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RUSSIA UNDER THE OLD REGIME

While the ratio of horsemen to infantry was one to two, the cavalry constituted the senior arm. As in medieval western Europe, except for the personal force of the Great Prince's household, the Muscovite army was demobilized and sent home in the autumn and reassembled in the spring. The men reported for service with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on: firearms of all types, axes, pikes and bows. There were no regular formations, or chains of command, or battle tactics. The cavalry, usually massed in five regiments, followed by a mob of men on foot, rode into battle at a given signal, and then it was every man for himself. This essentially medieval mode of waging war, learned when the Russians had fought in the Mongol armies, was good enough when the enemy was the Tatar who fought in the same manner but was even less well equipped. The Russian soldier was just as tough and undemanding as his oriental opponent. According to Herberstein, a sixteenth-century traveller, on campaign Russians subsisted on a bagful of oats and a few pounds of salted meat which they carried with them. But confronting the armies of the great powers - Poland, the Ottoman Empire and Sweden - especially in offensive operations, Muscovite troops found themselves hopelessly outclassed. This was the lesson Ivan iv learned at heavy cost in 1558 when, fresh from his triumphs against the Tatars, he turned west and challenged Poland and Sweden to a war over Livonia. After a quarter of a century of tremendous exertions which left the country exhausted, he not only failed to capture Livonia but had to surrender several of his own cities. Russian troops fared no better against foreigners during the campaigns of the Time of Troubles (1598-1613).

The difficulties encountered by Russian troops on western fronts can be traced principally to the fact that they had failed to keep up with technological changes in warfare. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries western European states developed a style of'scientific' warfare which made obsolete the traditional levies of landed gentry and their retainers. Gradually, warfare became professionalized and mercenaries came to shoulder the brunt of the fighting. A particularly important event was the invention of the flintlock and bayonet which made redundant the pikemen who in the past had been required to support soldiers armed with slow-firing muskets. In the west, the infantry now replaced the cavalry as the principal arm of the service. A profound change in tactics accompanied these technical innovations. In order to gain the greatest possible advantage from die new weapons, soldiers were drilled so that, like automata, they advanced unflinching against the enemy, alternately firing and loading their guns, until, having reached his lines, they charged with fixed bayonets. Chains of command were established, with heads of each unit responsible for the behaviour

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