Internal Organization
The quartered military forces were being formed from among married soldiers, who had already served in the army for no less than six years, and local men (mainly, peasants) between 18 and 45 years of age. Both of these categories were called master settlers (поселяне-хозяева). The rest of the locals of the same age, who had been fit for military service, but had not been chosen, were being enlisted as assistants to their masters and were a part of reserve military subdivisions. The children of the military settlers were being enlisted in the cantonists at the age of 7. Upon reaching the age of 18, they were transferred to the military units. The settlers would retire at the age of 45 and continue to serve in hospitals and other establishments.
Each military settlement consisted of 60 interconnected houses (дома-связи) with a regiment of 228 men. Each such house had four masters with indivisible household economy. The life in a military settlement was strictly controlled. The peasants had to undergo military training, which caused tardiness and unseasonableness in agricultural activities. Corporal punishment was a common phenomenon. Military settlements were being created on fiscal lands (казённые земли), which would often provoke riots among the state-owned peasants (казённые крестьяне), like the ones in Kholynskaya and Vysotskaya volosts of the Novgorod guberniya in 1817 and among the Bug Cossacks in 1817–1818. Alexander I, however, stood his ground and announced that "military settlements will be created, even if we have to pave the road from Saint Petersburg to Chudov with dead bodies". By 1825, Russia had already built military settlements in Petersburg, Novgorod (along the Volkhov River and near Staraya Russa), Mogilev, Sloboda Ukraine, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav and other guberniyas. They made up for almost one fourth of the Russian army (one third, according to other accounts) and accumulated some 32 million rubles worth of savings, but still were not able to satisfy the army’s recruiting needs.
Read more about this topic: Military Settlement
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