Fate entrusted the empire to Nicholas II in an alarming and Time of Troubles– terror, revolution, war. In such conditions, the life of the sovereign was constantly in danger, and therefore the emperor’s security was special.
Safety first
While still heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich felt the consequences of belonging to the imperial family. While traveling around Japan, the twenty-two-year-old Tsarevich was attacked by one of the Japanese policemen: only luck and the Greek Prince George, who arrived in time, saved Nicholas from the deadly blow of a samurai sword.
Despite the fact that during the reign of Nicholas II there were much more reasons for his murder, the incident in Japanese Otsu turned out to be the first and last attempt on the life of the Russian Tsar. Nicholas perfectly remembered March 1, 1881, when he stood at the bedside of his bleeding grandfather, Emperor Alexander II. The lessons of history were not in vain.
The Tsarevich received his first protection in 1889, when he took command of a company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. But after ascending the throne, the safety of His Majesty’s life acquired special significance. The newly-crowned emperor used well-proven security methods that had developed under Alexander III: let us mention the prevented attempt on the life of Nicholas II’s father in 1887 on the same fateful March 1st.
Methods of protection
We should talk not just about the emperor’s bodyguards, whose function in the new conditions of political terror was practically useless, but about a complex security system, the main task of which was to prevent an attempt on the life of the king.
A Cossack convoy, an infantry company, a railway regiment, the Palace Police, a Special Security Detachment, as well as a large number of plainclothes agents - this is not a complete list of those who ensured the quiet existence of the imperial family day and night.
Each of the security units developed its own traditions to ensure the safety of the king. Take the Palace Police. Within the imperial residences, her posts were located so that members leaving their private chambers royal family always came to the attention of the guards, but if they started a long walk, the guards “passed them from hand to hand.”
Moreover, the park areas were guarded by specially trained dogs - German shepherds and Dobermans, and additional guard posts were located along the perimeter of the residences. Anyone who came to the royal residence or its surroundings was required to meet with an employee of the Registration Bureau within 24 hours to confirm their identity. The mouse will not slip through!
People for the imperial guard were carefully selected. So, for example, before taking a Cossack into the convoy, the commanders traveled around the Kuban and Terek villages, looking for the most worthy. They took it based on recommendations, taking into account not only external data - a strong physique, height of at least 2 arshins and 8 inches (180 cm), but also personal qualities - intelligence, devotion and the ability to get along with people.
Service in the royal guard was considered, although prestigious, to some extent thankless. Towards retirement former employee acquired a number of occupational diseases - rheumatism, tuberculosis, chronic colds or nerve disorders. But, as a rule, they did not pay a pension; it could only be earned by a heroic act, for example, by capturing a terrorist.
Close to the Person
To get into the Palace Police, innate qualities were not enough - you had to undergo gendarmerie training. Great school The gendarmerie had behind it an outstanding, talented, albeit controversial specialist in the field of security and investigation, A. I. Spiridovich. He is considered perhaps the most important figure who ensured the safety of Nicholas II.
The palace police could not always and not everywhere guarantee the safety of the Tsar, especially in the period after the 1905 revolution. To accompany the emperor on his trips in 1906, by order of the Palace Commandant D.F. Trepov, a Special Security Detachment was created, the head of which was Spiridovich.
The duties of the head of the Special Squad included detailed study information about the sovereign's proposed trip. Spiridovich sent his people along the route in advance, while carefully keeping them secret - he knew about the negative attitude of Nicholas II towards the obvious appearance of representatives of the Tsarist secret police.
Spiridovich was also aware of the operational work of the Socialist Revolutionary terrorist groups. He acted calmly and prudently so as not to spook the large fish. His most famous successful operation was the discovery of a plot to assassinate the emperor. The terrorists intended to carry out a daringly bold plan - to detonate a bomb under the office of Nicholas II, but its result was the execution of the main instigators of the conspiracy.
The Emperor, unlike the Empress, treated Spiridovich very respectfully and with great confidence. This is evidenced by a whole series of photographs taken by the head of the Special Detachment - he became practically the official photographer of the reigning family. As a token of gratitude for his faithful service, Nicholas II awarded Spiridovich the rank of colonel.
"Personals"
In the chronicle footage of 1912, which captured the exit of the imperial couple, one cannot help but notice a tall Cossack carefully carrying Tsarevich Alexei in his arms. This is sergeant Alexey Pilipenko, who served in His Majesty’s Own convoy, and was also an orderly and “personal guard” (bodyguard) of the Russian Tsar.
With the outbreak of the First World War, the devoted servant Pilipenko, together with a platoon of Cossacks, accompanied the emperor when visiting Headquarters. He turned out to be the last of the royal guards who was allowed to be near Nicholas II: since December 1916, he was constantly with the emperor in the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, but on April 1, 1917, they were destined to say goodbye forever.
Another famous “personal” of Nicholas II was the no less colorful Cossack and sharp shooter Timofey Yashchik, who for two years - from 1914 to 1916 - served the sovereign as a second Cossack chamber, being with the emperor on his front-line trips. Timothy boasted that he was chosen by the king himself during his tour of the formation!
"I'm not afraid of anything"...
After abdicating the throne, Nicholas II did not lose his guard, but he was assigned a guard of a completely different type - its task was not so much to protect the former tsar from assassination attempts, but to protect him from the raging and unpredictable crowd. Well, with the arrival Soviet power The main task of the guard was to prevent the release of the king, which could lead to the restoration of the monarchy.
Once in 1905, Nicholas II attended a fireworks display at the Winter Palace, which was fired from the guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The buckshot, which accidentally (although, who knows) turned out to be loaded on one of the guns, landed next to the gazebo where the emperor was. The clergy, retinue, and guards who were located near the king were very concerned about this incident. Only the emperor himself turned out to be unperturbed, saying: “Until the 18th year, I am not afraid of anything.” It is surprising that with such fatalism, Nicholas II was absolutely calm about all the security measures taken during his reign. Or maybe it doesn't matter.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||
Andrey Marynyak
With aiguillette - to fall or to win
Life and traditions of the Imperial Russian Guard
(Motherland magazine)
Imperial Russian Guard to end of the 19th century century was the largest of the world's "guards": three infantry and two cavalry divisions, the Rifle and Separate Cavalry Brigades and corresponding artillery units made up about 4 percent of the Imperial Army.
Its Officer Corps was staffed according to certain rules; representatives of many noble families served in one or another regiment from generation to generation. “The officers looked at the regiment as their second family when they were married, and when they were single, as their only one. Among the officers there were those who numbered 10, 15 and 20 representatives of their kind in the previous composition"1.
Royalists and stove-makers
The main condition for leaving military school in guards regiment in addition to the vacancy and the “guards point,” there was general agreement among the regiment officers to accept a new comrade into their midst. A senior cadet reported his intention to a junior officer or adjutant of the regiment, who, in turn, submitted his candidacy to the consideration of a society of officers, usually headed by a senior colonel. If the cadet who received the consent of the officers did not reach the guards point, he, as a rule, took an army vacancy and ended up in a guards regiment for a year as a secondee2. Since the issue of admission to the regiment was decided by closed ballot, a cadet who was not accepted into one regiment could try his luck in another. The reasons for refusal were very diverse: from origin and debt to performing on stage, even in an amateur theater. Let us also note that there were regiments, which traditionally, in the overwhelming majority, included cadets from one school. Thus, those who graduated from the Corps of Pages staffed the Cavalry Guards, the Preobrazhensky Life Guards and the Life Guards of the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial Family; the cadets of the Pavlovsk Military School made up the majority of the officers of the Pavlovsk Life Guards Regiment.
Another unspoken limitation for Guard officers was the financial side. According to the testimony of a number of contemporaries, service in the cuirassier regiments of the 1st Guards Cavalry Division required from a young officer at least 3,000 rubles a year in addition to his salary, and in the Hussar Life Guards twice as much. Therefore, cadets on their first visit to the regiment, or young officers immediately upon enlistment, were asked in advance to weigh their financial capabilities against the life worthy of a guards officer.
“In all matters, official and private,” recalled the indigenous officer of the Life Guards Jaeger Regiment, General Staff, Major General B.V. Gerua, “the dignity of the regiment came first for everyone. They didn’t wash dirty linen in public, the commander - whatever he was - was supported as a representative of the regiment, the established regimental customs were sacredly respected and they “went out of their way” if it was necessary to show that the life rangers in a particular region were at the proper level.” 3.
The one-on-one conversation between the senior colonel of Her Majesty’s Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment E. N. von Schweder and the officers who had just joined the regiment is indicative: “Gentlemen,” he said quietly. - The Cuirassier Regiment did you a great honor by accepting you as officers into its midst. Yesterday you put on the officer's shoulder straps of the Cuirassier Regiment. I, your senior colonel, demand from you that, wherever you are, you do not forget for a minute that you have the officer’s insignia of our regiment on your shoulders. These shoulder straps oblige you... Yes, these shoulder straps oblige everyone who has the honor to wear them to worthy actions, decency and decency. Remember that in the eyes of society and the world, any unseemly act or even gesture of yours will be attributed not so much to your personality as to the entire regiment, because a regiment that accepts an officer into its midst thereby guarantees his decency and good manners. An officer who does not know how to protect his dignity and the dignity of the regiment, an officer who does not know how to behave, the regiment will not tolerate in its midst.”4
The senior staff officer or regiment commander, if he was a native officer of the unit, congratulating young second lieutenants or cornets on such an important event as the beginning of officer service, at the same time warned: “There are people who look at the regiment as a passage yard. He served for three years, found a nice place and left. We don't need those. Only those who have decided to serve in the Regiment all their lives, up to the rank of colonel, and if war happens, then die in its ranks, should come out to us. Not touring people. We need those for whom there can be not only service, but also life outside the regiment. Do you understand me?<...>It was difficult not to understand when the example of regimental patriotism spoke to us. 26 years in regimental uniform, from the lower rank to colonel”5.
The impoverishment of the layer that filled the Guard's officer corps began to have a strong impact by the beginning of the twentieth century. An indicator of this was the high “staff turnover” in many regiments. Officers went to the Academy (usually the General Staff) for civil service, retired, or were transferred to the army. To prevent this process, scholarships were established for some of the best students of military educational institutions (from 600 to 750 rubles per year), and in the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment, for example, at the expense of the lands of the former imperial gardens6, it became possible not only to remove from officers the burden of “public” expenses, but also begin to pay subsidies to those most in need from the funds received from the sale of these lands. At the same time, a movement began in the regiments to make the lives of guards officers cheaper. Thus, in the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment they were divided into “stove-makers” and “royalists” (who sat at the stove and at the piano, respectively, during general meetings). If the former advocated a modest lifestyle, the latter insisted on the need to maintain “guards chic.” “It is absolutely impossible to indicate on what grounds this division occurred. The “royalists,” along with wealthy people, included many relatively poor people and people of the most humble origins, while the “oven workers” included several homeowners and officers who entered the largest St. Petersburg drawing rooms. It happened that of two brothers, one was a “royalist” and the other a “stove maker”7. The main “debate” was conducted regarding expenses that did not directly affect the life of the regiment. So, for example, the regiment received a request to donate money for a monument to Alexander II, which the village assembly decided to erect in the village of Uspensky, Yaroslavl province. Naturally, it was decided not to make donations on behalf of the regiment, but to grant such a right to those wishing to engage in philanthropy.
Maintaining a life “worthy” of a guardsman placed a great burden on the officer’s pocket. According to tradition, officers were supposed to visit only first-class restaurants, ride only in 1st class carriages, and in the city - in “decent” cabs. Large amounts of money were required for tailoring uniforms (and in the cavalry, in addition, the cost of one’s own horse and its maintenance), constant contributions to the officers’ meeting, numerous dinners, regimental holidays, receptions, gifts to officers leaving the regiment, theaters (where one was supposed to occupy seats no further than a certain a row of stalls or a separate box)…
With the expansion of the “sphere of entertainment” in Russia, and especially in the capital, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the need arose to officially regulate public places, where the officer was allowed to be, and where his presence was strictly prohibited.
"1. All Messrs. officers stationed in St. Petersburg are unconditionally prohibited from visiting:
1) Private clubs and meetings where gambling takes place.
Note. Gg. officers do not have the right to become members of private clubs and societies without the permission of their direct superiors. As guests Messrs. officers are allowed to unconditionally attend the following clubs: 1) Imperial Yacht Club; 2) Imperial River Yacht Club; 3) English Club; 4) New Club; 5) Assembly of the Nobility; 6) Noble Assembly; 7) Merchant Assembly; 8) Railway Club; 9) Theater Club; 10) Agricultural Club.
2) “Variety” - Fontanka, 81 (winter cafe-chantan).
3) “Cafe de Paris” - a coffee shop near Passage on Nevsky Prospekt.
4) “Eden” - summer pleasure garden, Glazovaya St., No. 23.
5) “Yar” - restaurant on Bolshoy Prospect, Petersburgskaya side.
6) Small cinemas.
7) Restaurants and hotels of the lower categories.
8) All in general taverns, tea houses, cookeries, coffee shops, beer houses, porter shops, as well as third class buffets at railway stations. From order No. 13 (1911) for the troops of the Guard and the St. Petersburg Military District8.”
Membership in some clubs (for example, the Imperial Yacht Club) was considered a matter of regimental prestige. The number of restaurants "acceptable" for officers to visit (according to tradition, not wallet) was quite limited. The standard group consisted of “Cuba”, “Donon”, “Bear” and “Contan”, where, “having taken a table for breakfast, lunch or dinner, it was obligatory to demand a bottle or “wine”, that is, a bottle of champagne (this is the minimum), which cost 12 rubles (in the regiment meeting - 6 rubles - A.M.)9.” And this is with a junior officer’s salary of about 100 rubles including apartment allowance.
Rotation in high society, rapid promotion, and guards privileges did not at all relieve officers of the responsibility for accurately performing their service and maintaining the proper professional level. The guards were required to excel in military training compared to other parts of the Imperial Army.
As a result of constant control by the superiors and the awareness of the regiments themselves of the need to be “first,” the guards infantry always scored “beyond excellent” in shooting, and, being under the watchful eye of the artillery inspector general, did not lag behind. book Sergei Mikhailovich Guards artillery, both light and horse. Since the days of his inspector general, the commander-in-chief vigilantly monitored the preparation of the guards cavalry - he led. book Nikolai Nikolaevich. Equestrian sport generally received in the Imperial Russian army widespread at the beginning of the twentieth century. Guards officers won many prizes at international competitions.
Samovarniks
There was also a selection for the lower ranks of the Guard, but naturally according to rules different from those for officers. In addition to the well-known physical characteristics (health, height), favorite “types” have long been formed in the regiments: for example, the Pavlovsk Life Guards Regiment took snub-nosed ones, redheads with beards went to the Moscow Life Guards... However, given that recruits were selected almost twice ten regiments, at the “breakdown” in the Mikhailovsky Manege, there were often disputes between regimental commanders asking the commander-in-chief or corps commander to assign this or that “recruit” to their regiment.
Unlike officers, for lower ranks service in the Guard was more profitable than army service in material terms: an ordinary guardsman received a salary double that of his fellow army soldier, fed very well (in addition to a more than satisfying general ration, it was not uncommon for additions to the soldier’s cauldron at the expense of company and especially squadron commanders), wore a beautiful uniform. “It would be appropriate to say that for all parades and reviews, as well as exercises and maneuvers in the Highest Presence, all guards private soldiers received 1 ruble, corporals 1 ruble 50 kopecks, junior non-commissioned officers 3 rubles, senior non-commissioned officers - officers 5 rubles, sergeants on active service 10 rubles, and long-term officers 25 rubles from His Majesty.” The musicians of all guards regiments could generally be considered quite wealthy people, since they could play at charity bazaars and theaters. Moreover, the performance cost from 300 to 500 rubles, and invitations to officer parties also brought in a considerable profit. In the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, for example, for each such call to a “trumpet choir” the officer paid 25 rubles, while the performance of favorite melodies was paid separately. At the same time, the adjutant of the regiment, in charge of the trumpet team, paid the headquarters trumpeter a salary of 60 rubles a month from his personal funds (that is, the salary of an army second lieutenant (cornet), however, without additives). The conscripts and “specialists” received unofficial salaries from their officers: the senior regimental clerk - from the regimental adjutant, the administrative clerk - from the regimental treasurer, the regimental gunsmith - from the weapons manager...
When going on vacation, the guards were not averse to flaunting the advantages of their position in front of their fellow villagers. A complete sensation was created by the arrivals home of the guards cuirassiers, who received the mocking nickname “samovarniks” (due to the external “resemblance” of the shiny cuirass with a samovar) or “funeral cavalry” (for their frequent participation, especially of the 1st brigade of the division - Cavalry Guards and Horse Guards - in the funerals of retired generals). One of the officers recalled: “They (cuirassiers - A.M.) were released (on leave - A.M.) in helmets with grenade, in tunics, greatcoats, and broadswords. Most secretly took the eagle for a fee to the squadron captain and bought monograms for shoulder straps, which they wore at home. In frank conversations, they choked up and told how they were saluted and even stood in front not only by the lower ranks, but almost by army infantry officers, in county towns, seeing them riding in the best cab in the city, wearing a helmet with an eagle and a tunic. , with monograms and a broadsword, mistaking them for Grand Dukes!!! In church they stood in front so that all the people could see them. They loved to show off...”10
A special layer was made up of long-term service sergeants and sergeants, especially old men who had served in the regiments for several decades. “In each guards regiment, in addition to inanimate relics - banners, standards and St. George's trumpets, which reminded officers and soldiers of the glorious military past of their regiments, there were also living relics - super-ensigns who served in the regiment for thirty or more years, who were witnesses of various historical events and zealously guarded the old regimental customs"11. These old men, many of whom “broke off” with their regiments during the campaign for the Balkans, kept to their separate caste, sometimes not allowing even the younger “super-term” soldiers to enter, believing that after Turkish war“The soldiers were not taught anything worthwhile.” Making up a real “regimental aristocracy,” they could well afford to be offended by senior officers if they forgot to personally pay their respects at their name days and other family celebrations.
Being respected people, the old people had a number of honorable duties that were exclusively their prerogative. In the Life Guards Cavalry Grenadier Regiment, for example, there were six such veterans who had more than 25 years of long-term service behind them and were awarded the Cross of St. George, numerous medals and foreign orders. The regiment officer recalled: “The regiment commander and all the officers called them by name and patronymic, and even the Emperor, greeting Maslennikov and Geichenko at parades, called them Kirill Yakovlevich and Stepan Ivanovich. Each of these elders had traditional duties that they performed on ceremonial occasions. On regimental holidays, Sinegubkin and Maslennikov presented the Tsar with the first “test portion” and the second with a silver glass of vodka, and Geichenko managed the regimental songbooks when they sang in front of the Tsar or other distinguished guests.
The old men treated the young officers with condescending disdain, and although they showed them the respect required by the regulations, they did not take them into account at all. And Maslennikov even considered his squadron commander, who served for 15 years in the captain’s regiment, to be a boy, for the captain, whose father also commanded the 6th squadron at one time, was born when Kirill Yakovlevich was already wearing two chevrons (silver corners on the left sleeve) for emergency service. service"12.
During their service in the Guard, conscripts could accumulate quite a large sum, which was quite enough to “bring their children into the public eye.” So, the already mentioned “treasury captain” Ivan Alekseevich Sinegubkin’s eldest son and son-in-law were officers of one of the infantry regiments, and the youngest son was a communications engineer. Often, “extra-term” people purchased real estate with the money they earned (for example, dachas in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, the rental of which for the summer provided a good income).
Button-savior
The Guard regiments sacredly respected their traditions and remembered their history.
Various moments in the life of the regiment were reflected not only on St. George's banners and standards, in the windows of regimental museums and in the atmosphere of the officers' meeting, but also in the elements of the uniform of the guards units and the features of the formation. “Little things” that were obscure to an outsider were significant and dear to fellow soldiers.
For a long time, the regiments of the “Petrovskaya Brigade” - the Preobrazhensky Life Guards and the Semenovsky Life Guards were the only ones whose officers wore badges that indicated the dates of the founding of the regiments, the 150th anniversary of the Guard and the 200th anniversary of the founding of the regiments. On the “captain’s” insignia, the date of the battle near Narva was also added, and in the 1st company of the Life Guards Regiment, the date of the enthronement of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna was also added, in memory of the decisive role played in this by the grenadier company of the regiment, the future Life Company. These signs were a source of pride and served to “advertise” the regiments. So the Semenov officers, convincing the cadet Pavlon of the advantage of joining their regiment, said: “We are the Petrovskaya Brigade ... And Chest sign you will wear... In the entire Russian army there are only two regiments that have it... Preobrazhentsy and we...”13.
In the Life Guards Izmailovsky Regiment, the uniform was traditionally sewn in the form of a woman's braided braid. According to legend, when at the founding of the regiment in 1730, Empress Anna Ioanovna was asked what kind of sewing to give to the new guards regiment, the empress, who was doing her morning toilet, pointed to her braid, and the question was resolved. The charm of the beautiful legend was so great that no one for a long time did not pay attention to the fact that there was simply nowhere to put the sewing on the uniform of that time, which actually appeared only in 1800 and was probably adopted from the Prussian Guards Grenadier Battalion.
At the beginning of the century, the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment regained first the embroidery and then the aiguillettes on the right shoulder, granted to the regiment in 1775 to distinguish it from other grenadier regiments for the valor shown by the regiment during the Russian-Turkish War. The regimental march contained the following lines:
Otherwise it is impossible to be a grenadier,
Aiguillette calls us to fall or to win.
With the words of this march, in 1915, Colonel Moravsky, whom everyone in the regiment, both officers and soldiers, called “Uncle Sasha,” led his 2nd battalion into the attack. The Life Grenadier's opponent in this battle was the best regiment of the German Guard - the Life Guard Grenadier Regiment of Emperor Alexander I. The battalion, picking up the march, went towards the German machine guns, the position was taken, the mortally wounded “Uncle Sasha” died on the crest of the German trench.
The regiments of the Life Guards Pavlovsky and the Life Guards of the 4th Infantry of the Imperial Family stood out sharply from the rest of the Guards infantry. The first to retain their grenadier caps for distinction in the battle of Preussisch-Eylau, when 500 men were out of action. While shakos were being introduced in the rest of the army, on November 13, 1808, by the Highest Order of Emperor Alexander I, the names of the owners were cut out on the “grenadiers”. Thus, the Life Guards Pavlovsky Regiment, until the revolution of 1917, remained the only regiment that had a headdress early XIX century, and the regiment kept 532 “registered” grenadiers, about which A.S. Pushkin said: “The radiance of these copper caps, shot through and through in battle...”. In memory of the regiment's exploits in the Napoleonic Wars, the Pavlovtsians marched in parades holding rifles “on the arm,” as if going on the attack, while all other regiments, according to the regulations, carried guns “on the shoulder.”
The Life Guards 4th Rifle Regiment of the Imperial Family, formed in 1854 from appanage peasants, received the rights of the Young Guard in 1856. Initially, he received a uniform different from other parts, which should resemble the Russian national costume: a caftan, fastened obliquely, and a hat (something between a Polish confederate hat and a coachman’s hat) with a militia cross. The regiment retained this uniform, with minor changes, until 1917 (naturally, only as a ceremonial uniform), and on the semi-caftan of the 1906 model there was no collar, but crimson appeared (the color of the rifle units Imperial Army) braid.
The Guards cavalry did not lag behind its infantry. The receipt of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment of the star of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called on elements of uniforms and equipment, which later became the emblem of the entire Russian Guard, was firmly associated in the regiment with the tragic events of March 11, 1801: the Horse Guards guard, at the insistence of Palen, was removed by Emperor Paul, who paid for it with their lives. The Horse Guards were the only regiment whose officers did not participate in the conspiracy, and, at the insistence of Empress Maria Feodorovna, received stars with the order’s motto: “For Faith and Loyalty.”
The officers of His Majesty's Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment retained a button on the collar of their tunics, which was abolished in other cuirassier regiments. She is “on the L.Gv. Podolsk Cuirassier Regiment... saved the life of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich - Viceroy in the Kingdom of Poland and Chief of the regiment: the bullet of a Pole who shot at the Grand Duke changed direction, hitting a button on the collar of his tunic"14. Subsequently, His Majesty's Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment accepted the Podolsk cuirassiers into its ranks, and with them yellow applied cloth and a button on the tunic collar.
The officers of His Majesty's Life Guards Hussar Regiment wore tashkas with an unfinished pattern. According to legend, Empress Catherine II embroidered the tashka and died before finishing the work. Since then, in memory of the Empress, under whom the regiment was formed, the officers of the regiment wore an “unfinished” tashka.
Like all other regiments of the Imperial Russian Army, units of the Guard also had their own holidays: regimental, company, squadron and battery. In St. Petersburg and its environs, regimental holidays were always celebrated with great pomp, which is quite natural: they were always attended by members of the Imperial Family, many of whom were Chiefs, served or were on the lists of guards units, the emperor himself always tried to be present at the regimental holidays of his Guard. After 1905, the sovereign’s visits to officers’ meetings “simply” became more frequent, without any special official occasions and even without security. Knowing perfectly well the customs and traditions of his Guard, Nicholas II often sat with the officers until the morning, discussing various episodes of military service over a glass of wine.
To maintain contact between the regiment and its officers, even those who had left the regiment, “comradely dinners” were regularly held. Usually they were held once a month, but in richer regiments - weekly (in the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment they even had the special name “Thursday” dinners). Officers could be absent from these regimental meetings only due to illness and with the permission of the senior colonel, who in each regiment was the legislator and guardian of internal regimental life and whose authority stood almost above the regiment commander. Senior colonels were a necessary layer between the officers of the regiment and its commander, who was often appointed from the officers of another regiment, sometimes a “competing” one. For example, during the centuries-old rivalry between the Cavalry Guards and the Horse Guards, it happened that the Cavalry Guards regiment was commanded by a Horse Guardsman and vice versa. The senior colonel was responsible for regulating the internal life of the regiment and resolving all kinds of conflicts. The introduction of young people into regimental life was the responsibility of the senior second lieutenant (cornet), who was supposed to observe the behavior of newly promoted officers both in the regiment and outside it, to warn and guide them on the right path. At general dinners and breakfasts, he always sat on the left, “youth” flank of the table and vigilantly watched to ensure that his “subordinates” observed proper decency and did not cross the boundaries of what was permitted.
When joining a guards regiment, an officer usually ordered his own silver device, the same model for the regiment, “i.e. knives, forks, spoons engraved with his name, patronymic and surname and year of manufacture, for which he paid 100 rubles. Such devices were owned by the Sovereign-Chiefs of the regiment and the Grand Dukes, who were included in the lists of the regiment, and were included in the lists of the regiment upon leaving the post of regiment commander. Each device was in a separate case. The highest persons were always given their cutlery, and for everyone else the silver was mixed on purpose, also serving the silver of old, former officers, to remind them of them. If an officer left without a gift and without a membership badge15, then his silver was returned to him, and he never again dared to cross the threshold of the meeting. If an officer, leaving the regiment, allowed his debts, discrediting the honor of the regiment's uniform, to be paid by the officers together, then the silver was returned to him. Silver was served only on special occasions, but not on a daily basis.”16
Thanks to strong internal foundations, historical traditions and strict selection of officer personnel, the Guard regiments were the real elite of the Imperial Russian Army and proved this during the First World War. With the crash Russian Empire The Russian Imperial Guard also became a thing of the past, the officers and soldiers of which fought for Russia for several more years under the national white-blue-red flag of the White Movement and, without laying down their arms, left Crimea in November 1920 under the command of a native officer of the Life Guards Horse Regiment Baron P. N. Wrangel. Already in exile, in different countries, officers of the guards units created regimental associations and societies and did everything to preserve for posterity the memory of the glorious deeds of the Russian guard, who faithfully served the Tsar and the Fatherland.
Notes
1. History of the Life Guards Horse Regiment. T. 3. Paris. 1964. P. 78.
2. The exception in this regard was the Guards artillery. If cadets leaving for infantry and cavalry units immediately put on a regiment uniform immediately upon entering the regiment, then “all pages and cadets leaving for the Guards Artillery unit were enrolled in the Field Artillery, i.e., they put on a field artillery uniform and only a year later after being awarded their combat superiors were transferred to units of the Guards Artillery, when they put on the uniform of the Guards Artillery" (Life Guards 2nd Artillery Brigade. Compiled by Gen. A.F. von Ackermann. Belgrade. B. g. P. 53.).
3. Gerua B.V. Memories of my life. T. 1. Paris. 1969. P. 61.
4. Trubetskoy V., book. Notes of a Cuirassier//Our Heritage. 1991. No. IV. P. 105.
5. Makarov Yu. My service in the Old Guard. 1905-1917. Peacetime and war. pp. 41-42. This is how the commander of the Life Guards Semenovsky Regiment, Colonel G. A. Min, greeted the young second lieutenants Makarov and Essen in 1905, an 18-year-old youth who ran away to Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878, who received the rank of ensign already in the regiment during the war.
6. Nicholas II at the end of 1905 transferred to the ownership of the regiment a huge plot of land of the former imperial vegetable gardens near the regiment barracks on Kirochnaya Street, in the center of St. Petersburg. By gradually selling land for development, the regiment accumulated a large capital for itself (according to the Minister of War, General A.F. Roediger: “probably several million rubles”).
7. Makarov Yu. Decree. op. P. 209.
8. Quote. by: Scout. 1911 No. 1067.
9. Cuirassiers of His Majesty. 1902-1914. Last years peacetime. B. m. B. g. P. 35.
10. Decree. op. pp. 72-73.
11. Voronovich N. The All-Seeing Eye. From the life of the Russian army. NY. 1951. P. 20.
12. Ibid.
13. Pavlons - a well-established name in the military environment for the cadets of the Pavlovsk Military School, which, by the way, did not apply to the ranks of the Life Guards of the Pavlovsk Regiment; Makarov Yu. Decree. op. P. 35.
14. Cuirassiers... P. 40.
15. An officer who left the regiment by decision of the society of officers, i.e., who allowed himself to commit any unseemly act that could cast a shadow on the honor of the regiment, was deprived of a regimental badge indicating the preservation of his membership in the regimental officers' meeting and was not awarded a farewell gift from colleagues.
16. Cuirassiers... P. 34.
Categories: former Russia
Tags: guard
In those battles, almost the majority of the personnel of the guards regiments of the last recruitment died, which left Emperor Nicholas II without the best, most loyal troops on the eve of the February crisis of 1917.
After all four Russian armies Southwestern Front successfully overcame the enemy’s defensive line and developed a “Lutsk” breakthrough in depth, in front of Commander-in-Chief A.A. Brusilov was faced with the question of the further direction of the breakthrough. He had an alternative: to attack Lvov or Brest-Litovsk through Kovel. On reflection, he decided that the 8th Army of General A.M. Kaledina would have to act together with the troops of the Western Front in the general direction of Brest-Litovsk, which implied an assault on Kovel. And this assault could not be carried out except head-on - through the swampy valley of the Stokhod River...
Kovel, which was the key to all of Polesie, was fortified by the enemy in advance. In addition to the fact that the city was a powerful railway junction, it covered the exit to Brest-Litovsk, and therefore to the rear of the entire southern wing of the German front. Many people gathered in Kovel railways, therefore it was very important for both sides, especially since the rail network in the Eastern Theater of Operations was very poor.
A Russian capture of Kovel would undoubtedly further divide the Austrians and Germans in their efforts to counter the Russian advance. North of Kovel there is a difficult swampy area. It was this strip that divided the German and Austro-Hungarian defensive lines on the Eastern Front into two unequal parts.
The capture of Kovel implied not only the cooperation of the two Russian fronts in their offensive in Poland, but also an operational gap between the Germans and Austrians.
The enemy would have to hastily roll up the constantly exposed flanks and thereby, retreating in different directions, trying in vain to maintain the unity of the defensive front, give the Russians the territory occupied in 1915. With pressure alone and a constant threat from the flanks in a breakthrough in the Kovel direction, Russian troops would force the Austro-Germans to retreat without a fight.
The enemy also perfectly understood the importance of Kovel. Therefore, already in the last days of May, German units of generals Luttwitz, Bernhardi, Marwitz and others began to be transferred here: already on June 1, the 10th German Army Corps was completely concentrated here. This was the same Lower Saxon corps of General W. von Lüttwitz (19th Hanoverian and 20th Brunswick infantry divisions), which since the spring of 1915 (Gorlitsky breakthrough) played the role of a “fire” unit on the Eastern Front.
The most selective here was the 20th Brunswick Infantry Division. Even at the beginning of the war, during the fighting on the Western Front, she was surrounded by the French in the Vosges. The French offered the surrounded Germans to surrender, but they chose to die rather than submit. The Brunswickers fought their way out of encirclement with a furious bayonet attack. For this feat, the division received the name “Steel” (by analogy, we had the “Iron” division of General A.I. Denikin) and the right to wear skulls (“Adam’s Head”) on their caps and helmets.
It is characteristic that the Germans strengthened all directions with their divisions, interspersing German troops between the Austrians. Such stripes, first of all, made it possible to use numerous German equipment, especially heavy batteries, in all dangerous directions.
The main factor was that in the presence of the Germans, the Austrians no longer fled, but fought.
Only German units that made up the maneuver group of General A. von Linsingen went to Kovel. Austrian troops, transferred from Italy and from the rear units, reinforced the shaky front in the Carpathians and in the Lvov direction.
At a time when every hour was precious for an offensive, by decision of the command, the Russians began a protracted regrouping. Our command, trying to protect itself from espionage activities, began the practice of evicting the “unreliable” population from the newly conquered territory. Thirteen thousand German colonists and members of their families were evicted from Lutsk, Dubensky and Kremenets districts in a week.
Suspending the offensive of Kaledin's 8th Army in order to align the lagging armies with it allowed General A. von Linsingen to gain time and pull up his few reserves to key points in the folds of the terrain. The Germans immediately, during the fighting, began building a powerful fortified area from scattered rear positions. Thanks to the fortification of the area, the Austro-Germans were able to stop the Russians with smaller forces.
The Germans also began to concentrate aviation in the Kovel region, which they skillfully used in battles for crossings across the swampy valley of the Stokhod River. A contemporary wrote: “Worried by the rapid advance of Russian troops, the German command transferred large forces of fighter aircraft to the Kovel area from near Verdun, and the balance of forces in the air in this combat area changed significantly. German aviation managed very quickly, thanks to its overwhelming numerical and technical superiority, to seize complete air supremacy and practically suppress the activities of Russian reconnaissance and spotter aircraft and thereby ensure complete freedom for its reconnaissance and spotter aircraft.”
In the battles for Kovel, the Germans carried out continuous bombing attacks on the location of Russian troops, as well as on forested areas near the front line, where Russian units could be located. In addition, the active actions of German aviation did not allow the Russians to conduct reconnaissance of the enemy defensive lines on which the attack was planned. This circumstance, for example, became one of the reasons for the failure of the July offensive of the Special Army troops on Kovel, since aerial reconnaissance, due to opposition from enemy aircraft, was unable to reveal the location of German heavy batteries.
In the summer of 1916, as the researcher says, “the bulk of air force Germany."
In the Russian Active Army on July 1, 1916, there were only two and a half hundred serviceable aircraft, and losses reached fifty percent of the total number of aircraft per month.
During the July battles in the Kovel direction, German aviation carried out bombing strikes almost every day on the main supply base for the troops storming the Kovel fortified area - Lutsk. Only by mid-August, through the efforts of a specially created fighter air group of the front, consisting of three air squads, did the Russian side manage to wrest air supremacy in the Kovel direction from the hands of the enemy. But by this time the offensive impulse of the Russian armies had already dried up, and the enemy had managed to turn the Kovel fortified area into an impregnable fortress.
German reserves radically strengthened the defense capability of the Austrian troops, and the enemy front began to acquire stability. From the beginning of June, the Austro-Germans began to launch counterattacks on the armies of the Southwestern Front in all areas of the breakthrough. The lack of heavy artillery prevented the Russian troops from dislodging the Germans from their positions in front of Kovel with one swift blow. It was necessary to bring up slowly arriving reserves.
According to some modern researchers, by refusing to advance in the Lvov direction, General Brusilov transferred the initiative to the Germans. As a result, instead of bypassing the flanks of the Linsingen group, which would have forced the Germans to voluntarily clear Kovel so as not to be surrounded, an incorrect and dangerous decision was made to apply frontal pressure through an open assault on the swampy valley of the Stokhod River, which represented a strong natural obstacle. A war participant said this about this area: “The Stokhod River itself is small, about 150–170 miles long, but deep (with the exception of certain sections). It flows through a wide swampy area, branching into branches, the number of which reaches twelve, which is why this river is called Stokhod. These branches either merged into 1-3 channels, then diverged again, making the river deceptive, both in its depth and in passability. And, despite its, at first glance, insignificance, this river literally played a fatal role for the Russians in 1916.”
By June 25, units of the 3rd and 8th armies, crushing the fiercely fighting enemy, reached the Stokhod River, splitting the enemy's resistance front into a number of scattered resisting sections. Some units - the 30th Army Corps (General A.M. Zayonchkovsky) of the 8th Army and the 1st Turkestan Corps (General S.M. Sheideman) of the 3rd Army - managed to cross the river on the move and cling to it left bank.
The left bank of the Stokhod River is high and protected by natural barriers. The right bank, to which the Russian troops reached, is, on the contrary, low and flat, completely shot through by artillery and machine guns. The enemy managed to burn his bridges, and General Brusilov did not have free reserves for the last desperate throw: the spread of forces in several directions had an effect.
At the same time, the Germans still managed to knock out our troops with counterattacks from the bridgeheads they occupied on the left bank of the Stokhod: the lack of heavy artillery that could support the infantry in the battle for the bridgeheads affected.
Thus, the offensive that had begun successfully fizzled out on the banks of Stokhod. The enemy resolutely suppressed all attempts by our troops to cross the river a second time on a wide front. It was also not possible to connect the small bridgeheads into one. The German troops defending the Kovel direction certainly fought skillfully and courageously.
The Germans removed reserve batteries and even part of the advanced ones from other, unattacked sectors of the front, and threw them towards Kovel. If the German reserves in the East were barely enough to hold the front north of Polesie, then technically the enemy still had superiority. Therefore, the enemy could to some extent maneuver the equipment, directing the last resources to the most dangerous areas, in this case - near Kovel.
To storm the enemy fortified area near Kovel, the so-called The Guards group, whose command was appointed by the commander of the Guards Corps (commanded from the beginning of the war until the end of August 1915), Adjutant General V.M. Bezobrazova.
According to contemporaries, he was loved in the guards units, giving him the nickname “Voevoda.”
The Guards Group included the 1st and 2nd Guards Infantry Corps, the Guards Cavalry Corps, as well as the experienced 1st and 30th Army Corps attached for reinforcement, as well as the 5th Cavalry Corps from the 8th Army.
The Guard, which last took part in battles in the fall of 1915, was eager to prove itself. During the winter of 1915–1916, the troops were replenished, trained and morally strengthened. A guardsman who participated in the war writes:
“Several months of standing in reserve gave the guards units the opportunity to bring themselves into excellent condition. Numerous wounded, battle-hardened in 1915, returned to duty, and young, unfired soldiers were eager to keep up with their older comrades. Everyone's spirit was excellent. Training and discipline left nothing to be desired.”
However, tactical training in the guards units, especially among recruits, left much to be desired. War participant V.V. Vishnevsky, who served as a volunteer in the Life Guards Jaeger Regiment, recalled that during the period the guards were in the rear, they trained in almost the same way as before the war in the Krasnoselsky camps.
In particular, V.V. Vishnevsky writes: “The enormous experience of positional warfare, which we had been conducting since the autumn of 1915, remained little known or almost unknown to fresh recruits... We were taught new tactics a day or two before the offensive on Stokhod, and even then only cursorily. Only the company commander received a book with instructions, which was stamped “Secret”. Reinforcements did not know how to act confidently under fire: in attacks, when breaking through multi-row trench lines intertwined with wire on all sides, etc. These skills were somehow created on the fly, but they were not able to transfer them to the reinforcements. But we compacted the earth and were perfectly level, no worse than the personnel officers at the anniversary parades in 1912 and 1913.”
The whole point was that the guard, withdrawn to the reserve after the losses of the Great Retreat of 1915, was trained according to peacetime canons, with minimal front-line experience.
... On July 6, the Guards Group of General Bezobrazov was advanced between the 3rd and 8th Armies, replacing the 39th Army Corps of General. S.F. Stelnitsky. The site for its attack was personally chosen by the commander-in-chief of the front, Brusilov, and then confirmed by the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General. M.V. Alekseev. In other words, gen. V.M. Bezobrazov was a simple executor, whose lot it fell to simply build guard divisions for the attack. And, of course, carry out these attacks, but again with the amount of artillery that was allocated for him by higher headquarters.
Alas, the terrain through which we had to advance guards divisions, could not even help concentrate heavy batteries. Subsequently, high-ranking generals seemed to completely forget that Bezobrazov, before the start of the operation, protested about the disastrous site chosen for the offensive of the guard troops. They also forgot about their own participation in this matter. As a war participant says, all this “did not prevent the real author - Adjutant General Alekseev - from launching an investigation into the reasons for weak achievements, silencing his authorship, and - as a result - replacing Adjutant General Bezobrazov, including the guard in the new Special army General Gurko."
The July offensive, as conceived by the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, was to have a pronounced attacking character based on the principle of striking with a very large mass on a narrow section of the front. At the same time, as many as three armies were supposed to participate in the new attack in the Kovel direction - a group of generals. V.M. Bezobrazov (four infantry and two cavalry corps), 3rd Army General. L.V. Lesha (four and a half infantry and one cavalry corps), 8th Army General. A.M. Kaledin (five infantry corps, one cavalry division). It is clear that such a mass of infantry could not crowd on a narrow section of the front, so the attack on Kovel head-on, through the swampy Stokhod valley, was entrusted to Bezobrazov’s newly formed group. The other armies (3rd and 8th) were supposed to provide the main attack from the flanks.
All three Russian armies taken together had about two hundred and fifty thousand bayonets and sabers in their shock units against one hundred and sixty thousand of the enemy. The superiority of forces is insignificant if we take into account the artillery firepower and the terrain itself, which was extremely conducive to defense and inaccessible for attack. In addition, as mentioned above, Russian aviation failed to reveal the location of the German batteries concentrated near Kovel.
Initially, the offensive date was set for July 10, then, due to deteriorating weather, it was postponed to the 15th. This may also have been the reason for the subsequent failure of the offensive. Thus, the engineer officer who participated in the assault on Kovel recalled that the Austrians were in front of the guards. Therefore, the preparation of the initial bridgeheads was not carried out so carefully, and the troops were confident of success. However, when the Russians went on the attack, they were met by selected Germans. “Obviously, our command missed something here,” writes an eyewitness. “Had our attack taken place two days earlier, the first strike would have cost us much less losses, and the further course of the operation could have been completely different.”
Countless branches of the flooded Stokhod created an extremely marshy area, so the guard could advance along the front with no more than ten companies. The remaining troops marched in columns to the back of each other, which made things much easier for the enemy’s artillery.
In turn, in this direction the Germans had three lines of trenches, each with eight rows of wire fences.
According to the testimony of war participants, the Germans used Russian prisoners of war to build fortifications in the Kovel region. Under Russian artillery fire, prisoners dug trenches, erected wire fences, and strengthened machine-gun points. At the same time, they were dressed in old German clothing. military uniform, so that they would not be able to escape, and the Russian guns would concentrate their fire on them.
The Germans skillfully positioned their artillery batteries, which were targeted in advance at areas of probable attack by Russian troops. Russian batteries, mostly light, could not conduct counter-battery combat, since German guns were located outside their range of action. And it was impossible to drag the guns along with you, as was the case during the May battles, through the swamps.
Also, during the operational pause, the Germans managed to build machine-gun points in the places most vulnerable to repelling an enemy attack.
However, in the battles of July 3–8, the 6th Siberian rifle division Up to three thousand soldiers, one hundred thirty-four officers, twenty-five guns and nine machine guns were captured.
On July 15, the guards went on the offensive. After six hours of fierce artillery preparation guards regiments attacked the enemy. Near the towns of Trysten and Voronchin, the reinforced 10th Corps of General was defeated. W. von Luttwitz.
In the battles of July 15, the group of Gen. V.M. Bezobrazova captured more than twenty thousand people and fifty-six guns. During the day, all three lines of enemy trenches were taken in many areas.
The enemy rolled back to Kovel, trying to cling to every more or less suitable line. This success was achieved due to the efforts of the 2nd Guards and 30th Army Corps, which penetrated the enemy defenses.
However, due to the indecisiveness and tactical inexperience of the guard commander himself, General V.N. Bezobrazov's success was not developed, although the situation encouraged him to rush after the retreating enemy and burst into Kovel literally on the shoulders of the retreating enemy.
With all this, the enemy, as it turned out, had targeted in advance his own trenches located in the rear, behind the swamps, with artillery batteries, which allowed the German artillery to destroy the trenches occupied by the Russian guards with impunity and, in addition, to successfully create a fire curtain between the first echelon of the attack and the reserves.
The main problem was that there were no reserves behind the 30th Army Corps, since they were all concentrated on the other flank of the group, where, in fact, the main blow was delivered. Meanwhile, in the rear of the Germans there was only one crossing over the Stokhod, and if success developed, the defending Germans would face complete destruction, and the river would be crossed on the move. It was precisely this development of events that was initially expected by higher headquarters. But the strengthening of the defensive lines by German troops forced our troops to lose too many fighters during the breakthrough, after which there was nothing to build on the success. On the contrary, one could expect strong counterattacks from the enemy.
As a result, General Bezobrazov stopped the 30th Army Corps, which had rushed forward. A.M. Zayonchkovsky, equaling him in other parts, which were somewhat behind their vanguards. But the Germans managed to throw heavy artillery in the direction of the clearly defined Russian attack, and in the battles of July 16–21, Russian troops were unable to advance a single step, although the guard attacked in full force, in thick chains. A participant in this battle gives the following description of the Russian attacks: “After weak artillery preparation, the guard regiments, chain by chain, almost in columns, moved forward. But one could only dream of moving people in normal dashes under enemy fire here. The movement of the chains was very slow, their feet were so sucked into the swamp that people fell or pulled their legs out of the mud with the help of their hands so as not to leave their boots in the swamp. The river branches turned out to be so deep that officers and soldiers drowned in them. There weren’t enough orderlies to help the wounded and take them out of the battle, and the healthy ones were shot by the Germans like partridges... About a company of troops remained from the regiment. Here for the first time I had to hear how ordinary soldiers sent curses to the higher authorities... In general - intentionally or out of inability - here our command dug a grave for the Russian Guard, because the reinforcements that re-staffed the regiments were far from guards.”
The soldiers of the attacking troops, in addition to military equipment, also carried bundles of brushwood to fill up swampy areas and boards to overcome barbed wire...
As a result, the strike group suffered enormous losses. To replenish them, on the 17th, the 1st Siberian Corps of General M.M. was transferred from the 2nd Army of the Western Front to the group of General Bezobrazov. Pleshkova.
The battle in the Kovel direction ended with the capture of the town of Trysten by the soldiers and officers of the Life Guards Kexholm Regiment, after which our troops could not advance a single step further. A participant in the battle later recalled: “With the crossing of Stokhod in the sector of the 2nd Guards Corps, the entire Kovel operation was essentially stopped. Reserves approached the Germans, but our reserves were depleted, and the same positional struggle began on the Stokhod line, with the only change that the enemy lost the tete-de-pont (bridge fortification - A.P.) on the left bank of the Stokhod, and we it was purchased on the right. The breakthrough to Kovel failed. All the sacrifices made by the guard remained fruitless.”
As one of the staff officers noted, “in none of Brusilov’s armies during the July offensive of the entire Southwestern Front was the success of the May Lutsk breakthrough repeated; the entire front remained on the same line.”
The main loss of the Kovel attack was the death of the guards themselves - the support of the Russian throne and the monarch personally. The personnel officers of the guards units were mostly destroyed in the battles of 1914–1915.
So, if by the summer of 1914 about sixty thousand soldiers and two and a half thousand officers served in the guard, then by the end of the year the guards lost over twenty thousand people only killed and seriously wounded. By the summer of 1916, the guards regiments were again replenished to one hundred and ten thousand bayonets and sabers. Now all those nobles who had always formed the support of the imperial throne were finished off.
The losses of the guard in the battles on Stokhod amounted to about fifty thousand soldiers and officers (that is, almost half of the total personnel).
And it was not for nothing that Empress Maria Feodorovna noted in her diary on July 31: “Again there is no unity among the commanders - it’s a shame. The biggest and, as it turns out, useless losses were suffered by the Guard - shame and disgrace!”
I must say that the Guards cavalry was still lucky. During the operation, Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander M.V. Alekseev, receiving information about the failures of the offensive, several times ordered Bezobrazov to hurry up the cavalry divisions and throw them into battle. That is, not into a breakthrough made by infantry in the enemy’s defense, as was intended before the start of the attack on Kovel, but precisely for the assault on German forts. There is hardly any doubt what would await the cavalrymen in this case... Well aware of this, Bezobrazov invariably refused General Alekseev such a hopeless demand.
The main culprit for the failure and heavy losses was presented exclusively by General Bezobrazov. In a personal letter to the emperor dated August 13 Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich mentioned: “I sincerely mourn the losses of the guard and the negative results of its heroic exploits due to the lack of management and lack of leadership of the commanders. Almost all the officers unanimously blame General Bezobrazov, who, due to incredible stubbornness and the imagination that he is a gifted commander, is now for the third time in vain destroying thousands of lives dear to you without result”...
Due to such large losses in the Guards Infantry (for example, in the 3rd Guards infantry division General V.V. Chernavin only twenty-six officers remained in the ranks), five officers from the cavalry guard regiments were sent to it by lot. And the fact that at the beginning of 1917 the guards units continued to stand in the South-Western and Western fronts, resulted in the success of the soldiers' revolt during the February Revolution of 1917 in the capital of the Russian Empire - Petrograd.
We have different attitudes towards the German Emperor of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II of Holstein-Gottorp. History buffs believe that he bore the surname Romanov and was Russian. This is not so bad, although it is still necessary to remind: Nicholas of Holstein-Gottorp became a “Romanov” only in 1917.
But here is a more serious gap in our knowledge about our “own” emperor. We are talking about: In which country's army did Nicholas II serve?
Don’t rush to answer that he was a colonel. This real colonels had higher ranks.
So, the criminal emperor Nicholas II Alexandrovich was born on May 6, 1868 in Tsarskoe Selo. His title is Emperor of All Russia, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. Colonel (1892).
However, the non-Russian “Russian” Emperor Nicholas II was on military service Great Britain. From the British monarchs, Nicholas II had the ranks of admiral of the fleet (1908) and field marshal of the British army (1915).
The first rank is mentioned in the Government Gazette of May 29 (June 11), 1908 (No. 116, p. 1) and in the Government Gazette of May 30 (June 12), 1908 (No. 117, p. 1 ). About the second rank - in the telegraph message “London, December 18th. King George granted the Sovereign Emperor the title of Field Marshal of the British Army,” published in the Government Gazette of December 20, 1915 (January 2, 1916; No. 295. p. 6).
Let's ask ourselves: what would such ownership of the ranks of a foreign army, say, our president, look like today? The answer is simple - monstrous!
Even then, before the revolution, it looked monstrous. A field marshal of the British army reigned on the Russian throne. Naturally, he brought the country to the Zionist revolution - he literally threw the Russian people into the crucible of the Semitic demon.
In the photo: a fragment of Valentin Serov’s painting “Nicholas II in the uniform of a colonel of the Scottish Gray Dragoons” (1902). Let us remember that Nicholas II received this title in Great Britain in 1896.
I hope that now the political game that the Romanov clan has been playing for 100 years on Russian soil will be better understood.
Andrey Tyunyaev, editor-in-chief of the President newspaper
By the way, it hangs in Edinburgh
All our emperors were chiefs of foreign regiments and I suspect that there may be many such portraits abroad.
Portrait of Nicholas II in the uniform of the Scottish Dragoons.
Prince of Edinburgh:))
True, the uniforms are similar.
Valentin Serov. "Emperor Alexander III in the uniform of the Danish Royal Life Guards Regiment against the backdrop of the northern facade of Fredensborg Castle." 1899.
Fredensborg Castle is the place where Alexander III stayed during his trips to his wife’s homeland, Denmark. The main nationalist of all Rus' - and in the uniform of one of the NATO countries!
Nicholas II
Ruled 1894-1917, 1/128 Russian, 127/128 German, wife German.
In general, he continued the line of the pope, Alexander III. During the first All-Russian population census in 1897, Nicholas II also filled out a census form, where in the “occupation” column he indicated: owner of the Russian land.
Then the revolution of 1905 began, the essence of which was precisely how one hangover, not chosen by anyone, became the “master of the Russian land.” At first, the owner tried to suppress everything by force, troops, Cossacks (who acted as riot police), but it didn’t work out. In October 1905, backed to the wall by the general strike in the country, Nicholas II signed the “Manifesto”, which turned Russia into a parliamentary monarchy. Yes, reduced, but... If we compare with modern times, after 1905 Nicholas II had less power than Putin has today. Real opposition parties sat in the Duma; there was no nationwide system of election fraud. The Tsar did not have his own pocket party in power and did not picture it with 2/3 of the votes in the Duma.
Stanislav Maslovsky. "Spring 1905"
Riot police make money by chipping enamel.
The next crisis came during the First World War. Things at the front were not going very well; the people blamed everything on the German queen, who allegedly spied for her fellow tribesmen. Yes, plus Rasputin, plus the complete lack of political talent on the part of the Tsar himself. On December 30, 1916, the British Ambassador Buchanan advised Nicholas to dismiss unpopular people in power and “earn the trust of the people.” To which the proud descendant of the Holstein princes replied: “Do you think that I must earn the trust of my people, or that they must earn my trust?”
In the end, with this approach, Nicholas II was left alone and was overthrown by the February Revolution of 1917. No one came to his defense, the country, on the contrary, rejoiced. Even the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church immediately recognized the new democratic authorities.
P.S.
Since 1924, the head of the House of Romanov has been Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (born from the marriage of the son of Alexander II and a German princess). And since 1938 - Vladimir Kirillovich, his son (also from a marriage with a German princess, and his cousin). On June 26, 1941, this Grand Duke, as Russian as Nicholas II (at 1/128), made a statement of full support for Hitler's attack on Russia:
APPEAL
HEADS OF THE RUSSIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE
GOVERNOR GRAND DUKE VLADIMIR KIRILLOVICH
At this terrible hour, when Germany and almost all the peoples of Europe declared crusade against communism-Bolshevism, which has enslaved and oppressed the people of Russia for twenty-four years, I appeal to all the faithful and devoted sons of our Motherland with an appeal: to contribute, to the best of our ability and ability, to the overthrow of the Bolshevik government and the liberation of our Fatherland from the terrible yoke of communism.
Vladimir Kirillovich met the end of the war in 1945 in the so-called. 1st Russian National Army (former Abwehr punitive division "Russland" of Smyslovsky), crossing the Liechtenstein border with them. These are the vicissitudes of the great German dynasty.
