In the name of Jesus Christ and Christianity.
They knew Peter Alexeevich when he was only “Petrusha” – how bland a label for this dark-haired youth, always playing pranks in the dim corridors of the Preobrajensky palace. They themselves were notorious hooligans – mercilessly attacking birds’ nests, peasants’ gardens – and always ready for any dirty trick. In the village they drove pigeons from pillar to post, brawled with each other and dragged serf girls to the hayloft. They wrote or read poorly or sometimes not at all, but many of them knew well the taste of vodka and – Oh God have mercy upon the fools! – the hellish herb nicotine, found in the contraband tobacco which could provoke punishment of excision of the nostrils. These same were to be the pride of Russia, her glory and honour, who “with weapons, broke through darkness to the light” – the guardsmen of Peter the Great.
They were his childhood playmates, youths brought to the palace “for the tsar’s military games”. Some came from the heated boyar chambers, covered with Persian carpets; some from the remote manors of the poor nobility, hidden under overgrown burdock and with pigs scratching against the fences; and many came from peasant’s hovels, sunken and lacking even chimneys, so the smoke of the fire escaped through gaps around doors. Whether Duke or serf they all had a rude temper as this was a barbarian land - barbarians yes, but young and inquisitive.
The smell of incense and the dust of centuries that pervaded their antiquated abodes made them sick. As much as their young lord they thirsted for something new and unknown. They became “nestlings of Peter’s nest” as a poet would later put it, the closest companions-in-arms to the young tsar of an emerging power. With European weapons they broke through the darkness into the light. By barbaric methods they had expelled barbarity from Russia.
At first they were few in number – just 300. They were quartered near Moscow, in the village of Preobrajenskoe, where Peter Alexeevich was whiling away the time. When their numbers exceeded 1000 some of them were moved to the nearby village of Semyonovskoe. Thus began the formation of the two best known regiments in Russia, Preobrajensky and Semyonovsky. But it was only the beginning, because these regiments only appeared in 1692, on the eve of the first Azov campaign, and their guard status was only granted at the close of 1699. Long before that time they were not only the bodyguards of Peter, playing a vital role in his struggle for the throne, but also the first Russian soldiers in the full meaning of the word – men rigorously trained by foreign officers in European methods of waging war. History has recorded the appearance of the first soldier of Russia - Aleksey Bukhvostov, a guardsman of the Preobrajensky regiment – cast in bronze by the great Rastrelli on the orders of the monarch. Peter, Aleksey Bukhvostov and others were marching in the meadows around Moscow with a passion.
Soon enough the manoeuvres and wargames of the young tsar were to change for more bloody pastimes from which the guardsmen would not rest for a quarter of a century. Twice they burned in the fire of Azov, and for years they choked in the forest swamps of the Baltic while the salty wind of the Caspian aggrevated their wounds. From Schlezvig to Dagestan, from Estland to Moldavia - from the East to the West, from the South to the North, their trail was covered in bones but also glory. Those who survived the bullets and cannonballs of Poltava, the disease of Riga, the desperate thirst near the full-flowing river Prut, would consider themselves fortunate indeed. We won’t describe the battle tactics of the Guards – it is known to everyone who has even a little knowledge of Russian history. As always we are more interested in the spirit of the Guards, a formation with a history that has little in common with other units of the Russian armed forces.
The Guards were distinct from other infantry units in many ways, beginning with their numbers. During the reign of Peter I an ordinary infantry regiment numbered from 1000 to 1200 men, but the Semyonovsky regiment had a complement of 2800 rank and file, and the Preobrajensky regiment even more – 3600, including the famous ‘bombardiers’ company, commanded by the tsar himself. The Guard’s uniform, both Hungarian and German in style, has been described in other articles. We would remind the reader that it was not distinctive from the ordinary army uniform, nor from the uniform of other European armies. This makes it possible to use the figures in this set, as well as the previous sets “Dragoons of Peter I” and “Infantry of Charles XII”, for not only the Great Northern War but also other conflicts of the time, most notably the War of the Spanish Succession. On our site you will observe several figures of Russian pikemen painted in the white colours of the soldiers of the Prince of Savoy, and also grenadiers of Charles XII in the red uniform of the Duke of Marlborough. Having mentioned the pikemen it is appropriate to comment further on them. As already detailed in our article on “Infantry of Charles XII”, in the first decade of the XVIII century the bayonet finally made the pike obsolete as an infantry weapon. Things were different in the army of Peter I, where no pikes were issued when the army was first formed, but one sixth of the infantry were given them in 1706. In general pikes endured far longer in the Russian army – throughout the Crimean campaigns, i.e. the first half of the XVIII century, 286 pikes were issued to each regiment. However, after the death of Peter I, they were mainly used against the disorganized attacks of the Tartar cavalry by using them to make the portable field protections called in Russia “The Spanish Rider”. The length of the pike in the Russian army was about four metres (for comparison that of the Swedish army before it disappeared was almost 50% longer, and about a third of infantry were issued with them, which we intend to reproduce in a set “Guards of Charles XII”). To better arm our 12 pikemen we have made a separate sprue for the pikes. Each is 58mm long, and if a lesser length is required then they can simply be shortened. Moreover, the pikemen has a short sword and pistol under a belt, and a cartridge bag was carried in grenadier fashion instead of the belt plate. As far as the grenadiers are concerned, some critics may notice the absence of powder horns which were required by regulations at the time. The fact is that the matchlock used was loaded in 12 stages, and although the rate of fire had increased compared to earlier weapons (in the era of Richelieu, for example, a musket was loaded in 30 stages) it was still clearly very slow. As a result in battle soldiers preferred to prime the musket directly from a paper cartridge to shortcut the procedure. It is worth mentioning here that the arms for Preobrajensky and Semyonovsky were acquired from Liege and Maastricht as the domestic industry was not capable of fulfilling the army’s needs. Only around 1715 did the guards receive muskets made by the Tula, Sestroretsk and Lipetsk factories, which were cheaper, but nonetheless of higher quality.
In order to describe the original appearance of the Russian guardsman of that era, it is necessary to mention the famous leather helmets that replaced the former "Hungarian"-style fur cylindrical caps. This impressive head-dress, that according to the reviews of some foreign envoys made the grenadiers look like the praetorians of ancient Rome, had two long peaks – a front one that was upright and decorated by a plaque with the State Emblem (tin for soldiers and silver for officers), and a back one that was almost horizontal, at the base of which a tube for fastening ostrich-plumes was fixed. One can’t say precisely when they came first into use. It’s known only that the first samples were ordered from England in 1706, and that those samples did not please many higher ranking officers and, in particular, colonel von Martens who, in the absence of the tsar, performed the role of the commander of the Preobrajensky regiment. Nevertheless, by 1712 the guards grenadiers undoubtedly wore them. On all battle-paintings devoted to the Poltava battle of 1709 grenadiers also wear them, however none of these pictures are contemporary with the battle.
Our new set consists of six mounted figures and thirty foot ones. Among the former you can see a foreign officer in a wig and cuirass that generally speaking wasn’t required by Russian regulations of the time. There is also a mounted trumpeter and a standard-bearer. In our previous set of the dragoons of Peter I, despite the large number of poses, both a trumpeter and standard-bearer were missing. Now we have corrected this omission. It is not necessary to explain any further why several cavalrymen are present among the foot guardsmen: we have already written about the universal role of the Russian infantry, that was on many occasions put on horseback during the Great Northern war. Among the foot figures of our set we also include a trumpeter, drummer and junior officer-standard-bearer. In accordance with the linear tactics of the day the officers with their pikes, decorated by silk brushes, towered above the ranks of soldiers stood in or behind the line, serving like a signal flag or identification sign. The sergeant, which could be easily recognized by the silver edging on his hat, is armed with a massive halberd. These halberds were only good to level the soldiers in a line. Being a pragmatist to the core, Peter Alexeevich openly called halberdiers idlers, and tried to reduce their numbers (no more than 16 in an infantry army regiment) by any means, but he didn’t decide to abolish them altogether. Nine grenadiers in different poses are led by an officer with a musket. Unlike the commanders of other units, the grenadiers’ officers were armed with long-barrel guns. The puttees of grenadiers’ gloves in the Russian guards were considerably shorter than those of the Swedes’. As far as the Moscow strelets figure is concerned, it would be wrong to take it exclusively for the period of the Great Northern war. The clothes and armament of the streltsy were almost unchanged for the 150 years from the moment of their inception in the middle of the XVI century and to their complete disappearance in the second decade of the XVIII century. We also draw your attention to the tall figure of Peter I, leaning against a walking stick. This pose is characteristic enough, if we can trust to most monuments. Next to him resting a telescope on his hip, is – as a poet put it – “a commoner favourite of fortune, semi sovereign ruler” – a permanent favourite of the tsar, an adroit intriguant, a brave military leader and a talented administrator, no less known than tsar Peter himself, an arrogant dandy, Alexander Menshikov. According to the rumours spread about him by the higher aristocracy, this was a man who had traded with pies in his youth, but in fact he was a poor nobleman, son of a court groom, who couldn’t sign his name properly. He became the Duke of Ijora, an Earl of the Holy Roman Empire, and he possessed an extraordinary privilege in Russia – of having his own regiment - Ingermanlandsky – that according to the regulations was equal to the Guards in status. There was another characteristic and curious detail: being of very ignoble origin, Alexander Danilovich Menshikov recruited more than half of the officers of the regiment from the lowest ranks of society. With the death of his friend and sovereign, the hero of the Great Northern war was stripped of all property, rank and rewards, and was exiled to a god-forsaken province: since it was no secret that, while fearlessly attacking the enemies’ bastions, the brilliant Duke Ijorskiy also fearlessly attacked the state treasury. The regiment that was so suspicious to the new government immediately lost its former high status.