: Anhangen 1); for general context, see Matthew Smith
Anderson, The War of the Austrian Succession, 17401748 (London: Longman, 1995),
1323.
238 erik a. lund

chief-of-staff, Karl v. Schmettau, noted that Charles would have lost

his army had the day been three hours longer, but this may have been
pique. Thanks to another prodigy of military bridge building a few
months later, Frederick (and Schmettau) were forced into a humiliat-
ing and catastrophic retreat from Bohemia, one of the more significant
blows leading to the failure of Fredericks larger hopes for his participa-
tion in the succession wars.75
We do not know how Prince Charles, no great light of the military
arts, achieved these back-to-back military-technological surprises. It is
not a much-studied subject, since bridges are a great deal less sexy than
battles, but there are old military bridging manuals to be studied. From
there we can learn that military bridge building is hard, that there is
room for masterpieces of art, and brilliant victories. Contrary to what
has sometimes been assumed, in wartime, the hydrological engineer
can be the highest calling in any society, and not just the Cappadocian.76
We can also learn a great deal about the raw material of such suc-
cesses. A Napoleonic bridging train equipped with 36 pontoons re-
quired 56 wagons and 316 horses, with 20 cartwrights, 6 wheelwrights,
6 blacksmiths, and 4 tinsmith, plus 36 pontooners. The title denotes a
private soldier, but in fact a pontooner is much more than a raw recruit.
He must be a skilled waterman, handy with oar and rope, at home in
small boats and at least minimally handy with carpentry. And yet all of
this, and all the expenses, sufficed to bridge a maximum 72-meter
span. In 1700, a single pontoon bridge of 12 meters cost 5,165 fl., almost
the monthly payroll of an infantry regiment. Bridging columns were
suitable for the average river, but a crossing of the Rhine, Danube, Po
or Elbe required something more. Pontooners were independent men
who could scrounge up boats, rope and lumber up and down a river
bank, but from there, the problem lay in the hands of a skilled designer.
The options were legion, from suspension bridges to trestle to floating
to flying bridges. Possibilities were mediated by weather, bank condi-
tions, water depth, current speed, and bottom conditions. Manpower
was a key issue, and so was science. A bridge had to be manned, and the
more complicated it was, the more personnel were required. A floating

75
E, 5: 504; Christopher Duffy, Frederick the Great: A Military Life (London:
Routledge, 1985): 545.
76
Bridging manual, see KWM 8/191; for more general guidance, Sir Howard
Douglas, Bt., An essay on the principles and construction of military bridges, and the
passage of rivers by Military Operations (London: W. and T. Boone, 1832).
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 239

bridge was the most labour-intensive of all. At least in theory, there

should be a pontooner in every pontoon during a major crossing. A
look at the numbers suggests how impossible this would be when a
bridge a kilometer or more wide was contemplated, and in theory it all
had to be managed by a skilled hydrodynamicist.77
How was all this to be achieved? It required officers for administra-
tion, and skilled hands for execution. Where could they come from?
In 1697, the Imperial Danube flotilla had a staff of 63 from commodore
down to trumpeter, an artillery of 84, 236 deck officers, and 2,000 mili-
tia. This was about three times the size of the naval list from the peace
years, and assuming that the numbers were equivalent in 17379 (staff
figures are comparable, and other ranks may someday be extracted
from the great mass of the unpublished official history), it required
a great deal of reinforcement, at a cost quite unsustainable in peace-
time. Those manpower resources just had to be out there somewhere,
embedded in the larger economy. Danube boatmen were the basis for
expansion, as the details of the Rhine crossings indicate. The officers
were another matter. There is actually no mystery where they came
from. Diesbach started as Pallavicinis second-in-command, took over
the Flotilla, turned into the colonel of a Bridging Regiment in the
1740s, and, when peace resumed, a Pontoon Corps springs into exist-
ence and promptly deposits a massive manual of bridging opera-
tions of 214 pages, 26 tables, and 64 supplementary illustrations of
pure technique, for all the world like one of the great national planning

77
The gargantuan scale of a Napoleonic-era pontoon corps is worth noting for
comparative purposes. It included 10 staff officers; 40 company officers; a staff of
9 chief constructors including a carpenter, blacksmith, ropemaker, armorer, tailor,
and shoemaker; 130 company noncommissioned officers rated as workmen, boatmen,
blacksmiths, or carpenters; 120 master workmen rated as blacksmiths or carpenters;
and 960 pontooners, rated as blacksmiths or boatmen, plus a war reinforcement of
450 tradesmen including ropemakers, forgesmiths, locksmiths, nailers, blacksmiths,
solderers, carpenters, sawyers, wheelwrights, joiners, and coopers. Including boys,
musicians, and other additional personnel, just over 2000 men (Douglas, 438);
Feldzge, 1: 24951; Douglas, 15860; hydrodynamic analysis is necessary to measure
the velocityof the stream and show [what is] required to cleanse, or deepen canals
of any kind and for military purposes. [T]his furnishes useful data to enable us to
judge the consistency of the bottom, which it is not always possible to ascertain experi-
mentally. [F]rom this we may form some estimate what effect a decrease of velocity
may have in rendering the bed more foul; or an increase in the celerity of current in
removing soft bed. This information also helps to predict what fords may be lost or
gained in a flood, important information for the strategist (Douglas, 20, 236), while
KWM 15/15 and 16 are contemporary student exercises in just this kind of analysis
240 erik a. lund

staffs of 191418, suddenly turning into the official historical section

when the guns fell silent. One senses institutional continuity here, and
names can sometimes be matched to instincts, as in the case of
Clemente Pellegrini, another North Italian and of the same breed as
Pallavicini and Stratico, indeed in generational terms the bridge
between their eras.78
And now we can draw the connection. North Italy was in those
days undergoing an enormous hydraulic transformation, as a land of
wheat turned into one of rice and corn. Men like Pellegrini, Pallavicini
and Stratico were intimately involved in this work. Their interest in
fluid dynamics intersected their economic interests. So when the state
needed naval officers, or bridge-builders, they were equally available.
It is no coincidence that in Pallavicinis mind, the issue of the land
tax reform turned into a matter of designing a new generation of cais-
sons. He had been thinking like that, stepping up and down from the
technicalities of water flow to grand strategy/national economics all
of his life.

IV. Engineers and Staffs: Modern Obsessions Projected Backwards

November 11th, 1918 was a deeply humiliating moment for Germans.

They had gone into the First World War profoundly convinced of the
superiority of their army, hoping that it would transcend regionalism
to become one of the great uniting institutions of the German nation.
They had expected to win, and believed as recently as that spring
that they would. And no one was more embarrassed than the 650 offic-
ers who made up the Great German Generalquartermasters Staff in
1914. While many a loser has had occasion to prove that the war
would have been won but for some scapegoat, it was the Staff s une-
quivocal and sole job to take the army from the moment when the
reservist presented himself at the armory to the moment when, march-
ing down the road, they encountered the enemy. And the Staff s mobi-
lization plan led, miraculously, to victory. Or so it promised. When it
led to defeat instead, one might have expected a bit of a reckoning. That
instead we debate whether the German General Staff was infallible,

78
Organisational details from Feldzge, 1: 2512, 257, 16: 3439; E, vol. 1, part 1:
34850 and 4447, but compare 386.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 241

or merely correct suggests the success of the German staff s self-

exculpatory project. Why?
[T]he general staff is supposed to be the seat of intelligence, the brain of
the army. In the broadest sense, a general staff has two functions: first,
the systematic and extensive collection in time of peace of specific infor-
mation which may be important to the future conduct of operations or to
the proper preparation for future operations; and, second, intellectual
preparation for the future conduct of operations either through system-
atic development of skill for the handling of contingently anticipated
situations or through the elaboration of specific plans for war, or both.
The second function generally includes the training of a corps of specifi-
cally designated staff officers who can serve at army, corps, brigade, and
division headquarters, and give appropriate information and advice to
commanding officers.79
We learn that this obviously brilliant idea was invented very recently
indeed. The Austrians first glimpsed it in 1759, but never got it quite
right.80 That was left to the Prussians, with the result that Germany was
united by Prussia, rather than the failed state of Austria-Hungary.81
One does not have to spend very long in the archives to come up
with a very different definition of the role of the Generalquartermasters
Staff, see that definitions distant relationship with the first, and notice
that people quite adequately grasped the concept in the Thirty Years
War, and probably in Xerxes time. Notice that this job description (and
others like it) has details, clearly spelled out objectives, and metrics of
job performance.
11 Provide plans of the area of contact
12 Direct detachments, as in 110 above
13 Direct the foraging of the army
14 Project where magazines will be placed
15 Determine where provisions are to be brought
16 Find suitable quarters for generals
17 Find suitable quarters for colonels
18 Find suitable quarters for the GQM-Staab and other corps

79
Gordon Craig, Command and Staff Problems in the Austrian Army, 17401866
in The Theory and Practice of War: Essays Presented to Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, ed.
Michael Howard (London: Cassell, 1965): 545; Craigs citation is to Dallas D. Irvine,
The Origins of Capital Staffs, in the Journal of Modern History 10 (1938), 27.
80
KWM 11/25a Memoire zur Mannschaft und Verwaltung des Corpo des
Quartiermeisterstaab (1757).
81
See Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius For War: The German Army, 18071945
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977). The title says it all.
242 erik a. lund

19 Buy and levy food

20 Provide security for the headquarters from marauders by arranging
patrols
21 Cooperate with the General Adjutant [liaison officers]
22 Lay out protocols for the watch.
23 Prepare protocols and questions for dealing with enemy deserters
and persons of the country [paysans]
24 Make preparations to deal with enemy spies
25 Direct the activities of our own capitan des guides [spy]
26 Direct the pioneers and the Staab-Battalion [formations of dragoons
who escort reconnaissance missions]
27 Provide for the general security of the army
28 Arrange the march of the artillery and train
29 In cooperation with the major generals, prepare the approach march
[of the army]
30 Provide quarters for the army
31 Attend upon the commanding general on the day of the battle82
Once stated, the need is obvious enough. What is not so obvious
is why a general quartermasters staff, whose basic task is to find the
army a place to sleep, should be the brains of the army. It is because
that is what it is to a point. It is axiomatic in the planning of mili-
tarymovements that no unit should move across the route of another,
nor should it intermingle with other units marching before or after
it on the same route. March two battalions along the same road at the
same time, or even let them cross paths without strict traffic disci-
pline,and the result will be an intermingling of thousands of men over
a mile or more of road. It is no exaggeration to say that the result is
(temporarily) as costly as a major battle. The intermingled battalions
will not be sorted out for hours, and will not be under command until
that happens. In order to avoid this and also to preserve the roads,
it is necessary to carefully organize the march of an army so that each
individual unit followed its own route and timetable. The orders of
battle and march tables intended to execute these movements survive
in huge volume as mute testimony to the amount of work invested
in them.83
The main obvious difference between the staff of 1625 and that of
1914 is technological. Conscription, railways, telegraphs, and adequate

82
This is a paraphrase of 11/589, a consolidated dossier of similar documents
whose earliest iteration is a lost 1625 document reproduced in type.
83
See, for instance, Vault and Pelet, Atlas, 1, 2: passim.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 243

mobilization plan delivered unprecedented speed and smoothness to

the process. With many contingencies smoothed out of the process, the
mobilization plan theoretically could determine the outcome of the
war, because armies could be in battle within days, and battle would
surely be that decisive battle of annihilation only possible to the lib-
eral state. That is, anyway, how the German General Staff came to pre-
sent the issue to Berlin. We know that the staff had to overcome the
resistance of the engineers, who wanted to fight sieges, and presumably
other institutional interests as well. The Staff won, because it promised
victory in a single campaign.
As the postwar excuses snowballed, they became fixed notions in
the military historical literature. The Prussian-German army was the
best in the world due to various inventions that happened between the
defeat of 1806 and the 3 great wars fought between 1864 and 1872. And
since innovation was not possible before the ultimate stage in Hegelian
world history, in which case the concept of the staff proved Prussia to
be the liberal-national end of history. Since it was quite embarrassing
that the ultimate state was led into battle by a gay emperor and assorted
kings and grand dukes, it was even proposed that the real point of the
staff was that it made a consummate technocrat (the chief of staff ) the
real commander-in-chief, even though we only have to go back to
Archduke Charles little army in Spain for a parallel, when Field-
Marshal Count Guido v. Starhemberg (16571727) was chief-of-staff
and commander. The staff he directed included accountants, doctors,
and lawyers, and he also had a generalquartermasters staff, under
Lieutenant-Field-Marshal Count Peroni; but that is not too dissimilar
from the actual command structure in 1866, 1871 or 1914.84
That Peroni is an obscure figure, while Moltke is famous, does not
mean that he comes out of nowhere. Entering the War of the Spanish
Succession in the first place was not an easy decision for a cautious old
monarch like Leopold. Long before he slipped Prince Eugens leash,
Leopold peppered the Court War Council with questions. Where
would the supply lines go? Would Breisach and Fort Louis hold? How
big might the Gallospanic army in the Netherlands become? What
could be done for the Duke of Savoy if he entered the war on the
Habsburg side? This is all planning, and it is far from precocious. There
is plenty of it in the archives. Leopold knew what could be done, and in

84
Feldzge, 10: 521. See also Montecuccoli, Aforisimi, 9.
244 erik a. lund

the end that meant calling in experts whom he knew perfectly well,
even if the obscurity of centuries covers their biographical tracks.85)
So what did a man like Peroni do? Here there is some justice in the
brains of an army analogy. Once the fighting got moving, there had
to be a stream of communications from subordinate to superior head-
quarters. Officers carried messages to and from subordinates, and
made their own reports on matters ranging from the feasibility of pro-
posed bridges to the available supply of forage. All of this went into the
march tables, but when events began to out run the pace of revision,
staffs can be overwhelmed. Incoming information is poorly assessed or
ignored, and outgoing commands and requests for information began
to fall behind the pace of events. Staff riders cannot even find subordi-
nate commands, much less give them irrelevant and out-of-date orders.
Subordinates, their own replies ignored or misplaced, lose confidence
in command. Their execution of orders becomes dilatory and selective.
Long before the army is physically destroyed, it is recoiling in disorder
from an enemy that is inside the intelligence-decision-action cycle.
To prevent this, staff officers must be more than passive conduits of
information and instructions. They must translate intentions into cur-
rently relevant actions. Delivering messages becomes a pretext for the
more important task of interpreting and adapting of command inten-
tions. Sometimes, the naked intention is to supersede unreliable local
commands, one infers from the oft-sketchy letters they carried. In
short, a good staff officer is charismatic, influential and able. The per-
fect staff officer carries a great name in his own right, because some
general out in the woods might bristle at following a random young
mans instructions, but would know perfectly well not to cross a
Montecuccoli, Hohenlohe, Starhemberg or Pallavicini.
And yet there are also new names amongst the gods of the staff. In
an age of expansion, there has to be. These men can still speak with
authority, although it is now that of their commander. It is sometimes
thought that they have nothing going for them but their charm. In fact,
the best of them are men like Frederick the Great, Saxe, Montecuccoli
or Khevenhller, good commanders, but also men of the pen. Intel-
lectual history is predicated on the notion that ideas matter, and the

85
See Diplomatisches Akten 1701: 1/21 and 1/ad21; 1701: 7/5, and 11/ad1; 13/1;
and AFA (Italien): 13/5; a selection of eighteenth century staff planning might
include KWM 10/27 (1934); and KWM ; KWM 7/29 (1737).
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 245

academic military historian has studied a great mass of military intel-

lectual literature produced by bookish soldiers, often without finding
something terribly philosophically impressive. That is because, I sus-
pect, that it was often written to impress rather than as science. The
hand- produced manuscripts in the archives are as blatantly works of
design in search of patronage as any of the classic old Princes Mirrors
found in much the same place.86
The first surviving staff corps Reglement, as compiled in (175758),87
we find a list strength of 41 officers, 19 NCOs, 100 pioneers and
300 soldier-pioneers, and 82 guides. (Note that this was not the first
Austrian staff. Prince Charles of Lorraine had to resign in that
year, and took his staff with him.) Numbers and organization would
fluctuate over the years. In the Turkish war of 171719 Prince Eugens
chief of staff sometimes rode with six regiments of cavalry, and
with that many officers gathered round him, he probably did not need
specialists. By the 1750s, a Central European army needed one staff
officer per 10002000 men and had them in a staff corps, whereas
in 171719, there were Engineer Brigades doing much of the extra
work. Which seems a little odd, in that graceful, wellborn military
intellectual staff officers seem very different from military intellectual
engineers. And yet they are not. If an engineer is a surveyor, and a sur-
veyor makes maps, the brilliantly illustrated maps of the era, with their
putti supporting logos and the winds blowing in the corners suggest a
touch of elegance, and Eugen actually took a publisher of such maps,
Nicolai Person, with him to war in 1700. And one can find putti on
military maps in the archives.88
If Buchsenmeisterlehren say one thing, it is that a technical life existed
in eighteenth century armies. They may seem quite different from the
elegant manuals of the Gentlemans Recreation genre or the grand ide-
as of a Pallavicini. After all, the intense study of nails and bolts seems
much more proletarian than riding after stags or reforming tax laws.

86
For example KWM 6/141 [Antonio]; Essai sur les operations de la guerre pour
Son Altesse Royale, le Prince de Prusse, par Mr. De Fournay, apell de Bernay (1789);
and KWM 7/701, Opera Militare che sintitola il Generale-Commandante dedi-
cate al S.M.R. Il Re de Romani General di Battaglia [General] Francesco Perelli (no
date, but 175665).
87
See KWM 11/25.
88
See KWM 11/25cf (1758). KWM 11/25f; for Elster, otherwise unidentified, see
Feldzge, 18: 73; the very brief material we have for the Person neither establishes nor
rules out the possibility that he was a military contractor in 1701 (Peter Meurer,
246 erik a. lund

Yet that is only a first impression. A Buchsenmeisterlerhen is actually

very similar to a Gentlemans Recreations in many crucial ways.
There are Euclidean abstractions, followed by a great mass of material
reveling in the details, furnished with beautiful drawings. In real life an
engineer or artillery officer is not usually concerned with executing
beautiful drawings, but with sketching a road and its surroundings
from the saddle. And when he has to keep a mental count of his horses
paces, an eye on distant steeples and hilltops, disregard bullets flying by
him, and estimate distances by sighting along an outstretched hand or
a jostling sextant, one would think that he would be very grateful for
time spent jumping fences in pursuit of the inedible. And who says that
there is a distinction between the middle class technocrats love of an
artillery caisson assembled from twenty kinds of nails, and an aristo-
cratic dilettantes attempts to lay out an ornamental grove according to
the sight lines from his palace windows? It is not hard to find men like
Marsigli or Pallavicini, who were interested in both, and had beautiful
drawing hands. And it is pretty clearly the quality of Marsiglis draw-
ings that led Leopold to take him on as an officer.89
I have argued elsewhere that we need to understand military intel-
lectual production less as a transparent window into military activity
than as a reflection of the inevitably politicized construction of mili-
tary practice. That is all very well for wars, which military historians
study. But standing armies are peacetime institutions. They have been
studied in that light, as enforcers of order, constructors of gender, driv-
ers of economies. Is that all? A very long time ago, that eccentric histo-
rian of the Holy Roman Empire, Friedrich Heer, called our attention to
a mock war and horse ballet performed to celebrate the marriage

Introduction, in Nicolaus Person, Das Festungsbuch des Nicolai Person: Wichtige

Festungen Europas Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts ed. and with an introduction by Peter
Meurer [Bad Neustadt a. d. Staale: D. Pfaehler, 1984], 6) and Eugens N. Person may
be only coincidentally related (AFA 1701 (I): 1/21); for pretty flourishes and puttis in
the archives, see AFA (Rmisches Reich) 1707: 12/6 Double title/inscription;
Remonstration uber die dermahlige Linea auf dem oberen Schwarzwald von
Rottenhaus an wie solche der Zeit angelegt, und sich in der fach befindet mit A
gezeichnet and Remonstrationen und observationen uber die neu projectirt Linie
bei Zollbach, mit B gezeichnet, by Hermann Kleinwachter v. Wachtenberg; for Prince
Charles staff, see Horace, Count St. Paul, A Journal of the First Two Campaigns of the
Seven Years War, Written in French ed. George Grey Butler (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1914): 934.
89
Stoye, Marsigli, 23.
 the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 247

of the Emperor Leopold with the Infanta Marguerite. Familiar names

the Duke of Lorraine, Montecuccoli, Sulzbach and Dietrichstein
led the squadrons of earth, air, fire and water into a ceremonial battle
that performed the Habsburg dynastic ideology. This sounds like
generals executing a carefully planned military exercise. It was not a
very practical military exercise, but we are still talking about it,
which suggests that it achieved its objectives. And how impractical is
that?90
We all know that things got much more rational, utilitarian and
rational by the time that the Habsburg army performed its first great
annual manouevre in 1748, even more so once these manouevres
began to be directed by the General Staff after 1763. So why are the
planning documents dominated by elaborate layouts of royal viewing
stands and watercolor drawings of huge follies to decorate the
grounds chosen for the final review? It seems to me that modernity had
hardly ended the armys need to perform the state, or, as Andrew
Wheatcroft puts it, embody the empire.91
At the end of the day, when we talk about generals, we are talking
about a wealthy and privileged group that wanted, above all, to become
wealthier and more privileged. It is natural to be jealous, and conceive
of these men as being too comfortable in life to ever need to master
a practice. It does not matter if one is the nephew of the Duke of
Lorraine if one is competing for a posting with the nephews of the
Duke of Baden. The selection committee will have to make a choice,
and it will be as well for your future in high politics and real estate
speculation if your application is well-drawn and throws in some math
and a few quasi-erudite lists, and that you can replicate this level of
work if they put you on the spot. The Reverend Blome may have been
sententious and moralizing, but that does not change the fact that the
Gentlemans Recreation existed, that there was a nexus between
geometry, hunting, real estate investment and war; just as there was a
nexus between agricultural labor and war. The practice of war in
Eighteenth Century Europe was the work of the hand. Nobles might
write elegant memorials while common soldiers split good rails and

90
Heer, Holy, 241.
91
See KWM 6/101; for this modernizing view of military exercises, see Duffy,
Army, 1667; KWM 6/165, for 1764, although an excessive 500 pages of fascicle bun-
dles, is the first to omit drawings or paintings; Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs:
Embodying Empire (London: Viking, 1995), especially 188200.
248 erik a. lund

sergeants organized mowing parties, but, high or low, war was the
practice of the everyday.
Ask a focus group, and I would expect that a study of an army of an
East Central European state would be prejudged as a study of inepti-
tude and sloth. Does that reflect the historiography? I suspect the con-
trary, that as small a slice of the professional historical consciousness as
a military history takes up, it still has a disproportionate influence on
both popular and professional views of East Central Europe. As a
reader of much popular military history, I think that it is safe to say that
no army comes off as inept as that of ones allies. (Well, sometimes ones
own, but that is a different mentality at work.) And it happens that the
English-speaking world has fought many wars in alliance with
Austrians, and never actually engaged Austrian forces in the field. Does
this mean that English-speaking historians come to the study of east-
Central European history with unexamined prejudices formed by
teenaged laughter about the Italians only coming into World War One
to give the Austrians someone to beat? I suspect the answer, but that
would be to prejudge any study actually investigating the question.
What I can say is that it is possible to normalize the question. Is it
telling tales out of school to report that Daniel Klang, a fine scholar and
a teacher to whom I owe so much, once dismissed Eastern European
warfare as different from Western, that they do things differently
there? My own sense is that this is true more of military historians
than military practice, that we really could stand to have a closer look
at stories of Turkish warfare. That said, that is not what I have done
here. I have instead followed an East Central European army out of
East and into the cockpit of war, to the walls of Lille. I trust that I do not
have to show that it acquitted itself perfectly well. Lille fell. What I have
shown, I hope, is why this was necessarily the case. Take away the pre-
sumption that a special social path to modernity could somehow make
East Central Europeans less effective at cutting grass and estimating
distance and much else falls away. And if that sounds like a challenge
to the idea of an East Central European special social path to moder-
nity, well, it is.
 COMMAND AND CONTROL IN THE
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN ARMY

Peter B. Brown

The Concept of Command and Control

The seventeenth-century Russian army offers an opportunity to

examine what military command and control could mean in early
modern military practice. Command and control, hereafter abbrevi-
ated to C2, is a process of extension of authority over distance, and
reductively described comes down to issuing orders and trying to con-
trol outcomes.1 The expression is verbal, not nounal. To command
and to control connotes the correct meaning of C2.
This expression is a modern invention, but its precepts are ageless
and embedded in any historical military organization. Command and
control constitutes the norms and procedures by which top-, medium-,
and low-level military commanders congregate, cooperate, plan, and
implement military decisions and thereupon attain and evaluate out-
comes. But it is institutions and the people in them that implement C2.2
It stands to reason that any C2 study must analyze two levels of struc-
ture: on the one hand, the institutions and people formulating and
implementing dicta, and, on the other hand, the norms and procedures
guiding the responsible parties. Inferably, C2 relies upon authority and
feed-back.
The range of C2 responsibilities is broad and subsumes strategy,
force recruitment, logistics, transportation, deployment, and battle-
field management. This study will concentrate upon the last two, for
their outcomes so tellingly reveal the institutional inter-workings of
seventeenth-century Muscovys tightly interrelated military, political,

1
Roger A. Beaumont, The Nerves of War: Emerging Issues In and References To
Command and Control (Washington, D.C.: AFCEA International Press, 1986), 8.
2
Some C2 models for modern warfare are sometimes elaborated as C3 and empha-
size integration of command and control with communications, and C4 for integrating
C3 with computers (Frank M. Snyder, Command and Control. The Literature and
the Commentaries [Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 1993], 1012, 42,
44, 73).
250 peter b. brown

and administrative structure and to what degree its C2 was capable of

performing adequately to ensure the survival of the Russian state.
Command and control has evident psychological implications that
infuse any societys military institutions. More broadly speaking, C2 is
a cultural outgrowth of a particular national or period style. This is
unequivocally true for Muscovy. Muscovite norms, perceptions, pat-
terns of behavior, technology, and geography influenced Russian sev-
enteenth-century command and control.
Modern C2 literature is, of course, interested in modeling command
and control techniques appropriate for waging war with industrial/
postindustrial technologies and techniques. But it is possible to extrap-
olate back from this literature to posit a comprehensive C2 model
appropriate for military technique in seventeenth-century Muscovy.
Modeling Muscovite command and control techniques in the seven-
teenth century is especially desirable because this century marked the
last stage of Muscovite Russias military and bureaucratic evolution
before the Imperial Russian epoch, and, therefore, could be expected to
display C2 techniques more mature and better documented than in
earlier periods.3 The institutional framework for C2 in the late Muscovite

3
Muscovite command and control has not been the subject of a separate study in
any language; at most it is briefly treated in passing. See A.Z. Myshlaevskii, Ofitserskii
vopros v xvii veke. Ocherki iz istorii voennogo dela v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Glavnoe
upravlenie udelov, 1899), passim; I.Ia. Gurliand, Prikaz velikogo gosudaria tainykh del
(Iaroslavl, 1902), 22122, 279, 300; A.I. Zaozerskii, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich v svoem
khoziaistve (Petrograd, 1917), 57, 221, 225, 28586, 298302, 338, 34547; E.D.
Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina 16321634 g.g. Organizatsiia i sostoianie Moskovskoi
armii (Kiev: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1919), passim; Richard Hellie, Enserfment
and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971), passim; Peter
Bowman Brown, Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy: the Evolution of the Chancellery
System from Ivan III to Peter the Great (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1978),
42025, 46576; Brian L. Davies, The Role of the Town Governors in the Defense and
Military Colonization of Muscovys Southern Frontier: the Case of Kozlov, 16351638,
2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1983), 16163, 16886, 195212, 22324,
24378, 51417, 64345, 70106, 72236; W.M. Reger IV, In the Service of the Tsar:
European Mercenary Officers and the Reception of Military Reform in Russia, 1654
1667 (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997), 23349, 271
75; Peter B. Brown, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich: Muscovite Military Command Style
and Legacy to Russian Military History, in The Military and Society in Russia 1450
1917, eds. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (Brill: Leiden, Boston, Cologne, 2002), 11945.
The exception to this is A.V. Malovs magisterial work on the mid-seventeenth-
century Moscow new model infantry regiments, which discusses command and con-
trol techniques at length, though without using modern American C2 terminology (see
A.V. Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki soldatskogo stroia v nachalnyi period svoei istorii
16561671 gg. [Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2006], passim).
 command and control in the russian army 251

period to be examined here included the tsar, the Boyar Duma (the
upper-upper service class council, see Table 1.2), the civil bureaucratic
administration (the chancelleries [sing., prikaz] or chancellery sys-
tem), and the military districts.
The Muscovite C2 apparatus and techniques were by no means static
over the course of the seventeenth century. They show an interesting
evolution in response to the Russians acknowledgment of different
physical terrain, distance, and military force dispositional demands
and in reaction to the transformative effects upon military thinking
and military practice of bureaucratization, technological change, and
encounters with new political as well as military challenges. It is also
possible to discern different C2 preferences or military leadership
styles of the several seventeenth-century Russian monarchs. Muscovite
C2 practice was not monolithic, did not follow a neatly linear continu-
ity, though a secular trend is clearly discernible.
The Muscovite government articulated its C2 desiderata through
both written and unwritten instructions. The best source for learning
about the latter is from the mid-seventeenth-century, government
clerk Grigorii Kotoshikhins account of the workings of the chancellery
system and Duma, later published under the title Russia in the Reign of
Aleksei Mikhailovich.4 The bulk of these written instructions took the
form of edicts (ukazy) issued by the government to its military com-
manders or summary references to these edicts in commanders
rescripts (otpiski); some information about edicts can also be gleaned
from personal correspondence, such as Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovichs
(164576) letters.5
The central administration, which had its origins in the fifteenth
century, responded throughout its development primarily to military
stimuli, and much of this is reflected in the characteristic sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century Muscovite documentary imperativeness,
formulary, and wording. Even before the seventeenth century, the

4
Grigorii Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha. Sochinenie
Grigoria Kotoshikhina, 4th ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia glavnogo upravleniia
udelov, 1906); Benjamin P. Uroff, Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin. On Russia in the
Reign of Alexis Michailovich: an Annotated Translation (Ph.D. diss., Columbia
University, 1970); A.E. Pennington, ed., commen., Grigorij Kotoixin, O Rossii v
carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajlovia. Text and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1980).
5
Imperatorskoe russkoe arkheologicheskoe obshchestvo, Zapiski otdeleniia russkoi
i slavianskoi arkheologii imperatorskogo russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva (here-
after ZORSA), 7 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Iosafata Ogrizko, 18511918), 2.
252 peter b. brown

language style and content of Muscovite C2 had become firmly embed-

ded in both military and official civilian paperworka documentary
militarizationalthough the Russians at the time would not have
made a firm distinction between the two spheres.
Muscovite C2 exhibited considerable plasticity with a whole range of
responses. It would be wrong to assume autocracy and hypertrophic
bureaucratization always straitjacketed decision-making to the point
of permitting no spontaneity, initiative, or innovation by officers, even
if they did tend overall to discourage them. This can be shown by com-
paring Muscovite C2 practices over time and in different military situ-
ations. We will examine Muscovite C2 through the prism of six major
seventeenth-century conflicts: the Time of Troubles (15981613) and
its complementary Polish-Russian (161318) and Swedish-Russian
Wars (16131617); the Smolensk War (163234); the Thirteen Years
War (165467); the ongoing southern steppe contest with the Crimean
Khanate; the first Russo-Turkish War (167681); and the abortive
Sophia-Golitsyn Crimean debacles (168789). The greatest attention
will be paid to the Thirteen Years War, as it was the most stressful of
these conflicts, involving the largest number of troops committed over
the longest periods of war. Peter the Greats Azov naval campaigns
(169596) and his 1700 Narva disaster are omitted because they belong
thematically as much to the subsequent Imperial period as to late
Muscovy.6
Broadly speaking, the Muscovites practiced two different warring
styles, one oriented towards the steppe and the other towards its
Western foes. Both steppe and non-steppe warfare infused their par-
ticular desiderata into Muscovite military practices. But the latter,
which involved conflict with technologically advanced enemies,
demanded state-of-the-art combat branches, equipment, training, tac-
tics, officerly outlook, and strategic vision for field fortification, artil-
lery, infantry, and cavalry utilization. All of these phenomena and
concerns intersected with terrain, political regime, and mentalite.
Over time changes in Muscovite C2 were necessitated by new model
technology and tactics introduced at the regimental and battalion

6
For an introduction to Russias seventeenth-century international situation and for-
eign affairs, see G.A. Sanin, Geopoliticheskie factory vo vneshnei politike Rossii vtoroi
poloviny xvii-nachala xviii veka i Vestfalskaia sistema mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii,
in Geopoliticheskie factory vo vneshnei politike Rossii. Vtoraia polovina xvi-nachalo xx
veka. K stoletiiu akademika A.L. Narochnitskogo (Moscow: Nauka, 2007), 10433.
 command and control in the russian army 253

command levels. This eventually had some impact on higher command

levels, as evidenced by the greater sophistication in troop-handling on
display in the Russo-Turkish War compared with the Thirteen Years
War.
Table 1.1 identifies and defines The Six Constituents of Command
and Control likely to have comprised a relevant model for military
practice in early modern Muscovy.7

Table1.1 The six constituents of command and control

1. Command leadership. The commanders ability to exercise authority
and direction over his forces in order to accomplish a mission.
Command leadership involves motivating and directing subordi-
nates and subordinate units to perform military operations and
other militarily-related tasks.
2. Command structure. A commander must have an already estab-
lished command structure or to be able to adapt or create one that
is tailored for the mission at hand. Commander must ensure that
his command structure can bring about successful horizontal and
vertical collaboration. It is essential, in order to compensate for
changing circumstances, for a commander to have alternative ideas
and plans and accordingly, be able to alter his command structure
to successfully implement one of them should that prove
necessary.
3. Situational awareness. Commander and his subordinates must have
an operational picture consisting of present and forecast informa-
tion that is tailored to the present and is relevant and actionable.
This information is based on the geographical environment and on
the friendly forces and adversaries numbers, capabilities, positions,
plans, and actions. This information should promote awareness of
friendly forces and adversaries strengths and weaknesses and fos-
ter balanced risk management.
(Continued)

7
U.S. Department of Defense, Command and Control. Joint Integrating Concept.
Final Version 1.0 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2005), 2327. Information in Table 1.1 is a
condensed and revised version of this publications contents, and consists of rewritten,
paraphrased, and directly quoted material. One of its categories, Capability 5. Plan
Collaboratively, pertains to technologies and technologically-based operations that
simply did not exist in the seventeenth century and is therefore omitted from Table 1.1.
254 peter b. brown

Table1.1 (Cont.)
4. Coherent and lucidly communicated orders. The operational objec-
tives conveyed in a commanders orders must be based upon a
strategic mission, involve collaborative mission analysis, contain
practical agendas, be stated clearly to subordinates, and allow for
mission-type operation (see Table 1.3. Types of Command and
Control) by subordinate commanders.
5. Synchronized plan execution. Once an attack or an armed defensive
maneuver commences, the commander must strive to keep control
over the pace and scope of operations. However, keeping in mind
the expression, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The com-
mander must maintain synchronization when operations are not
executed as planned. He achieves this either through centralized
redirection or through self-synchronization by his subordinate
forces. Among other things, self-synchronization at lower-echelon
levels requires subordinates to have an unhindered comprehension
of their commanders intent, good communications, and the ability
to act without detailed instruction from above.
6. Unity of effort and leveraging of mission partners. A commander
must be able to achieve and maintain unity of effort when allied
coalition forces, some of which might not be under his command,
are jointly committed to military operations. Commander achieves
this through coordination, collaboration, influence, persuasion,
negotiation, and diplomacy.

The Six Constituents to Command and Control

Of these six constituents (command leadership; command structure;

situational awareness; coherent and lucidly communicated orders; syn-
chronized plan execution; and unity of effort and leveraging of mission
partners) most scholarship on seventeenth-century Russian war-
farefocuses on the first two elements, neglecting the remainder. The
literature also tends to restrict its attention to upper-echelon com-
manders, ignoring the role of middle- and lower-echelon command-
ers. More work is needed on the last four constituents. There is some
evidence that the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth constituents improved
over the century, attesting to the growing corporate and planning
sophistication of Russians involved in military-administrative work as
 command and control in the russian army 255

a consequence of sustained macro-organizational experience. For

example, synchronized plan execution for units larger than 500 men in
the Russo-Turkish War showed improvement over practice in the
Thirteen Years War.8
Some of these constituents naturally received greater investment
than others. Compared to the government of Peter the Great, the late
Muscovite government lacked the technical, conceptual, managerial,
and financial means to maintain all of its defense sectors on an equal
footing, and could not sustain priorities. Muscovys leaders and other
decision-makers in the royal court, the bureaucracy, and in the upper-
most reaches of its civil hierarchy had to engage in differential alloca-
tion of time and resources that speak to the leaderships foresight and
shortcomings alike. The Russians variegated implementation and
maintenance during the seventeenth century of both new and existing
weaponry, military units, command techniques, service strata, mili-
tary-social linkages, and fortifications reveal both intentional forward-
ness and neglect.
It was complicated to introduce and maintain new weapons and new
military formations, recruit and support units, refine command and
communications procedures, build and support fortifications and gar-
risons, manage logistics for field armies, regulate the duties and privi-
leges of service classes and service strata, and manage court and army
relations. Some of these endeavors were likely to be neglected in order
to give others greater attention.
Command and control both effected and affected all of the above-
articulated factors, and they upon it in a self-circulating feedback
mechanism. Muscovite C2 in Russias final century before Peter the
Great is best visualized as being both subject and object in relation to
other environmental factors, that is to say, the product of issues inher-
ent to any command structure and the outcome of specific, Muscovite
realities. What all of this boils down to is the latitude permitted com-
manders and the trust the regime was willing to place in them. To what
degree should decision-making be vested in battlefield commanders
and their subordinates and to what degree should the highest levels of
government be involved in C2? What were the risks and advantages of
centralizing decision-making at the top or giving greater latitude to

8
See Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500
1700 (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 16365, 167.
256 peter b. brown

commanders in the field? Whichthe central government or the field

commanderwas to be trusted more, i.e., considered more capable
of assembling all inputs (information, men, and material), appropri-
ately assessing opportunity and risk appropriately, responding to
changing conditions in the field, and implementing operational plans
on both the strategic and tactical levels?
On the whole Muscovite C2 practice and doctrine show a preference
for placing greater trust in centralized decision-making. Muscovite C2
tended to minimize any initiative-taking capacity of individuals while
vesting authority and decision-making in various Moscow-based agen-
cies. Not only middle- and lower-ranking officers but higher-ranking
commanders were deemed incompetent or at best only marginally capa-
ble of being entrusted with decision-making. As we shall see, there were
various reasons for this, first of all the inclination towards centralizing
and authoritarianizing political power engendered and reinforced by
Russias territorial vastness, economic backwardness, and highly
articulated caste structure.

Muscovite Nomenclature for Units and Ranks

In order to comprehend Muscovite C2, gaining familiarity with

Muscovite force structure is essential, with the caveat that it had little
in common with modern force structure. The hierarchy of units and
subdivisions did not correspond to the modern hierarchy of corps,
division, brigade, regiment, battalion, company, platoon, and squad,
most of which were not to be found in the Muscovite army, and, with
the important exception of the new model units (see below), the
ranks of general, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant and the non-com-
missioned and sub-non-commissioned ranks of warrant officer, ser-
geant, corporal, and private were not used. There were no uniforms
and rank devices.9
One should not assume from this that chaos prevailed because
familiar modern force structure was not employed. Indeed, the
seventeenth-century Russian army had well-codified institutional and
personnel structures of its own, although they would be significantly
altered in the reign of Peter the Great.

9
James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, Massachusetts;
London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 34.
 command and control in the russian army 257

The largest unit subdivision of the Muscovite army was the polk, a
term used in most Slavic languages. In seventeenth-century Russian
practice the polk denoted forces ranging in size from hosts, (in the
Biblical sense, i.e., a very large force) through army subdivisions of sev-
eral thousand men down to smaller subdivisions of a few thousand to
several hundred men.10 To invoke modern comparison, a polk could
vary in equivalence to a corps, a division, or a regiment. Between the
late sixteenth century and the 1620s, the term polk also came to denote
a territorial army group of multiple polki stationed to defend the for-
tified line running along the Oka River.11 By the mid-seventeenth cen-
tury, during the wars with Poland and Sweden, such an army group
could be deployed along either the western or southern frontiers and
could number between 30,00050,000 men. From that time polk as
army group was commonly used in governmental written instru-
ments. With the formation of the Belgorod and other frontier military
districts (sing., razriad), along the western, southern, and eastern
peripheries during the second half of the seventeenth century, the
term, territorial army group (razriadnyi polk) became commonplace.12
But the Muscovites with little or no confusion seemed to know exactly

10
I.I. Sreznevskii, Materialy dlia drevnerusskogo iazyka, 3 vols. (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatelestvo inostrannykh i natsionalnykh slovarei, 1958), 2: 1747
49; S.G. Barkhudarov, et al, eds., Slovar russkogo iazyka xixviii vv. (Moscow: Nauka,
1975-), 16: 22021; Maks Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar russkogo iazyka, German
trans. O.N. Trubachev, ed. B.A. Larin, 4 vols. (Moscow: Progress, 1986), 3: 311; P.Ia.
Chernykh, Istoriko-etimologicheskii slovar sovremennogo russkogo iazyka, 2 vols.
(Moscow: Russkii iazyk media, 2006), 2: 53; Pennington, O Rossii v carstvovanie
Alekseja Mixajlovia, 61617.
11
Akty moskovskogo gosudarstva, izdannye imperatorskoi akademieiu nauk (AMG),
3 vols. (June 30, 1627), 1: 21214; D. Beliaev, O storozhevoi, stanichnoi i polevoi slu-
zhbe na polskoi sluzhbe na polskoi Ukraine moskovskogo gosudarstva do tsaria
Alekseia Mikhailovicha, in Chteniia v imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei
rossiiskikh pri moskovskom universitete, 1, no. 4 (1846): 160.
12
See, for example, the usage of polk in Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii iugo-zapadnoi
Rossii (15 vols.; St. Petersburg, 186192), 12: 14147 and in Opisanie dokumentov i
bumag, khraniashchikhsia v moskovskom archive ministerstva iustitsii, 21 vols.
(St.Petersburg, Petrograd, 18691921), 13: 533; V.P. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta
(Voronezh: Izdatelstvo voronezhskogo universiteta, 1968), 17, 73, 114, 121, 124, 147
48, 153, 156; Davies, The Role of the Town Governor, 77, 96, 99100. This evolution
is discussed in Peter B. Brown, The Military Districts (Razriady) of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries and the Muscovite Origins of Peter the Greats Provincial
Administrative (Guberniia) Reform, unpublished manuscript (292 pp.), 1995 and in
Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 165, 173; O.V. Novokhatko,
Formirovanie razriadnykh shatrov v pervom Chigirinskom pokhode 1676/77 goda,
Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2008, no. 2: 4748.
258 peter b. brown

what were the size and type of polki by knowing the particular polk
commanders name and his ascribed rank and any attributive that
might be attached to the polk.
From the Appanage Era down through the late seventeenth century,
the very large polk host or division was typically subdivided tactically
into five constituent polk regiments, using the term loosely to apply to
units of several hundred to a few thousand men. These were the center
regiment (polk bolshoi, polk velikii), containing the grand prince or tsar
and his retinue and protecting men-at-arms; the advance guard regi-
ment (peredevoi polk), deployed in front of the center regiment; the
right-hand regiment (polk pravye ruki), to the right of the center regi-
ment; the left-hand regiment (polk levye ruki), to the left of the center
regiment; and the rearguard regiment (storozhevoi polk), to the rear of
the center regiment.13 With the advent of the new model army (polki
inozemnogo stroia, literally, regiments of foreign [Western European]
configuration) in the 1630s and 1650s, the government coined new
terms reflecting regimental formation specializations: new model
infantry regiment (soldatskii polk), new model cavalry regiment (reit-
arskii polk), new model dismountable cavalry (dragunskii polk), new
model light cavalry regiment (husarskii polk), and new model lancers
regiment (kopeinyi polk).14 This was attended by the introduction of
some western European unit subdivision terminology so that a new
model polk regiment might be divided into battalions (sing., shk-
vadron) and companies (sing., rota).15 The old model forces preserved
traditional structure, the cavalry subdivided into units of one hundred
men (sing., sotnia) and the musketeers divided into battalion-size units
(sing., prikaz).
As for rank convention, the Muscovites had no specialized military
rank system for the old model units for the equivalent of upper officer
ranks. The universal term was voevoda, a word of common Slavic ori-
gin meaning military leader or commander, and used as equivalent

13
Slovar russkogo iazyka xixviii vv., 16: 220; George Vernadsky, A History of
Russia, 5 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 194369), 3: 363. This practice was
of Mongol origin.
14
Sergei G. Pushkarev, comp., Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the
Eleventh Century to 1917 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1970), 91;
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 127.
15
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 127.
 command and control in the russian army 259

to the Byzantine Greek hegemon.16 In seventeenth-century Russian

parlance there were two types of voevody: field (military) commander
(polkovyi voevoda) and town governor (gorodovoi voevoda), both of
which often performed some of the functions of the other, since the
Muscovites did not adhere rigorously to distinguishing military from
civil functions in state service. Since combat arms C2 is the preoccupa-
tion of this essay, it will focus mostly on the military voevoda, the term
best understood as commander, who could command polki of the vari-
ous sizes indicated earlier.
In terms of the size of force a voevoda could command, he might be
the equivalent of a World War II American Army lieutenant general
(corps commander, in charge of three divisions or 40,00050,000
men), a major general (division commander, 13,00016,000 men), a
brigadier general or a colonel (regimental commander, 2,0003,000
men), or a lieutenant colonel or major (battalion commander, 500
men).17 A better comparison might be with U.S. Navy usage of the term
captain to denote the commander in charge of a vessel, whatever its
size.18 In terms of the Muscovite state service hierarchy, a voevoda
could be someone of the rank of boyar, at the top of the upper service
class, or merely a striapchii, several grades lower (see Table 1.2. The
Muscovite Civil Hierarchy and Ranks Conferring Military Leadership.
However, every voevodathe term itself never being part of the
Muscovite hierarchy of civil rankhad an ascribed rank: either boyar,
okolnichii, dumnyi dvorianin, stolnik, or striapchii, the first three
belonging to the upper upper service class and the last two belonging
to the middle upper service class. A boyar would be the commander
(voevoda) of a force (polk) that might number from several thousands
to several tens of thousands of men. A stolnik would be a commander

16
Grigorii Diachenko, comp., Polnyi tserkovno-slavianskii slovar, 2 vols. (Moscow:
Tipografiia Vilde, 1899), 1:84; Slovar russkogo iazyka xixviii vv., 2: 26162; Materialy
dlia drevnerusskogo iazyka, 2: 28081; Etimologicheskii slovar russkogo iazyka, 1: 332;
O Rossii. Text and Commentary, 42728.
17
Jonathan Gawne, Finding Your Fathers War. A Practical Guide to Researching and
Understanding Service in the World War II US Army (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2006),
2426, 2946; Kent Greenfield, The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Carlisle,
Pennsylvania: Center of Military History, 1987).
18
For example the captain of a U.S. aircraft carrier, with a complement of several
thousand men, might be a rear admiral, whereas the captain of a landing craft, with a
crew of one or none, other than himself, might be a boatswains mate.
260 peter b. brown

Table 1.2 The Muscovite civil hierarchy and ranks conferring military
leadership (indicated by asterisk)19
The *tsar and his family
The upper upper-service class
*Boyar (Russ: sing., boiarin; pl. boiare). Could serve as voevoda.
*Okolnichii (pl. okolnichie). Could serve as voevoda.
*Counselor dvorianin (Russ.: sing., dumnyi dvorianin;
pl., dumnye dvoriane). Could serve as voevoda.
Counselor state secretary (Russ.: sing., dumnyi diak;
pl., dumnye diaki)
The middle upper-service class
*Stolnik (pl., stolniki). Could serve as voevoda, and as general and
colonel in new model units.
*Striapchii (pl., striapchie). Could serve as voevoda, and as lieutenant-
colonel and major in new model units.
State secretary (Russ.: sing., diak; pl., diaki)
The lower upper-service class
*Moscow dvorianin (Russ.: sing., moskovskii dvorianin;
pl., moskovskie dvoriane)
Zhilets (pl., zhiltsy)
The middle service class (sluzhilye liudi po otechestvu)
Provincial dvorianin (Russ.: sing., dvorianin; pl., dvoriane)
syn boiarskii (pl., deti boiarskie)
The lower service class (sluzhilye liudi po priboru)
Musketeer (Russ.: sing., strelets; pl., streltsy)
Cossack (Russ.: sing., kazak; pl., kazaki)
Artilleryman (Russ.: sing., pushkar; pl., pushkari)
Town-wall cannoneer (Russ.: sing., zatinshchik; pl., zatinshchiki)
New formation regiments
Lancer (Russ.: sing., kopeishchik)
Hussar (Russ.: sing., gusar; pl., gusary)
Cavalryman (Russ.: sing., reitar; pl., reitary)
Dragoon (Russ.: sing., dragun; pl., draguny)
Soldier (Russ.: sing., soldat; pl., soldaty)
Others
Foreigner (Russ.: sing., inozemets; pl. inozemetsy)

19
The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, Part 1: Text and Translation,
Richard Hellie, trans., ed. (Irvine, California: Charles Schlacks Jr., Publisher, 1988),
 command and control in the russian army 261

(voevoda) of a battalion-sized force (polk). Not only ascribed rank but

the seniority and experience of men holding the identical ascribed
rank conferred the greatest command responsibilities.20
The commanders of units, though known as voevody, were written
up and referred to by ascribed rank and full name in the all-important
elite appointment and promotion registries, the Boyar Books (Boiarskie
knigi), for example, as Boyar Ia.K. Cherkasskii or okolnichii I. A.
Gavrenev.21 Ostensibly this left no doubt as to who was the most senior
commander and who were the commanders beneath him. But the
thorny issue of precedence (mestnichestvo), a system of status ranking
dating back to the Appanage era and anachronistic by the seventeenth
century, meant that elite promotion rivalries over heredity and service
record, sometimes erupting into civil litigation, were a distraction, and
may have dragged upon command effectiveness.22
Polkovnik, like voevoda, was a traditional term for the leader of a
large- or intermediate-size unit. Unlike voevoda, the term polkovnik
always referred to the military.

xiixiii; id, Slavery in Russia 14501725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982),
68; id, Muscovite Conceptions of the Social Order (Paper delivered at the Eighth
National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies, St. Louis, Missouri, October 1976), 2a-2b.
20
Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia 14501725 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982), 45, 911. The interplay betweenquite broadly speakingheredity and
background are two poles of analysis Robert Crummey recurrently employs in describ-
ing the careers of members of the upper upper service class or the Duma ranks or
Duma cohorts (Crummey himself prefers the non-specific European term, aristocracy,
or Boyar Duma) in his monograph Aristocrats and Servitors. The Boyar Elite in Russia
16131689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), see esp. 34106 (Servitors,
Family and Marriage, Politics, Parties, and Patronage). Marshall Poe and his team
offer more trenchant explanations. See Marshall Poe with the assistance of Olga
Kosheleva, Russell Martin, and Boris Morozov, The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth
Century. A Quantitative Analysis of the Duma Ranks 16131713, 2 vols. (Helsinki:
Annales Academiae Scientiarium Fennicae, 2004), 2: 1948. Marshall Poe, who has
reservations about the appropriateness of the term Boyar Duma, prefers Duma ranks
or Duma cohorts (ibid, 19).
21
M.P. Lukichev, Boiarskie knigi xvii veka. Trudy po istorii i istochnikovedeniiu
(Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2004), 1572; V.I. Buganov, Boiarskaia kniga 1627 g.
(Moscow: Institut istorii, Akademiia nauk, 1986), 1923; Prikaznye sudi, 14647.
22
Carol Belkin Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe. Army Reform and Social Change in
Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995),
7778, 141; Iu. M. Eskin, Mestnichestvo v sotsialnoi structure feodalnogo obsh-
chestva, Istoriia Rossiia, 1993, no. 1: 3953; Nancy Shields Kollmann, By Honor Bound.
State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, New York; London: Cornell University
Press, 1999), 13234, 16566; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 48, 13637.
262 peter b. brown

Beneath the title of voevoda, military rank nomenclature became

more consistent, in the sense of there being a discrete title correspond-
ing to a discrete unit size, for old model army units. The chief com-
mander of a battalion-sized unit, for example, a musketeers battalion,
was a golova (literally, head), although sometimes he could be a
voevoda.23 The leader of a 100-man unit (somewhat smaller than a
modern-day company) was a centurion or captain (sotnik), the leader
of a fifty-man detachment (somewhat larger than a platoon) a quin-
quagenarian (piatidesiatnikfiftyer, comparable to a lieutenant),
and the leader of a ten-man unit (squad) was a decurion or sergeant
(desiatnik), who was a non-commissioned officer.24
The Muscovite old model army of pomeste-based middle service
class cavalry and lower service class musketeers, cossacks, and gunners
originated in the Appanage period and enjoyed accelerated middle-
stage growth from the late fifteenth into the late sixteenth centuries.25
Calling those who commanded its units officers should be qualified
by keeping in mind that while they could assemble, maneuver, engage,
and disperse their combat underlings, they were not literate, were not
recipients of formalized, military instruction and training, and were
not commissioned.
The military rank system for the new model (inozemskii stroi) offic-
ers is easier to grasp because it was based on Western European par-
lance. In descending order the Muscovite new model ranks were
general (general), colonel (polkovnik), lieutenant-colonel (podpolko-
vnik), major (maior), captain (kapitan), junior captain of infantry or
dismountable cavalry (kapitan-poruchik), junior captain of cavalry
(rotmistr-poruchik), first lieutenant (poruchik), and second lieutenant
(praporshchik).26
The new model formations had been introduced and first used on
campaign during the Smolensk War, and this is when the unit structure

23
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 114.
24
P.P. Epifanov, Voisko, in Ocherki russkoi kultury xvii veka, 2 pts. (Moscow:
MGU, 1979), 1: 23.
25
For a recent description of the Muscovite army from the early 1300s to the death
of Vasilii III (150533), see Donald Ostrowski, Troop Mobilization by the Muscovite
Grand Princes (13131533), in The Military and Society in Russia 14501917, 1940.
26
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki,12627, 17476, 184, 189; Reger, In the Service
of the Tsar, 23349.
 command and control in the russian army 263

and ranks described above were established in the Muscovite army27

There had been some Muscovite experimentation with new model
units earlier, during the Time of Troubles, when Boyar Skopin-Shuiskii
endeavored to teach Russian foot soldiers the European infantry
style according to the Dutch model with the assistance of Swedish
and other foreign officers. The new model units reappearing on larger
scale during the Smolensk War had been retired at wars end by order
of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (161345), but his successor, Tsar Aleksei
Mikhailovich, resuscitated them a decade and a half later with the
encouragement of the military innovator boyar Boris Morozov. The
government broadly expanded them during the Thirteen Years War.28
This time the government left all the new model units in place as a
permanent institution, one which more profoundly acquainted the
Muscovites with Western nomenclature for the more up-to-date mili-
tary units, ranks, and notions and which came to guide Peter in his
military institutional overhauls.

Styles of Command and Control: Centralization and Decentralization

The six constituents of Command and Control described above

(Table 1.1) were condition objectives of the Command and Control
system to be implemented through planning, command, and execu-
tion. The manner of planning, command, and execution may be more
or less centralized or decentralized in system practice. A schematiza-
tion of the planning, command, and execution options to seventeenth-
century Muscovite C2 would show the following range of centralization
and decentralization (see Table 1.3): command by plan, command by
direction, centralized planning, decentralized execution, command by
influence, and mission-type order. The first three reflect centralized
command schemes, the last three decentralized ones. Both centralized
and decentralized C2 tendencies can exist simultaneously within the
same organization and even within the same military operation.
There is no doubt that the entire direction of the Muscovite politi-
calsystem, administrative operation, and expectations of social class

27
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 32, 3841, 53, 12425; Hellie, Enserfment and
Military Change, 17273.
28
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 37, 4142, 47, 5258.
264 peter b. brown

and individual behaviors had pronounced, even overwhelming,

centralizing and statist tendencies. When outsiders ponder the Russian
military tradition, one of the aspects of it typically coming to mind is
an overweening centralization of command depriving subordinates of
initiative-taking capacity and often leading Russian armies into unwise
tactical decisions and unnecessarily heavy casualties. But Muscovite C2
was not a lock-step regimen to which an autocracy and central admin-
istration completely and on all occasions shackled commanders and
their subordinates, depriving them of any capacity and wherewithal
to exercise initiative. Seventeenth-century Russian military leaders
themselves (although not necessarily the capital-bound military
administrators) were aware of the tension between centralized and
decentralized command.
The evolution of autocratic prerogatives of the Muscovite grand
prince (later, tsar) and of the chancelleries from the time of Ivan III are
seemingly well-known in their consequences for Muscovite armies.
But hurling moral judgments about in order to castigate the apparently
excessive centralization of Muscovite C2 is irrelevant since environ-
mental factors of different types contributed to this phenomenon,
simultaneously an advantage and handicap of Muscovite armies.29
Muscovite written sources offer so few clear instances of command-
ers independently setting command and control agendaeither old
model army commanders in charge of units equivalent in size from
regiments to companies, or their new model counterparts heading
units from battalions to platoonsas to suggest commanders were

29
For Soviet-era doctrine on the comparative strengths of centralization and decen-
tralized initiative, see Fundamentals of Tactical Command and Control, a 1977 Soviet
Defense Ministry publication (12324): Hence, with centralized control the degree of
decentralization and independence of subordinates will depend on the circumstances
of each case In the majority of cases, the subordinate should be free to select the
methods for carrying out the tactical mission, particularly because he always has more
opportunity than his superior to consider all of the details of the specific situation and
to quickly react to changes in itIgnoring this fact and increasing centralization of
control excessively will inevitably lead to bureaucratic red tape and delay, for the supe-
rior begins to get involved in the details and decides all of the questions for the subor-
dinate, is late in reacting to changes in the situation, and thus causes an unnatural delay
in the troops operations. Moreover, this undermines the self-confidence of the subor-
dinates, and they get used to waiting passively for orders or advice from above. The
following important psychological aspect of command and control should be pointed
out. An officer inspired by the very best ideas, but deprived of the authority to exercise
initiative, gradually loses his store of energy, becomes apathetic, and begins to work
out of fear rather than because of conscientiousness.
 command and control in the russian army 265

Table 1.3 Types of command and control: centralization and

decentralization30
Moving towards centralization
1. Command by plan. Centralizes uncertainty by letting overall com-
mander operate from a scripted set of (rather highly specified)
actions. During a campaign, focus supplants flexibility in order
for a commander to concentrate on identifying, neutralizing, and
or destroying target sets and non-combatant, belligerent centers
of gravity.
2. Command by direction. Prioritizes uncertainty by having overall
commander direct some or all of his forces.
3. Centralized planning. A higher echelon retains the ability to develop
and coordinate plans. This enables commanders to arrange efforts
in time and space to maximize the likelihood of success, employ-
ing each part of his force in the best possible way.
Moving away from centralization
4. Decentralized execution. Commander gives subordinates opportu-
nity to take initiative during mission execution. This is done to
compensate for the demands of a harsh and dynamic combat
operating environment. This method is acceptable as long as sub-
ordinates decisions meet commanders intent.
5. Command by influence. Uncertainty is decentralized. Only an out-
line and minimum goals are established in advance. Higher-
echelon commanders place great reliance on subordinates initia-
tive to compensate for the formers relative lack of local situational
awareness.
6. Mission-type order. Order to a unit to perform a mission without
specifying how it is to be accomplished.

generally expected to serve as passive recipients of C2 processes

originating from above. We do not find discernible example among
these commanders of decentralized execution, command by influ-
ence, and mission-type order, not even in the case of the new model

30
U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Command and Control Functional Concept
(Washington: GPO, 2004), 12; U.S. Department of Defense, Command and Control
Joint Integrating Concept. Final Version 1.0 (Washington: GPO, 2005), 46. Information
in Table 1.3 is a condensed version of this publications contents and consists of rewrit-
ten, paraphrased, and directly quoted material.
266 peter b. brown

army officers, so many of whom were Europeans and presumably

accustomed to a more decentralized C2 system allowing more inde-
pendent authority.

Factors Shaping Muscovite Command and Control

One factor discouraging the kind of decentralizing C2 prerogatives

Western and Central European armies extended to their middle- and
lower-ranking officers was the arduous, resource-starved, and geo-
graphically enormous environment of Muscovy and the sparser popu-
lation it carried. This obligated the government to place a high pre-
mium on meticulous decision-making and arrogate so much of that to
itself. A second factor was the heritage of Muscovite slavery and the
severe master-subordinate psychology, particularly in evidence from
Ivan IIIs reign onwards, which pronouncedly affected all social
interactions.31
The decentralizing C2 prerogatives that in Central and Western
European would have been permitted to middle- and lower-ranking
officers of new model regiments were further discouraged by the
steeply hierarchical organization of the Moscow-based upper service
class and the upper upper service class or the Duma ranks (dumnye
chiny) within it. This structure inhibited subordinates (even voevody of
boyar and okolnichii rank, the two uppermost Duma ranks), from
engaging in meaningful, inquisitive interaction with superiors that
might have aided all concerned in visualizing differently battlefield
plans, tactics, and projected outcomes. The notorious precedence sys-
tem and the rancorous fights it often bred over assessment of birth
and service record could derail effective collegial intercourse in the
combat zone and on the battlefield. There are numerous examples of
this from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.32 Firm, uncompen-
sating central direction was a logical way of circumventing precedence
tensions; also the concatenation of all these factors promoted the
assumption that giving lower-level commanders greater initiative
would lead to chaos.

31
See the two English-language studies on Muscovite slavery: Hellie, Slavery in
Russia, 14501725 and Marshall T. Poe, A People Born to Slavery. Russia in Early
Modern European Ethnography, 14761748 (Ithaca, New York; London: Cornell
University Press, 2000).
32
See the listing of works by Ann M. Kleimola and Nancy Shields Kollmann in the
bibliography of Kollmann, By Honor Bound, 26869.
 command and control in the russian army 267

One may certainly stress informal, workaday, intra-elite interactions

and elite kinship and other ties of affinity. However, the fact remains
that burgeoning autocratic doctrines since the late 1400s, infusing the
Moscow grand princes and tsars persona, exerted a severely constrain-
ing force against autonomous, non-royalist actions by the elite. Elite
socialization into this ethos is one of the notable facets of the Moscow
service elites history from Ivan III up to Peter as is the unquestionable,
pervasive socialization of the elite and the tsar into bureaucratic think-
ing during the seventeenth century.
Thus, Muscovite autocratic culture dictated some procedures that
would have been handled differently elsewhere. European army com-
manders routinely handled regimental accountancy matters, but in
Russia this prerogative, including the marshalling and distribution of
salaries, the chancelleries arrogated to themselves. In Europe com-
manders could sentence the men in their units to death for serious
crimes, but in Muscovy only the tsar and the Moscow civil administra-
tion had the right of death-sentence conferral.33
Third, technological considerations also discouraged the decentrali-
zation of C2 prerogatives. The complicated loading procedures, short
range, slow firing rate, and inaccuracy of musketry meant that close-
order formations had to be maintained to maximize fire-power,
maneuverability, and discipline. This was certainly the message of
Maurice of Nassau (Maurits van Oranje, 15671625) and his military
successors of the first half of the seventeenth century,34 whose prescrip-
tions were response to their perceptions of the current technological
limitations upon military art. The Muscovite new model units and the
European tactical handbooks the Russians drew upon emphasized
this even more.35 Keeping ones men together tightly in battalions and
regiments and in polk arrays was at a premium and high-echelon C2
was the solution. The lack of modern communications systems also
made it difficult to enlarge the operational role of smaller dispersed
units acting in coordination.36 The greater centralization of C2 in the
Moscow-based command structures was therefore a default response.

33
Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 122.
34
Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 14941660 (London, New York: Routledge:
2002), 33, 126; Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 16465, 188.
35
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the
West, 15001800 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1822.
36
The increase in the demands made on [contemporary] command systems is due
to the greatly enhanced complexity, mobility, and dispersion of modern armed forces.
268 peter b. brown

A fourth factor was limited literacy, which hindered officer skill

acquisition. It was a major reason why Muscovy relied so heavily on
foreign mercenary officers through the seventeenth century. Genuine
literacy was overwhelmingly concentrated in the Moscow chanceller-
ies and in the clerical amanuenses that division-, corps-, and army-size
units would have.37 This reinforced the assumption that middle- and
lower-echelon commanders could not plan or improvise on their own
and should not be trusted to try, as they were considered incapable of
thinking on their own. On this assumption the higher levels of com-
mand took steps to severely diminish, if not to block altogether, initia-
tive by lower officers. Though there are no known documents explicitly
prescribing this policy, its effects are clear enough on record. The low
literacy rate forced successive Muscovite governments to tuck more C2
into the central chancelleries than would have been desirable under a
higher literacy rate.
This handicap helps explain why top-, intermediate-, and low-level
commanders (or, more precisely, officer-like implementers of com-
mands) did not display the same degree of initiative and pluck as their
counterparts in the Polish Crowns, Swedish, and French armies.38
There are few reports attesting to ethnic Russian officers (generals
down through lieutenants) of Muscovite new model units or ethnic
Russian officers of old formation units (voevody, golovy, centurions,
quinquagenarians, and decurions) displaying the same panache, bold-
ness, and verve as their foreign rivals. With the possible exception of

(Martin van Crevald, Command in War [Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1985], 2).
37
It is well-known that the professional Muscovite bureaucrats were literate. This
skill has to be matched to the illiteracy and semi-literacy of 97% of the Muscovite
populace. See the explanations in Gary J. Marker, Primers and Literacy in Muscovy:
A Taxonomic Investigation, The Russian Review 48, no. 1 (January 1989): 119.
38
Many nobles serving as officers in early modern European armies were of line-
ages dating back to the Merovingian and Carolingian periods and served within a
political culture that permitted greater pride in estate affiliation and encouraged tacti-
cal adaptability in changing battlefield circumstances. On Gustavus Adolphuss expec-
tations of educational achievement and command initiative from his officers, see:
Geoffrey Parker, ed., The Thirty Years War, 2d ed. (London, New York: Routledge,
1997), 185; David Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. The Baltic World
14921772 (London, New York: Longman, 1990), 13941; Michael Roberts, The
Swedish Imperial Experience 15601718 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1979), 5662; Gustavus versus Wallenstein, 1632: Alte Veste and Lutzen in
William P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War. From White Mountain to Nordlingen,
16181635 (Westford, Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press, 2002), 187230. On
officer initiative in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see below.
 command and control in the russian army 269

foreign-born mercenaries officering new model units, these native

officers were entirely or nearly illiterate, and that may have limited
their ability or readiness to take initiative.
Muscovite commanders never had much exposure to the humanis-
tic education, with its emphasis upon rhetoric and disputation, that
had become part of Western and Central European elite (and even seg-
ments of non-elite) culture by 1600. Humanism accustomed its stu-
dents to the notions that ideas were debatable and subject to logical
argumentation and that an educated man should be able to weigh and
choose among alternatives and act upon his decision to the extent his
likewise-educated superiors would allow.
In seventeenth-century Muscovy literacy was respected because it
was rare, but those who monopolized itin the secular sphere, the
professional civil administrators, that is the state secretaries (sing.,
diak) and clerks (sing., podiachii)felt all the more strongly they had
a duty of stewardship towards those who lacked it, namely the military
commanders. Therefore, these officials felt compelled to save com-
manders from error by spelling out instructions very explicitly and at
great length and repetition.
The highly centralized autocratic political culture of Muscovy could
therefore be seen as a cultural compensation for limited elite literacy,
and this compensation acted reflexively in enhancing autocracys
power claims. The paperization mania of the seventeenth-century pri-
kazy, an outgrowth of the preceding centurys move towards a docu-
mentary society, was both product and manufacturer of the belief that
a paper document possessed great power. He who could compose and
dispatch documents felt a certain omniscience that others, non-
endowed in letters, were bound to respect.
The chancellery records therefore make the Muscovite middle-
and low-level officer grades appear a faceless lot, their temperaments
and inclinations unknown to us. The official documents, specifically
edicts, rescripts, and memorandums (sing., pamiat) do not reveal
anything of the officers talents, inclinations, and expectations. These
papers laconically list only names, ranks, unit designations, and
responsibilities to be carried out under the direction of superiors.
Other aspects of these mens service careers are left entirely to our spec-
ulation. Consequently, it is certainly plausible to believe that the
rampant illiteracy ensnaring middle- and lower-ranking officers obli-
gated the government to over-compensate for this through taking
more decision-making responsibilities upon itself.
270 peter b. brown

On the one hand, the centralization of C2 expressed a conservative

mentality, an effort to avoid at all costs risk of failure by field com-
manders given too much freedom of initiative. On the other hand it
took risks of a different sort by promoting one-shot operational plan-
ning by the government, with the government mustering as many
resources as it could and throw them all at once, win or lose, at its
foe. The middle waya low-risk/low-gain strategy involving some
combination of shared central governmental and field commander
planningdoes not seem to have been followed.
It must be emphasized that the choice of centralization of C2 was not
just ideologically driven in the direct sense, predicated upon certain
assumptions about the nature of power under autocracy. It was also a
response to particular military reverses or perceived failures that had
threatened actual de-legitimization of the political system. The difficul-
ties of Muscovite commanders during the Time of Troubles and
General Sheins failure during the Smolensk War had left the govern-
ment looking incompetent and had sparked unrest amongst elite, lesser
social service strata, and commoners alike.
Consideration of past military failures therefore gave the govern-
ment additional reason to maintain tight centralization of C2. By
monopolizing decision-making for itself, the government sought to
minimize the intrusion of cognitive dissonance into its field com-
manders thinking. Cognitive dissonance could befall a commander
whose choice of action or belief is challenged by new situations or
information. In such a case the individual attempts to preserve consist-
encyby actively avoiding situations and information which would
likely increase the dissonance.39 A commander given too much lati-
tude might succumb to his own cognitive dissonance and disregard
or abandon a sound operational plan for unsound (reckless or over-
cautious) action on his own.
Were the centers organs (tsar, Boyar Duma, and chancelleries)
aware that centralization of C2 carried its own costs and risks, and did
they take measures to minimize them? There are discernable instances
in which one element of Moscow-centered C2 acted to correct or over-
ride perceived deficiencies in one of the other two elements, and, in
fact, the three could compete against one another.

39
Robert A. Pois and Philip Langer, Command Failure in War: Psychology and
Leadership (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 122.
 command and control in the russian army 271

Magnate cliques, generally in the Boyar Duma, supplanted the de

facto executive and managerial C2 roles of Tsars Mikhail Fedorovich
and Fedor Alekseevich (167682) during the Smolensk and Russo-
Turkish Wars. During the first two years of the Thirteen Years War,
Aleksei Mikhailovich did the opposite by marginalizing the Boyar
Duma. Later in this conflict, he allowed the Secret Chancellery (prikaz
Velikogo Gosudaria tainykh del) to superintend the Military Chancellery
(Razriad) and the rest of the bureaucracy. The Razriad, for its part,
acted consistently through the seventeenth century to subordinate
other military chancelleries to itself. In all these instances the institu-
tion or person asserting dominance was motivated by misgivings that
other organizations or persons lacked the competence to perform the
requisite C2 tasks. How, then, did these shifts play out in the wars
Muscovy fought in the seventeenth-century, and what do they tell us
about the overall trajectory of Muscovite C2 development before the
reign of Peter the Great?

The Time of Troubles and Its Aftermath, 15981618

The Time of Troubles (Smuta, Smutnoe vremia) is conventionally dated

from Boris Godunovs 1598 enthronement until the 1613 Romanov
election, although some scholars extend it to the 1618 Russo-Polish
Treaty of Deulino terminating the foreign interference in Russia. The
Smuta encompassed a mosaic of military events and C2 practices
sharply in contrast to the C2 style so prevalent later in the seventeenth
century. Overall, C2 centralized modes during the Troubles were
muted, reflecting the atrophy of the Moscow chancelleries and of the
tsars power. Chancellery-generated military mobilization and opera-
tional plans through this period are few;40 consequently there remain

40
The Smuta Razriadnye knigi do portray on-going military mobilization; succes-
sive regimes did very much have a vested interest in keeping the Military Chancellery
afloat (see V.I. Buganov, ed., Razriadnye knigi: 15501636 (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1975;
id, Razriadnye knigi: 15981638 (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1974); id, Razriadnye knigi pos-
lednei chetverti xv-nachala xvii v. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1962). Military documents from
Akty arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsii for Tsar Vasilii Shuiskiis reign (16061610) depict
some bureaucratic involvement; force structures that overallbut not exclusively
were small; troop mobilizations that in general were not large; the dispatching of sala-
ries from Moscow to servicemen in the field; and combat engagement details. See Akty,
sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh rossiiskoi imperii arkheograficheskoiu ekspeditseiu
imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 4 vols., index (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia ii otdeleniia
272 peter b. brown

a whole battery of C2 questions difficult to resolve for lack of data.

C2 narrative for the Smuta era must confine itself to relatively non-
specific assertions.
As the center lost control of the periphery and then of the hinter-
lands, the mobilization base for men and resources shrank. By the time
Vasilii Shuiskii took power in 1606 the financial, material, and human
extraction capabilities of the Military Chancellery, the financial chan-
celleries, and the weapons and material-producing departments had
declined significantly. One must be cautious about blaming this all
upon the failure of the Razriad to instruct and direct other bureaus, for
great fires in Moscow in 1610, 1611, and 1626 nearly destroyed much
of the central chancellery archives that documented chancellery action
during the Smuta; enough survived, however, to show certain trends in
C2 and military operations.
In terms of normative central bureaucratic and supreme executive
control, one of the last hurrahs of the Smuta-bound Muscovite army
was a force of over seventy thousand that Tsar Boris Godunov (1598
1605) in 1604 cobbled together to resist the encroaching First False
Dmitrii (160506). Decision-making was virtually monopolized by
state secretaries and clerks detached from the Military Chancellery
(Razriad) to the 40,000 to 50,000-man army group of Fedor Mstislavskii,
one of Boriss commanders. Despite this stop-loss measure, it was
Mstislavskiis reluctance to go beyond what was explicitly authorized in

sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantseliarii, 1836, 1858), 2: no. 70 (May

1607): 162; no. 71 (May 1607): 16263; no. 76 (June 29, 1607): 169; no. 105 (February
1609): 20607; no. 111 (March 17, 1609): 21314; no. 112 (March 1609): 21415; no.
118 (May 1609): 223; no. 120 (May 23, 1609): 22425; no. 121 (May 1609): 225; no. 122
(May 1609): 22628; no. 123 (June 1609): 22831; no. 124 (June 14, 1609): 231; no. 125
(June 1609): 23133; no. 127 (June 28, 1609): 23536; no. 128 (June 28, 1609): 23640;
no. 130 (July 1609): 241; no. 131 (July 23, 1609): 24142; no. 133 (August 6, 1609): 246;
no. 134 (August 1609): 247; no. 137 (August 1609): 25053; no. 146 (November 1609):
26061; no. 147 (December 1609): 26163; no. 150 (December 1609): 264; no. 156
(January 1610): 268; no. 157 (January 1610): 26869. Some C2 conclusions are infera-
ble from this data.
I discuss the bureaucracys fate during the Time of Troubles in Early Modern
Russian Bureaucracy. Pervasive insecurity and job turbulence affected chancellery
cadres, and after Godunov, pronounced politicization and factionalism became domi-
nant. It is during 1608 when the bureaucracys operational effectiveness went into
sharp decline, the tax collection chancelleries in particular nearly ceasing to perform.
By January 1611 the chancelleries were practically deserted and inactive. The 1610 and
1611 fires destroyed many chancellery archives (Brown, Early Modern Russian
Bureaucracy, 21130).
 command and control in the russian army 273

his orders that contributed to his rout at Novgorod-Severskii (December

1604), at the hands of a much smaller but more flexible army accus-
tomed to quick and coherent executive decision-making. Mstislavskii
had a subsequent briefly fortunate victory at Dobrynichi a month
later, but the tsars army steadily disintegrated over the first few months
of 1605, ending for quite some time any full-fledged, centralized C2
emanating from the capital.41
After the fall of Godunov and the brief reign of the First False
Dmitrii, Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii (16061610) took power. Though he typi-
cally did not personally lead his military forces in combat, Shuiskii
affected a C2 leadership style that was less bureaucratically-filtered and
more personalized and charismatic, reminiscent of the style of military
leadership practiced through the 1400s. The ineffectual rival chancel-
leries Second False Dmitrii set up in 1608 and 1609 testify to the
Second Pretenders insight into the need for his own administrative
apparatus, but there is no meaningful C2 data available from them.
Mstislavskiis uneven record under Boris did not deny him another
rematch, this time in July 1606, under Vasilii Shuiskiis aegis, against
the Bolotnikov rebels. Shuiskiis commander had mustered between
50,000 and 60,000 men for fighting on the southern frontier, though
they were not concentrated in one place. The subsequent history of
Mstislavskiis campaign against Bolotnikov there and operations by
his subordinate commanders Prince I. M. Vorotynskii, Prince Iu.
N.Trubetskoi, and M. A. Nagoi bore strong earmarks of decentralized
execution, command by influence, and mission-type order.42
Chester Dunnings account on the subsequent suppression of the
Bolotnikov Uprising connotes that Mstislavskii and other command-
ers belonging to Vasilii Shuiskiis retinue operated with diminished

41
Chester S.L. Dunning, Russias First Civil War: the Time of Troubles and the
Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2001), 15058, 160, 16580. Dunning reviews the wide dispari-
ties for the quantity of troops in various service categories allocable to Godunov (ibid.,
15057). Historians prefer different translations for the central administrations gan-
glia, the Razriad. I choose Military Chancellery, whereas John L.H. Keep and
Marshall Pole lean towards Military Service Chancellery (John L.H. Keep, Soldiers of
the Tsar. Army and Society in Russia 14621874 [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985], 35; Marshall Poe, The Military Revolution, Administrative Development, and
Cultural Change in Early Modern Russia, Journal of Early Modern History 2, no. 3
(August 1998), 266.
42
See the account of Mstislavskiis troop mobilization and of the July conflict in
Dunning, Russias First Civil War, 27274.
274 peter b. brown

Razriad control. This is because the bureaucracys manpower and

resource base shrank precipitously as the rebels had seized a large
chunk of the realm within the first half-year after Shuiskiis acces-
sion.43 Even after Bolotnikovs denouement in early 1607, Vasilii
Shuiskii never recovered the level of earlier administrative and military
executive control, for the countryside was spinning out of control
and central executive authority was degrading. Small localized
campaignstypically against opposition-held townssmall forces,
less bureaucratic oversight, and less obtrusive centralized C2 character-
ized military operations against a new crop of royal imposters for the
rest of this tsars tenure. V. V. Amelchenko points out that Russian
forces during Shuiskiis reign era were typically not large, numbering
but in the several thousands, and that chancellery direction had
declined. All of this contributed to stronger opportunity for decentral-
ized C2 as centrally-channeled resources and the capital bureaucracys
hold over field commanders slid into abeyance.
There were a few conspicuous exceptions to this. Tsar Vasilii cobbled
together an imposing force in February 1607 to fight the Battle of the
Vyrka River, south of Kaluga. Again in May 1607 he raised a land
armada between 100,000 and 150,000 men (according to contempo-
raries and possibly an overstatement) to besiege rebel-occupied Tula.
A third case of resuscitating the erstwhile model of Muscovite mili-
tarymobilization played out in Spring 1608 when Vasilii Shuiskii del-
egated some 30,000 fighters to his inept brother, Dmitrii, in order for
the latter to do battle at Bolkhov, and 150,000 men to his other, less
forlorn brother, Ivan, to evict rebel ally Sapiehas forces from the Holy
Trinity Monastery north of Moscow.44 Tsar Vasilii was attempting
to recoup the maximum force dispositions of the preceding cen-
tury(V.V. Penskoi gives figures of 110,000 to 120,000 Muscovite sol-
diers in the 1535 campaign against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and
95,000 to 101,000 troops for the 1562 Polotsk siege). But these preten-
sions were episodically realizable, only at the start of his reign, for
the support base for sustained large force mobilization was evaporat-
ing.45 After 1608 his bureaucracy was no longer capable of raising and

43
Ibid, 28196.
44
V.V. Amelchenko, Drevnerusskie rati. Istoricheskie ocherki (Moscow: Voenizdat,
2004), 282311; Dunning, Russias First Civil War, 32226, 329, 34142, 350, 35253,
377, 392, 396, 409.
45
V.V. Penskoi, Voennyi potentsial Rossiiskogo gosudarstva v kontse xvxvi
vekakh: kolichestvennoe izmerenie, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2008, no. 1: 78, 1011.
 command and control in the russian army 275

maintaining such large numbers of troops, and command by plan and

centralized planning were no longer viable options.
The Rzeczpospolitas forces occupied the capital from 1610 into late
1612, and the Poles C2, as was typical for their armies, was a combina-
tion of centralized and decentralized modes, the latter more in evi-
dence.46 The opposing Russian forces, the First and Second National
Levies, had been raised in the provinces and did not have the Moscow
administrative bureaus, for these remained in enemy hands in Moscow.
The Poles attempted to revive the prikazy, but lack of funds, internal
factionalism, and general confusion sidelined them by early 1611. In
an attempt to rival the Polish-controlled Moscow bureaucracy, the
First National Levy strove to build a fledgling chancellery apparatus,
though the Second Levy enjoyed more success in this endeavor.47
Prince Pozharskii exhibited command by direction, and he directly
led the Second National Levys 20,000 to 30,000 motley and poorly-
armed troops.48 To that extent one clear-cut centralized C2 mode was
evident. His command style was personalistic, charismatic, and horta-
torical. But the resources, the institutional base, and the know-how
were lacking for meaningful centralized C2 in accordance with earlier,
established practice. The dearth of resources, namely provincial loca-
tion and paucity of institutions and amanuenses, had forced dire
economy in outlook upon Pozharskii, compelling him to entertain
innovative command styles previously throttled. The Second National
Levy was likewise compelled to follow decentralized C2 modes.49

46
A.V. Pavlov and P.V. Sedov remind us in their review article of B.N. Floria, Polsko-
litovskaia interventsiia v Rossii i russkoe obshchestvo (Moscow: Indrik, 2005) that the
members of various Russian upper social strata who supported Wadysaw had
complex motives for doing so (A.P. Pavlov, P.V. Sedov, B.N. Floria. Polsko-litovskaia
interventsiia v Rossii i russkoe obshchestvo, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2007, no. 6:
18081).
47
Brown, Early Modern Bureaucracy, 21130. Despite the successive blows at the
prikazy, the Smuta did not introduce fundamental institutional changes to the central
administration. Nearly thirty years later, D.V. Liseitsev in his Evoliutsiia prikaznoi
sistemy Moskovskogo gosudarstva v epokhu Smuty, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2006,
no. 1: 315 discusses the same information that I did and reaches the same conclu-
sions. I have no reason to believe he knew of my work.
48
Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 168. Pozharskiis earlier service career
was unexceptional (M.P. Lukichev, D.M. Pozharskii posle 1612 g., in M.P. Lukichev,
Boiarskie knigi xvii veka. Trudy po istorii i istochnikovedeniiu (Moscow: Drevlekhranil-
ishche, 2004), 24347.
49
Dunning, Russias First Civil War, 43042; A.V. Shishov, Minin i Pozharskii
(Moscow: Voenizdat, 1990), 89131; Tomasz Bohun, Moskwa 1612 (Warsaw: Dom
Wydawniczy Bellona, 2005), 171242.
276 peter b. brown

The final phase of Smuta-era C2 began with the election of Tsar

Mikhail Romanov and lasted until the 1617 and 1618 Stolbovo and
Deulino Treaties ending hostilities. In this period the chancellery sys-
tem rapidly recovered and the number of bureaus and personnel
increased.50 Though the new Romanov regime had gone a distance in
resuscitating the earlier level of Razriad activity, it would take until the
1630s for it to achieve the military chancelleries performance bench-
mark and fully reassert centralized C2 pretensions. The spread of mili-
tary governor (gorodovoi voevoda) administration in the late 1610s in
Muscovy laid part of the foundation for this, as did the governments
work in the 1620s to rebuild the administrative infrastructure in toto
by reestablishing its central and provincial files and reasserting its
authority in the countryside.51
The administrative infrastructural deficiencies remaining in the
period from 1613 to 1618 did limit military mobilization, combat
effectiveness, and C2 centralization. Military actions were mostly small
engagements involving rural pacification efforts against those Smuta-
disaffected elements still creating turmoil and engaging in brigandage.
In 1616 the Russians had 1,327 fighters facing Smolensk and nearly
6,200 men in two locations elsewhere on the western borderlands.
Nearly 13,000 troops arced about the southern frontier, facing the
Crimean Tatars, and over 3,000 guarded the northern towns.52 These
servitors were all on active duty and approximated 25,000about 25%
of the figure for the forces on active duty when Aleksei Mikhailovich

50
Even though the Smuta had heaped physical abuse upon the central administra-
tion, which was not to recover fully for some time, it still could generate impressive
amounts of paperwork in the years immediately following Mikhails election. See the
lengthy diplomatic report, The Foreign Affairs Chancellery Records Book on Russian-
English Relations from 1614 to 1617, in D.V. Liseitsev, Posolskaia kniga po sviaziam
Rossii s Angliei 16141617 gg. (Moscow: RAN, 2006): 36276. See also D.V. Liseitsev,
Posolskii prikaz v epokhu Smuty, 2 vols. (Moscow: RAN, 2003).
51
I. Ia. Gurliand, Prikaz sysknykh del, in Sbornik statei po istorii prava, posviash-
chennyi M.F. Vladimirskomu-Budanovu, ed. M.N. Iasinksii (Kiev, 1904), 91; P.P.
Smirnov, Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaia borba do serediny xvii veka, 2 vols. (Moscow,
Leningrad: AN SSSR, 194748), 1: 362; S.F. Platonov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, 9th ed.
(Petrograd, 1915), 33949; N.S. Chaev, K voprosu o syske i prikreplenii krestian v
moskovskom gosudarstve v kontse xvi veka, IZ, 6 (1940): 15253; S.B. Veselovskii,
Soshnoe pismo. Izsledovanie po istorii kadastra i pososhnogo oblozheniia moskovskogo
gosudarstva, 2 vols. (Moscow, 191516), 2: 229.
52
Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 169. This is also the impression discern-
ible from E.I. Kobzareva, Novgorod mezhdu Stokgolmom i Moskvoi (16131617 gg.),
Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2006, no. 5: 1628.
 command and control in the russian army 277

invaded Belarus in 1654. The Muscovites in 1617 and 1618 mobilized

and routinely threw into battle against the Poles and Swedes forces in
the neighborhood of 2,000 to 6,000 men, diminutive complements in
comparison to what would follow later in the century.53
The Kniga Seunchei 16131619 gg. records a plethora of small-scale
actions (rural pacification efforts against non-reconciled social ele-
ments or against Crimean Tatar bands) but only a few larger battles
against Commonwealth forces, e.g., 3,000 Muscovite warriors on
October 16, 1616 and 12,000 on January 28, 1617.54 In mid-1614 B.
Lykov sallied forth from the capital with a force of Muscovite troops,
joined by at least 10,000 service cossacks.55
Most operations involved dispersion of forces from a small core
number of troops in order to fight large numbers of small engage-
ments, and hard-wired centralized C2 modes were not feasible for this.
Since Mikhail Fedorovich lacked the charisma, drive, and know-how
that Vasilii Shuiskii and Pozharskii had exhibited, his government
would have to give greater rein to their generals to exercise decentral-
ized execution, command by influence, and probably even mission-type
order. This worked well enough to produce the peace treaties of 1617
1618. With a smaller resource base and diminished central oversight,
Russian armies during the Time of Troubles had often to cope on their
own. Militarily, their overall record, taking into account their limita-
tions was not bad at all.

The Smolensk War, 16321634

The Smolensk War embroiled Muscovite forces in their shortest and

least successful campaign against a seventeenth-century Western
opponent. Launched by the Russians to reconquer Smolensk, the
Dnepr River entrepot which Muscovy seized initially in 1514 only to
lose it during the Smuta, the Smolensk War56 had limited territorial

53
Andrzej Adam Majewski, Moskwa 16171618 (Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy
Bellona, 2006), 87, 107, 10911, 113, 127, 135, 13738.
54
Kniga Seunchei 16131619 gg. Dokumenty razriadnogo prikaza o pokhode A.
Lisovskogo (osen-zima 1615 g.), eds. I. Gral, I.A. Tikhoniuk (Moscow; Warsaw:
Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1995), 19123; E.I. Kobzareva, Shvedskaia okkupatsiia
Novgoroda v period Smuty xvii veka (Moscow: RAN, 2005), 33031, 334, 358.
55
Kobzareva, Shvedskaia okkupatsiia, 372.
56
Daniel Stone, The Polish-Lithuanian State, 13861795 (Seattle, London: University
of Washington Press, 2001), 47, 141.
278 peter b. brown

scope for operational planning. In fact, the Russians had but one goal:
retaking this fortress city and securing Russian control over the upper
Dnepr. The Smolensk fortress rebuilt by the Muscovites in the 1590s
was the largest in Europe. Over four miles in length, this citadels cren-
ellated walls, from 10 to 23 feet thick, thrust upwards from 26 to 40 feet
and nested 38 towers.57
The Smolensk campaign was mostly a war of position, and its C2
reflected this. Since less territory (in comparison to the 165455
Belarussian campaign described below) was encompassed in battle
orders, there was less opportunity to disperse command authority and
localize decision-making autonomy. Decentralized C2 options for
commanders were more circumscribed than in the Time of Troubles.
The Smolensk campaign is noteworthy in a number of respects. It is
the first campaign against the Poles for which ample documentation
has survived because it postdated the great Moscow fires; it is the first
seventeenth century campaign for which the central government,
rebuilt from the Troubles, was completely functional; and it was subse-
quently treated as a shake-down cruise, its shortcomings studied for
lessons to prepare for the much larger conflict Russia launched two
decades later.
Boyar M. B. Shein and A. V. Izmailov were the ill-starred Muscovite
commanders who eventually became sacrificial lambs. Their order of
battle boiled down to ringing Smolensk with sophisticated assault
trenches and siege instruments, mounting frontal assault of Smolensk,
and conducting mobile flanking maneuvers against their opponents.
But faulty Muscovite logistics and daringly artful Commonwealth
counter-attacks, including a long-range strike, were among the several
factors undermining the Russian order of battle.58 Confined territorial
objectives and tailor-made rules of engagement had required a C2
heavily emphasizing command by plan, command by direction, and cen-
tralized planning, as is apparent from the campaign narrative docu-
mented in E. Stashevskiis Smolenskaia voina and in Akty moskovskogo
gosudarstva.59

57
Iu. G. Ivanov, Velikie kreposti Rossii (Smolensk: Rusich, 2004), 17591.
58
Carol B. Stevens, Russias Wars of Emergence 14601730 (Harlow, England: Person
Longman, 2007), 131; Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe,
7476.
59
E. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina 16321634 gg. Organizatsiia i sostoianie Mosko-
vskoi armii (Kiev: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1919); AMG, 3. This is borne out by the
 command and control in the russian army 279

Some reasons for the collapse of the Muscovite campaign at Smo-

lensk included the ineptitude of the old model service cavalry in cover-
ing the recently initialized Russian new model infantry, difficulties
in coordinating subordinate commanders operations, insufficient
numerical advantage (32,000 men proved not enough), incompetence
in countering the Poles skillful flanking maneuvers, and the inability
to protect the now-neglected southern frontier from Crimean Tatar
assaulta successful diversionary maneuver against the Russians by
the Poles fair-weather allies.60 Shein and Izmailov became the fall guys,
and their trial, conviction, and decapitations bore all the markings of a
kangaroo court, with church complicity to boot. Habsburg envoy
Adam Olearius reported on their execution at some length; Shein was
executed after the Patriarch treacherously promised him that he would
be spared:
Shein was persuaded that he was being taken out only for show, only
to let the people see the Grand Princes intention, and that he would
not be executed; as soon as he had lain down, a stay would come, fol-
lowed by clemency, and the people would be satisfied. Comforted, and
full of hope that was reinforced by the Patriarch, Shein came forward
and lay prostrate on the ground. The executioner was then given the

128 documents in AMG for 1633 alone. These seldom address command procedures
explicitly, but they do convey a picture of them indirectly. These materials consist in
part of petitions and voevody rescripts on salary and other compensation, call-ups of
upper service class strata and military units, and the capitals requests that command-
ers prepare lists of the weaponry equipping servicemen of all ranks and the grain stores
available. They 1633 documents also contain (1) papers on the rounding up of middle
service class deserters and service Cossacks and Tatars and returning them to Smolensk
(no. 478 [January 18]: 44041; no. 578 [October 28]: 54142; no. 591 [December 6]:
54850; no. 556 [September 30]: 52830; no. 578 [October 28]: 54142; no. 591
[December 6]: 54850; no. 594 [December 17]: 55152); (2) reports on the dispatch to
Moscow, for Razriad interrogation, of Russian servicemen couriering the Smolensk
campaign general M.B. Sheins rescripts on battlefield information and other materials
(no. 480 [January 22]: 442, no. 495 [February 15]: 45859, no. 496 [February 16]: 459
60, no. 502 [March 11]: 47172, no. 506 [March 23]: 47879, no. 511 [April 5]: 48384,
no. 513 [April 13]: 48788, no. 514 [April 14]: 48889, no. 516 [April 16]: 492, no. 522
[May 5]: 49798, no. 523 [May 9]: 49899, no. 524 [May 11]: 499); and (3) recruitment
and draft call announcements (no. 546 [September 8]: 51718, no. 548 [September 12]:
52223).
60
Lidia Korczak, et al., Dzieje Kresw (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Kluszczyski, 2007),
8687; Stevens, Russias Wars of Emergence, 12832; Davies, Warfare, State and Society
on the Black Sea Steppe, 7276. The Commonwealths forces, including both their
citadels complement and relief columns, totaled nearly 30,000 (Dzieje Kresw, 86);
Andrzej Jezierski, Andrzej Wyczaski, eds. Historia Polski w liczbach. Pastwo.
Spoeczestwo. Tom I (Warsaw: Zakad Wydawnictw Statystycznych, 2003), 44.
280 peter b. brown

signal to strike forthwith, which he did, and with several blows, he cut off
Sheins head.61
Over-centralized C2 was another factor in the failure of the Smolensk
campaign. Evgenii Stashevskii viewed this campaign as one aiming at
taking and reinforcing towns and borders for positional warfare. This
was pursued through centralized C2 and the issue from Moscow of
detailed orders for besiegement and siege defense to field command-
ers. The latter were for the most part already accustomed to defensive
positional warfare or to governing as town governors, i.e., were accus-
tomed to mechanically implementing detailed working orders (nakazy)
from Moscow. But this mentality left them less able to visualize differ-
ent command perspectives, ones that might have nudged them to take
more initiative and assume greater personal responsibility; and the
campaign exposed contingencies their instructions from Moscow, no
matter how detailed, had failed to foresee.62
For example, in September 1633 the tsar, having been informed by
Shein of an imminent Polish-Lithuanian and Zaporozhian attack on a
number of Russian-held townsincluding Dorogobuzh, 48 miles east
of Smolensk sent the two voevody of Dorogobuzh very explicit
instructions on how to prepare the defense of Dorogobuzh. They
detailed how to fortify the town, go on alert, post sentries, assign artil-
lerymen to their guns, assemble the inhabitants of Dorogobuzh district
and move them into the town, send these folk to siege posts, gather
intelligence about the Lithuanians and Ukrainian Cossacks, and how
to write Shein upon implementation of all these complicated instruc-
tions.63 What is striking here is that from the start Shein could not
himself communicate directly with these two other commanders; he

61
Samuel H. Baron, trans., ed. The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 15354.
62
Stashevskii does not come right out to state these conclusions, but his narrative
points in their direction (see Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina, 23388). Relying upon
Stashevskii, Brian Davies does imply a certain mobility to Sheins troops as they did
seize, before investing Smolensk, more than twenty towns (Brian L. Davies, Muscovy
at War and Peace, in The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume I. From Early Rus to
1689, ed. Maureen Perrie [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 491.) Most
recently, a study on the first part of the conflict has centered on analyzing the success-
ful Muscovite strategy of conquering towns other than Smolensk and the importance
of this (A.V. Malov, Nachalnyi period Smolenskoi voiny na napravlenii Luki Velikie-
Nevel-Polotsk [do 3 iiunia 1633 g.]), in Pamiati Lukicheva. Sbornik statei po istorii i
istochnikovedeniiu, ed. Iu.M. Eskin (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2006), 12472.
63
AMG, 1, no. 550 (September 19, 1633): 523.
 command and control in the russian army 281

already knew the threat they would be confronting but could not issue
his own orders to them to prepare for siege. He had been forced to
waste time reporting his intelligence up to Moscow so the tsar could
issue his own orders for siege alert to the Dorogobuzh governors. This,
even though Dorogobuzh lay much nearer to Sheins headquarters
than to Moscow and even though Shein knew more details than
Moscow about developments in the Dorogobuzh area. Meanwhile
Moscow treated the two commanders at Dorogobuzh as incapable of
consulting with Shein and exercising their own judgments.
Shein, as was true for other Russian commanders in the Smolensk
and Thirteen Years War, was hobbled in other ways. He had over thirty
thousand men under his command but was expected to take time out
to make detailed report whenever a few score apprehended deserters
were returned to duty; he even had to report their criminal histories
and incarceration histories.64 He and other senior field commanders
were inundated with paperwork, much of it on comparatively trivial
matters. This must have left them less free to improvise in response to
new developments. From Moscows point of view, however, such
stove-piping of communications was a fail-safe measure, a way of
preventing commander errors perceived to have derailed at times
operations during the Time of Troubles. In fact, the problems con-
fronting the Smuta Russian generals reflected less upon their own
shortcomings and more upon bizarre domestic ones over which they
had no control.
Moscow did draw some lessons from Sheins defeat at Smolensk: the
need next time to penetrate deeper into Smolensks hinterland so as to
encircle it and deny it any reinforcement; the need to maintain greater
numerical superiority over the enemy; the need to improve the armys
logistical tail; the need to field more new model units and improve
their combat effectiveness by better integrating them with the rest
of the army; and the need to provide centralization on the spot, within
the theater of operations. Subsequent steps to achieve these goals
included the construction of the Belgorod fortified line, B.I. Morozovs
reforms of the later 1640s, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovichs efforts to acquire
his own command skills, and resumed investment in hiring foreign
mercenaries and reforming new model units.65 All of these efforts

64
AMG, 1 (May 17, 1633): 501.
65
Stevens, Russias Wars of Emergence, 13338, 15153; Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar,
8185; Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 18689; J.T. Kotilaine, In Defense of
282 peter b. brown

strove to upgrade large-unit coordination, logistics, and officerly skills.

But Moscow expected to accomplish these goals through strengthen-
ing centralized C2 modes at the expense of decentralized modes. And
memory of the scapegoating of Shein and Izmailov provided a power-
ful deterrent to commander experimentation with any decentralized
C2 posture

The Thirteen Years War, 16541667

The Thirteen Years War immersed Russia in a generalized Eastern

European conflict ultimately stretching from Riga to the Crimean
Peninsula, a distance of over 900 miles. Provoking this three-phased
conflagration were Muscovys unfulfilled intent to seize Smolensk,
control the Dnepr River, and ally with the Ukrainian Cossacks in their
six-year-old struggle against the Poles. Muscovy declared war against
the Rzeczpospolita in October 1653 and the January through March
1654 Pereislavl agreements cemented the alliance between Muscovy
and the Hetmanshchyna.66

the Realm: Russian Arms Trade and Production in the Seventeenth and Early
Eighteenth Century, in The Military and Society in Russia 14501917, 74; Brown, Tsar
Aleksei Mikhailovich, 11945.
66
Dymitri Zlepko, Der groe Kosakenaufstand 1648 gegen die polnische Herrschaft.
Die Rzeczpospolita und das Kosakentum in der ersten Phase des Aufstandes (Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz,1980), 2580; Andreas Kappeler, Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1994), 6067; L.V. Zaborovskii, Rossiia, Rech Pospolita i Shvetsiia
v seredine xvii v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 1660; Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of
Ukraine (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 195216; Introduction:
Poland-Lithuania in the Mid-Seventeenth Century, in Robert Frost, After the Deluge.
Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 16551660 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 125; Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: a Multiethnic
History, trans. Alfred Clayton (Harlow, England: Longman, 2001), 6065; Zbigniew
Wjcik, Dyplomacja Polska w okresie Wojen Drugiej Poowy xvii w. (16481699), in
Historia Dyplomacji. Tom II. 15721795, ed. Zbigniew Wjcik (Warsaw: Pastwowe
Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), 16377, 18999. For a collection of articles and
excerpted book passages of heterogeneous views, by Ukrainian and Russian historians
over the generations, on the Pereiaslav agreements, see O.I. Hurzhii and T.V. Chukhlib,
eds., Pereiaslavska Rada. Ochyma istorykiv movoiu dokumentiv (Kiev: Ukraina, 2003)
and Pavlo Sokhan, et al, eds., Pereiaslavska Rada 1654 roku (Istoriografiia ta doslidzhe-
nyia) (Edmonton, Alberta; Kiev: NAN, 2003). The doyen of specialists on the Cossack
Rebellion remains Mykhailo Hrushevsky. See his History of Ukraine-Rus. Volume 8.
The Cossack Age, 16261650, trans. Marta Daria Olynyk, eds. Serhii Plokhy, Frank
Sysyn (Edmonton, Alberta and Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian
Studies Press, n.d.) and History of Ukraine-Rus. Volume 9, Book 1. The Cossack Age,
16501653, trans. Bohdan Struminski, eds. Serhii Plokhy, Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton,
Alberta and Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2005).
 command and control in the russian army 283

The first phase of the war lasted from 1654 to 1658. It was marked by
successful Russian campaigns against the Poles and Lithuanians in
1654 and 1655 and against the Swedes in 1656, and by Russias ability
through 1658 to keep its conquests intact. Far less fortuitous for the
Russians was the second phase lasting from 1659 to 1663. During this
interval, the Commonwealth and its allies repeatedly routed Muscovite
forces, nearly driving them from all their earlier Belarussian and
Ukrainian conquests. Furthermore, the Swedes in this period forced
the Russians to cede many of their captured territories. The third and
final phase stretched from 1663 until 1667, taken up by desultory nego-
tiations between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania, and culminated in
the January 1667 Andrusovo Armistice between the two sides.67 The
Russians and their Ukrainian allies attacked on three fronts: a northern
(Western Dvina) one under V.P. Sheremetevs command, a central
(Northern Dnepr) front under A.N. Trubetskoi and Ia.K. Cherkasskii,
and a southern (Western Ukrainian) front under Bohdan Khmelnytskyj
and A. V. Buturlin.68

67
So far, there is not a single monograph-length treatment on the Thirteen Years
War. There is still a mounting English-language literature on the subject. In chrono-
logical order: C. Bickford OBrien, Muscovy and the Ukraine. From the Pereiaslavl
Agreement to the Truce of Andrusovo, 16541667 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1963), 28131; Peter B. Brown, Early Modern Russian
Bureaucracy, 395479; id, The Routinization of Charisma in Seventeenth-Century
Russian Bureaucracy. Studies on Russian Elite, Administrative, and Military History,
Unpublished manuscript, 1998, 107322 (Muscovite Military Leadership in the Early
Part of the Thirteen Years War: the Belarussian Campaign of 1654 and 1655); Robert
I. Frost, The Northern Wars 15581721 (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000), 15691;
Brown, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 11945; Stevens, Russias Wars of Emergence, 147
86; Davies, Muscovy at War and Peace, 50006; id, Warfare, State and Society on the
Black Sea Steppe, 10652.
The number of Russian-, Polish-, Ukrainian-, and Belarussian-language mono-
graphs dealing in their entirety or partially with some or all of the Thirteen Years War
is large. Here are some prominent works: A.I. Baranovich, ed., Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s
Rossiei 16541954. Sbornik statei (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1954); A. N. Maltsev, Rossiia i
Belorussiia v seredine xvii veka (Moscow: MGU, 1974); L. Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska.
R. 16541655 (Warszawa: Nakad Gebethnera i Wolffa, 1910); Henadz Sahanovich,
Neviadomaia vaina 16541667 (Minsk: Navuka i tekhnika, 1995).
68
N.I. Kostomarov, G.F. Karpov, eds. Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii iuzhnoi i zapad-
noi Rossii, sobrannye i izdannye arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu (hereafter AIuZR),
15 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia P.A. Kulisha, tipografiia Edvarda Pratsa, tipografiia
V.V. Prattsa, et al., 186392), 10, no. 15, ii: 67578; Vitebskaia uchenaia arkhivnaia
kommissiia, Trudy vitebskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii (hereafter TVUAK), 1 vol.
(Vitebsk: Tipografiia Nasl. M.B. Neimana, 1910), 1:1; A.N. Maltsev, Voina za
Belorussiiu i osvobozhdenie Smolenska v 1654 g., IZ, 37 (1951): 12543; R.M. Zotov,
Voennaia istoriia rossiiskogo gosudarstva, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Aleksandra
Smirdina, 1839), 1: 189. Paul Bushkovitch provides a compelling analysis of how
284 peter b. brown

The Thirteen Years War tested Muscovite C2 as never before and

exposed the strengths and weaknesses of its centralized C2 model.
Initially, The Russians performed most ably in investing Smolensk and
the fortified towns of Eastern Belarus (e.g., Orsha, Kopys, Shklov,
Mogilev, Staryi Bykhov), as these places were right by the Dnepr River,
Muscovys military supply artery, and thereforewere provisioned with-
out too much difficulty from Viazma, the Russians principal logistical
base. The none-too-effective Belarussian troops of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania manned these places,69 and the Russians were able to hem
them in without hardship. Under such circumstances centralized C2
did not place the Muscovites at disadvantage.
The Russians in 1654 and 1655 usually enjoyed imposing if not stag-
gering superiority in materiel and manpower, and their men acquitted
themselves well enough in set-piece combat. This was noticeable in
their attacks against Commonwealth fortresses against which Musco-
vite artillery time and again proved its mettle. Centralized command
was provided not from far-off Moscow but from the front, where Tsar
Alexei was personally present, overseeing the Smolensk siege with

genealogy and personal rivalries affected Alekseis appointing his top generals for the
1654 offensive (Paul Bushkovitch, The Politics of Command in the Army of Peter the
Great, in Reforming the Tsars Army. Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter
the Great to the Revolution, eds. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Bruce W.
Menning [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 25558). Some flavor of the
role that informal ties between chancellery officials and senior- and middle-ranking
members of the Moscow service group can be had from O.V. Novokhatko, Upravlentsy
srednego zvena v xvii veke: neformalnye kontakty sluzhilykh po otechestvu i prika-
znykh, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2005, no. 3: 15867, reminding us that what hap-
pened behind the scenes had vital impact upon battlefield outcomes.
69
For an estimation of Belarussian fighting abilities, see Jan Paseks jaded account in
Jan Pasek, The Memoirs of Jan Chryzostom z Goslawic Pasek, trans., ed. Maria A.J.
wiecicka (New York and Warsaw: Kosciuszko Foundation and Polish State Publishers,
1978). For an overview of the Lithuanian military of this era and its responsiveness to
the outbreak of the Thirteen Years War, see Darius Baronas, Wojskowo, in Kultura
Wielkiego Ksistwa Litewskiego. Analizy i Obrazy, eds. Vytautas Aliauskus, et al.
(Cracow: Towarzystwo Autorw i Wydawcw Prac Naukowych, 2006), 87884; Mikola
Ermalovich, Belaruskaia dziarzhava Vialikae Kniastva Litoskae (Minsk: Bellitfond,
2003), 37695; H.M. Sahanovich, Voiska Vialikaha Kniastva Litoskaha xvixvii stst.
(Minsk: Navuka i tekhnika, 1994). For a Belarussian point of view on the wars effects
in Belarus, see Sahanovich, Neviadomaia vaina. For a perspective on how parts of east-
ern Poland (the Crown) fared during the periods of Khmelnytskyj and the Thirteen
Years War, see Jerzy Motylewicz, Spoeczestwo Przemyla w xvi i xvii Wieku (Rzeszw:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2005), 16574 and Robert Kozyrski,
Sejmik Szlachecki Ziemi Chemskiej 16481717 (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL,
2006), 22028.
 command and control in the russian army 285

his forceful and charismatic command leadership in full swing and

implementing marvelously all three types of centralized command
and control. Thanks to his decently organized and mobile command
headquarters, which included some of the Boyar Duma and his extraor-
dinary amanuensis Secret Chancellery State Secretary Dementii Bash-
makov, Aleksei conducted the Belarussian campaign with alacrity.70
The Muscovite war machine was at its height, and the contrast to the
Smolensk War was sharp.
In summer and autumn of 1654 the three Belarussian fronts had over
100,000 Russian troops and Ukrainian Cossacks committed against
the beleaguered Lithuanian forces, which probably numbered no more
than 20,000 to 30,000, declining to around 10,000 by the 165455
winter. Usually no more than 10,000 to 20,000 of the Russian and
Ukrainian troops were committed to battle at one time.71 The number
of troops the defenders typically had at their disposal during the
numerous sieges of 1654 and 1655 were several thousands at most;
Russian forces enjoyed ratios of as high as 20:1 at Smolensk and 17:1 at
Staryi Bykhov.72
At the outset of the Thirteen Years War, Aleksei envisioned one
operational theater extending from the Baltic to the Black Seas. In
preparation for this conflict, he became personally involved in the
details. This meant supervising the bureaucracy and the army in such
matters as march route and bivouac logistical provision (grain and

70
See Brown, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich.
71
AIuZR, 14: 46870; Zotov, Voennaia istoriia rossiiskogo gosudarstva, 1: 18890;
TVUAK,1:1; Maltsev, Voina za Belorussiiu, 129; BEF, 2: 108; ZORSA, 2: 72527; Jan
Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej do roku 1864 (Warsaw: Ministerstwo obrony naro-
dowej, 1978), 224; id, Materiay do zagadnienia organizacji i liczebnoci armii koron-
nej w latach 16551660, in Studia i materiay do historii wojskowoci, 491, 497, 499;
Upravlenie vilenskogo uchebnogo okruga, Arkheograficheskii sbornik dokumentov
otnosiashchikhsia k istorii severozapadnoi Rusi, izdavaemyi pri upravlenii vilenskogo
uchebnogo okruga, 14 vols. (Vilna: Pechatnia gubernskogo pravleniia, pechatnia A.G.
Syrkina, pechatnia O. Bliumovicha, et. al., 18671904), 14: xxvii, xxx. For an overview
of the seventeenth-century Russian army, see Istoriia russkoi armii i flota (Moscow:
Obrazovanie, 1911), 6879; Jzef Andrzej Gierowski, Rzeczpospolita w dobie zotej
wolnoci (16481763) (Cracow: Oficyna Wydawnicza, 2004), 4749. See Ivan Tyktor,
Istoriia Ukrainskoho Vijska (Lviv, 1936; 1992 reprint), 24288.
72
BEF, 2, no. 55: 84; 2, no. 70: 10203; Pamiatniki, izdannye vremennoiu kommis-
sieiu dlia razbora drevnikh aktov, vysochaishe uchrezdennoiu pri kievskom voennom,
podolskom i volynskom general-gubernatore (hereafter PVK), 4 vols. (Kiev: Univer-
sitetskaia tipografiia, 184559), 3: 8996; Jsef Andrzej Gierowski, Rzeczpospolita
w Dobie Zotej Wolnoci (16481763) (Cracow: Oficyna Wydawnicza, 2004), 4749.
See Tyktor, Istoriia Ukrainskoho Vijska, 24288.
286 peter b. brown

weaponry) and in negotiating to obtain and keep as coalition partner

the Hetmanshchyna, which had its own agenda in the struggle against
Poland-Lithuania.73 Aleksei personally led at the front one prong of his
forces in the Smolensk siege, lasting from July to September 1654.74
In all of the above, either through directly personal command or
by transmitting intricate scripted orders to the bureaucracy and to
his front-line commanders, Aleksei was a text-book case of command
by plan, command by direction, and centralized planning; moreover,
he heeded well the six C2 constituents of command leadership, com-
mand structure, situational awareness, coherent and lucidly communi-
cated orders, synchronized plan execution, and unity of effort and
leveraging of mission partners. In his two years at the front during the
highly productive Belarussian campaign, thus he kept a portion of the
Boyar Duma in the field near him, relied heavily upon the Secret
Chancellery, and maintained a series of field headquarters relocated
frequently to better track the battlefront and diminish communication
time with his generals.
Aleksei wrote out agenda of campaign business; consulted with his
elite at the front line, with generals and non-military people alike; and
compiled written questions to which he wished input from his coterie.
Above all else he was a superb military administrator, who, like Emperor
Paul and Joseph Stalin, had a compulsion for churning out directives.
Of the fifteen edicts in 1654 and 1655 written in his name and
published in Akty moskovskogo gosudarstva (a small portion of all the
military edicts he issued in this period), twelve were written from his
encampments at the front. His C2 skills showed him to be a compe-
tent and domineering executive with managerial flair, organizational
prowess, and an omnivorous hunger to know everything. At times he
was so obtrusive as to intervene in the disposition even of small units,
as in April 1655 when he instructed A.L. Ordyn-Nashchokin to inte-
grate into his army 100 lower-service class cossacks detailed from
V.P. Sheremetevs forces.75
Tsar Aleksei also bullied his subordinates with temper spasms,
threats, and blandishing of punishments. This intimidated his senior as
well as junior commanders into accepting command by plan, command

73
Brown, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 12021, 126, 130.
74
Maltsev, Voina za Belorussiiu, 141.
75
Brown, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 12729, 13234.
 command and control in the russian army 287

by direction, and centralized planning. How much they resented this

and demurred we do not know, for even literate commanders would
have refrained from expressing misgivings about their commander-in-
chief and his judgment in their private correspondence.
But foreshadowing of serious problems with the tsars command and
control style traceable to the Aleksei C2 approach, was already in
evidence. An example is the summer-autumn 1654 conduct of Boyar
V. P. Sheremetev, Northern Front commander during Alekseis 1654
55 Belarussian Campaign, who displayed excessive caution if not out-
right incompetence in his movement through northern Belarus. After
capturing Nevel with little or no loss on June 1, 1654, the second day
of siege, Sheremetev would not push on to seize nearby Polotsk, though
no Commonwealth forces were stationed there. He tarried in Nevel for
no reason other than for not yet having received orders from Aleksei to
move ahead. Sheremetev finally did proceed towards Polotsk, sixty
miles away, which surrendered on the second day of the siege, June 17.
One of his subordinates, Zhdanko Kondyrev, urged him to press on to
Vitebsk, another sixty miles distant, but Sheremetev broke camp for
Vitebsk only after two months had passed. During this time he had
made no move because the tsar evidently had not authorized him to
do so.
On August 21 and 31, 1654, Alekseis headquarters ordered V.P.
Sheremetev to attack Vitebsk through tunneling and arson and find a
way to force its inhabitants to surrender without risking a costly storm
assault. Sheremetev moved his Russo-Ukrainian army into position
before Vitebsk in late August or early September and followed his
instructions to the letter, but with such excessive caution Kondyrev
complained he was squandering opportunities to seize Vitebsk with
little or no opposition.76 On September 14 the tsar ordered Sheremetev
to launch an all-out assault against Vitebsk with his 20,000 men and

76
NN 212: 9495; TVUAK, 1:2; Beliaev, I.S., ed., Boiarin V.P. Sheremetev pod
Vitebskom v 1654 g. Russkii arkhiv, 1914, no. 10: 14954; Sheremetev pod Vitebskom,
15052; Arkheograficheskaia ekspeditsiia, akademiia nauk, Dopolneniia k aktam
istoricheskim, sobrannye i izdannye arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu, 12 vols., index.
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiia ii otdeleniia sobstvennoi Ego imperatorskogo velichestva
kantseliarii, tipografiia Eduarda Pratsa, tipografiia V.V. Pratsa, 184675), 3, no. 123:
52829. For an account of the audacious and overly complicated 1646 Crimean cam-
paign into which the otherwise nominally competent Kondyrev was thrust, see Davies,
Warfare, State, and Society, 96. The Boyar V.P. Sheremetev document, presented by
Beliaev, I discovered in 1982 in the Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
It is truly a rare find, and one of the most remarkable seventeenth-century official
288 peter b. brown

twenty guns. But the citadel fell only on November 22, after fourteen
weeks of siege.
V.P. Sheremetevs conduct is a good illustration of defensive pro-
crastination, an exaggerated awareness of the threat of serious losses
should one elect an alternative plan and lack of hope of finding a solu-
tion that would mitigate risk.77 Kondyrevs report shows Sheremetevs
advisors acting as a posturing in-group given to self-reinforcing con-
sensus-seeking and weak justifications to protect Sheremetev from
having to face unpalatable facts and agonizing choices. Sheremetev
and his advisors frequently engaged in back-peddling; Sheremetev
would parley long with subordinates to undercut the immediacy of the
message sent him from Aleksei. The reason for such conduct was not
only the personality of an ageing and irascible general but the fact that
the tsars C2 style placed enormous responsibility upon Sheremetev.
But Aleksei did so without granting him the freedom to make his own
judgments; and, since no central planning could anticipate all subse-
quent developments, Sheremetev had to seek refuge in delay, contriv-
ing new rationalizations to justify delay and searching for cover in
group-think.78
Interestingly, Sheremetev had at one point tried to display some ini-
tiative by trying to affect a speedier victory through an assault of his
own design. This was prior to receipt of the September 14 instruction.79

records I have ever uncovered, for it reveals at length the thoughts and intentions of
main military actors involved.
77
Irving L. Janis, Leon Mann, Decision Making. A Psychological Analysis of Conflict,
Choice, and Commitment (New York, London: the Free Press, 1977), 109.
78
Attributes of group-think which encourage timidity and self-reinforcing ration-
alization that can produce planning disasters include:
1. An illusion of invulnerability.
2. Collective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings.
3. An unquestioned belief in the groups inherent morality.
4. Stereotyped views of rivals and enemies as too evil or too weak or stupid to parley
with.
5. Direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of
the groups stereotypes, illusions, or commitments.
6. Self-censorship of deviations from the apparent group consensus.
7. A shared illusion of unanimity, partly resulting from this self-censorship and
augmented by the false assumption that silence implies consent.
8. The emergence of self-appointed mindguardsmembers who protect the group
from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency. Janis and
Mann, Decision Making, 13032.
79
Sheremetev pod Vitebskom, 153; AMG, 2, no. 1160: 68283; Sinbirskii sbornik.
Istoricheskaia chast. Vol. 1 (Moscow: Tipografiia A. Semena, 1845), 1: 4041.
 command and control in the russian army 289

But this only brought down the tsars wrath, for on April 2, 1655eight
months after the factAleksei upbraided Sheremetev for this assault,
which in Alekseis view had been launched prematurely and had caused
unnecessary casualties. Tsar Aleksei even sentenced the hapless old
man to death for it, although he rescinded this a few sentences later
and appointed Sheremetev governor of Vitebsk.80 Judging from other
instances Aleksei feared allowing his generals to undertake their own
storm assaults because they were too costly in lives.81 This was not the
first time Aleksei threatened a commander with death and then
rescinded his malediction, but relenting and offering mercy was hardly
the way to encourage commanders to think outside the box and to
venture departing from the letter of orders.
Sheremetev could have made an argument that remaining at Nevel
and Polotsk was prudent; the Russians were now moving deep into
their belligerents territory, their lines of communication lengthened,
and their supply trains were laden down with siege artillery and ammu-
nition, provisions, and other supplies. But prevailing C2 practice denied
him the power to make such representations, so when Kondyrev
suggested he attack Vitebsk forthwith he lashed out at Kondyrev in
hysteria.82 He slandered Kondyrev as Ortemeis henchman, compar-
ing him to the woebegone A.V. Izmailov, who had been beheaded
with Shein for the Smolensk debacle.83 The implication was that a
commander departing from the letter of his instructions was either
courting defeat or treason. But for Sheremetev the only safe alternative
was temporary self-paralysis. Sheremetev clearly was more fearful of
his tsar, who tolerated no deviation from prearranged plan, than of the
enemy.84 His dependence upon orders was such that in their absence he
would not even take upon himself responsibility for implementing
elementary safety measures for his own men. At one point Kondyrev
lamented:

80
ZORSA, 2: 73637; TVUAK, 1:2; Kievskaia kommissiia dlia razbora drevnikh
aktov, Pamiatniki, izdannye kievskoiu kommissieiu dlia razbora drevnikh aktov, 3 vols.,
2d ed. rev. (Kiev: Tipografiia imperatorskogo universiteta, Sv. Vladimira N.T. Korchak-
Novitskogo, 1898), 3: 215; PVK, 3: 10912.
81
See AMG, 3, no. 58: 6566 for Alekseis dressing down I.A. Khovanskii over
engaging in a needless assault against the Belarussian town of Liakhovichi.
82
Sheremetev pod Vitebskom, 152.
83
Sheremetev pod Vitebskom, 152; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 46.
84
See A.I. Zaozerskii, Tsarskaia votchina xvii v. Iz istorii khoziaistvennoi i prika-
znoi politiki tsaria Alekseia Mikhailovicha (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsialno-
ekonomicheskoe izdatelestvo, 1937), 25153 for his discussion of Alekseis insistence
that his generals and other officials never stray from prearranged plans.
290 peter b. brown

At first I was unable to write you, Sovereign, about this, bearing in mind
your Sovereigns gracious command to be in accord and to discharge
your official business jointly. I endured all of this, and did not write to
you, Sovereign. Sovereign, I then no longer had the strength to endure
this, seeing that there was not any attack in progress against the fortress,
that we were standing around complacently with everyone strewn about
like Tatar yurts, and that there were no strong points shielding us,
Sovereign. Sovereign, if even a few [enemy] troops mounted any attack
whatsoever, they would wreak havoc upon us. Would that I, your slave,
not be in disgrace from you, Sovereign, due to his Boyars displeasure!85
During this phase of the war, there other instances of over-extension of
centralized C2, as in July 1655, when the tsar ordered Cossack Colonel
Zolotarenko to remain halted at the Nieman River, regardless of the
risk of counterattack, although the tsar had no familiarity with this
terrain and no topographical maps of it. But these incidents did
not measurably compromise Russian military performance. The later
course of the war is another matter. From 1659 to 1663 the Poles had
recovered their ability to mobilize larger forces and force open-field
combattheir forteand with the help of their Tatar allies they
exacted a devastating toll from the Muscovite field commanders. In
this phase of the war, Muscovite C2 culture proved ill-suited for the
impromptu decision-making incumbent upon commanders in non-
positional warfare. At Konotop (1659), Chudnovo (1660), Mogilev
(1660), Liakhovichi (1660), and Kushlikovy Gory (1661) the Muscovites
were slow to react to out-flanking and envelopment and failed to grasp
all the potentialities offered by terrain. Russian wagenburg tactics, sub-
optimal logistics, Baltic alliance shifts, and Ukrainian factionalism did
not help either.86 Brian Davies observed that at this time the

85
Sheremetev pod Vitebskom, 152. A less negative assessment of V.P. Sheremetevs
dilatory performance is in Barsukovs hagiographical narrative on the Sheremetev
clan (A.P. Barsukov, Rod boiar Sheremetevykh, 8 vols. [St. Petersburg: Tipografiia
M.M. Stasiulevicha, 18811904], 4: 8398, 11619).
86
Brown, Early Modern Bureaucracy, 40103; id, The Routinization of Charisma,
21420; Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars 15581721 (Harlow, England: Longman,
2000), 184, 18687; Tetiana Iakovleva, Ruina Hetmanshchyny. Vid Pereiaslavskoi
Radi-2 do Andrusivska Uhody (16591667 rr.) (Kiev: Osnovy, 2003), 12030; Tetiana
Iakovleva, Hetmanshchyna v druhii polovyni 50-kh rokiv xvii stolittia. Prychyny i
pochatok Ruiny (Kiev: Osnovy, 1998), 340, 34748; Stevens, Russias Wars of Emer-
gence, 15859; Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 13032,
13638, 14347; Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 44450, 472. Polish adulation
over the Commonwealths new string of victories was such that it resonated in
the seventeenth-century panegyric, 1,958 lines in all, mocking Muscovite general
V. B. Sheremetevs rout and capture at Chudnovo (Samuel Leszczyski, Potrzeba z
 command and control in the russian army 291

Muscovite preference for static defensive tactics owed to limitations on

training time and to the particularities of warfare in a steppe environ-
ment, and noted that this was attributable to preference, not ignorance
on the Russians part, for they were abreast of current European mili-
tary literature.87
Aleksei, his advisers, and the chancelleries heavily determined
and organized the tasks Muscovite generals in the field were to carry
out; field commanders were minimally involved in the task prioriti-
zation of the duties assigned them. Since commanders were denied
the opportunity to contribute meaningful input into the casting of
orders, they were impaired in assessing the intrinsic worthiness of the
tasks they were ordered to carry out. How should time-value be opti-
mized? Which job deserves more attention? Which was more impor-
tant to a Muscovite general, spending yet more time recording ones
units activities or employing such opportunity to ponder past lessons
for impending military operations? It would appear that answers to
such questions were not always clear-cut to Muscovite generals. They,
no more no less than their counterparts elsewhere, had their share of
heroes, thinkers, shirkers, and incompetents; how Muscovite political
and administrative cultures intersected with these individuals explains
both their accomplishments and shortcomings.
The Razriad sent Muscovite field commanders no known extant
records soliciting their assessments on how the commanders on their
own might want to devise regional or local military planning. To the
contrary, field commanders were regarded metaphorically as passive
receptacles. It was assumed that army commanders would implement
and report upon combat theater directives predetermined by the capi-
tal, and forward this information to Moscow.
Upon returning to Moscow, Aleksei relegated prosecution of the war
to the chancelleries and no longer took the same leadership role as he
had before. It is now that the defects of over-whelming reliance upon
bureaucratic C2 came to the fore. The string of Muscovite defeats high-
lights the major shortcomings in the Military Chancellerys relations
with its field commanders. Again and again the center deprived itself of
competent military leadership by denying its commanders any per-
sonal initiative. Generals were hamstrung by edicts from the center

Szeremetem Hetmanem Moskiewskim, i z Kozakami w roku Paskim 1660 od Polakw

Wygrana, ed. Piotr Borek (Cracow: Collegium Columbinum, 2006), 78, 4399.
87
Davies, War, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 13637.
292 peter b. brown

that required them to inform Moscow in minute detail of all their

activities. Moscow determined strategy and the orders of battle, and
cleared all requests for supplies and men. Any changes in command
had to be approved ahead of time from Moscow. Plan fetishism domi-
nated both Razriad directors and field commanders minds. This
became a major contributory factor for V.B. Sheremetevs Chudnovo
(Ukr., Chudniv) debacle in October 1660, in part engineered by the
Military Chancellery.88 Then the Russians lock-stepped themselves into
an enemy envelopment resulting in the decimation and capture of their
army and the seizure and eventual ransoming of Sheremetev himself.
Reading through commanders rescripts and other documents does
bring to light these mens discontent arising, from time to time, from
tight circumscription of commanders initiative. Their resentment may
have been able to have found no other channel than precedence con-
testation, but this challenged commanders relations with each other,
not the tsars authority. The increase in precedence litigiousness over
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries left the processes of autocrati-
zation, bureaucratic centralization, and centralization of military C2
free to continue without effective challenge from the upper and middle
service classes.
Thus by the seventeenth century there was a greater gap between the
political culture and C2 styles of Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania than
had been the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Earlier
Polish monarchs such as Casimir the Great (133370), Casimir Jagiel-
loczyk (144092), and Sigismund I (150648) and their Musco-
vitecounterparts Ivan Kalita (132541), Dmitrii Donskoi (135989),
Vasilii II (142562), and Ivan III (14621505) had followed similar C2
styles, giving more play to decentralized execution, command by influ-
ence, and mission-type order.89
But by the time of the Thirteen Years War, the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealths C2 was markedly different from Muscovys. The
political culture of the Commonwealth had evolved in such a way as to
valorize the liberty of the nobility and check autocratization and royal
bureaucratization. This in turn promoted military doctrine that trusted

88
D.F. Maslovskii, Zapiski po istorii voennogo iskusstva v Rossii, 2 vols. in 3 pts.
(St. Petersburg: Nikolaevskaia akademiia generalnogo shtaba, 189194), 1: 37, 52;
Reger, In the Service of the Tsar, 27172.
89
Janusz Tazbir, ed., Polska Na Przestrzeni Wiekw (Warsaw: PWN, 1995), 11011,
13839, 16467, 171.
 command and control in the russian army 293

to the educated paladins wide acquaintance with military history and

current European military theoretical works and handbooks. Such lit-
erature stressed maneuver, quickness in action, studied awareness of
terrain, rapid responsiveness to sudden and unanticipated events, and
independent thinking on the battlefield.90
One might expect the spread to Eastern Europe of the gunpowder
revolution and the rush to build stone fortifications to have pushed the
Poles and Muscovites alike in the same centralizing C2 direction.91 But
such was not the case. The more automatic and unswerving Muscovite
commitment to centralized C2 proceeded from a political culture dif-
ferent from the Commonwealths, and this was further reinforced by
the lessons of particular military experiences. These were the enor-
mous difficulties of restoring order and expelling foreign invaders
after the collapse of central government during the Troubles, and then
Tsar Alekseis apparent 16541655 success in turning himself into a
military monarch dictating to commanders whom he automatically
assumed incapable of thinking for themselves.
This is not to say that Aleksei was oblivious to the deficiencies of
over-centralization and the advantages of decentralized execution, com-
mand by influence, and mission-type order. In numerous cases during
1654 and 1655, he permitted his commanders in smaller operations
latitude in determining the scope, timing, deployment, and order of
battle. Campaigning on unfamiliar terrain against an enemy of some-
times unknown strength and disposition, without the aid of detailed
maps, timepieces, or compasses, required that the tsar permit his com-
manders some discretionary command authority.92
The Thirteen Years War C2 record of the Russians was mixed. They
possessed no fora for systematically evaluating their forces performance

90
Karl Olejnik, Rozwj Polskiej Myli Wojskowej do koca xvii w. (Pozna:
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, 1976), 19294; Polska Na Przestrzeni Wiekw,
13033, 14647, 16870, 17481, 18489, 24042, 26062; Andrzej Wyczaski, Polska
Rzecz Pospolit Szlacheck (Warsaw: PWN, 1991), 59122, 20347; Orest Subtelny,
Domination of Eastern Europe. Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 15001715
(Kingston, Ontario; Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1986), 1422.
91
Though it is generally not known, the Polish government in the 1620s invested
large sums into the construction and refurbishing of numerous stone fortresses ringing
the Bay of Gdask (Janusz Bogdanowski, Architektura Obrona w Krajobrazie Polski od
Biskupina do Westerplatte (Warsaw, Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996),
passim.
92
Brown, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 13538.
294 peter b. brown

and codifying lessons to be learned by current and future commanders.

There were no available printed military educational materials except
for a few imported and domestically produced drill manuals. The
chancelleries archived enormous amounts of valuable information, but
it was not passed back to military pedagogues. However, military
development on the southern frontier had its own dynamic, making
steady institutional progress throughout the Thirteen Years War and
sustaining it thereafter.

The Southern Frontier and the Frontier Military Districts

Warfare on the southern frontier differed from warfare on the western

and northern fronts in several important ways; the terrain was, of
course, very different, and whereas the Poles, Belarussians, and Swedes
made great use of firearms, artillery, and stone fortresses and redoubts,
the Crimean Tatars confronting Muscovite forces on the southern
steppes were predominantly light cavalry archers. The seventeenth
century did see some major battles against Crimean Tatars and Otto-
man Turks using artillery and firearms, but more frequent was the
lower-intensity warfare of small engagements pitting cavalry against
Tatar mounted archers. Tatar incursions aimed at slave-raiding and
diversionary raiding rather than the capture of towns and conquest of
territory, so the Tatars tended to split up their forces into battalion- or
even platoon-size detachments. This required that the Muscovites alter
their C2 accordingly.
The Muscovites recognized that relying only on large concentrated
forces moving back and forth along a defense front several hundreds of
miles across was impractical. Large mobile forces would have to be
supplemented with stationary defenses in the form of a fortified or
abatis line (zasechnaia cherta), built and settled through the capitals
intervention. Such abatis lines consisted of earthen walls, log palisades,
observation towers, and military-administrative settlements and gar-
rison towns reminiscent of the Roman castrae. And in addition small
mobile units patrolled into the territory anterior to the line. These
small units undertook sector patrolling, quadrant reconnoitering and
surveillance, early warning, and limited search and destroy missions.
Recent work by Brian Davies and Carol Stevens portrays Moscow as
extraordinarily attentive to almost all details connected with the con-
struction and maintenance of the Belgorod fortified line, the para-
mount southern defense line from the 1630s until the 1680s, when it
 command and control in the russian army 295

was superseded by the new Iziuma fortified line further south.

Administration of the fortified defense lines followed a strikingly cen-
tralized C2 style, with what Davies remarked as the overcentralization
of command initiative in the Military Chancellery.93
This probably did not work as well when applied to small-unit
patrolling of the vast and less familiar topography beyond the defense
lines. Patrol leaders could be held to certain centrally determined
broad rules of engagement, but would also have to be given discretion
to respond to unanticipated circumstances (unfamiliar terrain, ambush)
according to their own judgment. Some decentralized execution and
even command by influence and mission-type orders had to be permit-
ted. The logistical management of the defense line was exercised
through tightly centralized C2, but tactical C2 (for small-unit patrolling
and combat) was diffused to company-grade commanders.
As the seventeenth century wore, the fortified lines advanced south
and expanded in length, while the population behind them increased;
this required defense in depth across a broader front and the mounting
of more operations and confronted the Razriad with heavier commu-
nications traffic and more operational decisions to make. This could
have threatened the Razriad with overload, given that it was already
the ganglia of the chancellery system, controlling all the military
prikazy in peacetime and nearly all the chancelleries in wartime.94
The Razriad avoided this by devolving to the frontier military districts
some of its C2 prerogatives from the 1650s to the 1680s.

93
Carol Belkin Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe. Army Reform and Social Change in
Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University, 1995), passim;
Davies, State Power and Community, 5052, 53, 5758, 87, 91, 155, 158. The author
[PB] found these pages especially relevant. See also Davies, Warfare, State, and Society
on the Black Sea Steppe, 4191. Though Davies takes pains to show manifold instances
of central authoritys remanding initiative-taking to local authority, the preponder-
anceof his findings depict the Razriads nit-picking obtrusion in virtually every activ-
ity along the Belgorod fortified line, Kozlov being the object of his synchronic study.
See, The Urliapovo Working Order and the Mechanisms of Military Colonization
and Consolidation: the Polnoi Voronezh and Chelnavsk Garrisons, in Davies, The
Role of the Town Governors, 284377, 51099. Overviews of seventeenth-century
Muscovite local government are in Brown, Early Modern Bureaucracy, and in Brian
L. Davies, Local Government and Administration, in The Cambridge History of
Russia. Volume I. From Early Rus to 1689, 46485.
94
See Peter B. Brown, With All Deliberate Speed: the Officialdom and Departments
of the Seventeenth-Century Muscovite Military Chancellery (Razriad), Russian
History 28, nos. 14 (Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter 2001): 14452 and Marshall Poe,
Elite Service Registry in Muscovy, 15001700, Russian History 21, no. 3 (Fall 1994):
25360, for explanation of the internal subdivisions (many of them with southern and
western frontier geographical designations) within the Military Chancellery and their
296 peter b. brown

This looks like a decentralization maneuver but actually was not.

The central Razriad at Moscow maintained firm control over the prin-
cipal frontier towns where razriad military districts were headquar-
tered; the governors in the latter controlled military affairs in the lesser
towns comprising the various military districts. This was an example of
what John Le Donne has called the technique of deconcentrating power.
It was not the same phenomenon as decentralization of power, which
would have entailed at least remanding authority to local elected repre-
sentatives and at most creating autonomous areas that might have
become federal jurisdictions.
The central Razriad devolved to the frontier military district gover-
nors only certain functions, e.g., mobilization of local manpower and
superintending local towns administration. A fuller deconcentration
of power would have guaranteed the prerogative of the frontier mili-
tary district governors to appeal directly to the tsar and bypassing the
central Razriad. In theory the frontier military district governors had
such right of appeal insofar as most of them were boyars or okolnichie,
men of Duma rank, who could have made such appeal in Duma ses-
sions. But in practice they had no opportunity to exercise this right
because they were posted at the moment to frontier towns hundreds of
miles from Moscow and therefore unable to sit in Duma gatherings. So
the control of the Military Chancellery over its super-voevody was
ubiquitous,95 and assisted in concentrating its C2 prerogatives by facili-
tating even more the univalent devolving of military orders to one per-
son having control over thousands of square miles of frontier terrain.
The Boyar Duma may have acquiesced to the formation of frontier
military districts from its own concerns about the communications lag
between the frontier towns and the central Razriad at Moscow
Belgorod, for example, was 375 miles to the south of Moscow. Vologda,
250 miles to the north of the capital, was far off, too, but it was not

seventeenth-century enlargement. For accounts of the Razriads evolution, personnel,

and numerous deployment and recording responsibilities, see the two above sources
and Brown, Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy, 44879. Yet another Razriad respon-
sibility was service registration and articulation of monetary remuneration due servi-
tors (see the section entitled, Mesto boiarskikh knig v deloproizvodstve razriadnogo
prikaza, in Lukichev, Boiarskie knigi, 64109).
95
See the descriptions of deconcentration and decentralization of power in John P.
LeDonne, Regionalism and Constitutional Reform 18191826, Cahiers du monde
russe, 4, no. 4 (April-September 2003): 5, 30.
 command and control in the russian army 297

militarily threatened in any way, so business from Vologda could still

be handled in the Boyar Duma. But business from Belgorod involving
the deployment of troops was of greater strategic importance and
therefore more urgent. It took about a week-and-a-half for reports
from the southern frontier to reach the chancelleries in Moscow, and
another week for business from the chancelleries to be discussed by the
Boyar Duma.96 Permitting more military administrative business to be
handled at the regional level by the governors of the frontier military
districts could cut the response time.
At least three frontier military districts were in existence by the
1660s, and eight by 1680. They were located on the western, southern,
and eastern frontiers of European Russia and also on the Trans-
Ural and Siberian frontiers. They had emerged in three stages: in the
later sixteenth century, as a consequence of the conquest of the Volga
and the opening up of Siberia; from the 1630s to the 1650s, in connec-
tion with the construction of the Belgorod defense line and the begin-
ning of the Thirteen Years War; and in 1680 due to the military-
administrative reform of that year. The process was driven by the need
to defend existing frontiers, but over time it was turned to the expan-
sion and consolidation of new frontiers. The network relations evolv-
ing into razriad military districts on the southern frontier started with
the construction of the defense line, and crystallized further with the
delegation to a general of wide-ranging power over a region. This cul-
minated in the formal establishment of the military district itself as a
territory serving as the base of an army group (polk). The towns on
this territory contributed contingents to the army group, and polk and
garrison affairs were made accountable to the army group commander
headquartered in the capital of that razriad.
The Belgorod, Sevsk, and Novgorod frontier military districts were
present by the 1660s. Between 1678 and 1680 five razriady were cre-
ated or reestablished: the Smolensk, Riazan (Pereslavl-Riazanskii),
Vladimir (Frontier), Tambov, and Kazan frontier military districts.
This was due in part to the reform of finances and administration

96
Peter B. Brown, Military Planning and High-Level Decision-Making in
Seventeenth-Century Russia: the Roles of the Military Chancellery (Razriad) and the
Boyar Duma, in Russische and ukrainische Geschichte vom 16.18. Jahrhundert
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001), 8687; Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on
the Black Sea Steppe, 16364.
298 peter b. brown

beginning in Tsar Alekseis last years and to the demands of the Russo-
Turkish War; but it also reflected the longer-term trends of the milita-
rization of Muscovite provincial administration and the consolidation
of administrative power in fewer hands.97
Tsar Alekseis command from the front in 1654 and 1655 and the
establishment of the razriad military districts could both be seen as
efforts to maintain centralization of C2 without basing all C2 far off in
Moscow in the Military Chancellery. There was an additional fiscal
reason for trying to avoid over-reliance on the Military Chancellery.
The trend over the course of the century was for the percentage of
chancellery income devoted to the salaries of chancellery secretaries
and clerks to decline relative to the proportion assigned to pay the
Duma members serving as chancellery directors. Meanwhile, the per-
centage of clerks the Razriad employed declined in relation to that of
the central administration as a whole.98 This meant the Military Chan-
cellery had less of a lock on financial resources and less opportunity to
take on more C2 tasks by doing what it had done in the past, expanding
its secretariat and clericate. Passing some responsibility down to the
territorial razriady could partly compensate. There may also have been
a sociopolitical reason for creating the razriady: to accommodate the
expanding number of upper service class servitors and create more
posts that did not require them all to remain in the capital.

The 16761681 Russo-Turkish War and the Crimean Campaigns

of 1687 and 1689

The 167681 Russo-Turkish War pitted significantly improved Musco-

vite armies against the most formidable army of Western Eurasia.
Never before had regular Russian forces fought in such numbers and at

97
Brown, Military Districts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1314,
2123, 40, 4344, 50, 94. Davies claims there was a Moscow razriad, bringing the total
to nine (Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 173).
98
Peter B. Brown, The Moscow Civil Elites Salaries, Sosloviia i gosudarstvennaia
vlast v Rossii. XV-seredina xix vv. Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiiaChteniia pamiati
akad. L.V. Cherepnina. Tezisy dokladov. Moskva, 1316 iiunia 1994 g. 2 parts, ed. N.V.
Karlov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi komitet RF po vysshemu obrazovaniiu, et al, 1994),
2: 26373; id, The Service Land Chancellery Clerks of Seventeenth-Century Russia:
Their Regime, Salaries, and Economic Survival, Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas
51 (2003): 5054, 57, 62; id, How Muscovy Governed. Seventeenth-Century Russian
Central Administration, Russian History 36 (2009): 459529.
 command and control in the russian army 299

such distances from Moscow, and during this war forces were deployed
and C2 exercised with greater efficiency than had been evident in the
Thirteen Years War overall.
The Ottomans initiated hostilities by harboring designs upon Chigi-
rin (Ukr., Chyhyryn), the stronghold on the Dnepr, 120 miles south-
east of Kiev, that served as the formal capital of the Hetmanate. The
Muscovites responded by undertaking two relief expeditions, on the
whole well-conceived, to reinforce the Muscovite and Ukrainian troops
holding beleaguered Chigirin. The Muscovites had some 110,000
troops arced about the Ukrainian front, half of which were committed
to the relief expeditions. For reasons unclear the commander of the
second expedition in 1678, G. G. Romodanovskii, elected not to attack
the Turkish army besieging Chigirin and ordered Chigirin abandoned.
It was destroyed, though, and so did not fall into Ottoman hands, and
the Muscovites subsequently attained strategic victory over the Turks
through impressive logistical exertion by settling and fortifying the
new Iziuma fortified line and shifting polk manpower towards the
southwest. The Ottomans were prevented from expanding their power
out of Podolia into the rest of western Ukraine.99
The 500 miles separating Chigirin from Moscow had forced the
Razriad to rethink how close a control it could afford to exercise
over its commanders in Ukraine. With the important exception of
Romodanovskiis halt outside Chigirin in 1678which may have been
ordered by Moscowthe Razriad abjured the kind of heavy-handed
command by plan and centralized planning C2 it and the Secret Chan-
cellery had exercised in the late 1650s and early 1660s. Romodanovs-
kii displayed genuine initiative in mobilization, transportation, and
deployment C2 at the army level and skillfully coordinated regimental
commanders combined infantry and artillery assaults and defenses.
A high-spirited sort, Romodanovskii had a charismatic temperament,
although to what extent this infused better morale into his men is
debatable.
Thus we see a movement towards decentralized C2 that contrasts to
the centralized C2 of the Smolensk and Thirteen Years wars. The gam-
ing Russian C2 sides in the Russo-Turkish War consisted of the Razriad,
Golitsyn, the Miloslavskii clique, and Romodanovskii. There were
some factional disagreements as to how to prosecute the war, but on

99
Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 15975.
300 peter b. brown

the whole Romodanovskii was permitted to plan in his own councils of

war and choose his own options. By comparison with the Thirteen
Years War, the Russo-Turkish War saw better command leadership,
situational awareness, synchronized plan execution, and unity of effort
and leveraging of mission partners.
The war galvanized efforts to move to a single-payer direct tax (by
universalizing the musketeers tax), to reform financial and military
administration reforms (1680), and to increase the number of frontier
military districts.100 Never before had the Razriads responsibilities
stretched so far. Yet it showed greater sophistication in the command
and control of field forces, probably because of sheer accumulation of
experience and better ability to make connections, and apparently
because it had learned to place more trust in its commanders. Russian
and foreign commanders by the late 1670s had consistently handled
new model troops for the past thirty years and appeared more able and
confident in operating them than before.101 Also, old model forces were
now in smaller proportion to new model forces, making it easier for
commanders and officers to integrate their operational roles and mak-
ing possible more streamlined C2 at both the capital and field levels. All
of this seemed to augur well for the next, major southern frontier con-
frontation, the 1687 and 1689 Crimean campaigns.
These campaigns, masterminded and led personally by V. V. Golitsyn,
a misfiring military activist, failed to obtain Perekop Peninsula, the
sentinel to the Crimean Peninsula and southeast of the Dnepr. They
were ambitiously planned, requiring over 160,000 Muscovite and
Ukrainian troops to march from 300 to 400 miles across the steppe to
besiege Perekop; the stupendous size of their supply trains is described
at length by Carol B. Stevens in her Soldiers on the Steppe. But both
expeditions were brought to naught by slow march progress; insuffi-
cient water; sickness borne of thirst, dust, air-borne mammalian fecal
particulate matter, and rations problems; the burning of steppe grass
forage; and clever spoiling Tatar attacks.102

100
AI, 5, no. 48 (October 21, 1679), 7275; DAI, 8, no. 36 (September 15, 1678-
March 4, 1681): 10412; DAI, 8, no. 66 (December 1679): 25859; PSZ, 2, no. 824 (May
22, 1680): 26768; PSZ, 2, no. 844 (November 12, 1680): 28385.
101
The government in the aftermath of the Smolensk War disbanded the new model
units, thus depriving the Russians opportunity to glean long-term performance data
from them. Therefore, the time-span above I did not extend back to the early 1630s.
102
Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 23031; Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe,
11221; Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 17882.
 command and control in the russian army 301

Golitsyns C2 style compared badly with Romodanovskiis. Sophias

lover ran military strategy in the field, and so was ostensibly in the
position to shift C2 responsibility from the Razriad into his own hands.
But Golitsyn was not up to snuff, failing to delegate enough authority
and monopolizing decision-making in such a way as to cramp his sub-
ordinates. This was partly the consequence of the logistical demands of
his plan of campaign (particularly for the first expedition), which
required that 110,000 Muscovite troops march slowly across the steppe
in close formation within one vast quadrilateral accompanied by an
enormous supply train.
Golitsyns armies did not have as clear a numerical superiority over
the enemy as the Muscovites had in Belarus and Lithuania in 1654, and
he seems to have lacked the charisma of Romodanovskii or Tsar Aleskei
when the latter commanded from the front. Though a concise study is
needed, his C2 flow from the top to regimental and battalion levels
appears to have been clunky and uneven, with impromptu coordination
on lower levels inadequate. Golitsyn lacked the wherewithal to mandate
separate assault forces and to coordinate them as did Aleksei in Belarus
or even Romodanovskii a decade earlier. Whatever his talents as a
chancellery administrator and man of taste back in the capital, in the
field Golitsyn seemed oblivious to decentralized execution, command
by influence, and mission-type order. He preferred instead, as is infera-
ble from the record, to let the Russians monolithic logistical operation
dictate C2 posture and tactics,103 rather than the other way around.

The Institutions of Command and Control (Outside the Army)

The six policy directions for shaping C2 (see Table 1.3) are present in
some degree within any C2 style, regardless of how centralizing or
decentralizing its architects ultimate intent. This is already apparent in
the military narrative we have presented above. Shifts in the mix
become clearer still when we examine Muscovite C2 across the period
structurally, namely the interaction of: particular institutions (the tsar,
Boyar Duma, the bureaucracy), environments (Western-foe and steppe

103
See Lindsey Hughess account of the Crimean expeditions (Lindsey Hughes,
Sophia Regent of Russia 16571704 [New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1990],
197216). It sheds little light on Golitsyns C2 technique. Hellie thinks that Golitsyn
was a bungler and coward (Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 231).
302 peter b. brown

nomadic warfare), fighting postures and scale (large-scale offensive,

small-scale offensive, large-scale defensive, small-scale defensive,
reconnaissance), force allocation (infantry, cavalry, artillery), and top-
and intermediate- and low-level command levels.

The Tsar
The monarch directly taking a hand and leading his troops, if not actu-
ally into battle himself then from a headquarters near the front, is an
example of command by direction. When it is successful it is viewed as
heroic leadership. Most historical examples of this date from pre-
Industrial times (Sennacherib, Alexander the Great, Diocletian, Clovis,
Charlemagne, Saladin, Bayezid I, Stefan Bathory, Gustavus Adolphus).
Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich did not attempt it and delegated military
leadership and planning to others; but Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich strove
to achieve it and succeeded in making himself a reputation as one of
the great military leaders (polkovodtsy) in Russian history.
As a strategic planner and as supreme commander in the field,
Aleksei proved himself to be insightful, in control of himself, and will-
ing to delegate authority. His successor Tsar Fedor Aleseevich returned
to the example of Tsar Mikhail and left both domestic and foreign pol-
icy to a coterie of magnates. Their major military contribution was the
Russo-Turkish War, which exhibited a smoother C2 performance than
that achieved during the Thirteen Years War. Fedors sister Tsarevna
Sophiia Alekseevna (de facto ruler, 168289), and her consort Golitsyn,
were of different mettle, who prominently exhibited, to no avail, both
command by plan and command by direction in the bungled Crimean
Expeditions. These examples suggest that while autocratic ideology
assigned ultimate command authority to the tsar, this was in principle;
in practice the sovereigns of seventeenth-century Muscovy differed in
the extent to which they personally exercised ultimate C2 and were
competent in doing so.

Boyar Duma
The Boyar Duma was the tsars advisory council, consisting of the
top four service ranks of the Moscow or upper service class: boyars,
okolnichie, counselor dvoriane, and counselor state secretaries.104

104
The upper upper service class was the apex of the upper service class (Moscow
service class). Its ranks, appointment criteria, compensation, and other data are
 command and control in the russian army 303

Numbering between 28 and 151 members in the seventeenth cen-

tury,105 the Boyar Duma in theory discussed matters at the tsars
pleasure. It was those who held Duma rank who ran most of the chan-
celleries, directed armies, headed embassies, and held sway in the royal
court. It was ostensibly in the Boyar Duma that top-level decisions on
war declarations and major military operations took place; the Duma
then transmitted its resolutions on significant military planning to the
chancelleries for further detailing, drafting, and implementation.
Whether it was an active or passive force in deliberating and resolv-
ing matters of state depended upon the monarchs personality and the
power of faction. No written protocols of Duma sessions were kept,
so one can only infer its role in C2 from the edicts on military affairs
issued from the chancelleries in the name of the Boyar Duma (i boiare
prigovorili: and the boyars [i.e., the Duma ranks] decreed). The Boyar
Dumas proclaimed role in C2 was twofold: providing command by plan
and centralized planning. Former Foreign Affairs Chancellery clerk
Grigorii Kotoshikhins account of the Boyar Duma and chancellery
records mentioning other top-level bodies (the Golden Chamber [zolo-
taia palata] and the Chamber of Review [raspravnaia palata], both of
which could have been the Boyar Duma itself ) leave little doubt that
this was a permanent institution in all but name.106
With the deepening of bureaucratic culture throughout seventeenth-
century Muscovy, the Boyar Duma more and more functioned like an
administrative advisory agency, by setting days of the week to allocate
the airing and resolving of key state concerns: e.g., military, foreign
policy, royal court, frontier, taxation, judicial. In the course of its meet-
ings, chancellery executives presented desiderata, voiced gripes, grap-
pled with competing claims (inferable from voluminous prikaz
documentation) and resource needs, hammered out consensus, and
grudgingly otherwise consented to implement able plans. The tsars
input varied from decisive to negligible depending upon his force of

presented in A.P. Pavlov, ed., Praviashchaia elita russkogo gosudarstva ix-nachala xviii
vv. (Ocherki istorii) (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2006), 30866, 40757.
105
Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 2223.
106
The expression Boyar Duma is of nineteenth-century vintage; the actual expres-
sion, referring to this most retrospectively labeled entity, the Muscovites used was
counselor people or Duma people (dumnye liudi). Though not captioned as such,
the counselor people (the upper upper service class) had their forum, convened at the
sufferance and in the presence of the tsar. Chancellery records contain voluminous
references to the counselor people (the Boyar Duma).
304 peter b. brown

will, presence of mind, grasp of subject matter, reasoning skills, and

mood on a given day. The absence of minutes or stenographic tran-
scripts makes it impossible to determine how C2 issues were discussed
and resolved in Duma sessions on any particular occasion. We are left
only with the paperwork from the chancelleries that shows that the
chancellery apparatus treated the Boyar Duma as source of command
by plan and command by direction. We are not able to determine to
what extent military commanders of boyar, okolnichii, and counselor
dvorianin rank, soon to direct their forces in military operations, par-
ticipated in the crafting of their own orders, if these commanders were
even present in Moscow.
When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich was in the field in Belarus, he
sometimes issued orders in the presence of Boyar Duma members
he had dragged along, but their input remains conjectural.107 Then
and for the next few years the tsar generally made decisions on his
own or upon input from his personal chancery, the Secret Chancellery.
This course of action effectively cut out the Boyar Duma from military
decision-making for much of the Thirteen Years War and deprived
the Duma of any juridical or institutional recourse to abjure Alekseis
course of action.
Judging from the chancellery bureaucracys paper trail, the Boyar
Duma appears to have provided all six C2 constituents but to varying
degrees and with varying effectiveness. The Boyar Duma did provide
command leadership through the chancelleries to commanders and
directly through commanders (should they have been in attendance
during a Boyar Duma meeting), but with the caveat that neither it nor
the chancelleries could reinforce command leadership with personal
charismatic authority as could the tsar. This inability to inject person-
alistic sway undoubtedly affected morale. The Boyar Duma did rein-
force command structure by allowing the tsar and the handful of
magnates making military policy to portray their decisions as formal
rulings by the entire Duma-rank strata acting in council with the tsar.
This facilitated centralization of command authority, but it also had a
high cost, for it made it all the harder for field commanders to appeal
for the prerogative to revise operational plans on the spot in the event
of unforeseen contingency. Glued to this deficiency was the flawed

107
Maltsev, Voina za Belorussiiu, 136; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 176,
18586, 18891.
 command and control in the russian army 305

situational awareness inherent to the Boyar Duma, thanks to its removal

at great distance from the battlefield and its insurmountable incapacity
to generate and disseminate up-to-date forecast information in time to
enable a field commander to save his commands neck in the face of a
rapidly escalating, unpredicted event. The one exception to this was
from 1654 to 1655 when Aleksei Mikhailovich had some of the Boyar
Duma decamped near the Belarussian Front.
Coherent and lucidly communicated orders were an unimpeachably
strong suit of the Boyar Dumas C2 as was synchronized plan execution,
with the caveat that mission-type orders were generally abhorrent to
the tsar, the Boyar Duma, and to the prikazy. The Boyar Dumas unity
of effort and leveraging of mission partners was as good as could be
expected during the Thirteen Years War, the one seventeenth-century
conflict in which serious coalition issues came to bear. The Muscovite
elite and its supporting institutions seemed to have milked as much
as they could from the 1654 Ukrainian-Russian pact and the de facto
1655 Swedish alliance, although subsequent efforts (from 1658 through
the mid-1660s) to gain real strategic advantage from military coop-
eration with Ukrainian factions, the Swedes, and the Turks were
less successful. The Boyar Dumas compactness in diplomatic and
diplomatically-related military matters was a strength of Muscovite C2,
and any shortcomings in this sixth C2 constituent are attributable more
to the imponderables of conducting diplomacy with foreign heads of
state having their own personalities and agenda.

Chancelleries
It is inconceivable that Muscovite C2 could have existed as it did
without the system of bureaucratic administration that dominated
seventeenth-century Russia.
At its height the chancellery system had over 60 bureaus and over
2,000 state secretaries and clerks. Chancellery tribunals, usually num-
bering from 2 to 5 people, were executive bodies of the chancel-
leries,whose staff ranged in number from a few individuals to several
hundreds, a few dozen being a usual figure. The boss of a chancellery
tribunal almost always held Duma rank in the 1600s.108 This meant that

108
For some recent Russian-language studies on the seventeenth-century prikazy,
see N.F. Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia v xvii v. i ee rol v formirovanii absolutizma
306 peter b. brown

the most senior chancellery tribunal members and the Boyar Duma
were practically one and the same, so that the Boyar Duma and the
chancellery tribunals tended to share predilection for command by
plan and centralized planning.
The strikingly rapid multiplication of prikazy with more ramified
functions over the course of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries was driven especially by the needs of war. As a result there came
into existence over the course of the seventeenth century dozens of
chancelleries with military functions. Table 1.4 Categories of Military
Chancelleries lists these by function.109
The chancelleries performed an active role in C2 by gathering
data from a variety of sources, such as Moscow non-administrative,
governmental instances; provincial administrative organs; military
commanders reports; foreign sources; from their own, individual
chancellery archives; and from other chancelleries. This data was then
sifted, organized, written up, and submitted to the Boyar Duma as
written report or oral gloss by the chancellery directors, who were
almost always members of the Duma themselves.110 After discus-
sionthe Boyar Dumas decisionwhich could be detailed or broadly
generalwas handed down to the chancellery or chancelleries in

(Moscow: Nauka, 1987); M.P. Lukichev, Prikaznoe upravlenie i vysshee sluzhiloe

soslovie v pervoi polovine xvii v., in Boiarskie knigi xvii veka. Trudy po istorii i istoch-
nikovedeniiu (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2004), 27692; A.F. Pisarkova,
Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie Rossii s kontsa xvii do kontsa xvii. Evoliutsiia biurokratich-
eskoi sistemy (Moscow: Rosspen, 2007), 2784; N.M. Rogozhin and Iu.M. Eskin,
Prikazy i prikaznoe deloproizvodstvo Rossii xvixvii vv., in Pamiati Lukicheva,
23451. For recent English-language studies, see Peter B. Brown, Bureaucratic
Administration in Seventeenth-Century Russia, in Modernizing Muscovy. Reform and
Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia, eds. Jarmo Kotilaine, Marshall Poe
(London, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 5778; Marshall Poe, The Central
Government and Its Institutions, in The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume I. From
Early Rus to 1689, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 45358. For more information on chancellery staffs, see
Borivoj Plavsic, Seventeenth-Century Chanceries and Their Staffs, in Russian
Officialdom. The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the
Twentieth Century, eds. Walter McKenzie Pintner, Don Karl Rowney (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 1945.
109
This list is based upon Brown, Muscovite Government Bureaus, Russian
History, 28890, 294329 and Brown, How Muscovy Governed, 52129, which list
all the seventeenth-century chancelleries. Often military chancelleries carried out
functions in more than one category.
110
Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, 2425.
 command and control in the russian army 307

Table 1.4 Categories of Military Chancelleries

1. Manpower mobilization: Foreign Mercenary (I), Foreign Mercenary
(II), Dragoon, Recruit Mobilization, Musketeers Chancelleries;
Mobilization Chancellery of Military People; New Model Infantry;
Artillery, New Formation Cavalry, Preobrazhenskoe, Semenov, War
Fleet Chancelleries.
2. Weapons Production: Admiralty, Weapons Production, Armory,
Artillery, Ship Construction, Gun Barrel, Artillery Barrel Manufac-
turing Chancelleries.
3. Fortification: Stonework, Fortress Construction, Fortified
Lines, Court Stonework Chancelleries; Chancellery of Special
Commissions.
4. Finance, Remuneration, and Supply: Auditing, Service Land,
Treasury, Garrison Cossack, Grain Collection, Granary, Guberniia,
Money and Natural Collection, Loan, F.L. Shaklovityi Investigation
Chancelleries; Chancellery of the Grand Revenue; Chancellery of
the Grand Treasury; Galich, Kostroma, Novgorod, Ustiug, Vladimir
Tax Collection Chancelleries; Arrears Collection Chancellery; Col-
lection Chancellery of the Treasury, Collection Chancellery of
Tenth Monies; Cossack Provender Collection, Foreign Mercenaries
Provender Chancelleries; Collection Chancellery of Fifths and
Requisitioned Monies, Collection Chancellery of Fifths Monies,
Collection Chancellery of Fifths and Requisitioned Monies, Mobili-
zation Chancellery of Military People; Musketeers Grain Collection
Chancellery; Chancellery of Military Affairs; Provender Supply,
Musketeers Chancelleries.
5. Prisoner of War Redemption: Prisoner Ransom Money, Smolensk
War Prisoner of War, Military Captive Ransom Money Collection
Chancelleries; Investigation Chancellery of Military Captive
Ransom Affairs.
6. Military Administration: Frontier Army Forces, Military, Novgorod
Military, Secret, Military Affairs Chancelleries.
7. Combat-zone Territorial Administration: Baltic Lands Chancellery;
Chancellery of Great Russia; Foreign Affairs, Smolensk Chancel-
leries; Investigation and Judicial Chancellery of Lithuanian Affairs;
Lithuanian, Kalmuck, Little Russian Chancelleries.
8. Non-Combat-zone Territorial Administration: Kazan, Siberian
Chancelleries.
308 peter b. brown

question.111 In military matters this usually meant the Razriad and

other military chancelleries.112
It was obviously impossible for the Boyar Duma to discuss all the
points of detail the chancellery state secretaries and clerks reported or
maintained as background in their files, and one lower-ranking chan-
cellery staff may have accompanied his directors to the Boyar Duma
and briefed them at pregnant moments. Once a resolution (pometa)
was taken and the verdict announced by the tsar or a Duma member, a
clerk inscribed it on the obverse side of the memorandum or rescript;
this is why the resolutions are so often in a sloppy hand, obviously in
response to dictation by a lofty superior the clerk did not dare to ask to
slow down and repeat himself.113
Up to a point the Boyar Duma was good at gisting the content of the
orally parsed data presented it, but it was the prikazy it had to rely upon
for feeding into edicts and other bulletins the detail that was imperative
for meaningful communication to the field. A decision to order troop
movements made by the Boyar Duma could be filled out in greater
detail by the chancellery to which the instruction was commended.
We do not find clear instances of chancellery secretaries and clerks
letting their wording depart very far from the intent of the Boyar Duma
as they understood it. Conversely, the Boyar Duma tended to adhere
closely to the facts presented to it by the chancellery in making its
decision. Over the course of time, the political centers dependency on
information from the chancelleries so increased that it is fair to say that
the Boyar Dumaand with some qualification, even the tsar himself
became an extension of the chancellery bureaucracy.

111
AMG, 2, no. 186: 171; Arkheograficheskaia ekspeditsiia, akademiia nauk, Akty
istoricheskie, sobrannye i izdannye arkheograficheskoi kommissieiu. 5 vols., index
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiia ekspeditsii zagotovleniia gosudarstvennykh bumag, tipo-
grafiia ii otdeleniia sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantseliarii, 1841
43), 2, no. 63: 7879; Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, 70.
112
On the jurisdiction of the Razriad and the range and specializations of the
other military chancelleries, see: Brown, Muscovite Government Bureaus, 28890,
294329.
113
See Tikhomirov, Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo, 35960; S.O. Shmidt, S.E. Kniazkov,
Dokumenty deloproizvodstva pravitelstvennykh uchrezhdenii Rossii xvixvii
vv. (Moscow: Ministerstvo vysshego i srednego spetsialnogo obrazovaniia RSFSR,
1985), 15. Four decades of working with seventeenth-century archival documents
from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv
drevnikh aktov) inclines me to this supposition. I never have encountered any prima
facie statement in a chancellery document stating this. On the other hand so much of
chancellery modus operandi was never committed to paper.
 command and control in the russian army 309

The dependence of Moscow-issued orders on information provided

by the chancelleries did not so much result in orders of battle that
were overly specific and inflexible as it reinforced commanders
expectation that they could and should report to Moscow for further
instruction when orders were unclear and should not undertake their
own actions until explicitly authorized to do so. On the other hand
chancellery-issued instructions to commanders confined themselves
to operational details and abjured issuing mission-type orders, which
almost always were regarded as strategic matters lying beyond the
competency of commanders and chancellery staffs. For the most part
subordinates were permitted to implement only actions explicitly
authorized in advance by the chancelleries. Operations therefore pro-
duced a flood of highly specific orders on matters of troop mobiliza-
tion, logistics, march routes, etc., and this tended to reinforce the field
commanders conclusion that they should not try to undertake any-
thing on their own.
Although mission-type operational thinking was generally foreign
to the training and mindset of the prikaz staff, the chancelleries were
largely effective in conveying coherently and lucidly communicated
orders on specific tasks necessary to operational success. The prikaz
secretaries and clerks were not military strategists, but they did have
long experience in translating general operational instructions from
abovefrom the Dumainto concrete plans for command assign-
ments, mobilizations, and logistical arrangements. Moreover, the pro-
fessional administrative staff constituted a technocracy with access to
knowledge-based resources that no one commander could possibly
match.
General operational directives were more likely to be sent down to
the chancelleries from the Boyar Duma. Many members of the Boyar
Duma had past experience as field commanders, and it was ultimately
the Boyar Duma which decided the substance of combat orders to field
commanders (unless orders were issued on the spot by the tsar himself,
as Aleksei did on the field in 1654 and 1655). But the time lag involved
in transmitting instructions from the Boyar Duma to a chancellery and
then from the chancellery to the field sometimes forced commanders
to remain in lock-step with orders already outdated by changed cir-
cumstances at the front. There is much evidence to confirm the picture
of commanders hobbled by central bureaucratic controlthis hob-
bling seen as a normative conditionand the hobbling contributing to
military failure.
310 peter b. brown

Command leadership and command structure were strong suits, with

one glaring caveat, namely the disinclination of the bureaucracy to
impart alternative strategies to commanders should the initial, pre-
scribed one fall apart. As best they could, the chancelleries imparted
situational awareness into their combat orders, though the inevitable
time lag of information ferried to and fro Moscow and the field took
its toll. Moscows military offices certainly strove for synchronized
plan execution, although this was realistic only for units of regimental
size and larger, as there was no way the distant capital could possibly
coordinate lower-level echelon self-synchronization of battalion-,
company-, platoon-, and squad-size units. That had to be left to the
field commander on the spot.
Unity of effort and leveraging of mission partners was the weakest of
the six C2 constituents because of specific political circumstances that
undermined Moscows relationship with allied coalition forces in this
period.114 The most significant and protracted Muscovite experience
with coalition warfare was during the Thirteen Years War, when Mus-
covy fought in Belarus and Ukraine in coalition with forces of the
Ukrainian Hetmanate. To sustain this coalition required intensive
diplomacy which ultimately had to be carried over the heads of the
military chancelleries and referred up to the tsar himself. Differences
as to war aims and Muscovite garrisoning and resource mobilization
on Ukrainian territory provoked suspicions and ultimately betrayals
poisoning coalition relations for a long time to follow. The only time
when Muscovite armies fought with coalition partners on the field of
battle was during the Thirteen Years War. At various points during this
struggle deep suspicions, rancorous arguments, and even sudden
betrayals by Muscovys various Ukrainian allies pointedly affected
Russian armies on the field.115
This picture of the stifling of commander initiative by the over-
centralization of C2 in the Razriad and other military chancelleries is
confirmed by an analysis I have made of 47 categories of documents
the chancellery bureaucracy generated in relation to operations on the
Smolensk and Belarus fronts during 1654 and 1655. Tsar Aleksei was
then at the front and the centralization of decision-making at Moscow

114
Harald Hiback, Command and Control in Military Crisis. Devious Decisions
(London, England; Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass, 2003), 2324.
115
Orest Subtelny, History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988),
14445.
 command and control in the russian army 311

somewhat relaxed.116 Several chancelleries handled various matters

within these categories. The domineering military administrative
organ was the Razriad, which assumed overall control of military mat-
ters and bore some organizational and functional resemblance to the
seventeenth-century Prussian Kriegskommissariat. The Razriad subor-
dinated all military-related chancelleries and even ostensibly non-
military related chancelleries to its power.117
Chancellery orders, even if not that specific, implied no mission-type
order scenarios, or, for that matter, decentralized execution and com-
mand by influence. Nor did they have to, for anything not explicitly
ordered would be unauthorized. Chancellery administration domi-
nated C2 through command by plan with some allowance for centralized
planning. In theory command by direction lay outside the chancelleries
control for the overall commander was the tsar, who was actually
present at the front, and no institution could overrule the tsar. This is
not to say that the chancelleries de facto did not effect a considerable
molding presence upon the tsars command by direction through their

116
These 47 categories I have subdivided into five topical headings: (1) planning
and initial stage of the Smolensk campaign: troop call-ups, bivouacking of troops,
Aleksei Mikhailovichs command posts between Moscow and Viazma (staging
area), dispatch of artillery to Viazma, and Muscovite army travels to Smolensk; (2)
quartermaster organization: food supplies, grain purchases from local population,
weaponry,gunpowder, construction materials, transportation, and support personnel;
(3) military manpower: troop lists, regimental town assignments, routine troop
assignments, border troop assignments, manpower shortages, commanders assign-
ments, quartering policy, salary funding from the Chancellery of the Grand Treasury
(prikaz bolshoi kazny), distribution of monetary and service land compensation,
behavior of troops (abuse of local population, fighting between Russians and
Ukrainians, sex crime), and disease (Plague onslaught, prophylactic measures, prohi-
bitions against clothing purchases, medical discharges); (4) local civilian population:
commandeering of Russians, commandeering of the local, non-Russian population,
conferral of Russian subjecthood, trade prohibitions, destruction of property, restora-
tion of privileges, oaths of loyalty, the Orthodox Church, Jews, and disease; and
(5) intelligence information: statistical lists, administration, road reconnaissance,
Russian attacks, enemy attacks, Russian casualty lists, POW interrogation and assign-
ments, captured documents, war trophies sent to Moscow, Polish events, Ukrainian
events, and the Russian elite. Under (1) I did not include Aleksei Mikhailovichs proc-
lamation justifying the impending offensive, since that lay outside the bureaucracys
orbit.
117
Dennis E. Showalter, The Prussian Military State, in Early Modern Military
History, 14501815, ed. Geoff Mortimer (Basingstoke, England; New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004), 12021; Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1955), 1415; Otto Hintze, Staat und Verfassung: Gesammelte
Abhandlungen zu allgemeinen Verfassungsgeschichte (Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang,
1941), 23238, 256, 261.
312 peter b. brown

control over the welter of pre-operational planning, prior to the actual

launching of an operation.

Conclusion

Command-and-control evolution in Muscovys final century had sig-

nificant implications both for Russian military and non-military
spheres.118 C2 norms and procedures generated newer scoping and
macro-organizational planning possibilities. In short, late Muscovite
C2 with all its promise and pitfallsdid lead, because of its emphasis
upon the interaction of documentation, thought, and action, to an
enlargement of thinking capacity.
Though its record of success was uneven, seventeenth-century
Russian C2 assumed field commanders virtual literacy, their agility
to engage in extra-ocular terrain visualization, and their capability to
aggregate and disaggregate large numbers of both physical and non-
physical factors. But C2 also induced Muscovite field commanders to
develop these skills.119
Muscovite C2 documents helped codify and standardize language,
effect a grammatization of thought, and contribute to speech commu-
nity (Sprachgemeinschaft) evolution as documentary influence became
ubiquitous.120 The C2 spill-over effect from Moscows military depart-
ments into the lives of hundreds of thousands of military servitors of
whatever rank was large, but it did not stop there, for militarily-driven
administrative desiderata impacted so many other areas of Muscovite
existence.

118
This work does not have space to address at length the latter issue, argued in a
segment (The Military Revolution and the Fiscal-Military State Debate and Muscovy)
contained in this works original draft.
119
Virtual literacy implies that an individual, partially literate or even completely
illiterate, who, through direct or indirect exposure to written texts of whatever sort
is compelled to think of himself as a functioning person in the midst of a literacy-
operating environment and to imitate or mimic, as best as he can grasp them, the
thought processes of a fully literate individual, e.g., a chancellery state secretary or
clerk.
120
See Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 131; Dick Leith, A Social History of
English (London, New York: Routledge, 1983), 49, 79; and the various works of Soviet
linguists such as S.I. Kotkov and B.A. Larin.
 command and control in the russian army 313

Inconfutably, C2 acted as an acculturating force, and was one of

the late Muscovite forces under-girding the educational and even
other cultural phenomena of eighteenth-century Russia. Through-
out the seventeenth century Muscovite appetites for information
acquisition enlarged. This process forced Russians to envision larger
planning venues to which such information might be applied,
and, through sheer cumulative effect of growing statistical inputs and
macro-planning experience, compelled them to be more conscious
(and curious) about the implications of their self-generating knowl-
edge.121 Seventeenth-century Muscovite C2 thus contributed materially
to Russian civilization.

121
See Jean Meyer, States, Roads, Armies, and the Organization of Space, in War
and Competition Among States, ed. Philippe Contamine (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 99128; William Sunderland, Imperial Space: Territorial Thought and
Practice in the Eighteenth Century, in Russian Empire. Space, People, Power, 1700
1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2007), 3355.
 OTTOMAN MILITARY POWER IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

Virginia H. Aksan

Ottoman-Russian warfare of the eighteenth century, while generally

acknowledged as the causal factor necessitating a complete transfor-
mation of Ottoman society after 1800, has only begun to get the atten-
tion it needs from Ottoman historians. As a way of filling in some of
the gaps, this essay sets out the geopolitical status of the Ottomans in
the eighteenth century, discusses the general difficulties facing Ottoman
administrators, and then concentrates on some particulars of the two
wars of Catherine II from 17681792. The emphasis will be on man-
power, military leadership and supply, especially as driven by the
increasingly desperate fiscal difficulties of the Ottoman sultanate.
Drawn into recent comparative histories of pre-modern empires,
the Ottoman military enterprise remains somewhat undifferentiated
by contrast with the increasingly rich historiographies of pre-Raj India,
Qing China, Central Asia, and of course Europe.1 Comparisons across
cultures prove most fruitful in large thematic studies, such as the dis-
cussion of frontiers and borderlands, marginality and hybridity in
diverse populations, and/or cultural exchanges across vast, undifferen-
tiated zones of interaction. Studies on the political economies of
pre-modern agrarian empires, and a focus on the impact of local cul-
ture on the organization and financing of military manpower in such
contexts are promising. Other collaborative efforts, more overtly cross-
imperial, have arisen in response to the interest in the Mediterranean

1
Examples include: Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of
Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), but also notably
with Huri Islamolu, Introduction to Special Issue on Qing and Ottoman Empires,
Journal of Early Modern History 5 (2001): 27182; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russias
Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 15001800 (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2004), and Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field:
Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004);
Dirk H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour
Market in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and
Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 15001700
(New York: Routledge, 2002).
316 virginia aksan

and Indian Oceans as an inter-regional arena worthy of study, by con-

trast with the world system of the Atlantic Ocean. Leila Fawaz and
C. A. Bayly note the fragility of Ottoman and Mughal imperial centers.
It was almost inevitable that the regional nobles and merchant coali-
tions would assert some degree of independence from Istanbul, Isfahan
or Delhi.In many cases all that happened was that these rulers amal-
gamated offices and built up local coteries within the shell of the older
imperial institutions. Thus the much vaunted decline of the Islamic
empires can better be seen as a diaspora of its leading citizens along the
frontier of empire.2
Two articles on garrison states and military fiscalism in the Ottoman
Empire of Mahmud II (180839) and in the later British East India
Company, accompanied by C. A. Baylys effort to bring coherence to
the project of comparison, stress the similarity of operational difficul-
ties in such agrarian settings, particularly as related to the use of
indigenous soldiers and relationships with provincial notables. The
consensus of younger scholars, he concludes, is that the general opin-
ion now seems to be that the sick man was suffering not so much
from diseases of degeneration but from a wider, genetic failure of the
species multiethnic empire. 3
Gbor goston, in a similar vein, offers a further typology of
Ottoman frontiers, which demonstrates the wide variety of operational
difficulties facing Ottoman administrators: 1) regions of direct and
central control such as in the Balkan and Anatolian heartlands; 2) pacts
with conquered elites such as the condominium in Hungary; 3) tribute-
paying non-Muslim clients such as the elites of Wallachia and Moldavia
(modern Romania), and 4) hereditary, largely autonomous territories
(sancaks) of eastern Anatolia and the Arab provinces which were
granted to nomadic and sedentary tribes among Kurds, Druze and
Trkmen.4

2
Modernity and Culture: from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, Leila Tarawi
Fawaz and C. A. Bayly, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) p. 18; also-
Sugata Bose, Space and Time on the Indian Ocean Rim: Theory and History,
36588.
3
Virginia Aksan, The Ottoman Military and State Transformation in a Globalizing
World, 25972; Douglas Peers, Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State:
Modernity, Hybridity and the Political Economy of Colonial India ca. 17501860,
24558 and C. A. Bayly, Distorted Development: the Ottoman Empire and British
India, c. 17801916, In Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
27:2 (2007), 335.
4
A Flexible Empire: Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,
International Journal of Turkish Studies 9 (2003): 1529.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 317

For those interested in empires and their ability to organize armies

and manage debt, the transnational study of the Ottomans and their
imperial neighbors offers the best opportunity to explore similarities
and differences across religious and cultural divides, especially for the
period 15501800. In the eighteenth century, the Austrians began with
imperial ambitions and ended the century bound on both sides by the
new Eastern European balance of power. The Russians experienced a
reformation and triumphal expansion which radically increased the
number of Russian territories and diverse subject populations with all
its accompanying complications. Goldstones demographic arguments
about state-breakdown across the world in the seventeenth century
and again in 17701850, however to be contested, offer one model for
cross-cultural conversations.5
Ottomanists by and large have resisted drawing such large scale
interpretations for the difficult period from 16501850, although
Abou-El-Haj has called for more social analysis and comparison with
Europe for the transitional period. Another exception is Karen Barkey,
whose recent Empire of Difference enlarges on her influential paradigm
concerning center-periphery relations, in which she argued that sul-
tanic needs for legitimation required them to construct a model of
inclusion and exclusion which bound Istanbul and provincial grandees
in a cycle of punishment and amnesty.6
Military history has undergone its own revolution in the last quarter
century as regards Europes others. The journey from Geoffrey Parker
to Kenneth Chase is illustration enough of the sea-change in the study
of war and society. The appearance of works of those of Hamish Scott,

5
Jack A. Goldstone: Intro-elite divisions over social mobility; and popular upris-
ings, partly autonomous and partly elite orchestrated, pressed basic economic
demands so fiercely as to lead to changes in political, social, economic organization, in
his Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991), 6.
6
Rifaat Ali Abou El Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire
Sixteenth To Eighteenth Centuries (Albany: SUNY 1991, reissued in 2006).f. Abou
El-Hajs influence on several generations of students has been large, with evidence in
the doing rather than the reflecting. Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The
Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), and
Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press, 2008); see my review Turks and Ottomans Among the
Empires, in International Journal of Turkish Studies 15:12 (2009), 10314. Another
attempt to engage with European historiography of this period is Ariel Salzmanns
Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State (Boston: Brill,
2004), which is a work on Ottoman regional fiscal governance (Dyarbakir), using
Tocqueville as the comparative stand-in for the France of Louis XIV and XV. See an
extensive review by Nora Lafi in MIT-EJMES 5 (2005): 904.
318 virginia aksan

or Michael Hochedlinger and Brian Davies, as well as the edited collec-

tion of David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning
among a host of other works on the Russians, is demonstrably chang-
ing the picture regarding land-based agrarian empires and military
power.7 These kinds of macro historical approaches to the Ottoman
imperial setting are welcome but may be premature as specific cam-
paigns of specific wars remain largely unstudied in the Ottoman
archives.8

Ottoman Geopolitical Status 17001800

Ottoman military power and its distribution in the eighteenth cen-

tury were based on an understanding of the necessity to defend four
frontiers which preoccupied the court in Istanbul: the western
(Mediterranean); the southern (Egypt/Red Sea/Indian Ocean); the
eastern (Persia and the Caucasus), and the northern (Danubian/Black
Sea) frontiers. In 1715, the Ottomans marched into the Peloponnesus
(Morea) on the western frontier and took it from the Venetians, cap-
ping a long series of confrontations with Venice, which had involved
the costly siege of Crete from 1645 to 1669, amidst turmoil at the court
in Istanbul. The Ottomans were most concerned about corsairs (from
Malta and the Greek islands in particular) and piracy, which prevented
all-important supplies from reaching Istanbul via the Dardanelles.

7
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the
West 15001800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, rev ed. 2000);
Kenneth Chase, Firearms: a Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003); Hamish Scott, The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 17561775
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Michael Hochedlinger, Austrias
Wars of Emergence 16831797 (London: Pearson Education, 2003), Brian Davies, War,
State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe 15001700 (London; New York: Routledge,
2007); David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning, Reforming the
Tsars Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the
Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); See also European Warfare
14531815 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), which has a chapter by Gbor goston
on the Ottomans, and War and Warfare in the Early Modern World, 14501815
(London: UCL Press, 1999), with a chapter by V. Aksan, both collections edited by
Jeremy Black.European Warfare 13501750, Frank Tallet and D. J. B. Trim, eds.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), has two articles on the Ottomans by
goston and Rhoads Murphey.
8
My own work, Ottoman Wars 17001870: An Empire Besieged (London: Pearson
Education, 2007), should be seen as a preliminary effort to engage with the new studies
as well as redressing some of the absences in the story.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 319

They managed to maintain local coastal defenses haphazardly through-

out our period of study until the arrival of the Russian fleet (aided by
British naval expertise) in 1770. Their clients in Algiers and Tripoli
pursued their own paths but remained bound to the Ottoman system
until after 1800.
The Ottomans are generally said to have lost control of the Red Sea/
Indian Ocean frontier to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. More
recently, scholars have begun to understand that the Cairo-Damascus-
Mecca triangle continued to be important to the Ottomans for many
reasons, not the least of which was the legitimacy derived from being
the protector of the two holy cities of Islam. The chief obligation of the
sultan was to protect the Egyptian annual tribute from Mecca, a very
important part of his annual revenues, carried by the pilgrimage/trade
caravans in the annual trek to and from Cairo, Damascus and the
Hijaz. The trek to the Hijaz also connected Ottoman traders to the Red
Sea and the Indian Ocean. Neglected in the first half of the century,
Egypt and the Red Sea became the concern of Istanbul again after 1770,
in response to significant rebellions by autonomous warlords across
the empire, and disorder in Cairo itself. The Wahhabi uprisings, a true
challenge to Ottoman Muslim legitimacy in the early eighteen hun-
dreds, caused Istanbul no end of trouble.9 While it cannot be said that
the Ottomans controlled the Red Sea, they continued to be keen to
protect the Muslim trading rights there.
The heterodox Sunni Ottoman-Shiite Safavid frontier, cutting
through Kars, Erzurum and Baghdad, was disrupted by the Russian
arrival in Georgia after 1700. Uneasy peace with the Persians was fur-
ther broken by the collapse of the Safavids after 1721, and their defeat
by the Ghalzay Afghans in Isfahan in 1722. Both Russian and Ottoman
armies independently confronted the Afghan forces in the Caucasus,
with some initial success. In the agreement which followed in 1724, the
two powers recognized a Safavid survivor as Shah Tahmasp II and
divided their recent acquisitions of Persian territories in the Caucasus
and Azerbaijan respectively. Nadir, errant outsider, and later usurper of

9
Such uprisings were in part stimulated by the arrival of Russian and British war-
ships in the eastern Mediterranean and the British intervention in Indian Ocean trad-
ing in Basra and elsewhere, but also the chaos in governance of Egypt from the 1770s
forward. The annual number of pilgrims joining the caravan in Damascus numbered
15,00020,000 well into the nineteenth century: Abdul-Karim Rafeq, Damascus and
the Pilgrim Caravan, in Fawaz and Bayly, Modernity and Culture, 132.
320 virginia aksan

power, first allied himself with Tahmasp, and brought an end to Ghalzay
Afghan rule in Persia. He then had himself crowned as Shah in 1736.
Thereafter, Nadir Shah invaded India, and sacked Mughal Delhi (1739),
which likely contributed to the ease with which the British defeated the
Mughals two decades later.
Nadir Shahs incursions in Azerbaijan caused ripple effects among
semi-independent warlords along the Ottoman eastern border, which
the dynasty was hard put to confront. He led an army against the
Ottomans in 173234, then sent an embassy to Istanbul in 1736, which
prompted a truce, but war broke out again in 1742, leading to Nadirs
pivotal siege of Mosul in 1743. That significant challenge to the
Ottomans was only defeated by the mobilization of a regional army
which had important consequences for later events in the region.10
When Nadir Shah besieged Mosul again, it was to find the city well
defended by Husayn al-Jalili Pasha and his regional forces, not by any
major relief force from the center. The city and surrounding areas had
become largely self-reliant as a result of the rise of the political house-
hold of the Jalilis, who built an extensive network of local alliances
among Arab and Kurdish tribal confederacies, had established rela-
tions with local Jewish and Christian creditors, and maintained inde-
pendence based on their continued ability to supply the Ottoman
center with provisions (and more occasionally men) for the army. The
treaty of Kurdan was finally agreed upon in 1746, which reinstated the
borders and arrangements of the long-standing Ottoman-Persian
Treaty of Zuhab of 1639. It did, however, represent a new stage in
Ottoman-Persian relations, as an instrument between two states, rather
than as a contest between religious foes.11 The means of defense by the
use of a semi-autonomous force, the Jalilis, was also emblematic of the
decentralization of the eighteenth century as we will see in the descrip-
tion of the Ottoman-Russian wars below.
The northern frontier line, the site of all the Ottoman-Russian Wars
after 1768, was delineated by the string of massive fortresses from
Belgrade to the Danube basin, which extended via Ochakov on the
northern Black sea coast through the Crimean Peninsula to Kars in
the Caucasus. After 1768, it was the frontier of last resistance, where

10
Ernest S. Tucker, Nadir Shahs Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2006).
11
The complete story is available in Tucker, Nadir Shahs Quest.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 321

the client states of Wallachia and Moldavia, north of the Danube, as

well as the Tatar groups in the Crimea played an important role as
buffer territories for both the Ottomans and the Russians. The Ottoman
obsession with maintaining that boundary became clear only after the
disastrous losses of the first war 176874, but can be seen in much of
Ottoman diplomatic strategy throughout the eighteenth century.
The 173639 Austro-Ottoman-Russian War had strained all the
resources of the Ottomans (and the Austrians) as they were forced to
remobilize and resupply the northern frontier over a number of years,
but it ended in the humiliation of both the Austrians at Belgrade and
the Russians at Ochakov in 1737, in the initially successful but very
costly Russian invasion of the Crimea. The triumph of the 1739 Treaty
of Belgrade blinded the Ottoman court to the reforms which were des-
perately needed throughout the system. It was probably the last time
that the Ottomans effectively organized and renewed campaign sea-
sons year after year. But the costs were significant, and the cracks
already well evident.
From 1740 to 1768 peace prevailed with the western European pow-
ers and their Ottoman neighbor. In the empire, the era has been recog-
nized as a time of fiscal recovery and pacifist grand viziers. Sustained
efforts at neutrality enabled the greater flow of goods and the empow-
erment of local provincial elites (ayans) so distinctive to the Ottoman
eighteenth century. In 1768, the Ottomans declared war on Russia,
ostensibly because of the violation of Ottoman territory by Russian
Cossacks chasing Polish exiles of the Bar Confederation at Balta.
Poland was one of the constant underlying concerns of Ottoman diplo-
macy, but in 1768 the war party in Istanbul used it largely as the excuse
to reengage along the Danubian frontier.12
The stability of sultanic rule, a larger central bureaucracy, and the
introduction of multilateralism into foreign affairs characterize
Istanbul of the eighteenth century. One of the explanations for that
may have had to do with Ahmed IIIs ability to produce children: he
married sixteen daughters to royal bridegrooms in the practice known
as damatlk, creating a large coterie of privileged courtiers in Istanbul
who served the sultans well. Most successions were peaceful after 1730,
when Ahmed III (17031730) was toppled by massive discontent over
bureaucratic dallying around whether or not to go to war with Persia,

12
See Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 4.
322 virginia aksan

which included special extractions to support war which most affected

the artisans and guilds of Istanbul.13
New coalitions of the population, including members of the ulema
and merchants, represented by the large rebellion of 1730, first aligned
themselves with the Janissaries, the voice of the oppressed until mid-
century, and then turned against them as their increasing disorder and
military defeats focused the anger of the inhabitants of the city.
Competing centers of power in the provinces also contested the legiti-
macy of the Ottoman dynasty, reflected in disparate voices and several
significant rebellions across Christian and Muslim territories alike. The
sultan retreated even further into isolation and insignificance, and
warfare became the business of the grand vizier, as none of these sul-
tans led their armies into battle. The period is also characterized by the
further redistribution of wealth (especially as related to the cost of
mobilizing men and supplies) onto the provinces, which contributed
to the rise of provincial nodes into power, and ever-increasing loss of
control over provincial revenues.

Diplomacy Instead of War

Capable bureaucrats such as Koca Mehmed Ragb Pasha, reis (equiva-

lent of the minister of foreign affairs) and grand vizier to three sultans
from 1741 to his death in 1763, strove to keep the Ottomans off the
battlefield and bring them into the age of multilateral treaties with
Persia and Austria. The striking Ottoman turn to multilateralism,
beginning with the 1699 Karlowitz treaty, was linked to increasing mil-
itary weakness. Close to a hundred diplomatic instruments survive
from the eighteenth century, an archival record of an empire moving
from aggressive expansion to defensive mode. Embassies sent abroad
to announce accessions, or cement treaties, brought back military and
cultural intelligence which stimulated discussion in Istanbul circles

13
The guilds of the city were obliged to support the army on the march with goods,
tents, and manpower (saddle makers, tentmakers, cooks, copper makers, sword mak-
ers etc., and many non-Muslims among them, such as bakers and tailors), had commit-
ted 138 guildsmen and 106 tents to the mobilization in 1717, most of the requisitioned
goods by that time converted to cash payments rather than kind, and were angry at the
perceived squandering of their contributions. enol elik, Osmanl Sefer
Organizasyonunda Orducu Esnaf ve stanbul Orducular, in Feridun M, Emecen, ed.,
Eskiadan Modern aa Ordular (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2008), 35586.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 323

about the need for reform. Russian official representation joined the
diplomatic corps in Istanbul after 1700, adding to the French, Austrian,
Venetian, British and Dutch officials already there.14
Our view of Ottoman success at diplomacy is generally colored by
the consular records of these diplomats, who describe the opacity (and
rapacity) of Ottoman officials, but in fact perspicacity and patience are
also in evidence in the exasperation of European accounts. The
Ottomans resisted French urging to war over Poland in 1733 and again
in 1756. They concluded a mutual defensive alliance with Sweden in
1739, as a means of blocking temporarily Russian ambitions in the
eastern Mediterranean, and even offered to help mediate the end of the
Austrian War of Succession in 1745, largely because of concerns about
the disruption in Adriatic trade. In making the offer to mediate, the
grand vizier drew a line on the map from Arta (Greece) to Sidra
(Libya), east of which was to be prohibited to aggression and piracy.
The firman and the proposed intervention did little more than sur-
prizeand embarrass the courts involved, but it offers historians a win-
dow into the Ottoman understanding of Mediterranean politics.15
Discussions with Frederick the Great about commercial and defensive
alliances with Prussia began as early as 1740, and the outcome of this
set of talks was the Prussian capitulations, a treaty of friendship and
commercial ties only, ratified by July 1761. The Ottomans sent an
embassy to Frederick in June 1763, ostensibly to commemorate the
1761 treaty, but in reality to assess the Polish question in Fredericks
court, and further discuss an alliance.16

14
See Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 6. See also the discussion in Caroline Finkel,
Osmans Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 13001923 (New York: Basic Books,
2005), 36771.
15
The sources are Von Hammer and Ottoman chronicler Izzis Tarih-i Izzi
(Istanbul, 1786), 21a. For an interesting consideration of Russian diplomacy involving
the Mediterranean, see Thomas Freller, In Search of a Mediterranean Base: The Order
of St. John and Russias Great Power Plans During the Rule of Tsar Peter the Great and
Tsarina Catherine II, Journal of Early Modern History 8 (2004): 330.
16
Ambassador Ahmed Resmi reported to the court of the conditions in Poland fol-
lowing the death of Augustus III as he made his way across Europe to Berlin. The dis-
cussions concerning an alliance came to nothing once Catherine II and Frederick had
come to terms in April 1764. Such occasional Ottoman embassies continued until the
abrupt and arguably radical decision by Selim III, 17891807, to establish permanent
missions in European capitals in 1793. See Virginia H. Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman
in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi 170083 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), chapter 2. See
also Scott, The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 11215.
324 virginia aksan

In spite of sustained pressure by the French (Ambassador Vergennes

had specific instructions to bribe Ottoman officials for that purpose),
the Ottomans declared neutrality in the matter of Russian interference
in Poland in March 1764. Grand Vizier Muhsinzade Mehmed recog-
nized the election of Stanislas Poniatowski, Catherine IIs preferred
candidate in July of 1765. Until that time at least, Ottoman diplomats
preferred sustained negotiations to outright resumption of violence
with Austria or Russia.
Ottoman resistance to Prussian overtures lay in their commitment
to the treaties with Austria. The Treaty of Belgrade recapitulated much
of the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz, which had articles concerning the
establishment and maintenance of fixed borders, and regulations con-
cerning cross-border movements. The renewal of the perpetual treaty
in 1745 actually did sustain stability along the Austro-Ottoman line
until 1788, when reluctantly, Austria had to join her ally Russia in the
war against Istanbul. Ottoman diligence in the matter of maintaining
the conditions of the treaties is reflected in at least one mission to
investigate Janissary abuses along the Austro-Ottoman frontier in
1760.17 As with the Persian Kurdan treaty of 1746, the Treaties of
Passarowitz and Belgrade established the framework for later negotia-
tions and modern inter-state relations.

The State of Ottoman Military Power

By 1768 the vaunted Ottoman military system was in need of an over-

haul. In contrast to Europe, where federative, contractual armies were
giving way to centralized systems, the Ottoman army had become
highly decentralized and largely organized and financed at the local
level by governors, tax collectors and elites of town and village collec-
tives. This redistribution of wealth, facilitated by devolving tax respon-
sibilities to provincial notables and their entourages, who acquired
semi-permanent, annually renewed rights to taxation, is directly
related to the dynastys need to defend its borders through the period
170046. The return to war with Russia in 1768 revealed the extent to
which neither the military system nor Ottoman society in general was

17
There are likely many others to be unearthed in the Ottoman archives. See
Virginia Aksan, Whose Territory and Whose Peasants? Ottoman Boundaries on the
Danube in the 1760s, in The Ottoman Balkans, 17501830, Frederick F. Anscombe, ed.
(Princeton: Markus Weiner Publishers, 2006), 6186.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 325

prepared to take on another lengthy and costly campaign. As the two

wars unfolded, the dysfunctional Janissary system was clearly exposed,
and the bankruptcy of the state appeared imminent, forcing Selim III
(17891807) into the radical reorganization called the New Order.18
The Janissaries, the Ottoman standing infantry, which at its most
effective under Sleyman (152066) stood at some 20,000, may have
had over 400,000 registered on the muster rolls by the time the
corps was dissolved in 1826. About ten percent of the force could be
counted on as battle-ready warriors. The Istanbul garrisons probably
numbered 20,00030,000 battle-ready men at the outside in the mid-
eighteenth century. The rest constituted largely fraudulent entries in
inflated rolls, and included long dead, aged, pensioned, disabled, or
even non-existent soldiers who were real enough when it came to
accession ceremonies, which were marked by large bonuses and raises
paid by the new sultan. A more realistic number of 128,000 Istanbul
and provincial garrison Janissaries dates from 178485, between the
two Ottoman-Russian wars, at a time when three quarters of the states
revenue went to military expenses. Whatever the figure, yearly salaries
(paid in three month installments in theory) and the extensive privi-
leges insisted upon by the Janissaries, were distributed to what
amounted to a formidable caste.19
Registration in the rolls, as with every other interaction between the
Ottoman sultan and his subjects, was the marker of belonging to the
imperial system. Janissary officers and palace officials alike could
become very wealthy by simply having pay certificates (esames) in their
possession, occasionally in the thousands, which entitled them to the
sultans largesse. Early in the eighteenth century, the certificates moved
into the market, like stocks, and were traded as guarantees of access to
what amounted to a social welfare system.

18
It is worth remembering that bankruptcy was endemic to large land-based
empires of the early modern world. Both Austria and Russia wrestled with the problem
of cash flow and large armies in the same period.
19
Accession ceremony largesse, viewed as the pledge of the new sultan to his army,
had become ruinous by 1700. At Ahmed IIIs accession, in 1703, the palace silver was
melted down to make up the payment; Mahmud I (175774) distributed 29,530 kese
ake, not just to his soldiers. Seyyids, distinguished Muslims who could trace their line-
age to Muhammad, and numbering in the thousands, were given 1,000 akes each; see
Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 52. The practice was abandoned by the end of the century. The
figure 400,000 Janissaries is likely an exaggeration: Yavuz Cezar, Osmanl Maliyesinde
Bunalm ve Deiim Dnemi (XVIII. yy dan Tanzimata Mali Tarih), (Istanbul: Alan,
1986), 957.
326 virginia aksan

An estimated 54,000 Janissaries were assigned to the sixty-eight for-

tresses across the empire in mid-century.20 Various funds were assigned
to their upkeep, such as the non-Muslim poll tax (cizye), but it was
never enough. The Janissaries had merged with local communities,
and could no longer be required to rotate from city to countryside, or
fortress to fortress. As local elites, and bullies, they were at the center of
political rivalries and largely unreliable for other than police work.
Most operated in the marketplace in trades well outside their primary
responsibility as soldiers; many were involved in extortion and protec-
tion rackets. Nonetheless, the regiments (ocaks) still took care of their
own, maintaining separate treasuries, investing their money collec-
tively, insisting on the right of return of ten percent of the estates of
dead comrades, and generally attending to the well-being of regimen-
tal brothers at war. Discipline was the responsibility of the regimental
officers. Not even the sultan or the grand vizier could intervene unless
state crimes such as a murder occurred.
On the question of discipline and drill, there is no doubt that the
Janissaries were an undisciplined lot by 1700. This was not the case
in earlier centuries. Breki recently demonstrated that the Janissaries
took up volley fire formations perhaps as early as 1520s on the
battlefields with the Hungarians and Habsburgs, and concludes that a
hot war was just as significant a locale for military acculturation as
foreign expertise, especially in the innovative Hungarian theater.21 All
European observers remark on the solemnity and order of Ottoman
camps before Karlowitz. Even the remnants of the Janissary army who
fought at Kartal (Kagul) in 1770 a century later, an unmitigated disas-
ter for the Ottomans, were admired by Russian Field Marshal
Rumiantsev for their bravery and perseverance.22 Cash rewards on the
battlefield (for special deeds, for numbers of enemy killed, for battle
wounds), the continuation of the cult of individual valor, the persis-
tence of cavalry as a major component of the Ottoman military, and
the lack of control by Istanbul over access to firearms across the empire,

20
smail Hakk Uzunarl, Osmanl Devleti Tekilatndan Kapukulu Ocaklar,
vol.1, 3rd Printing, (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu Basmevi, 1988), 32930.
21
Gnhan Breki, A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: The
Janissary Use of Volley Fire During the Long Ottoman-Habsburg War of 15931606
and the Problem of Origins, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. 59 (2006):
40738.
22
Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 154 & 177, footnote 67.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 327

are all aspects of the latter-day environment and symptoms of a highly

independent force. Selim III was brought down in 1807 by a Janissary
revolt which erupted over new uniforms; in 1826, when Mahmud II
finally eliminated the corps, it was in response to a last Janissary revolt
over new drills.
Strikingly, Janissary leadership was not based on meritocracy, but on
length of service and latterly on heritage, as families enrolled sons into
the corps. Meritocracy was reserved for the Pasha (the grand vizierial
ranks) rather than the Agha (Janissary) ranks. Well into the middle of
the eighteenth century, pashas-in-waiting had extensive provincial
experience as Governors and/or Commanders-in-chief of major cam-
paigns. The Janissary Agha was present at battlefield conferences but
subordinate to the grand vizier, and generally appointed by him with
the approval of the sultan. Creation of a military academy for officer
training and a general staff had to await the elimination of the Janissaries
in 1826. The apparent power the Janissaries had over the sultan was
balanced by the equally apparent willingness to restore the traditional
order when their demands had been met. Janissary rebellions gener-
ated considerable violence and occasional regicides, but were charac-
terized by a curious lack of inclination to eliminate the dynasty
altogether.
While these long term trends had begun as early as 1600, they had
reached an intolerable level by the mid-eighteenth century. As long as
the Janissaries proved their worth on the battlefield, their excesses and
abuses of local populations were tolerated. After 1700, when the
Janissaries had consistently failed to hold back the Holy Leagues
armies, the sultan and his court worked at other ways of controlling the
unruly force in order to continue to defend the empire. Addressing
inflated muster rolls was one way: in 1688, 20,000 names were struck
from the registers; a century later, in 1771, 30,000 were struck, a meas-
ure of the degree of fraud represented in the official records.23
Devising alternative or parallel armies was another. The traditional
provincial soldiers of the Ottoman military system were the feudatory
sipahis, or timariots, that is, holders of timars, a fief in return for mili-
tary service, largely made up of cavalry. Generally, the system was
applied to Anatolia and the Balkan provinces, less so in the southern
tier of empire. Inheritance was not guaranteed, but dependent upon

23
Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 4653.
328 virginia aksan

performance in battle. Many new timariots were created for volunteers

on the battlefield who showed up in the hopes of being assigned a timar
in return for valor. The timarl or sipahi was required to outfit himself
and his retainers and stand prepared for the call to arms. Such forces
had become unreliable, largely because they were unable to sustain a
living from their agricultural holdings. Early in the empires history,
some 80,000 might have reported for duty for major campaigns, but by
the mid-eighteenth century no more than half that number was avail-
able for duty. Although the force was in steep decline, and repeatedly
subject to reforms, the Ottomans did not eliminate it completely until
the time of Selim III. Large scale confiscation or reassignment of such
rights to estates often resulted in rural unrest, one of the reasons for the
sustained revolts called the Celali rebellions of a century earlier during
the long war with Austria 15961606.
Paramilitary bands, mercenaries, or militias of one sort of another,
made up of demobilized soldiers, or those stuck from the central
rolls gradually substituted for the feudatory system. Such bands were
composed of masterless soldiers, originally called levend, a term of
opprobrium first used for vagrants and landless peasants, but were
increasingly drawn from the martial tribal populations of the fringes
of empire: Kurds, Albanians, and Circassians. As their numbers
increased, the term levend was applied to troops who were mobilized
by provincial officials and theoretically paid for out of central treas-
ury funds (miri). By the 1720s, a provincial governor was expected
to attend the major campaigns with 200 of his own retinue and any-
where from 1,000 to 2,000 recruits, cavalry and infantry, the latter paid
for from Istanbul. While some aspect of this system of provincial mobi-
lization of small bands of militia had always been in existence, the
numbers of such soldiers increased tenfold, from 10,000 to 100,000
between the years 1683 to 1768.24 They caused great difficulties in the
176874 war because they showed up as independent bands, with
unreliable leadership, and had a habit of flying after the first exchange
of fire.
Other auxiliary forces, housed in Istanbul, with small detach-
ments at the large fortresses, such as the armorers (cebecis) and the
wagoneers (arabacs), were connected to the production, storage

24
See Virginia H. Aksan, Whatever Happened to the Janissaries? War in History 5
(1988): 2336.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 329

and transportation of weapons and gunpowder. They supported the

bombardiers (humbaracs) and artillerymen (topus), who were prob-
ably the two corps which received the most systematic, if somewhat
erratic, investment and renewal by Ottoman officials over the centu-
ries, which would continue to be the case, with urgent emphasis under
Selim III and Mahmud II, 180839.
A myriad of local forces, drawn from frontier populations both
Christian and Muslim, had once served the war effort. The means of
recruitment and payment varied from contractual, such as rental of
wagons, horses, and drovers, to negotiable (as part of capitulation
agreements of conquered territories), to enslavement (this particularly
the case in the navy, on the oared galleys, but likely just as true for
many garrison tasks during wartime, such as for building bridges, dig-
ging trenches, etc.). There is little doubt that the disciplinary control
surrounding such systems had disappeared by the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury. Whereas villages and towns could once have benefited from the
presence of a well-organized, disciplined regiment, they now emptied
out at the approach of the sultans army. Sieges, where Ottoman prow-
ess is undisputed, began to end in annihilation of garrison populations,
which would naturally include civilians who took refuge in times of
attack.
The Crimean Tatars, formidable raiders and slave traders of earlier
centuries, had since the fifteenth century served as a tributary vassal to
the Ottomans. They could make up a huge force of horse and men for
major campaigns, and were often sent into Poland and Ukraine in par-
ticular at the start of large confrontations, the first signal that an
Ottoman grand campaign was underway. Two factors had served to
reduce their effectiveness by the era under scrutiny. Russian expansion
south, and the settlement of Ukraine especially after mid-century,
turned many ethno-religious communities(including some of the
Tatars), into military garrison communities along the Ottoman-
Russian border. In addition, the Belgrade Treaty not only established
fixed borders but also obliged both Austrians and Ottomans to control
such mobile soldiery against encroachment into one anothers territo-
ries. The Kk Kaynarca Treaty ending the 176874 war effectively
severed the end of the Ottoman-Tatar association. Its stipulations
included a clause concerning Tatar independence which led Catherine
II to annex the Crimea unilaterally in 1783. The impact of that loss can-
not be underestimated as one of the chief causes for the Ottoman
resumption of war in 1787.
330 virginia aksan

The Balkans and the client territories of Wallachia and Moldavia

(present-day Romania and Moldova) were absolutely essential to
Ottoman administrators who had to supply the sheep and grain, butter
and honey which continued to be the privileges of the Janissaries. It is
therefore impossible to exaggerate the importance of those two princi-
palities to the Ottoman war effort in terms of logistics and supplies. By
agreement, Wallachia and Moldavia were allowed to remain Christian
territories, without more than a token presence of Janissaries. Indeed,
for most of the post-1715 period, the princes were not allowed to have
their own armies. In return, they served as the Istanbul bread-basket
and the key to supplying the major campaigns in the Danube and
northern regions. The period of Phanariot rule (17151820s) is painted
as the blackest period of oppression in Romanian nationalism, which
underscores a period of almost constant warfare and occupation in the
area from the 1730s forward, Russian occupation in Jassy and Bucharest
during the Russo-Ottoman wars, and the relentless pressure on the
peasantry to supply two opposing armies.
Whether or not one subscribes to the notion of the Ottomans as the
perfect military state, it is true that logistics and supply were of the first
order in the time of Sleyman. Roads to the battlefront were carefully
prepared for the passage of the Janissaries, and communities within
proximity of bivouacs and way-stations could benefit from the pres-
ence of disciplined troops. But, as Europe had learned to its dismay
during the Thirty Years War, an undisciplined countryside produced
utter devastation and public opposition to the exactions of warfare.
Rebellions in the Ottoman capital after 1700 tell us that the urban pop-
ulation had reached its limit of tolerance and lost confidence in the
Ottoman management of war. At least one of the consequences of the
significant absence of the Ottomans from the battlefield in the mid-
eighteenth century was the complete collapse of the vaunted military
supply system, which was re-imposed on the Balkans with great diffi-
culty at the beginning of the 176874 war.25

Fiscal policies

As with all pre-modern empires, military expenditures consumed a

majority of the Ottoman expenses, and the increasing inability of the

25
See Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 14751.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 331

state to support the major campaigns became all too evident in the
long engagements with the Habsburgs in the 1680s. The redistribution
of revenue sources as outlined above, and the permanent international
agreements (capitulations), such as that with France in 1740, had the
unintended effect of empowering a class of local provincial elites, who
became essential to the states ability to go to war by the end of the
eighteenth century. Ottoman bureaucrats made efforts to reform some
traditional taxation policies, which included minting a new silver
coin, the kuru, which became the stable coinage of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and introducing the widespread use of life-term tax-farming
(malikane) after 1695, for all transactions of the state: agriculture, cus-
toms, and excise taxes. The malikanes passed largely into the hands of
the wealthy elites of Istanbul and other large cities of the empire. Their
local agents were given a set income against the revenues expected of
their holdings, and obligated to pay up to three years advance to the
state. While it gave the empire short-term benefits, the effect of the
initiative was to devolve control of the tax revenues to a cadre of local
officials. In 1722, such sales netted 1.45 million kurus; by 1768, this had
risen to 9.78 million; by 1787, 13.16 million, approximating the annual
revenue of the period which ran in non-war years at some 1516,000,000
million kuru.
This system constituted a form of long-term borrowing by the
state, secured against tax revenues.26 A further development was the
diversification of such investments as shares, creating private wealth
of extraordinary degree, with an urban class, as Darling notes, involved
largely in debt patronage rather than agricultural or industrial devel-
opment. In 1775, shares of such potential revenues were even sold
to the public. Janissaries and central state elites were largely benefi-
ciaries.27 NonMuslims were excluded from the system, but them-
selves profited as bankers and money-lenders, and increasingly, as
liaisons with the foreign trading communities of the empire. Here
again, revenue was generated by the selling of patronage certifi-
cates (berat) by the foreign consuls, first granted from the Ottoman
government often in cash, as were most of the transactions of

26
Linda Darling, Public Finances: The Role of the Ottoman Centre, in Cambridge
History of Turkey v. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire 16031839, Suraiya Faroqhi, ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 12428. Figures are on p. 127, and
drawn from the work of Mehmet Gen and Ariel Salzmann.
27
Linda Darling, Public Finances, 12428.
332 virginia aksan

the eighteenth century.28 Local merchants, largely non-Muslim, thus

acquired both the privilege and protection of the capitulatory regime
of the foreign nation, alienating both citizen and investment capital
from the Ottoman capital.
Provincial armies resulted from the explosion of such large estates,
or households, which were managed by long distance landlords across
the empire. A population of notables (the ayans above) became consid-
erable sources of power by the mid-century, with households requiring
protection, which attracted the paramilitary elements described above.
As one recent study has noted, After the provincial notables (ayans)
stepped in with their financial and social capital to fill the void left by
the timar system, it was only automatic that the mercenary troops,
most of whom belonged to the retinues of the ayans, would become an
integral part of whatever army the Ottomans were able to put in the
battlefield.29
Special taxes were allotted to such local officials in times of war.
These included the imdad-i seferiye, or special campaign taxes, as well
as state (miri) monies to raise regiments of troops, cavalry and infan-
try, the levends, as the occasion warranted. Elaborate records were
maintained of village commitments and guarantees for such troops,
and certificates of payment-owing by the state, which were often sub-
sequently utilized as tax credits, became routine parts of the mobiliza-
tion and supply strategies of Ottoman officials of mid-eighteenth
century.
Expenditures outran income consistently, and the system was unpre-
pared to accommodate the steep debt that war entailed, having, in a
sense, already overextended its credit with it subjects through tax
farming. Inflation, devaluation of coinage, forced loans, confiscation
were all practiced by Ottoman officials in this time of desperation. The
kuru collapsed as the stable currency: gold and copper coins traded
more widely. Trade was adversely affected by blockades in the
Dardanelles, and the collapse of individual buying power as prices
rose. Peasant flight and the pursuit of markets up the Danube also had
an impact on the Ottoman ability to feed not only troops but Istanbul

28
Edhem Eldem, Capitulations and Western Trade, Cambridge History of Turkey
v. 3, 321.
29
Murat nar Bykaka, Ottoman Army in the Eighteenth Century: War and
Military Reform in the Eastern European Context, MA (Middle East Technical
University) 2007, 19.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 333

itself, always a constant source of anxiety among officials. After the

1790s, especially, the Ottoman entered the most severe financial crisis
of the entire span of dynasty.

Sample Engagements of 176892

The Ottomans had managed to hold their own against the Austrians on
the Danube in the campaigns of 173639, because of occasional good
command (and very poor command on the Austrian side), astute
diplomacy and the loyalty of Bosnia to Ottoman defensive needs on
the European frontier. Leadership was precarious, however, evident in
the rapid turnover among grand viziers: five during the 173539 war;
six during the 176874 war. The incompetence of the command in
1768 was recognized by all and sundry, making the Ottoman-Russian
wars yet again a watershed for exposing the weaknesses of the system.
Grand viziers were appointed from within the court entourage, most
without battlefield exposure. Few grand viziers, apart from the able
Koca Ragb described above, who actually never led an army, had the
time to establish authority and continuity over a coalition of unruly
troops and commanders.
During 173639, the Ottomans had fought on terrain of the upper
Danube they understood, traditionally their area of strength. In 1768,
the seat of war moved further down the Danube, although Vidin would
often play a key role. What remained were the lower fortresses of the
Danube, as essential, if not more so than Vidin, to Ottoman survival:
Silistre, umnu (Shumen or Shumla), Rucuk (Ruse), smail, brail,
Bender and Ochakov on the Black Sea, fiercely contested during the
Russo-Ottomans Wars of 176892, when the Ottomans found them-
selves fighting largely on their own territory, and the Russians threat-
ening Istanbul itself. While little work has actually been undertaken
with the local population in mind, the impact can easily be imagined.
The most acute problem was the Russian investment of strategically
vital fortresses at the Danube mouth, which also served as supply
depots.
The Janissary army continued to be eroded by the parallel systems of
the countryside. Individuals infiltrated local Janissary regiments and
the timariot properties, and in effect, created a defense system organ-
ized out of rival households which effectively privatized warfare and
kept much of the states intended revenues in the provinces. Using the
Jalilis described earlier as an example, the head of the household might
334 virginia aksan

have had as a result of his networks and tax responsibilities, some

15002000 potential warriors at his personal command.30 Mosul may
have had as many as 30,00040,000 troops in the garrison at the time
of Nadir Shahs siege. Of these, perhaps 15,000 came from the Janissary
garrison at Aleppo, itself developing as an independent regional net-
work, although always more closely bound to Istanbul as part of the
Anatolian sphere. The Mosul triumph over Nadir Shah cemented the
reputation of the Jalilis as local heroes, but ushered in a period of con-
siderable strife among rival political households which generated into
civil war by the end of the century.31 Masters also argues provocatively
that the period created a dependence of Arab elites on the Ottoman
center, who developed a vested interest in the survival of empire as a
counterweight to the dynastic families of governors. Simply put, faced
with a choice between the sultan or the local dynast, many in this group
opted for Istanbul.32
The 176874 campaigns have been described elsewhere.33 The war
itself began slowly as neither side was particularly prepared to engage
on the Danube immediately. Mustafa III was informed that Russian
troops were in Poland and Ukraine. Tatar refugees from the Crimea
filled the streets of Istanbul with alarming news of encroaching
Russians. It was in that context that a war party could override the
objections of the experienced veteran Grand Vizier Muhsinzade
Mehmed Pasha who was only too aware of the consequences of the
return to war. He was dismissed in favor of Hamza Pasha, who behaved
in such a mad fashion that he was replaced by Mehmed Emin Pasha
who marched to the front with the Janissaries in the spring of 1769. He
was little more than a glorified secretary. Two other grand viziers
were appointed before Muhsinzade, the most able of the military com-
manders of the period, was restored to command in Nov. 1771, after
the Ottomans had experienced two of the greatest disasters of the
age: the destruction of the fleet by the Russians (with British help) at

30
Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul
15401834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 199, chapter 3 particularly. This
process is also succinctly described in Bruce Masters, Semi-Autonomous Forces in
the Arab Provinces, Cambridge History of Turkey, v. 3, 186206.
31
Khoury, State and Provincial Society, 205.
32
Masters, Semi-Autonomous Forces, 196 and elsewhere that the devolution of
economic resources led to a widening of their identity to include the possibility of
being Ottoman for the first time. (206)
33
Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 4.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 335

eme in 1770, and the humiliating rout of the army at Kartal (Kagul)
that same year. He immediately began negotiations to end the war,
which dragged on for two years until battlefield conditions forced the
Ottoman surrender.
The sultan had originally ordered 6,000 palace troops to each of
the two pivotal fortresses of Hotin and Ochakov. He also ordered the
Tatar Khan Kirim Giray to make raids into the new Russian territories
in the Ukraine as early as January of 1769. Chief Financial Officer
Sarm Ibrahim Pashas offers further evidence of the mobilization strat-
egies of the court.34 The first thing to be considered was to ensure that
the fortresses on the strategic line: Hotin, Bender, Ochakov, brail
and Killi, were supplied with 100,000 kile each of barley, wheat
and flour. This would normally be secured by forced purchase at
fixed prices (mubayaa). The manuscript includes a very extensive list
of the supplies and animals considered essential to the beginning of a
campaign. In the matter of hardtack (peksimed), for example, 400,000
kantar (at 120 lbs per kantar) were requisitioned from bakeries in
Istanbul, Salonika and Gelibolu, with a price tag of 2708 kese, by far the
largest expense on the list. Other examples include: 820 pairs of water
buffalo, for 69 kese; 1450 draft horses, 58 kese; 1000 trench diggers two
months wages, 58 kese, and so forth. Fortress repairs, lumber for
Danube bridges, army supplies, tents, etc., are all carefully recorded as
to be requisitioned, in accordance with the last imperial campaign,
173639.
Some 82,000 soldiers were to be mustered for the provincial levend:
among them, 6,000 infantry and cavalry to guard Moldavia; 14,200
for Ochakov; 17,560 for Hotin fortress; 3,100 for Bender; 24,000 for
the Crimea. If we add the some 60,000 Janissaries and related corps
assembled in Babada, plus 40,00050,000 Tatars raised by the Khan,
we arrive at the anticipated need of 150,000200,000 men for the

34
Mustafa Kesbi, bretnma-y Devlet, Ali Emiri ms 484. Mustafa Kesbi describes
himself as a secretary in the Defterdars office at the time (folio 32b). The manuscript
was published in Ottoman, with Cyrillic annotations, in Petersburg in 1881. (Sbornik
Nekotorykh Vazhnykh Izviestii i Ofitsialnykh Dokumentov Kasatelno Turtsii, Rossi i
Kryma. Devlet-i Aliye iyle Rusya Devleti ve Krm Hakknda Baze Malumat Muhimme
ve Tahrirat Resmiye-yi havi Mecmua dr, ed. By V. D. Smirnov.) Two Istanbul manu-
scripts have been compared and transcribed into modern Turkish characters as
bretnm-y Devlet (Tahlil ve Tenkitli Metin), ed., Ahmet reten (Ankara, 2002). See
pages 7494 for this description.
336 virginia aksan

Danubian and Black Sea frontier in this war. The register includes
close to a thousand officers and their entourages.35 The regional
commanders of provincial troops were drawn from the Balkans,
Anatolia and the Caucasus: Arnavut (Albanian) Kahraman Pasha,
Abaza (Abkhazian) Mehmed, Tarsuslu (Southeast) Koca Agha, Canikli
(on the Black Sea) Ali Pasha and sons; Ktahyali (Aegean) Rdvan
Agha, Dagstani Ali Pasha; erkes Hasan Pasha, etc. (Caucasus). In
the list as well are major clan names, important to later events:
Karaosmanoullar, apanoullar among others. A roll call occurred
as troops arrived at Babada, command center south of the Danube,
and actual battlefield numbers for the distribution of salaries and sup-
plies were then determined. Hantepesi, across the Danube between
Hotin and Jassy, was the northernmost supply center, with the crossing
at sak.
The Russians had 60,000 troops in Poland under Golitsyn and 40,000
in Ukraine under P. A. Rumiantsev, who had been a commander in
both European and Danubian arenas, and governor of the new Russian
territories in Ukraine after 1764. He was granted the title of field mar-
shal, with sole battlefield command after his defeat of the Ottomans at
Kartal in 1770. He and his foreign officers brought a new culture of
discipline and camaraderie to the battlefields of the east. The Russians
faced the difficulty in both wars of being far from their source of sup-
ply, and absolutely crippled by disease, as they were more susceptible
than the Ottomans to the fevers that were prevalent in the Danubian
valley. The army came to the northern shores of the Danube having
learned the utility of maneuverability, and the use of formations of
smaller numbers of troops and light artillery; the virtue of night attacks,
and the reintroduction of the bayonet against cavalry in the Seven
Years War. Consolidation of military supply and logistics and even the
merging of battlefield command, trends not fully evident until
Catherines wars against the Turks, were also legacies of the wars within
Europe.
The statistics appear to indicate an Ottoman advantage over the
Russians, but, in truth, mobilized troops, even if they were as up to
strength as requisitioned, vanished on the road, perhaps as much
as 6070%. Money and supplies failed to materialize, or, if to hand,
quickly ran out. In May of 1770, after a particularly disorganized

35
Mustafa Kesbi, fol. 35b, and p. 87 in the 2002 edition.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 337

campaign season in 1769, the grand vizier was reported as having only
20,000 troops under his command.. In August, the two armies faced
one another at Kartal (Kagul), with the Ottoman forces backed up
against the Danube in the marshy delta of the Kagul River. Rumiantsev,
greatly outnumbered, had already succeeded twice in routing the
Ottoman combined forces along the Prut River, commanded by Abdi
Pasha and Crimean Khan Kaplan Giray, and stood poised to lay claim
to the entire chain of fortresses along the estuary of the Danube. Grand
Vizier Halil Pasha had crossed the Danube in July to join the other
forces. The Russians may have been outnumbered as much as by five to
one (100,000 to 20,000), but as above, Ottoman statistics are unreliable
for this period, and Russian sources may well have been inventive.
Vasf Efendi, later Ottoman official historian, described the army as
resembling the waves of an ocean. Rumiantsev remained astonished by
the Ottoman ability to dig trenches overnight (which was an old habit)
and the considerable resistance of what he described as the last of
the formidable Janissaries in the inner ring of trenches. The confronta-
tion with the Janissaries was fierce and was accompanied by five hours
of continuous firing from the heaviest cannons.36 The Khans cavalry
fled first, sparking the desertion of the infantry, and leaving Abdi
Pashas infantry and the Janissaries to bear the brunt of the confronta-
tion. The entire baggage-train and one hundred fifty cannons and car-
riages were left behind and captured by the Russian forces. Three
thousand Ottoman soldiers are said to have died at Kartal, but worse
followed. Those fleeing had to cross the Danube by boat and the
Russians fired on the fleet assembled for that purpose, sinking many
vessels. Fleeing troops were crushing and slashing each other, some
climbing about the ships, others clutching at the rope and planks. The
greatest loss was there as evidenced by the drowned bodies floating
in the river.37 The estimates ranged from 20,000 to 40,000 Ottoman
dead, after the final confrontation before smail a few days later, when
it too was captured.
The final humiliation awaited the Ottomans at umnu in spring of
1774. Rumiantsevs assessment of the situation in late 1773 reveals
both Ottoman strategic initiatives, and the arenas that would engage

36
Rumiantsev, SIR10 vol. 1, #159, 347. He describes the Janissaries as ancient in
appearance and age. Vasif Efendi,
37
Rumiantsev, SIR10, vol. 1, #158, 345.
338 virginia aksan

the Russian forces in the second of the two Ottoman Russian Wars. The
Ottomans were firmly entrenched with skilled warriors in the Rusuk,
Nibolu, Vidin and Belgrade garrisons, he noted, and had proved their
mettle in holding out those fortifications. The Ottomans had complete
mastery of the Black Sea. As long as the Ottomans continued to hold
Ochakov and Kilburun, they could supply the Crimea even wood
was delivered that way and keep the Tatar hopes alive. In spite of the
Russian success in the Crimea and Buak, the Ottoman fleet guarded
the Danube estuary, and hence maintained control of the Crimean
Peninsula. The final capture of Ochakov lay in the future (1788), but
Kilburun, across the bay at the mouth of the Dnieper River, was cap-
tured by the Russians before the treaty was signed in 1774. Rumiantsev
could at least claim some success.
In spite of spirited regrouping in fall 1773, the Ottomans were
unable to mobilize an army of sufficient size the following spring to
resist the Russians. Grand Vizier Muhsinzade Mehmed commanded a
completely demoralized and disintegrating army. Camp revolts were
common, looting of supplies normal, and desertion endemic. In spite
of the exaggerated statistics of Ottoman strength, neither side had
more than 50,000 troops (the Russians far fewer) in the final set of
confrontations around umnu in late June 1774. The Russians crossed
the Danube, and surrounded the camp of the hopelessly outnum-
bered, gravely ill Muhsinzade Mehmed. He agreed to a cessation of
hostilities and immediate peace conference. The 21 July 1774 treaty
was signed on the battlefield by Ahmed Resmi and Nikolai Repnin,
plenipotentiaries for the two sides, at Kk Kaynarca, headquarters of
Rumiantsev.38
Kk Kaynarca has become synonymous with the beginning of
Eastern Question great power diplomacy, but its shock in Istanbul
must have been profound. Tatar independence represented the loss of
a significant population of Muslims for the first time, and the Russians
acquired the rights to passage through the Dardanelles, the latter
fought by Ottoman diplomats since Peters first victory at Azov in 1696.
The Russians insisted on the right to intervene for the protection of
Orthodox subjects of the sultan, a tactic they utilized adroitly for the
next fifty years. Furthermore, the treaty stipulated a huge indemnity to
be paid by the Ottomans which crippled recovery for the next decade.

38
This description is abbreviated from that of Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 4.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 339

Catherine II finished the humiliation by unilaterally annexing the

Crimea, which the Ottomans were forced to accede to in 1784.
Public concern in Europe, especially Britain, was not truly engaged,
however, until the events of the second Ottoman-Russian war of 1787
1792, when the fame of Field Marshal Rumiantsev was eclipsed by
that of two other major Russian figures of the period: Grigorii Potemkin
and A. V. Suvorov. Catherine II continued to press her southern policy
in the face of opposition, by establishing a protectorate over parts of
Georgia in the Caucasus in the course of 1785, while the Ottomans
affected a similar policy with rival Georgians. The Russian ambassa-
dor pressed their new treaty-based privilege of establishing con-
sulates in Ottoman cities, especially at Varna on the Black Sea, to
which the Ottomans remained hostile, perceiving them as centers of
provocation.39
Lured by her own rhetoric, as well as by her favorite Potemkin, who
was installed on vast estates in Poland, Catherine II engaged in a tour
of the Crimea, especially the new Russian Black Sea ports, with Joseph
II in the spring of 1787. Catherine passed under archways erected in
her honor inscribed with the road to Byzantium.40 In response to
such provocation, the Ottomans requested mediation from the English,
as their long-time allies the French were about to sign a commercial
treaty with Russia (which they did in January 1787). Public outrage
and dishonor at the loss of the Crimea, and potentially the Caucasus
(Georgia), however, probably had a greater influence on the final deci-
sion in Istanbul. Catherine IIs trip was the coup de grce. The Ottomans
declared war on Russia in August 1787.41 Austria, reluctant partner to
the Russians since 1781, declared war in early 1788.
Ochakov was the key to Russian strategy, while the Ottomans were
intent on recovery of the Crimea. In August 1787, hostilities began
when an Ottoman naval detachment fired on Russian frigates off Ocha-
kov, as part of their assault on Kilburun, surrendered to Russia in 1774.

39
Ba, Britain, 267.
40
This is an oft told tale about Catherines Greek Project: see Alan W. Fisher, The
Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 17721783 (Cambridge, 1970); The Chemin de
Byzance quote is from L. Pingaud, Choiseul-Gouffier: La France en Orient sous Louis
XVI (Paris, 1887), 18389. Ottoman diplomats were fully aware of the rumors con-
cerning the Greek Project (Aksan, Ottoman Statesman, 179).
41
Ba, Britain chapter 2. Gazi Hasan Pasha was absent from Istanbul during the
crucial events (41)
340 virginia aksan

Two Ottoman attempts on the fortress, a narrow strip of land located

on the Dnieper mouth, only a few hundred meters opposite Ocha-
kov,were repulsed by Suvorov. The Russian fleet did not perform well
in the confrontation, however, and later was badly damaged by a late
autumn storm.
Andr Lafitte-Clav, sent by the Ottomans as head of an artillery
corps to prepare the Ochakov defenses in April 1787, was the engineer
of the assault on Kilburun. He knew the Black Sea coast, having cir-
cumnavigated the estuary of the Danube and the northern littoral in
1784. To him we owe some observations about the Janissaries who he
thought would have succeeded had they followed his advice. He envi-
sioned an attack in stages with a landing on the very end of the sandy
peninsula on which Kilburun rested. Lafitte labored in vain to have the
commanders discipline the unruly troops, as he was convinced that an
orderly force could easily outsmart the Russians, but the majority of
the Ottoman troops were inexperienced and simply flew at the first
engagement. He thought the Ottoman habit of rewarding soldiers on
the spot for capturing men and property extremely unwise. He saw that
it led to soldiers quitting the confrontation in search of a potential
prize. In less than a minute, he noted, I saw several of them approach
the commander with seven or eight Russian heads, and myself saved
one of their captives by expressing the need to extract information
from him.42 The consequences of the Ottoman failure to reduce
Kilburun became apparent the next June, when fifteen ships of the
Ottoman Black Sea fleet were destroyed while trying to escape the
newly installed Russian battery at Kilburun.
The Habsburgs assembled the largest Austrian army to date for their
campaign against the Ottomans in 1788. Field Marshal Franz Moritz
Lacy, veteran of Ottoman-Austrian campaigning, proposed that six
separate army corps cover the Habsburg-Ottoman line from the
Adriatic to the Dniester: the main army under the emperor concen-
trating at Semlin opposite Belgrade; a second in Croatia; a third army
corps stationed along the Sava River; another to cover the Banat/
Temevar; a fifth protecting Transylvania and a sixth in Galicia/
Bukovina. Some 245,000 troops, with 898 field guns and 252 siege guns
were initially deployed on the Ottoman frontier a number which

42
Frdric Hitzel, Dfense de la place turque d oczakow par un officer du gnie
francais (1787), Ikinei Tarih Boyunca Kongresi Bildirileri (Samsun, Turkey, 1990),
6467.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 341

later rose to some 294,000 approximating the Russian mobilization

in the Principalities and the Crimea. The plan was to capture Belgrade
and secure the left bank of the Danube into Lesser Wallachia, while the
Galician army pushed towards Hotin to meet with the Russian army in
Moldavia.
The Russians mobilized two armies: one under Potemkin, to capture
Ochakov, the other to concentrate on the Danube, Prut and Dniester
basins, after joining up with the Austrians. Because Russian was slow
to mobilize, and the Austrians even more so, the Ottomans were able
to concentrate their forces on Belgrade in 1788, once Joseph II reluc-
tantly declared war in February of that year. Austrian strategy depended
on the Russian support in Moldavia, which failed to materialize until
late in the 1788 campaign season. Joseph II seems to have been reluc-
tant to confront the Ottoman army as the summer advanced.
We know very little about the size of the mobilized army of the
Ottomans. By one account, Koca Yusuf assembled 86,000 men at Nish
in mid-1788, of which 3,000 were artillery men, with 300 cannon.
There were 7,000 at Hotin under Osman Pasha, 40,000 at smail (of
which 10,000 were reputedly Janissaries), and 12,000 at Ochakov, with
little known about the other fortresses.43 Opinions vary about
the competence of Grand Vizier Koca Yusuf, Commander-in-Chief,
his troops and the state of the fortresses. A pair of British officers
were sent on a spy mission to the Ottomans in 179193, and found
themselves being consulted by Selim IIIs court, Koehler in particular,
who may have trained Koca Yusuf s hand-picked troops in the new
military disciplinary tactics later adopted as the new order. Their
comments in secret reports home were sanguine about Ottoman
chances of saving Istanbul and generally scathing in the description of
the state of the Danubian fortress system. Koehler reported that Selim
III was well disposed to the English, having lost the French military
mission in 1787, and welcomed the attempts at mediation. What we do
know is that the Ottomans were no more or less successful than the
Austrians in getting troops into place, and pressing advantages when
they had them.44

43
Trk Silahl Kuvvetleri Tarihi III, v. 4:3, kinciViyana Kuatmasndan Nizam-i
Cedidin Tekiline Kadar Olan Devre (16831793) (Ankara: Genelkurmay, 1982), 267.
44
Trevor J. Hope, The Secret Balkan Missions of Captain Koehler and Camptain
Monro (17911793), Revue Roumaine dhistoire 35 (1996), 87108. George Frederick
Koehler is the best know of the two. He died at Acre, fighting Napoleon with Sir Sidney
Smith and the Ottomans, in 1799.
342 virginia aksan

Ottoman troops reached Vidin in July 1788, crossed the Danube

and broke through the Austrian defenses of the Banat. The old foes
found their armies ranged once again in the Mehadia passage to
Temevar as in the 173639 war. Both sides were short of supplies, and
by mid-July 200300 men were falling ill every day in the Habsburg
camp. Refugees, largely Serbian, perhaps as many as 50,000, were
flooding across the Danube, and caused logistical problems
for the Austrian army. Joseph II moved 20,400 troops into the Banat in
mid-August, while the Ottomans dug in at [Old] Orsova after destroy-
ing lives and property at will, in a scorched-earth campaign which
proved detrimental to both sides. They failed to follow up on the
confusion in the Habsburg army north of Mehadia. In mid-September,
the Ottomans forced the blockade of the upper Danube, instead, while
the Habsburg troops withdrew from its shores. In late October,
Habsburg commanders braced for a full-scale attack by Grand Vizier
Koca Yusuf Pasha, at Semlin, but it failed to materialize, and by the end
of October, the Ottoman army had withdrawn from the Banat into
winter quarters in Sofia. Habsburg casualties (military and civilian)
were estimated at 80,000.45 It seems a particularly futile campaign for
both sides.
Potemkin, meanwhile, continued to propose the evacuation of the
Crimea altogether, while he gradually encircled Ochakov by land. Fifty
thousand troops crossed the Bug in June, and by mid-July, Potemkin
had spread his forces in an arc around the town. He chose in the end to
delay the final assault to mid-December. Part of the reason for
Potemkins delay till winter was the presence of the Ottoman fleet,
which as late as October had managed to break the Russian blockade
and disembark 1500 soldiers at the fortress of Ochakov.46 Potemkin
also hoped to negotiate a surrender rather than force a bloodbath.
Furthermore, with the surprising resilience of the Ottoman army on

45
Matthew Z. Mayer, Joseph II and the Campaign of 1788 Against the Ottoman
Turks, MA thesis (McGill) 1997, is the source of much of the information in this para-
graph; also his The Price for Austrias Security: Part I: Joseph II, the Russian Alliance,
and the Ottoman War, 17871789, International History Review 26 (2004), 25799;
Part II: Leopold II, the Prussian Threat, and the Peace of Sistove, 179071, International
History Review 26 (2004), 473514; Hochedlinger, Austrias Army, 38284. 36,000
civilians were said to have been killed, abducted or forced to flee, in an ongoing cross-
Danubian struggle resonating since 1718 when likely as many fled the Banat into
Ottoman territory.
46
Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, (New Haven: Yale University
Press,1981), 403405.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 343

the Danube, he understood very well that the war would not end with
the taking of Ochakov, and was already making plans for the cam-
paigns on the lower Danube the following year.
Waiting took its toll on the Russian besiegers. Fresh water was scarce;
winter arrived early, with temperatures of minus fifteen degrees Celsius,
and the camp became snow and shit, making life unbearable for the
soldiers in the trenches, who created burrows for themselves. In spite
of conditions, and much illness, Potemkin appears not to have lost as
many soldiers to disease and dysentery as Mnnich or Rumiantsev, his
predecessors in the Crimea, or indeed as many as Joseph II was losing
daily on the upper Danube.47
The final assault on 16 December 1788 occurred after a month of
Russian shelling from the harbor, and delays due to the severity of the
winter. The barbarity on both sides was unparalleled. Creasy, writing a
hundred years later, evoked the battle as follows: The Turks of Oczakov
had before the siege, surprised a Russian village in the vicinity and
mercilessly slaughtered all the inhabitants. Potemkin and Suwarrow
caused the Russian regiments that were there to assault the town, to be
first led through this village as it lay in ashes, and with its street still
red with the blood of their fellow countrymen [the] Russians
advanced whole ranks were swept away by the fire of the besieged:
but the supporting columns still came forward unflinchingly through
musketry and grape; 4000 Russians fell; but the survivors bore down all
resistance, and forced their way in to the city, where for three days they
revelled in murder and pillage. Nor mercy was shown to age or sex; and
out of a population of 40,000 human beings, only a few hundred
(chiefly women and children) escaped. Potemkin himself described
the Russian soldiers like a strong whirlwind, and the Turks fell in
piles, over which [the Russians] trampled, their legs sinking into bleed-
ing bodies. The final confrontation was commemorated in a song:
Turkish blood flowed like rivers, and the Pasha fell to his knees before
Potemkin.48
The new Triple Alliance of Britain, Prussia and the United Provinces
(The Dutch Republic) had offered mediation in August 1788, but

47
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkon (London:
Werdenfield and Nicolson, 2000), 408.
48
Edward S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1878), 432. Montefiore,
Prince of Princes, 41213, estimates between 8000 and 11,000 casualties, men, women
and children. Potemkin is said to have ordered a stop to the slaughter after four hours.
He reported 9,500 Turks, and 2,500 Russians killed.
344 virginia aksan

Catherine II rejected it.49 Istanbul was in disarray, because of the defeats

of the campaign season. In April of 1789, a change in sultans further
complicated the scene. The new sultan, Selim III, was young, idealistic
and a decided Francophile. Advised by his counselors to settle with
Austria and Russia, he chose to continue the war, with the seemingly
incompetent Koca Yusuf Pasha.50
In 1789, the Austrians, under Field Marshal Laudon, seventy-
two years old, stormed Belgrade with 62,000 troops against a garrison
of 9,000 Ottomans, which capitulated in October 1789. The Austrians
had occupied Wallachia by November. The Russians captured
Akkirman in October and Bender in November. Cooperation between
the two armies in Moldavia led to a defeat of the main Ottoman army
under Grand Vizier Kethda Hasan Pasha, who had replaced Koca
Yusuf in May, at Martineshti on 22 September 1789.
For the Austrians, financial and human costs were high: sick and
wounded for one year alone (1788/89) numbered 172,000 soldiers,
of whom 33,000 died.51 Revolt in Hungary, and resistance in the
Austrian Netherlands against Emperor Joseph II was partly responsi-
ble for the poor showing of the Habsburg armies against the Turks.
Indecisive leadership also played a part. Prussia looked poised to
attack Austria on the north in the spring of 1790. Public opinion in
Vienna opposed the continuation of the war. Prussia and Austria set-
tled their differences in the Convention of Reichenbach in 1790, so the
Habsburgs were free to negotiate the Austro-Ottoman treaty of Sistova
in August 1791, mediated by the Triple Alliance. Old Orsova, on the
Ottoman-Habsburg frontier, and a subject of dispute arising from the
1739 Belgrade treaty, was the sole, but important fruit for Austrian
efforts.
Relieved of the pressure on the western front, the Ottomans still had
to face the Russians entrenched along the Prut and threatening the
forts on the Danube basin. By the end of 1790, perhaps the worst year
ever for the Ottoman forces in terms of catastrophic collapse of mobi-
lization and logistical systems, the Ottomans had to acknowledge the
finality of the loss of the Crimea. Kili, Tulu, and saki also fell in

49
Ba, Britain, 69; see Virginia Aksan, Selim III, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d. ed,
CD version.
50
Mayer, Joseph II, using Habsburg sources, argues that Yusuf Pasha was an able
commander. (79)
51
Hochedlinger, Austrias Army, 385.
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 345

October and November. smail, the strongest fortress of the Danubian

system like Ochakov, was essential to Ottoman military and naval
operations. There were probably 35,000 men with 265 guns in the for-
tress, and it was well-supplied. (saki and smail, it will be remem-
bered, figured heavily in the first Russo-Ottoman War as centers of
supply.) Russians forces stood at 31,000 men with 600 guns. They had,
as well, their Danube flotilla as backup. Commander Suvorov boasted
he would storm smail in 5 days. In fact, it took just half a day. On
December 10, the attack began at dawn and by 11 a.m., a number of the
gates were in Russian hands. The battle took to the streets, each one of
which was fought for with great ferocity, until four in the afternoon.
The Serasker and 4000 men defended the last bastion but were slaugh-
tered to a man. Turkish losses stood at 26,000 dead and 9,000 prison-
ers. Suvorov allowed his soldiers three days of looting, following one of
the bloodiest confrontations in all Russian history, which cemented
Suvorovs military fame.52 It is beyond all human powers of compre-
hension to grasp just how strongly these places [Ottoman defensive
works] are built, & just how obstinately the Turks defend them, wrote
Austrian Field Marshal Laudon. As soon as one fortification is demol-
ished, they merely dig themselves another one. It is easier to deal with
any conventional fortress and with any other army than with the Turks
when they are defending a stronghold.53
Russian armies penetrated twice deep into Ottoman territory south
of the Danube in 1791. By July, they were in control of the entire
Danubian estuary. Russian guns could reputedly be heard from Istanbul
in a final Russian naval victory near Varna. Peace, as in 1774, when the
Ottomans finally capitulated, was arrived at with astonishing rapidity.
By the December 1792 Jassy treaty, the Ottomans ceded Ochakov, and
regained the Principalities and the strategic fortresses at the mouth of
the Danube. The new Russian-Ottoman border was the Dniester River
in the west and the Kuban in the east.
Russian success in the 17681792 era lay in its infantry organization,
and in the leadership of Potemkin and Rumiantsev, who were given
full authority on the battlefront. Regular regiments relied on continu-
ous conscription. There were thirty-one levies between the years 1762

52
De Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 41516; also Montefiore, Prince of
Princes, 451, and 580, footnote 2. He estimates a total of 40,000 dead in the one battle.
53
Mayer, Joseph II, 8889.
346 virginia aksan

and 1799, costly in human terms, but effective for manning the south-
ern frontiers. Russias expansion into the new territories in Ukraine
and Belorussia was accompanied by the extension of the levy, so
demand rarely outstripped availability of manpower. Rumiantsev and
Suvorov were not just brilliant commanders, they were also innovators
in the use of drill, discipline, and camaraderie usually attributed to
Napoleon and his citizens army. They understood that there were two
distinct military worlds: the linear order of the Prussians versus the
irregulars of the Turks.
Real innovation in the evolution of the military lay with the organi-
zation of the border garrison troops. Ukrainian Cossack landmilitia,
the equivalent of the Habsburg Militrgrenzer, became regular army
regiments under Rumiantsev in 1769. Such regulations continued
especially after the Military Commission of 1762, which allowed the
Russian army to develop into a ministerial bureaucracy in the nine-
teenth century. Potemkin called the Cossacks the eyes and protectors
of the army, and worked towards the formal integration of the infor-
mal Cossack irregulars into the Russia military until his death in 1791.
As military settlers, they could be self-sufficient in peace-time; as aux-
iliary light cavalry, they had a significant role to play in the unconven-
tional war that continued to unfold in Eurasia.54
While the Austrians under Joseph II had gone a long way to mod-
ernizing their military machine, they never reached the stage of total
war adopted by the French after 1793. They had both Hungarian and
Serbian aspirations to cope with by the end of the century which led to
considerable compromises of Habsburg absolutism. Coupled with a
lack of popular investment in a radical revolutionary worldview, and
an ongoing crisis in command structure, the Austrians were out-
manned by a two to one margin one all sides, once the leve en masse
was in place in revolutionary France. The perpetuation of privilege,
and the general ancien regime mistrust of the public in arms, continued
to influence military thinking in Vienna. Universal conscription in
both Austria and Hungary was only introduced in 1858.
The Ottomans had great difficulties in dealing with the consequences
of lost territories and floods of immigrants, who were more than ready

54
Bruce Menning, Russian Military Innovation in the Second Half of the
Eighteenth Century, War & Society 2 (1984), 2341, and also his chapters on the eight-
eenth century Romanov military organization, in Frederick W. Kagan and Robin
Higham, eds. The Military History of Tsarist Russia (New York, Palgrave, 2002).
 ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 347

to join the burgeoning provincial armies. Reform gathered steam as

the empire retracted and foreign troops stood at the doors of Istanbul.
Selim III began an ambitious and essential reform project of the entire
apparatus of empire in 1793, which began with finances, moved on to
grain and bread (a notable and lasting reorganization of the supply sys-
tem), and addressed gunpowder and the manufacture of arms. The
systemic assessment and reform of manpower and leadership, how-
ever, barely got underway, and the introduction of effective conscrip-
tion lay more than a century away. In 1807, Istanbul was convulsed
with one of the largest urban rebellions in its history, brought on by the
attempts of Selim III to introduce some discipline into the Janissaries,
but exacerbated by the arrival of provincial armies to support him who
demanded a new contract with the dynasty before Mahmud II could be
enthroned as his successor. The question of masterless men, and auton-
omous warlords remained an acute one until Mahmud II addressed it
in the 1820s, after a third and utterly devastating confrontation with
the Russians on the Danube from 18061812, when a captured and
isolated Ottoman army simply starved because of lack of supplies as
Russian prisoners of war before an exchange could be arranged. To the
extent that we know, death by starvation, wounds and disease far out-
weighed Ottoman battlefield casualties in most of these engagements.
There are two striking aspects to this period that are seldom empha-
sized in the literature of winners and losers. First, in 1700, the majority
of Eastern Europe was unmapped. Even in 1791 British parliamentar-
ians were embarrassed to discovered how little the government knew
of the Crimean region. By the end of the century that was no longer the
case. Secondly, it is astonishing how the Danube River system, then a
vast and unpredictable river with extensive marshlands, lethal fevers
and plagues, and the Balkan and Caucasus Mountain ranges, untracked
and difficult terrain, bested three great armies then reaching the limits
of their imperial pre-modern capacities, repeatedly bested.
 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Virginia H. Aksan is Associate Professor of History at MacMaster

University, Ontario. A specialist in Ottoman history, she is the author
of An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi,
17001783 (E J Brill, 1995), Ottomans and European: Contacts and
Conflicts (Isis, 2004), and Ottoman Wars, 17001870: An Empire
Besieged (Pearson-Longman 2007).

Brian J. Boeck is Associate Professor of History at De Paul University,

Chicago. He has written extensively about political, military, and cul-
tural relations on the Don frontier in the seventeenth and early eight-
eenth centuries and is the author of Imperial Boundaries: Cossack
Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great
(Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Peter B. Brown is Professor of Russian and Eastern European Studies at

Rhode Island College. A specialist in Muscovite history, he has pub-
lished a number of journal articles and book chapters on the central
chancelleries (prikazy) and their jurisdictions and staffs and is working
on a study of the Muscovite army in the Thirteen Years War.

Brian L. Davies is Professor of History at the University of Texas at San

Antonio and the author of State Power and Community in Early Modern
Russia: The Case of Kozlov, 16351649 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) and
Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 15001700
(Routledge, 2007).

Dariusz Kupisz is Professor of History at Uniwersytet Marii Curie-

Skodowskiej in Lublin, Poland. He is the author of Polock 1579
(Bellona, 2003), Pskow 15811582 (Bellona 2006), Smolensk 16321634
(Bellona, 2001) and Wojska powiatowe samorzdw Maopolski i Rusi
Czerwonej w latach 15721717 (UMCS, 2008).

Erik A. Lund, currently an independent scholar, received his Ph.D. in

History from the University of Toronto in 1998; he is the author of War
for the Every Day: Generals, Knowledge, and Warfare in Early Modern
Europe, 16801740 (Greenwood, 1999).
350 list of contributors

Janet Martin is Professor of History at the University of Miami at Coral

Gables, Florida. Much of her work has focused on trade, rural econ-
omy, and Russian-Tatar relations in Muscovy. She is the author of
Treasures of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and its Significance for
Medieval Russia (Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Medieval
Russia, 9801584 (Cambridge University Press, 1995). She is working
on a study of land tenure and political centralization in sixteenth-cen-
tury Muscovy.

Oleg A. Nozdrin is Candidate of Historical Studies at Orel University,

Russia and Docent of History in the Orel academic system. He has
been conducting research in several European archives for a study of
the international mercenary market and European mercenaries in
Russia in the 16th17th centuries. He has co-authored with Dmitrii
Fedosov Lion Rampant to Double Eagle. Scots in Russia, 16001700,
forthcoming from Aberdeen University.

Victor Ostapchuk, Associate Professor of Turkish and Ottoman Studies

at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations of the
University of Toronto, has published extensively on the Ottoman Black
Sea frontier and especially the relations of the Porte with the Crimean
Tatars and Ukrainian Cossacks; he has conducted historical-archeo-
logical research at the site of Aqkermen fortress in Ukraine; and his
War and Diplomacy Across Steppe and Sea: The Ottoman Black Sea
Frontier in the Early Seventeenth Century is in press with Harvard
Middle Eastern Monographs.

Gza Plffy is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of History,

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Lecturer at Eotvos Lorand
University, Budapest. He specializes in the social, political, and mili-
tary history of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy
in the early modern period. His publications include A csszrvros
vdelmben: A gyri fkapitnysg trtnete 15261598 [In the Defence
of the Imperial City: History of the Border Defence System around Gyr
against the Ottomans, 15261598] (Gyr, 1999); Eurpa vdelmben:
Haditrkpszet a Habsburg Birodalom magyarorszgi hatrvidkn a
1617. szzadban [In the Defence of Europe: Military Cartography on
the Hungarian Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 16th and 17th
Centuries] (2. ed. Ppa, 2000); Gemeinsam gegen die Osmanen: Ausbau
 list of contributors 351

und Funktion der Grenzfestungen in Ungarn im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert

(Budapest-Vienna, 2001); and The Kingdom of Hungary and the
Habsburg Monarchy in the Sixteenth Century (Columbia University
Press, 2009).

Carol B. Stevens is Professor of History at Colgate University. A special-

ist on late Muscovite military finance and logistics and southern
frontier social history, she has authored Soldiers on the Steppe: Army
Reform and Social Change in Early Modern Russia (Northern Illinois
University Press, 1995) and Russias Wars of Emergence, 14601730
(Longman, 2007).
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 INDEX
absolutism 12, 13, 42, 346
Adrianople (Edirne) 39, 43, 61
Adriatic 43, 44, 49, 340
Ahmed III, Ottoman Sultan 321, 325
Akkirman (Aqkirman) 344
Albanians 328
Aleksei Mikhailovich, Tsar of
Muscovy 7, 93, 2501, 263, 271, 276,
2819, 3012, 3045, 30911
Andrusovo Armistice (1667) 141
Angielinis 56
Arkhangelsk 109111, 114
armies and military establishments, size
of 2, 7, 9, 11, 356, 523, 60, 707,
121, 141, 1767, 182, 201, 274, 3356
armories and arsenals 534, 77,
307, 3289
army complecting
commoner levy 7, 3456 see also: an
recruits
conscription 7, 346
enrolling volunteers 1823
mercenary hire 45, 6468, 73,
109118, 182, 186
militia call-up 69, 2756, 328, 332,
346
noble general levy 19, 23, 646, 75,
1578 see also: insurrectio, pospolite
ruszenie
noble private bands 19 see also:
poczet towarzyski
army financing 13
Habsburg 46, 2367, 240, 245
Ottoman 13, 17, 18, 331, 332, 324,
326, 3303
Polish-Lithuanian 657, 69, 84, 88, 91
Russian 13, 21, 133, 137, 1401
See also: Fiscal-Military State; strelets
tax
army mobilization procedures 1578,
177, 243
artillery 2, 3, 5, 79, 95
Crimean Tatar 14, 1545, 159, 168
Don Cossack 191, 193
Habsburg 55, 202, 20715, 220, 222,
224, 2305, 23, 242, 246
Ottoman 3, 178, 182, 183, 192,
13, 197
Polish-Lithuanian 71, 75, 77, 79, 85,
87, 901
Russian 93, 1214, 126, 12932, 136,
284, 289, 299, 311
Aston (Ashton), Arthur 109, 112115
Astrakhan 128, 155, 158, 160, 166, 170
autocracy 51, 181, 188, 190, 194
ayan, provincial grandees 3167,
3312
Azov (Azaq) 16, 155, 173198
Bajcsavr 44
Bakhchisarai (Bakhchesaray) 168
Baldigara, Ottavio 49, 50, 56
Baltic Sea 1, 92
Baltic theater of war 12, 11
Bar Confederation 321
bayonet 11, 106, 336
Beauplan, Guillaume le Vasseur, Sieur
de 99, 103, 151, 15760, 165
Bekiesz, Kaspar 81, 82
Belgorod 140, 2967
Belgrade 213, 3201, 324, 329, 338,
3401, 344
Treaty of (1739) 324
Bender 330, 344
Biha 38, 44, 49, 60
Black Sea
Pontic theater of war 15, 318, 320
boiarskie knigi, Duma member lists,
military review lists 19
Bolkhov 274
Bolotnikov, Ivan 2734
Boris Godunov, Tsar of Muscovy 2713
Borres, Alessandro 2289
Boyar Duma 188, 251, 261, 266, 2701,
2856, 2968, 3016, 3089
Braun, Erasmus 56
Brnn 54
Bucak Horde 103, 152, 338
Buda 3840, 61, 225
Capitulations 331
cartography 42, 56, 78, 347
Catholic-Protestant conflicts 11013,
116, 118, 200, 210
Caucasus 107, 148, 151, 153, 155, 160,
161, 163, 164, 339
358 index
cavalry
armament and mounts 246, 64, 68,
74, 81, 89, 213, 216, 218
tactics 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 14, 95, 97,
98103, 147, 149, 15, 162, 165, 211,
21518
see also: New formation and foreign
formation troops
Celali rebellions 328
Chancelleries (prikazy), Muscovite 22,
109, 125, 2501, 269, 2717, 2846,
2912, 2959, 301, 303312
Grain Chancellery (Khlebnyi
prikaz) 140
Military Chancellery (Razriad,
Razriadnyi prikaz) 15, 2714, 276,
279, 2912, 295301, 308, 31011
Musketeers Chancellery (Streletskii
prikaz) 126
Secret Chancellery (Prikaz Velikogo
Gosudaria tainykh del) 271, 2856,
299, 304
Service Lands Chancellery (Pomestnyi
prikaz) 22
see also: Command-and-control
Charles de Lorraine 235, 237
Charles V, Habsburg Emperor 39, 40
Charles VI, Habsburg Emperor 208
Chesme 8, 335
chetvert, pl. chetverti 23, 27, 2931
cheval-de-frise 106
chorgwie, territorial banner units 68
Chudnovo 1056, 294
Chyhyryn 104, 299
Circassia 1536, 158, 1601, 1634, 167,
169, 176, 1823, 197, 328
command-and-control 249252, passim
by Boyar Duma 251, 261, 266, 2701,
2856, 2968, 3016, 3089
by central bureaucracy 47, 208,
2501, 269, 2716, 2846, 2912,
2959, 301, 30312, see also:
Chancelleries (prikazy)
by grand viziers 333
by marshals, field commanders and
war councils 2535, 25862, 267,
2857, 300, 304, 310, 327, 336
by regional state officials 457, 328
see also: military districts and
territorial military administrations
by sovereign 2856, 298, 302
centralization and
decentralization 2635, 267, 270,
276, 281, 2923, 2956, 298,
304, 310
command structure 2535, 304, 310
constituents of command-and-
control 253254
decision-making 252, 2556, 270,
2723, 278, 290, 27, 301, 304, 310
decree and instruction 251, 269, 286,
289, 2912, 303, 305, 308
mission-type order 29, 263, 265, 273,
277, 278, 2867, 303, 306, 311
planning 263266, 275, 278, 2867,
299, 3024, 306, 311
reporting 251, 269, 279, 292, 308
situational awareness 2534, 265, 286,
300, 305, 310
synchronized execution 2545, 286,
300, 305, 310
see also: General officers
Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita),
Polish-Lithuanian 14, 63, 150, 257,
268, 2745, 27780, 2827, 290,
2923, 301
Commonwealth Ukraine 6, 150, 153
Grand Duchy of Lithuania 6369, 71,
73, 92, 274, 284
Kingdom of Poland 63, 73, 778, 88
Cracow 16, 77
Crimean Khanate 16, 63, 66, 70, 142,
147, 150, 173, 276, 279, 294, 321, 329,
3345, 3379, 3414, 347
khan 14950
nuraddin and kalga 182
qarachi begs 149, 150, 158, 160
relations with Nogais 150
vassalage to Ottoman sultans 148,
150, 155, 321, 329
Crimean Tatar army 16, 95, 99, 1036
campaigns by khan 16, 147161
campaigns on behalf of Ottoman
sultan 108, 148, 150, 152, 1557,
1834, 192, 1967
chapgul units 1656
organization 149
raiding 52, 154, 156, 165, 167
see also: Nogai Horde
Cruys, Cornelius 17580
Czarnobylski, Filon Kmita 72, 83,
87, 89
Danckaert, Jan 114, 115
Danube River 389, 445, 50, 57, 100,
2289, 236, 238318, 320, 337, 341
Dardanelles 318, 338
defense lines and border defense
systems 36, 38, 4042, passim
Habsburg grenze in Croatia 44, 489

Habsburg grenze in Hungary 14,
4350
Ottoman defense line along
Danube 6, 14
Russian Abatis Line 294
Russian Belgorod Line 93, 281,
294, 2967
Russian Iziuma Line 25, 299
Russian Ukrainian Line 346
deli, Ottoman heavy cavalry 7
Deulino, Treaty of (1618) 271, 276
Devlet Gerey, Crimean Khan 95,
149, 155
Diet of Hungary 40, 46
diplomacy, Ottoman 3224
Dnieper (Dnepr) River 63, 88, 103, 133,
155, 274, 282, 284
Dniester (Dnestr) River 63, 160, 340
Don Cossack Host 107, 131, 174,
176187, 189, 192, 1948
Don River 150, 1556, 160, 1737, 181,
1837, 189, 1945, 198
Dorogobuzh 136, 2801
Doroshenko, Petro, renegade Ukrainian
hetman 141
Eger 46, 60
England 11113, 341
rsekjvr (Neuhausel, Nove
Zamky) 44, 55
esir, war captives taken for ransoming or
enslavement 154, 156, 164, 166
Estates 37, 401, 43, 457, 4, 57, 61
Esztergom (Gran) 38, 39, 61
Eugene de Savoy 205, 211, 214, 232,
243, 2456
False Dmitriis 2723 see also: Time of
Troubles
Fedor Ivanovich, Tsar of Muscovy 95,
114
Fedor Alekseevich, Tsar of
Muscovy 271, 302
Ferabosco, Pietro 56
Ferdinand I, King of Hungary 37, 38
field commanders, Muscovite see:
voevoda
field fortifications and fortified
camps 69, 93108, 180, 190,
193, 197
oboz 946, 105
tabor 7, 93, 6103, 193, 197
trenches and redoubts 83, 91, 93,
978, 179, 191, 193, 195
see also: Wagenburg
index 359
Fiscal-Military State 1, 13
Fletcher, Giles 937
Flodorf, Adrian 109118
fortresses and garrisons 3841, 436,
4850, 523, 55, 57, 60, 67, 84, 878,
90, 104, 121, 145, 152, 1568, 16970,
173, 176, 178, 180, 2246, 228231,
233, 2356, 278
France 53, 63, 145, 182, 2001, 2056,
230, 323, 3434
Frederick II, King of Prussia 323
frontiers 389, 416, 50, 52, 547, 148,
153, 165, 257, 273, 276, 27, 2947,
303, 316, 318
Flek (Filakovo) 42
gabions 85, 93
Garam River 44
Gdansk (Danzig) 4, 63, 68, 7779, 293
general officers, 199248, 256, 258261
class and ethnic origins 2012, 2036
education, academy study, training,
experience learning 209,
21115, 327
Habsburg Generallisten 202,
208, 236
patronage and ability as promotion
factors 20710, 261, 327
Scientific Revolution and scientific
generalship 199248 see also:
technicalism
staff officers 21011, 216, 223, 228,
232, 23747, 327
Georgia 319
Golitsyn, Vasilii Vasilevich 1045, 142,
252, 299, 3002
Gordon, Patrick 106
gorodovye voevody, Muscovite town
governors 259, 276, 280
Graz 50, 534, 567
Great Northern War (17001721) 5, 11
Grenze, see: defense lines and border
defense systems
guliai-gorod 939, 130
Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 2, 9,
11617, 268, 302
Gyr (Raab) 44
Habsburg Empire/Monarchy 14, 3561,
199248
Austria, Austrian Hereditary
Provinces 38, 401
Inner Austria 49, 50, 53
Lower Austria 42, 57
Ban of Croatia and Slavonia 456
360
Bohemia, Bohemian Lands and
Provinces 36, 41, 53, 57, 61
Bosnia 35, 39
Carinthia 49
Carniola 39, 49
Croatia, Kingdom of 36, 39, 419,
523, 56, 60, 340
Dalmatia 52
Holy Roman Empire 38, 41
Hungary, see: Hungary, Kingdom of
Moravia 41, 57
Serbia 35
Silesia 41
Slavonia 446, 489, 53, 56
Styria 50, 57
Habsburg fiscal-military
administration 14
Aulic Council (Aulic Chamber,
Hofkammer) 48, 57
Aulic Military Paymaster
(Hofkriegszahlmeister) 57
Aulic War Council (Aulic War
Chamber, Hofkriegsrat) 413, 45,
47, 49, 53, 56, 57
Inner Austrian War Council 50
Habsburg-Ottoman Long War
(15911606) 5, 60
Habsburg-Ottoman War
(17171719) 245
Habsburg-Ottoman War
(17371739) 227
haiduk infantry 6, 76
Hanse 4
hardtack 132, 1367, 335
Herberstein, Sigismund von 234
Hetmanate, Ukrainian 6, 104, 282, 286,
299, 310
hetmans, Polish-Lithuanian 71
Holy League, War of (16831699) 107
Hungary, Kingdom of 3561, 205
Upper Hungary 434, 46, 48,
54, 57
Hunyadi, Jan 102
husarz, pl. husaria, Polish-Lithuanian
lancers 7, 68, 72, 97
Hussites 96, 159
Ibrahim I, Ottoman Sultan 182, 1856,
189, 198
Ibrail (Brailov) 333
infantry 410, 15, 68, 75, passim
battle order, firing systems, and
tactics 2, 15, 60, 93, 149, 154, 159,
165, 190, 326, 3367, 346
firearms 545, 73
index
see also: New formation and
foreign formation troops
insurrectio, Hungarian militia 46
Ismail 333, 345
Istanbul 61, 150, 175, 1778
Italian military engineering 49, 556,
78, 91, 96, 100, 182
trace italienne 7, 9, 49, 55
Ivan III, Grand Prince of Muscovy 100,
264, 2667, 292
Ivan IV, Tsar of Muscovy 63, 78, 80, 83,
91, 96
Izmailov, Artemii Vasilevich 2789,
282, 289
Jajce 39, 55
James I, King of England 113
Jan Sobieski, King of Poland 7
Jans I Zapolyai, King of Hungary 38
Jans Zsigmond Zapolyai, Prince of
Transylvania 43
Johann Sigismund, Elector of
Brandenburg 112
Joseph II, Habsburg Emperor 341,
344, 346
Kabarda (Qabarda) 155, 158, 162, 182
Kagul (Kartal) 108, 326, 3357
Kamianets-Podilsk 67
Kanisza (Nagykanizsa) 44
Karlowitz, Treaty of (1699) 322, 326
Karlsruhe 56
Karlstadt 44, 49, 545
Kazan 14, 22, 33, 1312, 134, 150, 155,
297, 307
Kefe (Kaffa) 153, 156, 158, 160, 182
Kerch Straits 153, 156, 158, 160
Khmelnitskyi, Bohdan, Ukrainian
Hetman 98, 2834
Khodynka 97
Khotyn (Chocim, Hotin) 67, 335, 341
Kiev 63, 678, 90, 299
Kinburn (Kilburun, Qilburun) 158,
33940
Kirchholm 2
Klushino 2
Koca Mehmed Ragib Pasha 322, 333
Koca Yusuf 341, 342, 344
Komrom 44, 46
Kondyrev, Zhdan 2879
Konotop 104, 290
Kotoshikhin, Grigorii
Kriegszahlmeister in Ungarn, Military
Paymaster for Hungary 57
Kuban River 155, 160, 163
 index
Kuchuk-Kainarji (Kck Kaynarca),
Treaty of (1774) 338
Kurdan, Treaty of (1746) 320, 324
Kushlikovy Gory 290
Laibach 39, 54
an recruits 69
Lacy, Franz Moritz 340
Leopold I, Habsburg Emperor 210, 216,
243, 246, 247
levends, Ottoman volunteer militias 328,
332, 335
Liakhovichi 28990
Liechtenstein, Wenzil von 230
Livonia 22, 63, 104
Livonian War (15581583) 14, 15, 212,
63, 1334
Lodygin, Fedor Vasilev 19, 2426,
2933
logistics 42, 53, 57, 60, 119146, 180,
330, 3356
baggage trains and convoys 956,
124, 12931, 143, 197, 219220,
225, 229, 231, 237, 242
foraging and plundering 108, 1201,
1245, 127, 21215, 218220, 224,
244
forward magazines 11, 104, 107, 128,
1323, 1445, 235, 241
frontier town granaries 1279, 135,
139, 188
marching forces 199, 214, 21718,
220, 224, 240, 242, 244
quartermaster service 57, 2403
requisitioning and exacting
contributions 127, 217
road, bridge, and pontoon
engineering 57, 21315, 220, 223,
225, 229, 2323, 242
self-provisioning 15, 121, 125, 136
sutler deliveries 15, 131, 139
Louis II Jagiello, King of Hungary and
Bohemia 36
lower service class, Muscovite
gunners (pushkari) 20, 260
musketeers (streltsy) 6, 20, 75, 95, 260
service cossacks 20, 260, 262, 277,
279, 286
Lviv 67, 77
Mahmud II, Ottoman Sultan 316, 327,
329, 341
Malplaquet 226
Mansfeld, Ernst 117
Mantelets 96, 98, 1012
361
Margeret, Jacques 93, 110, 113
Maria Theresia, Habsburg Empress 201
Martineshti 344
Massa, Isaak 956
Maurice of Nassau 38, 42, 102
Maximilian I, Habsburg Emperor 53
Mehadia passage 342
Mengli Gerey, Crimean Khan 150
middle service class, Muscovite
dvoriane and deti boiarskie in cavalry
centuries (sotny) 19
allodial lands of 23
allotments of service-conditional land
(pomeste) 14, 1934, 1223, 126
bounty and rent income 19, 21,
2632, 123
desertion and service shirking 212
labor and agricultural economy on
pomeste lands 27, 28, 30
land registers 22, 27
ranks and scale of entitlements to
Sovereigns bounty 19, 2324, 33,
260
Regulation on Service (15556)
23, 126
retainers 19, 24, 32
Mikhail Fedorovich, Tsar of
Muscovy 109, 11416, 181, 188, 190,
194, 198
military districts and territorial military
administrations 257, 2947, 303
Habsburg District
Captain-Generalcies 4344
Muscovite razriady: 257, 297
military engineering 17, 208 see
also: artillery; cartography; Italian
military
engineering
Military Revolution 1, 4, 6, 812, 14,
5061, 267, 312, 318, 326
military units and ranks, Muscovite
names of old and new model units,
256259
names of old and new model
commanders and their ranks,
258262, 268
military units and ranks, Polish-
Lithuanian 74, 76
Mogilev 290
Mohcs 38, 42, 101
Moldavia 102, 1523, 1578, 160, 167,
176, 316, 320
Molodi 95
Montecuccoli, Raimundo 203, 21617,
2434, 247
362
Morozov, Boris Ivanovich 261,
263, 281
Moscow 16, 212, 957, 111, 114, 150,
250, 256, 2668, 2712, 2745,
27882, 284, 294, 2969
Mstislavskii, Fedor Ivanovich 2723
Muhsinzade Mehmed, Grand
Vizier 324, 338
Mnnich, Burchard Christoph von 343
Murat IV, Ottoman Sultan 184
Muscovy, Tsardom of 3, 57, 12, 1415,
202, passim.
Russia 48, 1113, 1517, 32 passim
Mustafa III, Ottoman Sultan 334
musters and reviews 19, 157
Nadir Shah 320, 329
Nndorfehrvr/Belgrade 55
naval warfare 4, 8, 78, 2289, 2367
nemetskii korm, foreign mercenaries
provender 136
Netherlands, United Provinces of
11011, 114, 11617
New formation and foreign
formation troops 4, 15
Muscovite inozemskii stroi 4, 93,
145, 140
cavalry: dragoons 7, 24;
hussars 21618; lancers 258;
reitar cuirassiers 7, 95,
216, 260
infantry: soldaty 7, 93, 250, 258,
260
Ottoman janissaries (yeni chari,
New Troops) 13, 1012,
2589, 166, 168, 176, 179, 180,
183, 192, 195, 197, 322, 32531,
3345, 337, 3401, 347
Ottoman nizam-i-jedid 19, 327
Polish-Lithuanian cudzoziemski
autorament 4
Polish-Lithuanian foreign
contingents (Germans,
Hungarians, Scots) 71, 73, 757,
79, 813
Nogai Horde 1024, 150, 152, 1545,
157, 162, 165, 1967
Novgorod 1920, 22, 246, 2830, 323,
112, 140, 273, 297, 307
Novgorod-Severskii 273
Oberstbaukommissar, Fortress
Construction Commissioner 56
index
Oberstmustermeister, Chief Muster
Master 57
Oberstproviantkommissar, Chief Military
Provisions Commissioner 57
Oberstproviantmeister, Chief Provisions
Supply Officer
Oberstzeugmeister, Chief Arsenal
Officer 534
Obertyn 102
Obony Quartermaster 71
obzha, pl. obzhi 278
Ochakov (Ochakiv, Ozi) 152, 158, 321,
327, 333, 335, 338, 345
Oka River 154, 160, 165, 257
Olearius, Adam 27980
Ordyn-Nashchokin, Afanasii
Lavrentevich 286
Orova 342, 344
ostrog fortress construction technique 3
Ottoman Empire 3, 58, 1113, 14, 16,
17, 63, 66, 70 passim
Pallavicinis 204, 2347, 23940,
2446
Pasek, Jan Chryzostom 98, 284
Passarowitz, Treaty of (1718) 324
Pcs 39
Pereiaslav Agreements 2823
Perekop (Or Agzi) 104, 152, 155, 157,
158, 300
Peter I, Tsar and Emperor of Russia 250,
252, 2557, 263, 267, 284, 338
petyhorcy, pl. petyhorcowie, Circassian
lancers 73
Phanariot rule 330
piechota wybraniecka, select infantry
69, 75
piechota zaciezna, hired infantry 75
pike 767, 93, 99, 1023, 2213
poczet towarzyski, private comrades
band 64, 68, 74
Podolia 6
Poetical Tale of the Siege of Azov 174,
18198
Polish-Russian War (161318) 252
polk, host, regiment, or division 95, 96,
2579, 297
Polotsk (Poock) 2, 22, 68, 70, 7987, 90,
134, 274, 287, 289
pomeste, pl. pomestia, service-
conditional land allotments; see:
middle service class
Poppendorf, Franz von 56
 index
pospolite ruszenie, Polish-Lithuanian
general levy of nobility 646, 75
Pozsony (Bratislava) 40, 45
Potemkin, Grigorii Aleksandrovich 339,
3423
Pozharskii, Dmitrii Mikhailovich 275,
277
Prague 54, 113
pripravochnye knigi, revisionary
cadastral books 22
prikazy, see: Chancelleries
Qansavuq 1534
Quarter Army 6, 667, 69, 71
racowie, Serbian lancers 72
Radziwi, Krzysztof 68, 8082, 8892
Radziwi, Mikoaj 68, 71, 81
religious war (crusade and gaza) 114,
156, 168, 182, 18, 190, 192, 194, 16,
198
Remmal Khoja 147, 150
History of Khan Sahib Gerey 16,
147171
river flotillas 45, 7780, 84, 1423, 229,
236, 239, 345
river fording 160 see also: logistics,
road, bridge and pontoon
engineering
Romodanovskii, Grigorii
Grigorevich 104, 299301
Rumiantsev, Petr Aleksandrovich 11,
108, 336
Rucuk (Ruse) 333
Russo-Ottoman War (16761681) 7,
142, 299300
Russo-Ottoman War (17361739) 321
Russo-Ottoman War (17681774) 11,
1078, 321, 324, 329345
Russo-Ottoman War (17871791) 329,
331, 33942
Sahib Gerey, Crimean Khan 147171
Sava River 340
Saxe, Maurice de 212, 2167, 220, 224,
227, 232, 244
Scamozzi, Vincenzo 111
Schwendi, Lazarus von 43, 48,
54, 102
Sejm, Polish Diet 63, 65, 78, 88
Selim I, Ottoman Sultan 35, 101
Selim III, Ottoman Sultan 323, 325,
3279, 341, 344, 347
363
Senj 38
service cossacks
in Polish-Lithuanian garrisons and
field army 64, 70, 723
see also: lower service class, Muscovite
Seven Years War (17561763) 11,
107, 246
Shaw, James 111
Shein, Mikhail Borisovich 270,
27882, 289
Sheremetev, Vasilii Borisovich 1056,
20, 292
Sheremetev, Vasilii Petrovich 283,
28690
siege works and siege operations 3, 7,
55, 60, 68, 7880, 836, 902 173198,
207, 214, 228, 231, 25, 243, 284, 286
see also: artillery, logistics
Silistre 178, 333
sipahi cavalry 7, 176, 3278
Skopin-Shuiskii, Mikhail Vasilevich 263
suba ziemska, Lithuanian landed
military service 645
Smolensk War (16321634) 3, 1357,
252, 2623, 2701, 27681, 285, 289,
299300, 307, 31011
Sobieski, Jan II, King of Poland
Sokol 812
Sophia Alekseevna, Muscovite
regentess 252, 3012
southern steppe, conditions of warfare
on 5, 6, 14, 74, 103, 107, 1434,
147171, 252, 257, 273, 276, 279, 294,
297, 3001
Speckle, Daniel 55
Starhemberg, Guido von 203, 211,
243, 244
Staritsa, 89
Staryi Bykhov 2845
Stefan Bathory, Prince of Transylvania
and King of Poland 14, 6392, 302
Stolbovo, Treaty of (1617) 276
Straticos 2323, 240
strelets, pl. streltsy, Muscovite
musketeers; see: lower service class,
Muscovite
strelets grain tax 15
strelets tax 15
Sleyman I, Ottoman Sultan 3, 356,
39, 43
umnu (Shumen, Shumla) 333, 338
Suvorov, Aleksandr Vasilevich 11, 339
Sviiazhsk 132
364 index

Sweden 1214, 69, 92, 116, 118, 252,
257, 323
swinefeathers 106
Szabcs (Sabac) 55
Szatmr (Sackmar, Satu Mare) 43, 45,
49, 54, 55
Szkesfehrvr 39
Szigetvr 42, 44
Szolnok 40
szlachcic, pl. szlachta, Polish-Lithuanian
middling and lower nobility 649,
745, 789, 84, 88, 91
Taborites 100
Taccole, Mariano di Jacopo 100
Tarnowski, Jan 67, 100, 102
Temesvr (Temeschwar, Timisoara) 55,
340, 342
Teutonic Knights 50, 99
Thirteen Years War (16541667) 4,
138, 2523, 255, 263, 268, 271, 2815,
2924, 297, 299300, 302, 3045, 310
Thirty Years War (16181648) 9
timar, Ottoman service-conditional
revenue grant 14, 17, 3278, 3323
Time of Troubles (15981613) 15, 96,
10, 134, 252, 263, 2708, 281
Timofeev, Ivan 97
Tisza River 45
Tokaj 43
Transylvania 5, 435, 54, 76, 102, 340
tribute 164, 316, 319
Triple Alliance (Britain, Prussia, United
Provinces of the Netherlands) 342
Trubetskoi, Aleksei Nikitich 283
Turco, Giulio 56
Ukraine 57, 647, 701, 83, 99, 1034, Zalankamen 103
107, 1412, 150, 153, 1567, 15960,
164, 165, 169, 283, 299, 310, 329, 324,
3346, 346
see also: Hetmanate, Zaporozhian
Cossack Host
Ungnad, Christoph von Sonnegg 47
Varasd (Warasdin, Varazdin) 44, 54
Vasilev, Naum, Don Cossack
ataman 182
Vasilii III, Grand Prince of Muscovy 100
Vasilii Shuiskii, Tsar of Muscovy 95,
112, 2714, 277
Vasilsursk 128
Velikie Luki 68, 849, 92
Venice 52, 11, 182, 205, 228,
230, 233, 318
Viazma 135
Vidin 333, 338, 342
Vienna 37, 340, 44, 478, 537, 2047,
223, 225, 22, 2323, 236, 344, 346
Vilnius 63, 778, 80
Vitebsk 84, 88, 287, 289
voevoda, pl. voevody, Muscovite field
commanders 86, 87, 95, 249, 259,
269, 304, 306
Volga River 89, 297
Volhynia 153
Vologda 2867
Vyrka River 274
Wagenburg 7, 15, 290
as fortified position 98103,
159, 161
as wagon convoy 78, 103107
Ottoman Tabur cengi 1012
see also: Zizka, Jan
Wallachia 176, 180, 182, 316, 320, 321,
330, 341, 344
War of the Spanish Succession
(17011714) 209, 210, 226, 243
Warsaw 63, 113
Wiener Neustadt
Wieznick, Adam von 54
Winiowiecki, Michal 70, 90
Zadonshchina 187
Zamoyski, Jan 71
Zaporozhian Cossack Host 69, 70, 73,
87, 107, 159, 173, 194
Zbarazh
Zenta 103
Zizka, Jan 96, 99100, 102
Zygmunt I, King of Poland 63,
65, 292
Zygmunt II August, King of Poland 63,
65, 67, 70, 7, 76, 77, 84