The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 1369: Chapter 197: Arthur Hastings’ Report

Question: Based on your observations during the Napoleonic Wars, if French cavalry were to break through the infantry squares of the northern nations in a battlefield charge, would they surrender their arms and let you control them?

Answer: If such a situation were to occur, the Austrian infantry would throw down their weapons, each claiming to be Polish, and follow you faithfully. The Prussian infantry would also lay down their arms, but once they sensed reinforcements arriving, they would immediately pick up their weapons and rejoin the battle. The Russian infantry would lie on the ground, allowing the cavalry to leap over them, and then get back up to use their weapons again.

— Jean-Baptiste de Blac, Expert in French Light Cavalry ”Light Cavalry Outposts”

Confidential

To: Viscount Palmerston, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

From: Sir Arthur Hastings, Cultural Counsellor of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the Russian Court

CC: Leader of the House of Lords, Duke of Wellington, Home Secretary, Viscount Melbourne, Lord Stanley, Minister of the War and Colonial Department, James Graham, the Naval Minister, Lord Roland Hill, Commander of British Army, Sir Thomas Hardy, First Sea Lord

”First Diplomatic Report on the Current Situation in Russia”

Entrusted by Your Excellency, as the Cultural Counsellor to Russia, I have recently entered the country by land and conducted an in-depth observation and study of local customs and practices. By some stroke of luck, I stumbled upon some important intelligence that could not be collected through conventional means. Herewith, I respectfully report my preliminary findings to Your Excellency and progressively outline my initial work progress in Russia.

During my entry into Russia, due to adverse weather conditions, I was snowbound in a small city in the northwest region of Russia and happened to encounter Commander Pavel Andreyevich Balgov of the Russian Ukraine 2nd Cavalry Regiment passing through this location. According to Balgov, he was dispatched by the Russian Home Office to gather information related to the earlier Pugachev rebellion along the Little Russia region.

(Note: Pugachev was a Russian Cossack born into a poor peasant family on the banks of the Don River. He joined the Russian army early on and was promoted to lieutenant due to his bravery in battles against the Ottoman Empire. After retiring in 1773, he falsely claimed to be the deposed Peter III, who was allegedly murdered in a palace coup. He indicted Catherine II, who ascended to the throne by allegedly killing her husband Peter III, as the primary cause of the heavy agrarian tax burdens, stirring Russian peasants to rebellion. At its peak, the Pugachev uprising involved over a hundred thousand participants and affected vast areas including the Ural, Western Siberia, and the middle and lower reaches of the Volga River.)

Through conversations with Balgov, I vaguely discerned the existence of a secret organization within the Russian court known as the ’Peasant Committee.’ This organization, headed by Tsar Nicholas I, includes members from the highest bureaucrats in the Russian Home Office, Treasury, Judiciary, Agriculture, and War Departments. Based on the information gathered so far, this secret committee’s establishment is seemingly connected with the 1831 Novgorod Province military settlement revolt.

After the war of 1812 ended, to address the acute shortage of military funding and food supplies, the reigning Tsar Alexander I heeded the recommendations of Minister of the Army Arakcheyev and designated military settlements across the country. The residents of the military settlements mainly consisted of veterans who served over six years in the regular army and local ’national serfs’ aged 18 to 45. Depending on the size of the settlements, their organizations were usually structured into battalions or regiments.

In the military settlements, male children were registered as ”hereditary soldiers” from age seven and wore military uniforms in daily life, receiving military training during the agricultural off-season. Orphans or stray children without residences lived collectively in specially built barracks, adhering to strict military regulations in their lifestyle, including waking, eating, training, and labor at specific times. Field labor in the military settlement was led and uniformly commanded by non-commissioned officers. Soldiers were allowed to marry, and their spouses were designated by their commanding officers. Anyone, including women and children, who violated the discipline faced punishment under military regulations.

Based on the observations along the journey, I estimate that the current number of military settlement troops across Russia is at least over 160,000. Additionally, the number of hereditary soldiers should be very close to this number.

Originally, the Russian government implemented the military settlement system to replace conscription and significantly reduce military expenditures. However, according to my observations in a few military settlement units upon entering Russia, there is a considerable gap between intention and reality. I cannot conclude that all military settlement units have utterly failed in production, but at least the ones I encountered were unable to be self-sufficient. The officers of the military settlements candidly expressed to me their need for substantial national subsidies to sustain themselves.

More seriously, these militarized rural areas have become conducive to peasant uprisings. During the mere eight years since the ascension of the new Tsar Nicholas I, there have been over 140 peasant uprisings of varying sizes across Russia. The most influential and destructive of these uprisings, without exception, all originated from the military settlements.

In 1831, when cholera struck, the Tsar ordered quarantine stations to be set up on all major roads nationwide. However, because these quarantine stations obstructed transportation and hindered production, reducing contractors and wagon drivers to poverty, they cut off the local farmers’ sources of income, leading to large-scale revolts in sixteen provinces across western Russia.