Russia Against Napoleon

18 There are two extremely useful unpublished Russian candidates’ dissertations (i.e. roughly equivalent to a contemporary British Ph.D.) on the military economy: S. V. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812g i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815gg: Istoricheskie aspekty, candidate’s dissertation, SPB, 2003, and V. N. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka Rossii k bor’be s Napoleonom v 1812–1814 godakh, Gorky, 1967. The basic statistics on raw materials are in Gavrilov, pp. 39–42. Speransky is a mine of useful information: his only weakness appears to be that he neglects the crucial production of field artillery at the Petersburg arsenal. See the following note for references to this production. Viktor Bezotosnyi kindly confirmed that the arsenal did indeed produce most Russian field artillery.

19 For the basic statistics, see L. Beskrovnyi, The Russian Army and Fleet in the Nineteenth Century, Gulf Breeze, 1996, pp. 196–7. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia, pp. 38–58, on production at the Petrozavodsk and other works. On the artillery’s equipment, guns and tactics in 1812–14, see A. and Iu. Zhmodikov, Tactics of the Russian Army, 2 vols., West Chester, Ohio, 2003, vol. 2, chs. 10–15. See also: Anthony and Paul Dawson and Stephen Summerfield, Napoleonic Artillery, Marlborough, 2007, pp. 48–55.

20 On the three arms works, the best introduction are the articles in Entsiklopediia, pp. 296, 654 and 724–5.

21 Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia, ch. 2, especially pp. 82 ff., 362 ff. Much the most detailed primary source on the Tula works is an exceptionally interesting article by P. P. Svinin, ‘Tul’skii oruzheinyi zavod’, Syn Otechestva, 19, 1816, pp. 243 ff. Though naively Soviet-era in many of its judgements, V. N. Ashurkov, Izbrannoe: Istoriia Tul’skogo kraia, Tula, 2003, contains interesting details.

22 On the French tests, see K. Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815, Princeton, 1997, p. 339. On English criticism, see Philip Haythornthwaite, Weapons and Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars, London, 1996, p. 22. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia, pp. 458–9, on the sources of the muskets distributed to the army in 1812–13.

23 Even Wellington’s men did not usually expect to beat off attacks by musketry alone. Volleys were followed up by rapid counter-attacks with the bayonet.

24 Two recent surveys of Russian finance and taxation are: Peter Waldron, ‘State Finances’, in Lieven (ed.), Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 2, pp. 468–88, and Richard Hellie, ‘Russia’, in R. Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 1215–1815, Oxford, 1999, pp. 481–506.

25 All these statistics should be viewed with a certain scepticism. The Russian ones are specially to be distrusted because of uncertainties as to whether sums are being cited in silver or paper rubles. Most of the statistics are drawn from Bonney, Economic Systems, pp. 360–76. The French figure is from Michel Bruguière, ‘Finances publiques’, in J. Tulard (ed.), Dictionnaire Napoléon, Paris, 1987, pp. 733–5. The British figure is from J. M. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder: British Foreign Aid in the Wars with France 1793– 1815, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, p. 96.

26 W. M. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I, Ithaca, NY, 1967, ch. 5. There is a useful table on p. 186 which shows the volume of paper money issued annually and its value vis-à-vis the silver currency. A well-informed source stated that the peasants’ obligation to feed the soldiers for very inadequate compensation from the state was a well-established custom: L. Klugin, ‘Russkaia soldatskaia artel’, RS, 20, 1861, pp. 90, 96–7.