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were always complimentary in all respects. He was usually satisfied with his infantry and artillery reserves too but the artillery’s horses were a frequent cause of complaint, as was the infantry’s equipment. Though he thought most of his departing infantry well trained, there were exceptions. In December 1813, for instance, he commented that the reserves now departing to reinforce Wittgenstein’s corps were too young and needed more time to prepare for combat.63

Perhaps the fairest judges were foreigners, however, not least because they were inclined to make informed comparisons. On 8 June 1813 Sir Robert Wilson watched as Alexander inspected the Guards and Grenadier reserves just arrived from Petersburg and Iaroslavl. Aware that they had spent the last three months on the march, he was astonished by their appearance:

These infantry…and their appointments appeared as if they had not moved further than from barracks to the parade during that time. The horses and men of the cavalry bore the same freshness of appearance. Men and beasts certainly in Russia afford the most surprising material for powder service. If English battalions had marched a tenth part of the way they would have been crippled for weeks and would scarcely have had a relic of their original equipments. Our horses would all have been foundered, and their backs too sore even for the carriage of the saddle.64

Colonel Rudolph von Friederich was the head of the historical section of the Prussian general staff. He had no doubt that the Russian reserves who arrived during the armistice were much superior to most of the Prussian and Austrian reinforcements who joined their field armies at that time. The Russian was ‘an excellent soldier, of course without any intellect, but brave, obedient and undemanding. Their arms, clothing and equipment were very good and on the whole they were well trained.’ Above all, these soldiers who had survived months of gruelling marches were extremely tough and resilient. As to the cavalry, they were ‘in general excellently mounted, well-trained and impeccably uniformed and equipped’. Friederich’s only criticism of the Russian reinforcements was that ‘only the jaeger regiments had been taught to skirmish’.65

As regards training, it helped that the great majority of the reserves had arrived in the Field Army’s encampments by the end of June. Most reserve units were broken up and distributed among the army’s battalions and squadrons. The July weather was fine and the Field Army’s regiments possessed the free time and the veterans to help complete the reserves’ training, including intensive shooting practice. Friedrich von Schubert was the chief of staff of Baron Korff’s cavalry in Langeron’s army corps. In his memoirs he wrote that

the reserve squadrons, new recruits and remounts arrived in the regiments from Russia and the training and exercising of the men and the horses lasted from morning until night: it was a very hectic, brisk but cheerful business…the same happened in the infantry and artillery…Our efforts paid off because at the end of the armistice the Russian army was in better condition than at the beginning of the war: fully up to strength, well-equipped, healthy, full of courage and enthusiasm for battle, and with a mass of experienced and tested generals, officers and soldiers in numbers it had never previously possessed.66

The Russian reinforcements moving westwards in the spring and summer filled not just the Field Army but also the allied strategic reserve, in other words the so-called Army of Poland which Alexander ordered General Bennigsen to form in early June.67 Bennigsen’s four infantry divisions had been blockading the fortresses of Modlin and Zamosc in the spring. Some of their units had also been performing an internal security role in Poland. At one point their combined strength was less than 8,000 men. By the end of the armistice, however, just these four divisions were 27,000 strong. In September Bennigsen’s army, which included Count Petr Tolstoy’s militia corps, advanced through Silesia to join