No GNW (or “Peter goes South”)

[alexmilman]

35. Campaign of 1709
Interlude:
In March 1709 Philipp Ludwig Wenzel von Sinzendorf, Obersthofkanzler of the Hapsburg Empire sent an ambassador to Moscow with an offer of mediation in the ongoing war. Taking into an account the Austrian behavior at Karlowitz, Peter was not enthusiastic to get them involved and then some details of their intended position became known: return of the Crimea and other Russian conquest to the Ottomans. Which was the last nail in a coffin. An ambassador was allowed a ceremonial audience with the Tsar (kissing the hand and questions regarding the Emperor’s and Tsar’s health) but everything else had to be discussed with Prince Vasily Golityn who politely came with a counter-offer of the Russian mediation in the Hapsburg conflict with the King of France. Demagoguery regarding the Russian recognition as an “European state” fall on the deaf ears. Golitsyn declared that Russia is already recognized as such by everyone it cares about and the Hapsburgs are not on that list. Taking into an account an absence of any realistic leverages, the Austrians had to drop the whole thing (but 3,000,000 piasters never had been returned). 😜

By May 23 1709 a part of the Moldavian army crossed the Danube at Fetesti - Cernavoda and joined the former Bessarabian Army which now became Bauer’s corps of Moldavian army. The crossing, guarded by the Danube flotilla was quite uneventful because most of the “meaningful” Ottoman river craft (cannon boats) had been captured at Braila leaving Vizier mostly with the small rowing boats. All together, on the right bank of the Danube Sheremetev had approximately 50,000 with approximately 15,000 more on the left bank.

At that time, according to the data obtained from the captured Turks, the enemy’s forces had been allocated the following way: in and around Silistra - 35,000; in Ruse - 15,000; in Varna - 6,000 and in Bazardjik [1] - 20,000 under command of Numan Pasha and Vizier was in Shumen with 10,000.

Following the “rules of war” [2], Sheremetev would have to start with attacking a well-fortified Silistra, simultaneously guardingooo himself from the Ottoman attacks coming from Ruse and/or Bazardjik. Which would most probably result in an expensive and very bloody mess with the losses forcing him, even in the case of success at Silistra, to get back to the left bank of the Danube simply because he would not have enough forces to continue his offensive [3]. So, instead of trying to break a wall with his head, he opted for a principle: “if the enemy occupies a very strong position, take care that he will remain in it” [4]: as long as the Ottomans are sticking to their position at Silistra, he is free to destroy their forces at Bazardjik, Varna and Shumen. If they get out of Silistra, then on the open they are doomed. The Russian troops on the right bank of the Danube will force them not to leave Ruse because if they do, it will be easily taken (or, as an option, the corps on the right bank will simply cross the Danube upriver forcing the garrison to turn back).

The Ottomans did not disappoint him: when the Army of Moldavia marched to cut communication between Silistra and Bazardjik, its vanguard under general Weisman intercepted Numan Pasha who made camp near Kaynardzha village, approximately 20 km from Silistra.

Weisman had approximately 5,600 troops with 45 guns and Numan Pasha up to 20,000. In what by now became a standard behavior, Weisman sent the light troops to keep the Ottoman cavalry off, marched his vanguard for 1.5km through a narrow defile and entered an open place in front of the Ottoman camp after which arranged his infantry into a square and took position on a high ground opposite to the enemy’s camp. The Ottoman artillery opened fire from a distance of 2km, which was pretty much useless. The main Russian force arrived and, due to the narrowness of a valley, arranged a square with a narrow front and stretched in depth. Cavalry remained in the marching columns. The troops had been advancing in that order when the Ottomans launched a counter-attack. Their cavalry on the left broke the Russian cavalry which was partially dispersed and partially retreated behind the vanguard square. The following charges of the Ottoman cavalry against vanguard square had been repelled. At the same time the Ottoman infantry attacked the Russian main square but had been beaten off by the artillery firing grapeshot and infantry fire. After this the Ottoman infantry launched a second attack in its usual mob-like style and had been beaten off again. At that point Weisman had been killed but, after two failed attacks the Ottomans had been dispirited and counter-attack of the Russian cavalry, which by that time reformed behind the right flank, won the day. Infantry charged with the bayonets and the Ottomans run. Being extremely pissed off by the death of their popular commander, the Russians were not taking prisoners killing more than 5,000 with a loss of 19 killed and 161 wounded [5].

Vizier found himself forced to advance from Shumen to protect Varna. With the leftovers of the Numan Pasha’s army he had up to 20,000 [6] and called for 3,000 more from Varna garrison. These forces had been placed under command of Reis Effendi [7] Hadji Abdul Rezak. Sheremetev sent against him a corps of 17,000 under command of Michael Golitsyn. The battle itself was interesting only by the geographic obstacles (forest and narrow defile) through which the Russian troops had to pass. After this it was business as usual: the battalion squares in the first line with the columns in a reserve and artillery at the front. When, after 3 hours of shooting, the Ottoman fire weakened, Golitsyn ordered his infantry to advance but the Ottomans did not oblige waiting for the bayonet charge and fled to Shumla leaving artillery and the camp. The Ottoman losses were rather small, 500 killed and 100 taken prisoners but, after Shumla was surrounded, it became obvious to the Ottomans that the further resistance is hopeless.

Vizier asked for the armistice and sent his representatives to Kaynardzha for signing the peace. Sheremetev gave him 5 days for the discussion after which he was going to continue the offensive. On July 21 peace was signed.

The main conditions were:
The Ottoman Empire recognized loss of the Crimea and the borders by the Dniester and Kuban rivers.
Russia got a right to hold a fleet on the Black Sea with a right of a free passage through the Straits.
Russian merchant ships and the merchants were getting the same rights as the French and British.
The Ottoman Empire had to pay Russia 7.5 millions piasters of the war contribution.
Russia would not prevent the Crimean and Nogay Tatars from moving into the Ottoman territories and the Ottoman Empire would permit the same to its Christian subjects.
In the future communications the Ottomans will address a Tsar as “Padishah” [8].
The Ottomans are getting a preferable treatment in purchasing salt from the Crimea.


There was nothing about the Russian protectorate over the parts of the Ottoman territories or any other form of intervention into their internal affairs.

________________
[1] Now Dobrich (on the map)
[2] Some kind of a delusion popular at that time. For example, Louis XIV warned Marshal Catinat that Prince Eugene is a dangerous opponent because he is not following the “rules of war”.
[3] Which is what Rumyantsev did during his first offensive in 1773, with the results outlined above.
[4] Stolen from Pratchett 😂
[5] At least this was officially reported.
[6] When you are reading description of the war of 1768-74, the first impression is that the Ottoman soldiers were not just growing on the trees but that the new “fruits” were getting ripe few times per year. The Numan Pasha had 20,000 but when it came to the battle, the number grew to 30,000. Vizier had 10,000 at Shumla but in a battle of Kozludzha, to quote wiki, “The Ottoman forces are estimated at about 40,000” with the Russian forces being only 8,000. To the credit of the Russian wiki, they had a decency to make the Russian 24,000 but both are confused regarding a general in charge: Suvorov, of course, more famous but Kamensky was in charge as one with a greater seniority in promotion (Potemkin issued a specific order on this subject). Being very free with the Ottoman numbers was a modus operandi of both Western and Russian generals and historians. 😂
[7] Why would a bureaucrat in charge of the foreign affairs be placed at the head of an army is beyond my understanding.
[8] Creating an opening to the future assumption of the imperial title.

 

[alexmilman]

36. Peace at last

Obviously, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca called for a much greater celebration than Peace of Warsaw. Not only the fact that a defeated side were the terrifying Ottomans but, most important, that this war had been won by Russia alone demonstrating that its army (and to certain extent navy as well) is a force to be taken into consideration in the European affairs. Of course, there would be some sniggering along the lines “these had been just the Turks” but it always could be pointed out that Prince Eugene made his name fighting the same Turks. Not that this really mattered because the most important thing was a developed sense of a self-esteem. There was one more thing which the “Europe”, busy with the WoSS, is most probably going to overlook at its own risk, development of a brand new military system with a much greater tactical and operational flexibility than a linear system prevailing on the West. Peter was not planning any major (or any at all) European entanglements but who can tell how the European affairs are going to develop and when they are going to impact the Russian interests. One of the potentially troublesome areas still was on the Baltic and there could be two types of problems which would require the Russian interference:
1. Anti-Swedish coalition of Denmark, Prussia and whoever else. As of right now Sweden and its potential opponents had been fighting on the same side but this most probably would not last for too long after the WoSS ends: the territorial disputes are not going to go away. Obviously, if Sweden is going to be attacked, Russia has to be involved, which means a need to have a meaningful naval force on the Baltic Sea and readiness to have the army marching toward the theater of war.
2. After “The Favorite Pet”, King August, dies (of course, he is a strong man but his drinking and sexual affairs should be exhaustive 😜), there can be an opposition to election of his son to the Polish throne and this opposition can go from two different sources: France, if it is still capable of meddling into the foreign politics far away from its borders, and/or Austria interested in the PLC help against the Ottomans. With the Peace of K-K signed, Russian attitude toward the Ottoman Empire changed: with the freedom of navigation and trade, unless the Ottomans decide to break the arrangement, peace with them became much preferable to the war and, while fighting somewhere in Serbia can be shrugged off, the Austria encroachment into the Danube Principalities may be potentially harmful to the Russian trade interests and any anti-Russian ruler of the PLC may cause a need for a new “European” war.

The Governing Senate, created by Peter in 1708 [1] to replace the Boyar Duma reacted immediately and appropriately. Peter was given a honorary title “Father of the Motherland” [2] and politely asked to assume the title of the Emperor of the Whole Russia (Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссійскій). Sweden, Prussia and the Netherlands acknowledged it immediately and the Ottomans even before the announcement by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca [3].

Both events, peace and the imperial status, had been celebrated by the musket and artillery salutes in all cities of the newly-declared Russian Empire and the fireworks in Moscow continued until 3AM.

But the fireworks, however extensive, were not enough for Peter. He summoned his chief architect Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond and (who would doubt it) General-Governor of Moscow [4] and explained his vision:

“There is an empty Khodynka field near Moscow. Make it to represent the Black Sea with two roads coming to it from Moscow: one with be the Don and another Dnieper. At the mouth of the Don put the dinning hall and call it “Azov” and at the mouth of the Dnieper build a theater and call it “Kinburn”. Out of sand make the Crimean peninsula and place there the ball halls called “Kerch” and “Enikale”. To the left of the Don will be buffet for the plain folk, opposite to the Crimea would be illumination representing join of both states regarding the peace treaty. On the Black Sea there will be illuminated boats and the ships and along the rivers-roads there will be placed illuminated houses, mills and trees. This way we’ll have a simple but very nice celebration.” [5]

Sheremetev got fieldmarshal’s batton with the diamonds, diamonds to the star of St.Andrew, Tsar’s miniature framed in gold and diamonds [6], 100,000 rubles for building a palace in Moscow and estate in Belorussia with 5,000 peasants.

The lesser personages also had not been forgotten.

To celebrate his own newly acquired imperial status Peter had to order a brand new set of the imperial regalia (jeweler who got a commission, received a short but clear order: “use more diamonds”).

And, while he was on the subject, Peter ordered creation of the “Diamond Chamber” as a special fund to house a collection of jewels that belonged not to the Romanov family, but to the Russian State. Peter placed all of the regalia in this fund and declared that the state holdings were inviolate and could not be altered, sold, or given away — and he also decreed that each subsequent Emperor or Empress should leave a certain number of pieces acquired during their reign to the State, for the permanent glory of the Russian Empire.
The first items had been the old Russian regalia that included a pectoral cross, a golden chain, a barmas (wide ceremonial collar), the Crown of Monomakh, sceptre, and orb.

Peter’s own imperial crown was the first of the subsequent series of the crowns made along the same lines: unlike the old Tsar’s crowns, it was shaped along the general design lines of the HRE’s imperial crowns (arch in the center) but with much more jewels (and more expensive ones [7] 😜.

Now the time came to develop a plan for the effective usage of the newly-acquired territories and, with the exception of a continued supply of the Sultan’s kitchen with his favorite brand of the Crimean honey, this was not going to be fast as simple.


_________________

[1] In OTL in 1711
[2] Well, actually “Father of the Fatherland” (Отец Отечества) but it sounds ugly.
[3] Title of “Padishah” granted by the peace treaty
[4] In case somebody forgot, Menshikov
[5] A slightly abridged version of CIIs directions regarding celebration of the K-K peace. All potential comments regarding its weirdness or over-developed imagination have to be addressed to her. 😜
[6] This was a sign of a high monarch’s favor to be worn together with the standard state awards.
[7] The HRE crown is quite impressive even if its technique now looks rather primitive (IX century is a remote past). The stones are polished in, more or less, the cabochon shapes and fastened with the thin wires. There are only 144 gemstones, sapphires, emeralds and amethysts ( but no diamonds) and approximately the same number of pearls.

 

[alexmilman]

37. One who is searching …

«Кто ищет, тот всегда найдет»
(One who is searching will always find…)​

This is from the old Soviet-time song. The text is wisely silent on the subject of what exactly this person is going to find. It can be something he is searching for or just a major pain in the butt and, in the last case, will this be a butt of one who is searching or somebody elses’s. In the cases when it is Peter who is conducting a search, we can be certain that, no matter how successful he is going to be in finding whatever he was looking for, a royal (or rather imperial) pain in somebody’s butt is going to be guaranteed.

To give a general background, the direct taxes had been paid by the peasants and city folks. The nobility and clergy had been excluded and, in the casecof clergy, the Church property (including the serfs) had been free from the taxation. Directly taxing nobility was out of question which leaves….

The war is finally over so the time came for starting paying attention to the budget. And, to be able to do an efficient fleecing of your subjects, it makes sense to find out how many of them do you have because the wise heads in the “income department” [1] gave him an idea to switch from a household-based tax to an individual one [2]. A conducted and revised census [3] discovered that Peter is in a possession of 5.4M taxable male subjects.
The 1st post-war budget looked as following [4].
Expenses:
army - 3.141M rubles
navy - 0.781M rubles
….
schools, academies and medicine - 64,700 rubles (1%)

Total: 6.24M rubles

Income:
head tax - 4.6M (54% of all income)
indirect taxes - 2.13M (24.9%)
income from minting the coins - 2.5%
custom dues - 1.8% [5]
salt monopoly - 7.76%

Total: 8.5M

So, formally, Peter was OK, except that the direct taxes paid by the peasants more than doubled raising from 1.8M to 4.6M. But, with the war being over, Peter had plans. All types of plans. And for this he needed to increase a size of the taxable flock. And when one is searching….

It did not take long to figure out that there was a big fat resource, the monasteries. Russia had 953 monasteries (732 male, 221 female) with 11,153 people in them. What was much more important, they owned 910,866 male serfs and did not pay taxes [6]. Something must be done about this and in 26 February 1710 Peter issued a manifest regarding the Church properties [7] (if you can’t tax the Church property, the most logical action is to confiscate it and then tax):

1. All land possessions of the Church are to be transferred to the state Collegium of Economy.
2. All Church institutions were removed from administration of the estates, monasteries, parishes and dioceses.
3. Peasant who live in these estates are transferred into jurisdiction of the Collegium of Economy.
4. Instead of “barschina” and “obrok” these peasants will have to pay 1.5 rubles of head tax which will go to the state treasury through the Collegium of Economy.
5. Collegium of Economy is going to allocate certain amount for maintenance of the Church institutions.
6. Dioceses are being divided into 3 classes and will be getting money according to the assigned class.

The manifest was rubber-stamped by the Synod [8] and, except for 5 or 6 extremely prestigious monasteries, the officially supported monasteries had been divided in 3 classes (based upon their prestige) as following:
1st class: 15 monasteries and 4 nunneries
2nd class: 41 and 18
3rd class: 100 and 45

There were also monasteries which did not get the state money and had to exist either by the gifts or by the monk/nuns working on their land:
1st class - 20, 2nd - 56, 3rd - 85.

Of course, not everybody in the Church was happy. The Bishop of Yaroslavl, rather foolishly, became vocal for which he was removed from his position, declared to be a criminal and spent the rest of his life in a monastery prison.

The only exception had been made for the monasteries in Siberia, taking into an account their importance in a process of expanding the Russian control there.

Byproduct of this reform (besides making the Russian Church completely dependent from the government) was creation of a new category of the peasants, so-called “economic peasants”, similar to the category of the “state peasants”: they were personally free and just had to pay taxes in cash and participate in the state-run projects.

Second cash cow were the Old Believers. In 1709 Peter issued ukaz which legalized them and allowed to get engaged in trade and professional activities: [Tsar] “does not want to force people’s consciousness and allows each Christian to take care of his soul as he seems fit”. [8] The result was almost immediate: communities of the Old Believers immediately became very active in the trade and business creating “community banks” and their own manufactures in which they had been hiring [9] exclusively their co-religionists: the religious solidarity allowed the owners to exploit their workers while avoiding the conflicts because an employer was considered one of their own in a generally alien outside world.

The land
The next potential source of a revenue were the newly-acquired land on the Black Sea. The Crimea itself had been left pretty much untouched except for establishing the Russian administration and ongoing construction of a new base for the Black Sea fleet: maintaining the status quo allowed continuation of a profitable trade with the Ottomans with the expectation that sooner rather than later development of the “Wild Steppe” will allow to increase the grain exports to the Ottoman Empire (Constantinople itself was a very big market with the population very sensitive to any kind of the supply problems). But this left what was now called “Novorossia”: a big chunk of land practically void of a population.

The 1st action was to move there 20,000 state peasants. To everybody’s (pleasant) surprise, the Old Believers demonstrated a considerable enthusiasm and few thousands of them even moved there from the Ottoman Empire to which they fled during the previous reigns. The next big group were all types of the serfs, Russian and Ukrainian, escaping from their masters and even the criminals. To get as many people as possible ASAP, state unofficially made the region a safe heaven with no extradition and even declared that all escapees (including the army deserters) who made it abroad can return not just with a full pardon but with tax free 6 years as a bonus.
The Greek and Armenian immigrants had been getting 10 years free of taxation and 30 hectares of land.
However, not everything was that rosy. In parallel, a process of creating the big estates was going on. The private persons (state officials, officers and foreigners) could get the land on a condition of populating it either with the free people or with the serfs. Minimal allotment was 1,500 hectares of a good land on which 13 households must be settled, with the corresponding increase of the settlers the allotment could grow up to 12,000 hectares but the influential, people could get more. For 10 years the estates had been free from all taxation and obligations and after that could become a permanent property.



_______________
[1] Peter had a special institution of «прибыльщики», the people inventing the sources of state income. The first «прибыльщик» started his career by proposing to conduct all official business (purchase and sake documentation, will, applications to the official institutions, etc.) exclusively on a special paper with the state seal. Depending upon the importance of a subject, it would cost 10, 1 or 0.5 kopeck per list.

[2] This being the early XVIII and an issue of the gender equality is not being there, yet, the head count applied only to the males (AFAIK, there were no protests from the obviously discriminated women with a demands for being equally taxed: Russia of that period was a very backward country). We can only speculate how much more money Peter would be able to squeeze if he had more progressive ideas. 😂
[3] Revision conducted “just in case” discovered that the census “missed” approximately 2.000,000 males. After which the revisions had been conducted on a regular basis. To make the process practical (Russia simply did not have enough bureaucrats), the estate owners had to provide the lists of their serfs.
[4] Numbers from the budget of 1724.
[5] As you can see, so far this was not a major source of income except that it was producing gold and silver. State monopolies on the most important export items and/or a sharp increase in their volume could increase importance of this component but not overnight and to increase exports you need an increased demand.
[6] To quote from “Mecklenburg series”, “he issued a degree according to which there was only one form of a punishable heresy in his lands: not paying the taxes”.
[7] According to wiki it was issued on 26 February of 1764 by Catherine II but wiki is famous for its mistakes. At least the day is correct (snd who the Hell is “Catherine II”?). 😂
[8] Really happened in 1709. What is not happening in this TL is another part of the OTL deal: double taxation, extra taxes on the beards, marriages, etc., special dress, and other restrictive measures.
[9] As a contrast to the prevailing serf-based industry.

 

[alexmilman]

38. More problems
Problem #1. Zaporizie

“Padrino, she had to go!”
Prizzi’s honor​

On the map above the blue area is a territory controlled by Zaporizie Sich. After the Peace of Küçük Kaynarca the territory is completely surrounded by the imperial lands and all earlier reasons for its existence are gone. What is there is a huge piece of a prime real estate right on the way to the newly-conquered possessions. It sparsely populated [1], its inhabitants do not like outsiders and not only do not let them settle there (unless they became members of the Sich) but from time to time are raiding the newly-settled neighbor areas. They are not paying any taxes, not accepting the Russian administration or the laws and in the case of war are not quite reliable and reluctant to obey anybody except their own commanders. They definitely have to go. At least as far as Peter is concerned.

On June 5 1710 lieutenant-general Peter Tekeli with 5 cavalry regiments and 10,000 infantry approached capital of the Sich. It was a midst of the night and there was some religious holiday previous day so everybody including the sentries had been asleep and Orlovsky infantry regiment took the main fortification without a single shot being fired. When the Cossacks finally woke up, Tekeli read them an ultimatum and gave two hours for consideration.

The Cossack leadership was for capitulation but the rank and file had been more bellicose and it took “koshevoy” [2] some effort to convince to surrender. Treasury and archive had been confiscated after which artillery leveled the empty fortress to the ground. For the task being accomplished without a bloodshed Tekeli was awarded order of St. Alexander Nevsky.
Below is a modern reconstruction of the capital of the Sich.

After liquidation of the Sich the cossack leaders had been ennobled and got estates. The rest had been allowed to join the dragoon regiments. Approximately 5,000 migrated into the Ottoman Empire and settled at the mouth of the Danube as “Zadunaiskaya Sich”. However, approximately 12,000 of them remained in Russia but had been quite reluctant to submit to the discipline of a regular army. Their leadership sent petition to Peter assuring him in their intention to serve the empire. Peter conceded and settled them in the Taman area and on the right bank of the Kuban River, a new troublesome border with the expelled Nogays on the left bank. They had been called The Kuban Cossack Host.

The Sich territory had been populated along the same lines as Novorossiya.

Problem #2. The cities in Novorossia
One of the first new cities built on a new territory was Kherson. Inotially, Peter was quite enthusiastic about it planning to make it into a major port with a main wharf for the Black Sea Fleet. Construction was seemingly easy because the quarries were practically in the city and the rest if the needed materials could be sent by the Dnieper. The port looked quite but then came a disappointment. The site proved to be not too good, the attempts to make the Dnieper navigational at the Rapids failed, the nearby swamps (look at the green on a map below - Kherson is just on their edge) [3] had been causing the diseases. The wharf was conveniently located but the water was too shallow for the big ships of the line. Ochakov had a more convenient harbor and with the construction of Nikolaev (top spot on the map) a wharf and the admiralty had been transferred there. It remained a functional port but did not live up to the expectations and a lot of money had been wasted.

Nikolaev (named after the first ship, “St. Nicholas”, built on its wharf) was built on a place where the Ingul River flows into the Bug. Started as a wharf with the attached barracks and hospital and soon enough the main wharf and admiralty of the Black Sea fleet had been transferred there.

Odessa - ukaz about its construction was issued only in 1720. The most important event in its early history was a mass Greek settlement there [4].

A number of the cities had been built inland. Usually, they had been getting some tax breaks for the first few years, which was really helpful.

To secure a new border with the Ottomans a fortified line had been built along the Dniester. The troops allocated for its defense had been quite diverse: the regular units, the cossacks, the hussar regiments composed from the Serbian immigrants, the units raised from the foreign colonists. The colonists had been getting considerable privileges: money for the travel had been provided by the Russian residents abroad, they could settle in the cities or form the colonies, a complete religiois freedom was guaranteed, for few years they were free from taxation, the colonies were getting their own jurisdiction, they were free from a mandatory military service and volunteers were getting a bonus, founder of a manufacture producing some new products could sell its production for 10 years tax free, the colonies could have tax free fairs, etc.

The newly built port Sevastopol had been designated as the main naval base. The custom post was removed and the merchant ships could not trade in it.

With the population of Novorossia in 1710 being 100,000, in 1720 it reached 500,000. Majority of the new settlers came from the Left Bank Ukraine.

Not exactly a problem….
With all these major developments going on Peter did not forget his little personal dream: to build a summer residence on the coast of the Baltic Sea. He started with a rather modest construction, which he called “Monplesir” (mon plaisir) on a coast of the Gulf of Finland, choosing (rather strangely) the only not swampy spot. The palace was built in a somewhat Dutch style (as Peter understood it)

Unlike the Versailles, it had a very cute bath house

Well, speaking of the Devil … oops… Versailles, Peter started developing certain ideas …..
____________
[1] By various estimates between 12 and 50+ thousands.
[2] Top elected official of the Sich.
[3] Choosing a swampy site for a new city was seemingly something of a hobby.
[4] In a deviation from the venerable tradition of building the major ports on a swamp, this one was built on a site lacking fresh water. Somehow its citizens managed to live without it. 😂

 

[alexmilman]

39. Enjoying the peaceful life

“War was the only entertainment of the kings in which their subjects also participated” (Fanfan the Tulip).​

While I’m a great admirer of this movie (1952 version) [1], I somewhat disagree with this specific statement because there was at least one more royal entertainment in which the subjects had been directly involved: financing creation of the royal residencies and direct participation in the construction process. There is no need for the artificial limiting the nation-wide entertainments. 😂

«За досаду боярину сталося, за великую обиду показалося» (Boyarin was greatly aggravated)
This is from the XVIII song about Prince Gagarin being envious of the palace being built by a “traitor” Prince Vasily Golitsyn and ordering construction of his own palace.

“The impromptus must be well-rehearsed”
common knowledge​

Monplesir’s construction was not complete, yet, when it came to Peter’s attention that by building a modest summer residence he is somehow underselling his newly-acquired imperial status [2]. Surely, all these foreign ambassadors are already making condescending remarks about his modest residence in Kremlin and now this “parochial” summer residence…. Isn’t it enough that the Danish ambassador Just Juel keeps criticizing pretty much each and every aspect of the Russian state for not being an exact replica of Denmark and, as such, barbaric [3].

So, how about something bigger and greater, worthy of a great monarch? Le Blond immediately presented a sketch of his vision of a new Big Kremlin Palace [4], which would require demolition of the half of Kremlin but was going to be truly majestic (Menshikov made one of his “I’m a honest guy and have nothing to do with it” faces, which Peter knew quite well and to which a standard reaction was promise to renew his stick’s familiarity with Menshikov’s backside). As much as Peter disliked the old Kremlin, the very scope of its destruction look excessive and politically unsound [5].
But a proposal to expand the summer residence by making it truly imperial found a much warmer reception, especially when it was underscored that the new palace may overlook the Gulf of Finland in a much more majestic (and cheaper) way than Versailles’s pathetic Brand Canal. Now, this Peter really liked, especially after an opportunity of an easy direct communication with Charles was brought in: a short sail across the Baltic and either you are in Stockholm or he is in your …. should we call it “Peterhof”? No, Le Blond does not have ready plans for, yet, but he knows the area quite well and is ready to travel to it immediately and return fast with some outlines for a general idea which you can overview. It also looks like there are nearby water sources on a higher level which would allow a lot of the fountains without the laughable water shortage problems which King Louis faces in his Versailles [6]: we’ll be able to have them functioning around the clock. Peter, who loved the fountains almost as much as he liked the fireworks and pulling the teeth [7], was sold and just expressed a wish for few “surprise” fountains to satisfy what passed for his sense of humor [8].

Now came the practical part. It was obvious without saying that for Menshikov the goal of the whole exercise was to place himself if not directly in charge then at least in a position in which he is capable to control the contracts (and to take bribes, of course). Peter was quite willing to accommodate him on this because, with all his faults, Menshikov was probably a single person who could guarantee the result being to Peter’s liking. Of course, he will take bribes (who cares) and most probably will “confuse” some of the state money with his own but against this specific disease Peter had (and Menshikov knew it quite well) a miracle medicine called Pavel Yaguzhinsky, supervisor of Peter’ assemblies and one of his drinking buddies but, more relevant in this case, Prosecutor-General of the Senate [9] who "was distinguished by directness, honesty and integrity, tirelessness in the work".

“Aleksashka” will try to steal, Yaguzhinsky (who was not his friend) will try to catch him. Of course, when caught, Menshikov will not be executed but he will be forced to return a big part of the sum he embezzled. So this was fine and Menshikov got his appointment as an overseer construction of Peterhof with an additional task of creating «тракт» (the improved quality road with the postal stations and accommodations along it ) between Moscow and St. Petersburg with an equally good quality branch to Peterhof: Peter was planning to use this road frequently and did not want to suffer from the potholes, broken bridges and cockroaches [10].

More of the merry peaceful life….

As far as Peter was concerned, if there is a peace, then everybody must enjoy it. And, of course, the form of enjoyment must be “European” [11], well-regulated [12] and properly overseen. For the last function he appointed “Tsar of the balls”, Paul Yaguzhinsky, who took this duty just as seriously as his diplomatic missions or position of Prosecutor-General: “If Yaguzhinsky ordered to drink, everybody had to drink even if a number of the drained glasses was exceeding everything that could be considered realistic. If Yaguzhinsky, after such a dinner, became “active” and ordered to dance, you can be assured that all doors are locked and guarded and that the guests will have to dance until they drop.” Which is what you can call a properly organized entertainment. These “assemblies” had to happen three times per week in the private residencies and Peter ordered to print “Explanation how to conduct the assemblies”: “Assemblee is a French word which is impossible to explain in a single word in Russian - it is a voluntary meeting in a private house, not just for fun but for business as well because you can meet here a friend and discuss whichever business you want, to hear the news and still have a fun”. The rules followed:
1. Owner of the house in which an assembly is going to happen must declare, by a letter or other sign, about the coming event which any make and female may freely attend.
2. It should nor start before 4 or 5PM and should not continue after 10AM.
3. The host should not greet his guests, wish them farewell or force them to eat and drink but he must clear few rooms and provide the tables, candles, drinks and the games played at the tables.

One of the “cleared” rooms was allocated for the dances, another for the checkers, chess and cards, the third one for the smoking and male discussions and the fourth for the women. A host also had to provide a music for the dances (either his own orchestra or a borrowed one). Breaking of the rules was punished by drinking a goblet of “Big Eagle” (something like 1 liter). When they became a tradition, the winter season was opened and closed by the assemblies in Menshikov’s palace.

All this was augmented by the banquets and masquerades and had been taken quite seriously: during one of the multi-day masquerade the Senators had been attending the Senate meetings in masks [13].


As a side note, many rich aristocrats in Moscow had been keeping an open table: anybody decently dressed could come in, be seated and served food. Small wonder that some of them ended with all their wealth being “eaten”.
______________
[1] What sense does it make to produce a remake of a pretty much perfect movie is beyond me. Well, never mind.
[2] Quite occassionally, when visiting Menshikov’s new residence, Peter saw the plans and engravings of the Verssailles. It was, of course, a pure coincidence that these specific sheets had been laying on the top of a pile of other graphic materials placed on the table for the guests’ entertainment (a new practice introduced by Peter himself as a part of the new social life). It was also a pure coincidence that at the same time architect Le Blond had been visiting General-Governor of Moscow to discuss some business related to the “westernization” of the capital. And most definitely all the above had absolutely nothing to do with anything else that may come to your mind. Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil of it). Ah yes, and I have a really nice bridge to sell. 😂
[3] In his descriptions of Russia he, indeed, projected a condescending attitude. How justified or unjustified was it in each specific item is besides the point.
[4] Actually, this was Bajenov’s plan presented during the reign of CII.
[5] Kremlin being a semi-sacred place, why step on too many toes without a real necessity. Not to mention that it was not quite clear how to use this monstrosity.
[6] The problems did exist. IIRC, the fountains (which are really beautiful) had been functioning only when the Louis was approaching.
[7] Among other things, he left 3 big bags with the teeth which he personally extracted.
[8] You are walking along a path and suddenly a hidden fountain jumps into action leaving you wet. Peter, who sits on a nearby bench and presses a hidden pedal, is laughing. Much less harmless than forcing you to drink a vinegar, having a candle pushed up your ass, forcing you to sit on a bucket of eggs and many other types of his favorite jokes.
[9] Something like AG. Actually, he was assigned to this position much later.
[10] Ne was afraid of them.
[11] Aka, no fistfights, no domesticated bear attacking the guests who refused to drink and no other traditional forms of an entertainment like those favored by “Prince-Caesar” Romodanovsky.
[12] This had nothing to do with Europe: Peter just loved to write the instructions. In the earlier chapters I reproduced some related to the simple social visits: he obviously did not trust ability and willingness of his subjects to find a toilet in the house they are visiting.
[13] No, this is not a current politics and has nothing to do withnyou-know-what: really did happen.

 

[alexmilman]

40. Boring economics

Prior to the LNW structure of the Baltic trade looked as following:
“The products of flax and hemp cultivation in the seventeenth century represented 70 to 80 per cent of Riga's exports. Out of the quantities of flax and hemp passing through the Sound to western Europe in the seventeenth century, as a rule considerably more than half consisted of cargoes from Riga. The other big port of export for these products was Konigsberg. Grain from the Livonian hinterland constituted 11.6 per cent of Riga's exports, while timber for shipbuilding formed 6.8 per cent. In Reval, grain from the Estonian-Livonian hinterland was the main item of export, while Narva's exports consisted of mixed Russian goods (mainly flax and hemp, along with skins, leather and furs). Thus flax and hemp appear to have formed the chief items exported from Sweden's Baltic ports (also from Konigsberg), On the other hand, the principal port of export for grain was Danzig, whence the Polish grain surplus was sent in enormous quantities to western Europe…..
While the Dutch ruled the sea for most of the seventeenth century, a marked change took place at the time of the War of the Spanish Succession, from which England emerged as the leading trading nation.
The goods most needed by England were raw materials for the shipbuilding industry: flax and hemp, timberg, tar and iron. Of these, flax and hemp were practically unobtainable anywhere else except from Russia and to some extent Poland; tar came from Russia, Sweden and the American colonies, timber from Norway, the Baltic ports and America, and iron only from Sweden and Russia, these two countries having sufficient forest resources for producing charcoal iron. Thus, England's naval and mercantile fleets were manifestly almost totally dependent on the Russian market for the most essential raw materials. While the Dutch had the greatest influence on Russian trade during the seventeenth century, it was the English who in the eighteenth century became by far the biggest consumers of Russian products.
Whereas Russian export goods had previously consisted of flax, hemp, tallow, wax, skins, leather, furs and ashes, from the time of Peter the Great onwards iron, timber and tar were included ….
Hemp and flax were of fundamental importance to the shipbuilding industry. As noted above, eastern Europe, or to all intents and purposes Russia, had virtually a natural monopoly of these articles and retained this position as long as sailing ships navigated the world's oceans. England was totally dependent on Russian flax and Russian hemp, taking more than two-thirds of Russia's hemp exports and half its flax exports. “ [1]

Now, the obvious task for the post-LNW arrangement was how to arrange the growing export of the Russian goods without seriously hurting the existing interests, especially trade through Riga. The end-result looked as following:
Riga preserved the existing levels of flax and hemp trade and other traditional items (mostly timber and rye) with a further expansion of the flax exports.
St-Petersburg became a major exporting port for the hemp (over 36,000 tons annually by 1715) with some flax and a growing amounts of the bar iron, timber (especially for tall ships’ masts), tar and tallow. Both iron and tar had been breaking the Swedish monopoly but this was happening as the additional supplies to the growing British market. The British annual imports of bar-iron since 1699 remained on the level slightly above 19,000 of which Sweden was supplying approximately 15,000 tons or approximately 80%. The Russian exports constituted meager 13 tons in 1706 growing to slightly over 1,000 tons by 1710 and kept steadily growing but so far were only a fraction of the Swedish [2].
Archangelsk - 29% tallow, 10.6% hemp- and flaxseed, 0.7% - hemp, 0.5% - flax, 1.8% - timber, 7.1% - grain and the rest some other goods.

The newly-founded Black Sea ports had been gradually growing in importance exporting increasing volumes of wheat, caviar, butter and, eventually, iron. For a while, the main markets remained within the Black Sea: Constantinople was a traditional consumer of the Khanate’s exports and could digest (figuratively and literally) more, especially of the grain and meat. But soon enough the Greeks, who migrated into Russia, started expanding the naval trade all the way to Italy (mostly Livorno and Messina) and to the Mediterranean possessions of the Ottoman Empire (Alexandria and Smyrna). Volume of that trade was relatively small but it kept growing.

Approximately 9% of the exports had been coming exclusively by land. In Europe the destination point was Leipzig market in which furs and leather predominated.

The most important part, as far as Peter was concerned, had been to maintain a positive trade balance and to keep it growing: with not too much of the gold and silver being found so far on the Russian territory (there were few findings but their output was almost negligibly small), a bullion was of a primary importance to keep the domestic economy growing. Well, and for some other things as well…

Exports to the Asiatic markets consisted mostly of furs and leather with China being the main customer. This made it necessary to secure the trade route, which was exposed to the very unstable situation in the Central Asia where Dzungar Khanate was in seemingly never-ending wars with all its neighbors including the Qing Empire, which was Russian important trade partner, and Kazakh Khanate, which was on the Russian Southern border.

One of the first actions taken to deal with this issue was to fortify Irkutsk and to provide it with a strong garrison: after abolishment of the monopoly on fur trade it became a major flourishing trade center.

Russian expedition up the Irtysh River and foundation of the fortresses Yamysh and Omsk provoked Dzungar reaction: 10,000 Dzungars besieged the small Yamysh fortress and kept it under the siege for few months after which garrison abandoned it and destroyed fortifications (in a couple years a new fort had been built on its site). Omsk fortress was much stronger and grew up in the important town.

The process evolved into creation of a fortified “Siberian Line” on the Kazakh-Dzungar border with a goal to protect the Russian possessions in Southern Siberia (and support the future expansion into the area). Besides the regular troops in the main fortresses, there were fortified settlements populated by the Siberian Cossack Host, which was in existence since the XVII century but now got its official status. To strengthen the new host, not only the old-timers but the newly-arriving peasants had been listed into it.

At the time of its official establishment the host included approximately 5,000 who were under the obligation to serve since the age of 17 for the whole life. Each male was getting 6 hectares of land, a salary, certain amounts of flour and oats, a right to collect the hay and to do fishing on the Irtysh River.

____________________
[1] From Artur Attman (1981) “The Russian market in world trade, 1500–1860” The quote is long but it provides a comprehensive overview of the market.
[2] In OTL the British imports jumped dramatically in the 1750s. Till the rest of the century the Swedish exports were pretty much on the same level (15-18,000 tons) with the Russian exports filling the “gap” jumping to 27-27,800 tons.

 

[alexmilman]

41. Peaceful entertainments (Мирные забавы)

Before going further, completely forgot to mention in the previous chapter that, to avoid any shadow of a suspicion that he may be trying to take advantage of his dear brother Charles, Peter established the export tariffs in St. Petersburg and Archangelsk at the same 6% level as in Riga [1]. Why not to use your position of a monopolist when you can get away with it? 😜

************************************​

Before the boring economic stuff we had been on a much more interesting issue which turned into the royal competition. As soon as the LNW was over, Charles ordered to continue construction of a new Royal Palace in Stockholm, which was going to be one of the biggest royal palaces in Europe.

He also ordered major renovations of the royal summer residence, The Drottningholm Palace.

Now, the brotherly love is fine but it goes only so far and Peter was already pointed out that his Monplesir on the Baltic coast and a small new palace in Kremlin make him look inferior and that sticking to his preferred modest style is «невместно» [2]. Peter already sanctioned construction of a bigger summer residence but now the instructions were clarified: “make it really majestic”. Unwillingness to break half of the Kremlin still was there but something slightly less monstrous but still huge became a must. And both projects must go ahead full speed.

The Peterhof part of a plan was obvious: a big palace with the formal gardens on a land side and on a sea side cascade of the fountains with the steps on the sides, leading to the canal which ends at the Gulf of Finland (screw Louis and brother Carl with their dead-end canals) so that from the top of the stairs one may see the sea.

Interior must correspond to the exterior

Any questions? … No questions. Good. Arbaiten!

Of course, when Peter started getting the …er… “well thought” ideas, it was close to impossible to move him off the track. Especially, when there was a loud chorus cheering these ideas and elaborating on how great they are. Of course, not to be outdone by anybody, Menshikov immediately jumped into the bandwagon asking for the permission to buy a piece of land nearby and to build on it his own summer palace. Well, this was pretty much expected, especially taking into an account that he was put in charge and obviously expected to “appropriate” some of the materials [3]. But, as soon as the news became public, the distinguished personages joined the chorus lauding Peter’s intention to upheld Russian imperial dignity and expressing desire to build their own summer residencies nearby. And when you hear the praises coming from Sheremetev, Apraksin, Vasily and Boris Golitsyns, your son (expected but nice to hear ), your daughter-in-law (not unexpected but also nice to hear) and even from the extremaly old-fashioned “Prince-Caesar” Fedor Romodanovsky, you are definitely on a right track.

This left Peter to contemplate the Kremlin palace issue. Of course, such a palace could be built on the nice outskirts of Moscow: in Kolomenskoe, in Izmailovo or near the German Settlement on Yausa. In the terms of available space each of these areas provided a much greater opportunity with no need of a major destruction [4] and location near the German Settlement had benefit of a shorter route to some of the Peter’s favorite whores and drinking establishments but for an emperor sticking to the old good habits was «невместно» so he had to start using …er… “resources” of his own court even of his daughter-in-law was a little bit prudish [5]…. Well, never mind. The point was that placing the main official imperial residence outside the capital, no mater how pleasant was the site, was not a very good idea. Kremlin was a symbol of the state power and a religious center of Moscow as well. It was fitting to have the main imperial palace there.

Plan approved by Peter assumed a building 125 meters long and 47 meters high overlooking the Moskva River at front

and having an exit to the Cathedrals Square on its back.


To minimize the destruction, it was going to incorporate some of the historic buildings and its interiors had to be, well, “majestic”.

As usually, construction (and especially demolition) started immediately after the plan was approved and while the tight schedule and budget had been established, nobody had doubts that it will end up being more expensive and behind the schedule. Why to set the unrealistic estimates, to start with? A naive question. If you start with a greater budget and a longer schedule, the construction will be more expensive and longer than these numbers, etc. Can the realistic budget and schedule be defined and followed? Are you kidding? 😂

Well, the construction itch is a contagious disease. Menshikov already got his brand new palace, which made palaces of Vasily Golitsyn and Gagarin look shabby, and everybody who was somebody had to have a residence fitting owner’s status. As a result, the numerous new constructions started popping up in and around Moscow. The wealthiest personages often had a (winter) palace in Moscow and one or more summer residencies right outside it. While there could be some space problems with the city residencies, even those directly outside the city border usually had substantial parks. Why not if the produce of their huge estates finally started being sold for gold and the incomes kept growing while the labor force used to build and maintain the mansions were their own. [6]

Of course, those below the top level found themselves in a tough spot: even being the remote seconds to the richest aristocrats implied a very expensive life style which could financially destroy them or just push them one step down their present level. So, in a long term the trend was quite dangerous but, without advantage of a hindsight, everybody was enjoying peace and prosperity. And if the Russian and Swedish rulers are going to compete in building their residences, it is much better than if they would start competing on a battlefield and, anyway, now this was all “in the family” and should not result in any hostility, providing none of them is not suddenly going to loss his mind.

Useful acquisition and Charles is getting upset

It is 1710 and, besides the massive construction projects and other types of the peaceful entertainments, there were two more important events:

Russia:

• A young (27 years old) Oldenburg-born military engineer, Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, who already had time to serve in the armies of France, Hessen-Darmstadt, Hessen-Cassel, and Saxony and participated in the ongoing WoSS was introduced to the Russian Ambassador in Warsaw and made a very good impression. He was offered Russian service with the colonel’s rank and impressed Peter with the result of his first assignment, plan of the Kronstadt fortifications. This was a promising opening for the future career.

• While the main shipbuilding effort had been on the Black Sea, the Baltic fleet was not forgotten. Cornelius Cruys was not a great or even good admiral but as a head of St. Petersburg Admiralty he was in his right place overseeing construction of the good quality ships. Taking into an account that size of this fleet was on a limited size 20-25 ships of the line plus smaller ships), the emphasis had been made on these ships having a lot of the heavy guns. Commander of the fleet, Naum Senyavin, was conducting regular join maneuvers with the Swedish fleet in the Eastern Baltic but nobody paid attention.

Sweden: In Sweden Charles was getting increasingly upset with the situation in which his troops “rented” to Britain found themselves. Time after time Stenbock was reporting about the inadequate supplies, bad winter quarters and wasteful assignments. In his opinion, intrigues of Prussia and Denmark had been to blame but, even putting them aside, the Duke of Marlborough, a supreme commander, either could not figure out how to use the unique Swedish tactics properly or simply did not care to make serious changes for the sake of the 10,000 Swedes. The final straw was Battle of Malplaquet. Placed under command of William of Orange, the Swedes participated in a ruinous attack on the French right flank and amounted to approximately 2,000 out of his 8,500 losses. Taking into an account the losses during the previous years, this left slightly more than a half of the original corps of 10,000. Charles had enough. The paid for year of 1709 expired in 3 months and Charles refused to prolong the contract and ordered Stenbock to march to Bremen-Verden. Which, of course, did not improve his relations with the Brits, Dutch, the Emperor, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Denmark and Prussia. Not that Denmark and Prussia really cared about the Hapsburg cause but everything possible had been done to emphasize the “perfidious” Swedish behavior. Charles remained seemingly unconcerned but ordered to strengthen fortifications of Stralsund and Rugen island. He also exchanged some letters with Peter and got the expected response. After which he started looking even more unconcerned…..







____________
[1] In Revel and Narva they were, IIRC, 3%.
[2] Something that hurts person’s social standing. For example, visiting your socially inferior before that person visits you.
[3] As Peter put it, “he was born a thief”.
[4] Well, for Peter this never was a problem.
[5] As was befitting her position, so she was not to be blamed for this and, anyway, “the young court” had their own palace so this was not a big problem.
[6] In OTL within a couple of generations Count Sheremetev had approximately 150,000 serfs and there were few more in the same “weight category”.

 

[alexmilman]

41. Fieldmarshal wants to enjoy life

-“Is it true that you are one of the richest girls in the area?”
-“I’m the richest one”
-“This is nice to know”
Support your local sherif​

Enjoying peace and prosperity was not an exclusive prerogative of the monarchs. Fieldmarshal Sheremetev, widowed in 1703, wanted to exploit opportunities of the peaceful life as well and he started with marrying in 1710 Anne Petrovna Naryshkina, nee Saltykova [1]. The marriage celebrations lasted for 3 days with Peter personally playing master of the ceremony, Tsarevich Alexey (who in a new imperial arrangement had been styled “Grand Duke”) with his wife and pretty much everybody else who mattered being present.

Not that Sheremetev himself suffered from a short pedigree but this marriage made him a relative to both branches of the Romanov (Tsaritsa Praskovua, widow of Ivan V, was from Saltykov family), not to mention a link to one more top aristocratic family, Prozorovsy (mother of Anne Petrovna was from that family).

What was of an additional importance, was the fact that Anne Petrovna was one of the richest brides in Russia. Together with fieldmarshal’s own considerable wealth, this made him (with a possible exception of Menshikov [2], the richest private person in Russia with ownership of approximately 150,000 serfs. A minor but nice detail was the fact that a rather small estate in Kuskovo village on the outskirts of Moscow was neighboring with a much greater estate of his wife, which allowed Boris Petrovich to create a huge palace & park complex there taking a space of 230 hectares.

On one side the palace was facing a regular park and on the other side there was a canal 300 meters long with a cascade fountain.

Besides the main palace there were numerous pavilions, a conservatory, 17 ponds with the expensive fish), a zoo and a hunting lodge. On the serious occasions more than 30,000 guests had been gathering there.

Pavilion “Hermitage” was built specifically for the noble guests who did not want to be bothered by the presence of the servants: access to the second floor was only by “elevator” and the food was delivered the same way.

In comparison, the city residence was a relatively modest affair in which he did not spent too much time but when he was there, he was holding “an open table”: any “decently looking” person could come in and join the dinner.

Of course, this was all nice and enjoyable but, with a ruler like Peter, one could not fully relax and enjoy life for too long. As soon as, in Peter’s opinion, fieldmarshal got enough time to relax after the war, get married and order construction of the Kuskovo palace, he was called back to the duty and made Chairman of the Military Collegium [3] with a task to bring all Russian army up to the level of the troops he commanded during the last two wars and to think about the possible improvements which may be useful if the need arises to face the “European” opponents. All Russian officers fighting as the volunteers on both sides of the ongoing WoSS had been recalled home and put to task to compose the comprehensive reports regarding their experience with the stress upon the Prussian and Austrian armies.

Few “noble tourists” and “merchants” soon had been on their way to the Koenigsberg, Mecklenburg and Saxony (via Berlin) with the orders to collect as much intelligence as possible and to buy the available maps (sometging, which any traveler may need). Naum Senyavin got an order to send two small from the Baltic squadron to Amsterdam and back on some preposterous errand.


________________
[1] Actually, this happened in 1713 and, as far as the wealth and estate are involved, it is “borrowed” from the marriage of his son. But why bother with an absolutely unremarkable personage who was just a son of his father.
[2] Menshikov’s wealth is a tricky issue even if it was regularly assessed by the audits launched with a purpose to find out how much did he steal on a specific occasion. Most probably, he was the wealthiest person in Russia due to the extensive “involvement” in various commercial enterprises but as a land/serfs owner he was nowhere close.
[3] Minister of War

 

[alexmilman]

42. While peace lasts
Of course, building the palaces was fun but this was not the only fun. Of course, the subjects must be happy and proud that they are being ruled by the sovereign who have the majestic residences [1] but they should be even happier if a monarch created something tangible presumably for their benefit (not necessarily a personal benefit but in general). Time of the public toilets was not there, yet, so the second best things were the canals. The great minds tend to think alike so both of them hit the idea independently [2], which probably implies that the idea was great as well: if there was only a single creat mind involved, this could be a fluke but with two you have a solid statistics. 😜

Charles launched his Göta Canal [3] was a part of a waterway 390 km (240 mi) long, linking a number of lakes and rivers to provide a route from Gothenburg (Göteborg) on the west coast to Söderköping on the Baltic Sea via the Trollhätte kanal and Göta älv river, through the large lakes Vänern and Vättern. Of course, it could not accommodate the big warships but it was OK for the smaller merchant ships fitting into 30 x 7 x 2.8 meters measurements. [4]

While the construction projects had been going on, Charles enjoyed his role of “father of the nation”, traveling with a minimal entourage or alone across the country, suddenly appearing to check performance of the state officials, inspecting the troops, awarding a watchman who refused to let him into a town after the gates had been closed for a night and doing some other things greatly increasing his personal popularity. Most of the soldiers and officers who returned from the last war brought with them some nice “extras” obtained in Poland and had been eagerly telling the stories about this glorious war and their great king providing Charles with a semi-divine status. The only entertainment his subjects were missing so far was the royal wedding and he was considering a suitable candidate….

On his side, Peter launched an ambitious program which involved 3 systems connecting the Volga River to the Baltic Sea. Of course, he did not have resources for all of them so only one of them, Vyshny Volochyok Waterway, had been started (the left-most on the schema below) and two others remained on a research stage during his life time.

The waterway from Lake Ilmen upstream the Msta and the Tsna Rivers, followed by a portage to the Tvertsa and downstream to the Volga River existed from the medieval times. The name of Vyshny Volochyok is derived from Russian: волок, which means portage. On January 12, 1703 Peter signed a decree which ordered a canal to be built instead of the portage. Prince Matvey Gagarin was appointed the supervisor of the construction, and Adriaan Houter, a Dutch water engineer from Amsterdam, was hired to perform the construction and, as was a typical case with most of the state-run projects, things went wrong and kept going in that direction [5] until Peter found a private entrepreneur, Mikhail Serdyukov, who volunteered to fix the problems. Construction and supervision had been transferred to him and he completely reconstructed canals and locks and created a number of the reservoirs allowing to maintain a reasonably high water level. Needless to say that the job was done faster and cheaper than under the state supervision. By 1716 up to 4000 ships were annually using the canal.

Serdyukov got a concession for 50 years. He was under the obligation to provide the maintenance and repairs at his own expense but with a free timber provided by the state. He got a right to establish a toll (5 kopecks for each 2 meters of the ship’s length), to build the mills along a waterway and (attention, this is very important 😜) to have a priority on “otkup” [6] of the drinking establishments along the route. Taking into an account that we are talking about Russia, this was better than a gold mine.

And, while on a subject of the canals, Peter’s recent “acquisition”, von Munnich, presented him with a plan for a much needed one to bypass the Ladoga Lake and expressed willingness to start implementation right now.


So, both Peter and Charles had been busy doing something useful while most of the European countries had been busy fighting the WoSS. The exports had been booming and while the Netherlands clearly were on decline as the Europe's greatest trader, the growing British imports had been more than compensating for the shrinking Dutch activities [7]. The last thing either of them needed was to get a new war on their hands. Which, following the principle “Si vis pacem, para bellum”, meant that they had to get prepared for one….


___________
[1] Just imagine a situation when a subject of a monarch X tells to a subject of a monarch Y that his king has a palace with 200 rooms and gets in response: “and our king lives in a hovel”….
[2] It is like the law of Lomonosov-Lavoisier: both of them (admittedly, with the interval of 25 years) came to the same conclusion that if something (for example, money) disappears in one place, it will sooner or later appear in some other place.
[3] My sincere gratitude to @von Adler who, by telling about this canal, saved me the need to start a new war right now: I had an idea to go into a detailed description of the aristocratic banquets but found that I simply can’t comprehend (forget about translate) meaning of most of the dishes’ names (among the few that are reasonably clear are cheeks of a herring, few thousands per portion). Which was leaving me with a choice between the royal weddings (subject that I don’t like at all), Peter and/or Charles converting into Buddhism or a new war.
[4] Not important for Sweden but potentially useful for the Russian-British trade.
[5] Due to the fluctuations of the water levels on the rivers and absence of the regulating reservoirs, system was getting too shallow for a serious traffic and then for any traffic.
[6] State license for which a receiver paid certain sum.
[7] As I understand, the WoSS was a major hit on the Dutch economy but the main reason for them getting into it was an old paranoia “the French are coming” which was caused by the Dutch own policies. Was it worth it?

 

[alexmilman]

I really need the opinions on the subject and preferably ASAP (before I started a new war 😜 ).

This is an issue of the field kitchens.

If you look at wiki (this ultimate source of wisdom and misinformation), you find “Karl Rudolf Fissler of Idar-Oberstein invented a mobile field kitchen in 1892”. Well, not exactly “invented” because in the Russian Imperial Army various models had been tested since 1866 and few regiments had them during the war of 1877-78. In Austrian army the first model had been tested in 1868 after which it was sent for the further testing to the army. In France the 1st (post-Napoleonic) testing was done in 1872 and in 1889 the numerous models had been presented on the Paris International Exhibition. Below are the models used in the war of 1877-78.

Needless to say that all these dates are definitely not the “birth dates” because the field kitchens had been known in Napoleonic times and Davout ordered 60 of them for his 1st Corps for the campaign of 1812 [1], which means that they should be known even before that time.

So the question is: how realistic would be their appearance in the early XVIII? There are two main aspects of the issue:
1. Technological. Surviving French model circa 1812 is using copper kettles. The later models - tinned iron: it seems that the process was known at least since 1620s and there was a considerable production in Britain and Saxony so this should not be a secret and later in Russia tinning of the kettles was one of the popular gipsies’ professions so the technology should be simple enough. But maybe I’m missing something?

2. Military practicality. AFAIK, at that time the main stress in a soldier’s diet was on bread and a “5 marches” military model involved construction of the field bakeries within 5-9 days march from the troops. Obviously, the field kitchen can’t bake bread but, for example, in the Russian army a standard ration of that time was 2 pounds of bread, 1 pound of meat, soup (on a meat base) and porridge, a lot of things to eat besides the bread and there always had been hardtacks in use. We do know that Charles XII did not stop for baking the fresh bread and that Napoleon’s soldiers had been carrying few days worth of the hardtack with them so, if the soldiers have enough of other things to eat the fresh bread may (not too fresh if it was baked few day marches away) not be too critical. Now, for the “classic” Western warfare of that period the issue was not critical because it was heavily based upon the complicated maneuvers on a limited space but an ability to prepare food on a march, thus extending the distances covered daily, would be important for the less “sophisticated” and more aggressive style of a warfare [2].

So, would this be fantastic to a degree which hurts everybody’s sense of a realistic alt-reality or does it look reasonably plausible? Can’t start a descent war without deciding on this issue. 😂

[When it comes to the Little Silly War, I’d surely like to have this gadget to backup unexpected blitz but if not, then not]



__________
[1] As much as I dislike Davout personally, the fact remains: he was the most responsible corps commander in Nappy’s army.
[2] Basically, it can be the nice old living off the land model but the soldiers do not have to wait for the hot food being cooked after the daily march: they may have it 2-3 times per day during the short stops for the rest.

 

[alexmilman]

Mostly to @von Adler and @Jürgen but to everybody else as well.

So far, I’m in a state of a serious confusion regarding Danish-Swedish affairs.
Here are some questions:

1. As I understand, Denmark wanted Scania and perhaps some other Swedish possessions in Europe (what exactly.). Did Sweden want something from Denmark (as I understand, the Norwegian adventures were more or less retaliation)?

2. The navies. According to wiki by 1700 Sweden had 38 ships of the line, 10 frigates and unidentified number of the small ships (list includes only five of them) while Denmark had 29 ships of the line and 4 frigates (no data whatsoever on the small ships). Yet, even on the 1st stage of war Charles needed the British-Dutch help for his landing on the Danish territory and on the later stage of war (post 1712) the Danes were mostly successful. I could not find any specifics on the Danish fleet (list of the ships with the armament, preferably).

So far, what I found boils to the following and in each specific case this may be just a personal opinion of a specific author(comments, please on correctness/incorrectness of these observations):

a. The Danes maintained a professional navy while the Swedes had been raising the crews only when the need arise so the Danish crews had been better trained. But an article describing a failed operation to provide Stralsund with the reinforcements (September 1712) points out that Wachtmeister was an experienced admiral and many of his subordinates participated in the 9YW but the Swedish ships had been severely understaffed (approximately 50% of the needed numbers). The detailed numbers are quite impressive but it is not specified up to which degree they were understaffed before epidemics (of what?) hit Karlskrona. Was there a general neglect of the navy? Or was Ulrik Christian Gyldenløve a vastly superior admiral. Does not look like that based on the battle of Køge Bay.

​

b. One article says that artillery of the Danish fleet was seriously upgraded both in the numbers and in the weight (a lot of 36-pounders) while, judging by the Wiki list, only one Swedish ship of the line, Kung Karl, had 10 36-pounders and in the rest the heaviest caliber was 24-pounds.

c. There was also a claim that the Danish fleet was better prepared for fighting in the shallow waters (in the Northern Baltic this was clearly a problem for the Swedes who could do little to stop operations of the Russian galleys). But was this critical?

So, which of these claims are correct, what could be other factors impacting the balance. IIRC, in his memoirs Just Juel in description of his travel to Russia in 1709 created an impression that at this time the Swedes pretty much dominated the Baltics but perhaps this was because the Denmark did not want a confrontation?

 

[alexmilman]

43. Peace is good….

“Мир - хорошо, однако при том дремать не надлежит, чтоб не связали рук, да и солдаты чтоб не сделались бабами”. Петр Первый [1]

“There is a certain danger in appointing a professional into position of responsibility and if this professional also has mental capacities, the danger is even greater” From “The manual for the absolute monarchs”
​

If somebody expected that after being appointed a Chairman of the Military Collegium Fieldmarshal Sheremetev is going to keep soending most of his time on construction of the luxury residencies, they were severely disappointed. He started with assembling most capable of his subordinates and formulating two top priority tasks:
1. Find out what is going on in the army and punish the guilty ones.
2. Based upon the recent experience, find out what should be changed and how.

A lot of things were not going well in the victorious army. Discipline and order maintained during the war became lax. Many officers were getting the fake paid “assignments” and actually spending time in their estates with a full knowledge of their commanders who had been pocketing part of the given money. Some commanders had been turning their soldiers into household servants, there were numerous cases of the misappropriated money assigned for purchasing everything from uniforms to the fodder (with the allegedly bought stuff being destroyed by everything possible causes including the thunderbolt), the soldiers were not getting their rations, the training was neglected, etc. [3] One of the underlying reasons was low salary of the officers: they simply could not maintain themselves without stealing. But even more fundamental problem was an absence of fear: too many problems had been pretty much ignored while the war was going on. The fact that the foreign officers still had been getting salaries three times higher than they Russian colleagues did not improve the general spirit.
Of course, a complete elimination of the problems was simply impossible but certain disciplinary measures had been taken :

• Salaries of the Russian officers had been raised to the “foreign” level and from now on the foreigners would have to be taken into the Russian service without raising in a rank, as also was an earlier practice.​
• The audit service was created with a purpose to conduct the regular reviews of the financial and supply affairs in the army units.​
• Each regiment got an intendancy officer and the financial rights of the regimental commanders had been restricted. Of course, it was more or less expected that stealing os mot going away but now the regimental commander and regimental intendant were going to watch each other (and report on each other).​
• Using soldiers as the household servants was strictly forbidden: an officer could have a single orderly.​
• Instructions had been issued regarding the troops training and the regular reviews with a stress not on the parade ground “exercise” but on the tactical evolutions, aimed shooting (especially for the jagers) and bayonet charges. Similarly, the cavalry kept being trained on charging sword in hand and, in the case of the light units, scouting duties.​
• Those found involved in the fake assignments schemas will face disciplinary punishments.​

With a lot of moaning and complaints army was getting back into the fighting shape.

The changes also were quite serious and initially raised Peter’s hackles because he loved the uniforms he introduced and the “western” appearance of his soldiers. But united front of the prominent generals clearly indicated that it is a good idea to listen and digest the accumulated experience.

The uniform had to be changed. A knee-long tight “kaftan” with a long camisole under it, short breeches, stockings of a heavy wool, shoes and a wool cape for a winter had been heavy, cumbersome, hot in a summer and inadequate for a winter. Not to mention that the stockings and shoes were not the best idea for the dirty roads (as in “the roads with a deep dirt”). The long hairs of the soldiers and big wigs of the officers were just inviting the lice. As Sheremetev remarked, “the soldier does not have a valet and should be ready for service immediately after he wakes up” [4]. The officers could retain the long hairs or the modest wigs and the soldiers had to have their hairs cur short. Having King Charles as an example proved to be quite convenient.

A new uniform grudgingly approved by Peter [5] consisted of a wide short jacket which did not restrain the movements. Soldiers had been wearing the long wide trousers tucked into the boots. For the cold weather a warm vest would be worn under the jacket and for winter the soldiers had been getting the warm overcoats. Soldier’s tricornes had been replaced with the leather helmets.

To accommodate Peter’s sensibilities, it was decided that for a while the Guards are going to preserve their existing uniform (as a token to their military glory and whatever else). They were not expected to march to a war in a near future, their main function being to guard the imperial family. Speaking of which, it was declared that the Grand Duchess Elena Karlovna is pregnant again. So was the newly-married Mme. Chernishova, nee Rzewskaya [6]. 😂

The next big issue was a food preparation. During two previous wars the food had been prepared in the company’s kettles hanged over the fire. If an army was on a march, this would work only in a properly arranged camp (at best, in the morning before the march starts and by the end of a march) keeping soldiers hungry for most of the day (they were not carrying any food with them). Someone brought up an idea of making the field kitchens which would allow to cook food while the troops are on a march and to feed soldiers during the short breaks in a march or immediately by the end of a daily march.

The first practical design was based upon two-wheel cart with a copper cooking kettle being placed inside a bigger kettle filled with a water under which was a heating part. The “water bath” protected the food from being burned and stuck to the kettle.

Almost immediately came the proposals of two-kettles system (one kettle for the soup, another for porridge) and various improvements of the original design. As a result, the army was getting a variety of the models because choice of a favorite (as combination of performance, cost, ability to produce in the needed numbers and easiness/reliability of exploitation) was going to take a considerable time.

Military organization retained its division based structure but Vice-Chairman of the Military Collegium (general Weide) had been made a head of the “General Staff” responsible for the general military planning: making the maps, collecting intelligence, preparing plans of the future campaigns . Getting enough officers with an adequate education was problematic in a short term so in a reality its practical functions were quite limited and to a great degree the map making was substituted with purchase of the available maps abroad.

On a tactical level reports about the WoSS experience influenced some changes in the existing practices. It was recommended to use the jagers in a loose order in front of a battle orders and keep the battalion columns as a main formation for a following bayonet charge with a possibility of converting them into the lines if situation requires. Importance of the artillery fire was emphasized with each division getting 2 brigades of the field artillery (64 guns). Additionally, every division got an attached regiment of a light cavalry.

Taking into an account that the next war could be against the Western opponent possessing modern fortifications a corps of the engineers with siege artillery had been created to addition to the small commands of the sappers existing in each division.

Some of the mounted landmilitia regiments had been turned into the regiments of light cavalry.

Of course, there were numerous garrison units much less impacted by the new reforms and the limited manufacturing capacities for a while left them in the old uniforms all the way to the old Streltsy uniforms for the regiments which were not yet converted into the soldier regiments. The main issue was to provide them, especially those in the Siberian garrisons, with the new (or at least not too old) muskets.



________________________
[1] “Peace is a good thing but you should not lose your vigilance because otherwise you’ll find your hands tied and your soldiers turned into the women.” Peter I. (Note: Living in the XVIII century Peter did not have an opportunity to get familiar with the issues of a gender equality and many other modern views 😢).
[2] Which was going against the fundamental principle “punish the innocent and award undeserving”
[3] This is from the actual revision reports made during the reign of CII (I did not have patience to read all of them so these are just few “jewels” found at the first few pages). There is no reason to assume that in Peter’s time the order was better, probably it was even worse.
[4] Potemkin
[5] If an idea was not of his own, he started with resistance but eventually got used to it and was ending up as considering it his own from the very beginning: after all, it was he who allowed implementation. 😜
[6] Comment for those closely familiar with the Russian culture: no relation to «поручик Ржевский». 😂Explanation to everybody else: lieutenant Rzewsky (поручик Ржевский) is a fictional hussar officer, a hero of a popular movie and then even more popular hero of the countless anecdotes.

 

[alexmilman]

44. Second “ally”

“Russia has two allies: its army and its navy”
Nicholas I


​

After the end of the Ottoman War of 1707-1709 Russian ship-building program looked as following:
A. Admiralty of the Black and Azov Seas:
1. Wharf of Voronezh - slowly dying out producing the small ships (up to the light frigates), capable of getting out even when the water levels of the Voronezh and Don rivers was low, for the Azov and Black Seas out of the previously collected materials [1]
2. Wharf of Taganrog - founded in 1701. Gradually loses its position of the main supplier of the warships to the new wharfs on the Black Sea. However, still an important producer of the small and mid-sized warships and merchant ships.
2. Wharf and Admiralty of Cherson, fast enough transferred to Nikolaev. Producing all types of the ships with the stress upon the ships of the line.
3. Wharf of Ochakov - small wharf, mostly for the merchant ships.
4. Wharf of Sevastopol - exclusively for the warships

B. Admiralty of the Baltic and White Seas:
1. Old Olonets wharf on the Ladoga Lake - small craft capable of sailing down the Neva to the sea (galleys, cannon boats, etc.).
2. Solombalskaya wharf near Archangelsk. Founded in 1693. Started with building the big commercial fluyt ships

but then added construction of the warships, mostly for the Baltic fleet (6 ships of the line by 1710). Small wharfs in the region kept building the traditional koch-style ships for the fishing and merchant activities in the icy seas.

3. St-Petersburg wharf and Admiralty. Predominantly the warships. Small wharfs near the city building some merchant ships.

In the case of the St-Petersburg wharf, just as was the case with Voronezh but on a larger scale, the huge number of the “forgotten” and then …er… “rediscovered” oak timber on the shores of Ladoga Lake provided a multi-year wood supply for the naval construction. The draconian measures (all the way to a death penalty) had been taken to prevent this type of things from happening again.

Experience of the Ottoman war provided some useful lessons which had to be adopted for a possible engagement against more serious enemy.

1. The Russian ships had been slower than those of the Ottomans and one of the main reasons was that the Ottoman ships had tzeir bottoms covered with a copper.
2. Artillery on the Russian ships of the line was too light for causing a serious damage and on the frigates too light to cause any damage except on a point blank distance.
3. Blind sticking to the linear tactics did mot pay off and creation of the “reserve squadron” even out of the weak frigates gave significant tactical advantage.

To all this some regional news had been added: starting from 1701 the Danish navy under the leadership of Ulrik Christian Gyldenløve got a serious upgrade of its firepower. Keeping in mind that the Danish fleet is going to operate on the relatively short distances of few hundreds miles, he “overloaded” ships with the guns and replacing the 30-pounders of a lower deck with 36-pounders, 18 pounders with 24 pounders and building a considerable number of the 50 guns ships for operations at the Sound and near the enemy’s coast [2].

Taking into the account that the first few ships of the line built for the Baltic fleet on the Ladoga wharf not only had low sea-going qualities bit also had 18-pounder guns as their greater caliber, situation was plain intolerable and, as soon as St.Petersburg wharf became operational and Solombalskaya wharf got new “specifications” the ship building policy changed dramatically.

Construction of the first ship of the line with 100 guns started in 1705 and by 1710 the Baltic fleet had 4 of those with 6 having 96 guns and 6 more of 86 guns (arriving from Archangelsk). There were also 16 ships of the 3rd rank with 70-60 guns and smaller ships. The biggest calibers on all ships of the line was 36 pounds but on the upper desk they had the short-barrel 40 pounders guns, “unicorns” modified for the naval service. While having a considerable caliber, these guns had been weighting less than conventional naval 18-pounders and could fire a wide variety of the projectiles from a solid shot and grapeshot to the bombs and brandskugels [3]. With a purpose not to reveal “unnecessary” information to the Danes, Russian ships of the line sailing from Archangelsk had only the light 20-, 18-, 12-pounders and had been reequipped with the heavier guns upon arrival to St. Petersburg.

One of the biggest Russian assets in the area of strategic disinformation was the Danish ambassador, vice-admiral Just Juel. He landed in Riga (not St. Petersburg) and from here had been traveling by land. When at St. Petersburg, he asked once to show him the Russian fleet and after getting a refusal came to a logical conclusion that the Russians are simply hiding how bad their fleet is. On his route and while in Moscow he managed to spoil relations with each and every official by the countless complaints regarding them not following the diplomatic protocol properly and then showing disdain to pretty much everything from pedigree of the Russian aristocrats and all the way to the food [4]. All his observations he was putting in writing and the letters, which had been intercepted and studied, did not create him any additional friends. Why would they if he described the top Russian personages as the peasants without a sense of dignity (who else would be playing cards and dining with the subordinates?) and Russian nobility in general as lacking the willingness to serve in the military because they don’t have a proper sense of a honor. But the jesters and dwarfs of Peter’s court got his full attention. The projected image was that the Russians are rather pathetic barbarians who are still somewhere on a “back bench” in studying how to be properly civilized and can be safely ignored in the strategic planning. AFAIK, he was not even being paid by the Russians. 😂








____________
[1] As with the case of New Ladoga wharfs, a lot of collected but “forgotten” wood had been found during the revision. Some of this material had been used in Voronezh and some transferred to Taganrog.
[2] This is from https://george-rooke.livejournal.com/348772.html? I could not find any other sources so this is going to be an alt reality. 😉 As usually, wiki adds to the confusion because Dannebroge in an article on a Battle of Køge Bay shown as having 92 guns but on a link to this ship as 76 guns (with 24 pounders as a biggest caliber).
[3] Incendiary projectile, not very efficient and considered somewhat uncivilized but still being used. After the battle of Hogland (1788) the Swedes presumably sent a delegation to the Russian commander, admiral Greig, protesting against the Russian usage of the brandskugels to which Greig pointed to the burns left by the brandskugels fired by the Swedes. 😂
[4] One would assume that sturgeon is an expensive fish but, because it was not available in Denmark, he found its smell (?) and taste repulsive, and so on.

 

[alexmilman]

45. Three necessary things

“"For war you need three things: 1. Money. 2. Money. 3. Money.”
Raimondo Montecuccoli

​

Silver

Search for the precious metals to the East of Ural started in the late XVII and in 1676 the lead-silver deposits had been found on the Argun (Аргунь on the map above) river in the Nerchinsk (Нерчинск) region. The first experiments were on a primitive side (could not separate silver from the lead) and the first pure silver had been extracted only in 1688 after which the first silver-extraction plant was founded with the specialists and equipment being sent from Moscow [1].

However, the active construction started only after the Nerchinsk Treaty established a secure border with China and the plant located in 280 km to the South-East from Nerchinsk became fully functional only in 1704. In 1705 out of 60 puds of ore the plant produced 0.52kg of silver and 131 kg of lead. The plant was operating from April to October and in off-season period had been guarded by garrison of a nearby Argun fort. Initially, the operations were maintained by the hired workers but their shortage had been limiting production. Peter, who was always looking for money, had been upset and came with his usual solution: resettled the state peasants into the area and “assigned” them to the plant. As a result, the plant was greatly expanded and became functional for the whole year. Between 1705 and 1710 the plant produced over 118 puds (1,888 kg) of silver.

Gold
The first gold in Siberia was found in 1704 [3] near Tomsk on the Berikul River, one of the tributaries of the Ob River. In 1705 the first site, owned by the Popov merchant family, produced 1.5 puds of gold, the next year - over 4.5 puds and in 1707, with area expanded to few more minor rivers, exceeded 16puds. Popovs kept expanding and in 1709 they owned more than 120 sites.

Companies of the merchants Ryazanov, Kazantsev and Balandin owned more than 30 sites, Astashev owned 15 and the search for the new deposits in the Western and Eastern Siberia kept expanding both by the merchant companies and individuals. All of them had to be supplied with the food, clothes, weapons, horses, instruments, etc. so the growing gold-extraction industry provided occupation for the tens thousands people with the resulting population growth in Eniseysk gubernia: population of Krasnoyarsk alone exceeded 5,000 with a resulting growth of the bread, meat and forage consumption and requirements for the horses (2-3,000 annually).

Of course, for quite a while this was only extraction of the gold from the river bank deposits with a low productivity (at least one third of the gold routinely being lost) and it would not last forever but time of the gold mines did not come, yet.

Entertainment
In 1705 Tsarevna Natalya Alexeevna (Peter’s younger sister) a court theater in Preobrazensky Palace and became one of the first Russian playwrights authoring 4 plays. In 1707 she opened the first public theater in Moscow accessible, free of charge, to all “decently dressed public”.

With all his warm feelings to her, Peter never got her married (court at Vienna was expressing some interest and the Russian ambassador was asked for her portrait), presumably because she trusted her more than anybody else and needed her at home. However, he allocated “only” 2,500 rubles for her court. However, he provided some requisite for her theater (things left from the earlier visiting theatric companies).

Besides being by her rank the highest raking woman at court and sharing Peter’s interest to the things western, she allegedly also supplied him with the “female companions” (at least two) out of those holding the court positions. Presumably she was instrumental in convincing Peter to get rid of his wife because to the well-educated (unlike her brother, she did like reading and studied the Classic Greek theater), Eudoxia looked unbearably boring and plain stupid.

_____________
[1] To give credit where it is due, Golovin, who was present in the area (Nerchinsk Treaty), helped with it foundation.
[2] In OTL this was for 1704-1720 but we are in an extremely optimistic alt-universe. 😜 However, with approximately the same technology (horse- and water-driven equipment) this level was greatly exceeded by the 1760s when production rose to 172 puds of silver annually.
[3] Actually, in 1827 but in this TL the law allowing private people to search and extract gold and silver with paying special tax is issued in the early 1700s, not in 1812. Tax was initially set at 10% of the extracted gold but them raised to 15% and ended up at 20%.

 

[alexmilman]

46. Putting house to order (start of a new era)

“It does not matter if the state was created by the honest people or the bandits, it still will be ruled by the bureaucrats.”
Wilhelm Schwebel
“Bureaucratism is an inevitable element of any form of a statehood”
Trotsky
​

With the military activities being temporarily over, Peter finally got an opportunity to assess his activities as a ruler of the state and assessment was rather scary [1]. There was a mess of the constantly changing administrative divisions, types of a local and central administration, absence of the clear laws [2] and never ending attempts to regulate everything without worrying about communicating these initiatives to the intended recipients. How the peasants were supposed to learn about ukaz ordering them to increase production of the hemp?

So far, the main goal of all these reforms was to find a way of the more efficient squeezing the money for covering the war expenses but now there was a time to review this approach: even with the ongoing military reforms and naval construction, these expenses were under relative control, shrinking from the 90% to under 65% of the budget and, with the growing exports [3] and other sources [4], there was no immediate need for increasing the tax burden on a population and attention can be paid to organizing things properly.

As of now, functions of a supposedly highest state organ, the Governing Senate, had been reflecting the typical Peter’s wartime approach:
1. Provide true justice and punish the unjust justices and authors of the false accusations with confiscation of their property.
2. Check the state expenses and eliminate the unnecessary ones.
3. Collect as much money as possible because the money are an artery of a war.
4. Assemble the young nobles as the officer cadres, find out those who are hiding; also assemble 1,000 literate serfs for the same purpose.
5. Keep the financial papers in order and in the same place.
6. Conduct revision of the goods stored in various state institutions.
7. Sell salt trade licenses and try to get a profit out of them.
8. Create a reliable company for trade with China.
9. Increase volume of trade with Persia and give reasonable privileges to the Armenians.

As you can see, things of all kinds had been put in the same basket and some of the tasks had been clearly meaningless. For example, how could a Senate, which had 9 members and a minimal staff, conduct revision of the goods stored all over the Empire? By sending instructions to the relevant officials. Obviously, these instructions either would be ignored or the responses would contain the fake data which the Senate would not be able to check, etc.

At that point Peter found a completely unexpected asset, his own son. So far, Alexey did not have any permanent function within the state and was something of a high-ranking errant boy. Following father’s orders he was raising the new troops, overseeing the border fortifications, accompanying Peter in his travels, etc. But his marriage to the Swedish princess made him an important figure with certain political and international weight. As a zero risk experiment Peter made him a member of the Senate and soon enough got a cause for a serious aggravation because Alexey came with something Peter was not capable of, a systematic plan [5] of how to make Senate’s work more productive. Number of it members had to be increased up to 20 and it should be divided by the departments: I - internal and political affairs, II - judicial, III - military and naval, IV - administrative. Within the departments the the issues had to be resolved by a consensus and only of this was not achieved, on the general meeting of all senators [6]. However, the laws had to be initiated only by an emperor: the Senate had a right to review them and to report about potential problems in these laws and a law was considered active only after it was duly confirmed and registered by the Senate.

This was a serious deviation from Peter’s initial idea and, of course, initially father was not happy with his son’s hidden criticism. However, after making an expected amount of the unhappy noises, Peter acknowledged that proposal does make sense (by that time he himself already was fed up with Senate’s slowness and got certain doubts about his own wisdom of creating an institution co-equal to himself in power) and adopted it.

After the Senate restructure was adopted and implemented, Alexey was ordered to review the newly-established system of the “Collegiums” (ministries) which Peter also based upon the Swedish model framed into his personal style by creating 6 collegiums without definition of their functions: Justice, Foreign Affairs, Admiralty, Military, “Kamer” and Commerce. His order was short and unclear: “All collegiums must provide itemized lists of their functions based upon the Swedish model; the Swedish items unsuitable for the Russian specifics can be replaced and reported.” Bureaucrat’s dream: being allowed to define his own functions. It did not take long to produce a complete mess and Peter had to issue a new extended list with some clarifications:
1. Foreign affair (Posolsky Prikaz) - all foreign and diplomatic affairs, correspondence with other states, arrival of the ambassadors and envoys, couriers and other foreigners.
2. Kamer or state revenues - everything related to the state incomes.
3. Justice - all court and investigative affairs and Pomestnyi Prikaz (Votchinnaya kontora) [7].
4. Revision - control of all state incomes and expenses.
5. Military - army, garrisons and all military business.
6. Admiralty - Navy with all its personnel and naval affairs.
7. Commerce - Control all trade
8. Stats-contor - All state expenses.
9. Berg and Manufacture - all industrial enterprises and artillery.

Alexey proposed some modifications which had been easily accepted:
1. Berg and Manufacture had been split into separate Berg and Manufacture
2. Votchinnaya kontora became a separate collegium.
3. Adaptation of the General Regalement defining composition of the collegiums and their functions.

This was a beginning of the “reign of bureaucracy” era in Russia. 😢


The city population had been officially divided into 3 categories:
1st guild - the rich merchants and manufacturers
2nd guild - minor merchants, well-off artisans
3 - “подлый люд” (lower class) - everybody else.

Participate in the election in the city magistrate could the members of the guilds but only those of the 1st guild could be elected.

There were some changes in the peasantry status: institute of the “kholops” (slaves) was abolished - all of the became serfs who had at least some legal rights.

For the nobility separation between “votchina” (hereditary land owned mostly by aristocrats) and “pomestie” (land granted for service) was abolished turning nobility into a homogenous class. Some members of the old aristocracy were not happy but an overwhelming majority was enthusiastic because, indirectly, it made them equal to the members of the old families.


__________________
[1] Keep in mind that we are dealing with the alt-Peter capable of the objective assessment of the existing reality. The real Peter just kept generating the ideas and, even if he formally copied the Swedish administrative system, he also did everything in his power to make it as chaotic as was physically possible. The first person who risked to at least systematize the legalistic Augean stables left by Peter and his successors was Nicholas I and the result was 45 volumes of the Complete Collection of the laws of Russian Empire for period from 1649 to 1825. It took 4 years to accomplish this work.
[2] Even if there was an old law, there was no guarantee that its was not superseded by one of the countless ukazes.
[3] In theory, the state was getting only the custom dues on imports/exports but in practice state had a monopoly on the exports of hemp and flax: the producers/merchants had been carrying them to the ports where they had been bought by the state officials and sold to the Brits and Dutch at a higher price (and, of course, nobody cancelled the export dues 😜).
[4] Confiscation of the Church lands and acquisition of the lands North of the Black Sea considerably increased number of the state peasants and free settlers all of which had been paying a head tax at a higher level (1.1 - 1.5 rubles) than the serfs (0.7 rubles) who could work for themselves only a part of a week. By 1710 the state peasants amounted to 19-20% of the population and their number kept growing. Situation with them was rather peculiar. On one hand, state could give land with the state peasants to a noble thus turning them into the serfs. OTOH, formally, they were considered as the people with the legal rights: they could be witnesses in a court, conduct business transactions, have property of their own, conduct trade and open the manufactures (but only with a hired labor). Their land was formally a state property which they had right to use and which they could buy and sell. They could also buy “unpopulated land” (one without the serfs).
[5] Peter was anything but stupid, however by his character (and perhaps due to a certain mental disease) he was ill-suited for a systematic analytical work, favoring the physical activities. He was generating a huge volume of paper but very little of it was a result of a serious study of a subject. Well, it would be rather naive to expect him to be fond of a reading: he got an absolutely minimal education and hardly could read and write. OTOH, Alexey got a reasonably good education and was quite fond of studying. Unlike Peter, he studied the Swedish system thoroughly.
[6] Strictly speaking, this decreased Senate’s political importance because most of the decisions had been coming from 4 persons only and as such had been more “lightweigthed”. But in a strictly practical sense this division was immensely useful because it greatly improved the speed with which the documents had been usually passing through the Senate.
[7] Prikaz in charge of all issues related to the land ownership and responsible for finding the escapee serfs.

 

[alexmilman]

47. Family idyll ….

“Love and marriage, love and marriage
It's an institute you can't disparage
Ask the local gentry
And they will say it's elementary”
Sammy Cahn

“
“A boring man is someone who finds it easier to surrender than to explain what you don't want. A boring woman is the one who will explain after all.”
Author unknown

​

Soon after the dust of the LNW settled Charles found himself in a somewhat difficult situation because he run out of excuses for not getting married. Not that he was a monk or had some …er… “inclinations” but he did not like too much an idea of being somewhat restricted by the obligations of a family life with a resulting need to maintain a proper court, being a slave of the Almighty Protocol [1] and other questionable joys of a royal marriage. Of course, he was still young enough to postpone performance of his dynastic duties if he was left alone. But he was not allowed such a luxury because while his older sister, Hedwig Sophia, Duchess of Holstein-Gottorp, was (quietly) happy with an idea that her son, Charles Frederick may inherit the throne of Sweden, his younger (and favorite) sister, Grand Duchess Elena Karlovna, had different view of a situation [2] and had the ready candidate for him.

Peter’s older brother, Ivan V, left three daughters the eldest of which, Catherine, was 19 in 1710, had rather pleasing appearance, nice personality and received an occidental education: the study of German and French languages, dancing and etiquette. What else one could require from a future queen? Of course, she is an Orthodox but surely “dear father” Peter would not mind her conversion or at least that her children will become the Lutheran. And definitely the political benefits of such a marriage are too obvious to require an explanation and in the terms of prestige she is going to rank much higher than any of the available Protestant princesses (Orthodox is fine but who needs a Catholic?).

Of course, it took more than one letter for Charles to start paying a serious attention but, realistically, as soon as his sister took it into her head, he had a little chance to escape [3]. A pathetic attempt to use a legalistic card of a potential future conflict of the dynastic interests between the elder (Ivan’s) and junior (Peter’s) branches of the family had been easily defeated by convincing Peter to do one of his favorite things: write a new law.

This one was about the rules of succession (Petrian Succession Law) [4]. Of course, the initial text composed by Peter belonged to the usual “short and unclear” category but by now he got used to an idea that his son will work on the details [5] (with unofficial but rather energetic participation of his wife). The main ideas were: (1) the Peter’s line has the priority of succession, (2) only an Orthodox male has a right to tze Russian throne, (3) at the extinction of the Peter’s line a succession can be passed to a senior male of the closest branch either by male or female line, (4) in a complete absence of the male candidates within the lines less than 4 levels removed from a last reigning monarch the females can inherit the throne.

Now, Charles was completely trapped and it was either a marriage or a new war. With no suitable wars being immediately available (WoSS was still going on but Charles was not going there again), the options boiled to a single one and he surrender. Of course, it was a brief pause when everybody was trying to figure out how to define a new family relation between Charles and Peter (Peter’s son being married to Charles’ sister and Charles marryingPeter’s niece) but this was mostly on entertainment side. The marriage was planning for the spring of 1712.

In a meantime….

With Ladoga Canal being successfully implemented [6], Munnich, speedily promoted into engineer-brigadier, was trusted with a work on improving Kronstadt’s fortifications, a project in which Alexey, always interested in the fortifications, also got himself involved. The general idea was to fortify passage on the Southern side of the Kotlin Island by building a number of forts on existing and artificially created small islands and block (almost completely) the Northern passage, which was already too shallow for the big ships, by a set of the underwater cassions and other obstacles and shore batteries. In combination with the fortifications on Kotlyn and land side, the system would have to provide a complete coverage of a path to St. Petersburg port by the artillery fire.

The whole issue resulted in a serious argument between Peter and his son who expressed an opinion that having both strong fortifications and a big fleet with a single port on the Baltic Sea is excessive and too costly and that just few ships would be enough (in addition to the fortifications). If by that time Alexey did not prove his usefulness, Peter’s reaction could be quite harsh but, all things considering, he opted for the educational lecture. In the case of a war, you can’t just sit behind your defenses expecting enemy’s attack and leaving to him all initiative: you should be able to go on the offensive and to crush the enemy, on his territory, if needed. And an army alone may not be always an adequate for the task and may need the reliable communications by the sea even just to get supplies. “When someone has an army, he has one hand but when he also has a navy, he has two hands”. Besides, in the case somebody attacks your brother-in-law, how are you going to help without a navy? And how are you going to prevent somebody from blocking St.Petersburg’s trade without it?” The subject was one of his favorite, the listener respectful so the lecture kept going on until Peter run out of steam. Not that Alexey fully bought it but at least the part about helping Sweden looked reasonable, especially in a view of the recent Danish advances regarding possibility of anti-Swedish alliance delivered by Just Juel in his usual tactless manner [7] (the same old lure of Riga followed by the inquiry about possible Russian subsidies). It was looking like the peace is not going to last for too long.

The court news:
Great Duchess Elena Karlovna gave birth to a girl named Natalia after Peter’s mother and sister (who became her godmother).

Mme Chernyshova gave birth to a son named Peter after his … godfather who gave him a nice estate as a birth gift. His father, who was quote busy conducting census in various governorships, was promoted to the governor of Voronezh gubernia while mother remained at court.

Maria Cantemir [8], who was 12 years old but promised to become a great beauty, had been assigned as lady in waiting to Tsarevna Natalia Alexeyevna [9].

Peter celebrated a marriage of two court midgets with an ambitious goal to get a “midget breed” in Russia.

________________
[1] Example of Louis XIV was there and it was rather scary: it would be quite understandable and even encouraging if Louis invented something that would make other peoples life miserable (as a payment for the honor to be around the monarch) but he made his own life extremely inconvenient as well. Of course, there was also his “dear brother” Peter with his “the rules do not apply to me” attitude to the ceremonies but he had an excuse of being marginally “civilized” and population of the much more cultured Sweden may not take well similar antics.
[2] Her son, Peter, being an Orthodox, would not qualify for the Swedish throne (and had Russian one in a perspective) and, anyway, she only wished good to her brother… 😉
[3] See above definition of a boring person and Charles’ favorite sister was one of not by birth than by experience of her marriage. Being an insistent bore was the easiest way to get what she wanted from her husband and father in law. Hysterics as a weapon would just alienate them but a calm repetition of the same arguments with a nice smile was making her really scary and running away was not going to work: after an intended victim is back (which will happen sooner or later), she is still there with the same spiel.
[4] Which in OTL would prevent the extremely messy events of the XVIII century.
[5] As in “King and I”: - I’ll send you 50 male elephants to breed and multiply in the forests of America - Male elephants? - You’ll figure out the details…
[6] Peter, accompanied by Munich, made a trip and was quite excited after which Munnich’s reputation as an engineer was established beyond any doubts.
[7] In OTL he decided to deliver to Peter some verbal message from his king during a banquet. He was warned that in this specific moment it is not a good time to talk to Peter because he is in one of his “moods” during which the conversations had been extremely irritating for him but the Ambassador ignored the warning, went to Peter and started talking. Peter preserved a calm face during the conversation about which fact the ambassador left somewhat excited record but if you know that you are going to irritate somebody, why do it?
[8] Daughter of Dmitry Cantemir, a ruler of Moldavia who, after the Russian-Ottoman War of 1707-09, chose to flee to Russia because the Ottomans were not quite satisfied with his excessively passive position during the war.
[9] In OTL she became (much later) a lady in waiting of the Grand Duchess Natalya Alexeyevna, Alexey’s daughter and sister of Peter II.

 

[alexmilman]

48. The borders, natural and too much so ….

“Where the Russian flag was once hoisted, is Russia forever”
Peter I​

By the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca the Ottoman Empire agreed upon the border going along the Kuban River. The main problem with that agreement was that most of the people living on both banks of that river did not have any idea that they are the Ottoman subjects and, in the case of the Nogais, even less so why should they move from where they lived to the South from the Kuban where they were not welcomed by those who already lived there. Neither Peter nor the Ottomans had any inclination to enlighten the confused natives regarding complexities of the international policies [1]. From the Russian perspective situation was simple and clear: here is a border and the wild guys from the other side keep crossing it taking the prisoners, cattle and other valuables. What to do about this situation? Again, the answer is simple: build a system of the fortifications and military outposts (populated by the Cossacks) along the border. The same principle which proved to be workable in Siberia.

This line should be stretching from the Caspian Sea along the Terek River and then by the Kuban River all the way to the Black Sea. The first step in this direction had been made in 1588 when Terskoy Gorodok had been founded to the North of Terek River.

By the early XVIII the settlement dwindled to a small fort and Peter ordered construction of a new Kizlyar Fortress on the Terek and transferred to it the Tersky Cossacks [2].

At the same time construction of the line along the Kuban started as a series of small earthworks and bigger fortresses starting with Blagoveschenskaya fortress on the lower Kuban.

Within a decade fortifications formed Kuban Border Line 550 km long garrisoned by 10 infantry companies, 2 hussar regiments and 2 Cossack regiments. The fortifications had been mostly the earthworks with few artillery pieces each or few dozens in the bigger forts. Behind these defenses the Cossacks (and migrants from Russia, in general) had been settling and using the land. Of course, the “natives” were not happy with the situation and there were some quite serious fights but eventually the advantages of a regular army and artillery helped them to recognize wrongfulness of their ways and to accept the unpleasant reality.

At the same time rulers of the Kazakh Junior Zhuz (green on the map), pressed by the Junghars and a long list of other enemies (including Kalmyks and the Cossacks) applied to the imperial government for Russian citizenship. This horde was situated on the border with the Russian Empire, its commercial and political relations with Russia were the most stable. For Russia this was an opportunity to strengthen its border in the Central Asia (and make trade route with China more secure) so Peter received messengers from the horde and request for inclusion of the Little Horde into the Russian Empire was satisfied by the decree of February 19 1711 [3].

For taking the according oath ambassadors headed by A.I. Tevkelev, interpreter of the Foreign Affairs Commission, were sent to Kazakhstan with a letter to Khan Abul Khair. On October 10 (21) 1711 the majority at the meeting of Kazakh elders agreed to adopt the act on voluntary inclusion of the Little horde to Russia.

Kazakhs pledged to remain loyal to the Emperor and his heirs, agreed on limitation of external sovereignty of the Khanate, promised to serve, not to attack the trade caravans and Russian subjects, return the prisoners, and pay tribute.

Russia promised to protect its new citizens from outside invasion and oppression. At this first stage of Kazakh Khanate incorporation the problems of domestic political life of Kazakhs were not addressed.

Orenburg expedition headed by the Chief Secretary of Senate I.K. Kirillov was organized in May 1712 for consolidation of positions in the newly joined Kazakh lands. The objective of the commission was a comprehensive study of new lands which were joined to Russia, exploration of natural resources, erection of the Orsk fortress, new demarcation between Russian and Kazakh possessions. In 1713 was set up Orenburg, which had an important role for improvement of Russian-Kazakh political and trading relations. And, when there was a need to crush the Bashkir rebellions, the Kazakhs had been quite helpful.

Of course, not everything was too rosy because slowly but steadily the Russian encroachment on the Kazakh land started. The first step were the border fortresses as a defense against the Junghars (which did help to repel the invasion attempts) but then the areas around these fortresses had been settled and used for the agricultural purposes and so on. However, comparing to the danger of the Jungharian invasion these were relatively small potatoes [4].

On a down side, there was a need to keep up the promises regarding the defense because the Junghars kept coming and this was hurting both economic and political interests of the Empire. Garrisons of the border fortresses had been strengthened and official protests to Galdan Tseren, the Khong Tayiji of the Dzungar Khanate. The protests had been ignored and Galdan Tseren even demanded destruction of some of the Russian border fortifications. This attitude meant a danger of the Junghar attacks on the Russian industrial plants and mines at the Altai and the issues related to the silver and gold always warranted Peter’s serious attention. The additional artillery had been transported from the “inner” Siberia and the new border fortifications erected and garrisoned (to be used later as the starting points of the Russian colonization of the region). After few failed attempts, Galdan Tseren had to leave the Junior Zhuz alone and limit himself to establishing overlordship over the Senior and Middle Zhuzes.

Another down side was a need to stop the wars between the Little Zhuz and the Russian vassals Kalmyks so the Russian regional administration had been very busy for quite a while.

___________________
[1] To be fair, this would be a massive waste of the time and effort, anyway, because the natives involved tended to disregard any statehood entity above the level of their own settlement or, at best, some local ruler, and between the XVI and early XVIII did not have time (or interest) to find out that they are officially subjects of the Sultans. 😉
[2] Tersky (also “Grebensky”) Cossack Host existed since 1577. They lived in the Terek area but as a result of the Iranian attacks in 1651-53 the survivors moved to the North and started returning in the early 1700s. Adopted regional dress, weaponry, horsemanship and fighting style.

[3] In OTL in 1731 but they did start contacts on the subject in 1716. Peter, being busy with GNW, ignore it.
[4] Not that any Kazakh or Junghar of that time saw a potatoes or even hear about their existence. 😜

 

[alexmilman]

49. Money, money, money….

“Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world”
ABBA

“Вот тут герцог улыбаться перестал, Карл Оттон Четвёртый, герцог и курфюрст Ребенрее, никогда не улыбался, когда дело касалось денег. К серебру он относился весьма серьёзно.”
“Инквизитор. Башмаки на флагах.” Борис Конофальский [1]
​

There was never too much money and their major sources were not the gold and silver mines but two modest plants, flax and hemp.

These two, besides being in a high demand domestically, were the main export items and Peter was quite active in promoting their cultivation in Russia. Besides ordering to double their production on his own lands, Peter issued (who would doubt) a special ukaz with the demand to increase the lands dedicated to these culture and, in the areas where they were not previously grown, to teach peasants how to grow them.

Besides their traditional area of the Central/Northern Russia, flax and hemp start spreading into the Southern regions (mostly hemp) with a sharp increase of the exports in both the raw materials and products made out of them.

The hempseed (an important export item) was straightforward but preliminary processing of the hemp itself was a long and complicated process. First of all, it was necessary to remove the resins holding fibers together. To do this a collected hemp had been dried in the sheafs, then cleaned with a water after which held in a water for the long periods of time, sometimes for few years, then dried and combed. Only after this it was ready for being used for the ships’ cables. Usually, it was taking two years between cupping the hemp and making it ready for the market. The hemp which was just dried could be used only for the ropes (which also was a considerable market).

Traditionally, hemp processing was one of the main occupations of the peasants of the Northern Russia [2] all the way to the White Sea, which made Archangelsk the main port for the hemp exports. Typically, after obtaining Ingria and founding St-Petersburg, Peter issued an order to conduct all hemp trade through this new port but this proved to be very inconvenient for the traditional producers and ukaz forbidding its export via Archangelsk had been cancelled. Even with this temporary drawback, export of the hemp and its products doubled within a decades. Some measures had been taken to increase export in a form of the final product, the cables, but, besides attending to the domestic needs, their export was only a fraction of the whole volume.

Eventually, the hemp processing spread to the central gubernias: Orlovskaya, Kaluzskaya, Kurskaya, Chernigovskaya and Mogilevskaya with a total annual production reaching 9,000,000 puds, half of which had been exported and another half processed and sold domestically. Export became state monopoly and Peter (from time to time) had been personally reviewing quality of the export products.

Flax was the second by importance. It was already quite popular all over the central part of the European Russia from Volga to Novgorod and one of the big export items (yarn, oil, fabrics) and extremely important on domestic market before Peter but he decided to elevate its production and processing on the “industrial” level … with usual screwup at a starting point [3]. He started with a right premise that it will be more profitable to export the fabrics than just yarn. The next, again, correct assumption was that Europe wants a wide canvass and not a narrow one traditionally produced in Russia. One more correct step was to import the Dutch equipment for production of a wide canvass and to order its Russian-made copies. After this comes “vintage Peter” issuing an order to forbid production of a narrow canvass. Seems reasonable. Yes, if one completely ignoring the fact that at this time most of the canvas had been produced by the individual peasants/artisans working from their homes and these homes usually had been too small to accommodate a much bigger Dutch-style equipment.

In other words, he started with destroying what was already there before creating an alternative. Fortunately, soon enough he was made aware of the situation and cancelled his order. The narrow canvass still had been going to the domestic market and for the export purposes he ordered creation of the big state manufactures, most of which (what a surprise) soon after their creation proved to be economic failures and had been sold to the private entrepreneurs allowed to purchase the workers besides hiring the free laborers [4]. The Swedish specialists in production of a wide canvass had been invited to provide a necessary expertise. [5]

The first state canvas manufacture near Moscow used as its employees the volunteers escapee serfs and “various types of people” who had been promised a complete pardon for their previous misdeeds. Quite new thing was production of a sailcloth, which was earlier an imported item.



Another important aspect of the flax production was flax oil. It was produced from a different type of flax, which is much shorter but has a much greater oil content. Peter, for a short while, forbade export of the flax seed but then made it a state monopoly, then made it free again, then allowed export of only flax oil, then introduced practice of selling monopoly to the private persons, and so on.

In parallel with these experiments Peter established a special service to control quality of a sold flax [6]. Not sure if it helped too much.

Both hemp and flax turned into the cash crops. In the regions where they had been widely produced the estate owners often had been taking “obrok” from their peasants not with the money but with these products and their “derivatives” (fabrics, oil, yarn, etc.). Of course, Menshikov was one of the first estate owners who founded a small textile plant producing the napkins. Yaguzhinsky was not too much behind ending with a number of canvas and silk manufactures.

At some point Peter, after a long series of experiments related to which product from which area should be sold where, gave up and left it to the merchants.

________________
[1] “At that point the duke stopped smiling. Charles Otton the 4th, the Duke and Elector of Rebenree, never smiled when it was coming to the money issues. His attention to the silver was absolutely serious.” “Inquisitor. Boots on the flags” Boris Konofalsky.
[2] Who as a result had been much better off than the peasants living on the best agricultural lands of Russia.
[3] A newly acquired tendency to think means that he usually thinks after a screwup, not that he always starts with a thorough studying of an issue, soliciting educated advice from the friendly ASBs in a process. 😜 It is quite enough that he starts thinking before a screwup grows to a full-blown SNAFU.
[4] Usual problem: the lower classes proved, one more time, unable to understand what is good for them (in a grand schema of things) with a need to use the administrative persuasion. 😢
[5] In OTL these specialists had been captured during the GNW.
[6] After the British merchants complained that the Russian sellers are cheating on the quality. A controller must be “a honest foreigner” paid, in equal shares, by seller and buyer based on the weight of a traded material.

 

[alexmilman]

50. Armies

“Since invention of money, all other forms of a gratitude became unnecessary”
“Dancing w kwaterze Hitlera”​

Havover
In 1705 army of Hanover and Celle included 20 battalions (750 each) and 32 squadrons (350 each) totaling 15,000 infantry and 11,200 cavalry. Out of that number 5 battalions had been rented to the Dutch and 5 to the Brits.

Denmark
At the start of the LNW Denmark had an army of 35,000. After the peace of Travendal the large Danish army prepared for a major war against Sweden, became a major burden on the Danish economy, when it couldn't, as anticipated, live off the enemy's land. Downsizing the army was not possible, since the Danish king wanted to retain the option of going to war with Sweden at some future date, in order to regain the provinces lost in the treaty of Roskilde 1658 and disposal of the thousands of troops had its own problems. The Danish king therefore decided to make more than half of the Danish army, two-thirds of which were enlisted in Germany, available to the Allied powers during the War of the Spanish Succession. Political goodwill thus gained, could in addition be useful in any future war with Sweden and Holstein-Gottorp.

These troops had been, in turn, split two ways:

1. Danish Auxiliary corps in Hapsburg service [1]. 8,000 troops with 2,000 more troops recruited in Germany. As compensation, Denmark would within six years receive the million rixdollars that the Habsburg emperor owed the Danish king since 1674. If a Habsburg prince would become king of Spain another million would be transferred to the Danish treasury. These troops marched to Italy to fight under command of Prince Eugene and suffered heavy casualties which left only a half of the initial force by the end of 1702. In the spring, the corps marched through the Tyrol to Linz where reinforcements arrived from Denmark. After the arrival of the 1703 reinforcements, the Danish corps consisted of a cavalry regiment, a dragoon regiment, and four infantry regiments. It remained in Linz until the spring of 1704 when it marched to Hungary where it took part in the suppression of Rákóczys's Hungarian insurgency. The winter of 1704-1705 was spent living off the land in hostile Bavaria, where its maintenance did not burden the Habsburg treasury. In 1705, the corps returned to Hungary and renewed heavy fighting. The following year, the corps combat value fell significantly when the Habsburg emperor no longer could afford to pay it.

At that point Frederick IV, who seemingly did not believe in love without a compensation, began the diplomatic efforts to extricate his troops from the Hapsburg service and by 1709 the Danish corps left Hungary. Frederick had enough money to restore this corps to its initial strength but majority of the soldiers were now Germans and Hungarians.

2. Danish Auxiliary corps in Anglo-Dutch service [2]. 12,000 had been made available in 1701 for the service in the British and Dutch armies. The terms had been much more generous than with the Hapsburgs [3]. The corps was under command of the duke Carl Rudolf of Wurttemberg who was seemingly very good in extracting the money promised by the allied by refusing to march until the payments had been received.

Of these troops, three thousand would be horse, one thousand dragoons, and eight thousand foot. As compensation Denmark received 540,000 rixdollars as levy money, as well as 300,000 rixdollars annually as long as the war lasted. [4]

Previous monetary claims on Denmark were dropped by the powers. The Danish auxiliary corps would be paid and provisioned according to Dutch regulations, and the pay disbursed by Danish paymasters. At the end of each year's campaign season the Danish corps would receive the same recruitment money as the Dutch army, in order to replace its manpower losses. If a company or regiment would be destroyed, its commanding officer would receive recruitment money sufficiently enough to re-raise it. The agreement expired in ten years. If twelve thousand soldiers were not enough, the Danish king would put another four thousand soldiers at the disposal of the powers. In 1703 two additional regiments, one dragoon and one foot, were raised in the name of the minor dukes of Württemberg-Oels. But they were raised by Denmark and formed part of the Danish auxiliary corps, and when the regiments were disbanded after the end of the war, the soldiers were transferred to Danish service.

On a route to the theater these troops looted Bavaria and joined the allied force in time to take part in the Battle of Blenheim where they lost 2,300 by killed and wounded. In 1704-08 the corps had been fighting under Marlborough command (providing the money had been paid) and participated in a number of sieges and battles (2,200 soldiers and 1,300 horses lost in 1706, 3,500 in 1708 ) but hiring the new recruits during the winters. In 1709 the corps remained in the winter quarters until June, awaiting the one million guilders owed by the Dutch Republic, then joined and lost 1,300 at Malplaquet. In 1712 Britain made peace with France and the corps was taken over by the Dutch

In 1713, the "English" units of the corps returned to Denmark, and in 1714 the rest. In a meantime Frederick IV raised 17,000 militia for the anticipated war with Sweden.

As a personal observation. while the duke Carl clearly was very good in looking for the Danish financial interests and, seemingly, in recruitment as well, his performance as an independent military commander is not necessarily up to the same standard and the same goes for the Danish troops in general (this is based strictly upon the OTL performances but there is no reason to consider it improving noticeably in this TL).

Prussia
Prussia had an army of 40,000 out of which 8,000 had been sent to Italy and 5,000 to the Netherlands. Individual parts of the army took part in a total of 56 battles during the war in Italy and on the Rhine front, which of course improved their quality even if it made it difficult to conduct the future recruitment in the Prussian provinces.

Leopold von Anhalt Dessau brought about a significant increase in the performance of his troops through a new drill and other organizational changes. Due to the early autonomy of the regiment owners, the equipment of the army was very different and each regiment drilled according to its own rules. Organized chaos was the result. Von Dessau was turning the Prussian infantry into an uniform body in which every shooter carried, loaded and fired his weapon with the same precision and speed. Prince Leopold had also recognized that the rhythmic march made it possible to fire while moving. The aim of the regular training measures in the Prussian corps was to achieve the absolute superiority of the thin infantry lines in combat against the enemy army line. The Prussian drill had the effect that the soldiers were trained off every initiative of their own until they functioned like machines even under the greatest loads.

Introduction of an iron ramrod was, definitely, a great innovation which was not unnoticed by Charles and Peter.

As far as these goals had been involved, von Dessau achieved almost a complete perfection and the system produced the impressive results on the battlefields of the WoSS where both sides had been playing by the same rules. [5]

An interlude
In 1711 Britain and France were already in a process of the separate peace negotiations but the military activities kept going on. In July Marlborough outmaneuvered Villars and penetrated French Lines of Ne Plus Ultra [6] and went to besiege the fortified town of Bouchain.

To defend the town Bouchain's governor, de Ravignau, had some 5,000 men against Marlborough's besieging army of 30,000 (on the schema it is a fortified camp North of the city) and the advantage of one of the strongest fortresses left to France, surrounded by the marshy land of the confluence of the rivers Scheldt and Sensée.

In addition, Villars' strong army had taken up position to the west of the allied camp, and had managed to open a tenuous link to the besieged garrison. In total, Marlborough had 85,000 (55,000 in a camp South from the town) and Villars 90,000 (in the camps to the West of the city). The siege was going on along the ….er… “classic rules”. The besiegers had been digging the parallels, Villars was trying to establish communication with the town across the swamps (“N” on the map) and Marlborough was preventing him from doing that. Strictly speaking, Villars was under the orders of LXIV not to risk, which made the whole exercise rather meaningless: after certain amount of digging and shooting any fortress was supposed to capitulate [7].

After a while Villars decided to ignore the royal orders (or just to define what “risk” means in that case) and quietly moved the bulk of his forces to his northern camp out of which he marched during the night by the Valenciennes road (North of the besieging army) and established strong batteries opposite to the crossings connecting besiegers with the main army (“L” on the map). The bulk of his force launched a direct attack against the outside earthworks and, especially, the opening on their right side. 5 out of 7 bridges had been destroyed which made help the besieging army quite difficult. The allied troops in the left part of the besieging camp had been trapped, and while the desperate cavalry charges from the main camp across the river helped to extricate some of them, most of the rest was pretty much an useless bloodbath. Marlborough had to abandon the siege losing 7,000 killed and wounded and up to 10,000 captured, plus all sieging artillery. Villars lost between 6 and 7,000.

Not that strategically this made a serious difference because by that time the Brits already had been looking for the way out of the war. But politically ot made certain difference providing the French with a better bargaining position in Utrecht, which had been used on the very important item of the Asiento de Negros. France had previously got from Phillip V the Asiento de Negros, allowing French slave traders to supply 5,000 slaves to the Spanish Empire each year. The Brits wanted it for themselves but now had to compromise. As a result, each side got a right for 2,500 for 10 years, instead of 30, as the Brits insisted. This was a serious blow because The British government sought to reduce its debt by increasing the volume of trade it had with Spain, which required gaining monopolistic access to the Asiento de Negros. Which, as far as this TL is involved, meant that for the next few years Britain is going to be very careful with the subsidies and involvements in the foreign adventures not directly involving its interests. [8]


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[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Auxiliary_Corps_in_Habsburg_service_1701–1709#Background
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Auxiliary_Corps_in_Anglo-Dutch_service_1701–1714
[3] No surprise there: the Brits and Dutch had much more money to spread around than the Hapsburgs who could not pay regularly even their own troops.
[4] To @von Adler we seemingly undersold the Swedes and now it is too late (or were the Swedish numbers in £££?). Why didn’t I find these numbers earlier? 🤑🤑🤑
[5] A car, which shows the best performance on a highway is not necessarily the best on a dirt road.
[6] While Vauban was, unquestionably, the outstanding military engineer, IMO the whole idea of the fortified lines was pretty much a massive waste of the resources because, unless you can strongly garrison the whole perimeter, sooner or later an energetic opponent is going to find an undefended place (I wonder if the Great Wall of China ever stopped any serious invasion). The same goes for his system of the fortifications. He designed a series of the strongly fortified places and then explained to everybody how they can be taken with the minimal risk, making the sieges one more “game by the rules”: it was well-known to both sides how much time it should take between starting the first parallel and the point by which the citadel becomes exposed to the direct fire and its garrison can honorably surrender saving besiegers and besieged unnecessary losses related to storming the walls, fighting inside the fortress and other uncivilized nonsense.
[7] Which did happen in OTL. The fortress capitulated after a month of a siege. The next year Villars took it back after 18 days of siege.
[8] In practical terms, no cart blanche for the future King George in his adventures as Elector of Hanover. 😜

 

[alexmilman]

50. Armies (cont)

[
Before getting further, this is how the situation looked from the “wrong” (Danish-Prussian-Hanoverianh-etc.) perspective:
1. Sweden is the enemy out of which everybody involved wants to get something.
2. Unlike 1700, Sweden can’t expect the Anglo-Dutch naval support which puts her on more or less equal footing with the Denmark and perhaps even at some disadvantage, taking into an account a greater professionalism of the Danish sailors.
3. Charles got some military reputation in a single short war with half of his opponents being the Poles so perhaps he is not prohibitively scary.
4. The Swedish possessions are all over the place and can be attacked simultaneously.
5. Sweden is not maintaining a big standing army and by the time Charles manages to mobilize his forces, at least some of the important places can be occupied.
6. Denmark, Brunswick and Prussia have plenty of the troops with experience of the WoSS where they surely had plenty of opportunities to learn from the best commanders of Europe. True, a big part of these troops are the foreign mercenaries (not too much in the case of Prussia) but in the case of an aggressive war they can live for a while off the occupied Swedish and Gottorp territories.
7. The wild card is Russia:
(a) It is not going to get any territorial gains by supporting Sweden and while Peter did not say “yes” to the proposals communicated to him by the Danish ambassador, he did not say “no” either.
(b) Based upon the reports of the same ambassador, both Russian army and navy are rather pathetic and their victories against the Ottomans are due to the fact that the Ottomans are even worse. [2] As a military factor they can probably be safely discounted and, anyway, Russia is too far away to be capable of a serious and timely interference.
(c) All these family relations, treaties and other nonsense are of no real importance when it comes to the tangible gains and while Peter is a semi-barbarian, surely he is already civilized enough to understand this. Of course, it is unlikely that he is going to join anti-Swedish coalition right away, but it is likely that if it is winning, he will stab Charles in the back trying to get Livonia or something else. Probably can be safely ignored as an opposition factor.
]

Saxony
While August was seemingly enjoying his status of the Favorite Pet and a promise to support his son’s candidacy to the PLC throne, everybody on both sides of the potential/real alliances held a firm conviction that the only reliable thing about him [1] was a complete unreliability. Of course, after the beating he received in the LNW, it was unlikely that he is going to embark upon the high risk adventure but, OTOH, it was quite likely that he is going to join a side which is seemingly getting an upper hand.

Theoretically, he could benefit most at the expense of Brandenburg-Prussia: grabbing Brandenburg’s territory between the Oder and Vistula rivers would provide him with a direct access to the PLC. Yes, the Saxon troops were not permitted on the PLC territory by the Peace of Warsaw but, if the pleased the Big Brothers enough, they may reconsider their position on the issue.

OTOH, if the other side is a clear winner, he can endear himself to his Polish subjects by gaining back Elbing. If the Swedes are losing the BIG WAY, he can even expect to get back Courland and Polish Livonia.

So he is going to stay neutral until situation becomes clear.

What can he offer? The Saxon army was fully mercenary institution with the officers corps being 100% nobility. The army had 20 infantry, 7 cuirassier, and 6 dragoon regiments plus the Guards.
The infantry regiment was 1,156 strong (2 battalions + 1 grenadier company)
The cavalry regiment (both cuirassier and dragoon) - 870

The Guards included:
Regiment of the foot plus a company of the Swiss foot Guards (4 battalions) - 2,300
Guards du Corps, regiment of a heavy cavalry, 6 squadrons - 864

Grand Musketeers (1 squadron) - 164
Mounted Guards - 142
Guards Carabiners, regiment of a heavy cavalry - 864

Total: approximately 25,400 infantry and 13,300 cavalry.

An infantry soldier had musket and a sword. The grenadiers also had grenades.
Cuirassiers had 2 pistols and a sword, carabiners - carbine and the dragoons had been armed similarly to the cuirassiers.

Due to the (known) rather low moral qualities of the mercenary soldiers, an idea of the bayonet charge was not even considered (and the soldiers were not provided with the bayonets) and the whole stress was upon the well-organized salvo shooting which would, supposedly, push the enemy off the battlefield.

Cavalry also was heavily relying upon the firearms and rarely attacked sword in hand. Experience of the LNW did not change much in that regard.
Artillery was well organized and the cannons and other weapons had been of a very good quality (Saxony was one of the most industrially advanced states in Europe).

Logistics had been based upon the magazine system: practice of the requisitions usually resulted in a wholesale looting, loss of the discipline and desertions. Which means that the Saxon army could advance only slowly, stopping each few days to create a new field magazine. The same goes for vulnerability of its communications: the main task being not to allow to cut the link to a magazine.

In general, the army was good for a short victorious war with its fighting abilities going down the drain in the case of prolonged unsuccessful operations.

The PLC
As a military factor the “crown army” of the PLC was not seriously considered by any side. In theory the crown army of Poland should have 36,000 and Lithuania - 12,000. In practice each had only a fraction of these numbers and, with the exception of the Guards (approximately 3,500-4,000) lacked the discipline, modern weapons and organization.

Potential importance was mostly geographic: marching the troops from the Swedish Livonia or Russia to Prussia and further South would inevitably happening over the PLC territory and cooperation of the local magnates was important for making this march problem free by allowing an easy purchase of food and forage, having the secure roads, getting information about the enemy’s advance into the PLC territory, etc.

After the LNW Charles and the Swedes in general developed a high degree of a disdain to the local prominent personages but Peter and the Russians had a longer history of dealing with them and certain cultural similarities in the terms of attitudes toward importance of the money and other forms of a practical encouragement for the good behavior [3]. Most of the important personages in Lithuania and Poland had been getting the regular encouragements in the form of “pensions”, favorable treatment of their estates on the Russian territories (like Potocki), high state awards (like Jan Kazimierz Sapieha, portrait below shows him with the ribbon of St. Andrew) and even honorary positions at the Russian court.

As a result, when and if push was going to come to shove it could be expected that those who did matter in the PLC are going to cooperate.

__________
[1] Outside his personal habits, of course.
[2] The opinion really expressed about the Russian navy of the late XVIII.
[3] There was actually no need to experiment on the dogs to develop the Pavlovian theory and salivating is not the only form of a conditional (or unconditional) reflex.