Imperial Russian Army - Army Organization

Army Organization

The Imperial Russian Army entered the Napoleonic Wars organized administratively and in the field on the same principles as it had been in the 18th century of units being assigned to campaign headquarters, and the "Army" being known either for its senior commander, or the area of its operations. Administratively, the regiments were assigned to Military Inspections, the predecessors of military districts, and included the conscript training depots, garrisons and fortress troops and munitions magazines.

The Army had been thoroughly reorganised on the Prussian model by the tsar's father Paul I against wishes of most of its officer Corps, and with his demise immediate changes followed to remove much of the Prussianness from its character. Although the Army had conventional European parts within it such as the monarch's guard, the infantry and cavalry of the line and field artillery, it also included a very large contingent of semi-regular Cossacks that in times of rare peace served to guard the Russian Empire's southern borders, and in times of war served as fully fledged light cavalry, providing invaluable reconnaissance service often far better than that available to other European armies due to the greater degree of initiative and freedom of movement by Cossack detachments. The Ukrainian lands of the Empire also provided most of the Hussar and Ulan regiments for the regular light cavalry. Another unusual feature of the Army that was seen twice during the period was the constitution of the Narodnoe Opolcheniye, for the first time since the coming to power of the Romanov dynasty.

In 1806 most of the Inspections were abolished, and replaced by divisions based on the French model although still territorially based. By 1809 there were twenty-five infantry divisions as permanent field formations, each organised around three infantry and one artillery brigades. When Barclay de Tolly became the Minister of War in 1810, he instituted further reorganization and other changes in the Army, down to company level, that saw the creation of separate grenadier divisions, and dedication of one brigade in each division to the yeger light infantry for skirmishing in open order formations.