Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [215]
For all the difficulties overcome by Lobanov and his colleagues, it was General Andrei Kologrivov, tasked with forming the bulk of the army’s cavalry reserves, who faced the greatest challenge in 1812–13. He was to do an outstanding job. Training cavalrymen was much more complicated than turning recruits into effective infantry. Given good raw material and efficient training cadres, acceptable foot soldiers could be ready in three months. Cavalry would take at least three times as long. The cavalry recruit needed the same initial drill as an infantryman. The peasant recruit had to stand up straight, know his right from his left, and march in step. In short, he had to become a soldier. The cavalry recruit needed to master both cold steel weapons and firearms. Amidst the rush to train recruits in wartime, in the cuirassier and dragoon regiments the job of skirmishing might initially be left to veterans. But a light cavalryman who knew nothing about skirmishing, firearms and outpost duty was a danger to his comrades.51
The biggest challenge came when the peasant recruit first encountered his horse. Unlike Cossacks, who were bred in the saddle, few peasants rode horses, though it helped Kologrivov that the great majority of his first 20,000 recruits came from the southern provinces of Orel, Voronezh, Tambov and Kiev where horses and in some districts studs were numerous. The Russian light cavalry and dragoon horses drawn from steppe herds were feisty animals. The brief but ferocious breaking-in of these horses often left them hard to handle initially. The recruit’s life was also not made easier by the need in wartime to accept more mares than would otherwise have been the case. This did not contribute to order in a cavalry squadron packed with stallions. Despite these problems the cavalry recruit had to master his horse quickly. He must learn to ride first on his own and then in formation, carrying out increasingly complicated manoeuvres at ever greater speed. Crucially, he must also learn to water, feed and care for his horse properly, otherwise a cavalry regiment would quickly disintegrate amidst the strains of a campaign.52
In 1813–14 the Russian cavalry got its horses from a number of sources. The Field Army requisitioned or even occasionally bought a few horses in the countries through which it marched: its finest coup was to grab part of the King of Saxony’s stud. In the spring of 1813, however, Alexander ordered that no more cavalry horses were to be purchased abroad, since they were far cheaper in Russia. All cavalrymen in the Field Army whose horses were lost were to be sent back to Kologrivov to receive new mounts and help in the formation of reserve squadrons.53
A small number of the horses acquired in Russia came from the state’s own studs, both in the winter of 1812–13 and subsequently. These were fine animals but most were reserved for the Guards cuirassiers and dragoons.54 A far larger number of horses were bought by the regiments’ remount officers, in other words by the normal peacetime process. On their own, however, the remount officers could never have satisfied the hugely increased wartime demand. In addition, the price of horses went through the roof.55 In September 1812 Alexander sent the head of the internal security troops, Evgraf Komarovsky, to levy horses in lieu of recruits in the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia. He secured more than 10,000 cavalry horses – sufficient for fifty full-strength squadrons – from the two provinces. As a result the scheme was extended to the whole empire, with Komarovsky in charge. In time he sent General Kologrivov a further 37,810 horses. In addition, beginning in the winter of 1812–13, the governors bought 14,185 horses for Kologrivov’s cavalry. These huge numbers illustrate Russia’s wealth in horses, especially when one recalls that they do not include the great number