Suvarov’s disciples, notably Pyotr Bagration and Mikhail Kutuzov, strove to maintain the reforms he had brought, but the short, reactionary reign of Paul I (1796- 1801) undermined the foundations of the army. The son of Catherine II, Paul was raised largely by his grandmother, Elizabeth I, and her trusted minister, Nikolai Panin. Upon his ascent, Paul set about reversing many of Catherine’s policies. He replaced the army’s cheap and comfortable uniforms, which were distinctly Russian and eminently practical, with Prussian- style parade uniforms. Paul was also fond of parade and drill, and in 1796 he introduced The Infantry Codes, a set of instructions that focused on discipline, formation, and the outward appearance of both soldier and unit. Suvarov had largely ignored them, but common soldiers did so at their peril, for Paul was also an advocate of corporal punishment. His choice for quarter-master general, Alexis Arakcheev, so shared this temperament that during 1798 several units mutinied and an officer committed suicide rather than follow his orders.

Deprived of his offices upon the murder of Paul I, Arakcheev was soon reinstated and provided useful services to the new emperor, Alexander I. The damage had largely been done though; during Paul’s reign, the upper echelons had become corrupt, and officers, largely drawn from the upper nobility, cared little for the soldiers and knew less of military strategies and tactics. The Russian armies that fought Napoleon at Austerlitz, Eylau, and Friedland performed admirably in the face of such difficulties, but were defeated in the end. Alexander signed the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807, which pledged Russia to support the Continental System against Great Britain. Russia also lost the Ionian Islands, and had to evacuate the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.

During Russia’s brief interval of peace, Alexander and Arakcheev worked to reform the army. Taking the lessons of Austerlitz, Arakcheev had already introduced reforms to the artillery known as the “System of 1805”; this reorganization deployed 6- and 12- pound guns throughout the army, and created light and heavy foot artillery battalions that operated independently. He further improved officer training, and issued a new series of regulations that incorporated many of Suvarov’s ideas. Promoted to minister of defense in 1808, Arakcheev improved the army’s supply operations, and the grading of the general staff. During the Patriotic War of 1812, he supervised army recruiting and managed supply.

Alexander I’s turn back to the enlightened military ideals of Suvarov appeared of little worth in the early stages of the Patriotic War. Under the command of Field Marshal Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly the Russian armies fell steadily back before the onslaught of Napoleon’s 500,000- man Grande Armée . Tolly made a brief stand at Smolensk in August 1812, but left the city smoldering and resumed the retreat, scorching the earth to deny the French ready supply. After three months of avoiding battle, Tolly was replaced with Kutuzov, who practiced similar tactics. Kutuzov had the good fortune- or cleverness- to engage Napoleon outside of Moscow at Borodino, however, just before winter was to arrive. The Russians arguably lost the battle, with Kutuzov leaving the field that evening having suffered some 40,000 casualties from a force of about 150,000, but it was there that Napoleon lost the war. When he departed Moscow at the end of October, the French emperor found Kutuzov waiting for him; the Russians successfully blocked an attempt to retreat via Kaluga and then harassed the emperor’s forces all the way back to East Prussia.

Contrary to popular belief, the Russian armies of Tolly and Kutuzov were not large forces; they retreated because they could not match the strength of the French. Even as the Grande Armée returned west, it remained equal to or larger than Kutuzov’s force for most of the way. Not until the spring and summer of 1813 did the Russians’ mass reserves sufficient not only to pursue the French but to engage them. The immediate results again were not good; Kutuzov had passed away in April 1813 and his successor, Peter Wittgenstein, was defeated at both Lützen and Bautzen. Russian armies did take part in the allied victory at Leipzig though, and in January 1814 they invaded France under the direct command of Alexander I.

While the Russian armies thus were ultimately successful in returning to the ways of Suvarov, the Patriotic War changed something in Alexander. Scholars have debated whether it was the malevolent influence of Baroness de Kruedener, a revolutionary conspiracy among his imperial guardsmen, or a putative kidnap plot- or all of these- that turned the former supporter of liberalism (at least in a limited sense), but something did. Upon his return from Paris, where he had constructed the conservative Holy Alliance, Alexander set about restoring the discipline and methods of Arakcheev and Paul I in the army. In the Semeonovsky Regiment, which he personally commanded, Alexander introduced such strict discipline, enforced by endless drill, personal abuse, and floggings that a mutiny ensued. There were at least 14 other such incidents between 1816 and 1825.

An additional feature of Alexander’s attempt to restore discipline and morality to the army was the creation of military colonies in Novgorod and southern Ukraine. Benignly interpreted, these establishments were designed to reduce the costs of maintaining an army, foster camaraderie among units, and instill discipline. Essentially, they consisted of large estates populated by government serfs organized into battalions of “farmer- colonists.” Each farmer- colonist had an obligation to support not only his family but also two “soldier- lodgers” from his allotment of land. The soldier- lodgers provided labor for the many projects Alexander and Arakcheev lavished upon the colonies, including roads, sidewalks, and well- designed houses. The farmer- colonists also received decent farming equipment and livestock from the government. They hated the colonies nonetheless. Both farmer- colonists and soldier- lodgers were required to wear uniforms at all times.

They spend mornings at drill, and lived on military time, their activity governed by the call of bugle and drum. Male children began drill at age 6, and were sent to special military schools at age 12; they began regular military service at 17. In some colonies, and notably on Arakcheev’s personal estate, women were expected to bear children annually to supplement the levy. These strictures and others led to a number of rebellions; in 1819, two cavalry regiments revolted in Ukraine and over 2,000 men were arrested.

Others, notably those who had served as junior officers with Alexander in France, revolted in other ways. Many of the Guards and army officers joined secret, liberal societies dedicated to the reform of Russian institutions, including the army. When Alexander banished the rebels from his Semeonovsky Regiment to Ukraine, he merely dispersed the movement without destroying it in the capital. By 1825, there were two groups involved in a widespread conspiracy: the Northern Society of St. Petersburg, and the Southern Society housed in Second Army in Ukraine. Both groups hoped to abolish serfdom; disband the military colonies; institute responsible, representative government; and reform the military system. Alexander I died before they could enact the plot to assassinate him; however, the Northern Society seized the opportunity to attempt a coup- the Decembrist Revolt- and force the successor to bow to their demands.

If Nicholas I had ever had any grand intentions of reform, the Decembrist Revolt likely stifled them, for among the plotters were 16 major generals, 115 colonels, and 315 company officers representing 40 of the army’s 256 battalions. The failed coup thus not only stripped the army of many of its best officers, it instilled a distrust between officers and between units.

Nicholas did work to alleviate the harsh conditions Alexander had imposed upon the army, however; he dismissed Arakcheev and eased restrictions on farmer- colonists. The general term of service was reduced to 15 years, and Nicholas sponsored military legislation that eliminated some of the harsher punishments and generally encouraged more humane treatment of the enlisted. Provisioning was improved notably, and a system of dedicated military hospitals was created. Military education also improved, as Nicholas established 18 additional cadet corps and, in 1832, a military academy to train general staff officers. Training remained largely for show, however, and military equipment was little improved. While the Russian Imperial Army thus appeared magnificent and overwhelming, and produced a string of triumphs when pitted against the Persian and Ottoman armies, or against Polish or Hungarian rebels, by 1853 it could no longer stand against the modern armies of Europe as it had half a century before.

Nicholas I (Nikolai I Pavlovich; 6 July [O.S. 25 June] 1796 – 2 March [O.S. 18 February] 1855) was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855. 

He was also the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. He is best known as a political conservative whose reign was marked by geographical expansion, repression of dissent, economic stagnation, poor administrative policies, a corrupt bureaucracy, and frequent wars that culminated in Russia's disastrous defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-56. His biographer Nicholas Riasanovsky says that Nicholas displayed determination, singleness of purpose, and an iron will, along with a powerful sense of duty and a dedication to very hard work. He saw himself as a soldier – a junior officer totally consumed by spit and polish. A handsome man, he was highly nervous and aggressive. Trained as an engineer, he was a stickler for minute detail. His reign had an ideology called "Official Nationality" that was proclaimed officially in 1833. It was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and Russian nationalism

Because of the success of revolutionary resistance, Franz Joseph had to ask for help from the "gendarme of Europe" Czar Nicholas I of Russia in March 1849. Russian armies, composed of about 8,000 soldiers, invaded Transylvania on 7 April 1848. But as they crossed the Southern Carpathian mountain passes (along the border of Transylvania and Wallachia), they were met by a large Hungarian revolutionary army led by Józef Bem, a Polish-born General.

Bem had been a participant in the Polish insurrection of 1830 – 1831, had been involved in the uprising in Vienna in 1848 and, finally, became one of the top army commanders for the Hungarian Republic from 1848 – 1849. When he encountered the Russians, Bem defeated them and forced them back out of the towns of Hermannstadt (now Sibiu, Romania) and Kronstadt (now Brașov) in Transylvania, back over the Southern Carpathian Mountains through the Roterturm Pass into Wallachia. Only 2,000 Russian soldiers made it out of Transylvania back into Wallachia, the other 6,000 troops being killed or captured by the Hungarian Army. After securing all of Transylvania, Bem moved his 30,000–40,000-man Hungarian army against Austrian forces in the northern Banat capturing the city of Temesvár (now Timişoara, Romania).

In June 1849 Russian and Austrian troops entered Hungary heavily outnumbering the Hungarian army. After all appeals to other European states failed, Kossuth abdicated on August 11, 1849 in favour of Artúr Görgey, who he thought was the only general who was capable of saving the nation. However, in May 1849, Czar Nicholas I pledged to redouble his efforts against the Hungarian Government. He and Emperor Franz Joseph started to regather and rearm an army to be commanded by Anton Vogl, the Austrian lieutenant-field-marshal who had actively participated in the suppression of the national liberation movement in Galacia in 1848. But even at this stage Vogl was occupied trying to stop another revolutionary uprising in Galacia. The Czar was also preparing to send 30,000 Russian soldiers back over the Eastern Carpathian Mountains from Poland. Austria held Galacia and moved into Hungary, independent of Vogl's forces. On August 13, after several bitter defeats in a hopeless situation, Görgey signed a surrender at Világos (now Şiria, Romania) to the Russians, who handed the army over to the Austrians.

Petr Yakovlevich Chaadaev

The repression was particularly tough in Russia, the second of Europe’s pre-eminent absolutist regimes. If Metternich cast Austria in the role of Central Europe’s policeman, then Tsar Nicholas I saw himself as gendarme for the entire continent. The Russian empire had been in his iron, autocratic grip since the death of Alexander I in 1825. He had founded the notorious Third Section, the secret police, an organisation which had a tiny number of officials, but which worked through the gendarmerie and a larger number of informants, who made as many as five thousand denunciations a year. The very existence of police spies created an atmosphere in which it took a brave soul to express dissent openly. One widely believed myth held that in one office of the Third Section headquarters in Saint Petersburg there was a trap door: during a seemingly innocuous conversation, a perfectly innocent individual summoned before the police officials could be lured into saying a minor indiscretion, whereupon a lever would be pulled and the victim would fall into a dungeon below to be subjected to all sorts of unspeakable horrors.

The real oppression was bad enough for those who dared to voice their thoughts too loudly. In 1836, when the liberal intellectual Petr Chaadaev lambasted Russia for its backwardness, he met the fate that would be shared by some twentieth-century Soviet dissidents: the government declared him insane and confined him to an asylum. Even (or perhaps, given his quick temper, especially) the great poet Pushkin had to tread carefully: he was tolerated because the Tsar liked his work, but even he was subjected to the occasional rap on the knuckles. Intellectuals and writers cautiously circulated their writings in manuscript among friends first, and only later approached publishers – if they approached them at all. The Tsarist regime did not only fear dissent from among Russia’s intellectuals, it was anxious – perhaps more justifiably – of the possibility of a mass uprising by the peasantry, twenty million of whom were serfs and who had risen up with startling vengeance in the past, most recently under the renegade Cossack Emilian Pugachev in the early 1770s. It also worried about opposition from the downtrodden subject nationalities of the Empire, especially the Poles, who bore their subjugation only between fits of rebelliousness.

Since 1795 the old Polish kingdom (except for the Napoleonic interlude of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, established in 1807), had been wiped off the map, partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria – and this was confirmed at the peace congress. The three ‘eastern monarchies’ therefore tried (in vain) to asphyxiate Polish nationalism under their combined weight.

Karl Wilhelm von Willisen

The revolutionary crisis of the middle of the nineteenth century which shattered most of the European countries in protest against the political system established by the Congress of Vienna is usually associated with the memorable year of 1848, with the so-called “spring of the peoples.” It was indeed in the spring of that year that the movement started in Western Europe and in the western, German part of Central Europe. In East Central Europe, however, where the tension was deepest and the claims for national freedom even stronger than those for constitutional reforms, the crisis started exactly two years earlier, in the spring of 1846.

It started with the utopian project of a Polish insurrection which would be directed against all three partitioning powers at the same time. From the outset it proved impossible to include any direct action against Russia, which dominated by far the largest part of Polish lands and where the oppression was most violent. For Nicholas I who in the thirties had already crushed all conspiratorial activities of the Poles, now succeeded, and even in the decisive year of 1848, in stopping all revolutionary movements at the border of his empire. It was therefore Prussian Poland which was selected as a basis for the new struggle for freedom. Here the prospective leader, Ludwik Mieroslawski, had already appeared in 1845. The reasons for such a decision must be explained against the background of the general situation in Prussia.

As far as her policy toward the Polish population was concerned, earlier attempts at reconciliation, in agreement with the promises of 1815, had been followed by the systematic repressions of Edward Flottwell who in 1830 replaced the Polish prince, Anton Radziwill, as governor of the grand duchy of Poznan. On the other hand, not only in that purely Polish province but also in West Prussia and Silesia all government efforts toward Germanization met with strong resistance. This was not at all limited to the Catholic clergy and to the nobility, who were considered the main representatives of Polish nationalism, but it was also organized by a Polish middle class which had been formed in these western lands earlier than in any other part of Poland. It was there that the most advanced cultural, social, and economic progress had been made by the Polish people, while such progress was entirely impossible under the regimes of Metternich and Nicholas I. Even under Frederick William IV, new King of Prussia since 1840, who recalled Flottwell, only the methods of anti-Polish policy were changed. But the apparently anti-Russian attitude of the government, and some sympathy displayed by Prussian liberals, created the illusion that eventually the planned Polish action would find Prussian support.

What really happened was, on the contrary, the arrest of Mieroslawski and his collaborators in February, 1846, when their conspiracy was discovered and all attempts to liberate Prussian Poland failed completely. At the same time, however, a real tragedy took place in Austrian Galicia. Alarmed by preparations for a Polish insurrection which had also started there, the Austrian administration incited the peasants to rise against the noble landowners in some districts of western Galicia, promising rewards for the killing or capturing of any of them. The peasants were told by the Austrian bureaucracy that the nobles wanted to restore old Poland only to enslave them, while the emperor was ready to abolish serfdom completely. As a matter of fact it was precisely the leaders of the insurrection who, though of noble origin, like the eminently prominent Edward Dembowski, had the most advanced ideas of social reform. Their radicalism was best evidenced when at the end of February they seized power in the free city of Cracow, where Jan Tyssowski, later an exile in the United States, was proclaimed dictator. But his inadequate forces were defeated by the Austrians, Dembowski was killed, and after a brief Russian occupation the republic of Cracow was annexed by the Austrian Empire.

Even that obvious violation of the treaties of 1815 was accepted by the Western powers which in spite of the aroused public opinion in France and England limited themselves to weak diplomatic protests. And a new wave of violent repressions set in, both in Galicia where the new governor, Count Stadion, tried to play off the Ruthenians against the Poles, and in Prussia, where in December, 1847, Mieroslawski and seven of his associates, after a long imprisonment, were sentenced to death. But before they could be executed, the outbreak of the 1848 revolution opened entirely new prospects not only for the Poles but for all the submerged nationalities of East Central Europe.

As a matter of fact there were several revolutions in 1848, not only in different countries but with different objectives. In the French February Revolution, the issues were exclusively constitutional and social, but just as in the case of the great Revolution of 1789, the general ideas of liberty which were spreading from Paris all over Europe had a special appeal for those peoples who were deprived not only of constitutional freedom—and this in a degree much greater than under Louis Philippe’s French monarchy—but also of their national rights. Hence the growing excitement in various foreign-dominated parts of Italy and particularly in the non-German parts of Prussia and Austria. Not later than in March there appeared in both monarchies a rather confusing combination of nationalist movements and general revolts against autocratic regimes.

In Prussia, in spite of the disappointments of 1846, the situation of that year seemed to repeat itself so far as the Polish question was concerned. The liberation of Mieroslawski and his friends by German crowds in Berlin was very significant in that respect. Returning to Poznan, the Polish leader also returned to the plan of a war against czarist Russia with the support of a liberalized Prussia, whose new minister of foreign affairs, Baron H. von Arnim, was in favor of such a conception. The latter was also supported by Prince Adam Czartoryski who came from Paris to Berlin. But all these plans were doomed to failure for two different reasons.

First of all, a war against Russia was seriously considered in Prussia only so long as there was fear of Russian armed intervention in the German revolution and a prospect of the active cooperation of other powers. But Nicholas I, well advised by his ambassador in Berlin, remained passive, while the ambassadors of Britain and even of revolutionary France made it quite clear that the Western powers did not desire a conflict with the czar any more than Austria, who was involved in her own troubles. On the other hand, the impossibility of Polish-Prussian cooperation became obvious as soon as the “national reorganization” of at least the province of Poznan was considered. Contrary to the initial promises of the government, any administrative reform in favor of the Poles who hoped for complete separation from Prussia was opposed by the German minority. A compromise negotiated by General Willisen, as royal commissioner, was rejected by both sides, and after a decree which announced the division of the grand duchy into a Polish and a German part, open fighting started with the result that on May 9, 1848, the insurrectionary Polish forces had to capitulate.

There followed a violent anti-Polish reaction under the new commissioner, General Pfuel, who was even ready to cede to Russia a part of the Poznan province. Finally such drastic changes were abandoned, but even the Frankfurt Parliament, where a few liberals had spoken in favor of the Poles and the reconstruction of their country, fully approved Prussia’s policy in the name of a “healthy national egoism.” Such an attitude was in agreement with the general program of German nationalism which in 1848 claimed the unification of all German states in one empire, whether under Prussian or Austrian leadership, but which also wanted to include many non-German populations that were under the control of both these powers.

In the case of the Habsburg monarchy, such an approach had implications of a much larger scope, affecting at least all those possessions of the dynasty which in the past had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and which since 1815 had been included in the German Confederation. For that very reason the Bohemian lands were invited to send representatives to the Frankfurt Parliament, a claim which was rejected in the name of the Czechs by the historian Palacky, who now became the political leader of the nation. Nevertheless, when in March, 1848, almost simultaneously with the revolution in Berlin, a similar movement broke out in Vienna, here too at the beginning there seemed to be a possibility of cooperation among all those who, irrespective of nationality, had suffered under the Metternich regime. This cooperation was to include Austrian Germans, who were chiefly interested in constitutional reforms and other peoples who hoped that under a liberal constitution their national rights would also receive consideration.

In Austria, too, the Polish question, which had received such a harsh blow two years before, was immediately reopened, and in Galicia, as in Prussian Poland, concessions were made at the beginning of the revolution. These included the creation of national committees in Cracow and Lwow, and the raising of hopes for a reconstruction of Poland in connection with the Habsburg monarchy. But there was even less chance of cooperation against the Russian Czardom—the main obstacle to such a reconstruction—than in Prussia. On the contrary, on April 26 Cracow had already been bombarded by the Austrian commander, and when Polish activity was transferred to the eastern part of Galicia, the Austrian government favored the claim of the Ruthenians. This was to cut off that part of Galicia as a separate province with a Ruthenian majority. In November drastic anti-Polish measures also set in there. Lwow, too, was bombarded. The first Pole, Waclaw Zaleski, who had been made governor of Galicia, was recalled, and although the partition of Galicia did not materialize, the whole province was again subject to efforts of Germanization and to strict control by the central authorities.

Here, however, the analogy with the fate of Prussian Poland ends. In the multinational Austrian Empire the Poles did not limit themselves to another abortive uprising in their section of the monarchy, but took an active and sometimes a leading part in all other revolutionary movements, including even that of the Viennese population. A first important step was the Polish participation in the Slavic congress which was opened in Prague on June 2. Like the whole earlier purely cultural phase of Pan-Slavism, that congress, naturally under Czech leadership, had nothing in common with the later development of that trend which was sponsored by Russia. Except for the isolated extremist Bakunin, who hoped in vain to use Bohemia as a basis for a communist revolution, the Russians were conspicuously absent from the congress. There was indeed in Prague a difference between conservative partly aristocratic leaders who were defending traditional regionalism, and a liberal, even radical, majority. There were also individual delegates from outside the Habsburg monarchy. But all of them represented those Slavic peoples who, crushed between German and Russian imperialism, hoped that a reorganization of that monarchy on democratic principles would give them a chance for free development.

In spite of such a positive attitude toward Austria, whose existence even Palacky considered indispensable in that phase of his activity, the imperial authorities were suspicious. In Prague, as in the two Polish cities, the end was a bombardment, the congress being dispersed. In addition to that hostility of the military and bureaucratic elements in the central government, however, there was another difficulty which made the Slavic congress and its whole program end in failure. It had already appeared during the deliberations that the Slavs, though a majority in the Habsburg monarchy, were not the only non-German group which had to be taken into consideration in any reform project. Besides the Italian and Rumanian question of a rather special character, there was the big issue of Hungary with her Magyar leaders and her own nationalities problems.