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

Th e 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 / Th e Bridgeman Art Library.

Th is 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 355.020947’0903--dc23 2011042137

ISSN 978 9004 22196 3 (hardback) ISSN 978 9004 22198 7 (e-book) ISBN 1385-7827

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

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Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Th e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1 Brian Davies

Economic Eff ectiveness of the Muscovite Pomest’e System: An Examination of Estate Incomes and Military Expenses in the Mid-16th Century...... 19 Janet Martin

Th e Habsburg Defense System in Hungary Against the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century: A Catalyst of Military Development in Central Europe ...... 35 Géza Pálff y

Th e Polish-Lithuanian Army in the Reign of King Stefan Bathory (1576–1586) ...... 63 Dariusz Kupisz

Guliai-gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th–17th Century Muscovy and Eastern Europe ...... 93 Brian Davies

Th e 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: Th e View from Remmal Khoja’s History of Sahib Gerey Khan ...... 147 Victor Ostapchuk

Th e Siege of Azov in 1641: Military Realities and Literary Myth ...... 173 Brian J. Boeck vi contents

Th e Generation of 1683: Th e Scientifi c Revolution and Generalship in the Habsburg Army, 1686–1723 ...... 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 Europe—Polish and German historians have been especially prolifi c–but until recently little of it was made available in English. Anglophone readers are therefore less familiar with the ways in which resource mobilization for war, the conduct of war, and the impact of war on the state and society diff ered in Eastern from Western Europe. Th is has perpetuated some misunderstandings about the geopolitical centrality of Western European military confl icts 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. Th ese essays reveal the scale of destructiveness of Eastern European wars over the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries and the enormous consequences these wars had for the balance of power elsewhere, in the West and in Asia; they also provide knowledge useful for critically unpacking two of the prevailing paradigms in early modern military 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 16th–18th centuries it is fi rst 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. Diff erences 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 repertory of military practices. Th ey were not the only identifi able theaters in Eastern Europe, but they were the two most signifi cant, and they present a striking contrast in terms of military praxis. Th e 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.” Th e 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 off ered. But the longer winter season and the heavy rains of autumn discouraged long operations and required that armies be demobilized at winter’s approach or sent into winter quarters. Th e dense network of rivers and tributary rivers facilitated movement of artillery and provisions by barge, which was cheaper and faster than carriage overland. Because settlement was denser armies could follow shorter march routes between respites. Th ick forest, marshland, and narrow winding roads tended to slow march rates, however, particularly on major expeditions where larger armies were followed by long trains. Long delays along comparatively short march routes occurred when baggage wagons caused bottlenecks or slid off -road. Th e abilities to lay down corduroy roads and erect pontoon bridges were quicker to become necessary skills in the Baltic theater. Th ere were some large-scale and decisive fi eld battles in the wars of the Baltic theater (Orsza, Klushino, Dirschau, Warsaw, Kliszów, etc.), but they do not provide a clear test of the superiority of Mauritsian line tactics—this is true even of many of Gustav II Adolf’s battles—in part because terrain was oft en too broken to facilitate line tactics, troops lacked the drill to master more than the most elementary fi ring systems, and because commanders still preferred to trust to cavalry action to decide the fi nal 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 used—janissary, haiduk, and strelets infantry largely dispensed with them. To substitute for pike protection musketeers were oft en deployed behind fi eld fortifi cations or in a wagenburg. Sieges were more common than fi eld 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, Th e Northern Wars, 1558–1721 (Harlow, London, New York: Longman, 2000), 63–64, 67–68. introduction 3 destroying enemy fi eld armies. Until the mid-17th century, when some Baltic coast cities were refortifi ed with trace italienne works, most fortresses 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 diffi cult to dig trenches to bring siege guns close enough to the wall. Guns were more oft en moved and positioned behind shift ing gabion lines than through trench approaches and behind fortifi ed 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 evidence that knowledge of the principles of scientifi c 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 fi res 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 support siege operations but especially in raiding to demoralize enemy troops and prevent enemy forces from joining together. Th e cavalry raids led fi rst 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 (1558–1559); one should note that much of this cavalry comprised Tatar horse archers fi ghting without fi rearms. Darius Kupisz writes below of the great cavalry raid undertaken across northern Muscovy in 1581 by Krzysztof Radziwiłł; it probably decided the outcome of that year’s campaign, even though Radziwiłł led just 6,000 horse. On the other hand, the Muscovite siege of Smolensk (1632–1634) failed above all because prior despoliation by

2 Brian Davies, “Th e Polotsk Campaigns of Ivan IV and Stefan Bathory: Th e Development of Military Art During the Livonian War,” in Baltiiskii vopros v XV–XVI vv., ed. Aleksandr Filiushkin (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010), 108. 4 brian davies the Lithuanians and bad weather made it impossible for the Muscovites to fi nd 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 seventeenth centuries, to the Danes and Swedes, followed far behind by the Poles. Lübeck’s naval power was already in decline by the 1570s, while the Dutch long preferred to subsidize the Danish fl eet 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 fl eets operating in the eastern Baltic. Interest in hiring Western military specialists with new skills was shown early on. In the late fi ft eenth through fi rst half of the sixteenth centuries those most in demand in Eastern European courts were Italian masters who could impart new techniques of gun casting, fortress architecture, and siege-work excavation. Ivan the Terrible and King Stefan Bathory competed with each other to hire Italian masters in the 1560s–1570s. By the late 16th-early 17th centuries recruiting expanded and redirected to target German, Dutch, French, English, and Scots offi cers who could bring into service their own small trained bands of mercenary soldiers, especially infantry. Th ese 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) signifi cantly supplementing their traditional national formations. Muscovite reliance on foreign formation troops further expanded during the Th irteen Years’ War (1654–1667), although political constraints prevented Poland-Lithuania from keeping pace with this. By the 1670s we fi nd signs that the techniques Michael Roberts associated with Military Revolution had actually

3 Brian Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700 (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 74–75. 4 Jan Glete, Warfare at Sea, 1500–1650 (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 specialists to “modernize” the army began in the 1690s and early years of the Great Northern War and had its most transforming eff ect on military engineering and the artillery service. Th e 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. Th e 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 fortifi ed defense lines (the Croatian-Hungarian grenze of the Habsburgs, the Ottoman defense line in Hungary, and Muscovy’s Abatis Line, Belgorod Line, and Iziuma Line). Manpower mobilization, provisioning, and administrative techniques on these defense lines were generally similar (there were even close resemblances between Ottoman and Muscovite wooden fortifi cation construction techniques). Th ese 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 fi eld armies brought down to the line for that purpose. Th ere were, however, some signifi cant diff erences in how defense lines related to shift s in frontier strategy over the longer term. Th e frontier marked by the Habsburg and Ottoman defense lines was much more static over time—even the Long War of 1591–1606 ended with no major change to the frontier, despite the frequent loss and recapture of border castles on both sides. Th is remained the case until the Holy League War of 1683–1699. 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, 166–167. 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. Th is presented greater opportunity for Muscovy– with huge investment in military colonization and fortifi cation construction–to gradually erect new defense lines farther south and extend its frontier closer to the Black Sea. Th ese 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 system—Poland- Lithuania’s Ukrainian frontier—defense 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 registered cossacks. Th is proved to be a major blunder when the Polish- Lithuanian government’s refusal to expand the cossack register became a factor provoking cossack rebellion in 1648, rebel cossack alliance with the Crimean Khanate (1648–1654), 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-Lithuania’s loss of great power status.6 Th e adoption of armaments, military formations, and tactics was heavily infl uenced 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. Th e janissary infantry corps served as a model for other Eastern European gunpowder infantries (Hungarian and Polish haiduks, Muscovite strel’tsy) before the seventeenth-century Western formation troops;

6 Gunther Rothenburg, “Th e Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 1522–1747,” in Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences. Volume 48 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1960); Geza Palff y, “Th e 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 advantageous 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 1630s–1650s, but they were of earthen rather than stone construction and designed by Dutch engineers rather than Italians. During the Th irteen Years’ War Muscovy came to rely not just heavily but preponderantly upon Western-style inozemskii stroi troops (soldat infantry, reitar cavalry, dragoons) offi cered by Western Europeans and Russians. But until the 1676–1681 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 undertaking 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 inozemskii stroi levies of Tsar Aleksei’s 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 characterized more by open battle and cavalry operations. Actually, wherever mastery of territory was contested (Moldavia, Ukraine) sieges were necessary. Th e challenge was to move large forces of infantry and artillery across considerable distances of open steppe to undertake sieges. Th e most common solution to this, employed down into the early eighteenth century, was to move troops in large wagenburg convoys screened by cavalry. Th ere were instances of decisive cavalry battles or cavalry victories over infantry (Konotop, 1659; Sobieski’s 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 fi repower, and that too required the use of the wagenburg as convoy and fi ghting position.7 Naval power played some role in confl icts 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 fl eet making eff ective use of fi re-ships and line-ahead tactics (Chios, Chesme, 1770).8 Th e 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 relations, 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 eff ects proved “revolutionary.”9 Th e 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-offi cers so the rank-and-fi le could be drilled more intensely and brought to master new fi ring systems and marches

7 Brian Davies, “Guliai-gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th–17th 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 suff ered just 11 killed. L. G. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i fl ot v XVIII veke (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1958), 485–487. 9 Some of the essays in this volume (Davies, Palff y, Aksan) approach their subjects in part through the perspective of the Military Revolution debate; Peter Brown’s original manuscript did as well, in pages which could not be published here because of considerations of length. 10 Michael Roberts, “Th e Military Revolution, 1560–1660,” republished in Th e Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Cliff ord Rogers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 13–35. introduction 9 into and from line rather than tercio block deployment. Gustav II Adolf then refi ned the new linear infantry tactics, expanded the number of smaller regimental guns, and reassigned the cavalry to delivering shock charge rather than caracole fi repower. He had such success with these tactics in the Th irty 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 fi scal challenges to states. Th e Military Revolution could also be seen as launching or reinforcing 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 Geoff rey Parker,11 sees the Military Revolution as occurring earlier, towards the end of the fi ft eenth century, originating in the northern Italian theater of war, and deriving above all from the innovation of the inclined-wall bastioned artillery fortress (fortifi cation in the style of the trace italienne) that was more resistant to artillery bombardment and which could provide more crossfi re from its multiple angled bastions. Sieges of the new artillery fortresses became much more protracted aff airs and required besieging armies large enough to undertake entrench- ment and countervallation fortifi cations while bombarding and storming and guarding their rear from enemy relief forces. Th is dramatically expanded army size and thereby spurred states to collect more revenue for war. Th e Roberts and Parker models of Military Revolution have been subjected to criticism on several points: for downplaying the transformative signifi cance of the expanded roles of infantry and artillery from the fi ft eenth century, before the emergence of the artillery fortress, for example; or for overstating the extent to which the innovations of the artillery fortress or linear infantry tactics provoked dramatic expansion in army size.12 Jeremy Black argues that a dramatic,

11 Geoff rey Parker, Th e “Military Revolution, 1560–1660—A Myth?” republished in same, 37–54. 12 See Cliff ord Rogers’ and John Lynn’s contributions to Th e Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Cliff ord 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 “revolution” and just how technological change worked as cause of larger eff ects. 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. Th e term Military Revolution, however, implies that possession of these new techniques gave a nation clear and lasting military preponderance. Th e problem for the historian is how that preponderance can be demonstrated in direct cause-and-eff ect 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 identify 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 shift ing the balance of power towards those nations possessing MR techniques, it is not enough to assume this by observing the eff ect, the ultimate shift in the balance of power; one must show its cause by documenting the accumulation of victories in battle, campaign, and war that were clearly attributable to MR practice. Th is is not an easy task.

13 Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800 (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1991), 93. 14 What concluding assessment could one safely make, for example, about the tactical superiority of Maurice of Nassau’s reformed Dutch infantry at the Battle of Nieuwpoort? Th ey did show remarkable endurance, but it is also true that they were driven from their position, and the fi nal 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 (1568–1648), ed. Marco van der Hoeven (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 104–106. introduction 11

Jeremy Black suggests that if we want to continue looking for a revolutionary 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 fl eets 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. Th e 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 century Military Revolution was the culmination of many changes in military technology, organization, and tactical and strategic practice over a long period, with the fi nal European “edge” attributable to more recent developments like the replacement of the pike with the ring bayonet, the fl intlock 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 fl exibility 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 eighteenth century, from Peter I’s Great Northern War through the Seven Years’ War and the 1768–1774 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?, 23–26; Bruce W. Menning,“Th e Army and Frontier in Russia,” in Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History, ed. Carl Reddell (Washington: USAF Academy, Offi ce of Air Force History, 1990), p. 28. 12 brian davies colonization policies and changes in the structure and function of provincial government.16 Military Revolution has also been seen as an agency of political and social change. Th ere seems to be association between Military Revolution and political and social change, but identifying which is cause and which is eff ect is diffi cult. Th e 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-fi scal 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 off ering compromises to end religious confl ict, for example, or by co-opting aristocratic and bourgeois elites with new offi ces and mercantile ventures). Th e 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. Th e 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. Th e 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 fi scal-military state. Even the association between political culture and the ability to sustain successful participation in Military Revolution is diffi cult to disen- tangle. Th e 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: Russia’s 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 “fi scal-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. Th e advantage of “fi scal-military state” is its own vagueness: it is a category that admits states of very diff erent 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 fi scal-military state17 has been preoccupied with inventorying the range of political systems that aspired to or attained the power threshold of the fi scal-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 fi scal practices. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, for example, one of the most effi - cient fi scal-military states in Western Europe was England, a regime resting upon a condominium of royal and parliamentary power and relying on both taxes and fi nance to mobilize resources for war. In Eastern Europe at this time the two regimes most successful in mobilizing resources for war were Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Th e former 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 fi nance (taxation was very ineff ective, and fi nance nearly non-existent). Th e 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 fi nance. Politically these three regimes had little in common, but by the test of resource mobilization power they have all been considered fi scal-military states. Perhaps discourse on the fi scal- military state has strayed too far from the text that originally inspired it: Joseph Schumpeter’s “Th e Crisis of the Tax State” (1918), which

17 Richard Bonney, ed. Th e Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200–1815 (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, 1500–1660 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Christopher Storrs, ed. Th e Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-century Europe (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009). 14 brian davies viewed the fi scal state or tax state as a stage in the fi scal development of European states (from tribute state through the medieval domain state to the modern tax state.18

Th e 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. Th ey 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 fundamental institutions in 16th–17th century Muscovy: the pomest’e system of military service, which was as important for Muscovite army as the Ottoman timar system it resembled. Traditional historiography sees Ivan IV’s 1556 reform standardizing service obligations by pomest’e 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 pomest’e-based campaign duty, and she examines the reasons why pomest’e economy was insuffi cient to equip cavalrymen for service without supplemental cash bounty payments from the Treasury. Géza Pálff y examines the frontier fortifi cations, captain-generalcies, and central administration of Hungary’s Ottoman frontier in the sixteenth century, showing how the complicated territorial and estate structure of the Habsburg monarchy did not prevent it from centralizing and systematizing frontier military administration. Palff y argues that some of the innovations attending the development of the frontier defense system—reliance on standing troops, arsenal development, centralized administration from the Aulic War Council– could be seen as Habsburg refi nements 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. Th ere were at least periods— Bathory’s reign in particular—when the nature of the military emergency encouraged estates and monarchy to collaborate in expanding and modernizing the armed forces. In the case of Bathory’s reign this

18 Joseph Schumpeter, “Th e Crisis of the Tax State,” in Schumpeter, Imperialism and the Social Classes (New York: Kelley, 1951), pp. 141–219. introduction 15 paid off in spectacular strategic gains, in part because of the King’s talent for shrewd campaign planning. Kupisz’s 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 diff erence between Western and Eastern European infantry tactics was the long-standing preference in the east, particularly in the Danubian-Pontic theater, for placing infantry fi repower behind a fortifi ed 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 mercenaries 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 infl uence in the White Sea North. But Nozdrin’s 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 provisioning of the 16th–17th century Muscovite army, which had been a neglected topic in secondary literature until her masterful 1995 monograph 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 pomest’e 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” requiring the expansion of sutlering and especially the strengthening of the state’s 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 fi scal-military state before the eighteenth century. Victor Ostapchuk reminds us that the Crimean Khanate was one of the most formidable military powers in Europe, capable of overwhelming 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 operations, 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, Th e History of Khan Sahib Girey, to reconstruct how invasion campaigns were organized and conducted in the 1530s–1540s. Ostapchuk’s 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, Th e 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 tale’s Muscovite readers. He shows that the Poetical Tale is not entirely a fi rst-hand eyewitness account written by or orally related by survivors of the siege, but a composite work, a reworking and embellishment upon some cossack reports, written sometime later by someone in Moscow apparently interested in making greater propaganda signifi cance 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 Scientifi c Revolution or views it as the expansion and deepening of technicalism (see Marshall Hodgkins), Lund examines the accumulation of practical-technical experience by generals and higher offi cers 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 offi cers with engineering and artillery experience; engineering skills were not a marker of “bourgeois” class origin; and despite the absence of formal training in military academies, scientifi c and technical learning was available to and appealing to offi cers as noble courtiers. One of the most valuable and fascinating features of this chapter is the attention it gives to showing 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 diff erent “leadership styles” while also fi nding a general continuity of preference for centralizing decision-making down to the 1670s. Th is preference derived especially from Muscovite political culture and from low literacy outside the central chancellery apparatus, discouraging offi cer skill acquisition (contrast with Lund’s 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 complicated fi ring systems. Virginia Aksan, author of a comprehensive new history of the Ottoman Empire’s 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 formations, and adjust strategic goals in Europe to the multinational character 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 aft er the late sixteenth- century, connected with a cascade of institutional breakdowns originating in the breakdown of the timar system. Aksan adheres to a newer interpretation, now predominant among younger Ottomanists, which emphasizes the reconfi guration rather than collapse of the political system aft er the 1690s and shows how military resource mobilization came to be conducted upon diff erent principles in the eighteenth century. ECONOMIC EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MUSCOVITE POMEST’E 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 (1551–53), he was a registered possessor of a pomest’e, 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 provide 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. Th e 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 servicemen who did not satisfy the government’s 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. 130–133 ob. 2 “Boiarskaia kniga,” 82–118. Th e remaining seven entries (4%) either did not indicate 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 Th e military review of 1556/57 refl ects the operation of Muscovy’s military apparatus, which was built around a cavalry made up of provincial landholders, at the time when new, standardized regulations were being introduced and were going into eff ect. A signifi cant portion of the landholders were pomeshchiki, i.e., possessors of landed estates (pomest’ia) issued to them by government offi cials. Muscovy’s pomest’e system had initially been organized during the late fi ft eenth century in the northwestern portion of the country aft er Grand Prince Ivan III (d. 1505) annexed Novgorod, confi scated landed properties owned by Novgorod’s boyars, bishop, and monasteries and redistributed them to men who relocated to the Novgorod lands and served the grand prince, typically as military servicemen. Th rough the sixteenth century the pomest’e 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 pomest’e system took part in the military campaigns on all of Muscovy’s frontiers. Muscovy’s armies in the sixteenth century did contain other units, e.g., Tatars, townsmen, musketeers, artillerymen, and Cossacks, but the pomest’e-based cavalry has been regarded as the core of the Muscovite military force.4 By the last quarter of the sixteenth century economic conditions throughout the country had deteriorated and Muscovy’s military fortunes were, correspondingly, in decline. Peasant populations,

3 E.g., “Boiarskaia kniga,” 88 (Obarin), 97–8 (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, 1462–1598,” Th e Slavonic and East European Review 71 (1993), 36. economic effectiveness of the pomest’e 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 fi elds untended. Th e estate incomes of pomest’e-based cavalrymen, consequently, fell, and their ability to perform their military duties became increasingly burdensome. Rather than providing the material means that enabled them to perform military service, the pomest’ia became obstacles to fulfi lling that duty. Th e same factors that reduced landholders’ incomes resulted, furthermore, in decreased state revenues. Moscow’s payment of supplemental stipends to landholders became irregular and incomplete.5 Faced with a confl ict of interest between management of their landed estates and military service, pomeshchiki avoided the latter. Offi cial 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 Th e collapse of their pomest’ia had left many pomeshchiki without the means to continue their military service and the proportion of pomest’e- 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), 169–201; Agrarnaia istoriia severo-zapada Rossii XVI veka, ed. A. L. Shapiro (Leningrad: Nauka, 1974), 292–9; B. N. Floria, “Voina mezhdu Rossiei i Rech’iu Pospolitoi na zakliuchitel’nom etape livonskoi voiny i vnutrenniaia politika pravitel’stva Ivana IV,” in Voprosy istoriografi i i istochnikovedeniia slaviano-germanskikh otnoshenii (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 178–9; Hellie, 37, 94–5. 6 V. I. Buganov, “Dokumenty o Livonskoi voine,” Arkheografi cheskii ezhegodnik za 1960 god (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1962), 266–7; V. I. Buganov, “Perepiska gorodogo prikaza s voevodami Livonskikh gorodov v 1577–1578 godakh,” Arkheografi cheskii ezhegodnik 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: Arkheografi cheskii tsentr and Centrum Historii Europy, 1998), 95–6; Floria, 179, 191–2, 205–8. 7 R. G. Skrynnikov, Rossiia posle oprichniny (Leningrad: Leningradskii universitet, 1975), 46; Janet Martin, “Tatars in the Muscovite Army during the Livonian War,” in Th e Military and Society in Russia, 1450–1917, ed. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 374–8, 384–6; Floria, 178–79; Hellie, 95. Even in these severe conditions some pomeshchiki were able to manage their aff airs 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 suffi cient means, even during the worst period of crisis at the end of the sixteenth century, to support himself and accumulate an array of items, identifi ed in an inventory of his possessions, made in 1595 aft er his death. Although individuals such as Bazarov were able to negotiate their way through the diffi cult 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 pomest’e system and the pomest’e-based army appeared to be functioning eff ectively. 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 1562–63, it waged a campaign that captured Polotsk from neighboring Lithuania. It was also during this period that, as the pomest’e system was spreading from Novgorod into other regions of Muscovy, the administrative apparatus that oversaw it was fashioned into a specialized section, known fi rst 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 pomest’e landholding not only in the Novgorod lands, where the pomest’e system had been functioning for decades, but in regions, such as Tver’, where it had been adopted more recently. Th e results of their eff orts formed the basis of land distributions to the growing number pomeshchiki and also of a series of compilations of records, including in 1551–53, a set of land registers known as pripravochnye knigi for Shelonskaia piatina.9 During the decade of the 1550s Muscovite offi cials were also standardizing various factors relating to the pomest’e system and military service. Establishing the relationships among military service, landholding, and monetary stipends was a central element of their eff orts. 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 pomest’e v gody ekonomicheskogo krizisa poslednei treti XVI v.,” in Materialy po istorii sel’skogo khoziaistva i krest’ianstva SSSR, sb. VIII (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), 5–26. See also Shapiro, 231–2. 8 A. K. Leont’ev, 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 (1538–1543 gg.),” Istoriia SSSR (1974), 193–4; Published compilations for Shelon- skaia piatina are in volumes IV and V of the series Novgorodskiia pistsovyia knigi, (St. Petersburg: Arkheografi cheskaia 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 geografi cheskoe obshchestvo, 1877). economic effectiveness of the pomest’e 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 specifi ed that each landholder was to supply one fully armed cavalryman for every 100 chetverti of good land in his possession.10 Th at 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 pomest’e was associated with his grade.11 Th e records contained in the boiarskaia kniga, however, show real variation among the sizes of pomest’ia possessed by individuals at the same grade of service, suggesting, perhaps, that standardization was not complete. Th e apparent success of the pomest’e 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 signifi cantly, however, during the sixteenth century military servicemen 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 kul’tury, 2000), 268–9; Hellie, 38; Denisova, 32; Zimin and Khoroshkevich, 83; P. P. Epifanov, “Voisko i voennaia organizatsiia,” in Ocherki russkoi kul’tury XVI veka (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1977), 340; Rozhdestvenskii, Sluzhiloe zemlevladenie v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI veka (St. Petersburg: 1897), 333–4. Abramovich has argued that a minimum norm of 100 chetverti for a pomest’e had been established by 1538–9; “Pomestnaia politika,” 195–6. 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 registers for Polotsk (1571) in PKMG, 540–66; Epifanov, 340–1. 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 servicemen salaries, Sigismund von Herberstein, whose observations were made during the reign of Vasily III, remarked that the grand prince provided a “fi xed 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 refl ected in the boiarskaia kniga, were standardized and, like land entitlements, corresponded to the grade of the serviceman.14 Th e landholders also received payments for supplementary troops they brought with them for campaign duty. Th e example of Lodygin, together with the those of the others who were unable to meet the military standard imposed by government offi cials, contrasts with the image of a maturing pomest’e system that in the middle of the sixteenth century was operating satisfactorily as a means of reliably enabling estate holders to meet their military obligations. It raises questions about the eff ectiveness, on the one hand, of the pomest’e system and its capacity to provide material support for members of the Muscovite cavalry in the middle of the sixteenth century and, on the other hand, of the government’s policies and regulations. Th e purpose of the following discussion is to address these issues. By examining the pomest’ia 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 standardized, stipends were necessary to supplement estate revenues to support the pomeshchiki’s 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 fi nancial capacity to aff ord their military service. Th e analysis will also yield insight into the apparent contradiction between the general image of the eff ectiveness of the pomest’e system and the failure of Lodygin and his fellows to meet their specifi c obligations. Muscovite cavalrymen were required to appear at military reviews fully armed, and were expected to bear the expense of equipping themselves and the additional men, typically military slaves, they had to supply. Th e 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,” 82–118; Hellie, 36. See also Rozhdestvenskii, 336. 15 On weapons, see Herberstein, 96; P. P. Epifanov, “Oruzhie i snariazhenie,” in Ocherki russkoi kul’tury, 293–6; 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,” 82–118; Epifanov, “Voisko,” 341–2; Abramovich, “Novgorodskoe pomest’e,” 22. For an example of an order for the army to assemble, see Dopolneniia k aktam istoricheskim, sobrannyia i izdannyia Arkheografi cheskoiu kommissieiu (DAI), v. 1 (St. Petersburg: 1846), No. 65 (1555), 123. economic effectiveness of the pomest’e 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. Th e 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, furthermore, 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. Th e 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 servicemen 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 established 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 craft smen who may have manufactured 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, 50 kopecks.20 Th e 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,” 296–8; Denisova, 33–8. 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 pomest’e,” 24. 19 For comments on magnates who maintained their own artisans for this purpose, see G. E. Kochin, Sel’skoe khoziaistvo na Rusi v period obrazovaniia Russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1965), 312. 20 Denisova, 38; Hellie, 31. 21 Th is 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 servicemen. Th ese amounts were approximately twice as much per man as those paid for required men. Th e landowner was, thus, expected to bear more of the cost of provisioning 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. Th e regulation of 1555/56 stipulated each military serviceman was to have one horse, two for long campaigns. Th e 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 1551–53 contain records of 144 pomest’e 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 military review 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 Sofi iskago Doma za 1548 god,” Izvestii Imperatorskago Arkheologicheskago Obshchestva (1861), 5; A. G. Man’kov, 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 zemlevladel’tsev XV-nachala XVII veka (ASZ), 3 vols., comp. A. V. Antonov and K. V. Baranov (Moscow: Arkheografi cheskii tsentr, 1998; Pamiatniki istorich- eskoi mysli, 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 Arkheografi cheskoiu Ekspeditsieiu, v. 1 (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia Akademiia Nauk, 1836), No. 233 (Tamozhennaia Belozerskaia gramota, 1551), No. 230, p. 223; Abramovich, “Novgorodskoe pomest’e,” 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 osteuropäischen Geschichte 50 (1995), 201, 224; Denisova, 40. On Lodygin’s 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 Bazarov’s possessions; Abramovich, “Novgorodskoe pomest’e,” 24–5. 24 Records in the land registers relate to 168 pomest’e estates, of which 17 were offi - cially in the possession of women. In two of those cases the pomest’e 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 fi ve pomeshchiki, identifi ed as pod”iachi or sytniki, who were in non-military service. economic effectiveness of the pomest’e system 27 number of cavalrymen offi cially required from their pomest’ia, the actual number they provided, and the stipends and supplementary compensation they received are all unknown factors. Th e land registers, however, indicate the amount of land, measured in obzhi, contained on each pomest’e; one obzha was the equivalent of ten chertverti. If it is assumed that the sizes of their pomest’ia and the incomes derived from them did not change signifi cantly between the early 1550s, when they were recorded in the land registers, and 1555/56, when standardized regulations were issued, it is possible to determine, based on the sizes of their pomest’ia, how many cavalrymen each pomest’e would have been assessed. Th e registers also record how much land on each estate was cultivated 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 suffi cient to support the military service of their pomeshchiki and the required number of additional cavalrymen. Th ose calculations are based on an assumption that one heavily armed cavalryman would be required for the fi rst 100 chetverti on a pomest’e 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 pomest’ia suggests that most of the estates were large enough, according the 1556 standards, to support at least one armed cavalryman. Th e 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 minimum 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-fi ve 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 suffi cient sums from the portion of the rent (obrok) paid by their peasants in cash to meet expenses of 4R, 50k for the fi rst cavalrymen and 3 rubles for all others. Another fi ve 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 pomest’ia, the pomeshchiki in possession of those fi ve estates and those on the remaining 122 pomest’ia would have had to fi nd other sources of money. Th e most abundant commodity they had available was the grain produced on their estates. Th e 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 specifi ed amounts, measured in korob’ia. Less frequently they collected portions of the peasants’ crops, normally one-quarter or, less commonly, one-fi ft h.25 To determine how much surplus grain the pomeshchiki of each estate may be considered to have had available for sale, it is necessary fi rst 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 fi xed quantities of grain. Th e 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 korob’ia produced from these sections of the pomest’ia.26 Th ose 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 pomest’e. Th e 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 den’gi/chet’, 28 it appears that by selling

25 Th ere were a total of 3906.7 ob. on all 153 pomest’ia. Specifi ed 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-fi ft h of the crop from 335.75 ob. Th e 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 pomest’e,” 19. 28 Th e assumed minimum consumption of 250–325 kg grain per adult per year is taken from estimates off ered by A. L. Shapiro and his colleagues, who posited that a man would require 15–20 puds/year or 245.7–327.6 kg/yr.; Agrarnaia istoriia Severo- zapada Rossii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971) 49–50, 270. Abramovich used 14 puds/year economic effectiveness of the pomest’e system 29 their grain surplus, most of the pomeshchiki could have theoretically raised enough money to purchase the equipment needed for his estate’s 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. Th ese calculations, on the one hand, support the view that in the 1550s the pomest’e system was functioning well as a means of supporting military service. Rents and demesne production on most of the estates provided their pomeshchiki, at least theoretically, with suffi cient 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 pomest’ia. If those 21 estates that could not provide suffi cient income are combined with the 12 pomest’ia that consisted of less than 100 cheti and, therefore, would not have been considered large enough to support even one cavalryman by offi cial standards, then almost one-quarter of the pomest’ia in Shelonskaia piatina, held by male servicemen, would have been unable to sustain military service using only the incomes from their estates. Th e 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 calculations, 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 pomest’e,” 19. Th ese fi gures, although higher, are consistent with those off ered by Colin Clark and Margaret Haswell, who proposed a range of 190–235 kg and concluded that 210 kg/year may be considered a subsistence minimum; Th e Economics of Subsistence Agriculture, 4th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1970), 58–9, 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. Martin’s Press, 1968), 130. Th e calculations use the equivalencies, provided by Shapiro, of 1 korob’ia = 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 kul’tury, 2000), 622. 29 Rozhdestvenskii (pp. 335–6) proposed that stipends were intended specifi cally for the purchase of armor and weapons, whereas estate incomes were expected to support the domestic needs of the pomeshchik, his family, and also maintain his horses. On the pomeshchik’s 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. Fedor’s share of the pomest’e 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 generated by pomest’ia. Yet Fedor Lodygin was unable to fulfi ll 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 Lodygin’s income from his pomest’e was suffi cient 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 pomest’e lands paid rents in grains, measured in korob’ia, 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 military 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 consumption introduced above (250–325 kg/person/year), he would have had to set aside 1000–1300 kg of grain. Th e remainder could have been sold to raise additional money. Th e 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. Fedor’s share would have been 91 korob’ia or 11,920 kg. If the two cavalrymen and their wives consumed 1000– 1300 kg, Lodygin would have had 10,620–10,920 kg or about 110 cheti available for sale. If another 750–850 kg of oats were devoted to feed for two horses, then the remaining amount of grain available for sale would have been 9770–10,170 kg (99–103 cheti).30 Th e price for rye in Novgorod in 1551 was, as noted above, 32 den’gi/chet’. Fedor Lodygin could have earned c. 16–16.5R if he had sold all his surplus grain on

30 For the consumption requirements of horses, see Abramovich, “Novgorodskoe pomest’e,” 18–19; 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 pomest’e system 31 the market.31 Th is amount coupled with his share of the cash income paid by the estate’s peasants exceeded the 11.5R he would have needed to purchase the required military equipment and horses for two armed men. Th e example of Lodygin illustrates how the general impression that the pomest’e system was functioning well may be deceptive. Lodygin’s inability to meet his obligation may have been due to any one or a combination of several factors. Although government regulations specifi ed that one armed horseman was to be provided for every 100 chetverti of good land, only 27.5 ob. (275 chetverti) on the Lodygin pomest’e were actually classifi ed as good land. Th e remainder of the 700 chetverti was described as average or poor land. Government offi cials, furthermore, used all the arable land on a pomest’e as the basis for determining the number of cavalrymen it should provide. But, in Lodygin’s case, 8.5 of the obezh (85 cheti) of the 14 ob. (140 cheti) set aside for the direct benefi t 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 Lodygin’s case the assumptions used to calculate the amount of surplus grain available for sale may have underestimated the household’s food allowance and estate needs. Th ose assumptions allowed for a minimum amount of grain to be consumed and only by a minimum number of adults. Th ey 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 specifi c information about Fedor Lodygin’s 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. Th ey, 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 Lodygin’s potential income. For relative prices, see Man’kov, 104–5. 32 RGADA, f. 1209, op. 3, No. 17144, ll. 131 ob. - 132 ob.; for a discussion of the designation “good” land, Rozhdestvenskii 332–3. 32 janet martin

Th e 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. Th ey did not allow for local or more widespread disruptions to either production or marketing.33 Th ey also assume that the pomeshchiki had no other expenses for the maintenance of themselves and their families, although it is unlikely that the only expenses they incurred were for their military equipment. Th us, although the third of the 70-obezh pomest’e allocated to Fedor Lodygin could, in theory and possibly from the Muscovite offi cials’ point of view, have been suffi cient to support the costs of outfi tting two military servicemen, a range of factors, including his domestic obligations 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 Lodygin’s personal circumstances, as revealed in the land registers of 1551–53, off er some possible explanations for his diffi culty 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 situations, as described in the land registers, indicate that at least some of Lodygin’s neighbors may have similarly found it diffi cult to meet the new standardized service requirements. Th e estate of Gam, the son Semen Tyrtov, provides an illustration.34 Tyrtov’s pomest’e, which consisted of parcels of land in two parishes in Shelonskaia piatina, contained a total of 31.5 obzhi or 315 cheti. Th e 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. Th is would have been more than suffi cient 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), 290–1; 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), 221–2. 34 RGADA, f. 1209, op. 3, No. 17144, ll. 165ob.-167ob. economic effectiveness of the pomest’e system 33

But, the situation on Tyrtov’s pomest’e was delicate. Tyrtov himself had not returned from Kazan’. His wife, Efrosin’ia, and four sons remained on his estate. Th e 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 signifi cant portion of the food required for the pomeshchik’s household had to be purchased. Using the norm of 250–325 kg/adult/year, the eleven adults alone would have required 2750–3575 kg of grain. Demesne production supplied approximately half of that amount, leaving about 1175–2000 kg or 12 to 20 cheti to be purchased. Th e 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 pomest’e system was functioning successfully in the middle of the sixteenth century. Th e 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 Muscovy’s borders at the expense of its neighbors. Yet, policies adopted in the middle of the century that standardized military obligations and attached them to the size of landholdings, while giving government offi cials 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 eff ects of these policies. Although incomes derived from their landed estates appeared to be suffi cient for most pomeshchiki to support their households and also aff ord the equipment necessary for their required military service, this was not the case for a signifi cant minority of them. Standardization had set service norms at levels higher than many pomeshchiki could aff ord from

35 A. I. Kopanev, “Materialy po istorii krest’ianstva 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), 177–8; ASZ, v. 1, p. 335. 34 janet martin their estate incomes. It became diffi cult for individual pomeshchiki, due to their personal circumstances, including the enlargement of their households, oft en with the addition of slaves, to fulfi ll military requirements, to meet expenses for both their domestic and military obligations.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. Th e pomest’e system provided landed estates to military servicemen. But in the mid-sixteenth century, when norms for military service and land tenure were standardized, many of those landed estates provided through the pomest’e system did not have the capacity to yield the material support, in suffi cient quantities and in a reliable manner, that their pomeshchiki needed to fulfi ll 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,” 178–9. THE HABSBURG DEFENSE SYSTEM IN HUNGARY AGAINST THE OTTOMANS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: A CATALYST OF MILITARY DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL EUROPE

Géza Pálff y

Th e Ottoman Conquest and East-Central Europe

Th e 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. Th is fi nal step was taken in the reign of Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520), who conquered a signifi cant portion of the Muslim Near East (Persia, 1514; Syria, 1516; and Egypt, 1517), bequeathing to his son Sultan Süleyman I the Magnifi cent (r. 1520–1566) a vast and powerful empire rich in natural and material resources. Th e Kingdom of Hungary, considered to be a strong middling power in Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages, could no longer be compared with it (see Table). Th e Ottoman Empire now held the power to play the decisive role in Eastern and Central European politics.1

Th e Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary about 15202 Ottoman Empire Kingdom of Hungary Area (Km2) 1,500,000 320,000 Population 12–13,000,000 3,300,000 Annual Revenue 4–5,000,000 250–260,000 (fl orins) Armed Forces 100–120,000 30–40,000

1 Halil Inalcik, Th e Ottoman Empire: Th e Classical Age 1300–1600, 3rd ed. (London: Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1997); Colin Imber, Th e Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: Th e Structure of Power (Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002); Güler Eren et al., eds. Th e Great Ottoman Turkish Civilisation, 2 vols. (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000). 2 Gábor Ágoston, “Habsburgs and Ottomans: Defense, Military Change and Shift s in Power.” Th e Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1998): 126–141; Th omas 36 géza pálffy

It therefore became evident in 1521, when the supporters of Asiatic and maritime conquests lost out to the Istanbul court faction demanding further conquests in Central Europe, that the next major goal of the Ottoman Empire would be the annexation of the Kingdom of Hungary.3 Th e 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. Th ere had been a number of minor border clashes already during the “peaceful period” (1463–1520) and the collapse of Hungary’s 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 Th e changed power relationships at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the fall of Nándorfehérvár/Belgrad6 on August 29, 1521, and the gradual weakening of the southern defense fortress system fi nally made it obvious by 1521 that the end of the medieval Hungarian kingdom was at hand.7

Winkelbauer, Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht: Länder und Untertanen des Hauses Habsburg im konfessionellen Zeitalter, 2 vols. (Wien: Ueberreuter, 2003), 1. vol., 23–24. 3 Pál Fodor, In Quest of the Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military Administration in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2000), 105–169. 4 Ferenc Szakály, “Phases of Turco-Hungarian Warfare before the Battle of Mohács (1365–1526)” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 33 (1979): 65–111; idem, “Th e Hungarian-Croatian Border Defense System and Its Collapse” in From Hunyadi to Rákóczi: War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary, eds. János M. Bak and Béla K. Király (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 5 András Kubinyi, “Hungary’s Power Factions and the Turkish Th reat in the Jagiellonian Period (1490–1526).” in Fight against the Turk in Central-Europe in the First Half of the 16th Century, ed. István Zombori (Budapest: Magyar Egyháztörténeti Enciklopédia Munkaközösség, 2004), 115–145. 6 Th e 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): Érsekújvár (German Neuhäusel, today Nové Zámky, Slovakia), Fülek (today Fil’akovo, Slovakia), Karlstadt (Hungarian Károlyváros, today Karlovac, Croatia), Kassa (Germ. Kaschau, today Košice, Slovakia), Komárom (Germ. Komorn, today Komárno, Slovakia), Léva (Germ. Lewenz, today Levice, Slovakia), Nándorfehérvár/Belgrad (Germ. Griechisch Weißenburg, today Beograd, Serbia), Pozsony (Germ. Pressburg, Slovak Prešporok, today Bratislava, Slovakia), Szabács (today Šabac, Serbia), Szatmár (Germ. Sackmar, today Satu Mare, Romania), Temesvár (Germ. Temeschwar, today Timişoara, Romania), Varasd (Germ. Warasdin, today Varaždin, Croatia). 7 Ferenc Szakály, “Nándorfehérvár, 1521: Th e Beginning of the End of the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom.” in Hungarian-Ottoman Military and Diplomatic Relations in the Age of Süleyman the Magnifi cent, eds. Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (Budapest: Loránd Eötvös University, Department of Turkish Studies; Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of History, 1994), 44–76. the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 37

Th e army of Sultan Süleyman far exceeded in both numbers and quality the armed forces of the Hungarian-Croatian and Bohemian ruler, Louis II Jagiello (r. 1516–1526), even though Louis II’s army was considerable by Central European standards. Th e Ottomans now had the largest, best-trained, and experienced standing army, which in contrast to European armies had substantial reserve and supply formations.8 Th ese contributed signifi cantly to the success of Ottoman campaigns. In addition the Porte also had a growing Mediterranean fl eet. Confronting this large standing army was a Hungarian army dependent on mustered troops provided by the Hungarian estates. Th e defeat of the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohács on August 29, 1526 was inevitable given the Ottomans’ commitment to the goal of occupying 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 aft er 1526 was a much more diffi cult 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. Th e Ottoman state

8 Gyula Káldy-Nagy, “Th e First Centuries of the Ottoman Military Organization.” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31 (1977): 147–183; Gábor Ágoston, “Ottoman Warfare, 1453–1815.” in European Warfare, 1453–1815, ed. Jeremy Black (London: Macmillan, 1999), 118–144. 9 Ferenc Szakály, A mohácsi csata [Th e Battle of Mohács], 3rd ed. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1981); Géza Perjés, Th e Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohács 1526–Buda 1541 (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 173–272; Gábor Ágoston, “Mohács.” in Th e Seventy Great Battles of All Time, ed. Jeremy Black (London: Th ames & Hudson, 2005), 100–112; János B. Szabó, ed. Mohács [(Th e Battle of) Mohács] (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2006); János B. Szabó, A mohácsi csata [Th e Battle of Mohács] (Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 2006); János B. Szabó and Ferenc Tóth, Mohács (1526). Soliman le Magnifi que prend pied en Europe centrale (Paris: Economica, 2009). 10 Cf. recently R[obert] J[ohn] W[eston] Evans, Th e Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press- Clarendon Press, 1979); Paula Sutter Fichtner, Th e Habsburg Monarchy 1490–1848: Attributes of Empire (Houndmills-Basingstoke-Hampshire etc.: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003), 14–30; Winkelbauer, Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht, 1. vol. 38 géza pálffy had since reached the peak of its development and its political and military leadership was insistent on realizing its great goal: the occupation of Vienna, the residence city of the new Hungarian king from the House of Habsburg, Ferdinand I (King of Hungary, 1526–1564; Holy Roman Emperor, 1556–1564). Following the catastrophe at Mohács Hungary experienced political crisis: the Hungarian estates elected John (János) 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. Th e looming civil war the camps of the two legitimate kings signifi cantly 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 fi rst two decades aft er Mohács King Ferdinand’s Viennese military advisors lacked a fully worked out and concrete defense plan against the Ottomans. During this period their main concern was to suppress King John I (Szapolyai). Th erefore 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. Th eir strategy for defense against the Ottomans off ered nothing new from the strategy followed by the Hungarian kings in the fi ft eenth century: they aimed only at holding up the Ottomans on Hungarian and Croatian territory, before they could reach the borders of the Austrian Hereditary Provinces. In the 1530s, signifi cant German and Spanish garrisons were sent only to the most important fortresses along the Danube (Esztergom, Komárom, and Györ) and to a few especially vulnerable Croatian frontier fortresses (Bihać, Senj, etc.).12

11 Gábor Barta, La route qui mène à Istanbul 1526–1528 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1994); Sándor Papp, Die Verleihungs-, Bekräft igungs- und Vertragsurkunden der Osmanen für Ungarn und Siebenbürgen: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft en, 2003), 27–51. 12 Christine Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik Ferdinands I. von 1529 bis 1532 (Wien: Notring, 1968); Géza Pálff y, “Th e 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: Th e Military Confi nes in the Era of the Ottoman Conquest, eds. Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 2000), 16–22; Zoltán Korpás, “La frontera oriental de la Universitas Christiana entre 1526–1532: La política húngara y antiturca de Carlos V.” in Carlos V. Europeísmo y Universalidad. El Congreso Internacional, Granada, 1–5 de mayo. 3. Los Escenarios del Imperio, eds. Castellano y Castellano et al. (Madrid: Universidad de Granada, 2001), 321–337. the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 39

Th e fall of the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom, Buda on August 29, 1541 fi nally 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 fi nancial assistance of the Holy Roman Empire to reconquer Buda, although it failed to do so.13 Th is failure was compounded by the loss of Esztergom, Székesfehérvár, and Pécs to Sultan Süleyman in 1543, which allowed the sultan to surround Buda with a protective ring and reinforce his own territories.14 Th is was the fi nal 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. Th reats once thought to be distant were now recognized as imminent. Aft er 1543 Ferdinand’s 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, off ering 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 Aft er two

13 Christian Meyer, “Die Feldhauptmannschaft Joachims II. im Türkenkriege von 1542.” Zeitschrift für Preussische Geschichte und Landeskunde 16 (1879): 480–538; Árpád Károlyi, A német birodalom nagy hadi vállalata 1542-ben [Th e Great Expedition of the German Empire in Hungary 1542] (Budapest: Athenaeum R. Társulat, 1880); Paula Sutter Fichtner, “Dynasticism and its Limitations: the Habsburgs and Hungary (1542).” East European Quarterly 4 (1971): 389–407; Antonio Liepold, Wider den Erbfeind christlichen Glaubens: Die Rolle des niederen Adels in den Türkenkriegen des 16. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main-Berlin-Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 1998), 237–252. 14 Klára Hegyi, “Th e Ottoman Network of Fortresses in Hungary.” in Dávid, and Fodor, eds. Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs, 163–164; eadem, A török hódoltság várai és várkatonasága [Fortresses and Fortress Soldiers of Ottoman Hungary] 3 vols. (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Történettudományi Intézet, 2007), 1. vol. 15 Andrew C. Hess, Th e Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero- African Frontier (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Zoltán Korpás, “Las luchas antiturcas en Hungría y la política oriental de los Austrias 1532–1541.” in Fernando I, 1503–1564: Socialización, vida privada y actividad pública de un Emperador del Renacimineto, eds. Alfredo Alvar and Friecrich Edelmayer (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2004), 335–370. 40 géza pálffy years of armistice Sultan Süleyman 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, “Th ere is a need for the fi nancial 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 cannot cover all of these.”18 As the main theater of military operations Hungary obviously depended on military and fi nancial 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. Th rough 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. Th e 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 aft er the Ottoman campaign of 1552 (which resulted in the fall of Szolnok, Temesvár, and some smaller castles north of Buda in Nógrád 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 für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 38 (1985): 49–80. 17 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Wien (hereinaft er cited as ÖStA Wien); Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Ungarische Akten (Hungarica), Allgemeine Akten Fasc. 39, Konv. F, fol. 36–37. 18 Magyar törvénytár (Corpus Juris Hungarici) 1526–1608. Törvényczikkek [Acts of 1526–1608], accompanied by explaining notes by Dezsö Márkus (Budapest: Franklin- Társulat, 1899), 198–199 (act 16, 1547). 19 On the two new capitals of Kingdom of Hungary aft er 1541 recently cf. Géza Pálff y, Th e 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 fi nd fi nancing for the new fortresses; what their military manpower sources should be; and how to provide war supplies and food to the soldiers. Th ese factors all had to be considered in order to impede the Ottoman advance.20 Th e 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 frontier fortresses located in diff erent parts of Hungary and Croatia. Th ese zones would be under the direction of the larger fortresses, in accordance with uniform principles. Financing as well as manpower and strategic considerations played a very important role in the establishment of the new border zones. Since income from Hungary was not suffi - cient to fi nance 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 fi nancial 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 fi nancial burden of this cause.21 Th e Aulic War Council (Wiener Hofk riegsrat), established in November 1556, decisively assisted the development and realization of a uniform defensive strategy against the Ottomans.22 Th is was

(Boulder, Co.: Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications Inc. Wayne-New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) 65–69. 20 Géza Pálff y, A császárváros védelmében: A györi fökapitányság története 1526– 1598 [In the Defense of the Imperial City: History of the Border Defense System around Györ against the Ottomans, 1526–1598] (Györ: Györ-Moson-Sopron Megye Györi Levéltára, 1999), 45–133. 21 Géza Pálff y,“Der Preis für die Verteidigung der Habsburgermonarchie: Die Kosten der Türkenabwehr in der zweiten Hälft e des 16. Jahrhunderts.” in Finanzen und Herrschaft : Materielle Grundlagen fürstlicher Politik in den habsburgischen Ländern und im Heiligen Römischen Reich im 16. Jahrhundert, eds. Friedrich Edelmayer, Maximilian Lanzinner, and Peter Rauscher (München-Wien: Oldenbourg, 2003), 25–34. 22 Oskar Regele, Der österreichische Hofk riegsrat 1556–1848 (Wien: Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, 1949); Géza Pálff y, “Die Akten und Protokolle des Wiener Hofk riegsrats im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.” in Quellenkunde der Habsburgermonarchie (16–18. Jahrhundert): Ein exemplarisches Handbuch, eds. Josef Pauser, Martin Scheutz and Th omas Winkelbauer (Wien-München: Oldenbourg, 2004), 182–195. 42 géza pálffy necessary because for two decades aft er the Battle of Mohács 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 fi eld offi cers and offi cials who were experienced in waging warfare against the Ottomans or conducting diplomacy with them and had as well familiarity with the geography 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. Th ey oft en voiced their opinions about the chances of success in reinforcing border fortresses, 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 fortifi cations work. Th e 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 (Fülek in 1554, Szigetvár and Gyula in 1566) up to the

23 Géza Pálff y, “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 Mat’a, and Th omas Winkelbauer (Stutgart: Franz Steiner, 2006), 279–282. 24 Géza Pálff y, Európa védelmében. Haditérképészet a Habsburg Birodalom magya- rországi határvidékén a 16–17. században [In the Defense of Europe: Military Cartography on the Hungarian Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 16th and 17th Centuries], 2nd ed. (Pápa: Jókai Mór Városi Könyvtár, 2000). the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 43 conclusion of a new peace agreement at Adrianople in 1568, the implementation 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 signifi cant was Schwendi’s reconquest of some crucially important border castles in Upper Hungary27 (Tokaj, Szatmár) from John Sigismund (János Zsigmond, son of Johan Szapolyai and Prince of Transylvania, r.1540–1571) 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 Porte’s vassal state, the Transylvanian Principality created by Sultan Süleyman in the 1550s.28 Schwendi’s reforms established an improved system for the logistical support of the Hungarian border fortresses. Th rough 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. Th is chain of

25 Wilhelm Janko, Lazarus Freiherr von Schwendi, oberster Feldhauptmann und Rath Kaiser Maximilian’s II. (Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1871), 31–90; Roman Schnur, “Lazarus von Schwendi (1522–1583): Ein unerledigtes Th ema der historischen Forschung.” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 14 (1987): 27–46; Th omas Niklas, Um Macht und Einheit des Reiches: Konzeption und Wirklichkeit der Politik bei Lazarus von Schwendi, 1522–1583 (Husum: Matthiesen, 1995). 26 Eugen von Frauenholz, Lazarus von Schwendi: Der erste deutsche Verkünder der allgemeinen Wehrpfl icht (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1939), 92–160: no. 5–7. 27 It must be emphasized that Upper Hungary in the sixteenth century (i.e. the thirteen counties in the northeastern territory of the Kingdom of Hungary) was not identical with the later so-called Felvidék (North Hungary) in the nineteenth century but it was much larger than the present Eastern Slovakia. Th e 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). Th us the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hungarian and Slovakian geographic concepts can not be applied to the sixteenth century. 28 Gábor Barta, Az erdélyi fejedelemség születése [Th e Making of the Principality of Transylvania], 2nd ed. (Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 1984); Béla Köpeczi 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, 593–646; Cristina Feneşan, Constituirea principatului autonom al Transilvaniei [Th e Making of the Independent Principality of Transylvania] (Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 1997); Papp, Die Verleihungs, 53–90. 44 géza pálffy

100–120 variously sized fortresses was organizationally divided into six so-called Border Fortress Captain Generalcies (Grenzgeneralat) (see Map).29 Th ey were under the command of border fortress captain generals (Grenzgeneral/Grenzoberst) headquartered in the main fortresses or fortifi ed cities. Beginning with the Adriatic and progressing to Transylvania we fi nd: 1. Th e Croatian and Adriatic Border Fortress Captain Generalcy (kroatische und Meergrenze), the fi rst one to be established, with its command center initially at Bihać and, aft er 1579, at Karlstadt;30 2. Th e Slavonian or Wendish Captain Generalcy (slawonische/win- dische Grenze), with Varasd as its center, aft er 1578 known as the Wendish-Bajcsavár Captain Generalcy.31 3. Th e Kanizsa Captain Generalcy (kanischarische Grenze), compen- sating for the loss of Szigetvár in 1566, renamed the Captain Gener- alcy across from Kanizsa (gegenüber von Kanischa liegende Grenze) aft er the loss of Kanizsa in 1600; 4. Th e Györ Captain Generalcy (Raaber/raaberische Grenze), protecting the residence and imperial city of Vienna;32 5. Th e so-called Captain Generalcy Defending the Mining Towns (bergstädtische Grenze) along the Garam River, with Léva and, aft er 1589, Érsekújvár as its command city; 6. Th e Upper Hungary or Kassa Captain Generalcy (oberungarische Grenze), with Kassa as its command center.

29 Pálff y, “Th e Origins and Development”, 39–49; idem, “Die Türkenabwehr in Ungarn im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert – ein Forschungsdesiderat.” Anzeiger der philoso- phisch-historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft en 137, no. 1 (2002): 112–114. 30 Gunther Erich Rothenberg, Th e Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 1522–1747 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960); Dragutin Pavličević, ed. Vojna krajina: Povijesni pregled - historiografi ja - rasprave [Military Border: Historical Review, Historiography, Studies] (Zagreb: Sveučilišna Naklada Liber, 1984); Milan Kruhek, Krajiške utvdre i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevstva tijekom 16. stoljeća [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 Militärgrenze (1535–1881) (Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau, 1997). 31 Franz Otto Roth, “Wihitsch und Weitschawar: Zum Verantwortungsbewußtsein der adeligen Landstände Innerösterreichs in Gesinnung und Tat im türkischen “Friedensjahr” 1578.” Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereines für Steiermark 61 (1970): 151–214; Diether Kramer, ed. Auf Sand gebaut Weitschawar / Bajcsa-Vár eine steirische Festung in Ungarn (Graz: Selbstverlag der Historischen Landeskommission für Steiermark, 2005). 32 Pálff y, A császárváros védelmében. 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 Komárom along the Danube. Straddling the major military highway, it was of critical importance for the defense of Vienna. It was also the command center for the Danube fl otilla and its captain general served directly under the Aulic War Council. Szatmár, a newly modernized border fortress in the northeast, center of the so-called Transtisza or Szatmár 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 Szatmár Captain Generalcy defended Habsburg-ruled Hungary against attack from a Christian state vassalized to the Ottomans and ruled by Hungarian princes.33 Th e fortress system was clearly diversifi ed in depth as well. Due to geographic and strategic considerations the frontier fortresses diff ered from each other, with every fortress having its own specifi c importance. Th e principal fortresses were massively enlarged, had garrisons of 1,000–1,500 men, and became the pillars of the defense system and the centers of military administration. Th ese key fortresses were followed by the large fortresses with garrisons of 400 to 600 men, and then by smaller stone or palisade fortifi cations with 100 to 300 soldiers. Th ere were also guard and patrol ports with only about a dozen soldiers, but they had important functions, too,34 such as the surveillance of enemy detachments and the provisioning of equestrian messengers. Th e guardhouses also could signal with cannon35 or with bonfi re (Kreidschuss- und Kreidfeuersystem) and thereby alert the larger fortresses and the people living in the general area.36 Another element of the frontier defense system was the District Captain Generalcy (Kreisgeneralat). Th ere were four of these Kreisgen- eral, functioning within the Border Fortress Captain Generalcies,

33 Géza Pálff y, “Die oberungarische Grenzoberhauptmannschaft und Siebenbürgen zur Zeit der Regierung von Stephan Báthory (1571–1586): Ein unerledigter Aspekt in der Báthory-Forschung.” Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1, nos. 1–2 (1997): 113–126. 34 Imre Szántó, A végvári rendszer kiépítése és fénykora Magyarországon 1541–1593 [Th e Organization and Flourishing Period of the Border Fortress System in Hungary, 1541–1593] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980), 23–46. 35 German Mörser zu Kreidschüssen or Lärmmörser = Latin mortarium pro dando signo seu rumore or bombarda ad sonum apta = Hungarian hírlövö mozsár or hírpat- tantyú = Croatish glasnik and Turkish haberdar. 36 Vasko Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem v 16. stoletju [Military Administration in Slovenia in the 16th Century] (Ljubljana: Slovenska Matica, 1991), 169–179. 46 géza pálffy 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 Gömör County) and in Upper Hungary. Th ey were in charge of the increasingly outdated noble levies (insurrectio), of the troops of the counties and of the free royal cities, and of contingents of the district captain generalcy. Th e latter contingents, usually of 300–500 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. Th e 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 Confi nes of the Ban (Banalgrenze).37 Th us the unifi ed military jurisdiction of the Croatian-Slavonian ban (banus Croatiae et Sclavoniae) decreased sharply aft er 1526 and was now split into two separate segments.38 Th e emergence of the district captain generalcies and their persistence until the end of the seventeenth century testifi ed to the power and infl uence of the Hungarian political elite. Th e district captain generalcies partly counteracted the diminishing position of the estates in the fi eld of military aff airs. For a long time the estates were squeezed out of the central control of military aff airs by the establishment of the Aulic War Council and by the fact that Austrian and German offi cers headed certain border fortress captain generalcies (Györ, Croatian and Slavonian, and fortress Komárom) as well. Th is refl ected Hungary’s dependence on fi nancial-military assistance from neighboring Austrian provinces. But the offi ce 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. Th is was also true for the ban’s position in Croatia-Slavonia. A foreigner could only be named to it if he fi rst received a Hungarian diploma of indigenatus.

37 Archiv des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (hereinaft er cited as Archiv GNM Nürnberg), Weltliche Fürsten, Siebenbürgen ZR 7657, fol. 97–103 (1588); ÖStA Wien, Kriegsarchiv (hereinaft er cited as KA), Alte Feldakten (AFA) 1593/9/1,5 (Sept., 1593); Kaser, Freier Bauer, 330–333. 38 Szabolcs Varga, “Die Veränderungen der militärischen Rechtssphäre des Banus von Kroatien in der ersten Hälft e des 16. Jahrhunderts.” in Kaiser Ferdinand I: Ein mit- teleuropäischer Herrscher, eds. Martina Fuchs, Teréz Oborni and Gábor Ujváry (Münster: Aschendorff , 2005), 303–322. the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 47

One such person was Ban Christoph Ungnad (1576/78–1583), who had a Hungarian wife.39 Th us 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) – consisted of two captain generalcies which partially overlapped: the system 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 aft er 1577

Th e 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 diffi culties. Th e defense strategy did undergo some alterations over time, but its foundations were laid down so well that all they subsequently needed was some modernization. Th e fi rst such modernization took place in 1577. Th e experience of the previous two decades was reviewed and it was decided to remedy identifi ed shortcomings and discuss whether modifi cation of the defense strategy was needed for the future. Th is was done by a major military conference (Hauptgrenzberatschlagung) convened in Vienna in mid-August, 1577 and lasting for one-and-a-half months.41 Th e minutes, consisting of eight hundred pages (surviving in ten copies),

39 János Gyözö Szabó, “Az egri vár főkapitányainak rövid életrajza [Th e Short Life of the Commanders of the Fortress Eger].” Egri Vár Híradója [Review of Fortress Eger] 17 (1982): 17–19. 40 Pálff y, Th e Kingdom of Hungary, passim. 41 István Geőcze, “Hadi tanácskozások az 1577-ik évben [Military Conferences in the Year 1577].” Hadtörténelmi Közlemények [Review of Military History, Budapest] 7 (1894): 502–537, and 647–673; Winfried Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung: Studien zum Kriegswesen des innerösterreichischen Territorialstaates (1564–1619) (Wien-Köln-Graz: Böhlau, 1973), 65–69; Kurt Wessely, “Die Regensburger »harrige« Reichshilfe 1576.” in Die russische Gesandtschaft am Regensburger Reichstag 1576, eds. Ekkehard Völkl, and Kurt Wessely (Regensburg-Kallmünz: Laßleben, 1976), 38–49; Géza Pálff y, “Th e Border Defense System in Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” in A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, eds. Béla K. Király, and László Veszprémy (Boulder, Co.: Social Sciences Monographs-Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications-New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 118–121. 48 géza pálffy vividly document the signifi cance of the sixteenth century military reforms in Central Europe as well as their shortcomings.42 Th is meeting was of major signifi cance for the military history of the early modern 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 off ensive against the enemy. Th ere was a clash of two fundamentally diff ering 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 off ensive with the help of European allies. Although Rueber’s recognition of the superiority of Christian fi rearms and tactics was right, in the given situation of the Habsburg Monarchy Schwendi’s position was more realistic. He had a clear understanding of European political and diplomatic relations, of the fundamental shortcomings of the Habsburg army’s logistical system, and of the fi nancial means of the Aulic Chamber (Hofk ammer) in Vienna, all of which considerations precluded driving the Ottomans back at this time. Th e accuracy of his judgment of the situation was completely verifi ed by the events of the Long Turkish War (1591–1606). Acceptance of the strategy of active defense required a reorganization 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 fi rst results of a modernized defense

42 1) ÖStA Wien, KA AFA 1577/13/2; 2) Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien (hereinaft er cited as ÖNB Wien); Cod. 8678; 3) ibid. Cod. 8345; 4) ibid. Cod. 12660; 5) Archiv GNM Nürnberg, Weltliche Fürsten, Österreich ZR 7670; 6) Magyar Országos Levéltár [Hungarian State Archives], Budapest (hereinaft er cited as MOL Budapest); P 108, Esterházy család hercegi ágának levéltára [Archives of Prince Esterházy Family] Repositorium 77, Fasc. N; 7) Érseki Könyvtár [Archbishop Library], Kalocsa; Kézirattár Ms. 49 (25238); 8) Stadtarchiv Retz; sine no.; 9) Stift sarchiv Geras; Fons Pernegg Hs. 6/1; 10) Oberösterreichisches Landesarchivs, Linz; Schlüsselberger Archiv Hs. 71. the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 49 strategy. By the early 1580s, the border captain generalcies were organized into effi cient zones against Ottoman incursions. “Landscap- ing” in the Kanizsa border area was an especially remarkable implementation, one that drew on the recommendations of border fortress inspections. Th e valley of the Kanizsa stream in the vicinity of the main fortress was fl ooded by mill dams, crossing places were blocked, guard posts of various sizes were built along the crossing places, and fortresses not suitable for the system were blown up. As a result, crossing places were more effi ciently controlled with the help of new castles and guard houses within sight of each other, and new incursions were prevented by the establishment of a continuous water defense system.43 Th e policy of active defense also required transforming the centers of the Border Fortress Captain Generalcies into modern fortresses. Examples include the transformation of Györ into a fortress city (Festungsstadt),44 the reinforcement of Kanizsa in the southwest, and the fortifi cation of Szatmár 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 fortifi ed in the Italian style (trace italienne) were built under the supervision of Italian architects. In 1579 a regular hexagonal fortress was built at Karlstadt (1579), at the confl uence of the Rivers Kulpa and Korana in Croatia, replacing Bihać, (by then in a completely defenseless situation).45 By the end of the 1580s Érsekújvár was completed on the right bank of the Nyitra River, upon the design of Ottavio Baldigara.46

43 József Kelenik, “A kanizsai védelmi övezet és természetföldrajzi adottságai a XVI. század 70-es éveinek végén [Th e Defense Zone around Kanizsa and its Geographical Characteristics in the Late 1570s].” in Végvár és környezet [Border Fortress and Environment], eds. Tivadar Petercsák, and Ernö Pethö (Eger: Dobó István Vármúzeum, 1995), 163–174; Pálff y, Európa védelmében, 23–28. 44 Lajos Gecsényi, “Ungarische Städte im Vorfeld der Türkenabwehr Österreichs: Zur Problematik der ungarischen Städteentwicklung.” in Archiv und Forschung: Das Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in seiner Bedeutung für die Geschichte Österreichs und Europas, eds. Elisabeth Springer, and Leopold Kammerhofer (Wien-München: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1993), 57–77. 45 Milan Kruhek, Karlovac: Utvrde, granice i ljudi [Karlovac: Fortifi cation, Border and People] (Karlovac: Matica hrvatska, 1995); Andrej Žmegač, “Karlstadt – Karlovac. Zur Frage der befestigten Idealstadt.” in Militärische Bedrohung und bauliche Reaktion: Festschrift für Volker Schmidtchen, ed. Elmar Brohl (Marburg: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Festungsforschung, 2000), 62–70. 46 György Domokos, Ottavio Baldigara: Egy itáliai várfundáló mester Magyarországon [Ottavio Baldigara: An Italian Military Architect in Hungary] (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2000), 38–41, 49–52. 50 géza pálffy

Th e military conference of 1577 also brought about radical changes 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 fl anking fronts by the central military leadership. Th erefore the command of the southern two border fortress captain generalcies was taken over by the newly established Inner Austrian War Council (Innerösterreichischer Hofk riegsrat) of Graz in January 1578.47 As a consequence 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 logistics. Examining each fortress in turn they assessed the state of fortifi cations, the problems of war materiel and food provisioning, diffi culties in providing pay for soldiers, problems of maintaining discipline, the training of the Austrian nobility in the border areas, etc. It was even considered (not for the fi rst time) moving the Teutonic Knights to Hungary.48 Not all the conference’s 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. Th is was the most important long-term result of the 1577 military reforms.

47 Viktor Th iel, “Die innerösterreichische Zentralverwaltung 1564–1749. Teil I: Die Hof- und Zentralbehörden Innerösterreichs 1564–1625.” Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte 105 (1916): 48–58, 96–100, no. III (February 2, 1578); Schulze, Landesdefension, 73–77. 48 H[ans] v[on] Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, “Über den Versuch einer Translation des Deutschen Ordens an die ungarische Grenze.” Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte 56 (1878): 403–445; Wilhelm Erben, “Die Frage der Heranziehung des Deutschen Ordens zur Vertheidigung der ungarischen Grenze.” ibid. 81 (1894): 513–599. 49 Peter Rauscher, Zwischen Ständen und Gläubigern: Die kaiserlichen Finanzen unter Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II. (1556–1576) (Wien-München: Oldenbourg, 2004), 343–354. the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 51

Th e Sixteenth Century Military Revolution in Central Europe

Th e 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 Geoff rey 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 constituted “revolution” and how they had periodized military change.52 Jeremy Black, for example, sees the truly revolutionary changes in European military aff airs occurring only during the decades aft er 1660. Th is later period was indeed more decisive in terms of quantitative (size of forces and logistic support) and qualitative (armament, uniforms, engineering) eff ects. But the success of these later changes was made possible by certain innovations made by the Habsburg Monarchy during the fi ft y years aft er 1526. Th e foundations necessary for the establishment of a standing army were laid at this time. Th e 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. Th e fi rst 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 József Kelenik, “Th e Military Revolution in Hungary.” in Dávid, and Fodor, eds. Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs, 117–159; Domokos, Ottavio Baldigara, 19–29; János B. Szabó, “A mohácsi csata és a «hadügyi forradalom» [Th e Battle of Mohács and the Military Revolution].” Part I–II, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények [Review of Military History, Budapest] 117, no. 2 (2004): 443–480; 118, no. 3 (2005): 573–632. 51 Michael Roberts, “Th e Military Revolution, 1550–1650.” in idem, Essays in Swedish History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 195–225; Geoff rey Parker, Th e Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Brian M. Downing, Th e Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton-New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992); David Eltis, Th e Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, I. B. Tauris, 1995). 52 géza pálffy

It would be just as much a mistake to see mature absolutist regulations in Ferdinand I’s 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 (20–22,000 men) compared to the defense system in southern Hungary prior to 1526 (7–8,000).53 Th ese 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. Th is 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 Th e approximately 20,000 Hungarian-Croatian border fortress 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, 1550–1800 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1991); Th e Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Cliff ord J. Rogers (Boulder-San Francisco-Oxford: Westview Press, 1995); Bernhard R. Kroener, “»Das Schwungrad an der Staatsmaschine«? Die Bedeutung der bewaff neten Macht in der europäischen Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit.” in Krieg und Frieden: Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Bernhard R. Kroener, and Ralf Pröve (Paderborn-München-Wien etc.: Schöningh, 1996), 1–23; La Révolution militaire en Europe (XVe–XVIIIe siècles), ed. Jean Bérenger (Paris: Institut de Stratégie Comparée- Economia, 1998); Jean Chagniot, Guerre et société à l’époque moderne (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2001), 275–295. 53 Géza Pálff y, “Türkenabwehr, Grenzsoldatentum und die Militarisierung der Gesellschaft in Ungarn in der Frühen Neuzeit.” Historisches Jahrbuch 123 (2003): 130–131. 54 M[ichael] E[dward] Mallett, and J[ohn] R[igby] Hale, Th e Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 452, 466; Hess, Th e Forgotten Frontier; Jerzy Ochmański, “Organizacja obrony w Wielkim Księstwie Liteuskim przed napadami Tatarów krymskich w XV–XVI wieku [Organization of Defense in the Great Principality of Lithuania against the Raids of Crimean Tartars in the 15th and 16th Centuries].” Studia i Materiały do Historii Wojskowości [Studies and Documents of the Military History, Warsaw] 5 (1960): 348–398. 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 population and even in France the ratio was only 2 percent.57 Another very signifi cant innovation was the establishment of the Aulic War Council in 1556, for it meant that the royal councils prevalent in the Late Middle Ages had been replaced by a regular administrative body of experts. Th e War Council became the fi rst central institution of military aff airs in Europe that met regularly. It is less well known that even before its establishment, a number of military administrative positions were created in Vienna that were initially responsible for the staffi ng and support of the Hungarian and Croatian border defenses; aft er the Habsburg standing army was established in the seventeenth century these positions became independent sections and specialized offi ces of the military administration,58 refl ecting the course of the later military revolution theorized by Jeremy Black. Th e Chief Arsenal Offi cer (Oberstzeugmeister) was responsible for the logistics of the border defense fortresses and the troops in the fi eld and for the supervision of the arsenals. Th is was a position created by Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519) in Innsbruck in 1503 when he instituted his military reforms.59 During the reign of Ferdinand I the holders of this offi ce were stationed in Vienna.60 Th eir primary responsibility was the organization of the provisioning of military supplies to the Hungarian border defense system.61 Aft er 1578 the Inner Austrian provinces also had their own offi cer with this title (Innerösterreichischer Oberstzeugmeister) at Graz. Th e Viennese offi cer was responsible for the supplies to the four mentioned captain generalcies from the Drava

56 Géza Dávid, Studies in Demographic and Administrative History of Ottoman Hungary (Istanbul: Th e Isis Press, 1997), 1–12. 57 Kroener, “Das Schwungrad an der Staatsmaschine”, 6–8. 58 Michael Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence: War, State and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy 1683–1797 (London-New York-Toronto etc.: Longman, 2003), 98–150. 59 Gerhard Kurzmann, Kaiser Maximilian I. und das Kriegswesen der österreichis- chen Länder und des Reiches (Wien: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1985), 151–152. 60 ÖStA Wien, Hofk ammerarchiv (hereinaft er cited as HKA), Niederösterreichische Herrschaft sakten (NÖHA) W–61/C/90/A–B, rote Nr. 300/1–2, fol. passim. 61 Géza Pálff y, ed. Gemeinsam gegen die Osmanen: Ausbau und Funktion der Grenzfestungen in Ungarn im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Katalog der Ausstellung im Österreichischen Staatsarchiv 14. März – 31. Mai 2001 (Budapest-Wien: Österreichisches Staatsarchiv-Collegium Hungaricum Wien, 2001), 11–12, no. II–5b. 54 géza pálffy

River to border of Transylvania; the Graz offi cer was responsible for the Croatian and Slavonian generalcies. Th e 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, Brünn, and Wiener Neustadt. Similar arsenals were established in the centers of the frontier regions, such as Karlstadt, Varasd, Kanizsa, Györ, Érsekújvár, Kassa, and Szatmár. 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 offi cer to be in charge of this arsenal. Th e Upper Hungary Deputy Chief Arsenal Offi cer (Oberstzeugmeisterleutnant in Oberungarn) acted on behalf of his chief in Vienna.62 Th e importance of the position was such that the fi rst appointee, in 1567, Adam von Wieznick, having shown his eff ective at Kassa, was promoted and transferred to Vienna.63 In the sixteenth century the late medieval armories (Rüstkammer) 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 Th is was a major step forward in comparison with fi ft eenth-century practice and testifi ed to the enormous proliferation of fi rearms. Th e border fortresses were equipped with guns and harquebuses and the infantry fi ghting the Ottomans were supplied with increasing numbers of harquebuses. Between 1552 and 1577 the number of rifl es kept in the Kassa arsenal increased greatly.65 Approximately 75–80 percent of the

62 Géza Pálff y, “Kriegswirtschaft liche Beziehungen zwischen der Habsburgermonarchie und der ungarischen Grenze gegen die Osmanen in der zweiten Hälft e des 16. Jahrhunderts. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des königlichen Zeughauses in Kaschau.” Ungarn-Jahrbuch (Munich) 27 (2004): 28–31. 63 ÖStA Wien, KA Sonderreihe des Wiener Hofk riegsrates, Bestallungen Nr. 151; ÖStA Wien, HKA NÖHA W–61/C/90/B, rote Nr. 300/2, fol. 1050–1053; MOL Budapest, E 211, Magyar Kamara Archívuma [Archives of the Hungarian Chamber], Lymbus, Series II, Tétel 2, fol. 77. 64 Cf. Hartwig Neumann, Das Zeughaus: Die Entwicklung eines Bautyps von spät- mittelalterlichen Rüstkammer zum Arsenal in deutschsprachigen Bereich vom XV. bis XIX. Jahrhundert. Teil I. Textband (Koblenz-Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 1992). 65 1552: ÖStA Wien, HKA Hoffi nanz Ungarn rote Nr. 3, 1552 Jan.–Febr. fol. 43–54; 1577: ÖStA Wien, KA AFA 1577/13/2; József Kelenik, “Szakállas puskák XVI. századi magyarországi inventáriumokban [Arquebuses in the Armor Inventories of the Sixteenth Century Hungary].” Hadtörténelmi Közlemények [Review of Military History, the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 55 soldiers fi ghting 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. Th e strongest border fortresses of the late medieval Hungarian frontier defenses (Temesvár, Nándorfehérvár, Szabács, Jajce, etc.) cannot be compared to the new fortresses and fortifi ed cities built in the second half of the sixteenth century in the Italian style. Vienna, Györ, Komárom, Szatmár, and the newly-built Érsekújvár and Karlstadt can be compared favorably with the most modern fortresses of the Netherlands, Italy, or Malta, as attested (with some criti- cisms) by Daniel Speckle in his famous 1589 work, Architectura von Vestungen.67 Th e older and smaller fortresses were still suitable for controlling minor Ottoman incursions, like the Spanish guardhouses (presidio) in North Africa or the patrol ports in Malta, Poland, and Muscovy.68 Th e increase in fortress building for the new defense system in Hungary brought about the establishment of a new military architectural 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 Th eir activities were coordinated in the border fortress captain generalcies by a Superintendent of Construction (Bausuperintendent).71

Budapest] 35, no. 3 (1988): 484–520; György Domokos, “A kassai királyi hadszertár fegyverzete és felszerelése a XVI–XVII. századi inventáriumok tükrében [Weapons and Munitions of the Royal Armory of Kassa based on his Inventories in the 16th and 17th Centuries].” ibid. 110, no. 4 (1997): 680–686. 66 Kelenik, “Th e Military Revolution”, 130–154. 67 Daniel Speckle, Architectura von Vestungen… (Straßburg: Bernhart Jobin, 1589). 68 Hess, Th e Forgotten Frontier; Alison Hoppen, Th e Fortifi cation of Malta by the Order of St. John 1530–1798, 2nd ed. (Malta: Mireva Publications, 1999), 173–186; Stephen C. Spiteri, Fortresses of the Knights (Malta: Book Distributors Limited, 2001), 322–331; Ochmański, “Organizacja obrony”. 69 Cf. the French organization: David Buisseret, Ingénieurs et fortifi cations avant Vauban: L’organisation d’un service royal aux XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: Éd. du CTHS, 2002). 70 Leone Andrea Maggiorotti, Gli architetti militari, II. Architetti e architetture militari, vol. II (Roma: Libr. dello Stato, 1936); Endre Marosi, “Partecipazione di architetti militari veneziani alla costruzione del sistema delle fortezze di confi ne in Ungheria tra il 1541 e il 1593.” in Rapporti veneto-ungheresi all’epoca del Rinascimento, ed. Tibor Klaniczay (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1975), 195–215. 71 Tibor Koppány, “A magyarországi végvárak építési szervezete a XVI–XVII. században [Th e Architectural Organization of the Hungarian Border Fortresses in the 16th and 17th Centuries].” in Hagyomány és korszerüség a XVI–XVII. században [Tradition and Modernization in the 16th and 17th Centuries], ed. Tivadar Petercsák (Eger: Dobó István Vármúzeum, 1997), 155–161. 56 géza pálffy

Aft er 1569 their activities were supervised from Vienna by a newly designated offi cer, the Fortress Construction Commissioner (Oberstbaukommissar).72 Th is offi ce was held primarily by Austrian noblemen who had seen previous service in the Hungarian and Croatian frontier areas. Th ey included Franz von Poppendorf, Niklas Graf zu Salm und Neuburg, and Erasmus Braun. Aft er 1578 the fortifi - cations of the Slavonian and Croatian captain generalcies were controlled from Graz. Even in the sixteenth century there were diff erences 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. Th e members of an Italian fortress-building family, the Angielinis from Milan, the brothers Natale and Nicolò 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. Th is eff ort is attested by the seven surviving copies of a detailed map of the borderlands in Vienna and fi ve in Karlsruhe.74 Th is 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. Th e Hungarian and Croatian maps were prepared locally on the basis of visits to all the border regions. Th e Ottoman conquests not only contributed to growth in government aff airs and military administration but also gave a substantial boost to the science of military cartography in the monarchy. Th e 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 ÖStA Wien, KA Hofk riegsrätliches Kanzleiarchiv VI 6 (April 15, 1569). 73 Domokos, Ottavio Baldigara, 30–52; Péter Farbaky, “Pietro Ferrabosco in Ungheria e nell’imperio ausburgico.” Arte Lombarda (Milano) 139, no. 3 (2003): 127– 134; Mira Ilijanić, “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), 369–379. 74 ÖNB Wien, Cod. 8609, fol. 2, fol. 3, fol. 4, fol. 5, fol. 6; ÖNB Wien, Kartensammlung AB 9.C.1; Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe; Gebundene Karte und Pläne Hfk . Bd. XV, fol. 1, fol. 2, fol. 3, fol. 4, fol. 5. the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 57

Th ere 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 offi cial who served under the Aulic War Council and who was responsible for the pontoon bridges over the Danube (Oberstschiff - und Brückenmeister).75 Aft er January 1558 there was an independent offi cial, the Chief Provisions Supply Offi cer for Hungary (Oberstproviantmeister in Ungarn). Th e title was changed in 1569 to Chief Military Provisions Commissioner for Hungary (Oberstproviantkommissar in Ungarn) and this offi cer was charged with arranging the provisioning of the border fortresses most important for the defense of Vienna.76 Aft er 1578 there was a second such offi cer who was stationed in Graz; both of these offi cials came from the Austrian nobility. An important task of the military and fi scal administrations was the provision of pay for the garrisons in the border fortresses and for the troops in the fi eld. Th e 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. Th e latter was stationed in Vienna and was usually referred to as the Aulic Military Paymaster (Hofk riegszahlmeister). 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 Th e centralization of the military and fi scal aff airs was in accordance with compromises reached with the estates. Th e principal purpose of the arrangement was to deliver the Aulic and estate support to the frontier defenses as rapidly as possible. It is not unreasonable to ask why, in view of these signifi cant 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-Brückenwesens in Oesterreich (Wien: Ludwig Mayer, 1878), 7–9, 611–613, no. 1. 76 István Kenyeres, “A végvárak és a mezei hadak élelmezései szervezete a XVI. században [Th e Organization of the Food Supply of the Border Fortress Garrisons and the Troops in the Field in the 16th Century].” Fons (Forráskutatás és Történeti Segédtudományok) [Fons (Sources Research and Auxiliary Disciplines of History), Budapest] 9, nos. 1–3 (2002): 179–186. 77 Pálff y, “Der Preis für die Verteidigung der Habsburgermonarchie”, 39–42. 58 géza pálffy the habsburg defense system in hungary the ottomans 59 60 géza pálffy in major successes for the Ottoman forces, including the occupation of Bihać in 1592, of Eger in 1596, and of Kanizsa in 1600. Th e answer again must be sought in the diff erences between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy in military and fi scal administrative structure, army, and logistics. Contrary to frequently expressed opinion the Ottoman Empire and its military aff airs 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 Th e Europeans developed more eff ective fi rearms, more modern fortifi cations, and improved maneuvers, but the Ottomans were able to counter these with relative ease. Th e Ottoman Empire was still well ahead of the Central European Habsburg Monarchy in territory, population, and fi nancial and natural resources. Th us 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 Th e Ottomans were still the only ones in Europe who had a strong standing army highly experienced in siege warfare. Th e 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 support 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, Th e Administration of Warfare: Th e Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606 (Wien: Verband der wissenschaft lichen Gesellschaft en Österreichs, 1988); Gábor Ágoston, “Disjointed Historiography and Islamic Military Technology: Th e European Military Revolution Debate and the Ottomans.” in Essays in honour of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, vol. I, Societies, cultures, sciences: a collection of articles, eds. Mustafa Kaçar, and Zeynep Durukal (İstanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 2006), 567–582, etc.; Günhan Börekçi, “Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: Th e Janissaries use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman–Habsburg War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59 (2006): 407–438. 79 Gábor Ágoston, “Th e Cost of the Ottoman Fortress-System in Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” in Dávid, and Fodor, eds. Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs, 195–228. 80 Cf. recently Winkelbauer, Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht, 1. vol.; Pálff y, Th e Kingdom of Hungary, 53–59. 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. Th e slowness with which subsidies of these were provided made the Christian forces practically immo- bile.81 Th us 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. Th e 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 fi nancial 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 revolution of the early modern era resulted in the fi rst signifi cant standing army in the Central European Habsburg Monarchy.

81 Some examples from the Long Turkish War: Alfred H. Loebl, Zur Geschichte des Türkenkrieges von 1593–1606, 2 vols. (Prag: Rohlíček und Sievers, 1899–1904); Géza Pálff y, A pápai vár felszabadításának négyszázéves emlékezete 1597–1997 [Th e Anniversary of the Liberation of the Border Fortress Pápa from the Ottomans, 1597– 1997] (Pápa: Jókai Mór Városi Könyvtár, 1997); Zoltán Péter Bagi, “Az 1595-ben Esztergom ostromára rendelt császári hadsereg szervezete és felépítése [Th e Organization and Structure of the Imperial Army to Siege of Esztergom in 1595].” Hadtörténelmi Közlemények [Review of Military History, Budapest] 113, nos. 2–3 (2001): 391–444. THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN MILITARY IN THE REIGN OF KING STEFAN BATHORY (1576–1586)

Dariusz Kupisz

In 1569 Poland and Lithuania concluded a full union on the strength of which they shared sovereignty, a Sejm (parliament), currency, and foreign policy. Th ey retained separate government offi ces, treasuries, and armies. Th e 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 fi ve 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 confl icts with the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. His barely ten-year reign left a clear mark on Polish- Lithuanian military organization. Th e 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 army’s adaptation to certain aspects of modern warfare. But the extinction of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1572 had signifi cantly cur- tailed the development of the armed forces. Th ey were not in the condition to defend the frontiers eff ectively against the Crimean Khanate and Muscovy. In 1577 Tsar Ivan IV “the Terrible” occupied a large part of Infl anty (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 fi rst of all upon the levee en masse of the nobility and gentry (pospolite ruszenie) and secondly upon mercenary forces. Th e 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. Th e numerical strength of the pospolite ruszenie depended upon the number of landed proprietors in the districts participating in the levee. Th e 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. Th e 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 oft en called the landed military service (służba 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 służby ziemskiej in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, of which 24,400 were cavalry and 3,600 were foot.2 But the Union of 1569 incorporated Podlasie, Volhynia and Ukraine into the Kingdom of Poland, reducing the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by half; so in Bathory’s reign one could count at most several thousand Lithuanians obliged to serve in the pospolite ruszenie.3

1 M. Kukiel, Zarys historii wojskowości w Polsce (London, 1949), 29. 2 I. I. Lappo, Velikoe kniazhestvo Litovskoe vo vtoroi polovine XVI st. (Iur’ev, 1911), 579–580. 3 M. Liubavskii, Litovsko-russkii seim (Moscow, 1900), 639–640. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 65

Th e 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 offi cials. In mobilizing for campaign the pospolite ruszenie was grouped into territorial “banners” (chorągwie) 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 mobilized 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 służba ziemska could be divided into smaller forces under commanders of the Lithuanian army, and in special circumstances it could be called up without the vote of the Sejm.4 Th e pospolite ruszenie could be slow to assemble, undisciplined, and easily politicized, so it was not suited for off ensive war. In the sixteenth century it was not advantageous to rely upon it too oft en 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 oft en raided by the Tatars and where there were fewer noble servicemen for defense. It was at its most eff ective in Lithuania, called up by Zygmunt I Stary and Zygmunt II August for their wars against Muscovy. Already in the fi rst 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 szlachta’s 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 intervals 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. Th e Sejm shared some of his opinions on this but still would not consent to new prescriptions, confi dent that the szlachta assembling for campaign would make their own immediate decision in

4 K. Olejnik, Stefan Batory 1533–1586 (Warsaw, 1988), 109–110. 66 dariusz kupisz regard to the king’s 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 oft en on it in event of war with Muscovy. He could avail himself only of the Lithuanian służba ziemska, which yielded just 10,000 men when mobilized and was used largely for support operations in his 1579–1581 campaigns. Th e king reached the decision that it was better to present the Sejm with measures for taxes to support a regular army. In general the mercenary 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 Th e 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 1562–3 the Sejm called up a Quarter Army (wojsko kwarciane), maintained from a quarter of the net revenue from crown estates. Th e organizational principles of the Quarter Army were confi rmed 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 unquestionable martial valour derived from many years’ service, the troops of the Quarter Army were not numerous, and they had to remain standing in Ukraine and Podole to protect the southeastern frontier endangered by the Crimean Tatars; they could not play a signifi cant 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. Państwo, spoleczenstwo, kultura (Warsaw, 1986), 295. 6 T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia oręża polskiego 963–1795 (Warsaw, 1981), 292; Z. Spieralski, “Wojskowosc polska w dobie odrodzenia,” in Zarys dziejów wojskowości polskiej do roku 1864, t. 2, ed. J. Sikorski (Warsaw, 1965), 301. 7 L. Podhorodecki, Chanat krymski i jego stosunki z Polska w XV–XVIII w. (Warsaw, 1987), 117. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 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 defending the realm from the direction of the Black Sea steppe (Kiev, Bila Tserkva, Cherkas, Kaniv, and Kamianets Podilsk).8 Th e foundation of the armed forces of Poland and Lithuania during their most important military confl icts 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. Th ere 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 Bathory’s accession to the throne Poland had maintained several thousand hired soldiers. Th e record number of 19,400 was hired for pay in 1538 during Hetman Jan Tarnowski’s Chocim (Ukr. Khotyn) campaign in Moldavia. During Zygmunt II August’s war with Muscovy the Sejm had voted taxes suffi cient to hire 10–12,000 men (1563–1566). At that time Lithuania was in condition to pay 6–7,000 horse and 1–2,000 foot.9 Th e costs of maintaining hired units were high, however, so they were discharged from service at war’s end, as was the practice in all other European states. Stefan Bathory managed to convince the szlachta to assume an unprecedented fi nancial burden for hiring more troops. Th e Sejm sessions of 1578 and 1579 voted taxes for war against Muscovy which, combined with other revenue sources, amounted to one million złotys annually. Similar funding was provided in the next years. Th e 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). Th e 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 Wojskowości, 31 (1988), 43–53. 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 signifi cantly increase its contingent of hired troops, this gradually exhausted the fi nancial capacity of Lithuania. Among the various kinds of hired troops one must distinguish the court detachments established by special royal letter in 1576. Th e 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. Th e personal example of the monarch departing for war had long induced many representatives of the magnateria and szlachta to appear for service in his train. Bathory managed scrupulously to avail himself of this and before each campaign sent out lists urging them to join the campaign army with their troops hired at their own expense. Th e hope of winning the new king’s favor was such that a great many private detachments of hired troops and volunteers were always to be found in the Polish and Lithuanian armies fi ghting 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 campaigns. Th e private poczet trains from Poland and Lithuania in each of Bathory’s three Muscovite campaigns totalled about 15,000 troops – a third of the army.11 Already in the fi rst months of his reign Bathory had been persuaded that the small number of infantry was a major defi ciency of the Polish army. Th is had been felt most painfully in 1577 during the seemingly endless blockade of Gdansk. Th en 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 Bathory’s war with Muscovy, see H. Kotarski, “Wojsko polsko-litewskie podczas wojny infl anckiej 1576–1582. Sprawy organizacyjne, cz. II–IV,” Studia i Materiały do Historii Wojskowości 17 (1971), p. 102; pt. 2 (1971), 107–108; 18 (1972), 39. 11 H. Kotarski, “Wojsko polsko-litewskie,” cz. II–IV, 99, 109, 33. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 69 practiced in Hungary, Sweden, and Muscovy. Bathory thought that the Sejm should accept responsibility for ordinances committing all categories 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 Th e king’s subsequent universals specifi ed the Sejm constitution. One recruit was to be levied from every twenty “fi elds” (łany) 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 łan land would be exempt from duties and taxes. In peacetime 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. Th e recruits were formed into company detachments (roty) numbering several tens to over four hundred men, according to the territorial system, i.e., according to the realm’s division into palatinates (wojewodztwa). Experienced infantry offi cers 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. Th ey ignored or delayed the Sejm’s resolutions and so only a small number of recruits were selected for Bathory’s fi rst Muscovite campaign. During the Velikie Luki campaign in 1580 1,100 of them were raised, and 1,800 in the following year. Full strength (2,000 infantrymen from Poland and 500 from Lithuania) was reached only aft er Stefan Bathory’s death. Even though the piechota wybraniecka formation was not large it would endure for 150 years and render signifi cant service to the realm. It was used on the battlefi eld, in besieging fortresses, and in the engineering of fortifi ed camps, fortifi cations, bridges, etc.13 Th e 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 źródłowe do historii polskiej sztuki wojennej, tom 5, Z. Spieralski and J. Wimmer (Warsaw, 1961), 47–51. 13 J. Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej do roku 1864 (Warsaw, 1961), 139–141. 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 signifi cant number of cossacks were taken on royal pay for the fi rst time to participate in the defense of Poland in 1572. Th ey were designated registered cossacks, to distinguish them from the cossacks residing in Zaporozhia. Th ere 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 register. It was henceforth to comprise 530 cossacks turned over to the command 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 fi elded 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. Th e former was obligated to send on campaign 100 horse, but the new king gave his approval for him to instead send 500 infantry to Polotsk. Th e Duke of Courland usually provided 100–150 infantry.15 Bathory’s unquestionable achievement was the realm’s willingness to shoulder the burden of huge fi nancial and organizational eff orts 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 eff orts were somewhat greater (56,000 men), with 48,000 troops assigned to the main theater of war. During the fi nal 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, Wojskowość Kozaczyny Zaporoskiej w XVI–XVII wieku. Geneza i charakter (Torun, 2002), 104–106. 15 D. Kupisz, Połock 1579 (Warsaw, 2003), 132. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 71 of the army, comprised of Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Germans, and Scots.16 Th e disparate composition and structure of the national army demanded eff ective command and discipline. Th e 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. Th e Grand Hetman functioned as minister of war and did not always lead troops in action in person. Th e 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 offi ce of hetman was no longer for life and the monarch changed commanders at each turn of campaign.17 Stefan Bathory was able to fi nd suitable men for command. Th roughout his reign Mikołaj Radziwiłł 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 Mikołaj Sieniawski, in place of the Grand Hetmans, who were leading the army on the Muscovite front. During the fi rst Muscovite campaign of 1579 the position of Grand Hetman was held by Mikołaj Mielecki; during the second campaign the position was left unfi lled, as Chancellor Jan Zamoyski was then serving as the monarch’s 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 conferred on Zamoyski hetman rank for life, which had legal precedent under Polish conditions. Th e 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 offi cials serving the king and hetmans: the Quartermaster (Oboźny), the Custos (Strażnik), and several fi eld secretaries. Command of the artillery and of various administrative matters connected with the artillery was in the hands of the Starszy nad armata. Military discipline was under the purview of a special board on military off enses, formed under the Grand Hetman at the outset of each campaign and comprising appointees representing each nationality and offi cers enforcing their authority in camp. In the Polish army there was also a

16 R. Heidenstein, Pamietniki wojny moskiewskiej, edition of J. Czubek (Lwów, 1894), 56–57. 17 M. Plewczynski, “Naczelne dowództwo armii koronnej w latach 1501–1572,” Studia i Materiały 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 Bathory’s accession.18

Types of Troops and Innovations in Armament

Th e fi nal years of Zygmunt II August and the reign of Stefan Bathory were a period of signifi cant 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 determined whether a given company was cossack or hussar was the preponderance of one or the other type; for example, Filon Kmita Czarnobylski’s 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 Th is was of tactical as well as organizational advantage. Th e traditional lancers in heavy armor had disappeared from the battlefi eld and been replaced by hussars for charges upon the enemy. On the basis of Bathory’s 1576 universal the hussars became a separate and independently functioning cavalry – and remained closely associated with Polish military art down to modern times.21 Th ey had evolved from the Serbian racowie lancers who had been introduced into Poland from Hungary and had originally served as light cavalry. By Bathory’s 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. Th e 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. Th e 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 źródłowe do historii polskiej sztuki wojennej, 26–29. 20 An example of the persistence of a few mixed units: Wojciech Strzechowski’s company in 1580 comprised 108 hussars and 60 cossacks. Archiwum Głowne 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, 1576–1586 73

Th e main off ensive weapons were a lance some fi ve meters long (hollow, for reduced weight), and a saber and koncerz sword. Th e lance was employed for shock charge, used just once and then abandoned, as it shattered upon striking the enemy, aft er 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. Th e 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 Th e 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. Th e 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). Th e 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 oft en 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. Th e hired mercenary Western European arkebuzerzy were of an entirely diff erent character; they wore half- armor and carried rapiers and long arquebuses. Sporadically relied upon were German rajtar cavalrymen equipped with half-armor, rapiers and pistols. Th e 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 cavalry, with the cossacks constituting 10% and the Western European cavalry the remaining 5%.24

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

Th e foreign contingents were hired abroad and organized according to the structure prevailing abroad. Meanwhile the Polish and Lithuanian cavalry were divided into companies of 150–200 hussars or 100 cossacks and light cavalry.25 Recruitment into these various formations (hussar, cossack, light cavalry) was conducted according to the traditional poczet towarzyski system. Th e 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 detachment. Th e rotmistrz then inquired aft er the most suitable and respected men of his own district. Th e organization of the recruited detachment was reminiscent of the medieval “knight’s lance” or craft smen’s 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 comrades’ own cost. Th e ordinary soldiers (pocztowi) of each train corresponded to journeymen who were armed and equipped like a towarzysz. Th e pocztowi tended to be of the poorer nobility, although it sometimes happened they could be of plebeian origin. Th e 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 towarzysze and fi ve trains, that is, 125 rank-and-fi le troopers so each poczet consisted of one towarzysz and fi ve pocztowi. Every towarzysz held his own “service” of servants attending to his horses and wagon. Th ese servants were not numbered in the detachment, however, and did not join the company in battle. Th e rotmistrz was assisted by a lieutenant (porucznik) chosen from among the towarzysze, who could replace him in command if needed, and by an ensign (chorąży) serving as standard-bearer. At this time cavalry predominated in the Polish-Lithuanian army, outnumbering infantry about two to one. Th e reasons for this were not only the szlachta’s traditional cultivation of the “knightly” condition but also practical considerations. War was most oft en waged in the eastern and southeastern parts of the realm, where the frontier was vast and mostly lowland, requiring patrolling by large numbers of cavalry. Without a large and quality cavalry force it would have been diffi cult to fi ght such enemies as the Tatars, Turks, and Muscovites.

25 According to pay records for cavalry in 1579. Archiwum Głowne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie. Akta Skarbowe Wojskowe, dział 82, rekopis 7, pp. 34–40. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 75

Already before Bathory’s 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 Terrible’s creation of a strel’tsy formation had increased the fi repower of the Muscovite army.26 For this reason Bathory’s preparations for each of his campaigns against the tsar involved heavier emphasis on the infantry, artillery, and engineering forces. True, infantry accounted for just 30% of his army on the campaigns of 1579–1581, 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 fi nal campaign against Pskov they signifi cantly outnumbered the cavalry.27 During his war with Muscovy Bathory aimed at enlarging the infantry 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 (zaciężna) and troops raised by selection (wybraniecka). Whereas the select piechota wybraniecka was raised from the peasantry, the Polish hired infantry consisted fi rst of all of townsmen. It was formed like the towarzysz system for the cavalry. Members of the szlachta were its offi cers – the szlachta being disinclined to serve in the ranks. Th is 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 XV–XVII vv. (Moscow, 1954), 48; P. P. Epifanov, “Voisko i voennaia organizatsiia,” Ocherki russkoi kul’tury XVI, v., tom 1 (Moscow, 1979), 345. 27 H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, cz. IV, 104–105. 28 H. Kotarski, Wojsko polsko-litewskie, cz. IV, 81. 76 dariusz kupisz

Its command consisted of a captain, lieutenant, ensign, and 18–20 decurions. Th ere was a drummer or fi fer. During the 1558–1570 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 fi rst time a standard infantry uniform – a blue żupan coat, cap, a cloak with red lining, and green trousers. Of greater importance were his changes to armament. Th e king ordered that every infantryman be equipped with musket, saber, and a hatchet useful for sapper’s work. He rejected full body armor, the pavise buckler, and the pike. As a result of these changes Polish infantry equipment diff ered not at all from the equipment the king’s 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 Th anks to Bathory’s reform the Polish infantry assumed a purely musketeer composition upon the Hungarian model. Both formations were equally eff ective on the defense and in the seizing of fortresses; in battle on open ground they massed considerable fi repower from their ten-rank array. Th ey were vulnerable to enemy cavalry but under Polish conditions could reckon on cover and support from their exqui- site cavalry.30 Th e 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 Bathory’s order. Later still larger units were used – 2,200 soldiers in 1579, 1,600 in 1581. Th ey were hired by Bathory’s order from Brandenburg, Saxony, Pomerania, and Silesia and formed into special regiments. Th ey had larger offi cer and under-offi cer staff s, ranging from colonel down to sergeants. Th e rank-and-fi le musketeers were equipped with rapiers and arquebuses, the pikemen with rapiers and long 5-meter pikes; the latter also wore protective half-armor and helmets. Here Bathory introduced certain innovations of his own. In the presence of a signifi cant part of his cavalry he instructed his infantry

29 J. Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej, 142–144. 30 T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia oręża, 315. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 77 they need not fear the enemy’s cavalry because in preparation for his war with Muscovy he had hired signifi cantly 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. Th e 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 aft er 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 military force. Th e 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 craft smen. 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. Th e transport of just one fi eld gun fi ring cannonballs of fi ve-funt weight required six horses; its ammunition and powder required two wagons pulled by twelve battle-horses. One of Bathory’s 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 1579–1581 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 engineering. 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. Th is proved simple and fi rm 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, building gun emplacements, siege mining, etc. Bathory’s Muscovite campaigns were the fi rst in Poland to be planned using maps. Th e 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 cavalry generally managed without great diffi culties, but the infantry oft en went hungry. Th is became apparent during Bathory’s Muscovite campaigns. Th e king tried two remedies for this. Th e traditional remedy relied on sending the cavalry out across the region for provender, assisted by certain infantrymen from each unit and wagons from camp. Th e newer remedy involved buying up provender by order of the king, transporting it to the battlefi eld, and distributing it among the infantry units in exchange for money deducted from their pay. But fi nancial and transport diffi culties resulted in supply sometimes not suffi cing. It should be remembered that the last of the Jagiellonian kings had recruited into royal service a corsair fl eet (Flota kaperska) to combat the blockade of Narva Ivan IV had set in motion. In 1570 construction of a royal fl eet began, although it was soon interrupted in the interregnum. 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 confi rm 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 infl exibility of the tsar. Unlike his predecessors, though, he also concerned himself with the printing-houses, which were publishing letters

34 T. Nowak, J. Wimmer, Historia oręża, 259. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 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, 1579–1582

Th e 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. Th e battle order employed was more fl uid than preferred in Western Europe; the cavalry was deployed in four ranks and the attack deepened by bringing on second or third waves. Th e Polish cavalry at that time relied on taking 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 enemy’s rear, beat back enemy relief detachments, and sometimes supported the infantry in storming fortifi ed positions. In defensive operations the Polish army oft en employed the Hussite tactic of fi ghting from behind a fortifi ed wagon camp, from which the cavalry could sortie for counterattack. However, sieges of enemy fortresses oft en 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. Th e tactics used during the Muscovy campaigns of 1579–1582 were dictated by Bathory’s strategic goals. Th e 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 fi ghting 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 Th e fi rst of these was published on the day of the capture of Polotsk, “Th e Taking of Polack, 1579. An Elizabethan Newssheet,” Journal of Bielorussian Studies 1 (1965): 16–22. 36 For example, see the unsuccessful storming of Pskov, Dziennik wyprawy Stefana Batorego pod Psków 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 off ensive against Moscow deciding the matter in the open fi eld, with the Polish and Lithuanian cavalry demonstrating their tactical superiority. 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 army’s rear could meanwhile threaten Vilnius. It was fi nally 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 fi rst objective of attack was to be Polotsk (Belar. Polatsk, Pol. Połock), and next were the Muscovite fortresses located to the north of it.37

Th e Polotsk Campaign in 1579

In early 1579 Ivan IV began concentrating his forces near Pskov and Novgorod, reckoning that the king’s 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 Radziwiłł struck in the direction of Dorpat with 2,000 cavalry. Radziwiłł’s 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. Th anks 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 fl ank of his planned march route by placing several thousand troops in Livonian castles recently recovered from the enemy, fortresses on Lithuania’s 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 confl uence 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), 387–391; S. Herbst, “Wojskowość polska i wojny w okresie 1576–1648,” in Zarys dziejow wojskowości, 395–396. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 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 fi ft y kilometers, that is, to Polotsk itself; it was the result of the tsar’s policy of securing occupied territory by isolating it from Lithuania as a wilderness deprived or roads and inhabitants. Th e Hungarian infantry screening the army’s front had to labor to cut wood and lay a road for the men, horses, and wagons of the army behind. Th e fi rst to reach Polotsk were the banners of Lithuanian light cavalry and the Hungarian units of Kaspar Bekiesz. Before Bathory arrived, a strong reconnaissance force sent from Lithuanian Grand Hetman Mikolaj Radziwiłł “the Red” seized Koziany, Krasne, and Sitno. Th e fortress of Sokol’ was the only enemy hard point remaining in the rear of Bathory’s army, and its garrison was capable of threatening his lines of communication—but he forbore from acting against it so for the time being, not wanting to disperse his army while besieging Polotsk. Th e wooden fortress of Polotsk was built in three parts. On the heights above the Polota’s confl uence with the Dvina a High Castle (Zamek Wysoki) had been built. Just to its east, on somewhat lower ground, a Musketeer’s 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) fi lled with dirt, and over thirty towers overlooked the water of the Polota and Dvina. Th e 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 fortifi ed key- point overlooking the other parts of the fortress would force the surrender of Polotsk.39 Th is plan was well considered but was undermined through the insubordination of his troops. Aft er that the command was given for the German infantry deployed above the Polota and the Hungarians to begin digging a trench around the fortifi cations of

38 S. Alexandrowicz, “Źródła kartografi czne do wyprawy połockiej Stefana Batorego roku 1579,” in Od armii komputowej do narodowej (XVI–XX w.), ed. Z. Karpus, W. Rezmer (Torun, 1998), 39–42; G. Saganovicz, “Polackaja vajna 1563–1579 gg.,” Adradzeinnje Istoryczny Almanach 1 (1995), 79. 39 D. Kupisz, Połock 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 multinational army. Th e Hungarians of Kaspar Bekiesz encamped over the Dvina opposite Zapolocie, and behind them camped the Lithuanians of Mikolaj the Red Radziwiłł and Krzysztof Radziwiłł. Farther to the northeast stood the king’s 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 aft er setting it ablaze. Th e artillery bombardment of Zamek Wysoki then commenced. It had little eff ect, even though Bathory contrived to have the gunners heat their shot. To be eff ective the heated cannonballs had to hit Polotsk’s wooden walls. But they either overfl ew the walls or fell into the mire on the slope below the walls. Th erefore several attempts were made to set the walls afi re by running up volunteers. Th is was further complicated by the rain falling incessantly from the start of the campaign. Nor were Polotsk’s defenders idle; they attacked the volunteers creeping up to the wall to set it ablaze by throwing huge logs on them and extinguishing their fi res. Some of them “lowered themselves on ropes from the top of the wall and, hanging in air, doused the piled tinder with water supplied by others on the heights; and whereas our accurate fi re 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 fi ll in fallen sections of the wall.”40 In addition, the garrison at Sokol’ in the army’s rear, strengthened by reinforcements from the tsar, began ever-bolder attacks on food convoys moving along the Dvina. Th ere were no other roads for provisioning, so hunger began to spread in the king’s camp. Th e Germans, stationed farther from the Dvina, suff ered 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 suff er from dysentery. On 29 August the rain stopped and Bathory’s soldiers managed to set afi re a corner of the Zamek Wysoki. To be sure, the Muscovite garrison managed to beat back the fi rst storm by volunteers from the

40 R. Heidenstein, Pamietniki, 60. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 83

Polish and Hungarian infantry, but they were not able to put out the fi re. Th e following day they surrendered. Th e twenty-day siege of Polotsk had cost the king’s 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 signifi cantly improved morale among his hungry troops.41 Th e 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 aft er 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 Bathory’s army in the open fi eld. Meanwhile the king kept part of his army occupied in repairing fortifi cations and fi lling in trenches while sending the rest against Turovl’ and Sokol’. Th e Muscovite garrison at Turovl’ burned their fortress and withdrew to the east. Only Sokol’ off ered resistance, holding against Hetman Mikolaj Mieliecki’s corps. Th e German infantry set to work digging mine galleries approaching the castle walls, and on 11 September guns brought down the Dvina and Disna fi red some heated shot; two of the fi res they caused were extinguished by the defenders, but the third, which struck part of the pine palisade wall, kindled a strong fi re there aft er going unnoticed for awhile. A storm assault anni- hilated much of the 5,000-man Muscovite garrison. Th e 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. Th ere was fi ghting in other regions, carried out by cavalry raids devastating the enemy’s 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 eff ective action against the Polish-Lithuanian army.42

41 D. Kupisz, Połock 1579, 150–155. 42 K. Olejnik, Stefan Batory, 170–171. 84 dariusz kupisz

Th e balance sheet of Bathory’s 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.

Th e Expedition Against Velikie Luki in 1580

Th e recovery of Polotsk made it easier for Bathory to convince the szlachta to vote taxes for continuing the war. Th e objective of his second 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. Th e 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. Th anks 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 fi eld army were stationed near Dorogobuzh, Pskov, and Toropets. In mid-July 1580 Bathory was already at Chashniki, where he conducted his fi rst inspection of the army over several days. Th e strongest impression on observers was made by the 6,000-man division of Jan Zamoyski, arrayed in black in memoriam to the chancellor’s 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. Th ey joined the royal army near Vitebsk, and some followed 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 Velizh’s capitulation the king arrived with the main army at Surazh, where two bridges across the Dvina were

43 R. Heidensteain, Dzieje Polski od śmierci Zygmunta Augusta do roku 1594, trans. M. Gliszczyński, tom 2 (Petersburg, 1857), 13. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 85 raised. Th anks to the Usviat’ River and its confl uence the heavy engineering equipment and artillery could be hauled by water for part of the route, sparing the draught teams. On 15 August the vanguard of the king’s army accepted the capitulation of the fortress of Usviat’. A hundred kilometers remained until Velikie Luki, and woods and very muddy marsh covered more than half the road.44 Th e march was further complicated by the heavy burden of the guns, which had to be unloaded from the river boats. Th e march tempo dropped from thirty to just fourteen kilometers a day. On 27 August 1580 units of the king’s army began to take up position 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 artifi cial mound. Th e tsar’s 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 Bathory’s 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 fi red 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. Th e infantry and Jan Zamoyski’s division immediately began the siegeworks. Opposite the citadel walls they began to dig a trench and set gabions fi lled 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 fi re, 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 fi re to the wall. Hungarian infantry were fi nally 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 fl anking fi re from the rest of the fortress. Aft er 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 fl ee. Th is

44 K. Gorski, “Druga wojna Batorego z Wielkim Księstwem 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 fi res still burning in the citadel blew up the powder magazine and killed several hundred of the king’s 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 unprecedented cruelty of the king’s 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 fortifi cations labor they were promised additional pay). Th e nearest forests provided suffi cient lumber, and the labor was astutely divided among the Poles, Hungarians, and Lithuanians. Th e 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 king’s 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 Zbaraski’s main force arrived, rushing towards the river bank in such an intimidating mass the Muscovite troops broke and fl ed. Part of them took the road east, others fl ed northward towards Toropets, while the Tatars, turning south, fell into a marsh. Because twilight was approaching the retreating Muscovites did not take heavy losses—just 300 were killed and another 200 (with both voevody) taken prisoner. Zbaraski did not attempt to capture Toropets, as reinforcements had just reached its garrison. But he did send a patrol of Hungarians there for reconnaissance. Th ey reported back that the rest of prince Khilkov’s army was withdrawing to the east.46

45 J. Besala, Stefan Batory (Warsaw, 1992), 310. 46 O. Laskowski, “Wyprawa pod Toropiec,” Przegląd Historyczno-Wojskowy 9 (1937), 67–70. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 87

Th e expulsion of Muscovite forces from the Toropets region secured Velikie Luki and restored operational freedom to the king’s army. Th anks to this the main royal forces, tormented by epidemic, could return safely to Polotsk while other troops garrisoned captured fortresses and undertook other successful operations: Nevel’, Ozerishche, and Zavoloch’e were captured. Th e Zavoloch’e 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 Zavoloch’e 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 fi nally returned to Polotsk aft er stationing 7,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry in the border castles and 9,000 cavalry in northern Lithuania. Th e 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 fi rst reached the fortress of Kholm and put it to the torch, capturing there the tsar’s voevoda Petr Boriatinskii; then they captured and destroyed Staraia Rusa, where a major saltworks was located. Meanwhile Jerzy Zybryk, the commander of the Polish garrison at Zavoloch’e, took Voronets, abandoned by the tsar’s 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 Th e territory occupied by the royal army in 1580 had great strategic importance. It shift ed the frontier to the north, and, above all, it bisected the shortest lines of communication between Muscovy and

47 “Diariusz obleżenia i zdobycia Wieliża, Wielkich Łuk i Zawłocia… Łukasz Działynskiego,” in Sprawy wojenne króla 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.

Th e Campaign Against Pskov in 1581

Th e costs of these two campaigns aff ected 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. Th e king therefore had to abandon long-term plans to conquer Moscow and limit his goals to the rapid recovery of Livonia. To fi nally cut Livonia off from Muscovy it made sense to occupy either Pskov or Novgorod. Novgorod, however, lay too far beyond the king’s 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 objective, cutting off the last route linking Muscovy with the fortresses the Muscovites maintained in Livonia. Th is time, however, Ivan the Terrible easily guessed the direction of the attack and prepared his fortresses for defense. Th ere 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 Radziwiłł, the raid’s goal was to test reports about the con- centration of large Muscovite forces near Rzhev, which had fi rst-order importance for a Polish operation against Kiev. Radziwiłł not only was supposed to expose the strength of the enemy’s forces but to spread terror among them and make it impossible for them to undertake off ensive action against the king’s army.50 Th e 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 1475–1605, t. 3, ch. 1, ed. V. I. Buganov (Moscow, 1984), 183–186. 50 K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, 245. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 89 on the Surazh. Near Pokrovskii monastery he was reinforced by units of Smolensk wojewoda Filon Kmita following from Velikie Luki. Th is increased the force to about 6,000 horse, which moved “in commu- nique,” that is, without any train, carrying all their rations and equipment on their mounts. Aft er 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 fi rst detachments of Muscovites near the Shelona River.51 Aft er twenty days’ march, on 25 September, Radziwiłł’s cavalry penetrated into the Rzhev region on the Volga. Th e Muscovite troops grouped there (estimated at about 15,000 men) refused to give them battle.52 Radziwiłł 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 hetman’s force was larger than it actually was. Radziwiłł proceeded towards Zubtsov, where he discovered a column of Muscovite regiments, but they did not give battle, and so some of the hetman’s subordinate offi cers turned to burning the villages within a fi ve-mile radius. From this point Radziwiłł 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. Th e Lithuanian hetman learned of the tsar’s presence at Staritsa but rejected Kmita’s recommendation that they strike Staritsa and take the tsar prisoner; he was afraid that the tsar was guarded by too many troops. Soon aft er, though, it was confi rmed that only 700 musketeers were stationed at Staritsa. Th e tsar fell into panic, seeing the fi res from the surrounding burning hamlets.53 Aft er 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 Radziwiłł rushed along the Lovat towards Starai Rusa at Lake Ilmen. Th ere the last great engagement occurred, with the defeat of 1,500 Muscovite horse and the capture of their commander, Prince

51 V. Novodvorskii, Bor’ba za Livoniu mezhdu Moskvoiu i Rechiu Pospolitoiu (1570– 1582) (St. Petersburg, 1904), 250–251. 52 T. Korzon, Dzieje wojen i wojskowości w Polsce, t. 2 (Lwow, 1912), 58. 53 V. Novodvorskii, Bor’ba za Livoniu, 252. 90 dariusz kupisz

Obolenskii. On 22 October Radziwiłł approached Pskov, already placed under siege by the king’s army.54 In the course of 78 days of constant marching and skirmish- ing Radziwiłł’s cavalry had travelled a line more than 1,400 kilometers long, demonstrating that their commander had earned the honorable sobriquet Piorun (“Th or”). Radziwiłł had scored a signifi - cant tactical success in terms of disorganizing and breaking up concentrations of half the Muscovite armed forces. Th e operation certainly blocked the tsar’s plans to undertake an off ensive against the royal army besieging Pskov. Other operations on enemy territory occurred, such as the August incursion by Kiev kasztelan Michal Wiśniowiecki into the Seversk region, which culminated in the storming of Trubetsk.55 Meanwhile the main army of Bathory left Polotsk on 21 July 1581 and marched in two columns; the fi rst, led by the king, passed the forests extending along the Polota and Dryssa; the right wing, comprised of Lithuanians, followed a somewhat twisting route, as the better road led through Nevel’. Th e 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 Zavoloch’e, where they were reloaded onto boats and transported by the Velikaia River to Pskov. Th e king’s 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 7–10 meters high and strengthened by 39 towers. Fundamentally the fortress was formed from four fortifi ed complexes, each of which could be defended independently: the Kreml’ Citadel, the Dovmunt Citadel, Middle Town, and Outer Town. Pskov had about 30,000 inhabitants who could assist the 9,000 soldiers of the garrison, who were well provisioned with guns, powder, and food. Th e commanders were Vasilii and Ivan Shuiskii. Pskov’s powerful artillery consisted of forty heavy guns and a great number of lighter caliber guns.56

54 K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, pp. 246–247; J. Natanson-Leski, Epoka Stefan Batorego w dziejach granicy wschodniej Rzeczyspospolitej (Warsaw, 1930), 92–94. 55 Letter from M. Wiśniowiecki to J. Zamoyski, Brahin 8 October 1581, in Archivum Jana Zamojskiego, kanclerza i hetmana wielkiego koronnego, publ. J. Siemienski, t. 2 (Warsaw, 1909), 63–64. 56 D. Kupisz, Psków 1581–1582 (Warsaw, 2006), 108–115. the polish-lithuanian army, 1576–1586 91

Th e king’s 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 preponderance of 5:1) there nonetheless was a chance they could break into the fortress. Th e cavalry blockaded the roads leading to town while the infantry commenced digging trenches on the southern side of the fortress. Here, at the corner of the walls running to the Velikaia River, were two large towers less covered by fi re 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 Pskov’s walls soon began from here, and despite the counterfi re from the Muscovite guns two breaches were blown in the walls and fi ve towers reduced. On 8 September the king’s infantry undertook a storm assault supported by volunteers from the cavalry. In the course of a full day’s fi ghting the king’s 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 king’s infantry. Th ey lost 863 men repulsing these attacks, while the Poles lost about 500 men.57 Only bombardment and storm assault on several sides simultaneously could guarantee success, but the king did not have enough infantry or guns for that. Counterfi re 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 king’s units interrupted 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. Th e 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 affl ictions of a harsh Russian winter and sorties by Pskov’s 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, Psków 1581–1582 (Warsaw 2006), 108–115. 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. Th e Commonwealth handed back Velikie Luki and withdrew the king’s army from Pskov. Th e majority of the king’s troops were withdrawn into Livonia to secure the fortresses abandoned by the tsar’s 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. Th e War of 1579–1582 marked the ascendancy of the Commonwealth over Muscovy, which lasted until the mid-seventeenth century. Several positive accomplishments on Bathory’s 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, fi rst of all from solutions to certain technical, military engineering, and siegecraft problems. Bathory’s reforms placed great stress upon developing and modernizing the infantry and adjusting its armament to the tactical demands of the Eastern European battlefi eld. Th e changes which the king introduced in organization and armament for several military formations proved durable. Th e Polish-Lithuanian state achieved a force mobilization capability it had never had before. Methodical and shrewd planning of operations was the foundation of Bathory’s campaigns. His campaigns forged a new offi cer cadre that earned renown in the early decades of the next century. Th e cavalry incursions devastating vast expanses of enemy territory became a model for Polish military practice in later years.59 Th ey 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 operations upon the model set by Krzysztof Radziwiłł.

58 K. Olejnik, Stefan Bathory, 251. 59 S. Herbst, Wojskowość polska i wojny, 402–403. GULIAI-GOROD, WAGENBURG, AND TABOR TACTICS IN 16TH–17TH 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 (strel’tsy and cossack infantry) in the open fi eld and preferred to place them along opposing river banks, on river patrol boats, in ambush within dense woods, or behind fortifi cations (earthwork, palisade, gabions, guliai-gorod, or wagon tabor).1 Various reasons have been suggested for this: that there was no real eff ort 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 comparatively few light mobile regimental guns to defend infantry lines and squares before the 1670s; that even during the Th irteen Years’ War strel’tsy and even foreign formation soldaty were unable to keep their matches lit while on the march, get up high rates of fi re, or attempt the newer fi ring systems; and, possibly, that Muscovite infantry “wanted order in leading” (Fletcher) or “could not easily shift positions and move about a battlefi eld, in part because they were commanded by a limited number of offi cers.”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 kul’tur, 2007), 149; Christopher Duff y, Siege Warfare: Th e Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (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 1646–1654 for the defense of the Belgorod Line and Tsar Aleksei’s war against the Commonwealth. 3 Hellie, Enserfment, 163; Robert Frost, “Th e Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,’ ” Poland and Europe: Historical Dimensions. Volume One, 94 brian davies

It is diffi cult to determine what kinds of fortifi cations were used as cover for infantry fi re in particular operations or reconstruct their tactical use. While there was a ramifi ed lexicon of fortifi cation 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. Th ere were many terms for camp (stan, tovar, kolymag, kosh, oboz) and fi eld fortifi cation (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 diff erentiate them.5

Th e Guliai-Gorod Line

Th e kind of fi eld fortifi cation that has most seized the imagination of historians—the guliai-gorod—is also the least understood, and may have been used less oft en than the historiography has supposed, especially if the form in question is the guliai-gorod described by Giles Fletcher. Th e guliai-gorod Fletcher reportedly observed near Moscow in 1588/1589 was a double wall, straight or cremaillere, of prefabricated wooden panels with fi ring embrasures, carried to the battlefi eld 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.” Th e distance between the two parallel walls was about three yards, enough to provide room for the infantry and smaller fi eld pieces to fi re 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, 1500–1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 134, 136–7; Fletcher, “Of the Russe Commonwealth,” 185; Carol Belkin Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 1460–1730 (London and New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007), 73. 4 F. P. Sorokoletov, Istoriia voennoi leksiki v russkom iazyke (Leningrad; Nauka, 1970), 194–196, 198–200. 5 Note for example that the index to E. A. Razin’s Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Tom III, Voennaia iskusstvo manufakturnogo perioda voiny XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1961)—the book that brought the guliai-gorod to the attention of Western historians—lists every reference to an oboz under the rubric guliai-gorod. guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 95 cover across the entire front of a fi eld army’s infantry, artillery, and baggage train (cavalry would have been stationed on its fl anks 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 eff ective in providing Muscovite infantry fi re cover “specially against the Tatar that bringeth no ordnance nor other weapon into the fi eld 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 stationing 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.” Th e 1475–1598 Razriadnaia kniga entry for 1591 mentions no guliai-gorod fortifi cation—only an oboz. Th e Nikonovskaia letopis’ describes it as a “grad oboz… na kolesnitsakh.” 7 Th e Razriadnaia kniga does confi rm that voevoda M. I. Vorotynskii used a guliai-gorod to protect the Great Corps (Bol’shoi polk) at Molodi in 1572, routing Khan Devlet Girei’s Tatars through a combination of concentrated fi re 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 hundred 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,” 185–6. 7 R. G. Skrynnikov, Boris Godunov (Moscow: Nauka, 1983), 63–64; Razin, Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Tom III, 52–53; V. I. Buganov, ed. Razriadnaia kniga 1475–1598 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 441; V. P. Zagorovskii, Istoriia vkhozhdeniia tsentral’nogo chernozem’ia v sostav rossiiskogo gosudarstva v XVI veke (Voronezh: Voronezhskii universitet, 1991), 210–214; 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: Mezhregional’nyi tsentr otraslevoi informatiki Gosatomnadzora Rossii, 1997), 245–250; Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 54–55. 9 Isaac Massa, A Short History of the Beginnings and Origins of Th ese 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 Massa’s Album Amicorum, depicts a large oboz encircling Dereviannyi gorod and the position of Tsar Vasilii’s army; much of it does appear to consist of closely fi tted wooden panels with gunports. Th is could be a variant of Fletcher’s 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 fi nd other references to its use in the Istoriia Kazanskogo tsarstva and the memoirs of Samuel Maskiewicz.11 Th e kinds of works involved are vaguely described, though, or not described at all. If we are to take Fletcher’s description as accurate, the kind of guliai-gorod he described—a very long double wooden wall covering the entire front of an army or several approaches to a bereg or city—was probably used on only a few occasions, in defense of Moscow or Kolomna, i. e., close to the site of its prefabrication. It is diffi cult to imagine the two thousand 2.5 × 1.5-meter panels for a double wall 1.5 kilometers long being transported farther afi eld 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 fortifi cation. 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 possibility 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 IV’s 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, Russia’s First Civil War: Th e 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 feodal’nogo perioda voiny (Moscow: Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1957), 337; Laskovskii, Materialy, 148–149. 12 Brian Davies, “Th e Polotsk Campaigns of Ivan IV and Stefan Bathory: Th e Development of Military Art During the Livonian War,” in Baltiiskii vopros v XV–XVI vv., ed. A. Filiushkin (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010), 108. guliai-gorod, wagenburg, and tabor tactics 97

Mobile Guliai-Gorod Shields

Th ere may have been another smaller, more mobile form of fortifi cation 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 panels mounted on small wheels or sledge runners. But if we are to believe Razin’s illustrations, the wheels and runners could be used only to slide panels together, not to move the entire works out into the fi eld, 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 fi eld for assembly. But there are references applying the term guliai-gorod to smaller works, multiple and separate and possessing some mobility on the battlefi eld. Razin cites the Vremennik of d’iak Ivan Timofeev (d. 1629?), who describes panels of roughly the same dimension, each manned by ten strel’tsy, 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 animals 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 fl anked by Muscovite cavalry. According to one of the Polish combatants, Mikolaj Marchocki, these guliai-goroda consisted of wide oak shields the size of tables, mounted on carts, and they moved forward upon the Poles’ position. Th ree cossack squadrons attacked them but were beaten back by their fi re; Polish husarz squadrons 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 cavalry 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, 52–53. 14 E. Kuksina, ed. N. Markhotskii, Istoriia moskovskoi voiny (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 52–53. 98 brian davies mantelets or panels mounted on carts. Th e “guliai-gorodin” shields used by Khmel’nyts’kyi’s 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 Th irteen 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 Czarniecki’s camp to describe how the Muscovite army “was advancing w hulajgorodach, the whole army being engirded. Th ose hulajgorody are built on a frame like a turnstile in the shape of the stockaded wooden siege towers we call ‘garlics’ and oft en use at corner bastions with our fi eldworks; that is, hollow logs are laced together in a cross and fastened at the ends with iron clasps. Th ey 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; there’s no way to charge these things, no way to break in upon the enemy, for the horses would be speared. Being behind those things, it’s as if an army were behind a fortress, whence the name: hulajgorod.” 16 Judging from Pasek’s description, these guliai-goroda were deployed according to the principles of impulse tactics, i.e. at intervals on the fi eld, as separated hard points providing fi repower supporting Muscovite cavalry and infantry attacking between them. Th e Poles countered by slaughtering 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.

Th e Tabor and Wagenburg

Most of the same tactical eff ects of the smaller guliai-gorod would have been achieved more cost-eff ectively 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: Th e Cossack Age, 1626–1650, 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. Th e Writings of Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a Squire of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania (Berkeley: University of California, 1976), 80–81; “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 fortifi ed cover against attack. Th e 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 signifi cance in the fi ft eenth century when combined with the gunpowder revolution, for infantry with fi rearms and pikes—and eventually, heavier pieces like hook-guns– could be positioned within the wagons themselves 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. Th e defensive tabor became a common practice across the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukraine, and Muscovy over the late 16th/ early seventeenth centuries. Th e tabor of haywagons employed at Dobrynichi in 1605 supported such heavy volley fi re by Muscovite strel’tsy as to break the charge of the Pretender’s cossacks and Polish cavalry. Th e tabor was especially eff ective against the Tatars. Guillaume le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan, who observed cossack operations against the Crimean Tatars in the 1630s, testifi ed, “In the fi eld, I have myself observed units of at least fi ve hundred Tatars several times, who attacked us in our tabor, and even though I was accompanied by only fi ft y to sixty Cossacks, the Tatars could do us no harm; nor could we harm them, since they kept beyond the range of our fi rearms.”17 Jan Zizka (1378–1424) and his Hussite armies are oft en considered to have pioneered the adaptation of the wagenburg to the gunpowder revolution by developing the vozova hradba, a wall or ring or quadrilateral of farm wagons chained together, the sides of the wagons sometimes reinforced and extended upwards with wooden panels with fi ring-ports. Th e bulk of the Hussite forces would be sheltered within the wagon-ring, perhaps with a few bombards, but the wagons themselves were crewed by 10–20 soldiers, a mix of gunners, crossbowmen, pikemen, and buckler-men. Aft er 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 counterattacking 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 Zizka’s disciplined military brotherhood called themselves the Taborites, metaphorizing their solidarity with the stronghold on the Biblical Mount Tabor. One can hypothesize the diff usion 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 diff usion 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 written 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 convinced Mariano di Jacopo Taccole, author of the military engineering treatises De Ingeneis and De Machinii, to take service with him.21 Th e 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 military treatises as “high” already by the mid-sixteenth century.22 But what especially should be stressed is the even greater scale of diff usion 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, 492–499. 19 Sorokoletov, Istoriia voennoi leksiki, 198. 20 Michael C. Paul, “Th e Military Revolution in Russia, 1550–1682,” Journal of Military History 68, 1 (2004), 32–34. 21 Taccole’s drawings of war-wagons and siege machines are reproduced on-line at //brunelleschi.imss.fi .it/genscheda. 22 Frost, “Th e 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. Th e 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 eff ective use of fi rearms/artillery fi re out of a wagenburg position as early as 1448, at the second battle of Kosovo. Th is was repeated at the Battle of Bashkent (1473), where they defeated the Aqqoyunlu. Th e deployment of artillery and janissary infantry in the center in a wagon lager, fl anked and screened by light akinci cavalry or 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 Ismail’s cavalry into withering artillery and janissary fi re 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 fi re from the tabur, aft er which his akinci cavalry encircled and massacred the surviving Hungarians encircled and massacred. Tabur cengi tactics subsequently 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 fortifi ed 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 cannoneer 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 fi rearm fi repower: the Ottomans eliminated the use of

23 Christon Archer, John Ferris, Holger Herwig, and Timothy Travers, Th e 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, Th e Ottoman Empire, 1300–1560: Th e Structure of Power (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 268–270. 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 fi rearms in a formation several rows deep behind the guns, wagons, and mantelets. Th e cavalry screen would retreat aft er provoking the enemy to attack the center, upon which the Ottoman artillery and heavier musketry would keep up fi re to wear down and disorgan- ize the attacking enemy. “Th en the janissaries, with light weapons, began fi ring 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 off ensively as a slow mobile fortress. Th e 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 repertory—perhaps with the Hussite mercenaries hired by Władysław 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 (1488–1561) 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 (suff ering 256 casualties to the Moldavians’ 7,000–10,000) by deploying his forces within a quadrilateral wagon camp, with artillery in the corners and hook-gunners stationed in the wagons.27 Tarnowski subsequently achieved signifi cant 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 fl at, open terrain with little natural cover (woods, hills, marshes) available, the defensive tabor was oft en a necessity; and necessity could be turned to tactical advantage by massing fi rearm fi re along the inner edge of the wagon perimeter, especially when

25 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, 50–51. 26 Emanuel Constantin Antoche, “Du Tabor de Jan Zizka et de Jean Hunyadi au Tabur Cengi des Armees Ottomanes,” Turcica 36 (2004), 114–116. 27 Ibid., pp. 94, 99; Jan Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej do roku 1864 (Warsaw: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1978), 79–8. 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 fi rearm available, had an average eff ective range of 400–500 meters (and theoretical maximum range of 1,278 meters), and fi red a 3–4 ounce bullet with enough force (at least at closer 100– 150-meter range) to penetrate a wooden plank 10–15 centimeters thick.30 Th e 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 wagenburg camp appears to have become more vulnerable because of the greater number of regimental guns fi elded by the Habsburgs and Romanovs and used to cover closer-in attacks by dragoons.

Th e Wagenburg Convoy

Th e 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 fl anks, with eight to ten in front and as many at the rear, and the Cossacks marching in the middle carrying fi rearms and half-pikes, and scythes mounted on long poles. Th e 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 fi rst, the Cossacks can always defeat them; but if the Cossacks are discovered fi rst, the Tatars surprise and attack them in their tabor.” 31 Muscovite military operations in the second half of the 17th century represented the apogee of wagenburg convoy tactics. Aft er 1655

30 Jozsef Kelenik, “Th e Military Revolution in Hungary,” Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe. Th e Military Confi nes 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 Khmel’nyts’kyi, Doroshenko) in Ukraine, followed by the two great expeditions to rescue Chyhyryn from the Turks (1677–1678), V. V. Golitsyn’s two marches upon Perekop (1687, 1689), and Peter I’s two campaigns against Azov (1695, 1696). Th ese 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 (L’viv, Konotop, Azov, etc.), and so they required much larger contingents of artillery and inozemskii stroi infantry and oft en direct support from auxiliary regiments of Ukrainian cossacks. Th e forces of Romodanovskii and Samoilovich marching on Chyhyryn in 1678 reportedly totalled 80–100,000—enormous by the standards of the time. Golitsyn’s 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 fi eld army fi rst had to cross a vast but sparsely populated plain, much of it uncultivated steppe, devoid of forward magazines, and off ering fewer opportunities for foraging and contributions extortion than central Europe. Th is in turn required that provisioning for much of the campaign come out of the army’s baggage train. Geza Perjes, calculating the bread requirements 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 month’s rations and fodder, and that just for the combat eff ectives; 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 50–70,000 draught animals.33 Hence Golitsyn’s army marching on Perekop in 1687—which still counted largely on foraging to feed its horses and draught animals—was accompanied by a train of 20,000 wagons.34

32 Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 162–3, 179. 33 Geza Perjes, “Army Provisioning, Logistics, and Strategy in the Second Half of the 17th Century,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 16 (1970), 10–11. 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. Golitsyn’s 1687 convoy travelled in a vast wagenburg 1.5 kilometers across and perhaps 5 kilometers in length; his 1689 expedition crossed the steppe in six wagenburgs. Th is had its costs—it raised such a cloud of dust as to make the army’s movement easy for enemy scouts to follow, and it slowed the army’s movement to about ten kilometers 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 fi re. When the formation was attacked it was possible to halt, unlimber some of the guns and use them and covering infantry fi re to support cavalry charges driving back the enemy (hence Golitsyn’s 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 off er more concerted and eff ective resistance than when deployed in open fi eld, especially when the wagenburg was smaller, permitting more eff ective command-and- control. Th is was demonstrated to striking eff ect during most of V. B. Sheremetev’s 1660 drive against Cracow, which involved 19,200 Muscovite troops (of which 14,000 were inozemskii stroi), 20,000 of Tsytsura’s cossacks, twenty fi eld guns, and 3,000 wagons. From 4–16 September Sheremetev’s 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 mass—about a thousand wagons and seven guns—was 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 fl anks just as it was ascending a steep hill. Th e Muscovite wagenburg lost another eighty wagons and seven or eight guns, yet it held and proceeded on towards Chudnovo. Lubomirski was suffi ciently impressed

35 Ibid., 180–182. 106 brian davies with their good order to have said, “Th e Muscovites fl ee from us like a wolf baring its teeth, not like a rabbit.”36 Th e 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. Th is was demonstrated at the end of Sheremetev’s campaign. On 27 September the Poles occupied the Chudnovo heights above Sheremetev’s camp on the Teteria River, training their guns down on his position. Sheremetev was halted here for several days, under constant artillery fi re, 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, fl ooded 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 fi ring their guns from an earth berm they had erected around his position. It rained incessantly. His stores running low, unable to fi eld his cavalry in order to break out, Sheremetev fi nally surrendered—and he and most of his army were taken into Tatar captivity.37 Th e predilection for wagenburg tactics in eastern European warfare faded in the eighteenth century. By the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 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 rifl ing of musket barrels, and the prefabrication of “swinefeather” stakes and portable chevaux de frise –these innovations supported a shift in tactics by making it easier for infantry to stand in open fi eld unprotected by a wagon tabor. To the extent that infantry still sometimes took cover behind fi eld fortifi cations, it was less likely now to be behind a long unbroken

36 Nikolai Kostomarov, “Getmanstvo Iuriia Khmel’nitskogo,” Kazaki. Istoricheskie monografi i i issledovaniia (Moscow: Charli, 1995), 194–196; Baiov, Istoriia russkogo voennogo iskusstva, 160–161; Antoni Hnilko, Wyprawa Cudnowska w 1660 roku (Warsaw: Wojskowy Instytut Naukowo-Wydawniczy, 1931), 49–51. See also Romuald Romanski, Cudnow 1660 (Warsaw: Bellona, 1996), Patrick Gordon, then a lieutenant of Lubomirski’s 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 off ered by a wagon lager or guliai-gorod, and more likely to be in regimental or battalion squares behind multiple, smaller, separated fi eld fortifi cations (chevaux-de-frise, quickly-dug entrenchments, 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 fi eld guns to the assault and gained experience in using dismounted dragoons and grenadiers to storming tabor positions.38 Th e 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 contributions-resistant foreign territory, for the frontier of the Russian Empire–and thereby the territory subject to Russian military resource mobilization–had 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 means—by rebasing forces and building magazines–but by exploiting political advantages and administrative reforms allowing the Russians to exert tighter control over the loyalties and military resources of non-Russian populations. Th e incorporation 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 fi rst 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 shift ed 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): 31–33. 108 brian davies plunder from the defeated enemy’s train.39 At Riabaia Mogila, Larga, and Kagul (1770) large Ottoman-Tatar armies of 70–80,000 men dug in within heavily fortifi ed camps were overwhelmed by much smaller Russian forces under P. A. Rumiantsev, the Russians conducting separate column attacks at several points to drive the Turks from their fortifi cations and then catching them in crossfi re 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 Th ese disproportionate Russian victories set a pattern sustained through the rest of the 1768–1774 war and the 1787–1791 Russo-Turkish War. Th ey could be said to confi rm the ascendance of Russia as the greatest military power in Eastern Europe.

39 Menning, “Russian Military Innovation,” 33–35. 40 I. V. Semenov, Chugun Kagul’skii, ty sviashchen (iz istorii russko-turetskoi voiny 1768–1774) (Kishinev: Izd. Kartia Molodveniaske, 1970), 68–69. THE FLODORF PROJECT: RUSSIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL MERCENARY MARKET IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Oleg A. Nozdrin

Muscovy’s Time of Troubles (1598–1618) 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. Th e prevailing confusion encouraged various enterprising personalities, projectors, adven- turers, fi libusterers, and self-aggrandizers to come forward and off er their solutions to Russia’s problems, complicating even further an already entangled situation. Many of their recommendations, prescriptions, 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 Arkhangel’sk in summer 1612 of the hired mercenaries of “senior commander” Baron Adrian Flodorf and Arthur Aston and James Hill, off ering 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. Aft er a year’s 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. Aston’s soldiers managed to participate in the defense of Kholmogory against “brigand cossack bands” and later received the right to enroll in Russian service. Th e Arkhangel’sk travails of these foreign mercenaries have been examined in some detail by specialists curious about their character and motives. Th e spectrum of opinion about their motive ranges from the suspicion that they were an eff ort to realize an English project to occupy the White Sea littoral to vaguer speculation that they refl ected the antagonism among multiple states seeking a sphere of infl uence in 110 oleg a. nozdrin

Russia.1 Less attention has been given to the backgrounds of the company’s 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 identifi ed 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 dealing with the establishment of Russo-Dutch contacts have nothing to say about him. Yet in his own time he was an eminent personage. Th e 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 sixteenth century made themselves infl uential seigniors holding many estates and castles. Th eir 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. Th eir high status is confi rmed by their privileges, which included the right to coin their own money (like the free imperial barons the Reckheims in 1555–1563).2 Openly Protestant in their sympathies, at times even extending protection 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), 302–331; G. G. Frumenkov, Solovetskii monastyr i oborona Belomor’ia v XVI–XIX vv. (Arkhangel’sk, 1975); O. V. Skobelkin, “Inostrantsy na russkom Severe v gody Smuty,” Istoricheskie zapiski, vypusk 3 (Voronezh, 1998), 5–18; O. Ia. Nozdrin, “Naemniki v Rossii nachala XVII vv.” Noblesse oblige. Voennye v traditisionnoi kul’ture Starogo sveta, Zhizn’. Okruzhenie. Nravy (Orel, 2004), 39–45; Zh. Marzheret [Jacques Margeret], Sostoanie Rossiiskoi imperii. Zh. Marzheret v dokumentakh i issledovaniiakh (teksty, kommentarii, stat’i), ed. A. Berelovich, V. D. Nazarov, P. Iu. Uvarov (Moscow, 2007), 362–363 passim. 2 Revue de la numismatique Belge. Publiée sous les auspices de la Société numismatique, par R. Shalon, L. de Coster, C. Piqué. 4e Série. T. I. (Bruxelles, 1863), 444–445. russia in the international mercenary market 111 were inclined like other titled gueux (“Beggars,” Confederates) to support 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. Th e future commander of the company at Arkhangel’sk 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. Aft er his father’s 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 oft en 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 d’iak 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 benefi t to the Sovereign…”3 In fact the baron was an enthusiastic traveler, having completed study (1602–1605) in L’Académie 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 “fi rst Palladio of the epoch,” the classicist and architect Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548–1616), who had rebuilt the castle of Well according to the latest achievements in fortifi cations science.5 Th e times were dangerous not only for proponents of “universal architecture”. Th e 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, 1602–1605,”/ Th e Aberdeen University Review Vol. X, 30 (July 1923), 194–195. 5 T. Temanza, Vite dei piu celebri architetti, e scultori veneziani che fi rorirono nel secolo decimosesto. Vol I (Venice, 1778), 465; Vincenzo Scamozzi, Venetian Architect: Th e 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 fi rmly 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. Aft er the defeat of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii the Poles had occupied the Kremlin (1610) and King Sigismund III’s son Crown Prince Władysław had been proclaimed ruler of Muscovy. Th e Polish occupation had neglected the interests of Muscovite elites, had refused to accommodate to ortho- doxy, and had devastated several towns and regions. Th is 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 signifi cant foreign military detachments on Russian soil had brought risk and fear and had confi rmed the worst suspicions through sad experience. England, considering itself the guarantor of Protestant liberty, viewed with alarm the Catholic off ensives in western and eastern Europe. Economic interests tied England with confl icting Protestant and Catholic powers, however, so England adhered to a calculated policy 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 Th us the routes of the main fi gures of the Arkhangel’sk expedition intersected at the court of Brandenburg, which if not overtly supporting the undertaking was at least tacitly sympathetic to it. Th e 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: Th e Russian Embassy of 1613–1614 (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 offi cial support. Th e Elector was not prepared to break relations with Warsaw, as he hoped for its consent to unifi cation with Ducal Prussia and because he saw his own freedom of political maneuver 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 leaders 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. Th eir zeal to “struggle against your enemies to the death, eyes set upon your justice”8 could acknowledge only Polish-Lithuanian forces among Muscovy’s enemies. A similarly pacifi c 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 recommendations to the Russian authorities—merely 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. Th ey 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 “fi erce and fanatic Catholic Sir Arthur Aston,” as English Puritan propaganda in

8 Akty vremeni mezhdutsarstviia 1610–1613, izdannye pod nabliudeniem S. K. Bogoisavlenskogo i I. S. Riabina (Moscow, 1915), 54–55. 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 fi nd successful careers under the fi rst 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 commander 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 Th e band also included an interpreter, a fi fer, a surgeon, two laundresses (one of them named, a “Margaret”), a cook, two butlers, and other servants.12 Adrian Flodorf was accompanied to Arkhangel’sk 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 Th is reference could be to either Arthur Ashton the Elder (c. 1571–1627) or his son Arthur Ashton Jr. (1590–1649), both of whom participated in Flodorf’s 1612–1613 expedition. Sir Arthur Ashton Sr. would later (1625–1627) serve as governor of the American province of Avalon (the settlement of Ferryland, Newfoundland and part of Labrador); he perished in 1627 at Buckingham’s 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 Cromwell’s assault on Drogheda in the fall of 1649. 10 Th e Bilandts (Bijlandt, Bylandt), owners of the castle of Vell up to 1600, were connected with the Flodorfs through Adrian Balthasar’s 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 fi gured prominently in aff airs 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. 1–7. 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 Th e fate of the Flodorf expedition might have aff ected his pessi- mism. Th e 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 suff ered 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 suff ered…”15 Th e 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 oft e 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 (t’Amsterdam, 1615); J. Danckaert, Reyse, oft e Voyage, gedaen door Moscovien oft e 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, 304–308. 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 provoked 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. Th is off ense to his person was compounded 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 abductor’s blandishments Flodorf unexpectedly took refuge in the Netherlands and sent the bride home to fulfi ll her marriage obligations. Th is aff air did not have bad consequences for him, however. Already by 1617 we fi nd the crown prince of Brandenburg Georg Wilhelm receiving Flodorf with friendship and consigning his past deed to oblivion—which 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 Sweden’s King Gustav II Adolf in 1614, discussing ways to use petards more eff ectively to take fortresses.17 Gustav Adolf found such information useful in preparing his siege of Pskov. Th is exchange of correspondence continued down to Gustav Adolf’s death in 1632 and Flodorf became one of the king’s trusted advisors on northern European aff airs.18 Around 1620 Flodorf married Baroness Isabella van Dorth to Dorth (1595–1652), 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 Wissenschaft en und Kunste in alphabetischer Folge von genanten Schrift stellern bearbeiter (Leipzig, 1818), 67; C. Stramburg, A. J. Weidenbach, Denkwurdiger und nutzlicher Rheinischer-Antiquarius. Von einem Nachforscher (Koblenz, 1870), 539. 17 Generalstaben Sveriges Krig 1611–1632. 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), 5–6; O. Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia. Until the Establishment of the S. congregatio de propaganda fi de in 1622. Volume II (1583–1622) (Oslo, 1980), 532. russia in the international mercenary market 117

Danish service, assisting Ernst Mansfeld against Tilly in 1625,19 participated in the founding of Dutch colonies in America,20 and became recognized 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. Th e king’s decree lists Flodorf’s professions as skilled engineer, miner, pyrotechnician and fi reworks-master, guncaster, powder- and saltpeter-master, artillerist, fortifi cations engineer, and intendant—the specializations essential to the successful conduct of war in the seventeenth 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 Th irty Years’ War. His sumptuous and intem- perate lifestyle eroded his family’s fi nancial condition, however. Aft er 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 father’s debts. Th e 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 barons Huyssen and Tuyll van Serooskerken, fl ourished 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 Th irty 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. Öhlander Bidrad till kännedom om Ingermanlands historia och förvalting. Bd. 1 (1617–1645) (Uppsala, 1898), 38. 22 “General öfver artilleriet, erhöll i uppdrag att ifrán Nederlānderna 1614 hemta några ingeniörer, minerare, petarderare, fyrverkare, stuckgjutare, verkmästare, krut- mamakare, salpetersjudare, grosmeder uch audra sådana embetsmän, försökte att lyft a Ingermanland och karelen…” Cit.op.: B. Schlegel, C. A. Klingspor Den med sköldebref förlänade men ej å riddarhuset introducerade svenska adelns ättar-tafl or. (Stockholm,2006), 75–77. 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. Th e 1630–31 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 Th e 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 supplying weaponry, the munitions and expertise needed to keep it functioning.4 Secondly, generalizations about supply in early modern Europe assume a unity of military behavior across the continent and have served to conceal diff ering military goals, organization and theaters across the continent in important ways.5 Th e following is an examination of Muscovite logistics for the early modern period. Th e Muscovite army typically fought in a very diff erent theater of war from west Europeans. Th e 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, 1611–1632 (London: 1958) and Geoff rey Parker, Th e Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 2nd edition (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 2004), for example. 3 Creveld, Supplying War, 37–38. 4 See, for example, G. Perjés, “Army Provisioning, Logistics, and Strategy in the second half of the 17th century,” Acta historica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae no. 16 (1970): 1–51 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, 1680–1740 (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 off ered 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. Th e diff erent organization and goals of Muscovite and other east European armies until the eighteenth century predicated somewhat diff erent supply needs; in particular, until aft er 1700 most of the Muscovite army gathered seasonally only to return home at the end of the campaign season. Finally, there were the diff erent economic and bureaucratic characteristics of Muscovite society. Th ese topics have been studied only in rather modest ways.6 Th is essay attempts to examine that which we know in order to identify the Crown’s 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 diff erence was predicated in part by the fundamental structure of their military. Th at 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 cossack life along the southern and southeastern frontiers into the seventeenth 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, 1462–1598,” Th e Slavonic and East European Review Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jan., 1993): 35–65, 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, 1500–1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), and Peter B. Brown’s work on the Th irteen 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. Malov’s excellent Moskovskie vybornye polki soldatskogo stroia v nachal’nyi period svoei istorii, 1656–1671 (Moscow: Drevnekhranilishche, 2006). 7 M. M. Krom, Starodubskaia voina, 1534–1537. Iz istorii russko-litovskikh otnoshenii (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 somewhat incredulously by Sigismund von Herberstein as late as the fi rst part of the sixteenth century.8 During and aft er fi ghting, cavalrymen further restored themselves with plunder, pillage, and, if victorious, booty. Cavalry raids were hardly the Muscovite army’s 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 fi eld battles and staged other large demonstrations of military force. If major fi eld engagements 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 30,000–40,000 men.9 Border fortresses and defenses against steppe raids were being put in place, and Muscovy made use of artillery—largely 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, Russia’s low population density, the changing availability of items at diff erent times of year, and the rather diff erent need to stock fortifi cations were needed. Supply arrangements for larger armies on the move for longer time periods appeared broadly related to those used by cavalry raiders. Th at is, the predominantly cavalry army still relied upon its members’ individual endeavors to meet their own needs. Fift eenth- 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. Th at 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), 79–80. 9 See A. N. Lobin, “K voprosu o chislennosti vooruzhennykh sil Rossiiskogo gosudarstva v XVI v,” Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana 1–2 (2009): 45–78. 10 Th e presence of artillery is recorded on the battlefi eld 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 supply practices practiced by raiders. Individuals going on a longer campaign 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 collective impact of foraging or pillaging. Each of these realities carried military impacts. Any signifi cant baggage train represented an unwieldy addition to rapidly moving cavalry contingents. Pillaging and living off the land became increasingly punitive for the subject population. Th e requirement of more supplies for more individuals greatly increased the possibility that an army might be crippled by dearth. Th e presence of artillery and occasional infantry placed new demands on an army relying upon self-supply. Th at 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. Th e development of the pomest’e 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 cavalry’s 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 aft er 1500.12 Nevertheless, the pomest’e

11 Smith, “Muscovite Logistics,” 53–54; Krom, Starodubskaia voina, 45; E. A. Razin, Istoriia voennogo iskusstva vol. 2 (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo ministerstva oborony SSSR, 1961), 310, 312–16. 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), 84–85. 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. Th ere were other, unsystematic interventions that bolstered and checked the availability of military supplies to those leaving home to fi ght. Military musters from the mid-15th century may have recorded cavalrymen’s preparedness, counting available mounts and weaponry before their departure for the front.13 Individual servicemen received direct support. Th e crown paid money derived from cash taxes, or grain harvested from demesne land, to help selected warriors. Others received direct gift s of grain or prepared foods. Th us, the Grand Prince off ered food (fl our 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. Gift s (of grain, cash and other items) were forms of remuneration, and not always directed at military supply per se. Gift s of food, however they might be used, were also bound up with the symbolic notion of “feeding from the Grand Prince’s table,” and might have political rather than any direct military signifi cance.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 category, as did most artillerymen. Some were off ered supplies in kind by those that hired them (a town, for example), but more oft en such men were hired for cash and required to supply themselves, fi rst by buying from local markets and then by foraging and purchases in the fi eld. Economic growth at the end of the 15th century had bolstered the trade in foodstuff s, but such dependence on commerce and cash nonetheless remained unreliable. Th e transport of foodstuff s for such troops posed further questions (see below).

13 A. V. Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily Russkogo gosudarstva: v XV–XVII v.v. s obrazovaniia tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva do reform pri Petre I (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1954), 34–35; Alekseev, Pokhody, 49. 14 Gustav Alef, “Muscovite Military Reforms in the second half of the fi ft eenth century,” FzOG vol 18 (1973): 77. 15 Kondratieva, Tamara, Gouverner et Nourir. Du pouvoir en Russie XVIe–Xxe siècles (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), 31–39, 51–55. 124 carol b. stevens

Th e 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 requirements, and men on foot threatened to generate a large, slow baggage train. Some of these issues were resolved by putting foot soldiers, artillery and supplies onto boats, built or contracted by the crown; these troops were known as sudnaia rat’. Th e arrangement allowed the cavalry to travel overland at speed with a smaller baggage train; supplies and materiel for later use could be transported with the more vulnerable infantry and artillery by water. When river travel was impossible, campaigns were timed to make overland transport more effi cient; foreign 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. Th us, soldiers protected the approach of food sellers to the army as it marched. In this way, commerce in foodstuff s 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 Th e military implications of requisitioning and ‘living off the land’ were clearly recognized. In Ivan III’s campaigns, particularly against Novgorod in 1477, food supply was an element of tactics. Ivan’s forces were explicitly positioned in such a way as to deny food supplies to the besieged city. Aft er 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, fortresses—sometimes even siege forces, taken at the rate of 2 or 3 from towns and fi elds per warrior. Th ey moved artillery, big guns, materiel, and built defense works on towns. 17 “Trakhaniot’s 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 discouraged. And the Tatar allies of Muscovite troops were off ered ‘gift s’ 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. Th e 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.

Th roughout the sixteenth century, the continuing centrality of hereditary 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 border,19 it also remained the dominant model when the army went on longer campaigns or set sieges. In 1553, Richard Chancellor was among the fi rst, but certainly not the last, to observe that Russian military men provided for themselves without help or support from the crown.20 Th is broad observation, however, conceals some signifi cant alterations 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 refl ected a broader growth in the Muscovite state—the development of a central chancellery system and its record keeping system, the greater systematiza- tion of 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 aff airs. Th e changes to military supply in this period, then, oft en refl ect 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, 192–93; Razin, Istoriia, 307. 19 Krom, Starodubskaia voina, 18, 94; his Mezh Rus’iu i Litvoiu: zapadnorusskie zemli v sisteme russko-litovskikh otnosheniĭkontsa XV-pervoiĭtreti XVI v. (Moscow: Arkheografi cheskii tsentr, 1995), 131, 229; Razin, Istoriia, 320–25. 20 Chancellor’s Voyage to Muscovy (Edinburgh, 1956), 57. 126 carol b. stevens two-thirds of the sixteenth century, Muscovy used its new abilities to expand signifi cantly the capacities of a predominantly self-supplying military system. Among the more signifi cant regularizations was that of the relationship of pomest’e (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 he was departing on a long campaign. “Th ey were required to provide their own stores, suffi cient for 3–4 months campaign, carried on their own horses and carts, and sent ahead to a mobilization point.”21 Th ese eff orts 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). Th ere was less immediate discussion about the provision of food and forage at musters. Eff orts to restrict the fl ight 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 strel’tsy, to the army at mid-century. As the numbers of infantrymen (and artillery) grew thereaft er, they somewhat altered the composition of the army and required more serious attention to provisioning by the Crown. Th e 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 eff orts 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. Th e tax did not refl ect the development of new economic 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), 25–27; Hellie, Enserfment, ch. 5. Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 80, discusses 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 country’s resources available to the troops. Payments from the Crown thus covered daily living expenses throughout the year, including food, for the strel’tsy 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 strel’tsy were an acute instance of a growing supply and logistical problem confronting the Muscovite army. Th at is, in Muscovy’s environmental 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 strel’tsy did not share the landed cavalry’s 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 diffi cult for infantry than cavalry troops. Where merchants and sutlers did attend the army, any signifi cant shortage drove food prices beyond the reach of many. Furthermore, some of Muscovy’s military destinations (Kazan’, Crimea, Lithuania) lay beyond the limits of what a supply train could carry. Two particular eff orts, which bolstered the volume of food supplies available to the strel’tsy 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 stockpiled local supplies) had stood for some time as a fi rst 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 Th ese were not always systematically stocked, nor were the methods used innovative except in volume. However, they were fi lled—oft en generously—by local grain levies carted in by the taxpayers, sometimes by purchases on the local market, or even contributions from Crown demesne land. Th eir primary purpose was to provide siege supplies to local defense forces—strel’tsy and Cossacks among others—but 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 Th e 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), 79–81, describes these forces. 128 carol b. stevens

(1558–83), border fortresses along the western frontier similarly developed generous stockpiles. Th e largest fortresses had city commandants (gorodovoi prikazchik) who shared responsibility for defense management with the town viceroys; stockpiled materials included provisions, forage for horses, as well as gunpowder and shot. Th eir primary purpose was to provide siege supplies for the garrison (again, including strel’tsy), but they could also re-outfi t 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, fortresses with supplies used to restock military contingents that had passed beyond the reach of friendly border fortresses. Among the earlier examples is the fortress of Vasil’sursk, which was built on the fringes of the Khanate of Kazan’ in the 1520s. Th e fi rst use of Vasil’sursk as a supply depot, stocked by the Crown in familiar ways, was not crowned with success. Th e 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 Vasil’sursk, but additional river shipments, needed to maintain stocks, were capsized by heavy spring rains.27 Nevertheless, forward supply magazines along river routes, as appropriate to a particular campaign, become a staple of Muscovite logistics. Similar arrangements 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), 93–94; T. I. Pashkov, Mestnoe upravlenie v Russkom gosudarstve pervoi polovine XVI veka (Moscow: Drevnekhranilishche, 2000), 102. 27 Razin, Istoriia vol 2, 355. 28 Halil Inalçik, “Th e origin of the Ottoman-Russian rivalry and the Don-Volga canal,” Ankara Üniversitesi Yıllığı I (1946–48): 61–91. logistics and the early modern russian army 129

Within these arrangements, the commitment to supply (and pay) the strel’tsy, its new permanent troops, year round, at war or in peace, remained a signifi cant exception in an army largely composed of self- supporting cavalry. As the number of strel’tsy grew, honoring this promise overlapped and competed with the Crown’s other, larger, but more intermittent and emergency-oriented supply commitments. Especially in a wartime context, the needs of the strel’tsy did not receive exclusive attention. Instead, fortresses stockpiled with grain and other supplies and baggage train supplies (discussed below) provided support fi rst, but by no means exclusively, to the strel’tsy or any other particular 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 eff ectiveness of the baggage trains accompanying the Muscovite army, particularly 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 sixteenth-century suggest that the Muscovites, despite growing artillery and infantry numbers, could compare favorably with their Tatar counterparts. A Tatar order of 1501, for example, mandated one cart per fi ve men. A poorly attributed number from a Muscovite campaign of 1564 suggests an average of 3–4 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. Th e army’s 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 excessively close quarters. Th is case was surely unusual; not only was the army quite large (about 31,000 fi ghting men), but the campaign was a

29 Lobin, “K voprosu o chislennosti,” 77, says no more than 60,000; but also see Hellie, Enserfment, 270–71. 30 Smith, “Muscovite Logistics,” 48; L.J.D. Collins, “Th e 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 Women’s 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 provisions and heavy artillery, which nevertheless reached the front in a timely fashion despite heavy military traffi c.31 By contrast, West European armies of the mid-sixteenth century recorded 6–15 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 diffi cult to do more than speculate about baggage train size and its implications. If Muscovite baggage trains were indeed less compact that those of western Europe, it is possible that supplies sent forward by individual cavalrymen were not eff ectively 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. Th e ‘portable fortress’ of the guliai gorod (connecting lengths of wooden wall behind which the military could shelter on an open battlefi eld) 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 traffi c, 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 following century, if then. Th e orderly movement of supplies across the countryside drew the Crown’s attention. Supplies provided by individual cavalrymen for distant or lengthy campaigns and during sieges were increasingly explicitly 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 Chancellery—they were

31 Sergei N. Bogatyrev, “Battle for the Divine Sophia? Ivan IV’s Campaign against Polotsk and Novgorod,” Th e Military and Society in Russia, 1450–1917 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 natsional’naia biblioteka, 2004), esp. 58–63. 32 Smith, “Muscovite Logistics,” 48. 33 Brian L. Davies, “Guliai Gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th–17th 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 regiment’s supplies followed its own unit’s path to the general meeting point. By the mid-sixteenth century, there were more specialized offi c- ers put in charge of organizing the artillery and choosing campsites (such camp sites were reportedly extensive, to allow horses to graze freely). Special offi cers 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 prepared foods to the troops under contract, either at fortresses or in the fi eld. Within Muscovy, the crown attempted to control prices on foodstuff s for the military. A workforce for building roads, bridges and fortresses was draft ed from among the peasantry and the townspeople; they also moved artillery, big guns, materiel and reinforced urban defenses. Th e Crown’s growing ability to gather and disburse supplies had other military signifi cance. Th e 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) off er some indications of how these changes worked in the fi eld. In the expectation that the army’s horses, if not its warriors, would have to live off the sparsely populated countryside, the army in 1552 left Muscovy from several diff erent mobilization points on the south-southeastern side of Muscovy, and the cavalry departed overland along three (and as it approached Kazan’, two) quite separate paths, only converging into a single unit as the border was crossed.36 Th e artillery and infantry forces (and a substantial number of supplies) traveled in a state fl eet, 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,” 37–38; 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 base—a pre-fabricated fortress at Sviazhsk—had 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 supplies derived from demesne land harvests, from purchases fi nanced by taxation, and from individual sources of supply. Th is stockpiling was similar to that routinely carried out in the southern frontiers’ fortresses, but on a grander scale. As it happened, the troops arriving overland did not fare particularly well; it took a substantial fi ve weeks for one group of overland forces to meet the others, and the cavalrymen arrived very hungry at the rendezvous point. Th e ordinary cavalryman’s diet of tolokno (an oaten fl our) 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. Th e 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 eff ectively.39

37 A. V. Dulov, Geografi cheskaia 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, Th e Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy trans. and ed. Ch. Dunning (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), 50–51. 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 (1558–1582) proved an acid test for Muscovy’s eff orts in military supply. During the prolonged confl ict against a background of domestic turmoil, Ivan IV’s government did what it could to provide Russian troops by stocking forward magazines with state supplies from taxes, demesne lands, and purchases. Th e 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 Th e forward fortresses between the Dniepr and the Dvina were reportedly well stocked even quite late in the war. Th e 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 eff orts achieved only occasional success during the Livonian War. For a signifi cant part of the confl ict, living off the land grew increasingly necessary.42 In and of itself, this was not only acceptable to Russian authorities but deliberately encouraged. Th e Russians plundered and pillaged around Dorpat (1558) and Fellin, near Riga and Helmet (1560). Th e army’s Tatar units were set to raiding and pillaging in order to intimidate the local population. But economic decline, the continuing demands of the war, peasant fl ight, and diffi culties in Muscovy proper increasingly limited cavalrymen’s abilities to support themselves in a war whose character ill suited their strengths. Not only did it thoroughly undermine their ability to support themselves from their lands, but they also lacked taxation and other governmental 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, 1571–1580 (Moscow, Warsaw: Arkheografi cheskii tsentr, 1998), pt. 2 no. 25, pp. 96–97; no. 38, pp. 108–09; part 3, no. 24; Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 35. Th e granaries, however, did not always contain the grain that they were expected to. Pamiatniki istorii vol.3 part I no. 40 p. 113. 41 Reingol’d Geidenshtein, Zapiski o Moskovskoi voine, 1578–1582. Perevod s lat- ynskogo (St. Petersburg: Izd. arkheografi cheskoi kommissii, 1889), 119–120; Bobrovskii, Perekhod, 82; Pamiatniki istorii, vol. 3 pt. 1, p. 19; part 2/2, p. 96–97, 108– 09; vol. 3 part 3, no. 24. 42 Johannes Renner, Livonian History 1556–1561 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 military support. Under duress it could stock individual fortresses or provide for intermittent and emergency situations, oft en 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. Th e strelets troops survived. Overall, however, the prolonged demands of the Livonian War underscored the military diffi culties inherent in fi ghting in the Livonian theater with a seasonal cavalry army. Among many other problems, that cavalry was incapable of supporting itself during a prolonged and economically debilitating confl ict; Muscovy’s supply system, despite the arrangements targeting the strel’tsy, was essentially designed to bolster and supplement self-supporting cavalry, and it was not eff ective in doing so during a prolonged encounter.

Th e subsequent descent into the Time of Troubles led to a gradual but massive collapse of the state’s structures, including those for the recruitment 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 fl ight of peasant labor from central Russia; fi nally they awarded local requisition rights to Cossack and other fi ghters when other options failed. Militarily speaking, the era demonstrated clearly to all participants that self- supporting cavalry were no longer effi cient nor eff ective troops. As is well known, political realities dictated that the army, like the state, at least appear to rebuild aft er 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, 37–38; Th e Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579 J. L. I. Fennell, ed., (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 114–15, 138–39; Th e 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 hereditary cavalry forces, both as a social group and as a military force, developed into disputes over peasant movement that ended in the formal enserfment of the Russian peasantry in 1649. At the same time, however, Muscovy’s 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 model—paid, trained troops with a more ramifi ed offi cer structure and a dominant infantry. From that point onward throughout the seventeenth century, Muscovy struggled with economically, politically, and militarily satisfactory ways of reconciling the character and requirements of these troops with the rest of a very numerous army—in matters 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 fl exible, in that it was capable of delivering large quantities of food to changing destinations, and productive, in that it generated adequate and sometimes generous quantities of supply. Th e support it off ered was largely seasonal and intended to maintain primarily selected troops, but it sustained Russia’s large army while active on several fronts. Th e issues in military supply raised by the Smolensk War were quite varied and, in some cases, new to the Muscovite establishment. Th e single most important factor was that the war was envisioned (and carried out) as a prolonged siege. However, the largest single contingent of the army was still the hereditary cavalry. Th e 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 formation troops—Europeans and Russians alike—who constituted more than a third of the army. Th is 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, aft er all, fi ghting to include precisely the nearby population within their borders). Some of the devices used were very familiar. Th e fortresses of Mozhaisk and Viaz’ma were stocked with supplies for departing troops. 136 carol b. stevens

Th e 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. Th e new formation troops were outfi tted with weaponry and the army generally with light artillery from the state’s 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 diffi cult 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. Th ree arrangements were put into use. Nearby villages were assigned the task of delivering (their own) foodstuff s to particular regiments—a 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, fl our, salt pork), which put less pressure the army’s facilities for preparation (mills, ovens, etc). But the enormous quantities so generated could not plausibly be delivered only by the taxpayers or by local postal carts, although both were recruited to the eff ort. In the end, the government of Mikhail Fedorovich placed unusually great responsibility on Muscovy’s commercial network. It contracted with sutlers to buy, deliver, and sell (at a set price) signifi - cant additional foodstuff s to the army in its Smolensk camp. Th ese same sutlers were also charged with the delivery of some of the provisions yielded by nemetskii korm.45 In terms of net collections, these tax eff orts were successful—they 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 suff ered from signifi cant 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, 1632–1634 (Kiev: Universitetskaia Tip., 1919), 197, 202–210, 212, 218–32; 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 Th ese and related supply issues47 played a role in Muscovy’s failure at Smolensk. And the failure of the military eff ort at Smolensk led to the dismissal of many new formation regiments and redirected further reform. Th e prototype for nemetskii korm, those systematic arrangements intended to supply Muscovite strel’tsy, had been re-established in 1613 following the Time of Troubles. Its resemblance to later eff orts to supply the new formation troops is obvious. However, the Musketeers’ Chancellery surpassed the eff orts 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 strel’tsy year ‘round, in war or in peace. Th e benefi ts did not extend to the entire army, of course; the musketeers were supposed to be its only clients. Tax payments came from both agricultural and urban lands, either in cash or in kind; in the seventeenth century, in at least some locations, payments in kind began only in the 1630s and thereaft er were frequently (but not exclusively) so levied 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, musketeers’ grain collections represented a renewed attempt at regular military food supply in Russia. Th e system paid out actual grain or prepared food–anything from 160–800 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 reasonably priced grain on the market, these grain payments could be more eff ective 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 carrying mills, ovens, and the other impedimenta of preparation.50 Th e strelets tax became increasingly systematic as the century wore on.

46 Davies, Idem.; Chernov, Vooruzhennye sily, 137; Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina, 212–214ff ; Akty Moskovskogo gosudarstva (St. Petersburg: 1890), vol. I nos. 202, 501. 47 When the Russian siege camp was surrounded by the Poles, Russian cavalry’s opportunities to forage were also eliminated. 48 Translation as in Davies, Warfare, 73. 49 P. Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo (St. Petersburg: 1905), 93–94. 50 Shein did send for bakers, however. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina, 209, 215–16. 138 carol b. stevens

Th e tax was more regularly and universally collected; systems for gathering, processing, storing, and transporting the grain became more reliable; the assessment rose. Nevertheless, it was not a notable success as a targeted supply system. Firstly, the numbers of strel’tsy 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 strel’tsy themselves were no longer Muscovy’s crack troops. Failure to pay the musketeers and their increasing use as a policing force then continued to undermine their usefulness as campaign 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 eff ective 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, musketeers 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 Th irteen Years’ War (1654–1667). 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 fi eld in signifi cant numbers. For such men, who were still bringing food from their estates, reliable supply remained a serious problem. At fi rst, the Crown’s reaction to supply questions was essentially unchanged. Some cash supplements were paid; some adjustments were made at military musters; the Military Chancellery reserved its increased, if not innovative, involvement in supply matters to mitigating problems at the front. Th us, the Crown was increasingly involved in all supply shipments: carts were commandeered from the postal system, tax relief was off ered to peasants for carting goods, and systematic labor draft s built ever more barges for forward shipments. Border fortresses and advance magazines were stocked. Maintaining riverine passage for supply boats

51 Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo, 98–99. logistics and the early modern russian army 139 remained an important military consideration.52 Attention to the transportation 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 supplies 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 foodstuff s 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. Th e only enduring exceptions were two large regiments of select infantry and a small number of strel’tsy and foreign offi cers. Otherwise, new formation infantry draft - ees were oft en 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. Th e Crown’s interest in their supply, as with other troops, applied only to their activities while on active duty, and that, too, was at fi rst 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 fi lled a variety of regional demands.54

52 Peter B. Brown, “Biting Off More than Th ey 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, 488–516; AMG II ## 906, 921, 1036; F. I. Kalynchev, Pravovye voprosy voennoi organizatsii Russkogo gosudarstva vtoroi polovine XVII veka (Moscow: 1954), 124–25. 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. 13–15; Stevens, Steppe, 53–54. 140 carol b. stevens

Two things conspired to bring about a signifi cant 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 off ered food allowances by the Crown) grew to 50–60,000 by 1663. Secondly, Muscovy had debased its coinage since the beginning of the war to help pay for the fi ghting; by the early 1660s, infl ation 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 infl ated prices spurred a number of foreign offi cers to request permission 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, 1663–83) 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 disappeared. Among other things it apparently provisioned infantry troops on campaign from escheated, confi scated, and court lands.56 Th e activities 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 fi rst, these were Novgorod and Belgorod; later Sevsk and others would be added. Th e 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 systems 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 destinations—for distribution or sale to new formation troops from the Belgorod region, to the Don Cossacks, and other points. Th e annual tax was bolstered on several occasions by emergency levies of additional grain. Th e new regional organization was surprisingly eff ective in collecting a great deal of grain and extending the still relatively ineff ective military transportation system; in terms of volume alone, for example, the south

55 Hellie, Enserfment, 196; AMG, vol. II nos. 921 and ff . 56 See Tsentral’nyi 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 originating in the region. In practice, there were other demands on the system, such as payments to Don Cossacks and support for garrison troops in the war zone.57 Th at 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 fl exibly distributed 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 signifi cant resources in a way that mitigated some supply problems for the Muscovite army at the front. It did not, however, confront directly the diffi culties of continued seasonal and individual supply. 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 servicemen’s already doubt- ful ability to supply himself for a campaign from his own land. Furthermore, neither musketeers’ grain, nor any system instituted during the Th irteen Years’ War, developed into a national system supporting all troops. Th e reasons for this may be connected to the growing size of the Muscovite military. Th at is, the total number of Muscovite military operatives remained relatively steady (95–130,000) from the 1580s into the 1660s. However, from the late 1660s to the turn of the 18th century, the size of the military forces fi ghting in particular battles or campaigns more than doubled. Th e reasons for this sudden and very rapid expansion is not diffi cult 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 Doroshenko’s Ukraine still relied heavily on foraging, personal eff orts, and commercial initiative. But, they were also supplied by the growing fi eld supply network. In its eff orts 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 fl exibility, failures of supply were frequently due to distributional problems; the organization of transport was stretched beyond its limit.58 However, the prolonged confl ict over Ukraine sparked an eff ort at broad reform in Muscovy over the period between 1678 and 1682. In military terms, the reform’s accomplishment was to abolish the centrality of the hereditary cavalryman from the Muscovite army. Th e result was an army organized overwhelmingly in west European regimental 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 character of military assignments. Military service was envisioned as lasting for a campaign season or a campaign, followed by a return to personal lands or households for the winter months or during peacetime. Only the same few troops were permanent, paid soldiers. Because of the new character of the army, the demand for military supplies in the fi eld and in garrisons increased. Accompanying fi scal reforms rationalized taxation and accounting, but did not improve the Crown’s fi nancial situation as intended. Food supports, in particular, required the mobilization of many more resources even as the Russo-Turkish War (1678–81) 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 eff orts were remarkably successful in collecting appropriate amounts of resources. In 1686, in preparation for the fi rst 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 households that had held them, fed by an in-kind fodder collection, and sent

58 Stevens, Soldiers, 110–11; Davies, Warfare, 173–74. 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 allowances 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. Th e troops eventually departed two months later than expected. Military transports to and just beyond the frontier were also stretched thin–available supply barges were seriously over- loaded because there were not enough of them. Th ese events might not have been so signifi cant, 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 proportions—on the order of 20,000 carts. Th ere were apparently no serious eff orts 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 experience, 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 diff erent environments, covered about twelve miles a day; Golitsyn’s 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, Golitsyn’s army carried little or no fodder for its horses, expecting to collect it at every stop. Th is was standard practice, and it is indeed hard to imagine how fodder might have been carried for larger distances. Th e combination proved lethal. Th e Tatars deprived the Muscovites of steppe grass (and clean water) by the simple expedient of lighting it, and the massive 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 aft er a massive organizational eff ort 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 diffi culty even in less demanding circumstances—proved its Achilles heel. Th e campaigns against Crimea represented massive single eff orts at Muscovite army supply in the pre-Petrine period; in organizational form, they would be signifi cantly echoed by Peter I’s early campaigns against Azov.61 Th ereaft er, Peter’s eff orts 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.

Th roughout 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 numerically. 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 foodstuff s 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 generally took the form of gift s 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, 114–21; Stevens, “Why Seventeenth-century Muscovite Campaigns against Crimea Fell Short of What Counted,” Russian History/Historie Russe vol 19, no. 1–4 (1992): 487–504. 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 Ivan’s 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 available to the military. Th ese eff orts 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 strel’tsy, were originally intended to have peacetime access to these resources. By the seventeenth century, however, the size of Muscovite armies, and their changing goals—requiring longer campaigns, more siege warfare, and fortress defense—made military supply increasingly problematic. In an even more pronounced fashion, the Crown focused its eff orts on organizing the collection of new monetary and in-kind resources to support army action in the fi eld. With a degree of organizational innovation (that is, the creation of regional collections and then their coordination), the supply network by the 1680s was successful in mobilizing new volumes of supplies. It also developed a fl exible system of moving those supplies to the appropriate border points. Even excluding the particular logistical shortcomings of the Golitsyn campaigns, however, the system was regularly plagued with diffi culties in moving supplies beyond those points. Muscovy’s primary focus in military supply, in-kind resource mobilization, was a logical one. Th e French army of the late seventeenth century was supplied from four sources: cash (and credit) from the state treasury, personal expenditures by regimental commanders, levies in kind from populations outside of the French borders, and ‘contributions.’62 Such resources were available to Muscovy in comparatively limited amounts. One of them, commanders’ expenditures, was quite uncommon.63 Hence, Muscovy’s (reasonably successful) organizational eff ort to collect food in kind. However, some attendant logistical matters—the transportation of supply beyond the borders, baggage train size and organization, fodder supply, and the logistical expertise to manage them—remained problematic. Attempts to remedy these by established means, such as in-kind collections and labor draft s, did not

62 John A. Lynn, “Food, Funds, and Fortresses,” in his, ed., Feeding Mars, 137–160. 63 Sheremetev did pay for his troops during the 1670s. Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii sobrannye i izdannye Arkheografi cheskoiu 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, Muscovy’s 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 Peter’s 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 KHOJA’S HISTORY OF SAHIB GEREY KHAN1

Victor Ostapchuk

In terms of military prowess, longevity, and historical impact, the Crimean Khanate (1440s–1783) 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. Th us in their initial advance through most of Europe Mongols and Tatars were able to infl ict 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 eff ective introduction of gunpowder weapons, the Tatars were overwhelming in their military prowess. Certainly until the 16th century they won many more battles than they lost. Even with the introduction of gunpowder weaponry—muskets and cannons—it 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 campaign of 1221–1223 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 fi ft een thousand 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 diff erent entities than the initial Mongol Empire and its war machine.

1 Th is 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): 271–287 and is reprinted here with the author’s revisions and permission. 2 James Chambers, Th e Devil’s Horsemen: Th e 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 knowledge of paths and of hostile territory, ability to survive in diffi cult environments, and so forth. Th ey were not always forays by nomads greedy for plunder and oft en seemingly well-planned and carefully executed military operations. Th us far we have only a superfi cial knowledge of how the Crimean Tatars mounted their long-range campaigns. Much of what we think we know is based on scant evidence—oft en one or two testimonies of contemporaries whose information was not necessarily gained fi rsthand. Here we would like to bring to the fore data on Crimean Tatar military 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 Th e 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 military 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 sixteenth-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, Th e Administration of Warfare: Th e Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606, Vienna: VWGÖ, 1988) /=Beiheft e zur Weiner Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, ed. Arne A. Ambros and Anton C. Schaendlinger, vol. 14/. Th is work also contains a section based on Ottoman archival materials devoted to Khan Gazi Gerey’s 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 Özalp Gökbilgin 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 Gökbilgin 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 Khoja’s Tarih as a historical source.7 Moreover, although Inalcik’s article is primarily devoted to Crimean politics, he also pays attention to military matters, particularly Sahib Gerey’s Ottoman-style musket-armed troops and fi eld artillery (the Crimean army can be divided into two parts—the 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 qarachï begs). Here we will mostly concentrate on other aspects Crimean military operations, especially non-combative aspects of campaigns, such as organization, travel, protocol, and ritual. Of interest will be information on daily life. We will dwell less on those aspects already covered by İnalcık and instead refer the reader to his work. Although our knowledge 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 superfi cially 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 Crimée de 1532 à 1551), ed. Özalp Gökbilgin (Ankara: Baylan Matbaası, 1973) (henceforth Tarih). 6 Özalp Gökbilgin, 1532–1577 yılları arasında Kırım hanlığı’nın siyasî durumu (Ankara: Servinç Matbaası, 1973). Being devoted primarily to politics and international relations, Gökbilgin does not devote much attention to analysis of military aspects, though his extensive direct citations from Remmal Khoja contain much information on the military. 7 Halil Inalcik, “Th e Khan and the Tribal Aristocracy: Th e 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 3–4 (1979–1980): 445–66. 150 victor ostapchuk of İnalcık, 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 posol’skii prikaz (foreign offi ce)8 and the study of Crimean Tatars raids on the northern countries—Poland-Lithuania (i.e., mainly Ukraine) and Muscovy—by 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 (1532–1551) 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 1478–1514) to become khan of the Crimea. Between 1521 and 1524 Sahib Gerey ruled over the Khanate of Kazan. Sahib Gerey’s 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 qarachï, 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 court—he went on the hajj and even participated in Süleyman’s campaign against the Habsburgs in 1532. Th us he knew the Ottoman state and society quite well and it served as the model for his vision of the Crimean Khanate—a 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 author’s preference to give a

8 V. E. Syroechkovskii, “Mukhammed-Geraj i ego vassaly,” Uchenye zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 61 (1940): 3–71. 9 L. J. D. Collins, “Th e 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), 257–76. Th is study also gives references to other authors who have dealt with the Tatar raids. 10 Th e 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-fl own style and rhetoric. Th e Tarih is a veritable mine of information not only on Crimean politics, institutions, and military, but also on the daily life of the peoples 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 aff airs we note here that to a great degree campaigns take center stage in the Tarih—approximately 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 celebrations. In large part information on Crimean politics, institutions and even daily life in general is to be found within of Remmal Khoja’s relations of military activities. To gain an appreciation of the rich tapestry of Crimean Tatar military endeavors during the reign of Sahib Gerey as presented in the Tarih it would be useful to retell some of Remmal Khoja’s accounts of Tatar campaigns. Lack of space precludes such an approach and, in any case, reference to Özalp Gökbilgin’s text and translation edition can provide suffi cient access to the chronicler’s 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 military aff airs preserved in the Tarih. In a topic with such a thin data base every concrete and well-attested detail is important. Signifi cant 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. Th is is so because oft en our sources of concrete information on the Crimean Khanate, for example, travelers such as M. Litvin, d’Ascoli, 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. Oft en 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 certain 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 traditional nature of Tatar society, we hope that their picture can be applied 152 victor ostapchuk to other periods. Th is potential problem can apply to information given in the diplomatic papers of the posol’skii prikaz, for example reports by Muscovite envoys.11 When a completely original, independent 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 fi rst 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 edifi ce 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 information 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: Th is is the same campaign as the one personally headed by Sultan Süleyman the Magnifi cent to suppress and depose the disloyal Moldavian voyvoda, Petru Rareş. One of the results of this expedition was the detachment of southern Bessarabia, or the Bujaq, from Moldavia and occupation of Özi, 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 Agzï or simply Or, “the Ditch”) so as to protect the Crimea from the threat of a Nogay invasion in his absence. Remmal Khoja’s account gives few concrete details of Sahib Gerey’s actual military contributions to

11 For example, that which is the basis for Syroechkovskii, “Mukhammed-Geraj.” 12 We only include larger expeditions. Th e 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 Temrük, Sahib Gerey mobilized his forces, crossed the Straits of Kerch and set off to punish the Circassians. Along the way the khan encounters Qansavuq, chieft ain of the Janey Circas- sian tribe. Th e khan intends to punish him severely for not controlling the off ending Circassians responsible for the raids near Temrük (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 off ering to supply a signifi cant number of slaves to the sultan, khan, and Ottoman beg of Kefe. Although an expedition into the high Caucasus is unsuccessful in reaching the off ending Circassians (see below), on the return trip Sahib Gerey allows his forces to acquire captives from among the Circassian population.14 3. “Kürel/Körel”15 (northwestern Ukraine—Galicia or Volhynia—or Belarus), winter 1539–1540: A campaign led by Sahib Gerey’s son,

13 Tarih, 25–31. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 14–17. 14 Tarih, 35–45. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 18–19. 15 At fi rst, 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- ketün chapub Rusun tahtgahïna erüb) and again once the expedition is underway, the operation is referred to as Rus aqïnï and it is said that the Tatars have reached a place near the Rus frontier (Rus serhaddï). However there is no clear indication that this frontier was crossed and that Muscovy was entered. Instead the Tatars seek information from captured informants (dil) so as to learn the location of a certain Kürel or Körel (Gürel according to Gökbilgin—in the original KWRL)—a person. a people, or a place. Gökbilgin does not attempt to identify this word and considers the raid as being mounted against Muscovy. However, Kürel/Körel most likely stems from the Ruthenian version of the common word for king, korol’ (kral, originally from Karol [Charlemagne]). Th e late Iaroslav Dashkevych, has connected this to the Galician Kingdom (Galicia-Volhynia), whose rulers had the title of korol’ (Iaroslav Dashkevych, Monhol’ske / irans’ke / tiurks’ke “kerel”: Etymolohiia ta semantyka etnotoponimu (XIII-XIV st.)., V. Skhodoznavchi chytannia A. Kryms’koho: Tezy dopovidei mizhnarod- noï naukovoï konferentsiï: Kyïv, 10–12 zhovtnia 2001 r. (Kiev: Instytut skhodoznavsta Akademiï nauk Ukraïny, 2001), 85–86). Since Volhynia was then in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, perhaps Kürel/Körel came to designate the latter? We also note that the 154 victor ostapchuk

Emin Gerey, but under the oversight of his tutor (atalïq), a certain İbrahim Pasha, aimed at raiding one of the northern countries for captives. Th e 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 Bel’skii, Sahib Gerey mounts an expedition hoping to cross the Oka and strike deep into Muscovy. Th e chance of success seems quite high, because Bel’skii 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, chieft ain of the Mangït branch of the Nogays, neither of them dares to be the fi rst 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, fi nding out the location of the Tatar army, bring suffi cient musket- bearing and artillery forces to the intended fording site and thwart the Tatar incursion. On the return trip the Tatars obtain some captives for enslavement (esir, “captive, slave”).17 5. Circassia (Janey tribe), 1542 (?)18: Janey chieft ain Qansavuq’s 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 defi nitely deliver plentiful captives is rejected by the khan. When Sahib Gerey proceeds into the mountains 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, 46–51. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 19–20. 17 Tarih, 56–66. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 20–22. 18 In general Remmal Khoja gives very few dates. Here we follow the dating established or assumed in Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu. More work with other sources is needed before the dates of some of the campaigns described the Tarih can be more fi rmly established. 19 Tarih, 72–82. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 24–26. crimean tatar long-range campaigns 155

6. Qabarda (Qabartay), 1544 (?)20: Elbozadï, a Qabardinian chieft ain, 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/Or—the Dnieper—Azaq at the mouth of the Don—across the Kuban steppes). Th e key tactic in this campaign is to arrive at the fi elds of the Qabarda (Qabartay mezra‘larï) during the harvest time (oraq zamanï) when most of the Qabardinians would be out on the fi elds 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 unsuccessful (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. Th e 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 Gerey’s fi eld artillery and musket-bearing troops. Yagmurji fl ees 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 fi re as well as a vicious man- to-man saber battle (see below). Th e result is a massacre of the Nogay forces (the so-called Nogay Qïrgïnï).23 9. Circassia, 1551: Th e 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 offi cial reason for the campaign 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, 83–96. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 26–27. 22 Tarih, 97–105. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 27–28. 23 Tarih, 106–13. See also Gökbilgin, Kırım siyasî durumu, 29. 156 victor ostapchuk

violations. Th e expedition includes an incident in which the place where a Circassian leader is hiding is fully surrounded yet he manages to escape which causes the khan to vent his wrath on his commanders. Eventually the Tatars catch up their foes with and attack. Th e 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 forces—by 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 khan—in the winter of 1539–1540 Sahib Gerey proclaimed to the Crimean begs “let us this year not be deprived from making raids (aqïn) and from the meritorious act of holy war (gaza)” and then suggested 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 interpolations by our Ottoman author. Even if the degree of Tatar religiousity was not great, references to gaza can be connected with Tatar awareness of and receptivity to this powerful justifi cation or excuse for waging 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 oft en 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 expeditions,26 surprisingly, in the Tarih winter is mentioned only once in this

24 Tarih, 121–43. 25 Tarih, 46. 26 E.g., Guillaume Le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan, Description d’Ukraine qui sont plu- sieurs provinces du Royame de Pologne contenues depuis les confi ns de la Moscouie, jusques aux limites de la Translivanie, Rouen, 1660, 41–46 (Ukrainian translation: Opys Ukraïny, kil’kokh provintsii Korolivstva Pol’s’koho… (Kiev: Vydavnystsvo “Naukova crimean tatar long-range campaigns 157 context. Mentioned more oft en as an optimal campaigning time is that of the harvest. Th us, during his proposal to the Crimean begs to mount a campaign in winter 1539–1540, Sahib Gerey says: “in this land (vilayet) there are two times for a raid: one of them is harvest time (oraq zamanï) and the other is winter (qïsh eyyamïdur).” 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 Süleyman’s mobilization order: “in the second month (i.e., starting from a month’s time from now—V.O.) [and] during the time of the harvest we too will cross the Dnieper River (Özi Suyï) and move towards Aqkerman… because if the harvest time does not yet arrive the army will suff er 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 specifi ed. In most cases it was also stated that each warrior was to bring three months provisions (azïq or zahire). Th e time limit for mobilization to be completed varied from fi ve, ten days to one month. In some cases a specifi c day of the month by when the troops were to report was mentioned (for example, “the fi ft eenth 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 fi rst 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), 58–62; English translation: A Description of Ukraine, tr., ed. Andrew B. Pernal, Dennis F. Essar (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1993), 48–53. 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 Beauplan’s 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, Th e Art of War in the Western World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 46–48). Th is 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 diff erent times and by the harvest time steppe grasses have long since dried away. What are the implications of information 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 Qïl Burun peninsula (Kinburns’ka kosa), that is, opposite the fortress of Özi (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 diff erent 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 specifi ed as the place of assembly.29 Th e mobilization proclamations applied to both the forces of the Crimean tribes located throughout the peninsula (oft en outside the peninsula as well) and to the khan’s 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 qarachï begs (chieft ains of the four main Crimean tribes), to bring only select men (yarar nökör ve erenlerden ihtiyar, “suitable retainers and choice men”) and not to allow the common subjects (re‘aya) to be deceived into joining the campaign, for the Circassians are a paltry people (garet edejegimüz 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 yarlïq or order issued by the khan is quoted as saying, no doubt with some exaggeration, that “no one is to remain in the land (i.e., the Crimea—V.O.), the entire people (or army, halq) is to go on war footing (sefer ayagïn edüb), and if there is anyone who is not at the khan’s side aft er Or Agzï, his property is to be raided and his head struck down.” Th ereaft er the khan’s divan or council adjourned and proclamations were made in all corners of the land that if any male between age fi ft een 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 (Caff a) at Sarï Göl (“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, 98–99. crimean tatar long-range campaigns 159 campaign, the khan’s troops varied between 200 and 1,000 for the musket-bearing infantry and 10,000 for all the khan’s forces including begs attached in service to him, while the tribal forces, if Remmal Khoja’s fi gures 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 khan’s forces rather than those of the tribal cavalry. Inalcik has already focused on the khan’s Ottoman style units and their eff ectiveness in battle— janissaries and local Crimean musket-bearers (tüfengchi), fi eld artillery (zarbuzan), and wagons carrying various necessities for a campaign (zarbuzan ‘arabalarï or top ‘arabalarï, “fi eld-artillery wagons” or simply “artillery wagons”; jebehane ‘arabalarï, “munitions wagons”; matbah ‘arabalarï, “kitchen wagons”; zahire ‘arabalarï, “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 fi eld-tactic 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 Th e Tarih has a wealth of information on various aspects of Crimean Tatar military operations both combative and non-combative beyond the initial stage of preparations—travel and camping, intelligence gathering, search and destroy missions, plundering expeditions, battles, and even fortress construction. Enhancing the value of Remmal Khoja’s 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 oft en hostile environments—as will be seen below, our chronicle oft en gives apparently authentic and rare details of physical geography and it also reveals a subjective aspect—the perception and conceptualization of geography and environments. Here we can only give a sampling of such data. Remmal Khoja provides ample information on river crossings by the khanate’s 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,” 459–461. On its eff ective use by the Zaporozhian Cossacks see Beauplan, Description d’Ukraine…, 47–51 (Ukrainian translation, 63–65; English translation, 56–57). 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 fl at and rolling plains in which one roamed with ease to and fro; to a signifi cant degree it was a patchwork of great fi elds divided by gullies and, above all, rivers, some of which are large and not easy to cross. Th us fording such great rivers as the Dniester, Dnieper, Don, and Kuban by a signifi cant 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 diff erent crossings of rivers or straits by Crimean forces—one at the Dnieper, Dniester, and an unnamed river in the Caucasus, two across the Kuban River, and fi ve across the Straits of Kerch. Th ere 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, raft s were constructed (sal bagla-). Th e exact utilization of the raft s is not specifi ed, but it is assumed that, as other sources indicate, the Tatars placed their equipment and supplies on the raft s while the horses swam alongside, possibly with their owners on them or only holding onto their manes.35 Each unit of the army would cross together. Th e 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 ijazet—“permission, permit”) to begin the crossing. Th e forces of the four main tribes, the qarachï, crossed fi rst, one aft er another. Oft en the Shirin or the Barïn tribe were the fi rst to go across. In all cases the khan went aft er 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 Th e 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 expedition), a day and a half (Straits of Kerch in the 1542 Circassian expedition), and on one occasion three days (the Dnieper in the 1538 Moldavian expedition). On a crossing of the Kuban River near Temrük

35 Beauplan, Description d’Ukraine…, 50–54 (Ukrainian translation, 67–68; English translation, 60–61). 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 (ta’ife) as it crossed. Altogether 40,000 men “were written down” (qaleme aldïlar), which suggest that registers or deft ers with the names of the men were compiled.37 During a forced march in the Caucasus mountains in pursuit of the enemy, the khan decided to ford a large river in the night. He ordered a large fi re 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 campaign—where 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 khan’s station and patrolled around it all night, serving in shift s (nöbetle).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 Khoja’s 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 fi res. 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 side—serious 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 fi ght, but in Remmal Khoja’s rendition, the Tatars

37 Tarih, 38. 38 Tarih, 126. 39 Tarih, 26, 74, 92. 40 Inalcik, “Khan and Tribal Aristocracy,” 460–461. 41 Tarih, 39–40. Cf. a similar scene in the 1542 Circassian campaign, Tarih, 77. 42 Reluctance to report defeats suff ered by one’s 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 supposedly defeated are reported, which leads the reader to believe that the reverse situation did not occur, which from other sources we know was not so. See Victor Ostapchuk, “Th e Human Landscape of the Ottoman Black Sea in the Face of the Cossack Naval Raids,” Oriente Moderno, n.s., 20 (2001): 23–95, esp. 89–94. 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 fi ckle nature. In the 1544 expedition against the Qabarda, the Qabardinians decided to make a night attack against the Tatar camp. Th e khan and his forces was well-defended by a wagon-camp, which included constant sentry patrols armed with muskets—here we have a clear example of the eff ectiveness of gunpowder weapons and wagon-camp tactics, for the Qabardinians realized that to attack the khan’s camp would be futile. And so they decided to mount a surprise 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 fi rst waves of Qabardinians attackers was trampled under the hooves of the horses of the succeeding waves. As to weapons, it was the Tatar arrow-fi re 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 fi re by fi eld-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 fi rst 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 fi re a blast with forty fi eld- cannons (darbuzan / zarbuzan) and follow up with a volley by his musket-bearing troops. Th is combination brought great disorder and damage 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 fi re, and had to be decided by saber (qïlïch) fi ghting.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 utilization—at least in the eyes of Remmal Khoja disorganization or ill-fortune of the enemy and traditional arrow fi re and saber fi ghting also played an important role in the outcome.

43 In typical fashion our chronicler informs us that not even single Tatar’s nose was bloodied, Tarih, 91–92. 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 diffi culties of operating in it. Th is 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. Th us, in Sahib Gerey’s fi rst 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 aft er 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 snowfi elds 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 fl y 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. Th is 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 according to the informant included a ditch implanted with sharp pointed stakes). Aft er some hesitation Sahib Gerey decided to make an ascent to this stronghold and to this end he selected a special force—from every unit (qosh) two men with one horse per man—while 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. Th e terrain was so steep and narrow that the Tatars could only proceed in single fi le. Below them were precipices. Remmal Khoja notes that “if a man slipped and fell he would break into a thousand pieces”; Sahib Gerey’s 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). Th e 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 hundred horses and several scores of men had fallen into the abysses. With the force and its commanders demoralized and confused, the khan fi nally announced that those who wished to return may, but that he would remain in the mountains through the winter. However, his advisors talked him out of this folly. Th e 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 neighboring states and empires: “Oh, our padishah! Th ese [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 country…for this Circassian people (Cherkes ta’ifesi) are a naked people (i.e., impoverished—V.O.).”45 Deciding that such an enemy was not worth the risk and suff ering that this expedition had brought and that such exertion was even beneath his dignity, Sahib Gerey found comfort in these words and aft er 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 captives 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 countries—Muscovy 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 “gift s,” and sometimes also with political aims in mind), the Tarih provides relatively little material on such undertakings. Th e only example of an expedition mounted purely with aim of seizing captives in the north was the campaign of the winter of 1539–1540 headed by Emin Gerey, son of the khan, into northwestern Ukraine.47 Th e picture presented by Remmal Khoja is similar to that

45 Tarih, 43. 46 Tarih, 44. Th e accounts of the other three expeditions to the Caucasus region also contain excellent material on the nature of military operations there. 47 At least offi cially, the campaign against Muscovy in 1541 did not seem to be primarily 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 operation at the destination, the Tatar army moved slowly on its journey to enemy territory—in this expedition the frontier was reached in twenty fi ve days.48 Once the border of the target territory was reached, Emin Gerey designated a raiding party (chapgul) of unspecifi ed size, with two horses for each man.49 Th e raiding party was to return to the main force within a set number of days (here ten days). Meanwhile the commander, Emin Gerey together with his milk brothers (emeldesh) and retinue (hass nökörleri)—two thousand men total—stayed behind, though they too mounted their own operations locally raiding villages in the vicinity.50 Th is same northern campaign of the winter of 1539–1540 provides a good example of the dangers of the steppe. On the return from successful raids, laden with booty, Emin Gerey’s force was caught in heavy snows and extreme cold. Th e conditions were so bad that, in the words of Remmal Khoja, “from morning until night they could [only] proceed the distance of three arrow shots.” Aft er 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 Mangït Nogays led by the khan’s great enemy, Baqi Beg, took advantage of its weakened condition and attacked and plundered it. Th ough the party was eventually relieved by fresh forces from the Crimea, according to Remmal Khoja four to fi ve 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 d’Ukraine…, 42 (Ukrainian translation, 59; English translation, 48–49); 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,” 267–68. 50 Tarih, 50. 51 Tarih, 50–51. 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 khan’s 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). Th e importance of the slavery institution in pre-modern Islamic societies, especially in the Ottoman Empire and for the Crimean Khanate, is beyond a doubt. Th e Ottomans were to a great degree dependent on slaves as laborers in craft production and agriculture, agents in commerce and domestic servants, and of course as soldiers. Th e 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 signifi cant sectors of the khanate’s 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 societies 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. Th is 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. Th at is, being ever conscious of the fact that societies of the past had their rules and moral systems that could be quite diff erent 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 aft er 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. Th us in the Astrakhan expedition an advance expeditionary force with wagons, fi eld cannons (zarbuzan), and janissaries was sent ahead to Astrakhan—its 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 chapgulï), Tarih, 125–26. 52 On slavery in the Ottoman Empire, including the Crimea see Halil Inalcik, “Servile Labor in the Ottoman Empire,” in Th e Mutual Eff ects of the Islamic and Judeo- Christian Worlds: Th e East European Pattern, eds. Abraham Ascher, Tibor Halasi-Kun, Béla K. Király (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn College Press, 1979), 26–52. 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 excellent source on the Ottoman and Tatar attitudes towards enslavement. He makes no attempts to conceal the keen interest of the Tatars in capturing humans—unabashedly he speaks of the great numbers captured and aft er each successful operation he conveys the great satisfac- tion that acquiring slaves gave to the Tatars—“the heart of the people (or troops—V.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 suffi cient portions of captives and other booty. Oft en offi cials 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 satisfi ed 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 off set by the capture of suffi cient slaves; conversely, without enough captives a military 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 captives, presumably because the Moldavians were subjects of the Ottoman sultan. Th is 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 gönlü shen ve shadman, Tarih, 80, see also 44, 128–29. 54 Tarih, 44, 80, 128–29. 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 purpose—either 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 successful 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 diff erent situation connected with captive-taking: When a nökör 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 nökör was located and the slave returned. Th e off ending party was then subjected to a humiliating public punishment—he was chained by his neck to an artillery wagon and whipped at every stop along the way back to the Crimea. Th e khan made it a point that all the army saw this spectacle and what would happen to anyone who dared to steal someone else’s slave.59 In his presentations of Crimean Tatar military endeavors Remmal Khoja pays no less attention to protocol, ritual, ceremony, and festivities than he does to concrete military actions. His frequent and lengthy descriptions of solemnities and festivities—public prayer, troop displays, parades, celebrations—are an indication of their importance to the Ottoman and Tatar mentality (in this respect probably they were no diff erent than other peoples of the age) and these activities can be considered integral components of a campaign. Th us when in 1539 Sahib Gerey set out from his capital Bakhchesaray against the Circas- sians, we are given a description of a splendid spectacle: Th e royal grooms saddled the khan’s horses with jewel-encrusted saddles and dressed them in gold-plated harnesses. Th e horse-tail standards (tug) were planted and the fl ags (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 fi nal time before setting out he turned in the direction of the palace gate. Th rongs of people chanted prayers as he and his entourage and escort—service begs (ichki begleri) and janissaries—with the fl ags above them and their extra horses following behind rode away on their gaza-bound journey.60

57 Here a compromise was eff ected—Sahib Gerey permitted limited capture of cattle—one head from each fl ock, Tarih, 31. 58 Tarih, p. 63. 59 Tarih, 93–94. 60 Tarih, 36–37. crimean tatar long-range campaigns 169

Similarly, before Sahib Gerey’s son Emin Gerey set out on the campaign of the winter of 1539–1540 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 khil‘at 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 well—both its vanguard and its rear, and of course, always be courageous). Th ereupon 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). Th en 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. Gift s were distributed to all as the gathering lasted the entire day and into the evening. Th e 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 Gerey’s own campaign against Muscovy in 1541 Remmal Khoja gives a diff erent picture of the eve before departure: aft er 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 namazï) and emerged from his prayer chamber to bid farewell to the palace women. Th ereupon he made a festive departure with a fanfare parade similar to that of the 1539 campaign.62 Th ere 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 fi re by the

61 Tarih, 47–48. 62 Tarih, 59–61. 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. Th us, 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 campaign was also occasioned by great celebrations, oft en lasting several days, which included banquets, readings of a celebratory work devoted to the triumphant course of the campaign (gazaname, zafername), gift - giving, khil‘at ceremonies, and distribution of captives amongst the elite of the khanate.65 In describing the celebrations aft er the Astrakhan campaign, Remmal Khoja makes the social and psychological utility of such events evident: “…the meals were prepared and a general spectacle (görünüsh-i ‘amm) was made. Th e 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 fi lled with people. All the people off ered 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 integrating role for the society of such celebrations involving its high, middle, and lower orders.67 Th e importance in Crimean Tatar society of the khan’s personal participation in public occasions is also evident in a comment by the Habsburg ambassador to Muscovy, Sigismund Herberstein, on Sahib Gerey’s predecessor, Sa‘adet Gerey: “Being beholden to the Turkish (i.e., Ottoman—V.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. Th ere are other military activities on which the chronicle has information as well as

63 Tarih, 85, 88. 64 Tarih, 92. 65 Tarih, 30–31, 44–45, 81–82, 95–96. 66 Tarih, 105. 67 On the importance of spectacles (görünüsh) see also Tarih, 32. 68 Sigismund Gerbershtein [Herberstein], Zapiski o Moskovii, tr. A. I. Malenina and A. V. Nazarenko (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1988), 184. crimean tatar long-range campaigns 171 subtleties and problematic points of Remmal Khoja’s work which we have not discussed because of the lack of space. To gain a full appreciation 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 (deft ers) exist for our topic, materials that would give us a multitude of names, dates, numbers, 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 inevitable 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

Th e 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. Th e 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. Th is triumph of tenacity and audacity over military might was celebrated in the fi rst 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 confl icting, fragmentary accounts of the siege that are available in Russian diplomatic records. Th e fortifi ed 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. Th e size of the Ottoman garrison at Azov fl uctuated but rarely exceeded a few thousand troops. Internal troubles in the Ottoman Empire and confl icts with the Crimean Tatars further weakened the vulnerable garrison.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 comments 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), 85–89; David Goldfrank, “Azov, Russian Relations With,” in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (Gulf Breeze: Academic International Press, 1976), 219–223; Mihnea Berindei and Gilles Veinstein, “La Tana- Azaq,” in Turcica Revue D’ etudes Turques VIII (1976), 110–201. 2 On Ottoman Azov and its garrison see Alan W. Fisher, “Azov in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 21, no. 2 (1972): 174 brian j. boeck

Cossacks took the fort aft er tunneling under and exploding a key section of its walls. Th e Don Cossacks were a multi-ethnic military brotherhood allied with Russia.3 In exchange for cash, weapons and supplies they protected Russian diplomats, collected information on developments in the Black Sea region, and conducted raids against the Ottomans and their Tatar allies. Th e Cossacks acknowledged an allegiance to the tsar but elected their own leaders, governed themselves without government interference, and conducted independent relations with other frontier communities. On the eve of the siege the Muscovite government neither vigorously supported the Cossacks nor intervened decisively to disrupt their siege preparations.4 Russian diplomats attempted to convince their Ottoman counterparts that the tsar had no infl uence over the Don Cossacks, while secretly providing the Don Host with limited fi nancial 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 aff airs, modern accounts of the siege rely heavily on a literary work, the so-called Poetical Tale of the Siege of Azov.5 Th is text has beguiled generations of Russian readers with its vivid accounts of the sights and sounds of battle, 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

161–174. For the Cossack conquest of Azov and events of the 1630s, see I. F. Bykadorov, Donskoe voisko v bor’be za vykhod v more 1546–1646 (Paris, 1937) 68–9, 89–94. 3 On the Don Cossacks in this period, consult N.A. Mininkov, Donskoe kazachestvo v epokhu pozdnego srednevekov’ia (Rostov-na-Donu: 1998). 4 Bykadorov, Donskoe voisko v bor’be za vykhod v more, 95–106; Mininkov, Donskoe kazachestvo, 173–179, 375–392. 5 Even a competent recent analysis by a talented young Russian historian uses testimony 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 feodal’noi Rossii (Moscow: Al’ians, 2006) 111–176. 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 bor’ba donskikh kazakov v 1642 g.,” Trudy otdela drevne- russkoi literatury, VI, (1948) 24–59. 6 For evidence that the text originated in Moscow, see Boeck, Shift ing 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- fi ed as a source for historical analysis.7 Th ree groups of hitherto under-appreciated sources in Russian provide important information on the events of 1641. 1) Th e 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 survived, 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 nineteenth century,10 the records of a Russian embassy to Istanbul that left Moscow in May 1641 and returned aft er 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, aft er the conquest of Azov in 1696. Th is 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. 570–582. I presented additional argumentation for this view in “Th e 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 (1910–1973) (Moscow, 2010), 314–324. 7 For a model example of the kind of study that the Azov tales require, see Daniel Clarke Waugh, Th e Great Turkes Defi ance: On the History of the Apocryphal Correspondence of the Ottoman Sultan and its Muscovite and Russian Variants (Columbus: Slavica, 1978). In particular Waugh’s discussion on pages 86–89 is important for any future study of the milieu in which the Azov tales emerged. 8 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov [hereaft er RGADA], f. 89, kn. 14, ll. 38–41ob; RGADA, f. 89, 1641, d. 4, ll. 1–7. 9 RGADA f. 159 op. 1, d. 28, ll. 1–4. 10 For published documents, see Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka [henceforth RIB], (Saint Petersburg: 1906) volume 24; N. A. Popov, ed., Akty moskovskago gosudarstva [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): 169–203, 471–494. 176 brian j. boeck not merely repeat information from Russian accounts. Future studies may even determine that its information derives from European diplomatic 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 fortifi ed 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 fl at plain. Built in the era before artillery became predominant, it appeared unimpressive to a Muscovite offi cial who inspected it before the siege and pronounced that it was “not strong and quite thin.”15 Th e fortifi cations 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 fortifi cations 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 Th e sizes of the respective military forces have never been precisely determined, but it is clear that Ottoman offi cials mounted a major eff ort 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. Th e 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 numbered 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 specifi c to derive from oral tradition as Kuts suggested (“Azovskaia oborona 1641 g.” p. 112 and p 163 note 152). It includes names of Ottoman offi cials, 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. 358–59. See also I. V. Volkov, “Azovskaia krepost’ glazami Evlii Chelebi i russkikh voennykh topografov XVII–XVIII vv.,” in V. E. Maksimenko, ed., Istoricheskaia geografi ia Dona i Severnogo Kavkaza (Rostov-on-Don: 1992), 83–94. 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,” 190–191. the siege of azov in 1641 177

Th is 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. Th ere appears to be no compelling reason for discounting the fi gure of 5,367 Cossack defenders contained in one of the documents derived from the lost Cossack report, since other witnesses 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 refl ects 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. Th e 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 Th is accords very well with the Ottoman pattern of mobilization, 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. Th e 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 Th is accords well with Katib Chelebi’s description of a typical Ottoman fl eet 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 1500–1700 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 1999), 36. 21 Th e precise fi gure is from RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 3ob. For 3,000, see RIB, 24: 230. For 5–6,000, see RIB, 24: 219. Greeks in Istanbul heard from Ottoman informants 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. Th e presence of women is confi rmed 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 fi gures, 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. 7–8. 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 fragmentary sources. Very little news escaped from the fort while it was in the Ottoman siege stranglehold and the reports written aft er the conclusion 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 bombardment began in late June and lasted for over a month.28 Bombs and mortars (iadra ognennyia chinenyia) were fi red to provide cover for the construction of a massive earthen rampart.29 Th is rampart was then used as a platform for over two weeks of cannon fi re (probably in July 1641). According to the Cossacks, 700 to 1,000 shots were fi red every day and other eyewitnesses also mention incessant fi ring from morning to night.30 Th e result of the bombardment was the leveling of all but one section of Azov’s outer walls.31 Eight of eleven towers were destroyed or damaged.32 When the Ottomans fi lled in parts of the ditch with dirt and debris and captured the outer ring of fortifi cations in the last days of July, the Cossacks retreated to the medieval fortress.33 Aft er the Ottomans pounded its walls with their artillery, the Cossacks hunkered down in what they called “a fourth, earthen fort” and in fortifi ed, underground bunkers.34 By early August 1641 the Ottoman army started to exhaust its supplies of lead, projectiles, and gunpowder, ending the fi rst 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. Novosel’skii, Bor’ba 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 fi ghting. Two groups of sources note that negotiations were conducted between the Cossacks and Ottoman offi cials. In their report to Moscow, the Cossacks highlighted that they had rejected Turkish off ers of up to 1,000 gold talers per Cossack defender and spurned “much treasure” off ered 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 aft er their retreat.37 Th ese events gave the Cossacks an opportunity to rest, recuperate and regroup before the fi nal assaults. Aft er supplies and reinforcements arrived in September 1641, the Ottoman forces attempted a fi nal assault, but again sustained major casualties.38 During the various stages of the siege, the Cossacks were able to infl ict large numbers of casualties upon the Ottoman camp. Th ey successfully 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 Th ey also conducted frequent sorties from the fort against the Ottoman camp. Th e Cossacks themselves reported savage fi ghting in the trenches in which small-caliber fi rearms 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 fi lled 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. 141–142. Th is 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,” 157–158. 37 Cruys, “Rozyskaniia o Done,” 194. 38 Cruys, “Rozyskaniia o Done,” 196–197. See also Kuts “Azovskaia oborona,” 167–170. 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 tunnels in their defense of the fort. See RIB 24: 218–19. 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 Novosel’skii, Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva, 287. 42 RGADA, f. 89, 1641, d. 4, ll. 1–7. 43 RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast’ 1 ll. 145–146. 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 fl ee in terror” (ustrashas’ otoshli). In spite of plans to winter in Crimea and resume the siege, the Ottomans began a hasty retreat starting in late September 1641.44 Th e literary tales would later explain this retreat as the result of divine intervention, but logistics hint at more material reasons. Th e dearth of provisions and the dearness of victuals hastened the end of the campaign season.45 All three groups of sources provide fi gures for Ottoman casualties, but once again there are discrepancies in the numbers. Th e 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 fi ghting.46 Th ose captured during the Ottoman retreat gave a total fi gure of 70,000 that supposedly came from counts (smety) by Ottoman offi cials.47 Russian diplomats in Ottoman lands were quoted fi gures 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 fi ghting.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: “Th ey returned to their galleys utterly shamed and

44 RGADA, f. 159, op. 1, d. 28, l. 3–3ob. 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: 285–6. 48 RGADA f.89, op. 1, 1640, d. 1, chast’ 1 l.220, l. l07, l. 139. For 20,000 see RIB, 24: 286–287. 49 Cruys, “Rozyskaniia o Done,” 200. On the loss of “6000 best people” in Ottoman ranks, see Novosel’skii, Bor’ba 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 Th e words of the Ottoman participants of the campaign, as reported by Russian diplomats, are remarkably similar: “We have never experienced such unheard of shame;” “Such a great victory and such great damage has never been infl icted 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 offi cials 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 history 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 offi cial memory. Only Russian contemporaries recognized the signifi cance of the siege. In an enthusiastic 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 “Th e Poetical Tale of the Siege of Azov”

Th is translation is based upon the text edited by Natal’ia 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. Th ey 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. Th e pashas were named Kapitan, Mustafa, {Husein, and Ibrahim}. To lead and oversee them in place of himself, he [the sultan] sent a close associate 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, gathering 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 fi ghting men, not including ordinary people from Kaff a 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. Th ey 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. Th e forces that were gathered against us included many countless thousands of ordinary people, such that their numbers could neither be counted nor recorded. Th e 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. Th ese 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. Th e cannonballs were great in size: 36 pounds, 55 pounds, and 72 pounds per ball. Th ey also had all kinds of small ordinance, cannons and guns. Th ere were 674 cannons, not including large caliber mortars, which numbered 32. Th eir 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. Th e Turkish tsar prepared to attack us Cossacks across the sea for exactly four years and in the fi ft h 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 fi elds 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 fl ooded the meadows. Th e Turks began to stake their Turkish tents on our fi elds. Th eir 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. Aft er that, in their regiments there was great cannon and musket fi re 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, fi re and smoke billowed to the sky. Our fortifi cations shook from their fi ery shooting [artillery charges]. Th e 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 terrifi ed of them at that time and it was both disturbing and marvelous to witness their organized, Muslim arrival. Th e 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. Th ey began to arrange themselves less than 500 yards from the Azov fort. Th eir Janissary captains approached us and the fort in disciplined formations in huge, great regiments. Th eir standards are enormous and indescribably black. Th eir brass tympanums thundered and their horns blared and they were beating upon huge, unheard-of drums. Th eir twelve Janissary captains besieged us forcefully coming up as close to the fort as possible. Th ey 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. Th e wicks of their musket-locks blazed like burning candles. In each captain’s regiment there are 12,000 Janissaries. Th ey are all equipped with fi rearms and each wears on his head a gold helmet. All of their outfi ts are of the same reddish color, which is [brilliant] like a sunrise. Th ey all have long-barreled Turkish arquebuses with lock mechanisms, and each wears on his head a pointed metal helmet [shishak]. When seen together [in multitudes these helmets] appear like a constellation of stars. Together with them in lines stood the two German colonels with their soldiers, and in each regiment there are 6,000 soldiers. Th e 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 fi rst 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 fl y without fear like soaring eagles and prance in the deserts like ferocious lions, you free and fi erce Cossacks of the Don, our near neighbors of erratic character, evil desert-dwellers, unrighteous murderers and merci less bandits! Your eyes are insatiable. How is it that for ages you never fi ll your greedy stomachs? Against whom have you committed such off enses 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 fl ee from his {awesome} hands? {Can you fl y like birds out of Azov?} You enraged Murat Sultan his highness the Turkish tsar. First you murdered the Turkish ambassador Th omas Cantakuzenus on the Don, killing him together with all the Armenians and Greeks. You also took from our tsar his favorite hereditary holding, 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 yourselves 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 sultan’s 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 tsar’s 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 tsar’s 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 God’s grave [Translator’s 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. Don’t 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 your brothers: felons, Cossacks and bandits. For him it is fi tting to defeat a great tsar who is equal to him in honor. Your bandit blood means nothing to him. 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. We’ll 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. Th ere aren’t as many hairs on your heads as there are Turkish forces near Azov. You yourselves, stupid felons, see with your own eyes the sultan’s 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 fl y over the length of our amassed forces, for it would be so terrifi ed 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 fi erce 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 Tsar’grad forever. He’ll 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 Tsar’grad [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 battlefi eld 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 interpreters 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 outfi ts 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 knowledge. By capturing us Cossacks in Azov he will not add much honor to his tsarist Turkish name. He will not erase and eff ace 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 won’t be able to escape across the sea. And if only God will deliver us from [the sultan’s] 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 suff er 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 pleasing 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! We’ll fi ght 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! Aft er 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 God’s assistance we’re 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 loft y 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 fi elds, tomorrow 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 fl ying over our fi elds and screeching and crawing awaiting you. By the Don brown foxes howl. [Translator’s 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 fl esh and we will feed them their fi ll. We didn’t take Azov by banditry or felony, nay, we took it by our own cunning and gallantry as an experiment to see how his Turkish subjects 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 Tsar’grad [Constantinople]. We will take Tsar’grad because it was formerly a Christian empire. 188 brian j. boeck

You Muslims frighten us with statements that from Rus’ we’ll 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. Th e 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 fl ee from the Muscovite state to escape unceasing labors and unfree servitude, from the Sovereign’s Boyars and nobles. Having fl ed and settled in untraversed deserts we fi x 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’. Th e heavenly lord feeds us brave lads in the fi elds by his mercy {day and night} with wild beasts and fi sh from the sea. We eat like the birds of the heavens: we neither sow, nor reap, nor fi ll up granaries. Th at’s 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 Sovereign’s orders, for the sake of our Cossack glory and because of your fi erce 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 sovereign’s 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 sovereign’s Russian people could be amassed together from that frontier alone. Th e sovereign’s Russian border- ers will match you in cruelty and rapacity, raging like fi erce untamable the siege of azov in 1641 189 lions and will want to brutally eat your living Muslim fl esh. 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 tsar’s orders they are held back by the Sovereign’s offi cials under penalty of death. Your Ibrahim Tsar could not fi nd shelter even in his mother’s womb from the tsar’s hand and the cruel hardheartedness of the sovereign’s 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 Sovereign’s hands and his exalted right hand. It wouldn’t hold back the Sovereign’s people! In one summer Jerusalem and Tsar’grad 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 tsar’s 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 infi del Turkish tsar? We do not want to abandon the illustrious 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 Tsar’grad across the sea. We’ll take a look at Tsar’grad and inspect its construction. Th ere we’ll have talks about all kinds of things, just so he will learn to love our Cossack speech! We’ll begin to “serve” the [Turkish] tsar with our Cossack arquebuses and our sharp sabers. But now we don’t have anything to say to your pashas or to anyone. As your pagan Muslim ancestors did unto Tsar’grad 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 Tsar’grad 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 don’t have anything else to discuss with you. Tell your pashas what you have heard from us. We Christians cannot make peace with or trust Muslims. A Christian swears upon his Christian soul and will stand fi rmly 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! We’ll be glad to show you hospitality in Azov tomorrow using that which God has sent. Go without delay to your stupid pashas and don’t 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 accomplish 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. Th ey began to blow huge bugles and assemble their regiments and forces. Aft er the bugles called in unison, they began to beat great [bass drums] and kettledrums, horns and cym- bals began to play very plaintively. All night till morning they organized themselves into their regiments and fell into line. When it was already the fi rst hour of daybreak the regiments began to advance from their encampments. Th eir standards and banners unfurled in the steppe like fl owers of many colors. From the huge horns and drums there was a marvelous and terrifying sound. Th e two German colonels with soldiers attacked fi rst and aft er them the entire formation of Janissary infantry [which was] 150,000 strong. Th en the entire horde began to attack together as infantry. Th ey screamed bravely and savagely in their fi rst assault and pointed all their standards at us, covering with them the whole city of Azov. Th ey 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 fi re and smoke it was impossible to see one another as on both sides there was only smoke and thunderous fi re. From the shooting fi re 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, didn’t hold up under their numerous unspeakable forces. Th ey all collapsed. Th e 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 fi red at] them with splinters and iron pellets. We killed along the wall of Azov during the fi rst assault on that fi rst day 6 Janissary captains, [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 fi rst day all day with all their forces until evening and sundown. Th at fi rst 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. Th ey off ered 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. “We’ll 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 fi rst 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 don’t have anything else with which to welcome you, aft er all it’s a siege!” On the second day there were no battles with them. Th ey gathered their dead bodies the whole day until evening. Th ey 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 diff erent languages. Aft er 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. Th eir 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. Th ey 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 Forerunner’s [John the Baptist’s] 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 infi dels. We see savage deaths from their forces confronting us. Th ey want to cover us alive with a great mountain, 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 fi ght against large forces of 300,000 men for the sake of God’s churches and for the whole Muscovite state and for the tsar’s 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 infi dels heard from our mouths that God is with us, truly not one was able to stand his ground. Th ey 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. Th e Turkish pashas began to yell at the Crimean tsar that he doesn’t 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 fi rst. 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. Th ey also ordered the Nogai Horde to dismount from their horses and join them. Th en from that mountain they began to pound Azov with their artillery unceasingly day and night. the siege of azov in 1641 193

Th eir cannon fi re caused terrible thundering: fi re 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 fi ring of their cannons neither during the day nor at night. All of our fortifi cations 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 28 tunnels [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 we infl icted great terror and caused great losses in their ranks. Aft er 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 gunpowder and blew up their tunnels killing many thousands of their Turkish people. From that moment their tunneling expertise was spent. Th ey wearied of all those tunneling tactics. Altogether there were 24 assaults on the fort by all their forces. Th ere was never such a brave and cruel attack as the fi rst, for then we even fought hand to hand with knives. Th ey began to toss fi ery 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. Th ey killed and burned many of us. Aft er those fi ery 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. Th ey 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! Th ey would fi ght with rotations day and night to overpower us 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, we became 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, suff ering 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 snake’s 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 violent deaths from the Turks. Th ey 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 fi ring 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 won’t be sitting besieged. Now we, poor souls, must part from your miracle- working icons and from all Orthodox Christians. We’ll 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 fi erce Host} to say our fi nal 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,} during that sally we killed many Muslims, over 6,000, by coming out suddenly. Seeing that God’s 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}. Aft er 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 won’t 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: We’ll 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 stupid Turkish tsar, upon returning from us across the sea, what it’s 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 we’ll rebuild Azov better than before. Th e glory of our brave lads will 196 brian j. boeck resound for ages throughout the world [now] that we’ll build a city from your heads. Your Turkish tsar brought upon himself shame and reproach for all ages. We’ll start to take from him each year six times as much.” Aft er that they eased up, there was no further attack. Th ey 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 others saw an aged man with long hair in bright vestments looking down on the Muslim regiments. Th e 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 defi led. Not only has the land in Azov or the thrones [of holy ones] been defi led, but also the air above became dark. Th ey 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?” Don’t 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 fl owed from his eyes during all attacks, and in the fi rst 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 multitudes 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. Th e 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: “Th ose 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. Th e 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 testifi ed 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 heavens above our Muslim regiments a great and terrible storm cloud was approaching from Russia from your Muscovite Tsardom. Th e 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. Th at 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 abandoning the pashas and the Crimean tsar.” Th at 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 outfi t 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! Th e Turkish pashas and Crimean tsar have run away from their camps. Christ’s victory against them by God’s forces was sent from heaven above.” Th e 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. Th ere 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. Th ere 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 God’s 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 fortifi ed towns along the Don, and that he order his hereditary holding, 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 aft er the siege are now all maimed and crippled old men. We are no longer fi t 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 off er prayers for the sovereign for eternity. Not by our bravery and martial skills, but through our faith and the sovereign’s 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. We’ll shear our Ataman before the {Forerunner’s} image and make him our hegu- men. Th e 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 Forerunner’s image, and will die to the last man. Th e Lavra of the Forerunner shall be forever glorifi ed. And aft er 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 muskets, 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 abandon Azov. THE GENERATION OF 1683: THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND GENERALSHIP IN THE HABSBURG ARMY, 1686–1723

Erik A. Lund

Th e 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 valuable tool. War focuses human attention. We know far more about it than about any comparable historic activity. It attracts journalists, giving us a remarkable day-by-day account unmatched for any other human activity except courting. And as more orthodox everyday historians have argued, there is much to learn. Th e Eighteenth Century account emphasizes “stealing a march” on the adversary by “manoeuvre.” Contemporary generals put so much weight on this measure of success that they oft en 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 society’s fi tness and even right to exist, and for the national-liberal social critic, history has a direction. Dodging “decisive battle” was a symptom of fear. And no insightful 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. Th e artful dodging of “manoeuvres” is as much a symbol of obsolete politics as ballet companies in an age of rock. Th is is probably not the mainstream of practical military history, and it will certainly not stand scrutiny as the model of a serious professional’s practice. What matters here is indicated by the French spelling 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, surveying, and with carpentry. Successful generalship was successful management 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 suffi ces to say that Central European warfare in the eighteenth century needs to be understood in terms of the everyday practice of war.1 Th e thesis on which this chapter is based was originally written to answer a claim in the history of science, that there was a “Scientifi c Revolution” in the late 1600s that came to an end sometime around 1700. Various explanations have been proposed. Th e literature, and its implications for all kinds of social praxis, is enormous. Th at 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 continuous 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 during the long eighteenth century. If it also suggests a revision of our conventional understanding of the social dimensions of the Scientifi c Revolution, well, you cannot blame a boy for trying.

I: “Th e Generation of 1683:” Th e Prosopography of Military Skill

We know a great deal more about generals than about common soldiers. We even have a prosopographic study of the French general offi cer corps by Andre Corvisier. Corvisier’s 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. Th at might be interesting in its own right. Th e 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 offi cer 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 André Corvisier, “Les généraux de Louis XIV et leur origine sociale.” XVIIe Siècle 42–43 (1959): 23–53. the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 201 been claimed that Maria Th eresia inherited a superannuated general offi cer corps from her father due to the same or diff erent 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 engineers and artillerists must have been bourgeois. A study of offi cers 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 1660–66, refutes these claims. (I doubt that it will cast much light on matters of ethnicity, which are oft en of some concern to Central Europeanists.) Th e choice of period, and the singular importance of the smaller cohort is the mobilization of 1681–3. An avalanche of work on the rise of the military-fi scal state emphasizes the transition from occasional military mobilization to standing armies, and this was the Habsburg moment. Th ese were the years in which this army got big, and never aft erwards 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 history. Armies really do teach trades; but we must also beware of this expansion’s 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? Th ere 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 fi nancial trail is deliberately obscured, I will focus on money-making skills, instead.2

2 Particularly valuable for composing this section were: Claudio Donati. L’idea di nobiltà in Italia: secoli XIV–XVIII (Rome: Laterza, 1988); David Parker, Class and State in Ancien Régime France: the Road to Modernity? (London: Routledge, 1996); the essays collected Th e European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols., ed. Hamish M. Scott (London: Longman, 1995), 1: 22–24; 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 study’s defi nition, was a general? Th e highest-ranking army offi cers, is the idea implicit in the Generallisten’s careful list of seniority, but needless to say, complexities and ambiguities abound. Above all, offi cer 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 identifi ed) 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.” Th ese 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 engineer 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 offi c- ers were already potent local brokers of patronage. Th e Grand Duke of Tuscany, Dukes of Modena, Mantua, and Savoy, the Pope, German territorial rulers, notably Baden, the Czech and Hungarian magnates, and allied monarchs can all be identifi ed 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-defi ned group of direct Habsburg

réaction aristocratique avant 1789: l’exemple de l’armée,” Annales E.S.C. 29, 1 (1974): 23–48; and István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Offi cer Corps, 1848–1918 (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, 1680—1740 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999). 3 Th e 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 Th omas Barker, “Military Nobility: Th e Daun Family and the Evolution of the Austrian Offi cer Corps” in Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy: Essays in War, Society, and Government in Austria, 1618–1780, by Th omas Mack Barker (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982): 34–42; and Christopher Duff y, Th e Army of Maria Th eresa (Newton Abbot, U.K.: David & Charles, 1977), 24–6; for an admiral-general, Louis de Pesme, Seigneur de Saint Saphorin (1668–1735), see Th eo Gehling, Ein europäischer Diplomat am Kaiserhof zu Wien: François Louis de Pesme, Seigneur de Saint-Saphorin, als englischer Resident am Wiener Hof, 1718–1727 (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1964). the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 203 clients and natural marriage partners. Notwithstanding that they oft en 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. Th ere is, however, a failure of prosopographic imagination here. Th ere were far fewer nobles than Europeans in general; but there were many, many nobles eligible to serve, and we fi nd the King of Portugal’s brother adjacent to the cohort (he only reached colonel’s rank before being invalided), and the Duke of Monmouth off ered 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 profi le of the general offi cers 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 offi cer corps does not hold up. Th e profi le’s regions of origins map the family’s self-proclaimed historic role well enough. To start with Germany-Bohemia, we fi nd its lesser nobility prominent in the army, as we would expect of the army of the Emperor and King of Bohemia. Czech historiography is profoundly 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 eff ort to distinguish Germans and Czechs. I do make some eff ort to identify an Austrian component to the so-called “aulic” nobility. Families such as the Starhembergs,

4 Regarding Baden’s generals, see Christian Beese, Markgraf Hermann von Baden (1628–1691): General, Diplomat, und Minister Leopolds I (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1991); Philipp Freiherr Röder von Diersburg, Des Markgrafen Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden Feldzüge wider die Turken (Karlsruhe: Fr. Müller’schen, 1839). Mantuan (Gonzaga) generals see ADB, 9: 386. For Modenese (Este) generals see Th omas Barker, Military Intellectual and Battle: Raimundo Montecuccoli and the Th irty Years War (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 3–5; and John Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680–1730: Th e Life and Times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Soldier and Virtuoso (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994):10–11. 5 See K.k. Abtheilung für Kriegsgeschichte des k.k. Kriegsarchiv. Feldzüge des Prinzen Eugen 21 vols. (Vienna: k.k. Generalstabes, 1876–1891): 1: 73–98; 16: 101, 249; Bryan Bevan, James, Duke of Monmouth (London: R. Hale, 1973), 184; Constantin Wurzbach Biographische Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich. (Vienna: K.K. Hof, 1856–1891), s.v. “Liechtenstein;” for a contrary opinion, see Barker, “Military,” 38, 41–2. 204 erik a. lund

Auerspergs, and Khevenhüllers benefi tted 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. Th e case of the Liechtensteins, who could today as easily be Frisian Lowlanders as Alpine uplanders is only the most egregious in this sample.6 Aft er 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 Maff eis, Malaspinas and Pallavicinis. A more diffi cult question is the alleged declining militancy of Italian nobility during the 1700s, something that still may be, in spite of Hanlon’s brilliant research, an artefact of sample selection. In an obsolete historiography, it was important that many Italian nobles qualifi ed themselves as members of an urban patriciate because we could then call them “middle class.” Th is is no longer our understanding.7

6 Volker Press, “Österreichische Großmachtbildung und Reichsverfassung,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 98/1–2 (1990): 139– 40, 143; Barker, Army, 52–67; Friedrich Heer, Th e Holy Roman Empire trans. Janet Sondheimer (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968; reprinted London: Orion, 1995): 203, 227–30. 7 Gregory Hanlon,.“Th e Decline of a Provincial Military Aristocracy: Th e Case of Siena, 1560–1740,” Past and Present 155 (May, 1997): 64–108; and ibid, Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Confl icts, 1560—1800 (New York : Holmes & Meier, 1998); On Reichsitalien, see Karl Otmar, Freiherr von Aretin, Das alte Reich, 1648–1806. Vol. 1, Föderalistiche oder hierarchische Ordnung (1648–1684) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993), 93–5; for patriciates and country nobility, see Donati, 344–50; Daniel Klang, Tax Reform in Eighteenth Century Lombardy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 5–6, 26–8, 39–40; Jean-Michel Th iriet, “Comporte- ment et mentalité des offi ciers autrichiens au XVIIIe siècle,” Mitteilungen des österrei- chischen Staatsarchiv 33 (1980): 130; Eric Cochrane’s unforgettable but overdrawn Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800: 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. Th e number then fell off dramatically when the offi ce reverted to a less pro-Imperial policy direction, a change that may well explain Marsigli’s career.8 Southern Italy’s Spanish connections, briefl y broken during the 1701–12 period, would be resumed in 1735–48, but the break in the Milan-Naples connection may well explain Hanlon’s fi ndings.9 French names are more common in Imperial service as Italian, hence claims about technology transfer and mercenary service. Actually, the majority of Francophones (identifi ed 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 offi cers, 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” offi cers, as opposed to ethnic French, are unidentifi ed, it may well be that General of Cavalry Marquis Philippe Langallerie de Gentil (1656– 1717) is the only offi cer of lieutenant fi eld-marshal’s 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 dynast’s 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 Rákóczy rebellion means that this sample refl ects a Magyar civil war, and it should not be taken as representative of earlier or later patterns of Magyar service to the Habsburg dynasty. It also complicates corrected from Jean-Claude Waquet, Le Grand-Duché de Toscane sous les dernier Medicis: Le système des fi nances et la stabilité des institutions dans les ancien états ital- iens (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1990), 90. 8 See the Kriegswissenchafl ichen Mémoiren collection at the Austrian War Archives (hereaft er KWM) 9/108 (taken from the war archives of Venice, or hereaft er ABV), KWM 16/35 (ABV); Stoye, passim. 9 Hanlon, 90–108. 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. (Th e “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 offi cer’s rank in the Imperial service, or were off ered general offi cer’s rank upon volunteering for the Imperial service. Detailed biographic research was confi ned to the 271 offi cers who achieved the rank of lieutenant-fi eld- marshal, although the 189 offi cers 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-Marshal’s 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 generals whose appointments appear to have been honorary or were termi- nated by a Spanish amnesty in 1725. Th e remaining sample included 125 terminal lieutenant fi eld-marshals, 74 terminal generals, and 72 terminal fi eld marshals; with 137 Germans, 10 identifi ed 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 identifi ed 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 (1683–1739) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), and Th omas Mack Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent: Vienna’s Second Turkish Siege and Its Historical Setting (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1967). 12 Corvisier identifi ed 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 fi ft eenth centuries, and 72 were of families that traced their nobility back before 1300. (Corvisier, “Généreaux,” 37). 13 Of the 43 terminal colonels and major generals whose fi nal fates can be identifi ed, 39 left service within ten years aft er their promotion; 21 terminal major generals and colonels of this period were immediate family of Imperial offi cers holding the rank of lieutenant-fi eld-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

2 Spanish, 5 Swiss, 3 Polish, 1 Dutch, 1 Portuguese, and 7 of indetermi- nate national origin. By birth these 271 offi cers include 47 of the high nobility, including 3 dukes, 18 marquises, and 2 landgraves, 10 Fürsten, 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 neither title nor particle. Ninety-six of 271 generals can be identifi ed as pre-1600 nobility, while an additional 14 carry titles not generally granted to recent nobility. Th ree belonged to families which were clearly ennobled aft er 1600, 12 received unambiguous personal nobility, and 123 have titles of unknown age and provenance. Only one individual is identifi ed by explicit biographical tradition as an ennobled member of the Th ird Estate, General Freiherr Christoph v. Börner (d. 1711), but the evidence is third hand and anecdotal.16 Th irty percent of the entire sample had family members who were proprietary colonels and colonels-commandant during the Th irty Years War, 17 while 12 percent had relatives who received the Military Cross of the Order of Maria Th eresia 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 fi ghting of 1848/9 and later colonial confl icts.19 Another biographical pattern emerges from an age sort. Even though the youngest general of the sample (General Fürst Károlyi Jószef Batthyány [1697–1772]) is separated from the oldest (Saxon Field Marshal Count Sigmund Joachim v. Trauttsmandorf [1620–1706]) by 77 years, members of a “Generation of 1683” dominate the group.20 While there are other clusters, particularly in 1676–85, it remains the

16 “Old titles” are prince, marquis, and duke. 17 Th is fi gure is based on a survey of regimental patents in Alphons, Freiherr von Wrede, Geschichte der k. und k. Wehrmacht 5 vols. (Vienna: Braumüller, 1898–1905; reprinted Starnberg: LTR, 1985): volumes 1–3: passim. Given the editorial diffi culties of working with Wrede’s text, the actual fi gure may be higher. 18 Field-Marshal Johann Martin Gschwind v. Pöckstein, Herrn der Pöckstein, Posseldorf, and Laabeck (1655–1721); the name is spelled “Geschwind” in some documents, but is more usually given as “Gschwind.” Gschwind v. Pöckstein’s artillerist great grandfather is noted in Wrede, 4: 678–9. 19 Jaromir Hirtenfeld, Der Militär-Maria-Th eresien-Orden und seine Mitgleider 2 vols. (Vienna: K.k. Hof-, und Staatsdruckerei, 1857), 1: 32–748; 2: 1363–1718, 1763–74. 20 See Wurzbach, 42: 81–2. 208 erik a. lund case that more than one-fi ft h of all the offi cers who were promoted general in the Imperial army between 1686 and 1723 were born in 1661–5, 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 offi cer corps to Maria Th eresia 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 Th eresia had little to complain of in some of the men mentored by the Generation of 1683. Marshals Khevenhüller, Count Otto Ferdinand v. Traun u. Abensberg (1677–1748) and Count Jószef Esterházy de Galantha (1682–1748) had fi ne wars, and a case may be made for Neipperg.21 So what does a general offi cer’s 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 offi cers 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 offi cers employed by the artillery and fortress offi ces and thus as engineers per se, and those known as engineers, we have a very signifi cant deviation from the statistical norms for offi cers with a reputation, or, better yet, (fi eld) employment, as engineers. An engineer on the command track could expect promotion to general at 37, as opposed to 44. (Offi cers with backgrounds in engineering and the artillery were being promoted 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 Th e 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 hereaft er following the convention established in the old Austrian offi cial histories (AFA 1683 [Türkenkrieg]: 13, passim); nine fi eld marshals entered their seventies in the 1730s, of whom at least fi ve 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 diffi cult 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 signifi cant. Th e generation of 1683 was not educated by a formal structure intended to feed a large standing army, because there was no such army. Th ey were educated to supply family dynasties of courtiers, which incidentally included generals. Th e fl ourishing scientifi c dynasties of the era such as the Bernoullis shows that this could work for mathematics as easily as politics, and any number of specifi c examples from the Habsburg offi cer corps show that it worked there, too.23

22 Nearly automatic promotion was guaranteed at least during the War of the Spanish Succession. AFA (Römisches Reich) 1708: 1/2 lists 24 offi cers promoted that year from lieutenant colonel to full colonel. Twelve were generals by 1723; nevertheless, 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,” 34–6; and Claudia Opitz-Belakhal, Militärreformen zwischen Bürokratisierung und Adelsreaktion: Das französische Kriegsministerium und seine Reformen im Offi zierskorps von 1760–1790 (Sigmaringen: J. Th orbecke, 1994): 12 and following. 23 Debates over the best way to educate young offi cers were endemic to military circles as they were in every other profession in the eighteenth century; a clan of military engineers might be all in favor of a rational education (Colonel Count Friedrich Wilhelm v. Schmettau, Mémoires raisonnés [Berlin: n.p., 1789], 196–227); and with reason (Douglas Wm. Marshall, “Th e British Military Engineers 1741–1783: A Study of Organization, Social Origins, and Cartography” [Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1976], 83–100); but noble families were less convinced (Friedrich Gatti, Geschichte der k. und k. technischen Militär-Akademie, 2 vols. [Vienna: W, Braumüller, 1901–1905], 1: 30–150). And there was a case for home education, for which see Steven Shapin,. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994): 138–42; for examples, see Stoye, Marsigli, 8–20; and Franz A.J. Szabo, Kaunitz & Enlightened Absolutism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11–13; Eugen and Louis XV are only two well-born princes who preferred math class to Latin, (Derek McKay, Prince Eugene of Savoy [London: Th ames and Hudson, 1977]: 10; Jean-François Chiappe, Louis XV [n.p.: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1996], 32–4); in a more practical way, here is the fi rst member of the Browne clan’s hiring pitch for a kinsman: “[He] knows the country of the Moselle and the Meuse better than the inhabitants themselves. …” AFA, 1708 (Römisches Reich): 6/20). 210 erik a. lund

Th e correlation between promotion and technical accomplishment becomes the more striking the more we know about the offi cer. At least sixteen offi cers listed in the “Generation of 1683” served in technical capacities, including artillerists, engineers, and staff offi cers where this clearly including cartographic duties.24 Th is list includes three Italians, one Swiss, three French; two Protestant, fi ve Catholic Germans, and three Germans of unidentifi ed religion. Two individuals, a general and a lieutenant-fi eld-marshal bear patronymics, usually taken to indicate familial non-noble origins, but the correlation here is markedly weak. Th e 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 fi gure. Finally, technical activity is only one measure of the intellectual character of the offi cer corps. “Military intellectuals” are usually identifi ed as rare birds. Is this the case? It is not. Th e court promoted learning. Leopold I sponsored central Europe’s fi rst 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 Maff ei, 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 (1684–1758) 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 Eugène Count Mérode de Westerloo (1674–1732), Louis-Joseph Count de Bussy Rabutin (1642–1717), Schmettau, Lieutenant Field-Marshals Marquis Ferdinando Maff ei (1662–1737), Veterani, Freiherr Hermann Carl v. Ogilvy (1679–1751), Count Wallis, George Ulysses v. Browne (fl . 1699–1730). Khevenhüller and Harsch wrote a treatment of artillery,

24 For fuller details, see Lund, War. 25 Th is is based on a running count of engineers named in archival documents. 26 Of general interest is Pamela H. Smith, Th e 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 österreichischer 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 (1656–1717) 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 (1685–1766) 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 offi cers, 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 offi cers (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 military intellectuals out of total strength, concentrated in certain branches of the offi cer corps, assuming that the high participation rate of the Generation is an artefact, which I do not believe it is.28 Extending to technical offi cers, the minimum intellectual community within the Imperial offi cer corps rises to 1 percent, 1.7% for nobles. Again, this is a minimum count. Aft er connections, technical skillsets are the best rewarded attributes by promotion.

II. War: Th e Economy of Knowledge

Th e 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 complicated among them. Th e state of the mechanical arts, with which it is necessarily 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 Militärreform von 1748/9,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchiv 27 (1974): 170–194; and further, Lund. 28 One artillerist (Löff elholtz-Colburg); one engineer (Harrsch); two chiefs of staff (Starhemberg and Zum Jungen); one memoirist (Maff ei); 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 extraordinary picture of eighteenth century warfare in which police-cordoned groups of near-prisoners wander across the countryside, fed by regular bread deliveries, until fi nally a fi eld suitable for a hundred-thousand- man-minuet can be found, whereupon they will win battles by an exhi- bition of superior ballet skills. Th at 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 fi rst be heard as gasps of joy, or so I have heard, so we might start with the hobbies and pleasures of the offi cers, the one thing we can be certain even the laziest of offi cers did. Th ey were, as we know, inveterate hunters. And, as always with sports, those will be at risk of having simple pleasures hijacked for didactic purposes. Th e eighteenth century version of George Will on baseball is the author of a “Gentleman’s Recreation,” who explains, typically for the age, that the gentleman was not just in it for the thrill of the chase, but for science. 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. A step-by-step progression that develops from geometry lessons 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 fi elds, 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 Th e fi rst and fundamental point is that the most important, most time consuming tasks of an eighteenth century offi cer were laying out camps and fi nding forage. Leaving the fi rst aside, the second cannot

30 Maurice, Comte de Saxe, Reveries, Or, Refl ections on the Art of War (London: J. Nourse, 1757; reprinted Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971), iii. 31 Richard Bloom, Th e Gentleman’s Recreation in Two Parts: Th e First Part Being an Enclcyclopedia of the Arts and Sciences…; Th e 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, 1500–1640” Forest and Conservation History 38 (January 1994): 16–23; For what may or may not be a continuation of this kind of thinking, Horace Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft (New York: Macmillan, 1917; Twenty-fi rst printing, 1962), 2: 195—200. It may admittedly be argued that Civil War-era huntin’ and fi shin’ folks were a great deal more scientifi c 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 eff ectively. 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, season, topography, and geography.32 An army that mastered a landscape could extract an amount of fodder proportional to its agricultural skill- base. Th is was usually an invisible skill. Generals could safely assume that an offi cer could tell one plant from another, and that a random soldier in the ranks could mow a fi eld. Th at does not mean that these skills were to be taken for granted. A distinction between offi cer 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 offi cer class of the day so notoriously cultivated. Perhaps a scythe-swinging soldier was enough. On these grounds I might rest on the careful guidance that forestry and range handbooks give. Th ey assume that botany matters. Perhaps again we dismiss this as a product of a scientistic age. Th us 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 artifi cial meadows of Flanders, the boggy mountain pastures of Savoy in the next, and on the vast fl oodplains 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 25–7: 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), 141–8. 34 Several recent studies have argued for the importance of links between craft knowledge and early science. See Pamela H. Smith, Business, 248–55; William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 8–12, 92; and Shapin, Truth: 355–61. 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-fi le 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 army’s role as a producer of embodied knowledge as well as a consumer. Implicit in this myth is the consequence of stalled technological progress. Th is 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 diff erent were Napoleon’s campaigns from Eugen’s, 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 fi elds of transalpine central Europe and the maize fi elds of Italy. Th e infl ux of cheap American leather signals better boots. Alfalfa and clover meadows sprang up everywhere with capital investment in fi eld drain- age. Th e 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 laborer’s 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. Th is was a skills lottery. Th e 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 offi cially soldiers) got the opportunity to learn a useful skill. And driving 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 1700–1800, see Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1660–1815 (London: University College of London Press, 1994), 33–60. the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 215 human ingenuity was needed. Th is was the means by which the army manufactured the skills it needed, because the early military-fi scal state certainly could not aff ord 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. Th ey invested in roads, estates, canals, even well-managed gardens. Th is 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 regiment as county hunt on the march, the artillery train, as mobile artisa- nal workshop, an infantry regiment as parish corvée in arms), we can see executive offi cers developing wide or specialized skillsets depending on circumstance. Th e cavalry foraged and raided, and above all encompassed the terrain, much as a land surveyor or property specula- tor might do. Th e infantry built and worked, like a civil engineering concern. Artillerists moved heavy loads across country with the least possible investment of eff ort, 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 fi re tactics, more on shock, and especially on cavalry shock, than do modern historians, that it embraces supposedly unaimed volley fi re

36 For a rare secondary source that takes on these issues, see Dorian Gerhold, Road Transport Before the Railways: Russell’s London Flying Wagons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 68–9). 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 Majesty’s Ordnance (Ottawa: Museum Restoration Service, 1970). 38 Discussions of the weaknesses of the received view can be found in Michael Howard, “Men against Fire: Th e Cult of the Off ensive in 1914,” in Makers of Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 512–14, 519–22, 527; and Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Firepower: British Army Weapons and Th eories of War 1904–1945 (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1982), 16–7, 26–37, 67–70. 216 erik a. lund over sharpshooting, and has a taste for halberds and grenades.39 Th ey 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. Th e Emperor Leopold and his sons were served by up to 37 cavalry regiments of cuirassiers, dragoons and hussars. Th ey were organized administratively into regiments of twelve regular and one carabinier/ grenadier companies, but tactically into two-company squadrons. Th e individual skills of the members of these regiments were the key issues. A cavalry regiment, for example, had only two listed command personnel, while companies had each another three, and squadrons commands 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 unspecifi ed numbers of assistants out of a book strength of no more than 1068 men, but usually much less, with carabiniers and grenadiers typically stripped out and formed into separate corps.40 Th e 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 battlefi eld. Dragoons were for dismounted duties off the battlefi eld, but there was no limit to

39 Paddy Griffi th has achieved great notoriety defending the received view, beginning 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 Griffi th (Mémoires, 19–25; Garnet, Viscount Wolseley, Th e Soldier’s 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 Feldzüge, 1: 210, 211, 221, 393; Austro-Hungarian General Staff , _Österreichischer Erbfolgekrieg 1740–1748 9 vols. in 10 parts (Vienna: W. Siedel & Sohn, 1896–1905): Vol. 1, Part 1: 406; Raimundo, Conte Montecuccoli, Aforismi Dell’Arte Bellico [Milan: Fratelli Fabbri, 1973], 9); more accessible is David Chandler, Th e Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough (London: Batsford, 1976): 35—7. the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 217 the number of cavalry that could be used for these. Th us 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, oft en), and dragoons felt the lack of armor, which was why cavalry sometimes took off their boots to fi ght, and cavalry brigades were organized with a squadron of dragoons backing up cuirassiers.41 Dragoons are defi ned by their muskets rather than their boots, because situations that actually called for fi re rather than shock action occurred largely off the battlefi eld. Th at said, the same could be said of the shotguns that gave the carabineers their names. Tasks such as barricade clearing and ambushes, cavalry raids and defenses, and everyday reconnaissance required fl exibility.42 Every army in the fi eld kept its cavalry constantly busy riding deep into the enemy rear and in defensive patrols against these raids. Th ey 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 Th e successful raiders brought back reports of terrifying and stereotypical sameness, so many men killed, so many horses or other stock taken, so many contributions exacted, and perhaps a few prisoners 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 fi red in the air.) And while this sounds like rustlers in action, the men who fi le 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. Th omas Mack Barker, in Th e Military Intellectual and Battle: Montecuccoli and the Th irty Years War, by Th omas Mack Barker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 73; John Charles Roger Childs, Th e Nine Years War and the British Army, 1688–1697: Th e Operations in the Low Countries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991): 86, 202; on weapons, see Chandler, Art, 33; Feldzüge, 1: 214, and Graphische Beilagen, Table IV, item 15a; Wrede, 2: 111, 113–17 John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: Th e French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 498–500; Wolseley, 70; Rimington, 53. 42 Archduke Charles of Austria, Grundsätze der höhern Kriegskunst für die Generäle der österreichischen Armee (Vienna: n.p., 1806; reprinted Osnabrück: Biblio-Verlag, 1974), 74–7. 43 Rimington, 7. 218 erik a. lund group their men in easily defended blockhouses to cover their picketed horses with fi re.44 Th e Emperor’s 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 Deák 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 forage, and waged a constant attritional struggle aimed at the enemy’s 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. Th e more that could be fed, the better.46

44 Feldzüge, 3: 300, 4: 258; 7: 225–6. 45 See, for one instance, Friedrich Wilhelm, Graf von Schmettau, Mémoires raison- nés, 240–1; AFA (Acten Des Karlstädter Generalität) 1705: 8/6; Feldzüge, 1: 272, 404— 5, 664; 20: Anhangen 22B; ÖE, Vol. 1, Part 1: 404–05, 410–412; Part 2, Anhangen 12. 46 Gerhold, Road Transport, 128–31, 272; Friedrich Wilhelm, Graf von Schmettau, Mémoires secrets de la guerre de Hongrie pendant les campagnes de 1737, 1738, et 1739 avec les réfl exions critiques (Frankfurt: n.p., 1771): 3, 23, 34, 44; 23; on fi nancial considerations, see Th e 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 meadows] are easily discovered by their aspect which off ers 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 uncommon, 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 aft er 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. (Wolseley’s 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 soldiers 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 fl eeing 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 warfare 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 off er them day hire.49

oft en seen a green and yellow moss. It may be here remarked, that plants are an indication of the nature of the soil, as well as the depth of water, and its constant presence” (J. S. MacAulay, A Treatise on Field Fortifi cations, and Other Subjects Connected with the Duties of the Field Engineer [London: J. Fraser, 1834): 255]; Ludwig Andreas, Graf Khevenhüller, “Idee vom Kriege” Mitteilungen des k. und k. Kriegsarchiv Neue Folge, 7–8 (1893–1894): 286–441, 319–397: 1:346. 47 Th e 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 à l’usage de S.A.R. ie Monseigneur le Prince de Piedmont,” Chevalier Papacin[o] d’Anton[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. Satisfi ed 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 diff erent 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, fi lled in part of a pond, and by new plantations and vistas through the old ones 220 erik a. lund

Th e Habsburgs recruited infantry in their crown lands, the “national” lands of Belgium and the Milanese, the Protestant cantons and Hungary. Regiments were of 2,000–2,500 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 battalion, while the grenadiers were assembled into ad hoc corps. With 53 offi cers, 352 assorted NCOs, 120 grenadiers, 100 men detached to the regimental artillery, 130 men in the colonel’s, captains’ and color guards, 34 pioneers, and at least 68 teamsters, there were only 1,363 actual private soldiers in a regiment. Th e battalion in practice emerged as a lean fi ghting institution ideally of 4–500 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. Th e vision is of men practically locked in a coffl e, marching from battlefi eld to battlefi eld to give slow and inaccurate fi re form near-useless muskets. In reality their more routine duties were the same as those that any fi t, strong and employed man. It was weighted, especially aft er detachments, towards everyday labor, because it was usually the grenadiers who were fi rst on the scene to fi ght skirmishes, but weapons were the predominant infl uence 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] Staël-Holstein (Boston: Hardy, Pratt, 1902), 1: 258). Ligne credits his father, a member of the sample, with similar eff orts (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); Khevenhüller, “Idee,” 8: 390–4; KWM 6/44 “Arta Della Guerra,” Sergente Maggiore di Battaglia Andrea Majorovich (1730) (ABV); Corvisier, “Les généraux,” 24–5; Saxe, 52. 50 Feldzüge, 1: 206–8, 281, 685; Supplement-Heft , 6; Wolseley, 28 Schmettau, Mémoires secrets, xviii; Wrede actually lists grenadier and pioneer corps (2:76 and ff .); also see Chandler, Art, 83–4; for “carpenter” corps, see Charles V, Duke of Lorraine. “Kriegstagebuch Karls von Lothringen über die Rückeroberung von Ofen, 1686,” in Lotharingiai Károly hadinaplója Buda visszafoglalásáról, ed. Karolay Mollay, (Budapest: Zrinyi Katonai Kiadó, 1986), 389–91. Th is 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 infantry, was (largely) replaced by the smooth-bored, muzzle-loading, socket-bayonet-equipped musket. Because this weapon was so far inferior to the rifl ed, 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. Th is is simply not true. Th e smoothbore musket was an excellent weapon. Nor were the peculiarities of contemporary tactics and drills technologically determined. Early eighteenth-century infantry maneuver and fi ring drill was virtually identical to that of the nineteenth century 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 fi re; the giving of attritional fi re to prepare for the taking of ground that could not be controlled by fi re by assault; and assault and defense against close assault. In the latter, infantry attackers must actually reach the ground in question by crossing open, fi re- swept ground. Th is 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 eff ectively. Th e objective is bayonet range, because if you do reach bayonet 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- fi ring and short ranged. A battalion of musketeers was probably less deadly than a single heavy machine gun but that is a very relative comparison. Properly used, more than enough bullets will go home to stop any infantry attack. Th e catch here is that they are not used properly. 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,” 521–6; Mayne, 10; Chandler, Art, 114–5; Christopher Duff y, Th e Wild Goose and the Eagle: Th e Life of Marshal von Browne, 1705–57 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964): 10–11. 222 erik a. lund preparatory fi re 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 fi re. Th ey break (or not, if the attacker breaks fi rst). Th e eff ectiveness of the weapon is not at issue, unless it is too short to be wielded in a close fi ght with the half-pikes and halberds of the steady veterans defending.52 Th is digression from everyday warfare to battlefi eld practice is necessary, because we are constantly comparing early modern with modern 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 fi re. (Or, rather, it is, but it does its controlling with organic supporting arms such as SAWs and mortars.) Th e modern infantryman carries an “assault rifl e” for a reason. It is for assault. Early-modern infantry, lacking machine gun detachments, needed their muskets for assault and control, and that meant tactical compromise. Th e fi rst compromise is range. Th e climactic performance for the personal infantry weapon was achieved by the bolt action artifi cial-propellant rifl es of 1914, which yielded a grazing range of 600 yards, a somewhat less-than-useful technical perfection on European terrain, although much loved by Pathan militia. In Europe, you can get away with 300 yards. Th is great grazing range was given by high muzzle velocity that created dead ground. While good for controlling ground at longer ranges (and thus dealing with artillery threats and other high-powered rifl es), the rifl e of 1914 was limited in attacking entrenchments, which requires a high plunging angle at a reasonably close range and dispersal. Th is 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 fi re that they are potentially nearly as eff ective for indirect as for direct fi re. In a perfect world, there would still be better choices than the smoothbore black powder musket. In a world that could not aff ord 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 governments did not have that kind of money. Th ere were alternatives. People

52 Krenn, Kalas, and Hall, 102, 105. Mayne, Infantry, 6–10; Wolseley, 170; a musket 200 cm. long with bayonet fi xed, and weighing some 5.5 kg, heavy by modern standards, was still about 50 cm. shorter than halberd or half-pike, and considerably more cumbersome, but not completely outclassed (Feldzüge, 1: 224). the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 223 knew this. Inner Eurasian warfare combined light cannons with shotguns. Aghans used jezails. Rifl es were widespread. But smoothbores worked in sieges.53 Th is is all a little abstract, much like the theory of rifl e 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 fl ying wing holds the town on the far bank where the ferry is based. Th e vanguard commander diverts his troops down the little river valley, fringed on both sides by trees and bushes and on the enemy’s side by a natural levee, to seek a cattle ford. Th e country roads lead them to a 30-yard narrows where a rill enters the river on the far bank, breaching the natural levee. Th e enemy’s staff offi cers 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. Th eir 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. Th e dragoons hunker down behind the levee, protected against direct fi re from the far bank but ready to enfi lade pontooners assembling a bridge in midstream or a direct assault crossing by the carabiniers, grenadiers and pioneers of the attacking van. Th e crossing could be made by rapid assault, at the cost of valuable lives. Th e dragoons are at little risk, at least veterans who know when to withdraw. Guessing all this, the general commanding the attacking van sends a battalion marching down the road, and it forms up on a small water meadow on the riverbank. Th ere is nothing but river and riverbank to aim at, but the offi cers know their business, using their half-pikes to dress the muzzles of the muskets, platoon by platoon. A fi rst platoon volley: experienced eyes notice foliage fl ying well behind the levee, and the muskets are

53 U.S. Infantry School, Infantry in Battle, 2nd ed. (Washington: Infantry Journal, 1939), 221.War Offi ce, Musketry Regulations, 2 vols. (London: HMSO, 1910–1914), 56–83; also useful is the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, s.v. “Rifl e,” and “Machine Gun;” discussion of problems with gunpowder and cartridges is still limited in secondary sources. See Jenny West, Gunpowder, Government and War in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge, Suff olk: Boydell Press, 1991), 168–80. 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. Th e third platoon’s muzzles are brought down a little. Th e third volley will bring fi re 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. Th ere 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 infantryman’s trade was the siege. Fortress warfare in the gunpowder age focused on the baroque complexities of artillery fortifi cations, but the work of overcoming them was work of the hand. Infantry supported the artillery with musket fi re, shooting down carefully laid-out sightlines that vitiated their weapon’s accuracy issues, dug trenches, hurled grenades, and, ultimately, wielded bayonets. But they also used spade, axe, pick and draft horse. Th is work lay behind the engineer’s “triumph of method,” and the fi eld general’s more vulgar intensive assault alike.55

54 Th is hypothetical draws, in part, from Childs, Nine Years War, 32, 45; Schmettau, Mémoires raisonnés, 240–5; Siegfried Fiedler, Kriegswesen und Kriegführung im Zeitalter der Kabinettskriege (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe, 1986): 133; Louis-Hector, Duc de Villars,. Mémoires 6 vols. (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1884–1909), 1:20, 25–7, 48–9, 71–2, 151–2; 2: 7–8, Chandler, Art, 110–21; Saxe, 72; David G. Chandler, ed. Robert Parker and Comte de Mérode-Westerloo: Th e Marlborough Wars (London: Longmans, Green, 1968): 19–21; Khevenhüller, “Idee,” 8: 348 and ff .; Barker, Double Eagle, 248; Jean Martin de La Colonie, Th e Chronicles of An Old Campaigner (London: J. Murray, 1904): 327; Schmettau, Mémoires secrets, 242–4. 55 All discussions of early modern siege warfare begin with Christopher Duff y’s Siege Warfare, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979); and Ibid, Fire and Stone: Th e Science of Fortress Warfare 1660–1860, (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 fortifi cation to strategy through an examination of specifi c works (Vauban and the French Military under Louis XIV [Jeff erson, 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 expanding to meet the supply. Th e 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 fortifi cations 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 supply 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. Th ey knew how to dig clay and loam and make retaining walls and canals, to manipulate the excess water that burdens Europe’s rainy climes. In peacetime they drained fi elds, watered hay, fl oated 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 fi rst glance, and the result could be spectacular: Lille was protected 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. Th e fortress was Cadmaean, growing from the black earth like the men who defended it.56 Th ere is an issue of direction, too. Too oft en one reads of an executive 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. Th e French siege of Mons in 1691, for instance, succeeded because the sluices at Condé had been used for months to reserve water to backfl ood 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, Th e Siege of Vienna (London: Collins, 1964); R. L’Estrange, 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. Gillifl ower 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 Vauban’s 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 artifi cial fl ooding? Was enough water being held back to run the grain mills in the event of siege? Mons was diffi cult and critical because its hydraulic geography is so choice. Th e garrison controlled key reservoirs and sluices, so that even with the brilliant French strategy, the infantry had, in the end, to haul the supplies of the siege fi ve 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 aft er the Allies had been forced to fi ght a very diffi cult battle at Malplaquet.57 Th e routine work by which infantry and their offi cers (never mind engineers and artillerists) made sieges seems faintly incredible in

57 Th e French offi cial history of the War of the Spanish Succession (Françoise Eugène de Vault, and [J. J.] Pelet. Mémoires militaire relatifs à la Succession d’Espagne sous Louis XIV 11 vols. and 2 vol. Atlas [Paris: Imprimérie Royale, 1835–1862]) is a gold mine of letters on the subject of water control. For example, “Mémoire de M. de Guiscard, de 18 Aôut 1703, sur de qu’il trouve à propos de faire pour rétablissement de la ligne du pays de Waes et la sûreté dudit pays” (3: 772–775), “Mémoire de M. de Regemorte; 9 Mars, 1707” (7:445–453); “Lettre de M. de Puységur contenant un détail de la position générale. 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 Puységur. 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: Th e MIT Press, 2004]); but I fi nd limited comfort in Antoine Picon, L’Invention de l’Ingenieur Moderne: L’École des Ponts et Chaussées, 1747–1851 (Paris: Presses de l’École des Ponts et Chaussées, 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, Th e Nine Years War and the British Army, 1688–97: Th e Operations in the Low Countries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 156–178 provides the overall strategic picture; geographic details are drawn from the 1:50,000 topographical map Mons, 1992 in the Topografi sches Atlas België/Belgique: Atlas Topographie (Bruxelles: Institut Géographique Nationale/ Editions Lannoo, Tielt, 1992); the contemporary or near-contemporary “Siege of Mons, 1709” in Feldzüge 11, Graphische Beilagen, Tafel I); “Fortresses and cities of the Netherlands, including Mons and Lille in Feldzüge 1, Graphische Beilagen, Tafel V, A; and Jean-Louis Van Belle, Plans inédits de places fortifi ées: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle (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 fi t 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 Th is hierarchy of skills was seen, and recognized, in the army. We can see this for the Turkish War of 1737–39 thanks to the papers preserved 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 “fi ve men from each battalion,” about 1,000 men, and the carpenters of the army. Not surprisingly, it took “many weeks” to fi nish. Th e resources sound so prosaic. Th e 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, oft en in a few hours of work, with little more than the tools one fi nds specifi ed 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 Salm’s wasteful use of human resources to his own preference for having regular soldiers and militia do most of the work, while saving fi nishing touches for pioneers, but Salm might have been right in the long run. Th e army always needs new pioneers. It is precisely in a dispiriting, attritional war with no victory 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. Th ere are uses for skilled fallers that go beyond war.59

58 André Corvisier, L’armée française de la fi n du XVIIe siécle au ministére de Choiseul 2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 19641: 463–499). 59 Saxe, 26; Schmettau, Mémoires secrets, 4—11, 9, 126, 195, 224. 228 erik a. lund

III: Generals as Virtuosi: War and Engineering in Th eory 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. Th is “experienced engineer” was so vital to the army that his master should consider allocating the next available regiment to the Tuscan veteran.60 Th e warning was in vain. Borres soon passed into Tuscan service as chief of staff to Prince Matteo di Medici, warring for Galileo’s honor against the Pope. He was for several years military governor of Galicia, and met his death in desperate fi ght while serving with the navy of Venice.61 We might take these as various signifi ers of the passage from “olden to modern times”, since surely by the time of the Napoleonic wars, a fi gure 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 staff s 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 offi cers 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. Th e distinction fl ows from the rise of civil engineering, so we would imagine the military engineer as doing the strictly military things we have sliced away from the civil engineer’s job description: in short, building fortresses. Th e 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.” Th ough he used neither 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. 4–5. 61 Th e life of Borres followed here is from Johann Heinrich Zedler, and Carl Günther Ludovici, eds. Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon (Halle: J. H. Zedler, 1732–1750; reprinted Graz: Akademisches, 1961–1964), s.v. “Borres. the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 229 that armies also need bridges and roads built and land surveys. Th us 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 general’s skill sets. Generals would also be a great deal better at their jobs if they could estimate the role of a fortress, fi nd a suitable place to launch an assault bridge, or even lay out a road. Th e 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 Staff s, 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 politicization. Th e 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 government. (To the extent that bureaucracy really did overtake courts in this period.) Th e story is actually well told by looking at the classic example of a strategically necessary yet frequently marginalised military asset, the Danube fl otilla. In some wars, the fl otilla 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. Th e trace is not entirely clear, but I suspect that this is because of the interplay of fi nance 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 fl otilla, it was marched back to Pannonia in 1737. Th e next step is less clear, but it seems that when the theatre of war moved to the Rhine, Po and Elbe, the fl otilla became a pontoon regiment, and fi nally emerged as one of the institutional parents of one of modern Austria’s 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 Feldzüge 9:191; and later a larger navy, albeit of transports and converted transports (Guillame de Lamberty, Memoires pour servir á l’histoire du XVIIIe siècle, 230 erik a. lund

Th en there is the artillery, shaped in the English-language historiography 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 battlefi eld 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 fi nd the same claims repeated again and again through the centuries, so that 1740 seems identical to 2000. Th at said, it is always good to have one special hero, and the Habsburg artillery has that in Prince Wenzel v. Liechtenstein (1696–1772). 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! (Th e 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?) Th e amazing thing is that all this talk about founders ignores the appearance of the fi eld 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 battlefi eld.63 If the nature of the (fi eld) artillery offi cer 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 1700–1750, 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 Négociations, traitez, resolutions, et autres documents authentiques concer- nant les aff aires D’état, 14 vols. (Th e Hague: H. Scheurleer, 1724–40), 8: 249. 63 Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1992), 123 and ff .; Fiedler, 159; Geoff rey Parker, Th e Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2d. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 9—10; Paddy Griffi th, Th e Ultimate Weaponry (London: Sidgewick and Jackson, 1991), 126, explicitly compared to Chandler, Art, 141–2; On Liechtenstein see Wrede, 4: 43, 56 and ff .; Manfred Rudersdorf, “Josef Wenzel von Liechtenstein (1696–1772): Diplomat, Feldmarschall und Heeresreformer im kaiserlichen Dienst,” in Liechtenstein: Fürstliches 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 Mayestät unserer ganzen Fürstlichen Familie aber zur Glori: Erziehung und Unterrichten der Fürsten Liechtenstein im Zeitalter des Absolutismus,” in Der ganzen Welt ein Lob und Spiegel: Das Fürstenhaus Liechtenstein in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Evelin Oberhammer, (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1990); Wolseley, 47–8. 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 projection of the arsenal. Th ere 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. Th e 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. Th ere was no shortage of materiel. What limited the artillery’s use was the state’s capacity to move it to where it would be useful. Th e tradesmen/offi cials of the Artillery Offi ce or the Horse Offi ce 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. Th ey could turn up on a battlefi eld 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 . Th ese 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. Th e “Grand Convoy” that supplied the wherewithal 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 4—a total of 18,000 horses. In one sense, this is what travelled 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 airfi eld to another was a challenge. Given the diff erence in national scales, Bomber Command and a major siege train were directly comparable organizations. 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. Th e convoy

64 Feldzüge, 1: 458; 10: 60–71, 80; 18: 26–7; ÖE, 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. Th e 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. Puységur, brilliant and wrong, thought that it could never work, that it would be quite suffi - cient to just off er 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 Habsburg’s 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. Th e actual manpower was 260 administrators, 960 skilled tradesmen, journeymen, and apprentices, and 8,000 skilled laborers. When we consider just how much more organized, effi cient and rapid were Saxe’s 1744—48 campaigns, we begin to imagine the impact of such operations on European society and the changes over those forty years.65 Th is eff ort speaks to an administrative genius, not something that we normally associate with the great captains of history, but important nonetheless. Th e better we capture generals’ lives, the more administration we fi nd. 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 offi ce director. Two generals of the Generation of 1683, served as the chiefs of artillery offi ces, 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 1702–1712, 5 vols., ed. George Murray (London: J. Murray, 1845), 2: 127; horse totals estimated from Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th 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 Puységur contenant un détail de la position géné- rale”); fi nancial and manpower estimates from ÖE, vol. 1, part 2: 588–9; Feldzüge, 1: 696; and Jean Berenger, Finances et absolutisme autrichien dans la seconde moitié du XVIIeme siècle (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 oversight 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, espe cially in 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 d’Artigliere.” Unlike many works of its ilk, it focused on the guns, and Stratico never got very far as he tinkered with various contemporary approaches to fl uid dynamics in attempt to model the explosion in the breach. Th is is where the family connection shows the most resonance. Simone Stratico (1734–1824) was Inspector General of Roads and Bridges in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, and was equally interested in practical fl uid dynamics. Th is 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 fl uid dynamics. Th e 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 collection of the Vienna War Archives some day.66 How was this mindset formed? Th e workbooks open with diagrams lift ed from Euclid’s Elements, exercises in learning to draft as much as geometry. Th ey 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 master’s class in technical drawing, a long

66 KWM 13/51—5, 77, 79; 83; and 16/15 cover most of Stratico’s 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. Th e caissons of 1750 are vastly complicated mechanisms, as (I fi nally realized looking at these incredible drawings) they had to be, in order to take the stresses imposed on them. When aft er this there comes a miscellaneous section on pontoons, mobile powder mills, then a discussion 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 fi nal 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, offi ce and fortune.)67 Now, one of the great mysteries for the amateur historian of the modern tank, machine gun, and like wonders of military technology is just how many people came to invent them in years past. Eighteenth century Artillery Offi ce clerks were oft en given an automatic rejection list that specifi cally 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 qualifi cations for employment. Invention, and engineering skills came early to war. One of the earliest known offi - cial Habsburg fi eld 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 (probably 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 diff erent kinds of nails for diff erent 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 l’Artillerie,” (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 Turpin’s 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 fi eld parks. Th e crux of artillery operations lay in getting 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 fi rmly in place, it is hardly surprising that the history of the Habsburg corps of military engineers puts the 1748 Reglement für das Ingenieurs-Corpo at its heart. Surely this is the moment when Maria Th eresia recognized the usefulness of military engineers and fi nally made them noble offi cers on a par with the spoiled brats of the cavalry? It is not. We have similar documents dating decades earlier. Th ey 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 eff ect, the engineers are to become a “regiment,” just like the Savoy Cuirassiers, contributing to, and benefi tting from, the patronage of Prince Charles of Lorraine. Th e military engineers, who spent a staggering 10 percent of the military budget of the Austrian Netherlands (361,000 fl .), certainly 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 various 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 off ensive, they serve as [operating] bases of the enterprise, as magazines, and as strong points, and for intimidating vassals…70 Pomposity does not conceal Elmpt’s problem. How could one rede- sign Arad without knowing how it was to be used? Th e engineer’s 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 Feldzüge, 17: 26–7; Johann, Graf Browne, “Türkenkrieg, welcher im Jahr 1737 angefangen und im Jahr 1739 mit dem Belgrader Frieden sich geendiget hat,” 1738, Appendix W. W. Microfi lm 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 offi cial review of the problem of defending Lombardy defence, Gianlucca Pallavicini had his moment to shine. Could the indigenous resources of Imperial Lombardy suffi ce in its own defence, or were major diplomatic concessions to Savoy the only hope? Some said that no fi nancially 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 fortifi ed, and the new tax would suffi ce to defend the Milanese, justifying the political eff ort to pass it. Whether or not this argument was decisive, the new tax was fi nally 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? Th e short answer is that he was one of Austria’s great admirals, seemingly the ultimate exotica. Th ere 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 sometimes dream big, but even at its peaks it was mostly harbor defense. Th ere 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 Pallavicini’s crowning moment as a military offi cer, 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 fl otilla.72

71 See KWM 8/191c (and more generally this entire dossier); also P. G. M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Th eresia, 1740–1780 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987): 2: 23, 102, 119; Daniel Klang makes the best claim for the Milanese reform’s importance (Klang, 24–5, 40). 72 See KWM 12/36. 72; for a review of the literature and a brief discussion of naval developments 1500–1797, see Lawrence Sondhaus, Th e Habsburg Empire and the Sea: Austrian Naval Policy, 1797–1866 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1989), xi–xvi, 2–5; Ugo Cova, “Trieste e la guerra di corso nel Secolo XVIII,” in the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 237

Th is 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 “offi cers,” 82 “bas-offi ciers,” and 698 “marinare,” t h e offi c- ers having enough spare time to produce a small amount of staff planning and intelligence digests. Th e manpower was self-evidently inadequate to the tonnage. Th ere were half-baked conscription schemes, a half-pay list, and arrangments to bring in Mateloten from Hamburg and Bremen in lieu of war taxes. (Th e latter were almost certainly dockyard riggers rather than sailors, although they probably started out as sailors.) Pallavicini seems to have commanded the fl otilla 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 fi rst Swiss in that offi ce, a coincidence probably worth someone’s track- ing down, and which might lead to the Imperial salt monopoly.73 Whatever, what matters here that on 1–2 July 1, 1744, the Habsburg main army under Prince Charles of Lorraine made two eff ectively 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. Th e change was not what Charles might have hoped, since Frederick the Great rejoined the fi ght, and it briefl y 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 offi cer, now Frederick the Great’s

Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchiv 29 (1976): 143–6. For Uskoks in the earlier period, see Ekkehard Eickhoff , Venedig, Wien, und die Osmanen: Umbruch in Südosteuropa, 1645–1700 (Munich: G.D.W. Callwey, 1970), 83–94; Franz A.J. Szabo, “Unwanted Navy: Habsburg Naval Armaments under Maria Th eresa,” Austrian History Yearbook 17–18 (1981–2), 57. 73 Karl Gogg says the navy lasted from 1719–1738 and gives rather higher manpower totals of c. 2000 men (Österreichs Kriegsmarine 1440–1848 [Salzburg: Bergland, 1972]: 30—1); see also Jean Berenger, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1273–1700, 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 diffi culties de former pour cette campagne un Armament sur la Danube, et les moyens qu’on peut encore employer pour avoire une Escadre de Vaisseaux de guerre en cas qu’on trouve necessaire” (1737); Browne, “Türkenkrieg,” 1738, Appendix M. M. M. 74 ÖE, 5: 499–504; quote is from William Coxe, and Franz Hartig. History of the House of Austria 3rd ed. 4 vols. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1847–1853): 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, Th e War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748 (London: Longman, 1995), 132–3. 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. Th anks to another prodigy of military bridge building a few months later, Frederick (and Schmettau) were forced into a humiliating and catastrophic retreat from Bohemia, one of the more signifi cant blows leading to the failure of Frederick’s larger hopes for his participation 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 successes. A Napoleonic bridging train equipped with 36 pontoons required 56 wagons and 316 horses, with 20 cartwrights, 6 wheelwrights, 6 blacksmiths, and 4 tinsmith, plus 36 pontooners. Th e 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, suffi ced 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. Th e options were legion, from suspension bridges to trestle to fl oating to fl ying bridges. Possibilities were mediated by weather, bank conditions, 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 fl oating

75 ÖE, 5: 504; Christopher Duff y, Frederick the Great: A Military Life (London: Routledge, 1985): 54–5. 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 offi cers for administration, and skilled hands for execution. Where could they come from? In 1697, the Imperial Danube fl otilla had a staff of 63 from commodore down to trumpeter, an artillery of 84, 236 deck offi cers, and 2,000 militia. Th is was about three times the size of the naval list from the peace years, and assuming that the numbers were equivalent in 1737–9 (staff fi gures are comparable, and other ranks may someday be extracted from the great mass of the unpublished offi cial history), it required a great deal of reinforcement, at a cost quite unsustainable in peacetime. Th ose 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. Th e offi cers were another matter. Th ere is actually no mystery where they came from. Diesbach started as Pallavicini’s 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 existence and promptly deposits a massive manual of bridging operations of 214 pages, 26 tables, and 64 supplementary illustrations of pure technique, for all the world like one of the great national planning

77 Th e gargantuan scale of a Napoleonic-era pontoon corps is worth noting for comparative purposes. It included 10 staff offi cers; 40 company offi cers; a staff of 9 “chief constructors” including a carpenter, blacksmith, ropemaker, armorer, tailor, and shoemaker; 130 company noncommissioned offi cers 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, 43–8); Feldzüge, 1: 249–51; Douglas, 158–60; hydrodynamic analysis is necessary to measure the velocity of 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 eff ect a decrease of velocity may have in rendering the bed more foul; or an increase in the celerity of current in removing soft bed.” Th is information also helps to predict what fords may be lost or gained in a fl ood, important information for the strategist (Douglas, 20, 23–6), while KWM 15/15 and 16 are contemporary student exercises in just this kind of analysis 240 erik a. lund staff s of 1914–18, suddenly turning into the offi cial 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. Th eir interest in fl uid dynamics intersected their economic interests. So when the state needed naval offi cers, or bridge-builders, they were equally available. It is no coincidence that in Pallavicini’s mind, the issue of the land tax reform turned into a matter of designing a new generation of caissons. He had been thinking like that, stepping up and down from the technicalities of water fl ow to grand strategy/national economics all of his life.

IV. Engineers and Staff s: Modern Obsessions Projected Backwards

November 11th, 1918 was a deeply humiliating moment for Germans. Th ey 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. Th ey had expected to win, and believed as recently as that spring that they would. And no one was more embarrassed than the 650 offi c- ers who made up the Great German Generalquartermaster’s 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, marching down the road, they encountered the enemy. And the Staff ’s mobilization plan led, miraculously, to victory. Or so it promised. When it led to defeat instead, one might have expected a bit of a reckoning. Th at instead we debate whether the “German General Staff ” was infallible,

78 Organisational details from Feldzüge, 1: 251–2, 257, 16: 343—9; ÖE, vol. 1, part 1: 348–50 and 444–7, 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: “fi rst, the systematic and extensive collection in time of peace of specifi c information 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 systematic development of skill for the handling of contingently anticipated situations or through the elaboration of specifi c plans for war, or both.” Th e second function generally includes the training of a corps of specifi - cally designated staff offi cers who can serve at army, corps, brigade, and division headquarters, and give appropriate information and advice to commanding offi cers.79 We learn that this obviously brilliant idea was invented very recently indeed. Th e Austrians fi rst glimpsed it in 1759, but never got it quite right.80 Th at 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 diff erent defi nition of the role of the “Generalquartermaster’s Staff ,” see that defi nition’s distant relationship with the fi rst, and notice that people quite adequately grasped the concept in the Th irty 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 1–10 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, 1740–1866” in Th e Th eory and Practice of War: Essays Presented to Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, ed. Michael Howard (London: Cassell, 1965): 54–5; Craig’s citation is to Dallas D. Irvine, “Th e Origins of Capital Staff s,” 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: Th e German Army, 1807–1945 (Englewood Cliff s, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977). Th e 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 offi cers] 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 quartermaster’s staff , whose basic task is to fi nd 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 military movements that no unit should move across the route of another, nor should it intermingle with other units marching before or aft er it on the same route. March two battalions along the same road at the same time, or even let them cross paths without strict traffi c discipline, 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. Th e 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. Th e 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 Th e main obvious diff erence between the staff of 1625 and that of 1914 is technological. Conscription, railways, telegraphs, and adequate

82 Th is is a paraphrase of 11/58–9, 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 liberal state. Th at is, anyway, how the German General Staff came to present the issue to Berlin. We know that the staff had to overcome the resistance of the engineers, who wanted to fi ght sieges, and presumably other institutional interests as well. Th e Staff won, because it promised victory in a single campaign. As the postwar excuses snowballed, they became fi xed notions in the military historical literature. Th e 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 (1657–1727) was chief-of-staff and commander. Th e staff he directed included accountants, doctors, and lawyers, and he also had a “generalquartermaster’s staff ,” under Lieutenant-Field-Marshal Count Peroni; but that is not too dissimilar from the actual command structure in 1866, 1871 or 1914.84 Th at Peroni is an obscure fi gure, while Moltke is famous, does not mean that he comes out of nowhere. Entering the War of the Spanish Succession in the fi rst place was not an easy decision for a cautious old monarch like Leopold. Long before he slipped Prince Eugen’s 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? Th is is all planning, and it is far from precocious. Th ere is plenty of it in the archives. Leopold knew what could be done, and in

84 Feldzüge, 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 fi ghting got moving, there had to be a stream of communications from subordinate to superior headquarters. Offi cers carried messages to and from subordinates, and made their own reports on matters ranging from the feasibility of proposed 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, staff s 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 fi nd subordinate commands, much less give them irrelevant and out-of-date orders. Subordinates, their own replies ignored or misplaced, lose confi dence in command. Th eir 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 offi cers must be more than passive conduits of information and instructions. Th ey must translate intentions into currently relevant actions. Delivering messages becomes a pretext for the more important task of interpreting and adapting of command intentions. Sometimes, the naked intention is to supersede unreliable local commands, one infers from the oft -sketchy letters they carried. In short, a good staff offi cer is charismatic, infl uential and able. Th e perfect staff offi cer carries a great name in his own right, because some general out in the woods might bristle at following a random young man’s 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. Th ese 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 Khevenhüller, 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 ½; KWM 7/29 (1737). the scientific revolution in the habsburg army 245 academic military historian has studied a great mass of military intellectual literature produced by bookish soldiers, oft en without fi nding something terribly philosophically impressive. Th at is because, I suspect, that it was oft en written to impress rather than as science. Th e 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 Th e fi rst surviving staff corps Reglement, as compiled in (1757–58),87 we fi nd a list strength of 41 offi cers, 19 NCOs, 100 pioneers and 300 soldier-pioneers, and 82 guides. (Note that this was not the “fi rst Austrian staff .” Prince Charles of Lorraine had to resign in that year, and took his staff with him.) Numbers and organization would fl uctuate over the years. In the Turkish war of 1717–19 Prince Eugen’s chief of staff sometimes rode with six regiments of cavalry, and with that many offi cers gathered round him, he probably did not need specialists. By the 1750s, a Central European army needed one staff offi cer per 1000–2000 men and had them in a “staff corps,” whereas in 1717–19, there were “Engineer Brigades” doing much of the extra work. Which seems a little odd, in that graceful, wellborn military intellectual staff offi cers seem very diff erent from military intellectual engineers. And yet they are not. If an engineer is a surveyor, and a surveyor 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 fi nd putti on military maps in the archives.88 If Buchsenmeisterlehren say one thing, it is that a technical life existed in eighteenth century armies. Th ey may seem quite diff erent from the elegant manuals of the “Gentleman’s Recreation” genre or the grand ideas of a Pallavicini. Aft er all, the intense study of nails and bolts seems much more proletarian than riding aft er 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, apellé de Bernay” (1789); and KWM 7/70–1, “Opera Militare che s’intitola il Generale-Commandante… dedi- cate al S.M.R. Il Re de’ Romani” General di Battaglia [General] Francesco Perelli (no date, but 1756–65). 87 See KWM 11/25. 88 See KWM 11/25c—f (1758). KWM 11/25f; for Elster, otherwise unidentifi ed, see Feldzüge, 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 fi rst impression. A Buchsenmeisterlerhen is actually very similar to a “Gentleman’s Recreations” in many crucial ways. Th ere 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 offi cer 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 horse’s paces, an eye on distant steeples and hilltops, disregard bullets fl ying 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 technocrat’s love of an artillery caisson assembled from twenty kinds of nails, and an aristocratic dilettante’s attempts to lay out an ornamental grove according to the sight lines from his palace windows? It is not hard to fi nd men like Marsigli or Pallavicini, who were interested in both, and had beautiful drawing hands. And it is pretty clearly the quality of Marsigli’s drawings that led Leopold to take him on as an offi cer.89 I have argued elsewhere that we need to understand military intellectual production less as a transparent window into military activity than as a refl ection of the inevitably politicized construction of military practice. Th at is all very well for wars, which military historians study. But standing armies are peacetime institutions. Th ey have been studied in that light, as enforcers of order, constructors of gender, drivers of economies. Is that all? A very long time ago, that eccentric historian 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 Eugen’s “N. Person” may be only coincidentally related (AFA 1701 (I): 1/21); for pretty fl ourishes and puttis in the archives, see AFA (Römisches 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 befi ndet 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): 93–4. 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, fi re and water into a ceremonial battle that performed the Habsburg dynastic ideology. Th is 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 fi rst great annual manouevre in 1748, even more so once these manouevres began to be directed by the General Staff aft er 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 fi nal review? It seems to me that modernity had hardly ended the army’s 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. Th e 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. Th e Reverend Blome may have been sententious and moralizing, but that does not change the fact that the “Gentleman’s 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. Th e 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 Duff y, Army, 166–7; KWM 6/165, for 1764, although an excessive 500 pages of fascicle bun- dles, is the fi rst to omit drawings or paintings; Andrew Wheatcroft , Th e Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (London: Viking, 1995), especially 188–200. 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 ineptitude and sloth. Does that refl ect the historiography? I suspect the contrary, that as small a slice of the professional historical consciousness as a military history takes up, it still has a disproportionate infl uence 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 one’s allies. (Well, sometimes one’s own, but that is a diff erent 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 fi eld. 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 fi ne scholar and a teacher to whom I owe so much, once dismissed Eastern European warfare as diff erent from Western, that “they do things diff erently 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. Th at 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 presumption that a special social path to modernity could somehow make East Central Europeans less eff ective 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 modernity, well, it is. COMMAND AND CONTROL IN THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN ARMY

Peter B. Brown

Th e Concept of Command and Control

Th e seventeenth-century Russian army off ers an opportunity to examine what military “command and control” could mean in early modern military practice. Command and control, hereaft er abbreviated to C2, is a process of “extension of authority over distance,” and reductively described comes down to issuing orders and trying to control outcomes.1 Th e expression is verbal, not nounal. “To command and to control” connotes the correct meaning of C2. Th is 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 outcomes. 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 structure: 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. Th e range of C2 responsibilities is broad and subsumes strategy, force recruitment, logistics, transportation, deployment, and battlefi eld management. Th is study will concentrate upon the last two, for their outcomes so tellingly reveal the institutional inter-workings of seventeenth-century Muscovy’s tightly interrelated military, political,

1 Roger A. Beaumont, Th e 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. Th e Literature and the Commentaries [Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 1993], 10–12, 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 society’s military institutions. More broadly speaking, C2 is a cultural outgrowth of a particular national or period style. Th is is unequivocally true for Muscovy. Muscovite norms, perceptions, patterns of behavior, technology, and geography infl uenced Russian seventeenth-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 seventeenth century is especially desirable because this century marked the last stage of Muscovite Russia’s 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 Th e 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 briefl y treated in passing. See A.Z. Myshlaevskii, Ofi tserskii 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), 221–22, 279, 300; A.I. Zaozerskii, Tsar’ Aleksei Mikhailovich v svoem khoziaistve (Petrograd, 1917), 57, 221, 225, 285–86, 298–302, 338, 345–47; E.D. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina 1632–1634 g.g. Organizatsiia i sostoianie Moskovskoi armii (Kiev: Universitetskaia tipografi ia, 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), 420–25, 465–76; Brian L. Davies, “Th e Role of the Town Governors in the Defense and Military Colonization of Muscovy’s Southern Frontier: the Case of Kozlov, 1635–1638,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1983), 161–63, 168–86, 195–212, 223–24, 243–78, 514–17, 643–45, 701–06, 722–36; W.M. Reger IV, “In the Service of the Tsar: European Mercenary Offi cers and the Reception of Military Reform in Russia, 1654– 1667” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997), 233–49, 271– 75; Peter B. Brown, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich: Muscovite Military Command Style and Legacy to Russian Military History,” in Th e Military and Society in Russia 1450– 1917, eds. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (Brill: Leiden, Boston, Cologne, 2002), 119–45. Th e exception to this is A.V. Malov’s magisterial work on the mid-seventeenth- century Moscow new model infantry regiments, which discusses command and control techniques at length, though without using modern American C2 terminology (see A.V. Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki soldatskogo stroia v nachal’nyi period svoei istorii 1656–1671 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 system), and the military districts. Th e Muscovite C2 apparatus and techniques were by no means static over the course of the seventeenth century. Th ey show an interesting evolution in response to the Russians’ acknowledgment of diff erent physical terrain, distance, and military force dispositional demands and in reaction to the transformative eff ects 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 diff erent 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 continuity, though a secular trend is clearly discernible. Th e Muscovite government articulated its C2 desiderata through both written and unwritten instructions. Th e best source for learning about the latter is from the mid-seventeenth-century, government clerk Grigorii Kotoshikhin’s account of the workings of the chancellery system and Duma, later published under the title Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich.4 Th e bulk of these written instructions took the form of edicts (ukazy) issued by the government to its military commanders 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 Mikhailovich’s (1645–76) letters.5 Th e central administration, which had its origins in the fi ft eenth century, responded throughout its development primarily to military stimuli, and much of this is refl ected 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 Grigor’ia Kotoshikhina, 4th ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia 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 Kotošixin, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča. Text and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). 5 Imperatorskoe russkoe arkheologicheskoe obshchestvo, Zapiski otdeleniia russkoi i slavianskoi arkheologii imperatorskogo russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva (hereaft er ZORSA), 7 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia Iosafata Ogrizko, 1851–1918), 2. 252 peter b. brown

language style and content of Muscovite C2 had become fi rmly embedded in both military and offi cial civilian paperwork—a documentary militarization—although the Russians at the time would not have made a fi rm 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 offi cers, even if they did tend overall to discourage them. Th is can be shown by comparing Muscovite C2 practices over time and in diff erent military situations. We will examine Muscovite C2 through the prism of six major seventeenth-century confl icts: the Time of Troubles (1598–1613) and its complementary Polish-Russian (1613–18) and Swedish-Russian Wars (1613–1617); the Smolensk War (1632–34); the Th irteen Years’ War (1654–67); the ongoing southern steppe contest with the Crimean Khanate; the fi rst Russo-Turkish War (1676–81); and the abortive Sophia-Golitsyn Crimean debacles (1687–89). Th e greatest attention will be paid to the Th irteen Years’ War, as it was the most stressful of these confl icts, involving the largest number of troops committed over the longest periods of war. Peter the Great’s Azov naval campaigns (1695–96) 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 diff erent warring styles, one oriented towards the steppe and the other towards its Western foes. Both steppe and non-steppe warfare infused their particular desiderata into Muscovite military practices. But the latter, which involved confl ict with technologically advanced enemies, demanded state-of-the-art combat branches, equipment, training, tactics, offi cerly outlook, and strategic vision for fi eld fortifi cation, artillery, 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 Russia’s seventeenth-century international situation and foreign aff airs, see G.A. Sanin, “Geopoliticheskie factory vo vneshnei politike Rossii vtoroi poloviny xvii-nachala xviii veka i Vestfal’skaia sistema mezhdunarodnykh otnoshe nii,” in Geopoliticheskie factory vo vneshnei politike Rossii. Vtoraia polovina xvi-nachalo xx veka. K stoletiiu akademika A.L. Narochnitskogo (Moscow: Nauka, 2007), 104–33. command and control in the russian army 253 command levels. Th is 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 Th irteen Years’ War. Table 1.1 identifi es and defi nes Th e Six Constituents of Command and Control likely to have comprised a relevant model for military practice in early modern Muscovy.7

Table1.1 Th e six constituents of command and control 1. Command leadership. Th e commander’s ability to exercise authority and direction over his forces in order to accomplish a mission. Command leadership involves motivating and directing subordinates and subordinate units to perform military operations and other militarily-related tasks. 2. Command structure. A commander must have an already established 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 information that is tailored to the present and is relevant and actionable. Th is information is based on the geographical environment and on the friendly forces’ and adversaries’ numbers, capabilities, positions, plans, and actions. Th is 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), 23–27. Information in Table 1.1 is a condensed and revised version of this publication’s 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. Th e operational objectives conveyed in a commander’s 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.” Th e commander 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 commander’s intent, good communications, and the ability to act without detailed instruction from above. 6. Unity of eff ort and leveraging of mission partners. A commander must be able to achieve and maintain unity of eff ort 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, infl uence, persuasion, negotiation, and diplomacy.

Th e Six Constituents to Command and Control

Of these six constituents (command leadership; command structure; situational awareness; coherent and lucidly communicated orders; synchronized plan execution; and unity of eff ort and leveraging of mission partners) most scholarship on seventeenth-century Russian warfare focuses on the fi rst two elements, neglecting the remainder. Th e literature also tends to restrict its attention to upper-echelon commanders, ignoring the role of middle- and lower-echelon commanders. More work is needed on the last four constituents. Th ere is some evidence that the third, fourth, fi ft h, 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 Th irteen 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 fi nancial means to maintain all of its defense sectors on an equal footing, and could not sustain priorities. Muscovy’s leaders and other decision-makers in the royal court, the bureaucracy, and in the uppermost reaches of its civil hierarchy had to engage in diff erential allocation of time and resources that speak to the leadership’s foresight and shortcomings alike. Th e Russians’ variegated implementation and maintenance during the seventeenth century of both new and existing weaponry, military units, command techniques, service strata, military-social linkages, and fortifi cations reveal both intentional forward- ness and neglect. It was complicated to introduce and maintain new weapons and new military formations, recruit and support units, refi ne command and communications procedures, build and support fortifi cations and garrisons, manage logistics for fi eld armies, regulate the duties and privileges 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 eff ected and aff ected all of the above- articulated factors, and they upon it in a self-circulating feedback mechanism. Muscovite C2 in Russia’s fi nal 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 inherent to any command structure and the outcome of specifi c, Muscovite realities. What all of this boils down to is the latitude permitted commanders and the trust the regime was willing to place in them. To what degree should decision-making be vested in battlefi eld 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), 163–65, 167. 256 peter b. brown commanders in the fi eld? Which—the central government or the fi eld commander—was to be “trusted” more, i.e., considered more capable of assembling all inputs (information, men, and material), appropriately assessing opportunity and risk appropriately, responding to changing conditions in the fi eld, 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 agencies. Not only middle- and lower-ranking offi cers but higher-ranking commanders were deemed incompetent or at best only marginally capable of being entrusted with decision-making. As we shall see, there were various reasons for this, fi rst of all the inclination towards centralizing and authoritarianizing political power engendered and reinforced by Russia’s 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. Th e 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-commissioned and sub-non-commissioned ranks of warrant offi cer, sergeant, corporal, and private were not used. Th ere 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-codifi ed institutional and personnel structures of its own, although they would be signifi cantly altered in the reign of Peter the Great.

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

Th e 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 several 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 fortifi ed line running along the Oka River.11 By the mid-seventeenth century, 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 30,000–50,000 men. From that time polk as “army group” was commonly used in governmental written instruments. 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 izdatel’estvo inostrannykh i natsional’nykh slovarei, 1958), 2: 1747– 49; S.G. Barkhudarov, et al, eds., Slovar’ russkogo iazyka xi–xviii vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975-), 16: 220–21; 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 Mixajloviča, 616–17. 11 Akty moskovskogo gosudarstva, izdannye imperatorskoi akademieiu nauk (AMG), 3 vols. (June 30, 1627), 1: 212–14; D. Beliaev, “O storozhevoi, stanichnoi i polevoi sluzhbe na pol’skoi sluzhbe na pol’skoi Ukraine moskovskogo gosudarstva do tsaria Alekseia Mikhailovicha,” in Chteniia v imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri moskovskom universitete, 1, no. 4 (1846): 1–60. 12 See, for example, the usage of polk in Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii iugo-zapadnoi Rossii (15 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1861–92), 12: 141–47 and in Opisanie dokumentov i bumag, khraniashchikhsia v moskovskom archive ministerstva iustitsii, 21 vols. (St. Petersburg, Petrograd, 1869–1921), 13: 533; V.P. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta (Voronezh: Izdatel’stvo voronezhskogo universiteta, 1968), 17, 73, 114, 121, 124, 147– 48, 153, 156; Davies, “Th e Role of the Town Governor,” 77, 96, 99–100. Th is evolution is discussed in Peter B. Brown, “Th e Military Districts (Razriady) of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Muscovite Origins of Peter the Great’s 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: 47–48. 258 peter b. brown what were the size and type of polki by knowing the particular polk commander’s 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 fi ve constituent polk “regiments,” using the term loosely to apply to units of several hundred to a few thousand men. Th ese were the center regiment (polk bol’shoi, polk velikii), containing the grand prince or tsar and his retinue and protecting men-at-arms; the advance guard regiment (peredevoi polk), deployed in front of the center regiment; the right-hand regiment (polk pravye ruki), to the right of the center regiment; 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] confi guration”) in the 1630s and 1650s, the government coined new terms refl ecting 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 Th is 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 Th e 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 offi cer ranks. Th e universal term was voevoda, a word of common Slavic origin meaning “military leader” or “commander,” and used as equivalent

13 Slovar’ russkogo iazyka xi–xviii vv., 16: 220; George Vernadsky, A History of Russia, 5 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943–69), 3: 363. Th is 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: fi eld (military) commander (polkovyi voevoda) and town governor (gorodovoi voevoda), both of which oft en 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 various 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 40,000–50,000 men), a major general (division commander, 13,000–16,000 men), a brigadier general or a colonel (regimental commander, 2,000–3,000 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. Th e Muscovite Civil Hierarchy and Ranks Conferring Military Leadership. However, every voevoda—the term itself never being part of the Muscovite hierarchy of civil rank—had an ascribed rank: either boyar, okol’nichii, dumnyi dvorianin, stol’nik, or striapchii, the fi rst 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 stol’nik would be a commander

16 Grigorii D’iachenko, comp., Polnyi tserkovno-slavianskii slovar’, 2 vols. (Moscow: Tipografi ia Vil’de, 1899), 1:84; Slovar’ russkogo iazyka xi–xviii vv., 2: 261–62; Materialy dlia drevnerusskogo iazyka, 2: 280–81; Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, 1: 332; O Rossii. Text and Commentary, 427–28. 17 Jonathan Gawne, Finding Your Father’s War. A Practical Guide to Researching and Understanding Service in the World War II US Army (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2006), 24–26, 29–46; Kent Greenfi eld, Th e 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 boatswain’s mate. 260 peter b. brown

Table 1.2 Th e Muscovite civil hierarchy and ranks conferring military leadership (indicated by asterisk)19 Th e *tsar and his family Th e upper upper-service class *Boyar (Russ: sing., boiarin; pl. boiare). Could serve as voevoda. *Okol’nichii (pl. okol’nichie). Could serve as voevoda. *Counselor dvorianin (Russ.: sing., dumnyi dvorianin; pl., dumnye dvoriane). Could serve as voevoda. Counselor state secretary (Russ.: sing., dumnyi d’iak; pl., dumnye d’iaki) Th e middle upper-service class *Stol’nik (pl., stol’niki). 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., d’iak; pl., d’iaki) Th e lower upper-service class *Moscow dvorianin (Russ.: sing., moskovskii dvorianin; pl., moskovskie dvoriane) Zhilets (pl., zhil’tsy) Th e middle service class (sluzhilye liudi po otechestvu) Provincial dvorianin (Russ.: sing., dvorianin; pl., dvoriane) syn boiarskii (pl., deti boiarskie) Th e lower service class (sluzhilye liudi po priboru) Musketeer (Russ.: sing., strelets; pl., strel’tsy) 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 Th e 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 Th e 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 okol’nichii 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 eff ectiveness.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.

xii–xiii; id, Slavery in Russia 1450–1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 6–8; 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 1450–1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 4–5, 9–11. Th e interplay between—quite broadly speaking—heredity and background are two poles of analysis Robert Crummey recurrently employs in describing the careers of members of the upper upper service class or the Duma ranks or Duma cohorts (Crummey himself prefers the non-specifi c European term, aristocracy, or Boyar Duma) in his monograph Aristocrats and Servitors. Th e Boyar Elite in Russia 1613–1689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), see esp. 34–106 (“Servitors,” “Family and Marriage,” “Politics, Parties, and Patronage”). Marshall Poe and his team off er more trenchant explanations. See Marshall Poe with the assistance of Ol‘ga Kosheleva, Russell Martin, and Boris Morozov, Th e Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century. A Quantitative Analysis of the ‘Duma Ranks’ 1613–1713, 2 vols. (Helsinki: Annales Academiae Scientiarium Fennicae, 2004), 2: 19–48. 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), 15–72; V.I. Buganov, Boiarskaia kniga 1627 g. (Moscow: Institut istorii, Akademiia nauk, 1986), 19–23; Prikaznye sud’i, 146–47. 22 Carol Belkin Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe. Army Reform and Social Change in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995), 77–78, 141; Iu. M. Eskin, “Mestnichestvo v sotsial’noi structure feodal’nogo obshchestva,” Istoriia Rossiia, 1993, no. 1: 39–53; Nancy Shields Kollmann, By Honor Bound. State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, New York; London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 132–34, 165–66; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 48, 136–37. 262 peter b. brown

Beneath the title of voevoda, military rank nomenclature became more consistent, in the sense of there being a discrete title corresponding to a discrete unit size, for old model army units. Th e chief commander of a battalion-sized unit, for example, a musketeers’ battalion, was a golova (literally, “head”), although sometimes he could be a voevoda.23 Th e leader of a 100-man unit (somewhat smaller than a modern-day company) was a centurion or captain (sotnik), the leader of a fi ft y-man detachment (somewhat larger than a platoon) a quin- quagenarian (piatidesiatnik—“fi ft yer,” comparable to a lieutenant), and the leader of a ten-man unit (squad) was a decurion or sergeant (desiatnik), who was a non-commissioned offi cer.24 Th e Muscovite old model army of pomest’e-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 fi ft eenth into the late sixteenth centuries.25 Calling those who commanded its units “offi cers” should be qualifi ed 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. Th e military rank system for the new model (inozemskii stroi) offi c- ers is easier to grasp because it was based on Western European parlance. 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), fi rst lieutenant (poruchik), and second lieutenant (praporshchik).26 Th e new model formations had been introduced and fi rst 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 kul’tury 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 (1505–33), see Donald Ostrowski, “Troop Mobilization by the Muscovite Grand Princes (1313–1533),” in Th e Military and Society in Russia 1450–1917, 19–40. 26 Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki,126–27, 174–76, 184, 189; Reger, “In the Service of the Tsar,” 233–49. command and control in the russian army 263 and ranks described above were established in the Muscovite army27 Th ere 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 offi cers. Th e new model units reappearing on larger scale during the Smolensk War had been retired at war’s end by order of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (1613–45), but his successor, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, resuscitated them a decade and a half later with the encouragement of the military innovator boyar Boris Morozov. Th e government broadly expanded them during the Th irteen Years’ War.28 Th is 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 military units, ranks, and notions and which came to guide Peter in his military institutional overhauls.

Styles of Command and Control: Centralization and Decentralization

Th e 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 execution. Th e 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 infl uence, and mission-type order. Th e fi rst three refl ect 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. Th ere is no doubt that the entire direction of the Muscovite political system, administrative operation, and expectations of social class

27 Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 32, 38–41, 53, 124–25; Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 172–73. 28 Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 37, 41–42, 47, 52–58. 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 oft en 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 administration 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. Th e 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 environmental factors of diff erent types contributed to this phenomenon, simultaneously an advantage and handicap of Muscovite armies.29 Muscovite written sources off er so few clear instances of commanders independently setting command and control agenda—either 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 platoons—as to suggest commanders were

29 For Soviet-era doctrine on the comparative strengths of centralization and decentralized initiative, see Fundamentals of Tactical Command and Control, a 1977 Soviet Defense Ministry publication (123–24): “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 specifi c situation and to quickly react to changes in it…Ignoring this fact and increasing centralization of control excessively will inevitably lead to bureaucratic red tape and delay, for the superior begins to get involved in the details and decides all of the questions for the subordinate, is late in reacting to changes in the situation, and thus causes an unnatural delay in the troops’ operations. Moreover, this undermines the self-confi dence of the subordinates, and they get used to waiting passively for orders or advice from above. Th e following important psychological aspect of command and control should be pointed out. An offi cer 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 decentralization 30 Moving towards centralization 1. Command by plan. Centralizes uncertainty by letting overall commander operate from a scripted set of (rather highly specifi ed) actions. During a campaign, focus supplants fl exibility 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. Th is enables commanders to arrange eff orts in time and space to maximize the likelihood of success, employing each part of his force in the best possible way. Moving away from centralization 4. Decentralized execution. Commander gives subordinates opportunity to take initiative during mission execution. Th is is done to compensate for the demands of a harsh and dynamic combat operating environment. Th is method is acceptable as long as subordinate’s decisions meet commander’s intent. 5. Command by infl uence. Uncertainty is decentralized. Only an outline and minimum goals are established in advance. Higher- echelon commanders place great reliance on subordinates’ initiative to compensate for the former’s 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 fi nd discernible example among these commanders of decentralized execution, command by infl u- 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), 1–2; 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 publication’s contents and consists of rewritten, paraphrased, and directly quoted material. 266 peter b. brown army offi cers, so many of whom were Europeans and presumably accustomed to a more decentralized C2 system allowing more independent 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 offi cers was the arduous, resource-starved, and geo- graphically enormous environment of Muscovy and the sparser population it carried. Th is obligated the government to place a high premium 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 III’s reign onwards, which pronouncedly aff ected all social interactions.31 Th e decentralizing C2 prerogatives that in Central and Western European would have been permitted to middle- and lower-ranking offi cers 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. Th is structure inhibited subordinates (even voevody of boyar and okol’nichii rank, the two uppermost Duma ranks), from engaging in meaningful, inquisitive interaction with superiors that might have aided all concerned in visualizing diff erently battlefi eld plans, tactics, and projected outcomes. Th e notorious precedence system and the rancorous fi ghts it oft en bred over assessment of birth and service record could derail eff ective collegial intercourse in the combat zone and on the battlefi eld. Th ere 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, 1450–1725 and Marshall T. Poe, “A People Born to Slavery.” Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (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, 268–69. command and control in the russian army 267

One may certainly stress informal, workaday, intra-elite interactions and elite kinship and other ties of affi nity. However, the fact remains that burgeoning autocratic doctrines since the late 1400s, infusing the Moscow grand prince’s and tsar’s 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 elite’s history from Ivan III up to Peter as is the unquestionable, pervasive socialization of the elite and the tsar into bureaucratic thinking during the seventeenth century. Th us, Muscovite autocratic culture dictated some procedures that would have been handled diff erently elsewhere. European army commanders routinely handled regimental accountancy matters, but in Russia this prerogative, including the marshalling and distribution of salaries, the chancelleries arrogated to themselves. In Europe commanders could sentence the men in their units to death for serious crimes, but in Muscovy only the tsar and the Moscow civil administration had the right of death-sentence conferral.33 Th ird, technological considerations also discouraged the decentralization of C2 prerogatives. Th e complicated loading procedures, short range, slow fi ring rate, and inaccuracy of musketry meant that close- order formations had to be maintained to maximize fi re-power, maneuverability, and discipline. Th is was certainly the message of Maurice of Nassau (Maurits van Oranje, 1567–1625) and his military successors of the fi rst half of the seventeenth century,34 whose prescriptions were response to their perceptions of the current technological limitations upon military art. Th e Muscovite new model units and the European tactical handbooks the Russians drew upon emphasized this even more.35 Keeping one’s men together tightly in battalions and regiments and in polk arrays was at a premium and high-echelon C2 was the solution. Th e lack of modern communications systems also made it diffi cult to enlarge the operational role of smaller dispersed units acting in coordination.36 Th e 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, 1494–1660 (London, New York: Routledge: 2002), 33, 126; Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 164–65, 188. 35 Geoff rey Parker, Th e Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 18–22. 36 “Th e 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 offi cer skill acquisition. It was a major reason why Muscovy relied so heavily on foreign mercenary offi cers through the seventeenth century. Genuine literacy was overwhelmingly concentrated in the Moscow chancelleries and in the clerical amanuenses that division-, corps-, and army-size units would have.37 Th is 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 command took steps to severely diminish, if not to block altogether, initiative by lower offi cers. Th ough there are no known documents explicitly prescribing this policy, its eff ects are clear enough on record. Th e 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. Th is handicap helps explain why top-, intermediate-, and low-level commanders (or, more precisely, offi cer-like implementers of commands) did not display the same degree of initiative and pluck as their counterparts in the Polish Crown’s, Swedish, and French armies.38 Th ere are few reports attesting to ethnic Russian offi cers (generals down through lieutenants) of Muscovite new model units or ethnic Russian offi cers 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. Th is 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,” Th e Russian Review 48, no. 1 (January 1989): 1–19. 38 Many nobles serving as offi cers 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 affi liation and encouraged tactical adaptability in changing battlefi eld circumstances. On Gustavus Adolphus’s expectations of educational achievement and command initiative from his offi cers, see: Geoff rey Parker, ed., Th e Th irty Years’ War, 2d ed. (London, New York: Routledge, 1997), 185; David Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. Th e Baltic World 1492–1772 (London, New York: Longman, 1990), 139–41; Michael Roberts, Th e Swedish Imperial Experience 1560–1718 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 56–62; “Gustavus versus Wallenstein, 1632: Alte Veste and Lutzen” in William P. Guthrie, Battles of the Th irty Years War. From White Mountain to Nordlingen, 1618–1635 (Westford, Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press, 2002), 187–230. On offi cer initiative in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see below. command and control in the russian army 269 foreign-born mercenaries offi cering new model units, these native offi cers 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 segments of non-elite) culture by 1600. Humanism accustomed its students 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 it—in the secular sphere, the professional civil administrators, that is the state secretaries (sing., d’iak) and clerks (sing., pod’iachii)—felt all the more strongly they had a duty of stewardship towards those who lacked it, namely the military commanders. Th erefore, these offi cials felt compelled to save commanders from error by spelling out instructions very explicitly and at great length and repetition. Th e highly centralized autocratic political culture of Muscovy could therefore be seen as a cultural compensation for limited elite literacy, and this compensation acted refl exively in enhancing autocracy’s power claims. Th e paperization mania of the seventeenth-century prikazy, an outgrowth of the preceding century’s move towards a documentary 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. Th e chancellery records therefore make the Muscovite middle- and low-level offi cer grades appear a faceless lot, their temperaments and inclinations unknown to us. Th e offi cial documents, specifi cally edicts, rescripts, and memorandums (sing., pamiat’) do not reveal anything of the offi cers’ talents, inclinations, and expectations. Th ese papers laconically list only names, ranks, unit designations, and responsibilities to be carried out under the direction of superiors. Other aspects of these men’s service careers are left entirely to our speculation. Consequently, it is certainly plausible to believe that the rampant illiteracy ensnaring middle- and lower-ranking offi cers obligated 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 eff ort to avoid at all costs risk of failure by fi eld commanders given too much freedom of initiative. On the other hand it took risks of a diff erent sort by promoting “one-shot” operational planning 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. Th e middle way—a low-risk/low-gain strategy involving some combination of shared central governmental and fi eld commander planning—does 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. Th e diffi culties of Muscovite commanders during the Time of Troubles and General Shein’s failure during the Smolensk War had left the government looking incompetent and had sparked unrest amongst elite, lesser social service strata, and commoners alike. Consideration of past military failures therefore gave the government 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 fi eld commanders’ 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 consistency…by actively avoiding situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.”39 A commander given too much latitude 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 center’s 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? Th ere are discernable instances in which one element of Moscow-centered C2 acted to correct or override perceived defi ciencies 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 (1676–82) during the Smolensk and Russo- Turkish Wars. During the fi rst two years of the Th irteen Years’ War, Aleksei Mikhailovich did the opposite by marginalizing the Boyar Duma. Later in this confl ict, he allowed the Secret Chancellery (prikaz Velikogo Gosudaria tainykh del) to superintend the Military Chancellery (Razriad) and the rest of the bureaucracy. Th e Razriad, for its part, acted consistently through the seventeenth century to subordinate other military chancelleries to itself. In all these instances the institution 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 shift s 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?

Th e Time of Troubles and Its Aft ermath, 1598–1618

Th e Time of Troubles (Smuta, Smutnoe vremia) is conventionally dated from Boris Godunov’s 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. Th e 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, refl ecting the atrophy of the Moscow chancelleries and of the tsar’s power. Chancellery-generated military mobilization and operational plans through this period are few;40 consequently there remain

40 Th e Smuta Razriadnye knigi do portray on-going military mobilization; successive regimes did very much have a vested interest in keeping the Military Chancellery afl oat (see V.I. Buganov, ed., Razriadnye knigi: 1550–1636 (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1975; id, Razriadnye knigi: 1598–1638 (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1974); id, Razriadnye knigi poslednei chetverti xv-nachala xvii v. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1962). Military documents from Akty arkheografi cheskoi ekspeditsii for Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii’s reign (1606–1610) depict some bureaucratic involvement; force structures that overall—but not exclusively— were small; troop mobilizations that in general were not large; the dispatching of salaries from Moscow to servicemen in the fi eld; and combat engagement details. See Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh rossiiskoi imperii arkheografi cheskoiu ekspeditseiu imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 4 vols., index (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia ii otdeleniia 272 peter b. brown a whole battery of C2 questions diffi cult to resolve for lack of data. C2 narrative for the Smuta era must confi ne itself to relatively non- specifi c 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 fi nancial, material, and human extraction capabilities of the Military Chancellery, the fi nancial chancelleries, and the weapons’ and material-producing departments had declined signifi cantly. One must be cautious about blaming this all upon the failure of the Razriad to instruct and direct other bureaus, for great fi res 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 (1605–06). 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 Boris’s commanders. Despite this stop-loss measure, it was Mstislavskii’s 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): 162–63; no. 76 (June 29, 1607): 169; no. 105 (February 1609): 206–07; no. 111 (March 17, 1609): 213–14; no. 112 (March 1609): 214–15; no. 118 (May 1609): 223; no. 120 (May 23, 1609): 224–25; no. 121 (May 1609): 225; no. 122 (May 1609): 226–28; no. 123 (June 1609): 228–31; no. 124 (June 14, 1609): 231; no. 125 (June 1609): 231–33; no. 127 (June 28, 1609): 235–36; no. 128 (June 28, 1609): 236–40; no. 130 (July 1609): 241; no. 131 (July 23, 1609): 241–42; no. 133 (August 6, 1609): 246; no. 134 (August 1609): 247; no. 137 (August 1609): 250–53; no. 146 (November 1609): 260–61; no. 147 (December 1609): 261–63; no. 150 (December 1609): 264; no. 156 (January 1610): 268; no. 157 (January 1610): 268–69. Some C2 conclusions are inferable from this data. I discuss the bureaucracy’s fate during the Time of Troubles in “Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy.” Pervasive insecurity and job turbulence aff ected chancellery cadres, and aft er Godunov, pronounced politicization and factionalism became dominant. It is during 1608 when the bureaucracy’s operational eff ectiveness went into sharp decline, the tax collection chancelleries in particular nearly ceasing to perform. By January 1611 the chancelleries were practically deserted and inactive. Th e 1610 and 1611 fi res destroyed many chancellery archives (Brown, “Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy,” 211–30). 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 fl exible army accustomed to quick and coherent executive decision-making. Mstislavskii had a subsequent briefl y fortunate victory at Dobrynichi a month later, but the tsar’s army steadily disintegrated over the fi rst few months of 1605, ending for quite some time any full-fl edged, centralized C2 emanating from the capital.41 Aft er the fall of Godunov and the brief reign of the First False Dmitrii, Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii (1606–1610) took power. Th ough he typically did not personally lead his military forces in combat, Shuiskii aff ected a C2 leadership style that was less bureaucratically-fi ltered and more personalized and charismatic, reminiscent of the style of military leadership practiced through the 1400s. Th e ineff ectual rival chancelleries Second False Dmitrii set up in 1608 and 1609 testify to the Second Pretender’s insight into the need for his own administrative apparatus, but there is no meaningful C2 data available from them. Mstislavskii’s uneven record under Boris did not deny him another rematch, this time in July 1606, under Vasilii Shuiskii’s aegis, against the Bolotnikov rebels. Shuiskii’s commander had mustered between 50,000 and 60,000 men for fi ghting on the southern frontier, though they were not concentrated in one place. Th e subsequent history of Mstislavskii’s 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 infl uence, and mission-type order.42 Chester Dunning’s account on the subsequent suppression of the Bolotnikov Uprising connotes that Mstislavskii and other commanders belonging to Vasilii Shuiskii’s retinue operated with diminished

41 Chester S.L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: the Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 150–58, 160, 165–80. Dunning reviews the wide dispari- ties for the quantity of troops in various service categories allocable to Godunov (ibid., 150–57). Historians prefer diff erent translations for the central administration’s ganglia, 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 1462–1874 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985], 35; Marshall Poe, “Th e 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 Mstislavskii’s troop mobilization and of the July confl ict in Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 272–74. 274 peter b. brown

Razriad control. Th is is because the bureaucracy’s manpower and resource base shrank precipitously as the rebels had seized a large chunk of the realm within the fi rst half-year aft er Shuiskii’s accession.43 Even aft er Bolotnikov’s 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 campaigns—typically against opposition-held towns—small forces, less bureaucratic oversight, and less obtrusive centralized C2 characterized military operations against a new crop of royal imposters for the rest of this tsar’s tenure. V. V. Amel’chenko points out that Russian forces during Shuiskii’s 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 decentralized C2 as centrally-channeled resources and the capital bureaucracy’s hold over fi eld commanders slid into abeyance. Th ere were a few conspicuous exceptions to this. Tsar Vasilii cobbled together an imposing force in February 1607 to fi ght 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 contemporaries and possibly an overstatement) to besiege rebel-occupied Tula. A third case of resuscitating the erstwhile model of Muscovite military mobilization played out in Spring 1608 when Vasilii Shuiskii delegated some 30,000 fi ghters 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 Sapieha’s forces from the Holy Trinity Monastery north of Moscow.44 Tsar Vasilii was attempting to recoup the maximum force dispositions of the preceding century (V. V. Penskoi gives fi gures of 110,000 to 120,000 Muscovite soldiers in the 1535 campaign against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and 95,000 to 101,000 troops for the 1562 Polotsk siege). But these pretensions were episodically realizable, only at the start of his reign, for the support base for sustained large force mobilization was evaporat- ing.45 Aft er 1608 his bureaucracy was no longer capable of raising and

43 Ibid, 281–96. 44 V.V. Amel’chenko, Drevnerusskie rati. Istoricheskie ocherki (Moscow: Voenizdat, 2004), 282–311; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 322–26, 329, 341–42, 350, 352–53, 377, 392, 396, 409. 45 V.V. Penskoi, “Voennyi potentsial Rossiiskogo gosudarstva v kontse xv–xvi vekakh: kolichestvennoe izmerenie,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2008, no. 1: 7–8, 10–11. 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. Th e Rzeczpospolita’s forces occupied the capital from 1610 into late 1612, and the Poles’ C2, as was typical for their armies, was a combination of centralized and decentralized modes, the latter more in evidence.46 Th e 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. Th e 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 fl edgling 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 Levy’s 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. Th e dearth of resources, namely provincial location and paucity of institutions and amanuenses, had forced dire economy in outlook upon Pozharskii, compelling him to entertain innovative command styles previously throttled. Th e 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, Pol’sko- litovskaia interventsiia v Rossii i russkoe obshchestvo (Moscow: Indrik, 2005) that the members of various Russian upper social strata who supported Władysław had complex motives for doing so (A.P. Pavlov, P.V. Sedov, B.N. Floria. “Pol’sko-litovskaia interventsiia v Rossii i russkoe obshchestvo,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2007, no. 6: 180–81). 47 Brown, “Early Modern Bureaucracy,” 211–30. 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: 3–15 discusses the same information that I did and reaches the same conclusions. I have no reason to believe he knew of my work. 48 Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 168. Pozharskii’s 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), 243–47. 49 Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 430–42; A.V. Shishov, Minin i Pozharskii (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1990), 89–131; Tomasz Bohun, Moskwa 1612 (Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy Bellona, 2005), 171–242. 276 peter b. brown

Th e fi nal 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 system rapidly recovered and the number of bureaus and personnel increased.50 Th ough 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. Th e spread of military governor (gorodovoi voevoda) administration in the late 1610s in Muscovy laid part of the foundation for this, as did the government’s work in the 1620s to rebuild the administrative infrastructure in toto by reestablishing its central and provincial fi les and reasserting its authority in the countryside.51 Th e administrative infrastructural defi ciencies remaining in the period from 1613 to 1618 did limit military mobilization, combat eff ectiveness, and C2 centralization. Military actions were mostly small engagements involving rural pacifi cation eff orts against those Smuta- disaff ected elements still creating turmoil and engaging in brigandage. In 1616 the Russians had 1,327 fi ghters 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 Th ese servitors were all on active duty and approximated 25,000—about 25% of the fi gure for the forces on active duty when Aleksei Mikhailovich

50 Even though the Smuta had heaped physical abuse upon the central administration, which was not to recover fully for some time, it still could generate impressive amounts of paperwork in the years immediately following Mikhail’s election. See the lengthy diplomatic report, “Th e Foreign Aff airs Chancellery Records Book on Russian- English Relations from 1614 to 1617,” in D.V. Liseitsev, Posol’skaia kniga po sviaziam Rossii s Angliei 1614–1617 gg. (Moscow: RAN, 2006): 36–276. See also D.V. Liseitsev, Posol’skii 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 bor’ba do serediny xvii veka, 2 vols. (Moscow, Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947–48), 1: 362; S.F. Platonov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, 9th ed. (Petrograd, 1915), 339–49; N.S. Chaev, “K voprosu o syske i prikreplenii krest’ian v moskovskom gosudarstve v kontse xvi veka,” IZ, 6 (1940): 152–53; S.B. Veselovskii, Soshnoe pis’mo. Izsledovanie po istorii kadastra i pososhnogo oblozheniia moskovskogo gosudarstva, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1915–16), 2: 229. 52 Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 169. Th is is also the impression discernible from E.I. Kobzareva, “Novgorod mezhdu Stokgol’mom i Moskvoi (1613–1617 gg.),” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2006, no. 5: 16–28. command and control in the russian army 277 invaded Belarus in 1654. Th e 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 Th e Kniga Seunchei 1613–1619 gg. records a plethora of small-scale actions (rural pacifi cation eff orts against non-reconciled social elements 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 fi ght large numbers of small engagements, 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 decentralized execution, command by infl uence, and probably even mission-type order. Th is 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 oft en to cope on their own. Militarily, their overall record, taking into account their limitations was not bad at all.

Th e Smolensk War, 1632–1634

Th e 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 1617–1618 (Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy Bellona, 2006), 87, 107, 109–11, 113, 127, 135, 137–38. 54 Kniga Seunchei 1613–1619 gg. Dokumenty razriadnogo prikaza o pokhode A. Lisovskogo (osen’-zima 1615 g.), eds. I. Gral’, I.A. Tikhoniuk (Moscow; Warsaw: Arkheografi cheskii tsentr, 1995), 19–123; E.I. Kobzareva, Shvedskaia okkupatsiia Novgoroda v period Smuty xvii veka (Moscow: RAN, 2005), 330–31, 334, 358. 55 Kobzareva, Shvedskaia okkupatsiia, 372. 56 Daniel Stone, Th e Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386–1795 (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. Th e Smolensk fortress rebuilt by the Muscovites in the 1590s was the largest in Europe. Over four miles in length, this citadel’s cren- ellated walls, from 10 to 23 feet thick, thrust upwards from 26 to 40 feet and nested 38 towers.57 Th e Smolensk campaign was mostly a war of position, and its C2 refl ected this. Since less territory (in comparison to the 1654–55 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. Th e Smolensk campaign is noteworthy in a number of respects. It is the fi rst campaign against the Poles for which ample documentation has survived because it postdated the great Moscow fi res; it is the fi rst seventeenth century campaign for which the central government, rebuilt from the Troubles, was completely functional; and it was subsequently treated as a “shake-down cruise,” its shortcomings studied for lessons to prepare for the much larger confl ict Russia launched two decades later. Boyar M. B. Shein and A. V. Izmailov were the ill-starred Muscovite commanders who eventually became sacrifi cial lambs. Th eir order of battle boiled down to ringing Smolensk with sophisticated assault trenches and siege instruments, mounting frontal assault of Smolensk, and conducting mobile fl anking 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 Confi ned territorial objectives and tailor-made rules of engagement had required a C2 heavily emphasizing command by plan, command by direction, and centralized planning, as is apparent from the campaign narrative documented in E. Stashevskii’s Smolenskaia voina and in Akty moskovskogo gosudarstva.59

57 Iu. G. Ivanov, Velikie kreposti Rossii (Smolensk: Rusich, 2004), 175–91. 58 Carol B. Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence 1460–1730 (Harlow, England: Person Longman, 2007), 131; Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 74–76. 59 E. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina 1632–1634 gg. Organizatsiia i sostoianie Mosko- vskoi armii (Kiev: Universitetskaia tipografi ia, 1919); AMG, 3. Th is 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 covering the recently initialized Russian new model infantry, diffi culties in coordinating subordinate commanders’ operations, insuffi cient numerical advantage (32,000 men proved not enough), incompetence in countering the Poles’ skillful fl anking maneuvers, and the inability to protect the now-neglected southern frontier from Crimean Tatar assault—a 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 aft er 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 Prince’s intention, and that he would not be executed; as soon as he had lain down, a stay would come, followed by clemency, and the people would be satisfi ed. Comforted, and full of hope that was reinforced by the Patriarch, Shein came forward and lay prostrate on the ground. Th e executioner was then given the

128 documents in AMG for 1633 alone. Th ese seldom address command procedures explicitly, but they do convey a picture of them indirectly. Th ese 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 capital’s requests that commanders prepare lists of the weaponry equipping servicemen of all ranks and the grain stores available. Th ey 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]: 440–41; no. 578 [October 28]: 541–42; no. 591 [December 6]: 548–50; no. 556 [September 30]: 528–30; no. 578 [October 28]: 541–42; no. 591 [December 6]: 548–50; no. 594 [December 17]: 551–52); (2) reports on the dispatch to Moscow, for Razriad interrogation, of Russian servicemen couriering the Smolensk campaign general M.B. Shein’s rescripts on battlefi eld information and other materials (no. 480 [January 22]: 442, no. 495 [February 15]: 458–59, no. 496 [February 16]: 459– 60, no. 502 [March 11]: 471–72, no. 506 [March 23]: 478–79, no. 511 [April 5]: 483–84, no. 513 [April 13]: 487–88, no. 514 [April 14]: 488–89, no. 516 [April 16]: 492, no. 522 [May 5]: 497–98, no. 523 [May 9]: 498–99, no. 524 [May 11]: 499); and (3) recruitment and draft call announcements (no. 546 [September 8]: 517–18, no. 548 [September 12]: 522–23). 60 Lidia Korczak, et al., Dzieje Kresów (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Kluszczyński, 2007), 86–87; Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 128–32; Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 72–76. Th e Commonwealth’s forces, including both their citadel’s complement and relief columns, totaled nearly 30,000 (Dzieje Kresów, 86); Andrzej Jezierski, Andrzej Wyczański, eds. Historia Polski w liczbach. Państwo. Społeczeństwo. Tom I (Warsaw: Zakład Wydawnictw Statystycznych, 2003), 44. 280 peter b. brown

signal to strike forthwith, which he did, and with several blows, he cut off Shein’s 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. Th is was pursued through centralized C2 and the issue from Moscow of detailed orders for besiegement and siege defense to fi eld commanders. Th e latter were for the most part already accustomed to defensive positional warfare or to governing as town governors, i.e., were accustomed to mechanically implementing detailed working orders (nakazy) from Moscow. But this mentality left them less able to visualize diff erent 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 towns—including Dorogobuzh, 48 miles east of Smolensk— sent the two voevody of Dorogobuzh very explicit instructions on how to prepare the defense of Dorogobuzh. Th ey detailed how to fortify the town, go on alert, post sentries, assign artillerymen 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 instructions.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. Th e Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 153–54. 62 Stashevskii does not come right out to state these conclusions, but his narrative points in their direction (see Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina, 233–88). Relying upon Stashevskii, Brian Davies does imply a certain mobility to Shein’s troops as they did seize, before investing Smolensk, more than twenty towns (Brian L. Davies, “Muscovy at War and Peace,” in Th e 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 fi rst part of the confl ict has centered on analyzing the successful Muscovite strategy of conquering towns other than Smolensk and the importance of this (A.V. Malov, “Nachal’nyi 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), 124–72. 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. Th is, even though Dorogobuzh lay much nearer to Shein’s 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 Th irteen 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 fi eld commanders were inundated with paperwork, much of it on comparatively trivial matters. Th is must have left them less free to improvise in response to new developments. From Moscow’s 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 confronting the Smuta Russian generals refl ected less upon their own shortcomings and more upon bizarre domestic ones over which they had no control. Moscow did draw some lessons from Shein’s defeat at Smolensk: the need next time to penetrate deeper into Smolensk’s 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 army’s logistical tail; the need to fi eld more new model units and improve their combat eff ectiveness 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 fortifi ed line, B.I. Morozov’s reforms of the later 1640s, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s eff orts to acquire his own command skills, and resumed investment in hiring foreign mercenaries and reforming new model units.65 All of these eff orts

64 AMG, 1 (May 17, 1633): 501. 65 Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 133–38, 151–53; Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 81–85; Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 186–89; J.T. Kotilaine, “In Defense of 282 peter b. brown strove to upgrade large-unit coordination, logistics, and offi cerly skills. But Moscow expected to accomplish these goals through strengthening centralized C2 modes at the expense of decentralized modes. And memory of the scapegoating of Shein and Izmailov provided a powerful deterrent to commander experimentation with any decentralized

C2 posture

Th e Th irteen Years’ War, 1654–1667

Th e Th irteen Years’ War immersed Russia in a generalized Eastern European confl ict ultimately stretching from Riga to the Crimean Peninsula, a distance of over 900 miles. Provoking this three-phased confl agration were Muscovy’s unfulfi lled 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 Th e Military and Society in Russia 1450–1917, 74; Brown, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 119–45. 66 Dymitri Zlepko, Der große Kosakenaufstand 1648 gegen die polnische Herrschaft . Die Rzeczpospolita und das Kosakentum in der ersten Phase des Aufstandes (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,1980), 25–80; Andreas Kappeler, Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1994), 60–67; L.V. Zaborovskii, Rossiia, Rech’ Pospolita i Shvetsiia v seredine xvii v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 16–60; Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 195–216; “Introduction: Poland-Lithuania in the Mid-Seventeenth Century,” in Robert Frost, Aft er the Deluge. Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 1655–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1–25; Andreas Kappeler, Th e Russian Empire: a Multiethnic History, trans. Alfred Clayton (Harlow, England: Longman, 2001), 60–65; Zbigniew Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska w okresie Wojen Drugiej Połowy xvii w. (1648–1699),” in Historia Dyplomacji. Tom II. 1572–1795, ed. Zbigniew Wójcik (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), 163–77, 189–99. 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., Pereiaslavs’ka Rada. Ochyma istorykiv movoiu dokumentiv (Kiev: Ukraina, 2003) and Pavlo Sokhan’, et al, eds., Pereiaslavs’ka Rada 1654 roku (Istoriografi ia ta doslidzhe- nyia) (Edmonton, Alberta; Kiev: NAN, 2003). Th e doyen of specialists on the Cossack Rebellion remains Mykhailo Hrushevsky. See his History of Ukraine-Rus’. Volume 8. Th e Cossack Age, 1626–1650, 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. Th e Cossack Age, 1650–1653, 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

Th e fi rst 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 Russia’s 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. Th e third and fi nal phase stretched from 1663 until 1667, taken up by desultory negotiations between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania, and culminated in the January 1667 Andrusovo Armistice between the two sides.67 Th e Russians and their Ukrainian allies attacked on three fronts: a northern (Western Dvina) one under V.P. Sheremetev’s command, a central (Northern Dnepr) front under A.N. Trubetskoi and Ia.K. Cherkasskii, and a southern (Western Ukrainian) front under Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyj and A. V. Buturlin.68

67 So far, there is not a single monograph-length treatment on the Th irteen Years’ War. Th ere is still a mounting English-language literature on the subject. In chrono- logical order: C. Bickford O’Brien, Muscovy and the Ukraine. From the Pereiaslavl Agreement to the Truce of Andrusovo, 1654–1667 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), 28–131; Peter B. Brown, “Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy,” 395–479; id, “Th e Routinization of Charisma in Seventeenth-Century Russian Bureaucracy. Studies on Russian Elite, Administrative, and Military History,” Unpublished manuscript, 1998, 107–322 (“Muscovite Military Leadership in the Early Part of the Th irteen Years’ War: the Belarussian Campaign of 1654 and 1655”); Robert I. Frost, Th e Northern Wars 1558–1721 (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000), 156–91; Brown, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 119–45; Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 147– 86; Davies, “Muscovy at War and Peace,” 500–06; id, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 106–52. Th e number of Russian-, Polish-, Ukrainian-, and Belarussian-language monographs dealing in their entirety or partially with some or all of the Th irteen Years’ War is large. Here are some prominent works: A.I. Baranovich, ed., Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiei 1654–1954. Sbornik statei (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1954); A. N. Mal’tsev, Rossiia i Belorussiia v seredine xvii veka (Moscow: MGU, 1974); L. Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska. R. 1654–1655 (Warszawa: Nakład Gebethnera i Wolff a, 1910); Henadz’ Sahanovich, Neviadomaia vaina 1654–1667 (Minsk: Navuka i tekhnika, 1995). 68 N.I. Kostomarov, G.F. Karpov, eds. Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii iuzhnoi i zapadnoi Rossii, sobrannye i izdannye arkheografi cheskoiu kommissieiu (hereaft er AIuZR), 15 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia P.A. Kulisha, tipografi ia Edvarda Pratsa, tipografi ia V.V. Prattsa, et al., 1863–92), 10, no. 15, ii: 675–78; Vitebskaia uchenaia arkhivnaia kommissiia, Trudy vitebskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii (hereaft er TVUAK), 1 vol. (Vitebsk: Tipografi ia Nasl. M.B. Neimana, 1910), 1:1; A.N. Mal’tsev, “Voina za Belorussiiu i osvobozhdenie Smolenska v 1654 g.,” IZ, 37 (1951): 125–43; R.M. Zotov, Voennaia istoriia rossiiskogo gosudarstva, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia Aleksandra Smirdina, 1839), 1: 189. Paul Bushkovitch provides a compelling analysis of how 284 peter b. brown

Th e Th irteen Years’ War tested Muscovite C2 as never before and exposed the strengths and weaknesses of its centralized C2 model. Initially, Th e Russians performed most ably in investing Smolensk and the fortifi ed towns of Eastern Belarus (e.g., Orsha, Kopys’, Shklov, Mogilev, Staryi Bykhov), as these places were right by the Dnepr River, Muscovy’s military supply artery, and therefore were provisioned without too much diffi culty from Viaz’ma, the Russians’ principal logistical base. Th e none-too-eff ective Belarus sian 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. Th e Russians in 1654 and 1655 usually enjoyed imposing if not staggering superiority in materiel and manpower, and their men acquitted themselves well enough in set-piece combat. Th is 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 aff ected Aleksei’s appointing his top generals for the 1654 off ensive (Paul Bushkovitch, “Th e Politics of Command in the Army of Peter the Great,” in Reforming the Tsar’s 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], 255–58). Some fl avor of the role that informal ties between chancellery offi cials and senior- and middle-ranking members of the Moscow service group can be had from O.V. Novokhatko, “Upravlentsy srednego zvena v xvii veke: neformal’nye kontakty sluzhilykh po otechestvu i prika- znykh,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2005, no. 3: 158–67, reminding us that what happened “behind the scenes” had vital impact upon battlefi eld outcomes. 69 For an estimation of Belarussian fi ghting abilities, see Jan Pasek’s jaded account in Jan Pasek, Th e Memoirs of Jan Chryzostom z Goslawic Pasek, trans., ed. Maria A.J. Świecicka (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 Th irteen Years’ War, see Darius Baronas, “Wojskowość,” in Kultura Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Analizy i Obrazy, eds. Vytautas Ališauskus, et al. (Cracow: Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac Naukowych, 2006), 878–84; Mikola Ermalovich, Belaruskaia dziarzhava Vialikae Kniastva Litoŭskae (Minsk: Bellitfond, 2003), 376–95; H.M. Sahanovich, Voiska Vialikaha Kniastva Litoŭskaha ŭ xvi–xvii stst. (Minsk: Navuka i tekhnika, 1994). For a Belarussian point of view on the war’s eff ects in Belarus, see Sahanovich, Neviadomaia vaina. For a perspective on how parts of eastern Poland (“the Crown”) fared during the periods of Khmel’nyts’kyj and the Th irteen Years’ War, see Jerzy Motylewicz, Społeczeństwo Przemyśla w xvi i xvii Wieku (Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2005), 165–74 and Robert Kozyrski, Sejmik Szlachecki Ziemi Chełmskiej 1648–1717 (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 2006), 220–28. 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. Th anks to his decently organized and mobile command headquarters, which included some of the Boyar Duma and his extraordinary amanuensis Secret Chancellery State Secretary Dementii Bash- ma kov, Aleksei conducted the Belarussian campaign with alacrity.70 Th e 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 1654–55 winter. Usually no more than 10,000 to 20,000 of the Russian and Ukrainian troops were committed to battle at one time.71 Th e 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 Th irteen Years’ War, Aleksei envisioned one operational theater extending from the Baltic to the Black Seas. In preparation for this confl ict, he became personally involved in the details. Th is 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: 468–70; Zotov, Voennaia istoriia rossiiskogo gosudarstva, 1: 188–90; TVUAK,1:1; Mal’tsev, “Voina za Belorussiiu,” 129; BEF, 2: 108; ZORSA, 2: 725–27; Jan Wimmer, Historia piechoty polskiej do roku 1864 (Warsaw: Ministerstwo obrony narodowej, 1978), 224; id, “Materiały do zagadnienia organizacji i liczebności armii koronnej w latach 1655–1660,” in Studia i materiały do historii wojskowości, 491, 497, 499; Upravlenie vilenskogo uchebnogo okruga, Arkheografi cheskii sbornik dokumentov otnosiashchikhsia k istorii severozapadnoi Rusi, izdavaemyi pri upravlenii vilenskogo uchebnogo okruga, 14 vols. (Vil’na: Pechatnia gubernskogo pravleniia, pechatnia A.G. Syrkina, pechatnia O. Bliumovicha, et. al., 1867–1904), 14: xxvii, xxx. For an overview of the seventeenth-century Russian army, see Istoriia russkoi armii i fl ota (Moscow: Obrazovanie, 1911), 68–79; Józef Andrzej Gierowski, Rzeczpospolita w dobie złotej wolności (1648–1763) (Cracow: Ofi cyna Wydawnicza, 2004), 47–49. See Ivan Tyktor, Istoriia Ukrains’koho Vijs’ka (L’viv, 1936; 1992 reprint), 242–88. 72 BEF, 2, no. 55: 84; 2, no. 70: 102–03; Pamiatniki, izdannye vremennoiu kommissieiu dlia razbora drevnikh aktov, vysochaishe uchrezdennoiu pri kievskom voennom, podol’skom i volynskom general-gubernatore (hereaft er PVK), 4 vols. (Kiev: Univer- sitetskaia tipografi ia, 1845–59), 3: 89–96; Jósef Andrzej Gierowski, Rzeczpospolita w Dobie Złotej Wolności (1648–1763) (Cracow: Ofi cyna Wydawnicza, 2004), 47–49. See Tyktor, Istoriia Ukrains’koho Vijs’ka, 242–88. 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, command structure, situational awareness, coherent and lucidly communicated orders, synchronized plan execution, and unity of eff ort 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 fi eld near him, relied heavily upon the Secret Chancellery, and maintained a series of fi eld 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 fi ft een 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 competent and domineering executive with managerial fl air, 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 integrate into his army 100 lower-service class cossacks detailed from V.P. Sheremetev’s forces.75 Tsar Aleksei also bullied his subordinates with temper spasms, threats, and blandishing of punishments. Th is intimidated his senior as well as junior commanders into accepting command by plan, command

73 Brown, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 120–21, 126, 130. 74 Mal’tsev, “Voina za Belorussiiu,” 141. 75 Brown, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 127–29, 132–34. 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 tsar’s 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 Aleksei’s 1654– 55 Belarussian Campaign, who displayed excessive caution if not outright incompetence in his movement through northern Belarus. Aft er 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 fi nally 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 aft er 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, Aleksei’s headquarters ordered V.P. Sheremetev “to attack Vitebsk through tunneling and arson” and fi nd 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: 94–95; TVUAK, 1:2; Beliaev, I.S., ed., “Boiarin V.P. Sheremetev pod Vitebskom v 1654 g.” Russkii arkhiv, 1914, no. 10: 149–54; “Sheremetev pod Vitebskom,” 150–52; Arkheografi cheskaia ekspeditsiia, akademiia nauk, Dopolneniia k aktam istoricheskim, sobrannye i izdannye arkheografi cheskoiu kommissieiu, 12 vols., index. (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia ii otdeleniia sobstvennoi Ego imperatorskogo velichestva kantseliarii, tipografi ia Eduarda Pratsa, tipografi ia V.V. Pratsa, 1846–75), 3, no. 123: 528–29. For an account of the audacious and overly complicated 1646 Crimean campaign into which the otherwise nominally competent Kondyrev was thrust, see Davies, Warfare, State, and Society, 96. Th e 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 fi nd, and one of the most remarkable seventeenth-century offi cial 288 peter b. brown twenty guns. But the citadel fell only on November 22, aft er fourteen weeks of siege. V.P. Sheremetev’s conduct is a good illustration of “defensive procrastination,” an exaggerated “awareness of the threat of serious losses” should one elect an alternative plan and “lack of hope of fi nding a solution” that would mitigate risk.77 Kondyrev’s report shows Sheremetev’s advisors acting as a posturing in-group given to self-reinforcing consensus-seeking and weak justifi cations 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. Th e reason for such conduct was not only the personality of an ageing and irascible general but the fact that the tsar’s 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 subsequent 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 initiative by trying to aff ect a speedier victory through an assault of his own design. Th is 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 Confl ict, 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 eff orts to rationalize in order to discount warnings. 3. An unquestioned belief in the group’s 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 group’s 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. Th e emergence of self-appointed “mindguards”—members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency. Janis and Mann, Decision Making, 130–32. 79 “Sheremetev pod Vitebskom,” 153; AMG, 2, no. 1160: 682–83; Sinbirskii sbornik. Istoricheskaia chast’. Vol. 1 (Moscow: Tipografi ia A. Semena, 1845), 1: 40–41. command and control in the russian army 289

But this only brought down the tsar’s wrath, for on April 2, 1655—eight months aft er the fact—Aleksei upbraided Sheremetev for this assault, which in Aleksei’s 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 Th is was not the fi rst time Aleksei threatened a commander with death and then rescinded his malediction, but relenting and off ering 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 belligerent’s territory, their lines of communication lengthened, and their supply trains were laden down with siege artillery and ammunition, 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 “Ortemei’s henchman,” comparing him to the woebegone A.V. Izmailov, who had been beheaded with Shein for the Smolensk debacle.83 Th e 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: 736–37; TVUAK, 1:2; Kievskaia kommissiia dlia razbora drevnikh aktov, Pamiatniki, izdannye kievskoiu kommissieiu dlia razbora drevnikh aktov, 3 vols., 2d ed. rev. (Kiev: Tipografi ia imperatorskogo universiteta, Sv. Vladimira N.T. Korchak- Novitskogo, 1898), 3: 215; PVK, 3: 109–12. 81 See AMG, 3, no. 58: 65–66 for Aleksei’s 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 prikaznoi politiki tsaria Alekseia Mikhailovicha (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’no- ekonomicheskoe izdatel’estvo, 1937), 251–53 for his discussion of Aleksei’s insistence that his generals and other offi cials never stray from prearranged plans. 290 peter b. brown

At fi rst I was unable to write you, Sovereign, about this, bearing in mind your Sovereign’s gracious command to be in accord and to discharge your offi cial 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 Boyar’s 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. Th e 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-fi eld combat—their forte—and with the help of their Tatar allies they exacted a devastating toll from the Muscovite fi eld 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-fl anking and envelopment and failed to grasp all the potentialities off ered by terrain. Russian wagenburg tactics, sub- optimal logistics, Baltic alliance shift s, 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. Sheremetev’s dilatory performance is in Barsukov’s hagiographical narrative on the Sheremetev clan (A.P. Barsukov, Rod boiar Sheremetevykh, 8 vols. [St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1881–1904], 4: 83–98, 116–19). 86 Brown, “Early Modern Bureaucracy,” 401–03; id, “Th e Routinization of Charisma,” 214–20; Robert I. Frost, Th e Northern Wars 1558–1721 (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000), 184, 186–87; Tetiana Iakovleva, Ruina Het’manshchyny. Vid Pereiaslavs’koi Radi-2 do Andrusivs’ka Uhody (1659–1667 rr.) (Kiev: Osnovy, 2003), 120–30; Tetiana Iakovleva, Het’manshchyna v druhii polovyni 50-kh rokiv xvii stolittia. Prychyny i pochatok Ruiny (Kiev: Osnovy, 1998), 340, 347–48; Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emer- gence, 158–59; Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 130–32, 136–38, 143–47; Malov, Moskovskie vybornye polki, 444–50, 472. Polish adulation over the Commonwealth’s new string of victories was such that it resonated in the seventeenth-century panegyric, 1,958 lines in all, mocking Muscovite general V. B. Sheremetev’s rout and capture at Chudnovo (Samuel Leszczyński, 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 environment,” and noted that this was attributable to preference, not ignorance on the Russians’ part, for they were abreast of current European military literature.87 Aleksei, his advisers, and the chancelleries heavily determined and organized the tasks Muscovite generals in the fi eld were to carry out; fi eld 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 important to a Muscovite general, spending yet more time recording one’s unit’s 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. Th ey, 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. Th e Razriad sent Muscovite fi eld 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, fi eld commanders were regarded metaphorically as passive receptacles. It was assumed that army commanders would implement and report upon combat theater directives predetermined by the capital, 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. Th e string of Muscovite defeats high- lights the major shortcomings in the Military Chancellery’s relations with its fi eld commanders. Again and again the center deprived itself of competent military leadership by denying its commanders any personal initiative. Generals were hamstrung by edicts from the center

Szeremetem Hetmanem Moskiewskim, i z Kozakami w roku Pańskim 1660 od Polaków Wygrana, ed. Piotr Borek (Cracow: Collegium Columbinum, 2006), 7–8, 43–99. 87 Davies, War, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 136–37. 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 dominated both Razriad directors’ and fi eld commanders’ minds. Th is became a major contributory factor for V.B. Sheremetev’s Chudnovo (Ukr., Chudniv) debacle in October 1660, in part engineered by the Military Chancellery.88 Th en 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 men’s discontent arising, from time to time, from tight circumscription of commanders’ initiative. Th eir 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 tsar’s authority. Th e increase in precedence litigiousness over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries left the processes of autocratization, bureaucratic centralization, and centralization of military C2 free to continue without eff ective challenge from the upper and middle service classes. Th us 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 fi ft eenth centuries. Earlier Polish monarchs such as Casimir the Great (1333–70), Casimir Jagiel- lończyk (1440–92), and Sigismund I (1506–48) and their Musco- vite counterparts Ivan Kalita (1325–41), Dmitrii Donskoi (1359–89), Vasilii II (1425–62), and Ivan III (1462–1505) had followed similar C2 styles, giving more play to decentralized execution, command by infl u- ence, and mission-type order.89 But by the time of the Th irteen Years’ War, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s C2 was markedly diff erent from Muscovy’s. Th e 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. Th is 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 general’nogo shtaba, 1891–94), 1: 37, 52; Reger, “In the Service of the Tsar,” 271–72. 89 Janusz Tazbir, ed., Polska Na Przestrzeni Wieków (Warsaw: PWN, 1995), 110–11, 138–39, 164–67, 171. command and control in the russian army 293 to the educated paladin’s wide acquaintance with military history and current European military theoretical works and handbooks. Such literature stressed maneuver, quickness in action, studied awareness of terrain, rapid responsiveness to sudden and unanticipated events, and independent thinking on the battlefi eld.90 One might expect the spread to Eastern Europe of the gunpowder revolution and the rush to build stone fortifi cations to have pushed the Poles and Muscovites alike in the same centralizing C2 direction.91 But such was not the case. Th e more automatic and unswerving Muscovite commitment to centralized C2 proceeded from a political culture dif- ferent from the Commonwealth’s, and this was further reinforced by the lessons of particular military experiences. Th ese were the enormous diffi culties of restoring order and expelling foreign invaders aft er the collapse of central government during the Troubles, and then Tsar Aleksei’s apparent 1654–1655 success in turning himself into a “military monarch” dictating to commanders whom he automatically assumed incapable of thinking for themselves. Th is is not to say that Aleksei was oblivious to the defi ciencies of over-centralization and the advantages of decentralized execution, command by infl uence, 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 sometimes unknown strength and disposition, without the aid of detailed maps, timepieces, or compasses, required that the tsar permit his commanders some discretionary command authority.92 Th e Th irteen Years’ War C2 record of the Russians was mixed. Th ey possessed no fora for systematically evaluating their forces’ performance

90 Karól Olejnik, Rozwój Polskiej Myśli Wojskowej do końca xvii w. (Poznań: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, 1976), 192–94; Polska Na Przestrzeni Wieków, 130–33, 146–47, 168–70, 174–81, 184–89, 240–42, 260–62; Andrzej Wyczański, Polska Rzeczą Pospolitą Szlachecką (Warsaw: PWN, 1991), 59–122, 203–47; Orest Subtelny, Domination of Eastern Europe. Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 1500–1715 (Kingston, Ontario; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986), 14–22. 91 Th ough 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 Gdańsk (Janusz Bogdanowski, Architektura Obrona w Krajobrazie Polski od Biskupina do Westerplatte (Warsaw, Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996), passim. 92 Brown, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” 135–38. 294 peter b. brown and codifying lessons to be learned by current and future commanders. Th ere were no available printed military educational materials except for a few imported and domestically produced drill manuals. Th e 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 Th irteen Years’ War and sustaining it thereaft er.

Th e Southern Frontier and the Frontier Military Districts

Warfare on the southern frontier diff ered from warfare on the western and northern fronts in several important ways; the terrain was, of course, very diff erent, and whereas the Poles, Belarussians, and Swedes made great use of fi rearms, artillery, and stone fortresses and redoubts, the Crimean Tatars confronting Muscovite forces on the southern steppes were predominantly light cavalry archers. Th e seventeenth century did see some major battles against Crimean Tatars and Otto- man Turks using artillery and fi rearms, 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. Th is required that the Muscovites alter their C2 accordingly. Th e 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 fortifi ed or abatis line (zasechnaia cherta), built and settled through the capital’s intervention. Such abatis lines consisted of earthen walls, log palisades, observation towers, and military-administrative settlements and garrison towns reminiscent of the Roman castrae. And in addition small mobile units patrolled into the territory anterior to the line. Th ese 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 construction and maintenance of the Belgorod fortifi ed 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 fortifi ed line further south. Administration of the fortifi ed defense lines followed a strikingly centralized C2 style, with what Davies remarked as “the overcentralization of command initiative in the Military Chancellery.”93 Th is 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 infl uence and mission-type orders had to be permitted. Th e logistical management of the defense line was exercised through tightly centralized C2, but tactical C2 (for small-unit patrolling and combat) was diff used to company-grade commanders. As the seventeenth century wore, the fortifi ed 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 communications traffi c and more operational decisions to make. Th is 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 Th e 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, 50–52, 53, 57–58, 87, 91, 155, 158. Th e author [PB] found these pages especially relevant. See also Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 41–91. Th ough Davies takes pains to show manifold instances of central authority’s remanding initiative-taking to local authority, the preponderance of his fi ndings depict the Razriad’s nit-picking obtrusion in virtually every activity along the Belgorod fortifi ed line, Kozlov being the object of his synchronic study. See, “Th e Urliapovo Working Order and the Mechanisms of Military Colonization” and “Consolidation: the Pol’noi Voronezh and Chelnavsk Garrisons,” in Davies, “Th e Role of the Town Governors,” 284–377, 510–99. Overviews of seventeenth-century Muscovite local government are in Brown, “Early Modern Bureaucracy,” and in Brian L. Davies, “Local Government and Administration,” in Th e Cambridge History of Russia. Volume I. From Early Rus’ to 1689, 464–85. 94 See Peter B. Brown, “With All Deliberate Speed: the Offi cialdom and Departments of the Seventeenth-Century Muscovite Military Chancellery (Razriad),” Russian History 28, nos. 1–4 (Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter 2001): 144–52 and Marshall Poe, “Elite Service Registry in Muscovy, 1500–1700,” Russian History 21, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 253–60, 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

Th is looks like a decentralization maneuver but actually was not. Th e central Razriad at Moscow maintained fi rm control over the principal frontier towns where razriad military districts were headquartered; the governors in the latter controlled military aff airs in the lesser towns comprising the various military districts. Th is 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 representatives and at most creating autonomous areas that might have become federal jurisdictions. Th e central Razriad devolved to the frontier military district governors 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 military 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 okol’nichie, men of Duma rank, who could have made such appeal in Duma sessions. 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 person having control over thousands of square miles of frontier terrain. Th e 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 Razriad’s evolution, personnel, and numerous deployment and recording responsibilities, see the two above sources and Brown, “Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy,” 448–79. Yet another Razriad responsibility was service registration and articulation of monetary remuneration due servitors (see the section entitled, “Mesto boiarskikh knig v deloproizvodstve razriadnogo prikaza,” in Lukichev, Boiarskie knigi, 64–109). 95 See the descriptions of deconcentration and decentralization of power in John P. LeDonne, “Regionalism and Constitutional Reform 1819–1826,” 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. Th ey were located on the western, southern, and eastern frontiers of European Russia and also on the Trans- Ural and Siberian frontiers. Th ey 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 connection with the construction of the Belgorod defense line and the beginning of the Th irteen Years’ War; and in 1680 due to the military- administrative reform of that year. Th e process was driven by the need to defend existing frontiers, but over time it was turned to the expansion and consolidation of new frontiers. Th e 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. Th is culminated in the formal establishment of the military district itself as a territory serving as the base of an “army group” (polk). Th e towns on this territory contributed contingents to the army group, and polk and garrison aff airs were made accountable to the army group commander headquartered in the capital of that razriad. Th e Belgorod, Sevsk, and Novgorod frontier military districts were present by the 1660s. Between 1678 and 1680 fi ve razriady were created or reestablished: the Smolensk, Riazan’ (Pereslavl’-Riazanskii), Vladimir (Frontier), Tambov, and Kazan’ frontier military districts. Th is was due in part to the reform of fi nances 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), 86–87; Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 163–64. 298 peter b. brown beginning in Tsar Aleksei’s last years and to the demands of the Russo- Turkish War; but it also refl ected the longer-term trends of the “militarization” of Muscovite provincial administration and the consolidation of administrative power in fewer hands.97 Tsar Aleksei’s command from the front in 1654 and 1655 and the establishment of the razriad military districts could both be seen as eff orts to maintain centralization of C2 without basing all C2 far off in Moscow in the Military Chancellery. Th ere was an additional fi scal reason for trying to avoid over-reliance on the Military Chancellery. Th e 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 percentage of clerks the Razriad employed declined in relation to that of the central administration as a whole.98 Th is meant the Military Chan- cellery had less of a lock on fi nancial 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. Th ere 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.

Th e 1676–1681 Russo-Turkish War and the Crimean Campaigns of 1687 and 1689

Th e 1676–81 Russo-Turkish War pitted signifi cantly 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,” 13–14, 21–23, 40, 43–44, 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, “Th e Moscow Civil Elite’s Salaries,” Sosloviia i gosudarstvennaia vlast’ v Rossii. XV-seredina xix vv. Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia—Chteniia pamiati akad. L.V. Cherepnina. Tezisy dokladov. Moskva, 13–16 iiunia 1994 g. 2 parts, ed. N.V. Karlov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi komitet RF po vysshemu obrazovaniiu, et al, 1994), 2: 263–73; id, “Th e Service Land Chancellery Clerks of Seventeenth-Century Russia: Th eir Regime, Salaries, and Economic Survival,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 51 (2003): 50–54, 57, 62; id, “How Muscovy Governed. Seventeenth-Century Russian Central Administration,” Russian History 36 (2009): 459–529. command and control in the russian army 299 such distances from Moscow, and during this war forces were deployed and C2 exercised with greater effi ciency than had been evident in the Th irteen Years’ War overall. Th e Ottomans initiated hostilities by harboring designs upon Chigi- rin (Ukr., Chyhyryn), the stronghold on the Dnepr, 120 miles southeast of Kiev, that served as the formal capital of the Hetmanate. Th e Muscovites responded by undertaking two relief expeditions, on the whole well-conceived, to reinforce the Muscovite and Ukrainian troops holding beleaguered Chigirin. Th e 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 fortifi ed line and shift ing polk manpower towards the southwest. Th e Ottomans were prevented from expanding their power out of Podolia into the rest of western Ukraine.99 Th e 500 miles separating Chigirin from Moscow had forced the Razriad to rethink how close a control it could aff ord to exercise over its commanders in Ukraine. With the important exception of Romodanovskii’s halt outside Chigirin in 1678—which may have been ordered by Moscow—the 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. Th us we see a movement towards decentralized C2 that contrasts to the centralized C2 of the Smolensk and Th irteen Years’ wars. Th e gam- ing Russian C2 sides in the Russo-Turkish War consisted of the Razriad, Golitsyn, the Miloslavskii clique, and Romodanovskii. Th ere were some factional disagreements as to how to prosecute the war, but on

99 Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 159–75. 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 Th irteen Years’ War, the Russo-Turkish War saw better command leadership, situational awareness, synchronized plan execution, and unity of eff ort and leveraging of mission partners. Th e war galvanized eff orts to move to a single-payer direct tax (by universalizing the musketeers’ tax), to reform fi nancial and military administration reforms (1680), and to increase the number of frontier military districts.100 Never before had the Razriad’s responsibilities stretched so far. Yet it showed greater sophistication in the command and control of fi eld 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 confi dent 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 offi cers to integrate their operational roles and making possible more streamlined C2 at both the capital and fi eld levels. All of this seemed to augur well for the next, major southern frontier confrontation, the 1687 and 1689 Crimean campaigns. Th ese campaigns, masterminded and led personally by V. V. Golitsyn, a misfi ring military activist, failed to obtain Perekop Peninsula, the sentinel to the Crimean Peninsula and southeast of the Dnepr. Th ey 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), 72–75; DAI, 8, no. 36 (September 15, 1678- March 4, 1681): 104–12; DAI, 8, no. 66 (December 1679): 258–59; PSZ, 2, no. 824 (May 22, 1680): 267–68; PSZ, 2, no. 844 (November 12, 1680): 283–85. 101 Th e government in the aft ermath of the Smolensk War disbanded the new model units, thus depriving the Russians opportunity to glean long-term performance data from them. Th erefore, the time-span above I did not extend back to the early 1630s. 102 Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 230–31; Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe, 112–21; Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 178–82. command and control in the russian army 301

Golitsyn’s C2 style compared badly with Romodanovskii’s. Sophia’s lover ran military strategy in the fi eld, 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 subordinates. Th is was partly the consequence of the logistical demands of his plan of campaign (particularly for the fi rst 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. Golitsyn’s 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. Th ough a concise study is needed, his C2 fl ow 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 fi eld Golitsyn seemed oblivious to decentralized execution, command by infl uence, and mission-type order. He preferred instead, as is inferable from the record, to let the Russians’ monolithic logistical operation dictate C2 posture and tactics,103 rather than the other way around.

Th e Institutions of Command and Control (Outside the Army)

Th e 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. Th is is already apparent in the military narrative we have presented above. Shift s 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 Hughes’s account of the Crimean expeditions (Lindsey Hughes, Sophia Regent of Russia 1657–1704 [New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1990],

197–216). It sheds little light on Golitsyn’s C2 technique. Hellie thinks that Golitsyn was a bungler and coward (Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change, 231). 302 peter b. brown nomadic warfare), fi ghting postures and scale (large-scale off ensive, small-scale off ensive, large-scale defensive, small-scale defensive, reconnaissance), force allocation (infantry, cavalry, artillery), and top- and intermediate- and low-level command levels.

Th e Tsar Th e monarch directly taking a hand and leading his troops, if not actually 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 fi eld, Aleksei proved himself to be insightful, in control of himself, and willing to delegate authority. His successor Tsar Fedor Aleseevich returned to the example of Tsar Mikhail and left both domestic and foreign policy to a coterie of magnates. Th eir major military contribution was the Russo-Turkish War, which exhibited a smoother C2 performance than that achieved during the Th irteen Years’ War. Fedor’s sister Tsarevna Sophiia Alekseevna (de facto ruler, 1682–89), and her consort Golitsyn, were of diff erent mettle, who prominently exhibited, to no avail, both command by plan and command by direction in the bungled Crimean Expeditions. Th ese 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 diff ered in the extent to which they personally exercised ultimate C2 and were competent in doing so.

Boyar Duma Th e Boyar Duma was the tsar’s advisory council, consisting of the top four service ranks of the Moscow or upper service class: boyars, okol’nichie, counselor dvoriane, and counselor state secretaries.104

104 Th e 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 century,105 the Boyar Duma in theory discussed matters at the tsar’s pleasure. It was those who held Duma rank who ran most of the chancelleries, 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 signifi cant military planning to the chancelleries for further detailing, draft ing, and implementation. Whether it was an active or passive force in deliberating and resolving matters of state depended upon the monarch’s 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 aff airs issued from the chancelleries in the name of the Boyar Duma (i boiare prigovorili: “and the boyars [i.e., the Duma ranks] decreed”). Th e Boyar Duma’s proclaimed role in C2 was twofold: providing command by plan and centralized planning. Former Foreign Aff airs Chancellery clerk Grigorii Kotoshikhin’s 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. Th e tsar’s 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), 308–66, 407–57. 105 Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 22–23. 106 Th e expression Boyar Duma is of nineteenth-century vintage; the actual expression, referring to this most retrospectively labeled entity, the Muscovites used was “counselor people” or “Duma people” (dumnye liudi). Th ough not captioned as such, the counselor people (the upper upper service class) had their forum, convened at the suff erance 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. Th e 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, okol’nichii, and counselor dvorianin rank, soon to direct their forces in military operations, participated in the craft ing of their own orders, if these commanders were even present in Moscow. When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich was in the fi eld in Belarus, he sometimes issued orders in the presence of Boyar Duma members he had dragged along, but their input remains conjectural.107 Th en and for the next few years the tsar generally made decisions on his own or upon input from his personal chancery, the Secret Chancellery. Th is course of action eff ectively cut out the Boyar Duma from military decision-making for much of the Th irteen Years’ War and deprived the Duma of any juridical or institutional recourse to abjure Aleksei’s course of action. Judging from the chancellery bureaucracy’s paper trail, the Boyar Duma appears to have provided all six C2 constituents but to varying degrees and with varying eff ectiveness. Th e 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. Th is inability to inject personalistic sway undoubtedly aff ected morale. Th e Boyar Duma did reinforce 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. Th is facilitated centralization of command authority, but it also had a high cost, for it made it all the harder for fi eld commanders to appeal for the prerogative to revise operational plans on the spot in the event of unforeseen contingency. Glued to this defi ciency was the fl awed

107 Mal’tsev, “Voina za Belorussiiu,” 136; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, 176, 185–86, 188–91. command and control in the russian army 305 situational awareness inherent to the Boyar Duma, thanks to its removal at great distance from the battlefi eld and its insurmountable incapacity to generate and disseminate up-to-date forecast information in time to enable a fi eld commander to save his command’s neck in the face of a rapidly escalating, unpredicted event. Th e 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 Duma’s 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. Th e Boyar Duma’s unity of eff ort and leveraging of mission partners was as good as could be expected during the Th irteen Years’ War, the one seventeenth-century confl ict in which serious coalition issues came to bear. Th e 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 eff orts (from 1658 through the mid-1660s) to gain real strategic advantage from military cooperation with Ukrainian factions, the Swedes, and the Turks were less successful. Th e Boyar Duma’s “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 numbering from 2 to 5 people, were executive bodies of the chancelleries, whose staff ranged in number from a few individuals to several hundreds, a few dozen being a usual fi gure. Th e boss of a chancellery tribunal almost always held Duma rank in the 1600s.108 Th is 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. Th e strikingly rapid multiplication of prikazy with more ramifi ed functions over the course of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 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 Th e 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. Th is data was then sift ed, 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 Aft er discussion the Boyar Duma’s decision—which could be detailed or broadly general—was 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 istochnikovedeniiu (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2004), 276–92; A.F. Pisar’kova, Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie Rossii s kontsa xvii do kontsa xvii. Evoliutsiia biurokratich- eskoi sistemy (Moscow: Rosspen, 2007), 27–84; N.M. Rogozhin and Iu.M. Eskin, “Prikazy i prikaznoe deloproizvodstvo Rossii xvi–xvii vv.,” in Pamiati Lukicheva, 234–51. 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), 57–78; Marshall Poe, “Th e Central Government and Its Institutions,” in Th e Cambridge History of Russia. Volume I. From Early Rus’ to 1689, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 453–58. For more information on chancellery staff s, see Borivoj Plavsic, “Seventeenth-Century Chanceries and Th eir Staff s,” in Russian Offi cialdom. Th e 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), 19–45. 109 Th is list is based upon Brown, “Muscovite Government Bureaus,” Russian History, 288–90, 294–329 and Brown, “How Muscovy Governed,” 521–29, which list all the seventeenth-century chancelleries. Oft en military chancelleries carried out functions in more than one category. 110 Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, 24–25. 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. Fortifi cation: Stonework, Fortress Construction, Fortifi ed 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 Fift hs and Requisitioned Monies, Collection Chancellery of Fift hs Monies, Collection Chancellery of Fift hs and Requisitioned Monies, Mobili- zation Chancellery of Military People; Musketeers Grain Collection Chancellery; Chancellery of Military Aff airs; 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 Aff airs. 6. Military Administration: Frontier Army Forces’, Military, Novgorod Military, Secret, Military Aff airs Chancelleries. 7. Combat-zone Territorial Administration: Baltic Lands Chancellery; Chancellery of Great Russia; Foreign Aff airs, Smolensk Chancel- leries; Investigation and Judicial Chancellery of Lithuanian Aff airs; 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 fi les, and one lower-ranking chancellery 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 oft en in a sloppy hand, obviously in response to dictation by a loft y 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 fi eld. A decision to order troop movements made by the Boyar Duma could be fi lled out in greater detail by the chancellery to which the instruction was commended. We do not fi nd 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 center’s dependency on information from the chancelleries so increased that it is fair to say that the Boyar Duma—and with some qualifi cation, even the tsar himself— became an extension of the chancellery bureaucracy.

111 AMG, 2, no. 186: 171; Arkheografi cheskaia ekspeditsiia, akademiia nauk, Akty istoricheskie, sobrannye i izdannye arkheografi cheskoi kommissieiu. 5 vols., index (St. Petersburg: Tipografi ia ekspeditsii zagotovleniia gosudarstvennykh bumag, tipografi ia ii otdeleniia sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantseliarii, 1841– 43), 2, no. 63: 78–79; 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,” 288–90, 294–329. 113 See Tikhomirov, Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo, 359–60; S.O. Shmidt, S.E. Kniaz’kov, Dokumenty deloproizvodstva pravitel’stvennykh uchrezhdenii Rossii xvi–xvii vv. (Moscow: Ministerstvo vysshego i srednego spetsial’nogo 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

Th e dependence of Moscow-issued orders on information provided by the chancelleries did not so much result in “orders of battle” that were overly specifi c and infl exible 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 confi ned 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 staff s. For the most part subordinates were permitted to implement only actions explicitly authorized in advance by the chancelleries. Operations therefore produced a fl ood of highly specifi c orders on matters of troop mobilization, logistics, march routes, etc., and this tended to reinforce the fi eld commanders’ conclusion that they should not try to undertake anything on their own. Although mission-type operational thinking was generally foreign to the training and mindset of the prikaz staff , the chancelleries were largely eff ective in conveying coherently and lucidly communicated orders on specifi c tasks necessary to operational success. Th e prikaz secretaries and clerks were not military strategists, but they did have long experience in translating general operational instructions from above—from the Duma—into concrete plans for command assignments, mobilizations, and logistical arrangements. Moreover, the professional 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 fi eld commanders, and it was ultimately the Boyar Duma which decided the substance of combat orders to fi eld commanders (unless orders were issued on the spot by the tsar himself, as Aleksei did on the fi eld 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 fi eld sometimes forced commanders to remain in lock-step with orders already outdated by changed circumstances at the front. Th ere is much evidence to confi rm the picture of commanders hobbled by central bureaucratic control—this hobbling seen as a normative condition—and 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, prescribed 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 fi eld took its toll. Moscow’s military offi ces 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. Th at had to be left to the fi eld commander on the spot. Unity of eff ort and leveraging of mission partners was the weakest of the six C2 constituents because of specifi c political circumstances that undermined Moscow’s relationship with allied coalition forces in this period.114 Th e most signifi cant and protracted Muscovite experience with coalition warfare was during the Th irteen 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. Diff erences 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. Th e only time when Muscovite armies fought with coalition partners on the fi eld of battle was during the Th irteen Years’ War. At various points during this struggle deep suspicions, rancorous arguments, and even sudden betrayals by Muscovy’s various Ukrainian allies pointedly aff ected Russian armies on the fi eld.115 Th is picture of the stifl ing of commander initiative by the overcentralization of C2 in the Razriad and other military chancelleries is confi rmed 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 Høiback, Command and Control in Military Crisis. Devious Decisions (London, England; Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass, 2003), 23–24. 115 Orest Subtelny, History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 144–45. command and control in the russian army 311 somewhat relaxed.116 Several chancelleries handled various matters within these categories. Th e domineering military administrative organ was the Razriad, which assumed overall control of military matters and bore some organizational and functional resemblance to the seventeenth-century Prussian Kriegskommissariat. Th e Razriad subor- dinated all military-related chancelleries and even ostensibly non- military related chancelleries to its power.117 Chancellery orders, even if not that specifi c, implied no mission-type order scenarios, or, for that matter, decentralized execution and command by infl uence. Nor did they have to, for anything not explicitly ordered would be unauthorized. Chancellery administration dominated 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. Th is is not to say that the chancelleries de facto did not eff ect a considerable molding presence upon the tsar’s command by direction through their

116 Th ese 47 categories I have subdivided into fi ve topical headings: (1) “planning and initial stage of the Smolensk campaign”: troop call-ups, bivouacking of troops, Aleksei Mikhailovich’s command posts between Moscow and V’iazma (staging area), dispatch of artillery to V’iazma, 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’ assignments, quartering policy, salary funding from the Chancellery of the Grand Treasury (prikaz bol’shoi kazny), distribution of monetary and service land compensation, behavior of troops (abuse of local population, fi ghting between Russians and Ukrainians, sex crime), and disease (Plague onslaught, prophylactic measures, prohibitions 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, restoration 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 assignments, captured documents, war trophies sent to Moscow, Polish events, Ukrainian events, and the Russian elite. Under (1) I did not include Aleksei Mikhailovich’s proc- lamation justifying the impending off ensive, since that lay outside the bureaucracy’s orbit. 117 Dennis E. Showalter, “Th e Prussian Military State,” in Early Modern Military History, 1450–1815, ed. Geoff Mortimer (Basingstoke, England; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 120–21; Gordon A. Craig, Th e Politics of the Prussian Army (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 14–15; Otto Hintze, Staat und Verfassung: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zu allgemeinen Verfassungsgeschichte (Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang, 1941), 232–38, 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 Muscovy’s fi nal century had signifi cant 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 pitfalls—did lead, because of its emphasis upon the interaction of documentation, thought, and action, to an enlargement of thinking capacity. Th ough its record of success was uneven, seventeenth-century Russian C2 assumed fi eld 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 fi eld commanders to develop these skills.119 Muscovite C2 documents helped codify and standardize language, eff ect a “grammatization” of thought, and contribute to speech community (Sprachgemeinschaft ) evolution as documentary infl uence became ubiquitous.120 Th e C2 spill-over eff ect from Moscow’s military departments 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 Th is work does not have space to address at length the latter issue, argued in a segment (“Th e Military Revolution and the Fiscal-Military State Debate and Muscovy”) contained in this work’s 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. Th roughout the seventeenth century Muscovite appetites for information acquisition enlarged. Th is process forced Russians to envision larger planning venues to which such information might be applied, and, through sheer cumulative eff ect of growing statistical inputs and macro-planning experience, compelled them to be more conscious (and curious) about the implications of their self-generating knowledge.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), 99–128; William Sunderland, “Imperial Space: Territorial Th ought 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), 33–55. 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 transformation of Ottoman society aft er 1800, has only begun to get the attention it needs from Ottoman historians. As a way of fi lling in some of the gaps, this essay sets out the geopolitical status of the Ottomans in the eighteenth century, discusses the general diffi culties facing Ottoman administrators, and then concentrates on some particulars of the two wars of Catherine II from 1768–1792. Th e emphasis will be on manpower, military leadership and supply, especially as driven by the increasingly desperate fi scal diffi culties of the Ottoman sultanate. Drawn into recent comparative histories of pre-modern empires, the Ottoman military enterprise remains somewhat undiff erentiated 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 discussion of frontiers and borderlands, marginality and hybridity in diverse populations, and/or cultural exchanges across vast, undiff erentiated zones of interaction. Studies on the political economies of pre-modern agrarian empires, and a focus on the impact of local culture on the organization and fi nancing of military manpower in such contexts are promising. Other collaborative eff orts, more overtly cross- imperial, have arisen in response to the interest in the Mediterranean

1 Examples include: Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: Th e Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), but also notably with Huri Islamoğlu, “Introduction to Special Issue on Qing and Ottoman Empires,” Journal of Early Modern History 5 (2001): 271–82; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: Th e Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (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: Th e Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (New York: Routledge, 2002). 316 virginia aksan and Indian Oceans as an ‘inter-regional arena’ worthy of study, by contrast 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 coalitions would assert some degree of independence from Istanbul, Isfahan or Delhi.…In many cases all that happened was that these rulers amal- gamated offi ces and built up local coteries within the shell of the older imperial institutions. Th us 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 fi scalism in the Ottoman Empire of Mahmud II (1808–39) and in the later British East India Company, accompanied by C. A. Bayly’s eff ort to bring coherence to the project of comparison, stress the similarity of operational diffi culties in such agrarian settings, particularly as related to the use of indigenous soldiers and relationships with provincial notables. Th e consensus of younger scholars, he concludes, is that ‘the general opinion now seems to be that the “sick man” was suff ering not so much from diseases of degeneration but from a wider, genetic failure of the species “multiethnic empire.” ’3 Gábor Ágoston, in a similar vein, off ers a further typology of Ottoman frontiers, which demonstrates the wide variety of operational diffi culties 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 Türkmen.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: Th eory and History,” 365–88. 3 Virginia Aksan, “Th e Ottoman Military and State Transformation in a Globalizing World,” 259–72; Douglas Peers, “Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State: Modernity, Hybridity and the Political Economy of Colonial India ca. 1750–1860,” 245–58 and C. A. Bayly, “Distorted Development: the Ottoman Empire and British India, c. 1780–1916,” 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): 15–29. 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 off ers the best opportunity to explore similarities and diff erences across religious and cultural divides, especially for the period 1550–1800. 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. Th e Russians experienced a reformation and triumphal expansion which radically increased the number of Russian territories and diverse subject populations with all its accompanying complications. Goldstone’s demographic arguments about state-breakdown across the world in the seventeenth century and again in 1770–1850, however to be contested, off er one model for cross-cultural conversations.5 Ottomanists by and large have resisted drawing such large scale interpretations for the diffi cult period from 1650–1850, 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 Diff erence enlarges on her infl uential paradigm concerning center-periphery relations, in which she argued that sultanic 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 Europe’s ‘others’. Th e journey from Geoff rey Parker to Kenneth Chase is illustration enough of the sea-change in the study of war and society. Th e appearance of works of those of Hamish Scott,

5 Jack A. Goldstone: “Intro-elite divisions over social mobility; and popular uprisings, partly autonomous and partly elite orchestrated, …pressed basic economic demands so fi ercely 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 Rifa’at ‘Ali Abou El Haj, Formation of the Modern State: Th e Ottoman Empire Sixteenth To Eighteenth Centuries (Albany: SUNY 1991, reissued in 2006).f. Abou El-Haj’s infl uence on several generations of students has been large, with evidence in the “doing” rather than the “refl ecting.” Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: Th e Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), and Empire of Diff erence: Th e 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 15:1–2 (2009), 103–14. Another attempt to engage with European historiography of this period is Ariel Salzmann’s Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State (Boston: Brill, 2004), which is a work on Ottoman regional fi scal governance (Dıyarbakir), 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): 90–4. 318 virginia aksan or Michael Hochedlinger and Brian Davies, as well as the edited collection of David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning among a host of other works on the Russians, is demonstrably changing the picture regarding land-based agrarian empires and military power.7 Th ese kinds of macro historical approaches to the Ottoman imperial setting are welcome but may be premature as specifi c campaigns of specifi c wars remain largely unstudied in the Ottoman archives.8

Ottoman Geopolitical Status 1700–1800

Ottoman military power and its distribution in the eighteenth century 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. Th e 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 Geoff rey Parker, Th e Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, rev ed. 2000); Kenneth Chase, Firearms: a Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Hamish Scott, Th e Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756–1775 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Michael Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence 1683–1797 (London: Pearson Education, 2003), Brian Davies, War, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe 1500–1700 (London; New York: Routledge, 2007); David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning, Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); See also European Warfare 1453–1815 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), which has a chapter by Gábor Ágoston on the Ottomans, and War and Warfare in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815 (London: UCL Press, 1999), with a chapter by V. Aksan, both collections edited by Jeremy Black.European Warfare 1350–1750, Frank Tallet and D. J. B. Trim, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), has two articles on the Ottomans by Ágoston and Rhoads Murphey. 8 My own work, Ottoman Wars 1700–1870: An Empire Besieged (London: Pearson Education, 2007), should be seen as a preliminary eff ort 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

Th ey managed to maintain local coastal defenses haphazardly throughout our period of study until the arrival of the Russian fl eet (aided by British naval expertise) in 1770. Th eir clients in Algiers and Tripoli pursued their own paths but remained bound to the Ottoman system until aft er 1800. Th e 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. Th e 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. Th e trek to the Hijaz also connected Ottoman traders to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Neglected in the fi rst half of the century, Egypt and the Red Sea became the concern of Istanbul again aft er 1770, in response to signifi cant rebellions by autonomous warlords across the empire, and disorder in Cairo itself. Th e Wahhabi uprisings, a true challenge to Ottoman Muslim legitimacy in the early eighteen hundreds, 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. Th e heterodox Sunni Ottoman-Shiite Safavid frontier, cutting through Kars, Erzurum and Baghdad, was disrupted by the Russian arrival in Georgia aft er 1700. Uneasy peace with the Persians was further broken by the collapse of the Safavids aft er 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 trading in Basra and elsewhere, but also the chaos in governance of Egypt from the 1770s forward. Th e annual number of pilgrims joining the caravan in Damascus numbered 15,000–20,000 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, fi rst allied himself with Tahmasp, and brought an end to Ghalzay Afghan rule in Persia. He then had himself crowned as Shah in 1736. Th ereaft er, 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 Shah’s incursions in Azerbaijan caused ripple eff ects 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 1732–34, then sent an embassy to Istanbul in 1736, which prompted a truce, but war broke out again in 1742, leading to Nadir’s pivotal siege of Mosul in 1743. Th at signifi cant 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 fi nd the city well defended by Husayn al-Jalili Pasha and his regional forces, not by any major relief force from the center. Th e city and surrounding areas had become largely self-reliant as a result of the rise of the political household of the Jalilis, who built an extensive network of local alliances among Arab and Kurdish tribal confederacies, had established relations with local Jewish and Christian creditors, and maintained independence based on their continued ability to supply the Ottoman center with provisions (and more occasionally men) for the army. Th e treaty of Kurdan was fi nally 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 Th e 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 description of the Ottoman-Russian wars below. Th e northern frontier line, the site of all the Ottoman-Russian Wars aft er 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. Aft er 1768, it was the frontier of last resistance, where

10 Ernest S. Tucker, Nadir Shah’s Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2006). 11 Th e complete story is available in Tucker, Nadir Shah’s 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 buff er territories for both the Ottomans and the Russians. Th e Ottoman obsession with maintaining that boundary became clear only aft er the disastrous losses of the fi rst war 1768–74, but can be seen in much of Ottoman diplomatic strategy throughout the eighteenth century. Th e 1736–39 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. Th e 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 eff ectively organized and renewed campaign sea- sons year aft er year. But the costs were signifi cant, and the cracks already well evident. From 1740 to 1768 peace prevailed with the western European powers and their Ottoman neighbor. In the empire, the era has been recognized as a time of fi scal recovery and pacifi st grand viziers. Sustained eff orts at neutrality enabled the greater fl ow 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 diplomacy, but in 1768 the war party in Istanbul used it largely as the excuse to reengage along the Danubian frontier.12 Th e stability of sultanic rule, a larger central bureaucracy, and the introduction of multilateralism into foreign aff airs characterize Istanbul of the eighteenth century. One of the explanations for that may have had to do with Ahmed III’s ability to produce children: he married sixteen daughters to royal bridegrooms in the practice known as damatlık, creating a large coterie of privileged courtiers in Istanbul who served the sultans well. Most successions were peaceful aft er 1730, when Ahmed III (1703–1730) 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 aff ected 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, fi rst 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 legitimacy of the Ottoman dynasty, refl ected in disparate voices and several signifi cant rebellions across Christian and Muslim territories alike. Th e sultan retreated even further into isolation and insignifi cance, and warfare became the business of the grand vizier, as none of these sultans led their armies into battle. Th e 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 Ragıb Pasha, reis (equivalent of the minister of foreign aff airs) and grand vizier to three sultans from 1741 to his death in 1763, strove to keep the Ottomans off the battlefi eld and bring them into the age of multilateral treaties with Persia and Austria. Th e striking Ottoman turn to multilateralism, beginning with the 1699 Karlowitz treaty, was linked to increasing military 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 Th e 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 makers etc., and many non-Muslims among them, such as bakers and tailors), had committed 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. Şenol Çelik, “Osmanlı Sefer Organizasyonunda Orducu Esnafı ve İstanbul Orducular,” in Feridun M, Emecen, ed., Eskiçağ’dan Modern Çağ’a Ordular (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2008), 355–86. ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 323 about the need for reform. Russian offi cial representation joined the diplomatic corps in Istanbul aft er 1700, adding to the French, Austrian, Venetian, British and Dutch offi cials 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 offi cials, but in fact perspicacity and patience are also in evidence in the exasperation of European accounts. Th e Ottomans resisted French urging to war over Poland in 1733 and again in 1756. Th ey concluded a mutual defensive alliance with Sweden in 1739, as a means of blocking temporarily Russian ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, and even off ered 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 off er 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. Th e fi rman and the proposed intervention did little more than sur- prize and embarrass the courts involved, but it off ers historians a window 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, ratifi ed by July 1761. Th e Ottomans sent an embassy to Frederick in June 1763, ostensibly to commemorate the 1761 treaty, but in reality to assess the Polish question in Frederick’s court, and further discuss an alliance.16

14 See Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 6. See also the discussion in Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: Th e Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 367–71. 15 Th e sources are Von Hammer and Ottoman chronicler ‘Izzi’s Tarih-i ‘Izzi (Istanbul, 1786), 21a. For an interesting consideration of Russian diplomacy involving the Mediterranean, see Th omas Freller, “In Search of a Mediterranean Base: Th e Order of St. John and Russia’s Great Power Plans During the Rule of Tsar Peter the Great and Tsarina Catherine II,” Journal of Early Modern History 8 (2004): 3–30. 16 Ambassador Ahmed Resmi reported to the court of the conditions in Poland following the death of Augustus III as he made his way across Europe to Berlin. Th e discussions 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, 1789–1807, to establish permanent missions in European capitals in 1793. See Virginia H. Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi 1700–83 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), chapter 2. See also Scott, Th e Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 112–15. 324 virginia aksan

In spite of sustained pressure by the French (Ambassador Vergennes had specifi c instructions to bribe Ottoman offi cials for that purpose), the Ottomans declared neutrality in the matter of Russian interference in Poland in March 1764. Grand Vizier Muhsinzade Mehmed recognized the election of Stanislas Poniatowski, Catherine II’s 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. Th e Treaty of Belgrade recapitulated much of the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz, which had articles concerning the establishment and maintenance of fi xed borders, and regulations concerning cross-border movements. Th e 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 refl ected 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 negotiations and modern inter-state relations.

Th e 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 fi nanced at the local level by governors, tax collectors and elites of town and village collec- tives. Th is redistribution of wealth, facilitated by devolving tax responsibilities to provincial notables and their entourages, who acquired semi-permanent, annually renewed rights to taxation, is directly related to the dynasty’s need to defend its borders through the period 1700–46. Th e return to war with Russia in 1768 revealed the extent to which neither the military system nor Ottoman society in general was

17 Th ere 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 Th e Ottoman Balkans, 1750–1830, Frederick F. Anscombe, ed. (Princeton: Markus Weiner Publishers, 2006), 61–86. 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 (1789–1807) into the radical reorganization called the “New Order.”18 Th e Janissaries, the Ottoman standing infantry, which at its most eff ective under Süleyman (1520–66) 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. Th e Istanbul garrisons probably numbered 20,000–30,000 battle-ready men at the outside in the mid- eighteenth century. Th e rest constituted largely fraudulent entries in infl ated 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 1784–85, between the two Ottoman-Russian wars, at a time when three quarters of the state’s revenue went to military expenses. Whatever the fi gure, yearly salaries (paid in three month installments in theory) and the extensive privileges 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 offi cers and palace offi cials alike could become very wealthy by simply having pay certifi cates (esames) in their possession, occasionally in the thousands, which entitled them to the sultan’s largesse. Early in the eighteenth century, the certifi cates 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 fl ow 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 III’s accession, in 1703, the palace silver was melted down to make up the payment; Mahmud I (1757–74) distributed 29,530 kese akçe, 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 akçes each; see Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 52. Th e practice was abandoned by the end of the century. Th e fi gure 400,000 Janissaries is likely an exaggeration: Yavuz Cezar, Osmanlı Maliyesinde Bunalım ve Değişim Dönemi (XVIII. yy dan Tanzimat’a Mali Tarih), (Istanbul: Alan, 1986), 95–7. 326 virginia aksan

An estimated 54,000 Janissaries were assigned to the sixty-eight fortresses 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. Th e 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 protection 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 regimental brothers at war. Discipline was the responsibility of the regimental offi cers. 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. Th is was not the case in earlier centuries. Börekçi recently demonstrated that the Janissaries took up volley fi re formations perhaps as early as 1520s on the battlefi elds with the Hungarians and Habsburgs, and concludes that a “hot war” was just as signifi cant 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 disaster for the Ottomans, were admired by Russian Field Marshal Rumiantsev for their bravery and perseverance.22 Cash rewards on the battlefi eld (for special deeds, for numbers of enemy killed, for battle wounds), the continuation of the cult of individual valor, the persistence of cavalry as a major component of the Ottoman military, and the lack of control by Istanbul over access to fi rearms across the empire,

20 İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devleti Teşkilatından Kapukulu Ocakları, vol.1, 3rd Printing, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988), 329–30. 21 Günhan Börekçi, “A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: Th e Janissary Use of Volley Fire During the Long Ottoman-Habsburg War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. 59 (2006): 407–38. 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 fi nally 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 campaigns. Th e Janissary Agha was present at battlefi eld conferences but subordinate to the grand vizier, and generally appointed by him with the approval of the sultan. Creation of a military academy for offi cer training and a general staff had to await the elimination of the Janissaries in 1826. Th e 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 generated considerable violence and occasional regicides, but were characterized 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 battlefi eld, their excesses and abuses of local populations were tolerated. Aft er 1700, when the Janissaries had consistently failed to hold back the Holy League’s armies, the sultan and his court worked at other ways of controlling the unruly force in order to continue to defend the empire. Addressing infl ated 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 measure of the degree of fraud represented in the offi cial records.23 Devising alternative or parallel armies was another. Th e traditional provincial soldiers of the Ottoman military system were the feudatory sipahis, or timariots, that is, holders of timars, a fi ef in return for military 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, 46–53. 328 virginia aksan performance in battle. Many new timariots were created for volunteers on the battlefi eld who showed up in the hopes of being assigned a timar in return for valor. Th e timarlı or sipahi was required to outfi t 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 empire’s 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 available 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 confi scation or reassignment of such rights to estates oft en 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 1596–1606. 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 fi rst 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 offi cials and theoretically paid for out of central treasury funds (miri). By the 1720s, a provincial governor was expected to attend the major campaigns with 200 of his own retinue and anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 recruits, cavalry and infantry, the latter paid for from Istanbul. While some aspect of this system of provincial mobilization 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 Th ey caused great diffi culties in the 1768–74 war because they showed up as independent bands, with unreliable leadership, and had a habit of fl ying aft er the fi rst exchange of fi re. Other auxiliary forces, housed in Istanbul, with small detachments at the large fortresses, such as the armorers (cebecis) and the wagoneers (arabacıs), were connected to the production, storage

24 See Virginia H. Aksan, “Whatever Happened to the Janissaries? War in History 5 (1988): 23–36. ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 329 and transportation of weapons and gunpowder. Th ey supported the bombardiers (humbaracıs) and artillerymen (topçus), who were probably the two corps which received the most systematic, if somewhat erratic, investment and renewal by Ottoman offi cials over the centuries, which would continue to be the case, with urgent emphasis under Selim III and Mahmud II, 1808–39. A myriad of local forces, drawn from frontier populations both Christian and Muslim, had once served the war eff ort. Th e 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, digging trenches, etc.). Th ere is little doubt that the disciplinary control surrounding such systems had disappeared by the mid-eighteenth century. Whereas villages and towns could once have benefi ted from the presence of a well-organized, disciplined regiment, they now emptied out at the approach of the sultan’s army. Sieges, where Ottoman prowess is undisputed, began to end in annihilation of garrison populations, which would naturally include civilians who took refuge in times of attack. Th e Crimean Tatars, formidable raiders and slave traders of earlier centuries, had since the fi ft eenth century served as a tributary vassal to the Ottomans. Th ey could make up a huge force of horse and men for major campaigns, and were oft en sent into Poland and Ukraine in particular at the start of large confrontations, the fi rst signal that an Ottoman grand campaign was underway. Two factors had served to reduce their eff ectiveness by the era under scrutiny. Russian expansion south, and the settlement of Ukraine especially aft er 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 fi xed borders but also obliged both Austrians and Ottomans to control such mobile soldiery against encroachment into one another’s territories. Th e Küçük Kaynarca Treaty ending the 1768–74 war eff ectively 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. Th e impact of that loss cannot be underestimated as one of the chief causes for the Ottoman resumption of war in 1787. 330 virginia aksan

Th e 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 principalities to the Ottoman war eff ort 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. Th e period of Phanariot rule (1715–1820s) 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 fi rst order in the time of Süleyman. Roads to the battlefront were carefully prepared for the passage of the Janissaries, and communities within proximity of bivouacs and way-stations could benefi t from the presence of disciplined troops. But, as Europe had learned to its dismay during the Th irty Years War, an undisciplined countryside produced utter devastation and public opposition to the exactions of warfare. Rebellions in the Ottoman capital aft er 1700 tell us that the urban population had reached its limit of tolerance and lost confi dence in the Ottoman management of war. At least one of the consequences of the signifi cant absence of the Ottomans from the battlefi eld 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 1768–74 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, 147–51. 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. Th e redistribution of revenue sources as outlined above, and the permanent international agreements (capitulations), such as that with France in 1740, had the unintended eff ect of empowering a class of local provincial elites, who became essential to the state’s ability to go to war by the end of the eighteenth century. Ottoman bureaucrats made eff orts to reform some traditional taxation policies, which included minting a new silver coin, the kuruş, which became the stable coinage of the eighteenth century, and introducing the widespread use of life-term tax-farming (malikane) aft er 1695, for all transactions of the state: agriculture, customs, and excise taxes. Th e malikanes passed largely into the hands of the wealthy elites of Istanbul and other large cities of the empire. Th eir 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 benefi ts, the eff ect of the initiative was to devolve control of the tax revenues to a cadre of local offi cials. 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 15–16,000,000 million kuruş. Th is system “constituted a form of long-term borrowing by the state, secured against tax revenues.”26 A further development was the diversifi cation 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 development. In 1775, shares of such potential revenues were even sold to the public. Janissaries and central state elites were largely benefi - ciaries.27 Non–Muslims were excluded from the system, but themselves profi ted 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, fi rst granted from the Ottoman government – oft en in cash, as were most of the transactions of

26 Linda Darling, “Public Finances: Th e Role of the Ottoman Centre,” in Cambridge History of Turkey v. 3: Th e Later Ottoman Empire 1603–1839, Suraiya Faroqhi, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 124–28. Figures are on p. 127, and drawn from the work of Mehmet Genç and Ariel Salzmann. 27 Linda Darling, “Public Finances,” 124–28. 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 considerable sources of power by the mid-century, with households requiring protection, which attracted the paramilitary elements described above. As one recent study has noted, “Aft er the provincial notables (ayans) stepped in with their fi nancial and social capital to fi ll 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 battlefi eld.”29 Special taxes were allotted to such local offi cials in times of war. Th ese included the imdad-i seferiye, or special campaign taxes, as well as state (miri) monies to raise regiments of troops, cavalry and infantry, the levends, as the occasion warranted. Elaborate records were maintained of village commitments and guarantees for such troops, and certifi cates of payment-owing by the state, which were oft en subsequently utilized as tax credits, became routine parts of the mobilization and supply strategies of Ottoman offi cials 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. Infl ation, devaluation of coinage, forced loans, confi scation were all practiced by Ottoman offi cials in this time of desperation. Th e kuruş collapsed as the stable currency: gold and copper coins traded more widely. Trade was adversely aff ected by blockades in the Dardanelles, and the collapse of individual buying power as prices rose. Peasant fl ight 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 Çınar Büyükakça, “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 offi cials. Aft er the 1790s, especially, the Ottoman entered the most severe fi nancial crisis of the entire span of dynasty.

Sample Engagements of 1768–92 Th e Ottomans had managed to hold their own against the Austrians on the Danube in the campaigns of 1736–39, 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: fi ve during the 1735–39 war; six during the 1768–74 war. Th e 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 battlefi eld exposure. Few grand viziers, apart from the able Koca Ragıb 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 1736–39, 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 oft en 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, Şumnu (Shumen or Shumla), Ruşcuk (Ruse), İsmail, İbrail, Bender and Ochakov on the Black Sea, fi ercely contested during the Russo-Ottomans Wars of 1768–92, when the Ottomans found themselves fi ghting largely on their own territory, and the Russians threatening Istanbul itself. While little work has actually been undertaken with the local population in mind, the impact can easily be imagined. Th e most acute problem was the Russian investment of strategically vital fortresses at the Danube mouth, which also served as supply depots. Th e Janissary army continued to be eroded by the parallel systems of the countryside. Individuals infi ltrated local Janissary regiments and the timariot properties, and in eff ect, created a defense system organized out of rival households which eff ectively privatized warfare and kept much of the state’s 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 1500–2000 potential warriors at his personal command.30 Mosul may have had as many as 30,000–40,000 troops in the garrison at the time of Nadir Shah’s siege. Of these, perhaps 15,000 came from the Janissary garrison at Aleppo, itself developing as an independent regional network, although always more closely bound to Istanbul as part of the Anatolian sphere. Th e Mosul triumph over Nadir Shah cemented the reputation of the Jalilis as local heroes, but ushered in a period of considerable 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 Th e 1768–74 campaigns have been described elsewhere.33 Th e 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 fi lled 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 glorifi ed secretary. Two other grand viziers were appointed before Muhsinzade, the most able of the military commanders of the period, was restored to command in Nov. 1771, aft er the Ottomans had experienced two of the greatest disasters of the age: the destruction of the fl eet by the Russians (with British help) at

30 Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul 1540–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 199, chapter 3 particularly. Th is process is also succinctly described in Bruce Masters, “Semi-Autonomous Forces in the Arab Provinces,” Cambridge History of Turkey, v. 3, 186–206. 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 fi rst time.” (206) 33 Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 4. ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 335

Çeşme 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 battlefi eld conditions forced the Ottoman surrender. Th e 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 Offi cer Sarım Ibrahim Pasha’s off ers further evidence of the mobilization strategies of the court.34 Th e fi rst thing to be considered was to ensure that the fortresses on the strategic line: Hotin, Bender, Ochakov, İbrail and Killi, were supplied with 100,000 kile each of barley, wheat and fl our. Th is would normally be secured by forced purchase at fi xed prices (mubayaa). Th e 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 buff alo, 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, 1736–39. 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 Babadağı, plus 40,000–50,000 Tatars raised by the Khan, we arrive at the anticipated need of 150,000–200,000 men for the

34 Mustafa Kesbi, İbretnüma-yı Devlet, Ali Emiri ms 484. Mustafa Kesbi describes himself as a secretary in the Deft erdar’s offi ce at the time (folio 32b). Th e manuscript was published in Ottoman, with Cyrillic annotations, in Petersburg in 1881. (Sbornik Nekotorykh Vazhnykh Izviestii i Ofi tsial’nykh Dokumentov Kasatel’no Turtsii, Rossi i Kryma. Devlet-i ‘Aliye iyle Rusya Devleti ve Kırım Hakkında Baze Malumat Muhimme ve Tahrirat Resmiye-yi havi Mecmu‘a dır, ed. By V. D. Smirnov.) Two Istanbul manuscripts have been compared and transcribed into modern Turkish characters as İbretnümâ-yı Devlet (Tahlil ve Tenkitli Metin), ed., Ahmet Öğreten (Ankara, 2002). See pages 74–94 for this description. 336 virginia aksan

Danubian and Black Sea frontier in this war. Th e register includes close to a thousand offi cers and their entourages.35 Th e 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; Kütahyali (Aegean) Rıdvan Agha, Dagıstani Ali Pasha; Çerkes Hasan Pasha, etc. (Caucasus). In the list as well are major clan names, important to later events: Karaosmanoğulları, Çapanoğulları among others. A roll call occurred as troops arrived at Babadağı, command center south of the Danube, and actual battlefi eld numbers for the distribution of salaries and supplies were then determined. Hantepesi, across the Danube between Hotin and Jassy, was the northernmost supply center, with the crossing at İsakçı. Th e 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 aft er 1764. He was granted the title of fi eld marshal, with sole battlefi eld command aft er his defeat of the Ottomans at Kartal in 1770. He and his foreign offi cers brought a new culture of discipline and camaraderie to the battlefi elds of the east. Th e Russians faced the diffi culty in both wars of being far from their source of supply, and absolutely crippled by disease, as they were more susceptible than the Ottomans to the fevers that were prevalent in the Danubian valley. Th e 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 battlefi eld command, trends not fully evident until Catherine’s wars against the Turks, were also legacies of the wars within Europe. Th e 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 60–70%. Money and supplies failed to materialize, or, if to hand, quickly ran out. In May of 1770, aft er 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. Th e Russians may have been outnumbered as much as by fi ve 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. Vasıf Efendi, later Ottoman offi cial 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. Th e confrontation with the Janissaries was fi erce and was accompanied by fi ve hours of continuous fi ring from the heaviest cannons.36 Th e Khan’s cavalry fl ed fi rst, sparking the desertion of the infantry, and leaving Abdi Pasha’s infantry and the Janissaries to bear the brunt of the confrontation. Th e entire baggage-train and one hundred fi ft y cannons and car- riages were left behind and captured by the Russian forces. Th ree thousand Ottoman soldiers are said to have died at Kartal, but worse followed. Th ose fl eeing had to cross the Danube by boat – and the Russians fi red on the fl eet 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. Th e greatest loss was there – as evidenced by the drowned bodies fl oating in the river.”37 Th e estimates ranged from 20,000 to 40,000 Ottoman dead, aft er the fi nal confrontation before İsmail a few days later, when it too was captured. Th e fi nal humiliation awaited the Ottomans at Şumnu in spring of 1774. Rumiantsev’s 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. Th e Ottomans were fi rmly entrenched with skilled warriors in the Rusçuk, Niğbolu, Vidin and Belgrade garrisons, he noted, and had proved their mettle in holding out those fortifi cations. Th e 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 Buçak, the Ottoman fl eet guarded the Danube estuary, and hence maintained control of the Crimean Peninsula. Th e fi nal capture of Ochakov lay in the future (1788), but Kilburun, across the bay at the mouth of the Dnieper River, was captured 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 suffi cient 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 fi nal set of confrontations around Şumnu in late June 1774. Th e Russians crossed the Danube, and surrounded the camp of the hopelessly outnumbered, gravely ill Muhsinzade Mehmed. He agreed to a cessation of hostilities and immediate peace conference. Th e 21 July 1774 treaty was signed on the battlefi eld by Ahmed Resmi and Nikolai Repnin, plenipotentiaries for the two sides, at Küçük Kaynarca, headquarters of Rumiantsev.38 Küçük 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 signifi cant population of Muslims for the fi rst time, and the Russians acquired the rights to passage through the Dardanelles, the latter fought by Ottoman diplomats since Peter’s fi rst victory at Azov in 1696. Th e Russians insisted on the right to intervene for the protection of Orthodox subjects of the sultan, a tactic they utilized adroitly for the next fi ft y years. Furthermore, the treaty stipulated a huge indemnity to be paid by the Ottomans which crippled recovery for the next decade.

38 Th is description is abbreviated from that of Aksan, Ottoman Wars, chapter 4. ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 339

Catherine II fi nished 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 fi gures 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 aff ected a similar policy with rival Georgians. Th e Russian ambassador 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 infl uence on the fi nal decision in Istanbul. Catherine II’s trip was the coup de grâce. Th e 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 fi red on Russian frigates off Ocha- kov, as part of their assault on Kilburun, surrendered to Russia in 1774.

39 Bağış, Britain, 26–7. 40 Th is is an oft told tale about Catherine’s “Greek Project”: see Alan W. Fisher, Th e Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1772–1783 (Cambridge, 1970); Th e “Chemin de Byzance” quote is from L. Pingaud, Choiseul-Gouffi er: La France en Orient sous Louis XVI (Paris, 1887), 183–89. Ottoman diplomats were fully aware of the rumors concerning the Greek Project (Aksan, Ottoman Statesman, 179). 41 Bağış, 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. Th e Russian fl eet did not perform well in the confrontation, however, and later was badly damaged by a late autumn storm. André Lafi tte-Clavé, 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 envisioned an attack in stages with a landing on the very end of the sandy peninsula on which Kilburun rested. Lafi tte 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 fl ew at the fi rst 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 Th e consequences of the Ottoman failure to reduce Kilburun became apparent the next June, when fi ft een ships of the Ottoman Black Sea fl eet were destroyed while trying to escape the newly installed Russian battery at Kilburun. Th e 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 concentrating at Semlin opposite Belgrade; a second in Croatia; a third army corps stationed along the Sava River; another to cover the Banat/ Temeşvar; a fi ft h protecting Transylvania and a sixth in Galicia/ Bukovina. Some 245,000 troops, with 898 fi eld guns and 252 siege guns were initially deployed on the Ottoman frontier – a number which

42 Frédéric Hitzel, “Défense de la place turque d’ oczakow par un offi cer du génie francais (1787),” Ikinei Tarih Boyunca Kongresi Bildirileri (Samsun, Turkey, 1990), 646–7. ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 341 later rose to some 294,000 – approximating the Russian mobilization in the Principalities and the Crimea. Th e 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. Th e Russians mobilized two armies: one under Potemkin, to capture Ochakov, the other to concentrate on the Danube, Prut and Dniester basins, aft er 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 reluctantly 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 reluctant 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. Th ere were 7,000 at Hotin under Osman Pasha, 40,000 at İsmail (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 offi cers were sent on a spy mission to the Ottomans in 1791–93, and found themselves being consulted by Selim III’s 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.” Th eir 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 Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri Tarihi III, v. 4:3, İkinciViyana Kuşatmasından Nizam-i Cedidin Teşkiline Kadar Olan Devre (1683–1793) (Ankara: Genelkurmay, 1982), 267. 44 Trevor J. Hope, “Th e Secret Balkan Missions of Captain Koehler and Camptain Monro (1791–1793), Revue Roumaine d’histoire 35 (1996), 87–108. George Frederick Koehler is the best know of the two. He died at Acre, fi ghting 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. Th e old foes found their armies ranged once again in the Mehadia passage to TemeȘvar as in the 1736–39 war. Both sides were short of supplies, and by mid-July 200–300 men were falling ill every day in the Habsburg camp. Refugees, largely Serbian, perhaps as many as 50,000, were fl ooding 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 aft er destroying lives and property at will, in a scorched-earth campaign which proved detrimental to both sides. Th ey 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 Sofi a. 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. Fift y 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 fi nal assault to mid-December. Part of the reason for Potemkin’s delay till winter was the presence of the Ottoman fl eet, 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 “Th e Price for Austria’s Security: Part I: Joseph II, the Russian Alliance, and the Ottoman War, 1787–1789,” International History Review 26 (2004), 257–99; Part II: Leopold II, the Prussian Th reat, and the Peace of Sistove, 1790–71,” International History Review 26 (2004), 473–514; Hochedlinger, Austria’s Army, 382–84. “36,000 civilians were said to have been killed, abducted or forced to fl ee,” in an ongoing cross- Danubian struggle resonating since 1718 – when likely as many fl ed the Banat into Ottoman territory. 46 Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, (New Haven: Yale University Press,1981), 403–405. 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 campaigns 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 fi ft een 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 Münnich or Rumiantsev, his predecessors in the Crimea, or indeed as many as Joseph II was losing daily on the upper Danube.47 Th e fi nal assault on 16 December 1788 occurred aft er a month of Russian shelling from the harbor, and delays due to the severity of the winter. Th e barbarity on both sides was unparalleled. Creasy, writing a hundred years later, evoked the battle as follows: “Th e 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 fi rst 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 fi re of the besieged: but the supporting columns still came forward unfl inchingly 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 (chiefl y 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. Th e fi nal confrontation was commemorated in a song: “Turkish blood fl owed like rivers, and the Pasha fell to his knees before Potemkin.”48 Th e new Triple Alliance of Britain, Prussia and the United Provinces (Th e Dutch Republic) had off ered mediation in August 1788, but

47 Simon Sebag Montefi ore, Prince of Princes: Th e Life of Potemkon (London: Werdenfi eld and Nicolson, 2000), 408. 48 Edward S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1878), 432. Montefi ore, Prince of Princes, 412–13, estimates between 8000 and 11,000 casualties, men, women and children. Potemkin is said to have ordered a stop to the slaughter aft er 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. Th e 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. Th e Austrians had occupied Wallachia by November. Th e 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 Kethüda Hasan Pasha, who had replaced Koca Yusuf in May, at Martineshti on 22 September 1789. For the Austrians, fi nancial 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 responsible 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 settled their diff erences 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 eff orts. 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 mobilization and logistical systems, the Ottomans had to acknowledge the fi nality of the loss of the Crimea. Kili, Tulçu, and İsakçi also fell in

49 Bağış, 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, Austria’s Army, 385. ottoman military power in the eighteenth century 345

October and November. İsmail, the strongest fortress of the Danubian system like Ochakov, was essential to Ottoman military and naval operations. Th ere were probably 35,000 men with 265 guns in the fortress, and it was well-supplied. (İsakçi and İsmail, it will be remembered, fi gured heavily in the fi rst Russo-Ottoman War as centers of supply.) Russians forces stood at 31,000 men with 600 guns. Th ey had, as well, their Danube fl otilla as backup. Commander Suvorov boasted he would storm İsmail 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. Th e battle took to the streets, each one of which was fought for with great ferocity, until four in the aft ernoon. Th e Serasker and 4000 men defended the last bastion but were slaughtered to a man. Turkish losses stood at 26,000 dead and 9,000 prisoners. Suvorov allowed his soldiers three days of looting, following one of the bloodiest confrontations in all Russian history, which cemented Suvorov’s military fame.52 “It is beyond all human powers of comprehension 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 fortifi cation 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 fi nal Russian naval victory near Varna. Peace, as in 1774, when the Ottomans fi nally 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. Th e new Russian-Ottoman border was the Dniester River in the west and the Kuban in the east. Russian success in the 1768–1792 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 continuous conscription. Th ere were thirty-one levies between the years 1762

52 De Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 415–16; also Montefi ore, Prince of Princes, 451, and 580, footnote 2. He estimates a total of 40,000 dead in the one battle. 53 Mayer, “Joseph II,” 88–89. 346 virginia aksan and 1799, costly in human terms, but eff ective for manning the southern frontiers. Russia’s 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 “citizen’s army”. Th ey 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 organization of the border garrison troops. Ukrainian Cossack landmilitia, the equivalent of the Habsburg Militärgrenzer, became regular army regiments under Rumiantsev in 1769. Such regulations continued especially aft er the Military Commission of 1762, which allowed the Russian army to develop into a ministerial bureaucracy in the nineteenth century. Potemkin called the Cossacks “the eyes and protectors of the army,” and worked towards the formal integration of the informal Cossack irregulars into the Russia military until his death in 1791. As military settlers, they could be self-suffi cient in peace-time; as auxiliary light cavalry, they had a signifi cant 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 modernizing their military machine, they never reached the stage of total war adopted by the French aft er 1793. Th ey 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 levée en masse was in place in revolutionary France. Th e perpetuation of privilege, and the general ancien regime mistrust of the public in arms, continued to infl uence military thinking in Vienna. Universal conscription in both Austria and Hungary was only introduced in 1858. Th e Ottomans had great diffi culties in dealing with the consequences of lost territories and fl oods 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), 23–41, and also his chapters on the eighteenth century Romanov military organization, in Frederick W. Kagan and Robin Higham, eds. Th e 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 fi nances, moved on to grain and bread (a notable and lasting reorganization of the supply system), and addressed gunpowder and the manufacture of arms. Th e systemic assessment and reform of manpower and leadership, however, barely got underway, and the introduction of eff ective conscription 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. Th e question of masterless men, and autonomous warlords remained an acute one until Mahmud II addressed it in the 1820s, aft er a third and utterly devastating confrontation with the Russians on the Danube from 1806–1812, 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 battlefi eld casualties in most of these engagements. Th ere are two striking aspects to this period that are seldom emphasized 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 diffi cult 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, 1700–1783 (E J Brill, 1995), Ottomans and European: Contacts and Confl icts (Isis, 2004), and Ottoman Wars, 1700–1870: 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 cultural relations on the Don frontier in the seventeenth and early eighteenth 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 published a number of journal articles and book chapters on the central chancelleries (prikazy) and their jurisdictions and staff s and is working on a study of the Muscovite army in the Th irteen 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: Th e Case of Kozlov, 1635–1649 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) and Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700 (Routledge, 2007).

Dariusz Kupisz is Professor of History at Uniwersytet Marii Curie- Skłodowskiej in Lublin, Poland. He is the author of Polock 1579 (Bellona, 2003), Pskow 1581–1582 (Bellona 2006), Smolensk 1632–1634 (Bellona, 2001) and Wojska powiatowe samorządÓw Małopolski i Rusi Czerwonej w latach 1572–1717 (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, 1680–1740 (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 economy, and Russian-Tatar relations in Muscovy. She is the author of Treasures of the Land of Darkness: Th e Fur Trade and its Signifi cance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Medieval Russia, 980–1584 (Cambridge University Press, 1995). She is working on a study of land tenure and political centralization in sixteenth-century 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 16th–17th centuries. He has co-authored with Dmitrii Fedosov Lion Rampant to Double Eagle. Scots in Russia, 1600–1700, 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: Th e Ottoman Black Sea Frontier in the Early Seventeenth Century is in press with Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs.

Géza Pálff y 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 military history of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy in the early modern period. His publications include A császárváros védelmében: A győri főkapitányság története 1526–1598 [In the Defence of the Imperial City: History of the Border Defence System around Győr against the Ottomans, 1526–1598] (Győr, 1999); Európa védelmében: Haditérképészet a Habsburg Birodalom magyarországi határvidékén a 16–17. században [In the Defence of Europe: Military Cartography on the Hungarian Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 16th and 17th Centuries] (2. ed. Pápa, 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 Th e 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 specialist on late Muscovite military fi nance 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 Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 1460–1730 (Longman, 2007). BIBLIOGRAPHY

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absolutism 12, 13, 42, 346 Polish-Lithuanian 71, 75, 77, 79, 85, Adrianople (Edirne) 39, 43, 61 87, 90–1 Adriatic 43, 44, 49, 340 Russian 93, 121–4, 126, 129–32, 136, Ahmed III, Ottoman Sultan 321, 325 284, 289, 299, 311 Akkirman (Aqkirman) 344 Aston (Ashton), Arthur 109, 112–115 Albanians 328 Astrakhan 128, 155, 158, 160, 166, 170 Aleksei Mikhailovich, Tsar of autocracy 51, 181, 188, 190, 194 Muscovy 7, 93, 250–1, 263, 271, 276, ayan, provincial grandees 316–7, 281–9, 301–2, 304–5, 309–11 331–2 Andrusovo Armistice (1667) 141 Azov (Azaq) 16, 155, 173–198 Angielinis 56 Arkhangel’sk 109–111, 114 Bajcsavár 44 armies and military establishments, size Bakhchisarai (Bakhchesaray) 168 of 2, 7, 9, 11, 35–6, 52–3, 60, 70–7, Baldigara, Ottavio 49, 50, 56 121, 141, 176–7, 182, 201, 274, 335–6 Baltic Sea 1, 92 armories and arsenals 53–4, 77, Baltic theater of war 1–2, 11 307, 328–9 Bar Confederation 321 army complecting bayonet 11, 106, 336 commoner levy 7, 345–6 see also: łan Beauplan, Guillaume le Vasseur, Sieur recruits de 99, 103, 151, 157–60, 165 conscription 7, 346 Bekiesz, Kaspar 81, 82 enrolling volunteers 182–3 Belgorod 140, 296–7 mercenary hire 4–5, 64–68, 73, Belgrade 213, 320–1, 324, 329, 338, 109–118, 182, 186 340–1, 344 militia call-up 69, 275–6, 328, 332, Treaty of (1739) 324 346 Bender 330, 344 noble general levy 19, 23, 64–6, 75, Bihać 38, 44, 49, 60 157–8 see also: insurrectio, pospolite Black Sea ruszenie Pontic theater of war 15, 318, 320 noble private bands 19 see also: boiarskie knigi, Duma member lists, poczet towarzyski military review lists 19 army fi nancing 13 Bolkhov 274 Habsburg 46, 236–7, 240, 245 Bolotnikov, Ivan 273–4 Ottoman 13, 17, 18, 331, 332, 324, Boris Godunov, Tsar of Muscovy 271–3 326, 330–3 Borres, Alessandro 228–9 Polish-Lithuanian 65–7, 69, 84, 88, 91 Boyar Duma 188, 251, 261, 266, 270–1, Russian 13, 21, 133, 137, 140–1 285–6, 296–8, 301–6, 308–9 See also: Fiscal-Military State; strelets Braun, Erasmus 56 tax Brünn 54 army mobilization procedures 157–8, Bucak Horde 103, 152, 338 177, 243 Buda 38–40, 61, 225 artillery 2, 3, 5, 7–9, 95 Crimean Tatar 14, 154–5, 159, 168 Capitulations 331 Don Cossack 191, 193 cartography 42, 56, 78, 347 Habsburg 55, 202, 207–15, 220, 222, Catholic-Protestant confl icts 110–13, 224, 230–5, 23, 242, 246 116, 118, 200, 210 Ottoman 3, 178, 182, 183, 192, Caucasus 107, 148, 151, 153, 155, 160, 13, 197 161, 163, 164, 339 358 index cavalry command structure 253–5, 304, 310 armament and mounts 24–6, 64, 68, constituents of command-and- 74, 81, 89, 213, 216, 218 control 253–254 tactics 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 14, 95, 97, decision-making 252, 255–6, 270, 98–103, 147, 149, 15, 162, 165, 211, 272–3, 278, 290, 27, 301, 304, 310 215–18 decree and instruction 251, 269, 286, see also: “New formation and “foreign 289, 291–2, 303, 305, 308 formation” troops mission-type order 29, 263, 265, 273, Celali rebellions 328 277, 278, 286–7, 303, 306, 311 Chancelleries (prikazy), Muscovite 22, planning 263–266, 275, 278, 286–7, 109, 125, 250–1, 269, 271–7, 284–6, 299, 302–4, 306, 311 291–2, 295–9, 301, 303–312 reporting 251, 269, 279, 292, 308 Grain Chancellery (Khlebnyi situational awareness 253–4, 265, 286, prikaz) 140 300, 305, 310 Military Chancellery (Razriad, synchronized execution 254–5, 286, Razriadnyi prikaz) 15, 271–4, 276, 300, 305, 310 279, 291–2, 295–301, 308, 310–11 see also: General offi cers Musketeers’ Chancellery (Streletskii Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), prikaz) 126 Polish-Lithuanian 14, 63, 150, 257, Secret Chancellery (Prikaz Velikogo 268, 274–5, 277–80, 282–7, 290, Gosudaria tainykh del) 271, 285–6, 292–3, 301 299, 304 Commonwealth Ukraine 6, 150, 153 Service Lands Chancellery (Pomestnyi Grand Duchy of Lithuania 63–69, 71, prikaz) 22 73, 92, 274, 284 see also: Command-and-control Kingdom of Poland 63, 73, 77–8, 88 Charles de Lorraine 235, 237 Cracow 16, 77 Charles V, Habsburg Emperor 39, 40 Crimean Khanate 16, 63, 66, 70, 142, Charles VI, Habsburg Emperor 208 147, 150, 173, 276, 279, 294, 321, 329, Chesme 8, 335 334–5, 337–9, 341–4, 347 chetvert, pl. chetverti 23, 27, 29–31 khan 149–50 cheval-de-frise 106 nuraddin and kalga 182 chorągwie, territorial banner units 68 qarachi begs 149, 150, 158, 160 Chudnovo 105–6, 294 relations with Nogais 150 Chyhyryn 104, 299 vassalage to Ottoman sultans 148, Circassia 153–6, 158, 160–1, 163–4, 167, 150, 155, 321, 329 169, 176, 182–3, 197, 328 Crimean Tatar army 16, 95, 99, 103–6 command-and-control 249–252, passim campaigns by khan 16, 147–161 by Boyar Duma 251, 261, 266, 270–1, campaigns on behalf of Ottoman 285–6, 296–8, 301–6, 308–9 sultan 108, 148, 150, 152, 155–7, by central bureaucracy 47, 208, 183–4, 192, 196–7 250–1, 269, 271–6, 284–6, 291–2, chapgul units 165–6 295–9, 301, 303–12, see also: organization 149 Chancelleries (prikazy) raiding 52, 154, 156, 165, 167 by grand viziers 333 see also: Nogai Horde by marshals, fi eld commanders and Cruys, Cornelius 175–80 war councils 253–5, 258–62, 267, Czarnobylski, Filon Kmita 72, 83, 285–7, 300, 304, 310, 327, 336 87, 89 by regional state offi cials 45–7, 328 see also: military districts and Danckaert, Jan 114, 115 territorial military administrations Danube River 38–9, 44–5, 50, 57, 100, by sovereign 285–6, 298, 302 228–9, 236, 238–318, 320, 337, 341 centralization and Dardanelles 318, 338 decentralization 263–5, 267, 270, defense lines and border defense 276, 281, 292–3, 295–6, 298, systems 36, 38, 40–42, passim 304, 310 Habsburg grenze in Croatia 44, 48–9 index 359

Habsburg grenze in Hungary 14, Fiscal-Military State 1, 13 43–50 Fletcher, Giles 93–7 Ottoman defense line along Flodorf, Adrian 109–118 Danube 6, 14 fortresses and garrisons 38–41, 43–6, Russian Abatis Line 294 48–50, 52–3, 55, 57, 60, 67, 84, 87–8, Russian Belgorod Line 93, 281, 90, 104, 121, 145, 152, 156–8, 169–70, 294, 296–7 173, 176, 178, 180, 224–6, 228–231, Russian Iziuma Line 25, 299 233, 235–6, 278 Russian Ukrainian Line 346 France 53, 63, 145, 182, 200–1, 205–6, deli, Ottoman heavy cavalry 7 230, 323, 343–4 Deulino, Treaty of (1618) 271, 276 Frederick II, King of Prussia 323 Devlet Gerey, Crimean Khan 95, frontiers 38–9, 41–6, 50, 52, 54–7, 148, 149, 155 153, 165, 257, 273, 276, 27, 294–7, Diet of Hungary 40, 46 303, 316, 318 diplomacy, Ottoman 322–4 Fülek (Fil’akovo) 42 Dnieper (Dnepr) River 63, 88, 103, 133, 155, 274, 282, 284 gabions 85, 93 Dniester (Dnestr) River 63, 160, 340 Garam River 44 Don Cossack Host 107, 131, 174, Gdansk (Danzig) 4, 63, 68, 77–79, 293 176–187, 189, 192, 194–8 general offi cers, 199–248, 256, 258–261 Don River 150, 155–6, 160, 173–7, 181, class and ethnic origins 201–2, 203–6 183–7, 189, 194–5, 198 education, academy study, training, Dorogobuzh 136, 280–1 experience learning 209, Doroshenko, Petro, renegade Ukrainian 211–15, 327 hetman 141 Habsburg Generallisten 202, 208, 236 Eger 46, 60 patronage and ability as promotion England 111–13, 341 factors 207–10, 261, 327 Érsekújvár (Neuhausel, Nove Scientifi c Revolution and “scientifi c Zamky) 44, 55 generalship” 199–248 see also: esir, war captives taken for ransoming or technicalism enslavement 154, 156, 164, 166 staff offi cers 210–11, 216, 223, 228, Estates 37, 40–1, 43, 45–7, 4, 57, 61 232, 237–47, 327 Esztergom (Gran) 38, 39, 61 Georgia 319 Eugene de Savoy 205, 211, 214, 232, Golitsyn, Vasilii Vasil’evich 104–5, 142, 243, 245–6 252, 299, 300–2 Gordon, Patrick 106 False Dmitriis 272–3 see also: Time of gorodovye voevody, Muscovite town Troubles governors 259, 276, 280 Fedor Ivanovich, Tsar of Muscovy 95, Graz 50, 53–4, 56–7 114 Great Northern War (1700–1721) 5, 11 Fedor Alekseevich, Tsar of Grenze, see: defense lines and border Muscovy 271, 302 defense systems Ferabosco, Pietro 56 guliai-gorod 93–9, 130 Ferdinand I, King of Hungary 37, 38 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 2, 9, fi eld commanders, Muscovite see: 116–17, 268, 302 voevoda Győr (Raab) 44 fi eld fortifi cations and fortifi ed camps 69, 93–108, 180, 190, Habsburg Empire/Monarchy 14, 35–61, 193, 197 199–248 oboz 94–6, 105 Austria, Austrian Hereditary tabor 7, 93, 6–103, 193, 197 Provinces 38, 40–1 trenches and redoubts 83, 91, 93, Inner Austria 49, 50, 53 97–8, 179, 191, 193, 195 Lower Austria 42, 57 see also: Wagenburg Ban of Croatia and Slavonia 45–6 360 index

Bohemia, Bohemian Lands and see also: “New formation” and Provinces 36, 41, 53, 57, 61 “foreign formation” troops Bosnia 35, 39 insurrectio, Hungarian militia 46 Carinthia 49 Ismail 333, 345 Carniola 39, 49 Istanbul 61, 150, 175, 177–8 Croatia, Kingdom of 36, 39, 41–9, Italian military engineering 49, 55–6, 52–3, 56, 60, 340 78, 91, 96, 100, 182 Dalmatia 52 trace italienne 7, 9, 49, 55 “Holy Roman Empire” 38, 41 Ivan III, Grand Prince of Muscovy 100, Hungary, see: Hungary, Kingdom of 264, 266–7, 292 Moravia 41, 57 Ivan IV, Tsar of Muscovy 63, 78, 80, 83, Serbia 35 91, 96 Silesia 41 Izmailov, Artemii Vasil’evich 278–9, Slavonia 44–6, 48–9, 53, 56 282, 289 Styria 50, 57 Habsburg fi scal-military Jajce 39, 55 administration 14 James I, King of England 113 Aulic Council (Aulic Chamber, Jan Sobieski, King of Poland 7 Hofk ammer) 48, 57 Janós I Zapolyai, King of Hungary 38 Aulic Military Paymaster Janós Zsigmond Zapolyai, Prince of (Hofk riegszahlmeister) 57 Transylvania 43 Aulic War Council (Aulic War Johann Sigismund, Elector of Chamber, Hofk riegsrat) 41–3, 45, Brandenburg 112 47, 49, 53, 56, 57 Joseph II, Habsburg Emperor 341, Inner Austrian War Council 50 344, 346 Habsburg-Ottoman “Long War” (1591–1606) 5, 60 Kabarda (Qabarda) 155, 158, 162, 182 Habsburg-Ottoman War Kagul (Kartal) 108, 326, 335–7 (1717–1719) 245 Kamianets-Podilsk 67 Habsburg-Ottoman War Kanisza (Nagykanizsa) 44 (1737–1739) 227 Karlowitz, Treaty of (1699) 322, 326 haiduk infantry 6, 76 Karlsruhe 56 Hanse 4 Karlstadt 44, 49, 54–5 hardtack 132, 136–7, 335 Kazan’ 14, 22, 33, 131–2, 134, 150, 155, Herberstein, Sigismund von 23–4 297, 307 Hetmanate, Ukrainian 6, 104, 282, 286, Kefe (Kaff a) 153, 156, 158, 160, 182 299, 310 Kerch Straits 153, 156, 158, 160 hetmans, Polish-Lithuanian 71 Khmel’nits’kyi, Bohdan, Ukrainian Holy League, War of (1683–1699) 107 Hetman 98, 283–4 Hungary, Kingdom of 35–61, 205 Khodynka 97 Upper Hungary 43–4, 46, 48, Khotyn (Chocim, Hotin) 67, 335, 341 54, 57 Kiev 63, 67–8, 90, 299 Hunyadi, Jan 102 Kinburn (Kilburun, Qilburun) 158, husarz, pl. husaria, Polish-Lithuanian 339–40 lancers 7, 68, 72, 97 Kirchholm 2 Hussites 96, 159 Klushino 2 Koca Mehmed Ragib Pasha 322, 333 Ibrahim I, Ottoman Sultan 182, 1856, Koca Yusuf 341, 342, 344 189, 198 Komárom 44, 46 Ibrail (Brailov) 333 Kondyrev, Zhdan 287–9 infantry 4–10, 15, 68, 75, passim Konotop 104, 290 battle order, fi ring systems, and Kotoshikhin, Grigorii tactics 2, 15, 60, 93, 149, 154, 159, Kriegszahlmeister in Ungarn, Military 165, 190, 326, 336–7, 346 Paymaster for Hungary 57 fi rearms 54–5, 73 Kuban River 155, 160, 163 index 361

Kuchuk-Kainarji (Kücük Kaynarca), Margeret, Jacques 93, 110, 113 Treaty of (1774) 338 Maria Th eresia, Habsburg Empress 201 Kurdan, Treaty of (1746) 320, 324 Martineshti 344 Kushlikovy Gory 290 Massa, Isaak 95–6 Maurice of Nassau 38, 42, 102 Laibach 39, 54 Maximilian I, Habsburg Emperor 53 łan recruits 69 Mehadia passage 342 Lacy, Franz Moritz 340 Mengli Gerey, Crimean Khan 150 Leopold I, Habsburg Emperor 210, 216, middle service class, Muscovite 243, 246, 247 dvoriane and deti boiarskie in cavalry levends, Ottoman volunteer militias 328, centuries (sotny) 19 332, 335 allodial lands of 23 Liakhovichi 289–90 allotments of service-conditional land Liechtenstein, Wenzil von 230 (pomest’e) 14, 19–34, 122–3, 126 Livonia 22, 63, 104 bounty and rent income 19, 21, Livonian War (1558–1583) 14, 15, 21–2, 26–32, 123 63, 133–4 desertion and service shirking 21–2 Lodygin, Fedor Vasil’ev 19, 24–26, labor and agricultural economy on 29–33 pomest’e lands 27, 28, 30 logistics 42, 53, 57, 60, 119–146, 180, land registers 22, 27 330, 335–6 ranks and scale of entitlements to baggage trains and convoys 95–6, Sovereign’s bounty 19, 23–24, 33, 124, 129–31, 143, 197, 219–220, 260 225, 229, 231, 237, 242 Regulation on Service (1555–6) foraging and plundering 108, 120–1, 23, 126 124–5, 127, 212–15, 218–220, 224, retainers 19, 24, 32 244 Mikhail Fedorovich, Tsar of forward magazines 11, 104, 107, 128, Muscovy 109, 114–16, 181, 188, 190, 132–3, 144–5, 235, 241 194, 198 frontier town granaries 127–9, 135, military districts and territorial military 139, 188 administrations 257, 294–7, 303 marching forces 199, 214, 217–18, Habsburg District 220, 224, 240, 242, 244 Captain-Generalcies 43–44 quartermaster service 57, 240–3 Muscovite razriady: 257, 297 requisitioning and exacting military engineering 17, 208 see “contributions” 127, 217 also: artillery; cartography; Italian road, bridge, and pontoon military engineering 57, 213–15, 220, 223, engineering 225, 229, 232–3, 242 Military Revolution 1, 4, 6, 8–12, 14, self-provisioning 15, 121, 125, 136 50–61, 267, 312, 318, 326 sutler deliveries 15, 131, 139 military units and ranks, Muscovite Louis II Jagiello, King of Hungary and names of old and new model units, Bohemia 36 256–259 lower service class, Muscovite names of old and new model gunners (pushkari) 20, 260 commanders and their ranks, musketeers (strel’tsy) 6, 20, 75, 95, 260 258–262, 268 service cossacks 20, 260, 262, 277, military units and ranks, Polish- 279, 286 Lithuanian 74, 76 L’viv 67, 77 Mogilev 290 Mohács 38, 42, 101 Mahmud II, Ottoman Sultan 316, 327, Moldavia 102, 152–3, 157–8, 160, 167, 329, 341 176, 316, 320 Malplaquet 226 Molodi 95 Mansfeld, Ernst 117 Montecuccoli, Raimundo 203, 216–17, Mantelets 96, 98, 101–2 243–4, 247 362 index

Morozov, Boris Ivanovich 261, Oberstmustermeister, Chief Muster 263, 281 Master 57 Moscow 16, 21–2, 95–7, 111, 114, 150, Oberstproviantkommissar, Chief Military 250, 256, 266–8, 271–2, 274–5, Provisions Commissioner 57 278–82, 284, 294, 296–9 Oberstproviantmeister, Chief Provisions Mstislavskii, Fedor Ivanovich 272–3 Supply Offi cer Muhsinzade Mehmed, Grand Oberstzeugmeister, Chief Arsenal Vizier 324, 338 Offi cer 53–4 Münnich, Burchard Christoph von 343 Obertyn 102 Murat IV, Ottoman Sultan 184 Obożny Quartermaster 71 Muscovy, Tsardom of 3, 5–7, 12, 14–15, obzha, pl. obzhi 27–8 20–2, passim. Ochakov (Ochakiv, Ozi) 152, 158, 321, Russia 4–8, 11–13, 15–17, 32 passim 327, 333, 335, 338, 345 Mustafa III, Ottoman Sultan 334 Oka River 154, 160, 165, 257 musters and reviews 19, 157 Olearius, Adam 279–80 Ordyn-Nashchokin, Afanasii Nadir Shah 320, 329 Lavrent’evich 286 Nándorfehérvár/Belgrade 55 Orşova 342, 344 naval warfare 4, 8, 78, 228–9, 236–7 ostrog fortress construction technique 3 nemetskii korm, foreign mercenaries’ Ottoman Empire 3, 5–8, 11–13, 14, 16, provender 136 17, 63, 66, 70 passim Netherlands, United Provinces of 110–11, 114, 116–17 Pallavicinis 204, 234–7, 239–40, “New formation” and “foreign 244–6 formation” troops 4, 15 Pasek, Jan Chryzostom 98, 284 Muscovite inozemskii stroi 4, 93, Passarowitz, Treaty of (1718) 324 1–4–5, 140 Pécs 39 cavalry: dragoons 7, 24; Pereiaslav Agreements 282–3 hussars 216–18; lancers 258; Perekop (Or Agzi) 104, 152, 155, 157, reitar cuirassiers 7, 95, 158, 300 216, 260 Peter I, Tsar and Emperor of Russia 250, infantry: soldaty 7, 93, 250, 258, 252, 255–7, 263, 267, 284, 338 260 petyhorcy, pl. petyhorcowie, Circassian Ottoman janissaries (yeni chari, lancers 73 “New Troops”) 13, 101–2, Phanariot rule 330 258–9, 166, 168, 176, 179, 180, piechota wybraniecka, select infantry 183, 192, 195, 197, 322, 325–31, 69, 75 334–5, 337, 340–1, 347 piechota zaciezna, hired infantry 75 Ottoman nizam-i-jedid 19, 327 pike 76–7, 93, 99, 102–3, 221–3 Polish-Lithuanian cudzoziemski poczet towarzyski, private comrades’ autorament 4 band 64, 68, 74 Polish-Lithuanian foreign Podolia 6 contingents (Germans, Poetical Tale of the Siege of Azov 174, Hungarians, Scots) 71, 73, 75–7, 181–98 79, 81–3 Polish-Russian War (1613–18) 252 Nogai Horde 102–4, 150, 152, 154–5, polk, host, regiment, or division 95, 96, 157, 162, 165, 196–7 257–9, 297 Novgorod 19–20, 22, 24–6, 28–30, 32–3, Polotsk (Połock) 2, 22, 68, 70, 79–87, 90, 112, 140, 273, 297, 307 134, 274, 287, 289 Novgorod-Severskii 273 pomest’e, pl. pomest’ia, service- conditional land allotments; see: Oberstbaukommissar, Fortress middle service class Construction Commissioner 56 Poppendorf, Franz von 56 index 363 pospolite ruszenie, Polish-Lithuanian Senj 38 general levy of nobility 64–6, 75 service cossacks Pozsony (Bratislava) 40, 45 in Polish-Lithuanian garrisons and Potemkin, Grigorii Aleksandrovich 339, fi eld army 64, 70, 72–3 342–3 see also: lower service class, Muscovite Pozharskii, Dmitrii Mikhailovich 275, Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) 11, 277 107, 246 Prague 54, 113 Shaw, James 111 pripravochnye knigi, revisionary Shein, Mikhail Borisovich 270, cadastral books 22 278–82, 289 prikazy, see: Chancelleries Sheremet’ev, Vasilii Borisovich 105–6, 20, 292 Qansavuq 153–4 Sheremet’ev, Vasilii Petrovich 283, Quarter Army 6, 66–7, 69, 71 286–90 siege works and siege operations 3, 7, racowie, Serbian lancers 72 55, 60, 68, 78–80, 83–6, 90–2 173–198, Radziwiłł, Krzysztof 68, 80–82, 88–92 207, 214, 228, 231, 25, 243, 284, 286 Radziwiłł, Mikołaj 68, 71, 81 see also: artillery, logistics religious war (crusade and gaza) 114, Silistre 178, 333 156, 168, 182, 18, 190, 192, 194, 16, sipahi cavalry 7, 176, 327–8 198 Skopin-Shuiskii, Mikhail Vasil’evich 263 Remmal Khoja 147, 150 służba ziemska, Lithuanian landed History of Khan Sahib Gerey 16, military service 64–5 147–171 Smolensk War (1632–1634) 3, 135–7, river fl otillas 45, 77–80, 84, 142–3, 229, 252, 262–3, 270–1, 276–81, 285, 289, 236, 239, 345 299–300, 307, 310–11 river fording 160 see also: logistics, Sobieski, Jan II, King of Poland road, bridge and pontoon Sokol’ 81–2 engineering Sophia Alekseevna, Muscovite Romodanovskii, Grigorii regentess 252, 301–2 Grigor’evich 104, 299–301 southern steppe, conditions of warfare Rumiantsev, Petr Aleksandrovich 11, on 5, 6, 14, 74, 103, 107, 143–4, 108, 336 147–171, 252, 257, 273, 276, 279, 294, Ruşcuk (Ruse) 333 297, 300–1 Russo-Ottoman War (1676–1681) 7, Speckle, Daniel 55 142, 299–300 Starhemberg, Guido von 203, 211, Russo-Ottoman War (1736–1739) 321 243, 244 Russo-Ottoman War (1768–1774) 11, Staritsa, 89 107–8, 321, 324, 329–345 Staryi Bykhov 284–5 Russo-Ottoman War (1787–1791) 329, Stefan Bathory, Prince of Transylvania 331, 339–42 and King of Poland 14, 63–92, 302 Stolbovo, Treaty of (1617) 276 Sahib Gerey, Crimean Khan 147–171 Straticos 232–3, 240 Sava River 340 strelets, pl. strel’tsy, Muscovite Saxe, Maurice de 212, 216–7, 220, 224, musketeers; see: lower service class, 227, 232, 244 Muscovite Scamozzi, Vincenzo 111 strelets grain tax 15 Schwendi, Lazarus von 43, 48, strelets tax 15 54, 102 Süleyman I, Ottoman Sultan 3, 35–6, Sejm, Polish Diet 63, 65, 78, 88 39, 43 Selim I, Ottoman Sultan 35, 101 Şumnu (Shumen, Shumla) 333, 338 Selim III, Ottoman Sultan 323, 325, Suvorov, Aleksandr Vasil’evich 11, 339 327–9, 341, 344, 347 Sviiazhsk 132 364 index

Sweden 12–14, 69, 92, 116, 118, 252, Vasilii III, Grand Prince of Muscovy 100 257, 323 Vasilii Shuiskii, Tsar of Muscovy 95, swinefeathers 106 112, 271–4, 277 Szabács (Sabac) 55 Vasil’sursk 128 Szatmár (Sackmar, Satu Mare) 43, 45, Velikie Luki 68, 84–9, 92 49, 54, 55 Venice 52, 11, 182, 205, 228, Székesfehérvár 39 230, 233, 318 Szigetvár 42, 44 Viaz’ma 135 Szolnok 40 Vidin 333, 338, 342 szlachcic, pl. szlachta, Polish-Lithuanian Vienna 37, 3–40, 44, 47–8, 53–7, 204–7, middling and lower nobility 64–9, 223, 225, 22, 232–3, 236, 344, 346 74–5, 78–9, 84, 88, 91 Vilnius 63, 77–8, 80 Vitebsk 84, 88, 287, 289 Taborites 100 voevoda, pl. voevody, Muscovite fi eld Taccole, Mariano di Jacopo 100 commanders 86, 87, 95, 249, 259, Tarnowski, Jan 67, 100, 102 269, 304, 306 Temesvár (Temeschwar, Timisoara) 55, Volga River 89, 297 340, 342 Volhynia 153 Teutonic Knights 50, 99 Vologda 286–7 Th irteen Years’ War (1654–1667) 4, Vyrka River 274 138, 252–3, 255, 263, 268, 271, 281–5, 292–4, 297, 299–300, 302, 304–5, 310 Wagenburg 7, 15, 290 Th irty Years’ War (1618–1648) 9 as fortifi ed position 98–103, timar, Ottoman service-conditional 159, 161 revenue grant 14, 17, 327–8, 332–3 as wagon convoy 7–8, 103–107 Time of Troubles (1598–1613) 15, 96, Ottoman Tabur cengi 101–2 10, 134, 252, 263, 270–8, 281 see also: Zizka, Jan Timofeev, Ivan 97 Wallachia 176, 180, 182, 316, 320, 321, Tisza River 45 330, 341, 344 Tokaj 43 War of the Spanish Succession Transylvania 5, 43–5, 54, 76, 102, 340 (1701–1714) 209, 210, 226, 243 tribute 164, 316, 319 Warsaw 63, 113 Triple Alliance (Britain, Prussia, United Wiener Neustadt Provinces of the Netherlands) 342 Wieznick, Adam von 54 Trubetskoi, Aleksei Nikitich 283 Wiśniowiecki, Michal 70, 90 Turco, Giulio 56 Zadonshchina 187 Ukraine 5–7, 64–7, 70–1, 83, 99, 103–4, Zalankamen 103 107, 141–2, 150, 153, 156–7, 159–60, Zamoyski, Jan 71 164, 165, 169, 283, 299, 310, 329, 324, Zaporozhian Cossack Host 69, 70, 73, 334–6, 346 87, 107, 159, 173, 194 see also: Hetmanate, Zaporozhian Zbarazh Cossack Host Zenta 103 Ungnad, Christoph von Sonnegg 47 Zizka, Jan 96, 99–100, 102 Zygmunt I, King of Poland 63, Varasd (Warasdin, Varazdin) 44, 54 65, 292 Vasil’ev, Naum, Don Cossack Zygmunt II August, King of Poland 63, ataman 182 65, 67, 70, 7, 76, 77, 84