Imperial Guard (Russia)
The Russian Imperial Guard, officially known as the Leib Guard (Russian: Лейб-гвардия leyb-gvardiya, from German Leib "life"; cf. Life Guards) were military units serving as personal guards of the Emperor of Russia. Peter the Great founded the first such units following the Prussian practice in the 1690s, to replace the politically motivated Streltsy.
Read more about Imperial Guard (Russia): Organization, Ranks
Famous quotes containing the words imperial and/or guard:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)