military revolution

military revolution or military revolution- a radical change in the strategy and tactics of military affairs due to significant changes in public administration. This concept was proposed by Michael Roberts in the 1950s. Studying Sweden in the 1560s and 1660s, he began to look for fundamental changes in the European method of warfare, which were caused by the introduction of firearms. M. Roberts connected military technologies with much broader historical consequences. In his opinion, innovations in tactics, training of troops (forces) and in military doctrine, carried out by the Dutch and Swedes in the 1560-1660s, increased the effectiveness of firearms and created the need for better trained troops and, therefore, standing armies. These changes, in turn, had significant political implications: a different level of administration was needed to support and supply the army with funds, people and provisions, in addition, finances and the creation of new governing institutions were needed. "Thus," explains Roberts, "modern military art has made possible - and necessary - the creation of a modern state."

The concept was developed by Geoffrey Parker, adding to the already existing manifestations of the military revolution, artillery forts capable of withstanding new siege artillery, the growth of the Spanish army and such naval innovations as battleships, giving a side salvo. J. Parker also emphasized the global significance of this phenomenon, linking the military revolution in Europe with the rise of the West to world domination. Some historians (among them Christopher Duffy) have found this concept to be exaggerated and misleading.

Origin of the concept

The concept of the Military Revolution was first proposed by M. Roberts in 1955. On January 21, 1955, he gave a lecture at Queen's University Belfast, which was later published as an article "The Military Revolution 1560-1660". It sparked a debate in historical circles that lasted for 50 years, in which the concept was formalized. Although historians often attack Roberts's findings, they usually agree with his main conclusion that European military affairs changed radically in the early modern period.

Chronology

M. Roberts placed his military revolution between 1560 and 1660. In his opinion, linear tactics were developed during this period, developing the advantages of firearms. Be that as it may, this chronology is disputed by many scholars.

Airton and Prince stress the importance of the "infantry revolution" that began in the early 14th century. David Iltis notes that the actual change in firearms and the development of the military doctrine associated with this change took place at the beginning of the 16th century, and not at the end of it, as M. Roberts determined.

Others advocate a later period of change in military affairs. For example, Jeremy Black believes that the key period was 1660-1710. During these years there was an exponential growth in the size of European armies. While Clifford Rogers developed the idea of successful military revolutions in different periods of time: the first, "infantry", - in the XIV century, the second, "artillery", - in the XV century, the third, "fortification", in the XVI century, the fourth, "gunshot" - in the 1580-1630s, and, finally, the fifth, associated with the growth of European armies, between 1650 and 1715. Similarly, J. Parker extended the period of the military revolution from 1450 to 1800. During this period, in his opinion, the Europeans achieved superiority over the rest of the world. . Not surprisingly, some scholars question the revolutionary nature of the changes that spanned four centuries. . K. Rogers proposed to compare the military revolution with the theory of punctuated equilibrium, that is, he suggested that behind short breakthroughs in military sphere longer periods of relative stagnation followed.

Tactics

Line tactics

Shallow formations are ideal for defense, but they are too clumsy for offensive action. The longer the front, the more difficult it is to keep the formation and avoid breaks, to maneuver, especially turning. Gustav Adolf understood well that assault columns like those used by Tilly were faster and more agile. The Swedish king used them when required, such as at the Battle of Alta Vesta. As a result, armies began to use more subtle formations, but with slow evolutions and trying on tactical considerations. . Firearms were not yet so effective as to single-handedly dominate the disposition of troops, other considerations were also taken into account: for example, the experience of the units, the designated target, the terrain, etc. The discussion about the line and column went on throughout the 18th century until Napoleonic times and was accompanied by some bias towards the deep columns of the late campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Ironically, lowering the depth of cavalry formations proved to be a more permanent change that Gustavus Adolphus made. In conjunction with less emphasis on pistol fire, this measure resulted in a preference for melee fire, which was the exact opposite of the trend advocated by M. Roberts.

Trace Italy

The concept of linear tactics by M. Roberts was criticized by J. Parker, who asked why the seemingly outdated Spanish thirds defeated the Swedes at the Battle of Nördlingen.

Instead of linear tactics, J. Parker proposed the emergence of a bastion system of fortifications (or trace italienne) in early modern Europe as a key technological element. According to this view, the difficulty of taking such fortifications resulted in a profound change in strategy. “Wars turned into a series of protracted sieges,” says J. Parker, “and battles in the open field became a rarity in regions where trace italienne existed. In the highest degree,” he continues, “military geography”, in other words, the existence or absence of trace italienne in this area, limited the strategy in the early modern period and led to the creation of large armies, necessary for the siege of new fortifications and to garrison them.Thus, J. Parker established the emergence of a military revolution at the beginning of the 16th century.He also gave to it a new significance, not only as a factor in the growth of the state, but also the main factor, together with the "marine revolution", in the rise of the West in comparison with other civilizations.

This model has been criticized. Jeremy Black noted that the development of the state allowed the growth of the size of armies, and not vice versa, and accused J. Parker of "technological determinism". Subsequently, the calculations presented by J. Parker to defend his idea of the growth of armies were severely criticized by D. Iltis for lack of consistency, and David Parrot proved that the era of trace italienne did not give a significant increase in the size of the French troops and that in the late period of the Thirty Years war, there is an increase in the share of cavalry in the armies, which, in contrast to the thesis of J. Parker about the prevalence of siege warfare, shows a decrease in its importance.

The infantry revolution and the decline of the cavalry

Some medievalists developed the idea of an infantry revolution that took place in early XIV century, when in some famous battles, such as the battle of Courtrai, the battle of Bannockburn, the battle of Almyra, heavy cavalry was defeated by infantry. Be that as it may, it should be noted that in all these battles the infantry was dug in or located on rough terrain not suitable for cavalry. The same can be said about other battles of the 14th and 15th centuries in which the cavalry was defeated. In fact, infantry had triumphed before in similar situations, such as at the Battle of Legnano in 1176, but in the open the infantry had to prepare for the worst, as shown, for example, by the Battle of Pata and the Battle of Formigny, in which the vaunted English archers were easily broken. Despite this, the experience of battles such as Courtrai and Bannockburn showed that the myth of the invincibility of the knights had disappeared, which in itself was important for the transformation of the military art of the Middle Ages.

More significant was the "return of the heavy infantry," as the historian Carey called it. Pikemen could, unlike other foot soldiers, stand in the open against heavy cavalry. Requiring drill and discipline, such infantry did not make such demands on individual training, unlike archers and knights. The change from the heavily armed knight to the foot soldier allowed armies to expand in size at the end of the 15th century, as infantry could be trained more quickly and could be recruited in greater numbers. But this change has been slow.

The final development in the 15th century of plate armor for both rider and horse, coupled with the use of a stop that could support a heavier spear, convinced that the heavy rider remained a formidable warrior. Without cavalry, a 15th-century army could hardly have achieved a decisive victory on the battlefield. The outcome of the battle could be decided by archers or pikemen, but only cavalry could cut the retreat or pursue. In the 16th century, lighter, less expensive, but more professional cavalry appeared. Because of this, the share of cavalry in the army continued to grow, so that during the last battles of the Thirty Years' War, cavalry outnumbered infantry as never since the classical Middle Ages. Another change that took place in the 15th century was the improvement of siege artillery, which made the old fortifications very vulnerable. But the superiority of the attacking side in siege warfare did not last very long. As Philippe Contamain noted, as with any dialectical process of any era, progress in the art of siege was answered in the form of progress in the art of fortification and vice versa. Charles VIII's conquest of Italy in 1494 demonstrated the power of siege artillery, but in the early years of the 16th century, fortifications began to appear in the region that were specifically designed to withstand artillery fire. The entire effect of the "artillery revolution" of the 15th century was negated soon enough by the development of the bastion system or trace italienne. But the military superiority, which gave a powerful siege park, was expressed in a considerable strengthening royalty, which we observe in some European countries at the end of the 15th century.

Army size

The growth in the size of armies and its influence on the development of modern states is an important point in the theory of military revolution. There are several sources for studying the size of armies in different eras.

Administrative sources

By their nature, they are the most objective sources available. From the time of the Napoleonic Wars, European commanders had at their disposal reports on the strength of their units. These reports are the main source for the study of conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although they are not without flaws: different armies take into account the available strength in different ways, and, in some cases, reports are corrected by commanding officers so that they look attractive to superiors.

Other sources are lists of personnel, non-periodic reports on personnel under arms. Personnel rolls are the main source for pre-19th-century armies, but by their very nature they lack integrity and do not take into account long-term sick leave. Despite this, they remain the most reliable sources for this period and provide a general picture of the forces of the army. Third, payrolls represent a different set of information. They are especially useful for studying military spending, but they are not as reliable as personnel lists, as they only show payments and not actual soldiers under arms. Until the 19th century, "dead souls," people listed by officers in order to receive a salary for them, were a frequent occurrence. Finally, "orders of battle", lists of units without a designation of numbers, are very important for the 16th-18th centuries. Prior to this period, armies lacked the organizational capacity to establish permanent formations, so the battle order usually consisted of listing the commanders and troops subordinate to them. An exception from the times of Antiquity is the Roman army, which from its early period developed a significant military organization. The battle warrant cannot be considered a reliable source, as units during a campaign, or even during peacetime, rarely, if ever, reach the declared numbers.

Narrative sources

Modern historians use many of the administrative sources available now, but this was not the case in the past. Ancient authors too often give numbers without naming sources, and there are very few cases where we can be sure that they used administrative sources. This is especially true when it comes to enemy armies, when access to administrative resources was in any case problematic. In addition, there are a number of additional problems when we consider the writings of ancient authors. They can be very biased in their reporting, and inflating the number of enemies has always been one of their favorite propaganda devices. Even when giving a balanced account, many historians, without military experience, lack the technical judgment to properly evaluate and criticize their sources. On the other hand, they had access to first-hand stories, which can be very interesting, but in the realm of numbers, however, it is rarely accurate. Historians regard the ancient narrative sources as very unreliable in terms of numbers, so that it is impossible to use them as administrative ones. Comparisons between modern times and antiquity are therefore very problematic.

Whole army size

A clear distinction must be made between the entire army, that is, all the military forces of a given political entity, and the field army, tactical units capable of moving as a single force during a campaign. The growth of the entire army is considered by some researchers as a key indicator of the Military Revolution. There are two main theses in this regard: either it is considered as a consequence of the economic and demographic growth of the 17th-18th centuries. , or - as the main reason for the growth of bureaucratization and centralization of the modern state in the same period. However, some who disagree with the main thesis dispute these views. For example, I. A. A. Thompson noted how the growth of the Spanish army in the XVI-XVII centuries. rather contributed to the economic collapse of Spain and led to the weakening of the central government in opposition to regional separatism. At the same time, Simon Adams questioned the growth itself in the first half of the 17th century. Growth was noticeable in the second half of the 17th century, when states took over the recruitment and armament of their armies, abandoning the commission system that prevailed until the end of the Thirty Years' War. The organization of the system of local and provincial militia at this time in a number of countries (and the growing importance of the local aristocracy, the so-called "re-feudalization of the armies", especially in Eastern Europe) contributed to the expansion of the manpower base of national armies, despite the fact that foreign mercenaries still accounted for a significant percentage in all European armies.

Size of field armies

The size of field armies throughout history has been dictated by supply constraints, primarily provisions. Until the middle of the 17th century, armies mainly survived due to the terrain. They had no lines of communication. They moved to supply, and often their movement was dictated by supply considerations. Even though some regions with good communications could supply large armies for a longer period, they still had to disperse when they left those areas with a good supply base. The maximum size of field armies remained in the region of 50,000 and below throughout the entire period. Reports of numbers above this number always come from unreliable sources and should be taken with skepticism.

In the second half of the 17th century, the situation changed dramatically. Armies began to be supplied through a network of depots connected by supply lines, which significantly increased the size of the field armies. In the XVIII - early XIX centuries, before the advent of railways, the size of the field armies reached numbers in excess of 100,000.

Conclusion

The deterministic theory of military revolution based on technology has given way to models based more on slow evolution, in which technological progress plays a smaller role in comparison with organizational, managerial, logistical and general non-material improvements. The revolutionary nature of these changes became apparent after a long evolution, which gave Europe a dominant position in the world of military affairs, which would later be confirmed by the industrial revolution.

Notes

Black 2008
See Black (2008)
Roberts, The Military Revolution
Ayton and Price, The Medieval Military
Eltis, The Military
Black, A Military
Rogers, The Military
Parker, The Military Revolution, 1500-1800
see Ayton and Price, The Medieval Military, and also Childs, Warfare
Clifford J. Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years" War" in: The military Revolution Debate. Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, C.J. Rogers, ed. (Oxford 1995), p. 76-77
The line formations marked an increase in the defensive potential of the infantry through an emphasis on static firepower and a decline in offensive capability due to shallower formations. Instead of infantry, the outcome of the battle was increasingly decided by the cavalry flank. see Parrott, Strategy p.227-252
In this regard, the introduction of regimental guns should be considered as one of the options, but not as an improvement, since the increase in firepower was accompanied by a decrease in the offensive capabilities of the infantry and the addition of an essential burden for them. For this reason, many believed that the game was not worth the candle. For example, France, then on the rise of its greatness, abandoned regimental guns after a short introduction of them in its army.
Barker, Military Intellectual p.91 the more experienced the unit, the finer the formation
see Chandler, Art of Warfare p.130-137
The Military Revolution, A myth?
Parrott, Richelieu's Army
Parrott, Strategy and Tactics
Ayton and Price, The Medieval Military, see also Verbruggen, Art of Warfare
Carey, Warfare in the Medieval World
Vale, War and Chivalry p.127
Guthrie, The Later Thirty Years War p.42
Contamine, War in the Middle Ages p.101
Rogers, The military revolutions of the Hundred Years War p.272-275
For example, between the review at Duben and the review at Breitenfeld, the Swedish army lost more than 10% of its infantry in just two days (see Guthie, Battles p.23), this type of command was typical before a decisive battle.
see Lynn, Clio in arms
Charles Tilly, Coercion Capital and European States
Thompson, War and Government
Adams, Tactics or Politics?
see Engels, Alexander the Great, for a treatment of the subject
see Lynn, Feeding Mars, for a discussion on the subject

Links

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Barker, Thomas The Military Intellectual and Battle(Albany 1975)
Black, Jeremy, "Was There a Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe?" History Today 2008 58(7): 34-41, in EBSCO
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Eltis, David. The Military Revolution in sixteenth century Europe(London 1995)
Guthrie, William P. Battles of the Thirty Years War, From White Mountain to Nordlingen(Westport 2002) ISBN 0-313-32028-4
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Hall, Bert and DeVries, Kelly, "Essay Review - the 'Military Revolution' Revisited", Technology and Culture 31 (1990), pp. 500-507.
Howard, Michael War in European History(1976), chs 1-4
Kennedy, Paul M., The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Changes and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1988)
Kleinschmidt, Harald, "Using the Gun: Manual Drill and the Proliferation of Portable Firearms, " The Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, no. 3 (1999), pp. 601-629.
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Lynn, John A. "Clio in arms: the role of the military variable in shaping history", Journal of Military History 55 (1991), pp. 83-95
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McNeill, William H. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society since AD 1000(Chicago, 1982)
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Parrott, David A. "The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe", History Today, 42 (1992)
Parrott, David A. "Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years' War" in Rogers, Clifford J (editor). The Military Revolution. Readings on the military transformation of Early Modern Europe(Oxford 1995)
Parrott, David A. Richelieu's Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624-1642(Cambridge 2001) ISBN 0-521-79209-6
Paul, Michael C. "The Military Revolution in Russia, 1550-1682," Journal of Military History 2004 68(1): 9-45,
Raudzens, George. "War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of Technological Determinism in Military History", The Journal of Military History, Vol. 54, no. 4 (1990), pp. 403-434.
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Rogers, Clifford J. (editor). The Military Revolution. Readings on the military transformation of Early Modern Europe(Oxford 1995)
Rogers, Clifford J."The military revolutions of the Hundred Years War", The Journal of Military History 57 (1993), pp. 258-75.
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War, military affairs in history human society, civilizations originally occupied and continue to occupy an extremely important place. And it doesn’t matter whether war is an innate state of any society, a consequence of some kind of “militant instinct”, one of the varieties of agonistic behavior inherent in the biological world, or whether war is a “cultural invention” closely related to the socio-political evolution of society. An important consequence is that classical political history appears to us primarily as a string of wars, interrupted by short periods of peace, which were usually used to prepare for a new war. The importance of wars cannot be underestimated. Like any border situation, war serves as a kind of measure of the strength of both an individual and a whole society, its ability to respond to a challenge from outside. AT war time their best and worst sides are much more pronounced. Moreover, although it has long been believed that inter arma silent Musae“Nevertheless, war to a certain extent acted in the history of human civilization as one of the most important engines of progress. In the 19th century the Prussian military theorist K. Clausewitz, giving the definition of war, wrote that "... War is ... a genuine instrument of politics, the continuation of political relations by other means." Since ancient times, the army has been one of the most important, if not the most important, instrument of the ruling elite of a particular society in the implementation of their political plans. The success of their implementation directly depended on the level of development of military affairs. The desire to keep up with possible adversaries in this vital aspect inevitably stimulated progress in military technology, and after that - in tactics and strategy. And it is no secret that military affairs developed especially rapidly at turning points in history, when world civilization faced the need to choose a new path of development.

Naturally, this could not but arouse great interest in the study of war as a sociocultural phenomenon, and in the fact that in society there is an interest in the history of military affairs, in military history generally quite explainable. Another thing is that this interest, due to various subjective factors, can be blocked, relegated to the periphery of social and scientific consciousness, but sooner or later it returns anyway. So, two incredibly destructive and bloody world wars that died down in the 1st half. XX century., contributed to the widespread pacifist sentiment, which reached its climax in the 60s - early. 70s of the past century. As a result, professional historians tried, if possible, to avoid doing research on military history, focusing their interest on studying other areas of the life of human society, since the range of historical studies has significantly expanded due to the widespread introduction of microhistorical and historical-anthropological approaches into practice (in military history the widespread use of the historical-anthropological approach is associated with the name of the English historian J. Keegan, who first used the term face on battle).

However, the decline of military history research, caused by the widespread pacifist views, came into conflict with the interest that persisted in society in the problems of studying military affairs in its past and present. The resulting void began to be rapidly filled with works made by non-professionals, the quality of which did not always meet the high standards of historical knowledge. All this led to the return of professional historians to the field of military historical research. The last quarter of the last century and the beginning of the current century were marked by a rapid growth of publications on military history prepared by professional historians, the emergence of military historical societies, the release of a wide variety of almanacs and periodicals, affecting in one way or another almost all aspects of military history - from purely technical to military anthropological. Military-historical knowledge abroad is now experiencing a kind of renaissance.

With some delay, Russia, the Russian historical community, also joined this process. Until ser. 80s 20th century military-historical subjects were not held in high esteem by domestic historians. This seems all the more surprising, given the role and importance that the army and military affairs had in history. Russian state and societies throughout their history. Perhaps the inattention of Russian historians to military historical problems was inherited from Russian classical historiography, which was characterized by some disregard for the study of questions of the military history of Russia, and even more so of the countries surrounding it. As a matter of course, there was an opinion that this is the prerogative of military historians. The latter, as the British historian F. Tallett aptly noted, both in the 19th and 20th centuries, were, as a rule, teachers of military schools and academies. They usually approached the study of military history in a very pragmatic way - they looked for, first of all, recipes for victories in it. Hence their desire to teach their students examples of how to properly plan operations, lead troops, use different types of troops and weapons, etc., etc. That is why military historians, with rare exceptions, wrote the history of wars, and not military history, which is by no means the same thing. Military and civilian historians of both pre-Soviet and Soviet times, sometimes dealing with closely related problems and issues, spoke about the same thing on different languages. This, on the one hand, led to parallelism in research, and on the other hand, did not allow a holistic analysis of the processes that took place in the development of domestic military affairs and art.

Only in the 2nd floor. 80s, with a serious delay against the West, the situation began to gradually change in better side. In the wake of perestroika and the reassessment of values it caused, interest in history, including military history, rapidly grew in Soviet society. The demand for military-historical literature increased rapidly, as evidenced by the appearance of many articles and independent, non-state periodicals on relevant topics. Then book publishing companies joined the case, which, in the conditions of economic liberalization and the formation of market relations, immediately reacted to it, first starting to reprint the old military-historical literature, and then proceeding to publish the new one. And, repeating the path traveled earlier in the West, the first niche to be filled was the work of non-professionals, the scientific level of which varied greatly - from serious and thorough to outright scandalous. This could not but cause a response from the historical community, especially since in the 2nd half. 90s of the past century, a new generation of Russian historians is being formed, more free in choosing the topics and methods of their research. This inspires hope in overcoming the noted by A.V. Malov, one of the brightest representatives of this generation of modern Russian historians, the imbalance between the general level of development of domestic historical science and the state of military historical research in the country.

An analysis of the available domestic military history literature shows that, first of all, there is an acute shortage of works of a non-descriptive nature - a lot of them have been published over the past two hundred years, and many of them are not so inaccessible, and some have been republished. No, the main problem is the absence of any significant number of analytical studies, especially of a comparative historical nature, in which an analysis of the main trends in the development of military affairs would be given. It cannot be said that there are no such works at all - they are, and at first glance there are many of them. These include, for example, studies prepared within the walls of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, or the reprinting of classic military history works. However, these works are clearly not enough to fully satisfy the existing hunger for serious, academic military history literature that reflects the latest trends in the study of problems of military history.

The main problem lies, first of all, in the fact that the processes of change in Russian military affairs (especially in the period before the 18th century) are considered either in complete isolation, or in very weak connection with the changes that took place at the same time for outside of Russia. Meanwhile, in the second half of the last century, historical science gradually began to move away from the previous view of history, inherited from the Enlightenment, as a continuous process of development along the path of progress, the same for all peoples and countries. The former Eurocentrism is gradually losing ground, and the European model of development is no longer considered by many historians to be the only true and correct one. The understanding of the essence of the historical process has also changed. It no longer looks like a wide arterial road stretching into the distance. On the contrary, the history of the development of world civilization is conceived as a multivariate, non-linear system, all elements of which are in close interaction and mutual influence. It is obvious that and Russian history is part of a general historical flow, therefore, the processes that took place in the countries surrounding Russia, one way or another, had an impact, direct or indirect, on the course of its development.

Thus, the Russian historical process, with all its characteristic differences, is part of the global historical flow, and, developing along its own special path, dictated by the peculiarities of formation and existence, the Russian society obeyed certain historical patterns that are inherent in one way or another to all human communities on the planet. certain stage of development. All this dictates the need to study the development of Russian military affairs in close connection with the changes in the military sphere that took place in neighboring states. However, in this case, it is impossible to conduct comparative historical research without drawing on broad historical analogies. You can, of course, close yourself within the narrow confines of a particular topic, but in this case, the results and inputs of the study will be to some extent flawed and have limited significance. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the fact that military affairs are influenced by other spheres of social life, in turn, influencing them.

One way or another, but inevitably, sooner or later, the problem arises of formulating some idea that could unite all these preliminary remarks into a single whole. In our opinion, such an idea, which makes it possible to tie together not only changes in military affairs, but also changes in the political, social, cultural development of Europe, Russia, Asia and the whole world as a whole, is the concept of a military revolution.

Serious changes in the tactics and strategy of the European armies, caused by the introduction of firearms, were noted by European scientists and specialists for a long time. They are reflected both in theoretical treatises and in the writings of the European military in the 2nd half of the 15th - early 19th centuries. However, the very term "Military Revolution" in relation to events in the military and political history of Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age was introduced into scientific circulation by the English historian M. Roberts.

Speaking in January 1955 with a lecture at the Queen's University in Belfast, he, according to his follower J. Parker, contrary to the established tradition, consider the 16th century. in the history of military affairs, the period, unremarkable, put forward an idea that was extremely “original, important and undoubtedly unique for studying the development of the art of war in post-Renaissance Europe.” The main provisions of this concept were outlined by Roberts in a separate article. Anticipating his thought, he noted that at the end of the Middle Ages, extremely important changes took place in the military affairs of Europe, which cannot but be called a military revolution. In his opinion, “... this revolution, when it was completed, had a profound impact on the general general course of European history. This event became a kind of watershed between the medieval world and the modern world. However, this revolution, oddly enough, was neglected by historians. Experts in military history were mainly interested in describing what happened, showing no interest in studying its impact on other areas of society; at the same time, social historians were not inclined to believe that new trends in tactics or improved weapons could be of great importance for the subject of their study.

Analyzing the essence of the changes that took place in the military affairs of Western Europe, M. Roberts pointed out that this coup, which took a period of time between 1560 and 1660, in essence, “... was another attempt to solve the constant problem of tactics - how to combine throwing weapons and hand-to-hand combat, how to combine striking power, mobility and defensive power. And the solution proposed in accordance with the reforms of Moritz of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus was a return, under the inspiration of Vegetius, Elian and Leo the Isaurian, to linear battle formations. Instead of the massive, deep, bulky squares of the Spanish tercio, or still large and numerous irregular Swiss "battles", they resorted to the use of units lined up in 2 or 3 lines in such a way as to most effectively use all types of weapons. Moritz used this new order of battle only for defense; but all the more stunning was the success of Gustavus Adolphus, who used it for offensive purposes.

Developing his thesis further, M. Roberts pointed out the main, in his opinion, features of this coup: changes in tactics, which, in turn, led to a sharp increase in the requirements for discipline and the quality of training of soldiers and officers. “The army,” Roberts noted, “has ceased to be a Swiss brute mass or a medieval society of aggressive lone professionals; it became a well-organized organism, every part of which obeyed impulses descending from above ... ". The next feature is the gradual replacement of the former mercenary armies, "purchased" for the duration of the campaign, by permanent armies, which were not disbanded after the end of the campaign or war. These standing armies grew considerably in numbers, as did the strategy. However, this also entailed a change in the nature of the war - the conduct of the war was monopolized by the state: “Now only the state could mobilize the necessary administrative, technical and financial resources required for large-scale military operations. And the state was interested in making the war its own monopoly ... ". The monopolization of the right to wage war by the state, its new image was expressed, first of all, not so much in the prohibition of private armies and entrepreneurship, but in the emergence of “... new administrative methods and standards; new administration, from the very beginning royal, centralized. War ministers and war ministries are born, which are rapidly spreading ... ".

However, as the historian pointed out, the new armies, the new order of their maintenance and training of soldiers, inevitably led to a sharp increase in military spending. Trying to solve this problem, at first, the monarchs of Europe, in pursuit of military superiority, were forced to get into debt, devalue the coin, resort to levying extraordinary taxes and, most importantly, in one way or another strive to free themselves from any dependence on class-representative institutions. in financial matters. Ultimately, society sacrificed freedom in exchange for the security provided by a standing army under the tight control of a strong royal power.

But that's not all. “The military revolution, according to many scientists, gave birth not only to modern war, but also to modern militarism ... The road opened, straight and wide, to the abyss of the twentieth century ...,” M. Roberts noted. Thus, the English historian suggested that the introduction of firearms into the military practice of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages and its wide distribution in the 16th - early 17th centuries. led to radical changes in European military affairs, which caused an avalanche of economic, social, political and cultural changes. They changed the face of Europe, laying the foundations for modern European society and the problems that confront it.

The idea put forward by M. Roberts aroused great interest and formed the basis of the work of many Western European historians of the 1960s and early 1970s. XX centuries., who studied the problems of political and socio-economic development of Western Europe in the XIV - XVIII centuries. “Within a few years, the somewhat vague concept of a military revolution,” according to the Americans B. Hull and C. DeVries, “became the new orthodoxy in the history of Europe at the dawn of modern times.”

However, the initial enthusiasm for the new concept passed by the middle. 70s of the past century. By this time, new materials had accumulated, new ideas appeared that required a critical revision of the concept of military revolution. Society's interest in military history and the history of military affairs as an integral part of it also grew. All this required an adjustment of the Roberts hypothesis. The beginning of the process of revision of the concept of the military revolution was laid by the English historian J. Parker with his programmatic article “Military Revolution” 1560-1660 – a myth?

In this article, J. Parker, agreeing with the four key, in his opinion, theses of Roberts about the revolution in tactics, the revolution in strategy, the incredible growth of the scale of the war in Europe and the enormous impact that new war on the development of Western European society, asked the question: "Can these statements be changed in modern conditions?".

The answer to it was in the affirmative. Firstly, according to J. Parker, 1560, chosen by Roberts as the starting point of the military revolution, is not entirely successful, since obvious signs inherent in the army of the New Age, the army of the era of the military revolution, can be found in condottah Renaissance Italy. At the same time, the military revolution did not end in 1660 either, so J. Parker proposed expanding its time frame from 1530 to 1710. Secondly, Parker, recognizing the revolutionary contribution made by Moritz of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus to the development of Western European military affairs, emphasized the need to pay tribute to their predecessors - for example, the Spanish military theorists and practitioners of the 16th century. In addition, Parker drew attention to a number of other military-technical innovations that had a significant impact on the development of military affairs in the 16th century, and, above all, to the new fortification system, trace italyenne, which appeared in response to the growing power of artillery.

Parker's article led to a revival of controversy around the concept of military revolution. This small but very informative study was followed by a number of other works, which outlined all the main pros and cons in relation to the Roberts concept. A kind of response to these publications was a large-scale study by J. Parker “The Military Revolution. Military innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800″, in which he outlined his vision of the problem, taking into account the latest data. And again, this work, in which the English historian defended Roberts' idea against its critics, served as the beginning of a new lively discussion around the problem of military revolution, which has not been completed to this day. Research in this direction continues today, capturing more and more aspects of the changes in military affairs of the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age.

To date, the main points of view have been clearly identified in the discussion around the problem of military revolution. The opinions of historians dealing with this issue differ on several main points, the main of which are the following: were these changes really revolutionary, what was their temporal and spatial scope, and what were their consequences both for the history of Europe and for the whole world. J. Parker became the main defender of the idea of a military revolution and the successor of the work begun by M. Roberts. In a number of his works, he reasonably and in detail set out all the arguments “for”, while significantly supplementing and developing the concept of his predecessor, giving it greater harmony and certainty. In this form, the military revolution attracted a significant number of supporters and was reflected in a series of studies.

At the same time, at that time, a trend was finally formed and strengthened that cast doubt on the very idea of a military revolution. Scholars who can be included in this group are rather supporters of the gradual, step-by-step development and change in Western European military affairs in the period between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age. Thus, J. Hale suggested using the term “military evolution” to describe the evolution of military affairs in the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the New Age, since, in his opinion, the process of changes in the military sphere turned out to be too long for a revolution. Moreover, one of the main "evolutionists", J. Lynn, proposed to abandon the term "military revolution" altogether, instead putting forward an original hypothesis of the gradual development of European military affairs from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Analyzing the evolution of European military affairs, J. Lynn emphasized that in order to study the features of military construction at each stage, it is much more important to study such aspects of it as the methods of manning the armed forces, their organization, problems of motivation and morale, the state of command, forms of payment for military personnel. and the relationship of the army to society and power. Technological and tactical innovations, along with the methods of training and education of the personnel of the armed forces, to which the supporters of the military revolution have given and continue to give priority, in Lynn's opinion, are certainly important, but in relation to the above aspects they occupy a secondary position. In his opinion, to reduce the causes of changes in the military affairs of late medieval Europe and Europe at the dawn of the New Age to technological innovations alone, such as a new fortification system, trace italyenne, it is forbidden.

On the whole, such radicalism did not meet with serious support among the bulk of specialists dealing with the problems of the military history of Western Europe in this period, but to a certain extent contributed to the "erosion" of the temporal and territorial boundaries of the military revolution. Thus, a number of Western European historians believe that for more than three hundred years, from the middle of the 15th to the beginning of the 19th centuries, there were at least two military revolutions. In addition, in their opinion, when considering this problem, one should not be limited only by the European framework, but it is necessary to study the changes in military affairs in other regions of the world that took place at the same time, as well as their mutual influence. Some, like, for example, M. Prestwich, even believe, in some way joining with the "evolutionists", that the military revolution of the XV-XVIII centuries. was a natural continuation of the medieval military revolution, which took place in stages from the end of the twelfth to the 40s. 14th century

According to a number of modern historians, the question of the degree of influence of changes in the military sphere at the dawn of the New Age on the political and social structure of European states also looks controversial and ambiguous. If, from the point of view of the supporters of the military revolution, the need to create strong and numerous standing armies stimulated the formation of strong power and the birth of the absolutist monarchies of the New Age, then, for example, N. Henshall believes that everything was exactly the opposite, because, in his opinion, absolutism is nothing but a myth.

Thus, we can conclude that the spread of opinions in Western historiography on the problem of the military revolution is quite large by now. Obviously, this diversity is largely due to the fact that M. Roberts and his first followers operated, first of all, with materials not even of all of Europe, but primarily of Protestant, northern and northwestern Europe. It is no secret that the concept of the military revolution was based on the results of many years of research by Roberts on the Swedish political, socio-economic and military history of the 17th century. Attracting materials from other regions of Europe, and even more so from its periphery, sometimes gave very unexpected results that could not be unequivocally interpreted in the light of the "orthodox" theory of military revolution. This led to the decomposition of the previously clear and holistic concept due to internal contradictions that arose and, as a result, harsh criticism of the main theses of the "revolutionary" theory. An attempt to find a way out of this situation led to the appearance of modernizing the theory, bringing it into line with new data, as well as led to the emergence of new hypotheses that denied it, built on completely different principles. The lively discussion around the problem of military revolution, which began fifty years ago, has by no means ended and continues to this day.

In Russian historiography, the problem of the military revolution and the changes that it caused in military affairs and society, in relation to Russia, is practically not developed and, in general, is little known. One of the first among Russian historians about the existence of such a concept and about the existing relationship between changes in the military affairs of Western Europe at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age and the birth of the state and society of the New Age, A.B. Kamensky. However, his initiative was not developed, and the concept itself still remained almost unnoticed. Only in recent years has there been a definite departure from the former attitude towards the military revolution. However, if references to it in relation to Russia appeared in the works of domestic specialists, then, as a rule, they are made with reference to foreign authors and without attempts to analyze the essence of this phenomenon in relation to domestic conditions. A more serious approach to using the concept of military revolution can be found in the recent works of the Ural historian S.A. Nefedov. However, even in this case, this concept did not become the subject of a special study, and nothing more than an addition to the main topic of his research.

Why the concept of a military revolution did not arouse interest among domestic historians, especially Soviet historians, is not entirely clear, since many aspects related to the revolution in the development of military affairs caused by the introduction of gunpowder and firearms were developed in sufficient detail not only in the works of pre-revolutionary domestic professional military historians , but also in the works of the founders of Marxism. F. Engels paid special attention to these questions. In a number of his works on military topics, he not only considered in sufficient detail the main changes in tactics and weapons, but also those changes that caused military changes in the economic, social and political spheres of society. At the same time, he repeatedly used the adjective "revolutionary" to characterize these changes. However, few of the Soviet historians involved in military history research, at best, limited themselves to describing the changes that took place in the development of domestic military affairs in the 15th-18th centuries, without going into their analysis, and even more so refusing to notice the heated discussions that unfolded around problems of the military revolution at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age, in Western historical science.

What is the reason for this is a question that requires a separate study, but it seems to us that this is due to the above-mentioned general disregard of Russian historical science for military history as the “lot” of military historians and with its certain isolation from Western historical science. As a result, after analyzing the general state of military history research in modern Russia and comparing it with the achievements of Western military history science, we can say with confidence that Russian science is still at the very beginning of this path. It is still quite a long way to overcome those long-standing prejudices, stereotypes and cliches that have developed over decades, if not centuries, of neglecting the study of the problems of the development of military affairs.

Having stated the generally unsatisfactory situation in Russian historiography with the study of the military revolution in relation to Russian conditions, let us return again to the discussion around the idea thrown into the consciousness of Western historical science by M. Roberts. To date, the hypothesis of a military revolution in Europe at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age in the most concise form, according to J. Parker, can be presented as follows. "The transformation of military affairs in Europe at the dawn of the New Age included three main components - the widespread use of firearms," he wrote, "the spread of new fortification systems and the growth in the size of armies ...". These three innovations led to all other innovations, first in military affairs, and then changes in the political, social, economic and cultural structure of Western European society. The fact that the introduction of gunpowder and firearms into the everyday military practice of the West (and then the East - thor) had very, very serious consequences - all participants in the discussion agree with this. However, opponents of the concept of Roberts and Parker believe that the term “revolution” is not suitable for describing the nature of these changes because of their extreme prolongation in time and “blurring” as a result of expanding the field of historical search for an initially coherent and logical idea.

There are reasons for this, but is it worth it because of this to abandon the concept itself on the sole basis that it does not fit into the originally outlined framework? In this case, we agree with the opinion of A. Ya Gurevich, who wrote that the “ideal type” with which the historian works is a preliminary, very schematic image of the reconstructed world, a kind of “research utopia”, a working model. “The general concepts that the historian inevitably uses are concretized in the context of his research. In the process of this concretization, they are each time saturated with new content. Moreover, in those cases when these abstractions conflict with the material obtained from the sources, general concepts have to be clarified, rethought and further, in certain cases, discarded. Theoretical constructions should not be a Procrustean bed, in which it is necessary at all costs to put a multi-colored reality (highlighted by us - thor) ... ". And the most important thought of a respected historian, with which we fully and completely agree, is that the “ideal type” is not the goal of research, but nothing more than a means, “ essential tool(highlighted by us - thor), which in no case should limit the freedom of search and subordinate scientific analysis to an a priori construction ... ". And if we refer to Roberts’ idea put forward specifically as a working tool that “wears out” in the process of work and requires constant “editing” and “sharpening, if we consider the concept of a military revolution not a dogma, but a guide to action, then it is not only not worth discarding, on the contrary, it makes sense to improve it.

We believe that the concept of a military revolution has not only not become obsolete in fifty years, but, on the contrary, has become of even greater interest and value, especially in the light of the changes that took place in military affairs at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries. We emphasize once again that an in-depth study of the processes of development of military affairs in Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages - the beginning of the New Age revealed the main and most vulnerable point of Roberts' concept: in his constructions, he was based on the results of studying the features of state building and the development of military affairs in the countries of the Protestant, North -Western and northern Europe, and in a fairly narrow time period. Attempts to go beyond the originally outlined narrow time and territorial boundaries, as noted above, gave somewhat unexpected results that do not fit into the suddenly narrow “old dress of the king”. However, is it worth rejecting the very idea of a revolution in military affairs on this basis, is there a possibility of reconciliation extreme points vision and development of a new vision of the problem of "military revolution" in relation to the period of the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age, taking into account all the critical remarks that were made against it in previous years? In our opinion, yes, there is!

To substantiate this thesis, it is first necessary to define what the term “military revolution” is, what is its essence. In our opinion, neither the definition given by M. Roberts nor his "corrected" reading by J. Parker fully reflect the essence of this extremely interesting and important historical phenomenon. Let us try to give our own definition of the essence of the military revolution, proceeding from the fact that such a "revolution" in general.

The most common definition of the term "revolution" is that it means some kind of qualitative change, a radical break in the established principles, ideas or concepts in the life of society or its individual areas. This change is a manifestation of a leap that occurs at the moment when quantitative changes in one or another sphere of society's life reach a certain value, followed by the emergence of a new quality. Consequently, the military revolution can be defined as a radical break in the military system that existed before and the creation of a new one, radically different from it.

Based on this definition, it is possible to refine the structure of the military revolution. Being part of a continuous historical process, it does not represent a kind of static, frozen formation, but, on the contrary, is constantly changing and developing. Only a certain core remains unchanged, the central idea, the fulcrum around which all changes revolve. That is why it makes sense to talk about the military revolution as a complex phenomenon with a multilayered structure, in the development of which three main stages can be distinguished.

The main driving motive for the development of military affairs, no doubt, should be considered the desire of military leaders to defeat the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible, using all available forces and means. The remark made by F. Engels almost a century and a half ago regarding the relationship between changes in the military sphere and changes in the economy has not lost its significance to this day. “Nothing is more dependent on economic conditions,” he wrote, “than the army and navy. Armament, composition, organization, tactics and strategy depend, first of all, on the stage of production reached at the given moment and on the means of communication. It was not the "free creativity of the mind" of brilliant generals that acted here in a revolutionary way, but the invention of better weapons and a change in soldier material; the influence of brilliant commanders is at best limited to the fact that they adapt the way of fighting to new weapons and new fighters ... ". True, in our opinion, the formula derived by F. Engels needs some clarification. While maintaining the primacy of economic changes over the military, it is necessary to take into account the influence of the subjective factor to a greater extent. Brilliant commanders do not just follow the events, but try to push events as much as possible, trying to get the most effective weapons and the best soldiers. This desire, in turn, stimulates the development of the economy, and the latter - new changes in the military sphere.

Based on this, it can be said with certainty that the content of the first, or preparatory, stage of the military revolution, is precisely the attempt to adapt the latest technology to solve the main task facing the military - to achieve a decisive victory. At this stage, there is a gradual formation of a certain "critical" mass of quantitative changes in military affairs - both in military technologies, and in tactics, and in strategy. The process of its accumulation could have a wide temporal and spatial framework, while military thought developed, as a rule, in the traditional way. As the American writer B. Tuckman aptly noted in her sensational book "August Guns", "... dead battles, like dead generals, hold military minds with their death grip ...". In this regard, it is appropriate to draw an analogy with scientific revolutions. Analyzing the processes of changing the scientific paradigm, T. Kuhn noted that “the assimilation of a new theory requires the restructuring of the previous one and the reassessment of the old facts, an internal revolutionary process that ... never takes place in one day ...”, and that any attempts to introduce a new scientific paradigm encounter stubborn resistance . “The source of resistance lies in the conviction,” he wrote further, “that the old paradigm will eventually solve all problems, that nature can be squeezed into the framework that this paradigm provides ...”.

However, sooner or later the desire to combine tradition and new reality, born on the battlefields, to find a compromise between the old and the new, led to a dead end. The new, in the end, categorically refused to fit into the Procrustean bed of tradition. And at that moment the actual military revolution took place - quantity through a leap passed into a new quality, a new one was born. military school built on qualitatively different foundations than all the previous ones. In this regard, the statement of the Russian military theorist of the late XIX - early XX centuries is noteworthy. N.P. Mikhnevich. He wrote that “although progress is apparently being observed in the development of military art, its very progress jumps(highlighted by us - thor) ... ".

This leap in the development of military affairs is, as a rule, limited in time and space and may be associated with the activities of one or more military theorists and practitioners. The time of the jump is the time of the second, main, stage of the military revolution.

However, the new military school is not always completely superior to the old one brought to the maximum degree of perfection. Its advantages are not immediately obvious, especially since in military affairs, which is akin to art, the subjective factor is very strong, and in the end it is not weapons and not ideas that fight, but people. Therefore, a new military system that falls into the wrong hands may well lose the competition with the old one, which is used by a more skilled and talented military leader. This is precisely what caused the emergence of the third, final, stage of the military revolution. On it, new methods and techniques of warfare that proved their effectiveness in practice were mastered, improved and adapted to specific historical conditions by other armies and societies. This cycle then repeated itself over and over again. Thus, we can conclude that the processes of evolution-revolution in the development of military affairs were closely interconnected and acted hand in hand.

Based on all this, it will be possible to try to give a detailed definition of the military revolution in Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages - the beginning of the New Age. Under the military revolution of the late Middle Ages - the beginning of the New Age in Western Europe, we mean radical changes in military affairs, which led to the birth of a new military tradition, radically different from the previous, medieval one. Expressed at first in the introduction of firearms into everyday military practice, first heavy (artillery), and then hand-held (pistols, arquebuses and muskets), they led to a radical revolution in the tactics and strategy of European armies. War began to turn from an art into a science. The few medieval militias were replaced by standing regular armies, numbering tens and hundreds of thousands of people and wholly and completely supported by the state. The former offensive shock tactics were replaced by defensive linear ones. The outcome of the battle was now decided not by hand-to-hand combat of lone fighters, but by the coordinated actions of the masses of uniformly armed and trained infantry and cavalrymen, armed with firearms and supported by powerful artillery. The army-machine, the army organized according to the principle of manufacture, has replaced the old army, which can be likened to the workshop of a medieval artisan.

This military revolution could not but lead to serious changes in the political, social, economic and cultural life of European society, because the lag in adopting the latest in military theory and practice inevitably led to the transformation of a lagging state incapable of modernization from a subject of international relations into an object. Starting in the form of changes in the military sphere, this revolution eventually led to the transformation of the medieval Western European society and state with their inherent political, economic, social and cultural institutions into the state and society of the New Age.

Of course, M. Roberts was not entirely right in limiting the time of the military revolution to the period from 1560 to 1660. Nevertheless, in our opinion, it is impossible to reject the very concept of a military revolution in favor of evolution on the basis that the process of change itself took several hundred years. The idea that there were two (or more) military revolutions between 1450 and 1800 also seems erroneous.

The military revolution in Europe on the threshold of the New Age really took place, and there was only one. But her picture was much more complex and not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. The first stage of the military revolution can be attributed to the period from the end or even from the middle of the 15th century. and until the 90s. 16th century During these years, there was a process of gradual accumulation of those quantitative changes in the military sphere, which affected both theory and practice. Ultimately, they had to sooner or later develop into a qualitative leap, which happened at the end of the 16th - 1st third of the 17th centuries. The period indicated by M. Roberts can be correlated with its second stage, the time of a leap, a kind of breakthrough in the military affairs of Europe. At the same time, its scope can be narrowed down to the 90s. 16th century - 30s. 17th century It was at this time that the very revolution in tactics and training of troops took place, which entailed all other changes - both purely military and political, social, economic, cultural and others. The period from the end of the 30s. 17th century and up to the end of the era of the Napoleonic wars - this is the time of gradual improvement of the system of principles for the preparation and conduct of war, which were developed by Moritz and Wilhelm of Nassau at the turn of the 16th / 17th centuries. and developed in relation to new conditions by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolf. Indeed, in essence, after the reforms of Wilhelm and Moritz, for the first time after the collapse of the Roman Empire and its military system, the first truly permanent, regular army was born in Europe. In the future, it was about the development of those ideas that were expressed and implemented by them.

In fact, the means of extermination of people that Moritz of Nassau and Napoleon had 200 years later did not differ too much from each other. The only difference was that Napoleon had much more resources, and therefore could argue that "God is always on the side of large battalions." So the transition from the relatively small armies of mixed manning of the 1st half of the 17th century, in which mercenaries still dominated, to the armies of the 2nd half of the 17th - 18th centuries, where they were significantly pressed by recruits forcibly recruited from among the subjects of the king, to scriptural and first mass armies of the 1st half of the 19th century. did not at all mean radical changes in European military affairs. Uniforms, hairstyles, separate (only separate -!) elements of tactics and strategy changed, but not weapons and basic ideas, and certainly not the mentality of the military community. The wars of the Napoleonic era only became even more rude, cruel, got rid of a touch of a certain salonism, ceremony inherent in the wars of the 2nd half of the 17th - 18th centuries, and nothing more. Until the appearance of machine guns, rapid-fire repeating rifles and artillery pieces, telegraph, radio and railways, European armies and their tactics and strategy did not change significantly enough to speak of a new military revolution. For this to happen, European society had to finally complete the transition from manufactory to factory, to complete the industrial revolution. Another military revolution was connected with the latter, which fell on the years of the First World War and ended already in the years of the Second World War.

Returning to the idea of the military revolution as a historical phenomenon, then, taking into account the spasmodic development of military affairs and analyzing the processes of change in this one of the most important areas of human society, it is easy to see that the military revolution of the late Middle Ages - the beginning of the New Age, described by M. Roberts, was not unique in world history. Moreover, we can safely say that it is not at all an accident, no, it is part of the world historical process as a whole, one of the links in the chain of other military revolutions. The emergence of the army as a state, political institution that replaced the tribal militias can be considered the first military revolution. The emergence of war chariots and cavalry led to significant consequences, and not only in the military sphere. No less important for the development of military affairs and art was the so-called. "hoplite" revolution, and subsequently the birth of a regular, standing army in the Hellenistic states and the Roman Empire. The introduction of stirrups and saddles with high bows into equestrian use in the early Middle Ages largely contributed to the formation of an elite heavily armed cavalry, which for a long time seized dominance both on the battlefields and in power.

Thus, numerous technological innovations throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages repeatedly changed the “face of battle” and war in general. However, for the most part, all of them, to one degree or another, were local coups, without fundamentally changing the balance of power and ultimately not making only one particular model of military construction a model for universal imitation and copying. The same regular armies of the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire were unable to overcome the resistance of the seemingly more conservative and traditional military systems of Asia, just as the infantry armies of imperial China at the end of the history of the ancient world repeatedly suffered severe defeats from the mounted militias of the Xiongnu nomads.

It is for this reason that one can hardly consider the revolution in tactics carried out in the first half of the 14th century. the British, the military revolution of the Middle Ages, as suggested by M. Prestwich and K. Rogers. The domestic author D. Uvarov on this occasion rightly noted that, in essence, “the specific English tactics, in principle, could be used by the only state in Europe due to the lack of other equally qualified archers and therefore is an exception in the pan-European military art ...”. Any attempts to copy the English experience, at least in the same France, were not successful. It is enough to recall the unsuccessful experience of creating the so-called corps. "franc-archers" by the government Charles VII French in the last years of the Hundred Years War. The new military system had to be both simple and versatile enough to be easily assimilated and then used in various conditions, and at the same time be more effective than all previous ones. Otherwise, as was the case with the English tactics of the late 13th-15th centuries, it was doomed to extinction as it was too complex, specialized and not flexible enough, leaving no offspring.

The situation was quite different with the military revolution in Western Europe at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age. It can be said with all certainty that it, of course, was the first global military revolution in terms of its consequences. It not only led to the birth of a new system of organization of military affairs. This has happened many times before, as noted above, in various regions of the world. No, this was different. As J. Parker rightly noted, this military revolution led to a radical change in the balance of power on the world stage: “To a large extent, the “Rise of the West” was predetermined by the use of force, by the fact that the balance of power between Europeans and their overseas opponents was constantly leaning in favor of the first ;… the key to European success in creating the first truly global empires between 1500 and 1750. consisted precisely in those improvements in the ability to wage war, which would later be designated as a "military revolution" ... ".

The military superiority won by Europeans over their potential adversaries on land and at sea, both in the Old and in the New World, contributed in many respects, according to the apt remark of the American historian W. new dimension. The sharply intensified ties between continents, civilizations, states, peoples contributed to a more intensive transfer of knowledge and cultural values than before, the intensification of interstate competition and the struggle for spheres of influence, resources, control over trade routes, etc., which contributed both to the development of human civilization in in general, and military affairs in particular. The development of the economy, science and technology in the Western world gave European politicians and the military the necessary means to maintain the necessary level of military power to protect their global interests, and the desire to maintain the achieved military superiority stimulated further development military technology and military thought inevitably led to the next military revolution. It followed at the beginning of the 20th century, when the “war of machines and motors” was born in the fire of the First World War. Now, less than a hundred years after the First World War, another military revolution is taking place before our eyes, radically changing the ideas about war that existed until now. And the last two revolutions, having consolidated the dominant position of the West in the military sphere, thus preserved the political, economic and cultural dominance of Western civilization over all the rest, achieved by military means at the end of the Middle Ages - early modern times.

The countries that found themselves in the sphere of influence of the West had to make their choice and respond to the challenge from the Europeans. Preservation of one's own independence, original culture and way of life were directly related to the ability of this or that non-Western society to accept the ideas of the military revolution and implement them in relation to their own conditions. However, far from all non-Western civilizations managed to give an adequate response to the challenge of Western Europe in the military sphere at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age. In this regard, it is interesting to study the experience of adopting new military technology, tactics and strategies associated with the military revolution, the states of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, primarily the Commonwealth, Russia and Turkey, who belonged to different civilizations and cultures.

The example of these three states and their response to the Western European challenge is all the more interesting because they were all on the periphery of the impetus that brought the military revolution to life. Constantly in contact with the countries of Western Europe, they were drawn into the process of rapid changes in military affairs at about the same time, with some delay against the leading Western European states, but from close starting positions.

However, the response that these countries gave to the military challenge from Europe turned out to be different. Ottoman Empire, considered in the XVI century. an ideal "military" state, inspiring fear in its neighbors, by the beginning of the 18th century. has already lost to a large extent its former greatness and power, and a century later it has become more of an object of international relations than a subject. Rzeczpospolita to late XVII 1st century and completely disappeared from the political map of the world. Such a fall was all the more surprising, since the Polish-Lithuanian army at the end of the 16th - 1st half of the 17th centuries. was considered one of the most combat-ready armies in Europe. She successfully fought with the drilled Swedish army, and with the Russian armies, and with the Turkish-Tatar hordes. Towards the end of the 17th century, in 1683, the glory of Polish weapons received another vivid confirmation, when the small army of King Jan Sobieski, numbering only ~ 26 thousand soldiers and officers, played a major role in saving Vienna, the capital of the Roman Empire, from the Ottoman invasion. However, less than 20 years have passed since the territory of Poland and Lithuania became a "passage yard" for the armies of Sweden and Russia, who fought not for life, but for death, but by the end of the 18th century. The Commonwealth completely disappeared from the political map of the world, divided among its powerful neighbors.

Among those who played a fatal role in the fall of the power of the Ottoman Empire and " Finis Poloniae", almost took the first place Russian empire. When at the end of the fifteenth century Russia for the first time entered the broad international arena and announced its foreign policy claims, hardly anyone in Europe or Turkey at that time could have imagined that it was this state, practically unknown to anyone before, as a result of the successful completion of the military revolution, that would turn into a Eurasian colossus, which for more than than three centuries will have a serious impact on the development of events not only in Europe and Asia, but throughout the world. All this became possible, not least because, perhaps, it was in Russia, of all non-European countries, that the military revolution received its most complete embodiment, and in all its main directions - military, political, economic, social and cultural. However, this success came at a high price, subsequently serving as the reason for the growing lag of Russian society and the state in socio-economic and political development from the advanced countries of Europe in the 19th century, which to a large extent contributed to the three revolutions and radical changes in the 20th century. as an attempt to catch up with the West that has gone far ahead.

Thus, the military revolution on the periphery of Western Europe had its own characteristics, different from the classical model described by M. Roberts and his followers, and gave somewhat unexpected results. This study is devoted to a comparative historical analysis of the classical, Western European model of the military revolution of the late Middle Ages - early modern times and its peripheral varieties.

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military revolution or military revolution- a radical change in public administration due to significant changes in the strategy and tactics of military affairs. This concept was proposed by Michael Roberts in the 1950s. Studying Sweden in the 1560s and 1660s, he set about looking for fundamental changes in the European method of warfare that were brought about by the introduction of firearms. M. Roberts connected military technologies with much broader historical consequences. In his opinion, the innovations in tactics, training of troops and in military doctrine, carried out by the Dutch and Swedes in the 1560s and 1660s, increased the effectiveness of firearms and created the need for better trained troops and, therefore, standing armies. These changes, in turn, had significant political implications: a different level of administration was needed to support and supply the army with funds, people and provisions, in addition, finances and the creation of new governing institutions were needed. “Thus,” explains Roberts, “modern martial arts have made possible—and necessary—the creation of the modern state.”

The concept was developed by Geoffrey Parker, adding to the already existing manifestations of the military revolution, artillery forts capable of withstanding new siege artillery, the growth of the Spanish army, and naval innovations such as ships of the line, firing broadside volley. J. Parker also emphasized the global significance of this phenomenon, linking the military revolution in Europe with the rise of the West to world domination. Some historians (Michael Duffy among them) have found this concept to be exaggerated and misleading.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Klim Zhukov about the birth of the revolution: the birth of the bourgeois revolution

✪ Intelligence: Dmitry Aleksinsky about the antique weapons of Academician Olenin

✪ Intelligence: Alexey Lobin about the Tsar Cannon

✪ Intelligence: Sergey Polikarpov about the Japanese army sword of the Second World War

✪ Klim Zhukov: report How to come up with a history of Russia?

Subtitles

I wholeheartedly welcome you! Klim Sanych, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hi all. I skipped the last lesson about revolutions, sorry. Yes, I had to take the rap. Let's continue. We now, it turns out, have part 6, which we will call "The Birth of the Bourgeois Revolution." Gradually crept up. Gradually crept up, yes. Last time we stopped at the Crimean War, aka the Eastern War, and I propose to start with it in order to, so to speak, throw a bridge between the two videos. The defeat of the Russian Empire in the Crimean War, of course, was, if not a catastrophe, then definitely a demolition of public consciousness, and not only in Russia, but in Europe in general, because before that victory over Napoleon Bonaparte, the great shaker of the universe, she, of course, gave the Russian regiments an aura of invincibility. Because who could beat Napoleon? And no one, you imagine. And we succeeded. And so we have our army and our society in general, which was led by the nobles in the first place, it received a certain status of a decisive political factor on the entire continent. And if culturally and economically we lagged behind Europe in some ways, then national vanity has always found an outlet in forceful exclusivity, because we may be stupid, but we are strong. It is in us, I notice, firmly sits. Yes Yes Yes. I wouldn't say stupid; maybe not the smartest. And I, I have, yes I am to you all now! Yes Yes. And now, after the victory over Bonaparte, the Holy Alliance remained as a legacy from Alexander the Blessed. This is the first League of Nations, the first UN, which was, of course, aimed at fending off any revolutionary threats in Europe. The Holy Alliance provided the internal stability of the throne for 35 years, this is more than a generation, please note. Those. people had time to be born, some to die, and some to be born again, while the Holy Alliance was operating in Europe. And Russia, in fact, the soul and muscle of this union, in gratitude received the honorary nickname of the world gendarme. Only. Well, in general, it is quite deserved, because in 1831, the hero of the war of 12, Paskevich crushed the Polish revolution, and crushed it cruelly. And that was 35 years of peace, right? No, it was not 35 years of calm, just as soon as someone raised his head and tried to do something, like the Great French bourgeois revolution, they immediately took out a mallet and did it. Where? Here the Poles once again tried to free themselves, there was a national liberation struggle. Was there peace? Did it help to develop the economy, trade, industry? As usual, on the one hand it helped, on the other hand it didn't, because people were forcibly crushing completely objective shifts, primarily in production relations. Those. yes, stability was ensured - first of all, for those who sat on thrones, it was very good. In general, of course, there was a downside associated with this. Although, of course, yes, peace is always, any peace is always better than the absence of it. Well, how they shout “give us”, how Stolypin still shouted there ... “20 years of calm”. "And you won't know." War is more useful, war is the father of everything. Well, actually, we have 35 years of peace there, please, no one is on us ... Rocket takeoff, right? No one even dared to look askance at us, because everyone knew that as soon as you looked askance, such people would fly in at all. Valenko. Yes Yes Yes. Tellingly, the victory of 1831 over the Poles, even Pushkin, who in fact was always very skeptical of the authorities, did not leave indifferent, he broke out at that time with the poem “Borodino”, where the following lines were specifically in honor of Paskevich: Victory! sweet hour to the heart! Russia! rise and rise! Thunder, the general voice of rapture!.. But quieter, quieter resound Around the bed where he lies, Mighty avenger of evil insults, Who conquered the peaks of the Taurus, Before whom Erivan humbled himself, To whom the Suvorov Lavra Wreath wove triple abuse. Respectfully. And Denis Davydov wrote, who also, in general, was not distinguished by loyalty, distinguished by a very sharp pen. Denis Davydov is a hero, hussar, partisan, one of the winners of Napoleon. He wrote as follows: “Having no reason to have deep respect for Field Marshal Prince Varshavsky - Paskevich - however, for the benefit and glory of Russia, I cannot but wish him new exploits from the bottom of my heart. May the activity of our Mars, dedicated to the good of the victorious Russian army, have a beneficial effect on it. Let him, worthily standing in the brow of the victorious Russian army, follow all the improvements in the military craft in the West, and intercede with the sovereign, who has full confidence in him, to apply them to our army. Well, yes, they are imbued. Those. straight to everyone - Paskevich can do it. And literally a little time passed, 1849, Paskevich again finds himself in Europe and brings down 120,000 bayonets and sabers on the national liberation struggle in Hungary (against the Austrians, of course), and stifles the revolution in the bud. Along the way, he walked through the places inhabited by Carpathian Rusyns, found that Russian people live there. By the way, Russian people also discovered that Russian people in such beautiful uniforms walk around here, and all of them are Orthodox, and they all suddenly wanted to go to Russia. The Austrians had to construct a slightly Western Ukrainian nation against this. Where the dog rummaged. Long time ago though. Yes. And it would seem that, in general, the neighboring lords, shocked by the manifested power, should have forever been imbued with, firstly, respect for the Russian bayonet and gratitude to the throne, because it was he who guaranteed their own stability, and not in words, but in a completely material way. But the situation turned out to be the exact opposite, because the Black Sea straits and direct economic interest outweighed any general chivalric motives. That there is some kind of gratitude, it's all some kind of nonsense. Napoleon died a long time ago, there was no longer any talk about it. The Holy Alliance disintegrated immediately. There is a well-known Soviet military saying - wherever you kiss a soldier, he has an ass everywhere. Here they are. Yes. As soon as Turkey showed its first weaknesses, it became a sick man of Europe, whose legacy everyone carefully looked at - well, we have a long tradition of fighting Turkey, it’s good for us, or rather, not good, but it happened - we have quite objective counterpoints with it , where we have encountered since the 16th century. And as soon as Turkey began to lose the war, England, France, and Sardinia (Piedmontese kingdom) immediately joined the war. And it turned out that despite the fact that we have a very large army, very good officers, trained soldiers, and a gigantic traditional reserve, all this turned out to be absolutely powerless in the face of the united force of the capitalist powers, which, in a narrow sense, had already embarked on the path of bourgeois modernization. for over half a century. Because the technique was better? Or is everything better? I'll tell you now. This is exactly what I'm going to do. Moreover, this is very revealing, the fleet was saved - the one where the sacred traditions of Ushakov, Sinyavin, and Lazarev were kept. It’s just that all these magnificent Black Sea battleships were simply drowned in the Northern Bay so that the enemy could not cut Sevastopol in two with their ships. And the fleet is the most complex and technological part military force in general, in which one can immediately see the state of the armed forces in general. In a technical sense, general progress. Here we are against the Europeans could not do anything. But they clearly understood that we couldn’t do anything with our ships, our guns, so it’s more profitable to drown them? Of course. That is why they were drowned, because, firstly, there were so many more English and French (and Turks) together that there was nothing to catch there at all. And some mega-shore batteries were not built, or what? No, coastal batteries were built. But what is a coastal battery? On a coastal battery, according to the regulations, you can’t shove more guns than you can physically fit in there. And the battleship is 3 decks, from 32 to 46 pounds of guns, there are 3 of them there that will drive up to this coastal battery - well, you will drown 1, perhaps, or damage it, and 2 others will simply smash it into rubble. Were they really that accurate? Most importantly, the coastal battery cannot escape anywhere. It always seemed to me, I read somewhere that the percentage of hits was 2. They shot from such a small distance, they could swim just for a pistol shot. Here is a natural shot from a pistol, there are 20 meters. And all this will fly from the board to this coastal battery, which has nowhere to go at all. Interesting. This ship can maneuver. I was in the city of Havana, there is a wonderful bay, where they formed a squadron that carried gold or something Spanish. There on the shore ... There are "12 apostles" guns. Yes, the battery is worth it. They are very big. Highly. By the way, there are so many guns in Havana that it is incomprehensible to the mind, they are everywhere lying around there. The streets are blocked off by cannons, and they are buried there with their muzzles down. Those. so many that it's not even clear why. Well, apparently they did. And we didn't make it. It's just, again, it all depends on the firing squad on the one hand, and on the other hand. And if these enemy ships would have called into the Northern Bay, they would have begun to shoot through the city in any direction like this. There was nothing to slow them down, it was necessary to close the fairway. The entire Black Sea Fleet was drowned in the fairway. In general, our naval power was such that neither coastal batteries nor the fleet would have kept them? Yes. Excellent. Those. if they were allowed into the bay ... And they would be allowed. They would have stopped by themselves, it would have been krants. But the moral consequences are difficult to estimate, frankly. And the political consequences of the Crimean War - the diplomats had to take the rap, who does not remember, we were disarmed, the Black Sea was demilitarized. In general, the consequences were very serious. Only the economic consequences were harder, because the Crimean one, on the other hand of chronology, is a reflection of the war of 1812. It is very similar in terms of the forces involved, but the war of 1812 is a huge land front, a theater of operations. And here, in general, a very limited area, frankly speaking, small, where the main forces acted. And the forces involved were the same, and maybe even more in the end. And Field Marshal Milyutin, in a note submitted to the State Council in 1856, said that the reserve of guns during the war years had decreased from 1 million to 90 thousand. Wow. Those. if now we have to fight again, then we simply will have nothing to equip the army with after a while. This is what they fought. Here is the twist, as it turns out. And this situation required urgent measures, because the most important thing, well, I'll tell you about technical superiority later, or non-superiority. First of all, of course, about the economy. To the military catastrophe was added almost a financial catastrophe. In 1854-55, the war gobbled up 500 million rubles. And in 1856, the budget deficit already amounted to 300 million rubles, these are still those rubles. Domestic loans from banks brought the state debt to 525 million rubles. And the external debt to foreign states amounted to 430 million rubles. Even such a monstrous debt burden, as it turned out, could not cover all military spending and current government spending. And, of course, just like during the war with Napoleon, the issue was the issue of paper circulation, because they began to finance by increasing the paper money supply. During the years of the Crimean War, the paper stock increased from 311 million to 735 million rubles, which led to a collapse of the ruble exchange rate by 25% and, of course, an inevitable rise in the price of food, and primarily bread. They fought well. Yes. And the reason - many do not know - what was the reason for all this? What did we want? Why did they attack us? We wanted the Black Sea Straits ourselves, as usual. We had the idea for a very long time that the ideological design of the war should be taken by Constantinople, the capital of Orthodoxy throughout the world. Well, along the way, it turns out that there are nearby the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, which, because. they are near Constantinople, we will just take it for ourselves. They will be ours too. Because they are very close, quite literally right here. So it turns out. That's how it works, yes. Because Thus, we get a direct outlet from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and gigantic expanses for trade open up for us. And what is important, by the way, for maneuvering the fleet, because in the Black Sea puddle, it is locked, no matter what squadron is there, if you do not have a free exit through the straits, this fleet cannot be a strategic resource. It will solve rather narrow tasks due to the narrowness of this theater of operations - the theater of military operations. And the British and French just really didn’t want a trade competitor to appear in the Mediterranean Sea, and even some kind of foreign fleet. They have been there with each other since the time of Napoleon, and even earlier, what is there, from the 18th century, they carefully looked at each other - something is happening here. They arranged tricks, sabotage, diplomatic dirty tricks, fought directly, and then there will be some kind of Russia, why is this necessary? They immediately rushed to help Turkey, spitting on the fact that we had just literally saved England from Napoleon, because if not for us, Napoleon would have crushed England sooner or later. Those. this, of course, would not have happened immediately, but if Napoleon had simply been able to somehow bring 10 divisions to the island at least there, they would have simply trampled the British. But then the British to the question “what are you doing? How is it possible?”, as they say in the circles to which we have the honor to belong, and what? Here. But we see with regard to finance that the withdrawal of money from banks in debt. And this means exactly one thing, that the tsarist government owed its own support to the throne, i.e. royal elite, because the main deposits in private banks were nobles. The depreciation of the ruble was very serious and generally put it on the brink of liquidity. By the end of the war, paper money was no longer exchanged for silver, which at that time was just a disaster. And, of course, we must remember that a monstrous number of ordinary recruits went through the war. 900,000 people passed through the army during this time. Not all of them, of course, got far into the Crimea, but it was necessary to constantly keep representative forces on one or another border, prepare reserves, and a little less than a million passed through the army. Those. they are healthy men who have been plucked from the fields, who have ceased to bring direct profit and produce a surplus product in the form of food. And Russia, as you can see, is on the verge of a financial, and more broadly, an economic crisis, and a very severe one at that. Moreover, this crisis was repeated, because last time we talked about the revolutionary situation on an all-European scale in 1847-49, from which we got out not simply, to put it bluntly. And now less than 10 years have passed, and 1 more crisis. And cosmetic measures could no longer contain this crisis, because the masters of cosmetic measures - tint here, here, and hammer in 1 nail, it was Catherine the Great there, and Nicholas I was also famous for this. But here it became clear that some kind of half-measures and cosmetic measures were indispensable, because the depressive phenomena had acquired an avalanche character. And the situation was aggravated, of course, by the understandable discontent of the entire people. When I say "all the people" - this is the whole people. Those. and the nobles were unhappy, because they owed them a lot, and the peasants - it is clear why. For the stupid - who was the leader then? The leader was Nicholas I. He just did not survive the war, he was so upset that he died. Really, yes? Well, it was a blow for him, of course, a monstrous one, because before his eyes, what he had consistently built all his life, this Sacred Union, collapsed. The allies betrayed him, and the war with Turkey, which seemed to have started well ... Something reminds me of how the front commanders betrayed another of the same kind. Something you do not understand in this life, since you have been betrayed. It was you who had to throw everyone so that it would be good in your country. The fact is that Nicholas I was a knight tsar, because he was really ... I worked for many years in the building that the architect Stackenschneider built for him, the New Hermitage; More precisely, not quite for him, but nonetheless. I worked in his collection, which he collected (armory). It was quite clear that the person had very strong retrograde thinking, of course. Of course, he was a real politician, of course, but he thought that everyone was like him, i.e. think like a knight. And the time was not quite the same. The leader should not be a knight, the leader should be a bit of a detective - cunning, treacherous. Aware. Dexterous as a spider, fir-trees. So it is impossible - betrayed. Where did you look that they betrayed you? But here another matter, that not only he watched. Naturally. Because there was a whole gigantic stratum, which all together looked incomprehensibly where, thinking that if we protect them from the revolution, then they will give us something in gratitude. If you work for free... Dreamer. … then a service provided free of charge is not considered a service. Because you've already done it, that's all. As another great man said, this is called "dizzy with success" and will not lead to anything good. This, of course, was also the case, yes. Well well. The landlords, in addition to what they were owed, were very worried about the departure of a mass of labor reserves to the army, because the recruit, freed from serfdom after his service life, he disappeared from the field of free labor for the landowner. Were they all released like that? Yes. Those. a recruit could later, having served his term, or retired due to injury, return home, but, as a rule, he was either assigned to an invalid team, i.e. a team of veterans, who, if anything, could perform some police functions, or in fact once again stand under arms, or went to the city as an artisan. If you ended up in a village, it was a disaster for the village, because ... read Russian fairy tales about retired soldiers, it’s just a nightmare there. Well, it's about a soldier who served for a long time. Those. they knew nothing about agriculture. Well, you haven't been home for 20 years, no one knows you at all; all the relatives who remembered you died. Who are you? I am a horse in a coat. And now I will cook porridge for you from an ax. This is, by the way, a completely unfunny fairy tale. Like all good jokes, it's not funny. Yes. And the peasants, who not only withstood very serious trials during the war, and once again took out this military enterprise on their hump, they succumbed to the most serious illusion (once again, not the first far) that the tsar would abolish serfdom as a reward forever and ever. Well, in the peasant consciousness, as in the traditional consciousness, there was a clear understanding that they bear the sovereign's tax. Not a landowner's tax, but a sovereign's tax for the sake of the landowners serving and fighting. And now they are at war. And the landowner is fattening, bastard. Well, they, of course, too, there are a lot of nobles who went through this, but nevertheless. If they are fighting themselves, why, one wonders, do they need a landowner? And the attempt at this recruitment led to serious problems, because the peasants en masse went to the militia, confident that as soon as they defeated the enemy, everyone would immediately go free. The militia differs from recruitment in exactly one thing - that you join the army voluntarily, serve, return to your place, back to a serfdom. Thank you everyone is free. Yes. Thousands of peasants rushed to the recruiting stations, demanding to sign them up in the militia and give them freedom. It was simply impossible to digest them all, physically impossible. Well, the factor of proximity to economically advanced Europe, and, by the way, the kingdom of Poland, which we cleaned up, where there was no longer serfdom, left its mark. In the southern provinces, there was a massive exodus of peasants to the Crimea, because someone fired a bullet that the British and French were giving freedom. Not bad. Those. it was necessary to simply intercept these very caravans of carts and turn them back so that they would not simply arrive on the field of hostilities in a crowd to the delight of others. What to do with them there? What to feed, how to treat? Yes. The forced return of people home, where nothing good awaited them, the deceived expectations of the families who gave recruits, as well as the militias, including the failed militias, who were turned away from the recruiting stations, this, of course, led to only one thing - to mass peasant uprisings. By the year 55, 16 provinces were engulfed in simple peasant uprisings. Wow. And they had to be suppressed by military force, i.e. the army had to be brought into their own country. Well, the conclusions were quite obvious: the army’s technical lag, of course, is not yet fatal, because when they say that we were all shot there with rifled guns, because we didn’t have them, and the French and the British were all with rifled guns - this is bullshit, because we had enough rifled fittings, it’s just that their share in the British and French armies is somewhat larger, sometimes seriously larger. But the main losses, as usual, were caused not by gunfire, but by artillery fire. And the question was not that we have worse guns or worse guns, but the question was ... moreover, if you look at Sevastopol, our guns were better and bigger, because, naturally, the fleet was drowned, and the guns were put to the redoubts. And these naval guns, they are really very good, and the mass of heavy artillery, in fact, made it possible not to give up all of Sevastopol, to hold out for so long, to give up only half of Sevastopol in the end. The only question was that we were faced with another army that no longer fought in the paradigm of the Napoleonic era. It was a different logistics, different goals, a completely different war. We lost not by weapons, we lost by military mechanism, which was weak in our country. We didn't have any railroads. We are in the Crimea, all these 900,000 recruits, we simply could not deliver them. Yes, we had something to fight with, the reserves were not only not exhausted, but we could still fight and fight, but we couldn’t come to where we need to fight, that’s all. The beauty. Did they already have railroads? Well, firstly, they had railroads, but, of course, they had no railroads to the Crimea. But they had a fleet, that's how it worked. Well, there were probably roads to the ports in order to quickly bring them there. Of course of course. That the French, that the British had complete order with the roads. Again, they have smaller countries, and deliveries are much shorter. And the summary was one thing, that the economy is not capable of pulling a full-fledged long-term war. This is not for you from June to December with Napoleon, but this is from 53 to 56, 3 years with the leading European powers, we are simply not able to, because even in a small theater of operations this total war just almost broke us. The agrarian country fell into the trap of its own basis, and the bulk of commodity producers, i.e. peasants, they are land-poor and thin-horse, and besides, they are absolutely powerless, we will talk about this a little later. Why didn't they get us? So it was a war with very limited goals. They had the task of not letting them into the straits. We were not allowed into the straits. Everything. What they wanted to do, they did everything. What for? And who was responsible for preparing for this war in our country? Did they know what was going on there, how they were organized, and so on and so forth? Of course they did. They went there to visit. No, well, it was believed that we had such a powerful army, just numerically powerful, and so well motivated soldiers and officers - the officers were actually very good - that we would take everyone on bayonets. We would have taken. Only it turned out that those who will take it will not be able to reach the Crimea. That's all. And for those who get there, it is impossible to feed, because there are a lot of them, many people need a lot of grub. Which also needs to be brought. And the supply of ammunition, we also have several problems with this. On horseback, as it turned out, you can’t bring a lot. That's it. That's it. Yes, absolutely disenfranchised people, mostly poor. And so we got a kind of fork of discrepancy between the economic basis and the objective demands of the superstructure, incl. and especially the army. Those. the basis could not provide the superstructure than necessary. And if in the 14-17th centuries there were these problems, but we deftly bypassed them, one way or another postponing the solution of the problem for later; and were forced to postpone the peasant problem in the 18th century, and this problem, because it was postponed, postponed for the future. And this future came in the 19th century. Looking ahead, we note that it was precisely the delay in its solution or half-hearted measures that led to the catastrophe of the empire at the beginning of the 20th century, because even then this problem could not be solved. Yes. Egor told in a very interesting way how help was brought from Britain, first to Arkhangelsk, to Murmansk, where there is nowhere to unload all this, there is nowhere for normal ships to moor, the cargo is on the ground; some lousy narrow-gauge railway, owned by local Orthodox merchants, who immediately inflated prices, and nothing could be taken away. So do we need to bring something? Yes Yes. And as a result, all this went through Vladivostok, which is already generally lovely. Of course. And then these people say something about Vissarionovich, who was not prepared for the war. I even don't know. Here. Well, war as the highest expression of politics - an ideal test for the solvency of the state - just in time for the question of Vissarionovich - once again in history acted as a breaking point, specifically showing, like a finger, the tension accumulated in the economy. It was no longer possible to exist in an unchanged paradigm, because the Russian Empire in a vacuum could conserve and stop all the described crisis phenomena for a very long time. But in reality, it was impossible to do this, because we had a powerful factor of external influence. Because it was both an economic factor of influence, and a cultural factor of influence, and, as it turned out, also a direct force factor of influence, because we had just been beaten, revealing both the logistical and technical superiority of this largest West, in which capitalism was born. And capital is a self-increasing value, it must expand, incl. and extensively, i.e. territorially. The nearest place where he could expand territorially was Russia. And because now it turned out that we could be beaten, there was no guarantee, or rather, there was a guarantee that sooner or later they would beat us for real. And this was dangerous and unpleasant both for the feudal elites and for the emerging class of the bourgeoisie, our national Russian. Resolute reformation was required, it was clear to absolutely everyone. In the meantime, let's turn to another important factor that we constantly mentioned, but never considered it together and carefully, so to speak, under a large lens, and specifically to the objective geoclimatic conditions in which Russia existed by the 1860s. Why do I only now consider such a massive and important factor specifically separately, and not in some fragments, as I used to do - and therefore Russia, by about the 60s, occupied approximately the same space on which we now live. Those. where the USSR existed, where the Russian Empire existed, where the Russian Federation now exists, i.e. these geoclimatic conditions are now common, all the time prevailing, and equal for all. That is, I mean chronologically, and for the Russian Empire, and for the USSR, and for the Russian Federation. Of course, the decisive factor here is the fact that the Russian Heartland was the most populated and economically developed; european part of Russia. From the borders of the Kingdom of Poland to the Urals, and from the Kola Peninsula to the Crimea and Ciscaucasia, in what conditions we existed and still exist. For an agrarian power, which Russia was until the 30s of the 20th century, the most important, of course, is the production of food, and specifically bread, this is the basis of the diet of the historical population of our entire country. And, by the way, for a long time one of the main export factors for which we received foreign currency. Let's go deeper. Everything that grows on planet Earth grows through the reaction of water and carbon dioxide under the influence of physiologically active radiation, i.e. sunlight. We know this from the school biology course. And here's an unfortunate fact: the central part of Russia has a depressingly small number of sunny days per year, just depressingly. If you look elementarily at the map of solar energy resources in Russia, it turns out a characteristic picture that (well, if you don’t take the Arctic Circle, everything is bad there, of course) along the line approximately Belomorsk-Arkhangelsk-St. Petersburg-Moscow-Ryazan-Nizhny Novgorod-Vyatka -Perm, that's the whole of central Russia lies in the belt of sunshine for less than 1700 hours a year. Smolensk-Bryansk-Samara-Saratov-Ufa is about 1702 hours, but then Novorossiysk-Astrakhan-Orenburg is already more favorable places, more than 2000 hours a year. Again, you can see, it’s easy to find on Wikipedia a map of the distribution of solar radiation in kW / h per m2 per day, and this map, it places almost the entire territory of Russia, with the possible exception of Southern Siberia, the south of the Far East, the Black Earth Region, Crimea and the Caucasus, in the security zone from 2 to 3 kW / h. In terms of agriculture, this is not fundamentally different from the north of Canada and worse than in the south of Alaska. For many, the discovery is the city of St. Petersburg, it is the only one on the planet Earth (they say) ... This size. Millionaire at this latitude. Well, we're a multi-millionaire, of course, but still. Yes. Those. that we have physiologically active radiation, PAR for short, we have agriculture the sun is delivered poorly. And Europe, by the way, is still warmed by the Gulf Stream, in addition to this, which is very important. Again, if you even look at Wikipedia, you can easily see that almost the entire territory of Russia lies beyond the winter isotherm of -10 degrees Celsius. An isotherm is a geographic line connecting points of approximately the same temperature. That's except for the south of Ukraine, Crimea and the Caucasus. For comparison, Southern Sweden and Southern Norway lie in the 0 degree Celsius isothermal zone. Those. there the temperature does not fall below 0 on average in winter. And such countries as Denmark, especially the Benelux countries, Britain, Ireland, France generally lie in the zone of +10-0 degrees. In Denmark, there is no winter, as a rule, it is colder than zero. Well, on average, of course. I was there. It's cooler there than in Ukraine, so I'll tell you. These endless wheat fields, blue skies, beauty in general. In general, I have been everywhere where you say, and everywhere the weather and climate are much better and milder than ours. You can't even compare to Peter. The average January temperature in Central Russia is -9.4 degrees Celsius. In the North-West, in the Vodskaya Pyatina, -12.4, in the Volga region - 13.4; in the Urals -19.1. Well, in the southern regions, where we, in fact, have the main grain-growing resources, this is -4.2, i.e. colder than in Denmark. Not bad. That's it. It is easy to see that any fluctuation in the temperature and humidity regime in winter, from sudden frost to thaw, snow melting, threatens with inevitable death or damage to winter crops. And this can happen unpredictably, and it happened unpredictably, because there was no meteorological service, which only the bloody Bolsheviks established. To destroy more people. Of course. And these dry numbers that I mentioned above, it was all a threat to physical survival of about 85% country's population , because it all could hit almost all the people. Well, it hit. And regularly. For thousands of years, something like this has been there, everyone has seen enough. Further. Another necessary condition for plant vegetation is moisture, i.e. some water. It would seem that we have complete order with the rains, which any Leningrader will tell you with pleasure. We can talk about rain and wind for hours. The trouble is that our rainfall is extremely uneven, and the average values are very indicative, because on average the entire territory of Russia receives about 571 mm of precipitation per year. This is below the level of generally possible agriculture. In Russia, on average, nothing can be planted. On average, of course. Here the assumption immediately suggests itself that it is impossible to build a storm water at all, it is necessary to save water. Yes Yes Yes. According to the statistical federal portal Protown, the main part of Central Russia is irrigated within the range of 550-700 mm annually, with patchy precipitation up to 1150 mm. But to grow a sustainable crop, a moisture regime of 700 mm of moisture per year is required. From 700. Moreover, in the USA, for example, where 700 mm of moisture falls annually, this is considered not just a zone of risky farming, there simply no one plants anything at all. Because who the hell knows what you end up with. Well, they have where else to plant, and we have almost none. And the trouble is that the southern regions, where it is much warmer, are much drier there, at the same time, i.e. there is heat, there is no moisture, or it is not enough. In addition, the precipitation regime is very complicated by relief, because Russia is probably distinguished by one of the record numbers of annual natural anomalies. Those. when the averages deviate very strongly in one direction or another, i.e. you suddenly have a drought, or 10 years of rainfall all at once. And it was impossible to predict. Those. agriculture was just a lottery, except, of course, the southern regions. Here it is necessary to remember that the cultivation of the earth is not only the sun, water, and soil, it is also draft power, i.e. ... Horses. Tractors, and if not, then horses and oxen. An ox is an almost fantastic animal for us, because it eats a lot. It was profitable to keep him only in the south - Kuban, Little Russia, possibly Poltava region, yes, oxen could be kept there. I think it's not as profitable as it can be. It is possible, yes, yes, yes. And we only have horses. Well, even a horse needs, oddly enough, a regular supply of fuel, i.e. fodder grain and hay. All this grows in meadows and pastures. That is, to put it simply, a horse needs a place to graze it, and where to store it all for the winter. But even with this, the situation in Russia is very difficult. Concisely and concisely, the conclusions are presented in a very scary book of horrors, which was written by the doctor of agricultural sciences N.I. Karmanov - "Soil and climatic resources of the USSR". Quote: “The soil resources of the USSR are great. The total area of the country is 2240 million hectares. However, about 15% of it is under water, sandy massifs, glaciers, stony placers, rocky mountains and other surface forms on which the soil cover is not developed or almost not developed ... Far from the entire territory of the country, soil and climatic conditions are favorable for development Agriculture. Over half of the country's territory is located in the cold zone and highlands of other belts that are not provided with heat. About 13% of the area of the USSR is located in the zones of semi-deserts and deserts. Vast territories are unfavorable for agriculture due to the relief conditions. The combination of conditions of sufficient moisture with a sufficient supply of heat and favorable soil properties is a rather rare exception in our country and is found in small areas. Most of the country's territories, where there is plenty of moisture, are poorly provided with heat, have predominantly infertile soils, some are acidic, poor in organic matter and mobile forms of nutrients with unfavorable water-physical and technological properties. Regions that are well provided with heat suffer from a lack of moisture almost everywhere. Solonetzic and saline soils and sand massifs are widespread in these regions. Attention - a little more than 10% of the country's land area is under arable land. Now the intellectuals known to us will shout that under the tsar, despite all this, the whole of Europe is grain. We are talking about this exactly in the next video, when we really started to supply bread massively. And then they will tell you - yes, you are quoting the book "Why Russia is not America." No, I'm quoting a very old book by Doctor of Agricultural Sciences Karmanov. I have no doubt. Well, somehow it is, when you say to citizens - you did not try to compare, no? Our favorite is that in our latitudes, horses have never been found at all, and they are not here. They don't live in the forest for some reason. They have nowhere to graze. Christmas trees are not eaten, of which we have many. Some spruce horses, of course, would be useful to us, otherwise ... And a North American boring rabbit. Yes. Well, at least they rode moose, I don't know. They eat it all with pleasure. But somehow it didn’t work out, and in general, I don’t know, from my point of view, the life of our peasant is a continuous struggle for survival. As one of my comrades told me, why didn’t they change all sorts of agricultural practices. Well, change it. It will not work - you will all die in the spring. Therefore, there can be no change in agricultural practices, we are doing it the way we have always done it, it worked. Exactly. A bleak picture. So I haven't finished yet. Like I said, a horror book. Yes, a little more than 10% of the country's area is under arable land, but almost all areas favorable for agriculture are intensively plowed and have almost no reserves for new development for arable land. The areas of natural fodder lands in the country are small (about 17% of the territory). However, more than half of them are represented by semi-desert and desert pastures, with very low productivity.” Now I'm done. Those. nowhere to graze the horses. Where they can be grazed, there is still little food, they will turn out to be skinny, i.e. will drag the plow badly. 10%, maybe 10.5% can be physically plowed up, and everything else is no good. And the country is agrarian, we directly depended on all this then in a vital way. I will note to all those who like to blame the blunt-nosed Khrushchev-maize, corn somehow didn’t grow very well with us before him. And citizen Khrushchev called not for such ears to ripen near Murmansk, as under the city of Mexico City, but for the fact that this is a grass that gives a large green mass, from which - without ears, you do not have to wait for any ears - you can make silage with which to feed cattle in winter. Yes. Those. looking for some way out. Based on the foregoing, one can simply say that most of Russia, where we all live, is the very border of the agricultural belt of Eurasia. Those. we are on the border where, in principle, something can be planted and grown. The zone of risky farming is it, no? Yes, this is it. And our crops require centralized efforts for land reclamation, wind protection, and the introduction of progressive agricultural methods, high-tech traction equipment and experimental high-grade sowing varieties. Well, this (for fools) means that no farmer will grow anything for you. Only a collective farm and a state farm can grow, having established commodity production. That's what, in fact, they did, starting from the 18th century, because all marketable grain was given to us by giant latifundia, where thousands of peasants were driven into one place and worked for the master. But still a large mass of people in one place, that's it. There, simply, on the collective farm, the gentleman was cut out, but the same thing remained. Well, progressive methods have spread throughout the rest of Russia. I will note that it was they who "fed the whole of Europe", and not at all some private traders and individual farmers. Yes. If we translate all of the above, the existing feudal system of land use in Russia has become unviable and has long exhausted the reserve of development. Yes, because as soon as we mastered the south of Russia, the Black Earth region, everything, we mastered it. There was a reserve, it ended. And the south of Russia ended up exactly in the same place where the central part of Russia fell, adjusted, of course, for better crop yields, population growth and land scarcity, because the landlords took away the best land from them. It was impossible to repair all this, a revolutionary breakthrough was required. Well, in an essentially feudal country there can be only one revolution - the bourgeois one. They tried to launch it several times with us, starting with Peter I, it did not work. And so the regime of Alexander II went almost to the same thing for which the Decembrists were hanged 36 years before. That's the turn, ah. What a twist! The Decembrists were hanged, and then the tsar himself began to do the same thing that they proposed, only with a great delay, i.e. on bourgeois changes in the basis. Now few people remember, here, but it is officials ... You sometimes explain what a basis is. The basis is the economy, and the superstructure is everything else - from the state to culture and the intelligentsia, and the army. Now very few people remember, but it was the officials who prepared the reform of 1861 who were the first to receive the nickname "Reds". Long before the red flag was unfurled at the Sormovo demonstration in 1902. And why? The first to call them "Reds" was Alexander II, so he wrote about Milyutin, who headed the theoretical reform group. And what is the meaning of the term? "Milyutin has long had a reputation for being red and mean, he needs to be watched." Because he instructed him to instruct, and he himself went nuts from what he was doing there. Well, red is, Lord, this is the banner of Spartacus, the banner of the rebellious slaves, they raised the red banner. Well, this is the same rebellious mob. People were educated, they knew a little about antiquity, unlike us today, they were all classically educated, they remembered this, and ... I did not know that Spartacus had a red banner. So then, moreover, the peasants in the Middle Ages regularly raised the red banner. Pirates, coastal pirates in France and England, who during the years of the Hundred Years War escaped from ruin, they also raised the red flag. Again, for classical education, this was, in general, quite obvious, and now they were called red. Funny. Yes. Milyutin is a harmful red, you need to watch him. Yes, and so, it means that the exhaustion of internal opportunities for development, the factor of external influence, and the most powerful one - economic, cultural, and forceful - forced us to form new adaptation mechanisms. Naturally, the adaptation mechanisms are to copy what the enemy who has just beaten has, and the most obvious step, of course, is to stupidly copy the enemy's combat mechanisms. This is where it all starts, this is the first step. Marx also wrote to Engels in a letter: “The history of the army most clearly confirms the correctness of our view of the connection between the productive forces and social relations. In general, the army plays an important role in economic development.” To give a number of examples, which show that many economic phenomena - wages, ownership of movable property, the guild system, the use of machines, metal money, the division of labor within one branch of production - develop in the army earlier than in the rest of society. “Furthermore, the history of the army sums up with amazing clarity the entire history of civil society.” And now, after the Crimean War, for example, a sad epic called "the birth of the Russian rifle" begins. From the literally Terry-Norman system to the systems of Baranov, Krnk, Berdan, and, finally, Mosin. It all started when we began to change the gun of the 1770s model first to conversion capsule, then to breech-loading, rifled, etc. But a rifle for a mass army is a giant string of technological chains. Those. from woodworking to metalworking, to metal-cutting machines that must either be bought or manufactured, to the training of engineers and skilled workers. This is only 1 rifle, all this is needed ... Yes, chemistry for gunpowder, of course, and what a complex thing a unitary cartridge is. It would seem that this is a penny garbage that you can buy at any store. No, there she has a capsule, which is filled with Berthollet salt or some kind of lead azide, all this needs to be synthesized, for this we need factories. It pulls a flurry of changes, it's only 1 rifle. And literally the entire army needed to be modernized. And this was just a symptom of the 3rd Westernization after Ivan III and Peter I. Another important symptom of the influence of Western modernity is the network of railways, without which Russia literally choked during the Crimean War. Somewhat later, Finance Minister Reitern wrote that " Crimean War proved that without railroads and a mechanical industry, Russia could not be considered safe from danger within its own borders. He knew what he was talking about, to be honest. Yes, and, of course, we talked about the cultural factor, and the third factor of external influence is, of course, the cultural factor of Westernization, because all of our Russian masters of thought, all of our intelligentsia, were perfectly familiar with the ideas that roamed in Europe. Literally from the beginning of the revolutions of 47-49, after they were defeated, the revolutionaries, just as if they had read Starikov, all fled to London, began to live there, and formed a certain European committee. It was full of Italians, all sorts of Garibaldi and so on. Herzen communicated with the brightest representatives, for example, with Mazzini. Apparently, the calculations of another - Pisacane - influenced the development of Bakunin's theory of anarchism. At the same time, Marx and Engels began to actively pee, everyone read European philosophers, and, of course, the intelligentsia became, and the nobility incl. educated, became educated, first of all, once again in the European manner. But these are factors that lie on the surface, and the underlying reason, for all, of course, the importance of external influence, is a gigantic shift in productive forces, and the fact that social relations have not kept up with them. To bring them into line was the reform of the most important body of the Russian economy, i.e. agricultural sector. But the abolition of serfdom is a far-reaching step, frankly speaking, because without serfdom you will immediately lose the economic rationale for the life of the nobility. And you will lose the nobility as an estate. And the peasants - more than 80% of the population - will leave the semi-slavish state and become equal citizens. For example, they will need to be given some kind of voting rights. And this is all that the enlightened monarchy of both Catherine II and Alexander I gave in to, this had to be addressed. And to encroach on the property and the basis of the well-being of the support of the throne was, firstly, simply dangerous. Will kill. They can kill. And, secondly, it was not easy, because it was necessary to solve a lot of purely legal issues, because the nobles, oddly enough, were also citizens who had certain rights. Although they were few, but still. And then, with the creation of a civil society of conditionally equal opportunities, with the establishment of a bourgeois basis, because as soon as the feudal basis ends, the bourgeois basis will inevitably come. And from here the restriction of the monarchy will follow, because the monarchy no longer relies on the nobles, but relies on the bourgeoisie, and it will demand the restriction of the monarchy, because the bourgeoisie is free enterprise, they will need freedom. Those. hence there will be a constitution, a parliament, and as a result, the actual disappearance of the monarchy. Those. going to the abolition of serfdom, Alexander II signed in the distant historical perspective the verdict of the monarchy in general in Russia. Those. from that moment the monarchy was doomed. Well, stupid people will object to you - but there is a king in Norway, and a king in Spain, and in England in general a queen, and rich countries. And what do they decide, the king and queen, I would like to know? Something is probably being decided. Well, this is an open-air theater, you think. Something the queen does not manage anything, but the prime minister in England manages everything. So that. Well, she's always up there with something. Well, Lord, this is, I'm talking about "not a legal disappearance", pay attention, but an actual one. That is, in fact, the king, the emperor will be a figurehead sooner or later. Or disappear altogether. By the way, we are more likely to disappear. But Tsar Alexander II was dialectically resolute; on the one hand decisively, and on the other hand indecisively. He understood that the government, and more broadly the elite, were losing control over the broad peasant masses, and it was he who, at a meeting with the nobility of Moscow on March 30, 1856, uttered this textbook phrase that entered the history books - “it is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for that time, when it begins to cancel itself from below. It's impossible to argue. Yes. And here it is very interesting, and the context in which this chased formula was sounded is interesting. What did the tsar do at the nobility meeting in Moscow? The nobility waited for the tsar to dispel rumors about the abolition of serfdom. Those. the mass of the elite, they were so hypnotized by their apparently quite prosperous situation at first glance that they were simply unable to realize the real state of affairs from their small bell tower. And reality resembled a powder keg, to which 2 smoldering wicks were connected. One lies at home, and the other is carefully laid from the West. Proto-Hitlers. Yes. And it's only a matter of time which wick burns out first, or maybe they burn out at the same time. You will first detonate a desperate people, or there will be a foreign intervention. Or all together. This, as a rule, can push each other. And, as we can see, both prospects were quite real. And here is the year 1839, let's jump back, wise A.Kh. Benckendorff, chief of the 3rd department of His Imperial Majesty's own Chancellery, chief of the gendarmes, reported to the emperor very characteristic and impartial information. So I think that these lines should have been minted in bronze and nailed to the Winter Palace. And someone else to the head. So. The note is called "Collection of opinions about the internal state of Russia and its actual state." “With every new reign, with every important event at the court or in the affairs of the state, from ancient times and usually the news of the upcoming change in the internal administration runs through the people and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe freedom of the peasants is aroused; as a result of this, disturbances are taking place and in the past year there have been in various places, disorders that threaten, although a remote, but terrible danger. The rumors are always the same: the tsar wants it, but the boyars resist. It is a dangerous business, and it would be a crime to conceal this danger. The common people are not the same as they were 25 years before. The clerks, thousands of petty officials, merchants and curry cantonists, who have the same common interest with the people, instilled in them many new ideas and fanned a spark in their hearts that might one day flare up. The people constantly interpret that all foreign-speaking people in Russia, Chukhny, Mordovians, Chuvashs, Samoyeds, Tatars, etc. free, and some Russian, Orthodox - slaves, contrary to the Holy Scriptures. That the Lord is the cause of all evil, i.e. nobles! That the gentlemen are deceiving the tsar and slandering the Orthodox people before him. In general, the whole spirit of the people is directed towards one goal, towards liberation, and meanwhile, in all parts of Russia there are idle people who kindle this idea. The king did not know, something familiar in this. “In general, serfdom is a powder magazine under the state, and it is all the more dangerous because the army is made up of peasants and that now there is a huge mass of worthless nobles from officials who, being inflamed with ambition and having nothing to lose, are happy with any disorder. Improvement of specific peasants, i.e. state peasants, and the protection provided to them, had a strong effect on inciting even greater disgust for the serfdom. In this regard, the soldiers who were dismissed on indefinite leave draw attention to themselves. Of these, the good ones remain in the capitals and cities, and people disperse to the villages, for the most part lazy or ill-tempered. Having lost the habit of peasant labor, having no property, alien in their homeland, they incite hatred against the landlords with their stories about Poland, the Ostsee provinces, and in general can have a harmful effect on the mind of the people. The opinion of sane people is this: without declaring freedom to the peasants, which could cause unrest from surprise, one could begin to act in this spirit. Now serfs are not even honored by members of the state (they are not honored even by members of the state) and do not even swear allegiance to the Sovereign. They are outside the law, because the landowner can exile them to Siberia without trial. Well, etc. “Then only the measure will be saving when it is taken by the government itself quietly, without noise, without loud words, and prudent gradualism is observed. But that this is necessary and that the peasant class is a powder mine, everyone agrees on this. no one thought anything good. Everyone was worried about the fact that it could already be suffocating. Well, except for those who are on the ground, again, who did not see the big picture. Information came to Benckendorff from all over Russia, from Vladivostok to Warsaw, he knew everything. He made a squeeze to the sovereign, presented, but the sovereign, as usual, did not react, because, as Karamzin wrote about Nicholas I, "he wanted to change something without changing anything." Well done. Also our man, of course. But this is 1839. 1858, the reform is about to break out. And the 3rd section reports: “The peasants, for their part, while waiting for a revolution in their lives, are in a tense state and can easily get irritated by some external reason. As the landowners put it, their hands have dropped, and they do not want to take on anything with zeal. Many understand freedom in the sense of freemen, some think that the land belongs to them as much as to the landowners; they are even more convinced that they own houses and estates - what nonsense - Just as the landowners, fearing stripedness and not wanting to have peasant householders as neighbors, object most of all to the cession of estates to them, so the peasants cannot understand why they should to redeem the estates that they built and in which their fathers and grandfathers lived. The disturbances that now most frequently occur consist in the fact that serfs either evade the payment of dues and other duties, or show disobedience to the elders and the owners themselves. Unrest of entire villages, requiring the personal action of the highest provincial authorities or benefits military teams , took place where the landowners in their orders did not conform to the real spirit of the times or where instigators appeared. Such unrest, more or less important, manifested itself throughout the year in 25 provinces...” Not bad. Those. this is what I can do, I have quite a lot written out here, I won’t read everything, because we don’t have much time. Well, we got it. Yes Yes Yes. Those. this is section 3. I have further extracts from the places there, which are reported from the places, incl. and some landowners, and provincial authorities. There's a nightmare. Those. Everyone understands that something needs to be done. And now, albeit with a monstrous half-century delay, but this is the top of the top, the tsarist government finally decided to reform. The direct executors faced a difficult task - on the one hand, to preserve the well-being of the dying feudal ruling class, without giving it a reason for active opposition, but they could. And, looking ahead, I will say - they began to counteract. On the other hand, it was necessary to find a new foothold, which only the emerging bourgeoisie could become, literally jump from one column to another, and carry with them a multi-ton load, which is the state. And the third task was, of course, to allocate land to the peasants in such a way as to guarantee the elite from a very real social explosion, while giving the peasants at least something, while observing the fulfillment of the first 2 points that I described - to observe the interests of the nobles and rely on other exploiters , to the bourgeoisie. This task seems to consist of mutually exclusive points and is generally impossible. It turned out to be feasible, because between all these pitfalls editorial commissions, made up of theorists, in fact, who should develop certain theories, had to maneuver first. And then the secret committee on the peasant question, which was established on January 3, 1857. The composition of the committee is very vocal. Firstly, the soul of this whole organization, I am not talking about some prominent theoretician, but the soul, of course, was the Tsar's younger brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, Admiral General of the Navy, who, like many sailors, was an Anglophile. And pointing to the king at England, he said - there, look at the British Empire for a second, it is quite big ... what a beauty. At the same time, there is a king. Why shouldn't we do the same? There is no serfdom, let's do the same. And he pecked, apparently, the brain of his brother so much that he finally decided and included him in the composition. Together with him was State Secretary Valuev (not a relative of the boxer), who was also a prominent liberal, but at the same time the liberal was so clever that he managed to be in the same political circles with the most reactionary circles, and did not quarrel with anyone. And the other people were wonderful. For example, the chief of gendarmes Dolgorukov; former gendarme chief Orlov; Minister of State Property Muravyov, future Vilna Hangman; member of the State Council Prince Gagarin; Minister of Justice Count Panin; Minister of the Interior Lanskoy; Ya.I. Rostovtsev, Chief of the General Staff for Military Educational Institutions, by the way, was the main developer of the regulation on peasants. Well, and others, only 11 people. But Panin is not a relative of Lyokha Panin, no? Don't know. He was a military man, first and foremost. In fact, ending with Rostovtsev, these are almost all participants in the war of 1812, almost all of them hang in the gallery of heroes. But they were hardened reactionaries. All of them were feudal lords themselves, owning peasants, and a rather large number of them. And apparently, by the way, judging by the selection of personnel, the members of the committee were sure that the idea would turn into a talking shop, just like it was during the work of 2 previous committees in the reign of Nicholas I, i.e. 1826-32, and 1835-48. Also on this occasion, committees met to free the peasants, and they talked, and it did not end with anything, although serious specialists in jurisprudence and agriculture worked there. The first committee in general was headed by Speransky, what can I say, a smart one and an extremely diligent person, if you look at the results of his work on the code of Russian laws, from Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas I, there are dozens of volumes of laws that had to be observed. Because the word of the king is a law that cannot be interpreted. Excellent. If the king himself did not cancel it by the next decree, then this is a law that still needs to be implemented. Originally arranged. Yes. And he was simply able to master, Speransky, for which he should have been given the Stalin Prize, but Stalin was not there. Yes. And, for example, Orlov boasted that he would rather let his hand be cut off than sign the release of the peasants with the land. This is a member of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peasants. Great, great. Muravyov, the future hangman, worked himself up to the point that Alexander II himself publicly accused him of covert sabotage of his policy, because he was engaged in it, sabotage. V.N. Panin, this is a unique person, the author of the famous law of 1847, according to which peasants could acquire real estate only in the name of their own landowners, which became a gold mine for landowners, for courts, and for the Ministry of Justice as a whole, because landowners, if anything, gave small bribes to get the case decided in their favour, and, of course, decided in their favour. Everyone just left in footcloths from Versace. Lanskoy announced in the press that, by the will of the emperor, "he will inviolably protect the rights granted to the nobility by his crowned ancestors." Here too please. And so Ya.I. managed to formulate the main provisions in the peasant question. Rostovtsev, and succeeded masterfully. He developed the key positions of the future reform, then, of course, they underwent some changes, but only cosmetic ones. And the main points, which, in fact, transferred the peasants from a serf state to a state of emergency, i.e. temporarily liable. And the following points, briefly they can be reduced to 4. 1 - the peasants receive land only after paying its cost. That's how it happened, right? Yes. 2 - peasants legally receive full citizenship rights after 12 years of transition period. The nobility retains part of the land - from a third to a half - and the right to police supervision of the peasants. 4 - until the full redemption, the feudal exploitation of the peasants is maintained through the institutions of quitrent and corvée, the procedure for which is established locally. But even such a reform seemed too bold, because from 1857, in 1860, Rostovtsev died - from old age. Those. he did not live to see the official launch of the process. And his last words, according to rumors, were "sir, do not be afraid." Those. the sovereign was even afraid of such palliative measures regarding the needs of the bulk of the population, and the project traveled through bureaucratic corridors for 4 years. 4 years. Moreover, it was published in 1857 in a rescript to the Vilna Governor-General Nazimov, about whom Lanskoy wrote that the person was extremely stupid. And as soon as it was made public, they took a very successful step. The matter was referred to the provincial noble committees for discussion, so that they would correct it as it seemed right and necessary to them. Moreover, the first one was formed in Ryazan in 1858, and the last one in the Moscow province, because the nobles (this order is not accidental) local nobles blocked the discussion of the reform in any form, even this one. They simply refused to even participate in the discussion of what seemed to them absolutely wrong. What for? And it's just as good. But, apparently, they understood what was shining. It began to shine that the king began to be dissatisfied with the nobles, and since. this is the biggest nobleman had to participate. Them? Yes, the nobles began to participate in the discussion. Those. it became clear that the reform could not be canceled in any way, it would definitely be. August 59 of the 19th century was marked by the beginning of the work of the congress of provincial deputies. Needless to say, there were no peasants there, and instead of agronomists and specialists in agriculture and jurisprudence, landowners sat in them, who were mainly engaged in observing their own interests. Very streamlined, Rostovtsev wrote a year before his death, in 1959: “The commissions wished with all their hearts to balance the interests of the peasants with the interests of the landowners. - just listen, this is a class - If they have not yet reached this balance, if there really is a certain preponderance on the side of the peasants in other questions, then this, of course, is no longer due to the fact that the Commissions wished to upset the landowners and that they did not their sacred rights were respected, firstly, because only Minerva was born directly armed, and, most importantly, because, when questions were especially difficult, how to tilt their scales, the Commissions sometimes tilted them to the side of the peasants and did this because they tilted the scales then, from the benefit of the peasants to the benefit of the landlords, there will be many hunters and a lot of strength, but on the contrary, otherwise, so that the life of the peasants could not improve, but worsen. Excellent. Here is what he said. And this is a small part of a very large note that Rostovtsev submitted to the sovereign, collecting the opinions that exist in the committees of the nobility about what the reform should be. Opposite point E of these opinions there is a very revealing marginal inscribed by a crowned hand. Marginal - marginal note. Paragraph E read: "Sixths prefer an amicable and gradual ransom, so that the peasant enters a new life and new relationships not suddenly, but gradually becoming accustomed to the new order of things." Here, opposite this, the sovereign deigned to draw "this is what I want." In total, editorial commissions, in fact, 1 commission, but at first it was assumed that there would be several of them, so the editorial commission was called editorial commissions. 82 provincial reform projects were submitted to the secret committee, later the main committee, of which 5 were selected, and the volume of documentation amounted to 35 volumes. Oh my God. I haven’t even read all of them yet and I won’t read them, because in the process of preparing a book about the revolution, you still need to observe certain deadlines and reasonableness, because I realized that I would die there in these volumes. And it would be interesting. But next time. Well, we all know that serfdom was abolished in 1861, but even in 1861 things did not get off the dead bureaucratic point. Those. everyone was in the mood to think a little more. And at this time, you still have time to exploit, you know, your peasants a little. There was a feeling that they wanted to drag the reform, if not to bury it, then to drag it out as much as possible, and it seemed not to me, but to the sovereign emperor. Because on January 28, 1861, he was forced to make a speech in the State Council, which set out the demand for the actual launch of reforms no later than February of this year, i.e. before the start of the agricultural cycle. The speech clearly stated: “I repeat, and this is my indispensable will, so that this matter is now over. Any further delay could be detrimental to the state.” And when Alexander II said this, he knew what he was talking about, because the 3rd department of His Imperial Majesty's Chancellery reported that 1855 was the year 63 of the unrest of the peasants. 1856 - 71 unrest of the peasants. 1857 - 121 unrest of the peasants. 1858 - 423 unrest of the peasants, and this is already the scale of the Pugachev war is real. And what was it meant that there they had already impaled someone on a pitchfork, cut off their head? This has been implied from armed demonstrations, assassination attempts, to illegal petitions, gatherings, illegal rallies, and so on. In 1859, things began to decline - 182, but already in 1860 there were 212 uprisings. Those. it went in such waves, and did not think to decline. Because if it all started with 63, then it dropped to 182, and next year 212, then it is clear that next year there will be a peak of speeches, there will be over 600 of them. And these are only speeches related to the land issue. There were, for example, protests against wine farming. Those. the peasants were seriously worried, and this is only about the land issue, and this is concrete, I say, already the scale of Pugachevism, only in its new edition. Well, the landlord stratum, which was directly, it was she who was threatened by the Russian revolt on the ground, not the emperor. The emperor would have been saved by the army and the guards, and he would have managed to slip away abroad, if anything. Well, they didn't care. The landowners began to bargain desperately about compensation when they realized that the reform could not be canceled. In addition to purely monetary moments, i.e. what they will be given financially for this, here again the fact of external influence, this time cultural, had a colossal influence, this is inevitable westernization. And her sign was the demand for an aristocratic constitution and aristocratic elected representation. Those. in exchange for the loss of the economic basis, the nobles wanted money, and that they were given to steer the country on an equal footing with the king. Not bad, yes. Well, if you rule something, then you can always have a little, so to speak, something else to fuck yourself. And the conductors, of course, of such aspirations were the Anglophile intellectuals, headed by Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. Many noble assemblies wrote about elective representation, literally from Moscow to Smolensk, from Ryazan to Yekaterinoslav, everyone wanted to steer. The newly appointed Minister of the Interior, the same Valuev, boldly indicated the degree of contradictions that had arisen in a note filed on June 26, 1862. I, honestly, if I didn’t know who wrote it and when, I would have thought that this was happening under Nicholas II, somewhere in 1916. You just recognize all the rhetoric now. Yegor Yakovlev This government is in a painful isolation, causing serious concern to all who are sincerely devoted to the emperor and the fatherland. Our press is entirely in opposition to the government. The organs of the press are either open and irreconcilable enemies, or very weak and unfriendly friends. The most common feature, almost universal, is the desire of a certain part of society to have some participation in government. As long as these aspirations are not satisfied to a certain extent, there will be neither peace nor a truce... That is. it was about an almost internal war of their own elite against their own government. Of course, the tsarist government and the emperor personally did not want to hear about the limitation of God-given power, this was already beyond what Alexander II was ready to consider. And a compromise, according to the apt remark of the same Valuev, was a means to pay off the Constitution, i.e. organization of zemstvo self-government. 3 estates - peasants, burghers, and nobles - nominated deputies. True, it turned out that 85% of the deputies were nobles and merchants, and the rest were peasants. What could they do there? Solzhenitsyn, I remember, liked it terribly, it was necessary to organize zemstvos. Zemstvo, yes, zemstvo. The zemstvos primarily dealt with economic matters (local). And they were solved extremely inefficiently. On this occasion, in 1871, my favorite poet A.K. Tolstoy in the satirical poem "Sometimes Merry May" wrote wonderfully. There, a young man and a girl walk and talk about dangerous things - about politics. You can’t talk about this with girls, they will definitely be upset. And so it happened. It will not be possible to incline to cohabitation. No no. Tell me, except for jokes, - The bride asked here, - Is there really no place for them in a lunatic asylum? "" Oh, you are my desired light! My soul is you, fret! They are very spacious. They should build a house! Question: how to build such a house for them? Allow the engineers - It will cost a lot; And to leave the zemstvo on their own dependency, That would mean leaving the Building without movement! " Well, it was Tolstoy who said about the raging liberals that they need to be locked up in a madhouse, but a very large house is needed. And if the zemstvo is provided for their own dependency, then everything, nothing will be built. Well, if we ignore the ridiculous, we will see that there is a gradual, and, by the way, a decisive loss of leverage by the nobility on the central government. That is, the superstructure began to delaminate in two, i.e. the royal top came off from the nobility, which suddenly turned out to be unable to influence it in any way, because the reform was carried out regardless of the pressure of the nobles, i.e. they, of course, tried to do something, but the king barked, and were forced to accept the reform and the noble feudal counter-revolution, which we spoke about in the previous chapters, was simply receding before our eyes before the avalanche-like process of changes in productive ilah. And following these tectonic shifts, of course, social relations also drifted. Those. we see, yes, it was not the Sicilists who did it, it was not even Alexander II who did it. He was forced to do this, because there was a cliff further, that's all. Well, of course, the loss of influence by the nobles in the first place was associated with the same basic points, namely, with a drop in economic efficiency across the country. Those. noble economy on a large scale, it provided each nobleman very well, but on the scale of the country it played less and less role. And, of course, with a small share of the well-born in the all-Russian framework, i.e. not cured, but well-born nobility in the state apparatus and in the army. Those. nobles, the nobility reaped the fruits of their victories in past centuries, and did not want to serve. As a result, they accelerated their own fall. The objective factor, of course, was the economic factor. By the time of the abolition of serfdom, a fair, but no longer comprehensive, labor force was concentrated in the hands of the landowners. As we remember, our population censuses were called revisions, starting with Peter I, and the last, 10th revision of 1857-58, revealed the following data without taking into account the kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland. I will not read the table, I will move on to the results. In total, 67,081,167 people lived in the Russian Empire. What precision. This, of course, is an inaccuracy, because everything was bad with the statistics there. But we see - a little more than 67 million. Of these, 23,069,631 souls were serfs. Those. 34.39% of the total population of the empire. Those. it would seem a lot, but it is no longer all peasants, far from all peasants. For comparison, the number of state peasants, already at that time called appanage peasants, has grown since the first revision of 1719 under Peter I from 1,049,000 souls, 19% of the agricultural population, to 9,345,000 souls in 59 of the 19th century, 45% of the agricultural population. population. Those. already what was seized by the hands of the state, especially after the secularization of the monastic peasants by Catherine II, by the way, you need to curse her, a German woman, such a disgusting one, you need to make a bad film about her, because she encroached, among other things, on Orthodoxy, in this way. Holy foundations. Yes, the holy foundations shook a little. A little less than half of the peasants were already in the hands of the state, and they were in the same hands, and not in the hands of scattered nobles. But here it must be remembered that the royal elite was the flesh of the flesh of a dying class. They themselves were actually nobles. Tsar Peter equalized them all into one. The king also became a nobleman, just the biggest and the best. And because they were nobles, they could not decisively rely on the new class of the bourgeoisie, breaking at once with the previous point of support. It’s just that there were relatives, friends… Well, it’s not clear at all how you break up with yourself. Pretty hard. This is where the half-heartedness and extreme slowness of transformations come from, which did not completely satisfy the main part of society. It is here that the root of the origin of the revolutionary nobility lies. Because the nobility, when they realized that their interests were not fully observed, and the nobles were very different in state. There were some superlatifundists, it is clear that everything was all right with them right away, but there were much poorer ones, they were also offended. Even those who were conservatives, completely devoted to the monarchy, it was at this time that they en masse moved into the circles of liberal constitutionalists who demanded a constitution. And moreover, at first it was intellectual games, and then, very soon, it manifested itself in a completely material way, because they tried to kill that same Alexander II, including. and nobles. Those. directly revolutionary participation in illegal societies, already without any quotation marks, there were a lot of noblemen there. Let me remind you, Lenin was a hereditary nobleman in the end. Reform broke out. Speaking about the preparation of reforms and their implementation, we must recall the words of Alexander II, also from a school textbook. "Everything that could be done to protect the interests of the nobility has been done." Just before the start of the reforms, the State Council came up with another cunning measure, which, apparently, was very much liked. He came up with a certain one - it was the initiative of Prince Pyotr Pavlovich Gagarin - it was the so-called. donation. The peasant could go free without redemption payments, having received land. But it will be 25% of the land that he would have been entitled to buy. Well, that's right, the garden is actually 6 acres. Of course, not 6 acres, but still very little. According to estimates by Zaionchkovsky, who wrote a book just about the land reform, the donation allotments received approximately 500,000 revision souls, i.e. slightly more than 5% of the landlord peasants. Well, apparently, who had absolutely nothing to lose, they understood that they would still be engaged in some kind of craft. And it was a real garden. On February 17, 1861, the draft regulation on the peasants was submitted to the tsar for signature. And on February 19, on the 6th anniversary of his accession to the throne, Alexander II signed the Manifesto announcing the reform. Alexander himself, before the publication of the Manifesto, said - “When the people see that their expectations, i.e. that freedom, according to his understanding, did not come true, will he not have a moment of disappointment? It will come. Well, even these very penny concessions, they led to the fact that literally when this very preparation for the announcement of the Manifesto began, the troops were transferred to combat readiness. Live ammunition was handed out, cannons were pumped out, i.e. they were just preparing to quell an internal rebellion, because they understood that once the peasants were told that they were in a lifetime mortgage, nothing good would happen. And the tsar was naturally guarded by the chief of gendarmes with a harnessed carriage to take him out of St. Petersburg. Well, the essence of the reform. We once recorded a separate big video about her, so I’m like that, in broad strokes. First, legally serfdom was declared abolished forever. The specific form of its abolition was drawn up by various provisions, there were several of them for different regions. Those. each district had its own conditions in some way. Firstly, for each district, depending on fertility and, most importantly, the market price of land, the maximum and minimum size of the peasant allotment, and the specific amount of the ransom, were established. If a peasant had more land than was given to him, the land was cut off. If less, then it was supposed to be tied. And under any conditions, part of the land departed to the landowner. Usually a third, and in the most fertile southern regions, half. Not bad. Well, how the same, in the end. Dear people. Yes. As a result of the division made in the central region, the peasants eventually lost 20% of land, and so small. And in the Black Earth region about 16%. Thus, for a significant part of the peasants, the allotments were cut so much that they simply did not give them a livelihood. We remember that if less than 15 pounds per capita per year, it is already below the subsistence level. Great reform. Those. if the consumer accounted for less than 1.5 hectares, approximately acres of land, then in the central zone one could not even talk about the subsistence minimum, and they had to not only eat from this, but also pay, and if you look at how much these payments were calculated, everything should have ended somewhere around the end of the 30s of the 20th century. Those. peasants had to be milked almost until the age of 37. Something didn't work out. And, of course, the most important thing is that the state immediately bought the land, and the peasants had to pay the mortgage to the state through peasant banks. At the same time, as I said, the feudal exploitation of the peasants was preserved until the full redemption. The peasants were obliged to work out on the land of the landowner, men for 40 days, women for 30 days. At least it was stated. Moreover, the landowner could transfer them to dues, i.e. to force them to simply pay, which was much less profitable. It was in the hands of the landowner. The peasants received, which is very important, they officially received the organization that the state peasants had, which was ruled by the community, headed by the elders. Those. specific peasants, state, their situation was somewhat better, we talked about this 2 times ago. They had somewhat large allotments, but at the same time ... yes, they, of course, did not work out any corvée, because what, will you run to the tsar to work off corvee? No thanks, you don't. They paid taxes in kind, and their situation was a little easier. But, it is true, they were madly exploited by local officials, who, of course, managed state property as they wished. Bribes, cuts, kickbacks. I said last time, you were not there, when under Alexander I they gathered to see what was happening with the palace department, they had to dismiss 70% of the officials in general, who managed state property. Not bad. Those. just like that, because here even the system that was able to forgive, when the arrears went off scale for 40 million rubles, they said that - you know, this is some kind of excess after all. Lord, burn, there is no one to save here. Yes Yes Yes. Actually, the state peasants were released not in 1861, but they began to be released in 1863, but finally ... They also ransomed, i.e. it is necessary to add to those 23 million another 9 million appanage peasants. They, too, were redeemed on the same terms, and finally settled all the legislative tricks only by 1886 with the sovereign peasants. So, the peasants were organized in the same way as the sovereign peasants, appanage. Those. they did not pay redemption payments on their own, but through the community, which itself distributed by the method of mutual responsibility within itself, who would pay how much, who could pay how much. Headmen were placed at the head with the rights of police supervision, who were not very loved, frankly. These were elective positions, of course. Well, for ordinary peasants, the amount of dues due to a decrease in allotment was slightly reduced, realizing that, damn it, now they will simply die everything. On average, from about 4 rubles to 3 rubles 55 kopecks per soul. Carefully. Carefully, yes. Those. in grain terms from about 10 to 8 pounds. I spoke about the limitation of corvée. The most important consequence of all this reform was that from now on it was completely clear to the peasant that he had been robbed. Now, if before someone thought yes, someone thought no, someone began to arrange peasant wars like Pugachev or Razin, someone did not start to arrange, they are still different. Now it was common for the entire peasantry to understand that they had been cultivating this land for 1000 years, and paid for it entirely with their sweat. Moreover, this land, in the understanding of the peasantry, just came from the past. This is the sovereign's land, which is given to the landowner for his service. Now the landowner does not serve, he is generally incomprehensible, because he was simply eliminated as a master, he is no longer a master. The peasant became a free citizen with civil rights, but at the same time he found himself in an even worse condition than he was. And this understanding gave rise to the desire for a black redistribution, i.e. the return of all the land to those who cultivate it, and an egalitarian division by eaters. It was born precisely in 1861, literally within 3 years. This is fixed by the reports of the same 3rd branch. Everyone knew that the bulk of the population, to put it mildly, was not entirely happy with what had happened. And from here, of course, it must be said that in the sense ... yes, by the way, 1861 was marked by 784 peasant riots, i.e. not even 432, as it was in 57, but 784. And 499 of them crushed the troops. Wow. Nobody talks about this as about the terrible Tambov uprisings. No, not that you. How can you compare? How can you compare? Right there, decent people pressed on. Yes, for business. And for the cause. Knowing the place. Romuald Albertych is there, for Russia, for Russia. Yes. I forgot to say, I just talked about it, so I repeat, the state loan was paid off for 49 years. Should have been paid for 49 years. Those. such a wow mortgage at 6%. Not bad. Moreover, when we say that since 1861 we have not had serfdom - a little dog-like, because what does it mean no? Until you redeem yourself, who are you? By 1870, 67% of the peasants managed to switch to redemption. By 1880 85%. Well, in fact, redemption payments became a new tax, which began to flow in favor of the state. And for the state, this was not the worst step, because the state received some money that can be spent on the development of capitalist industry, on the one hand. On the other hand, the ruined peasants constituted the labor market. Thus, it was precisely in 1861 that the real bourgeoisie began to rise in our country. Of course, its main economic factor was the bourgeoisie, which speculated in grain, i.e. these are those who sold resources abroad. First of all, abroad, which was facilitated by the development of the railway network, because under Alexander II the Main Society of Railways was formed, which at first they tried, thought at first to do at the state expense, they realized that there was not enough money, and the question was in the construction of 7500 miles of railway canvases. And, of course, as in developed countries, they turned to their experience and made a joint-stock company of railways, where they invited bankers, all interested merchants of the 1st guild, and, of course, foreign capital. It soon became clear that foreign capital in our railway capital occupies a little more than 80%. Naturally, the main part of the railways was built for state tenders, i.e. the state paid for it. And the money was leaving ... Over the cordon. For cordon, yes. And in total, by the end of the 19th century, the share of foreign capital in Russian industry, excluding railways, amounted to 72%. Wonderful. Those. when we talk about the unprecedented rise of the Russian Empire, yes, it is unprecedented, because we rose from just yesterday an agrarian country to, of course, an agrarian country, but with a very serious industry, a really gigantic network of railways, new ports, new ships. But it was ¾ not ours, that's the thing. Some hell. Those. from now on, when I talk about the Russian economy as part of the global economy, earlier it could be put in quotation marks and say that, well, yes, there were points of intersection and impact. And now these are not points of influence. The Russian economy has simply become part of the European one. Thus, we did not control about ¾ of our country. Genius solution. Well, this is a bourgeois reform, there could not be another. Where would we get the money from? We could not even pay for the three-year war ourselves. From corporatization, as well as under Alexander II, the government was forced to agree to the abolition of many restrictions, for example, to travel abroad, to participate in foreign capitalist concessions, then, of course, capital rushed to us already without any war, on its own. The market is untapped, it is necessary to master it. And they began to actively master it. Hence, of course, the immediate denial of the bourgeois factor was born. Those. as soon as the bourgeois revolution began in our country, and it was precisely a revolution, I am talking about it, the mass of free wage-working people, who found themselves in factories and factories, on steamships and railways, received their own very specific economic interests. And being soldered by bourgeois discipline into large collectives, she began to learn at that time to defend these interests. And it began to learn simply because the capitalist was forced to teach his workers, because even a fool without education cannot be put on a steam locomotive. He will not be able to understand what the pressure gauge is showing, and the engine will explode like a dead alligator from Lake Titicaca. I'm not talking about the ship, or, I don't know, about some blacksmith's press. Those. it is necessary that a person be disciplined, so that you can simply hammer into him the safety rules so that he does not saw off his own hand, or someone else, which is bad at all, does not saw off his hand, because then you have to support, well, or throw it out into the street, which will create tension. Because 1 can be thrown out, and 21, and 2021, what to do with them after that? Those. people had to be taught. Schools open. Of course, schools are opened for a reason, the supreme government was terribly dissatisfied with the opening of schools. And it all ended, of course, with the valuable initiative of the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, K. Pobedonostsev ... To stop all this disgrace. Which resulted in the law "on the cook's children", i.e. when education, as in normal European countries, was divided into 2 streams - for cattle and for decent people. European way. Yes. And it became very difficult to move between these 2 strata. And then, if you expose it to the future, they should have completely separated, so that interpenetration would be possible for some exceptional geniuses like Lomonosov - well, in fact, why should such a person rot. There are always few such people, and for the broad masses the way up would be closed forever. Universities, higher educational institutions, there were more of them, they began to give the European elite ... yes, I, in fact, before universities, I must say that simply by learning to read, a person got access to knowledge, incl. and to Western literature, which began to penetrate along with Western capital. It could not be otherwise, because these people had to be taught according to some textbooks, and along with textbooks, everything penetrates. And the worker began to learn to defend his own economic interests, because the worker, who is not in the know, is a person who sells his labor power on the labor market, i.e. ability to work. And the capitalist is the person who buys this ability. And when we come to the market to buy potatoes, we want to buy them as cheaply as possible. We will not buy where it is expensive. We'll see - here 3 rubles, here 4, here 5. Well, where 3 is. Let's see, it's not rotten, if not rotten, then OK, let's take it. The capitalist is the same - he wants to buy cheaper, and the worker, of course, as a seller, wants to sell more expensive. This, strictly speaking, is the basis of the contradiction between the capitalist and the worker, and this contradiction cannot be eliminated in principle. It cannot be eliminated because while you are buying, you want to buy cheaper. And while you're selling, you want to sell more. You can, of course, agree, but for something in between. But the question is that here the seller and the buyer suddenly turned out to be ... well, for us it was a big secret. For the Europeans, no, they already knew everything, but for us it turned out to be a big secret that they are in very non-equilibrium conditions. Because the capitalist does not just buy labor power, but he is also the holder of the means of production, where this labor power can be applied. If you don’t like it, that’s the door there, and a crowd of people who want to take your place, because our peasantry began to go bankrupt en masse, and more and more free hands appeared. But all this could have ended with exactly one thing, that ready-made work teams would rally on the ground. And the working collective in capitalist production is a ready-made labor army. And if you cross out the word labor, then this is just a ready-made army, because they are already divided into brigades, they have bosses, they are used to discipline, to joint action and they are educated at least at the minimum level. And the minimum level for those times was just some kind of cosmic progress. And it is precisely at this point that the denial of the bourgeois revolution, the socialist revolution, is not born literally immediately, of course, but comes out into the wide light. Therefore, looking ahead, I can say that when they say that we could not have a socialist revolution in a peasant country, I will say that it could be, because it began to be prepared under Peter I, when the first capitalist enterprises appeared in our country, and as soon as we found ourselves in one place a hired worker and his employer. After 1861, their specific gravity simply increased enormously, and the government was forced to change its foothold, stepped over from the head of the nobility to the head of the bourgeoisie, and began to rely on them. Thus, as I said in the middle of our conversation, I immediately found myself in an already almost revolutionary situation, because the top remained feudal, and the production basis turned out to be bourgeois. And therefore, when we no longer have a creeping emerging bourgeois revolution that Alexander II began, but a real bourgeois revolution that will bring social relations and productive forces into line with the movement of the knife switch, this was a matter of a very short time. As I said, in 1861 the monarchy was doomed. As soon as the gates were opened for capital, not even the gates, the window, this capitalist wind first knocked out the windows, and then brought down the entire wall. And behind the wall, the whole building fell. But inside the bourgeois sector, its denial was already ready, which simply took this falling wall, simply because there are a lot of these hands, into its arms, and put it back, not allowing the house to take shape. And it would have developed, because we must never forget, once again, 3 times today, I will say that we have become part of the European economy, which was many times more powerful than us. Why - look at the background on the geographic and climatic position of Russia, an agrarian country. We were weaker than them. Therefore, of course, all possible tensions were dumped into the weakest sector of our own European economy, and it was us, because we were only in 5th place. When they say that Russia has reached the 5th place in bourgeois capitalist production, this is very cool. But we must not forget that these are not the first 3 places, and that we will be the ones who will pay for the problems in the first 3 places, this is inevitable. But we will probably not talk about how we paid off this time, because we have 2 great reforms ahead of us. We are now in an interesting period between the 2 reforms of Alexander II and Stolypin, the Russo-Japanese War and the beginning of the February Revolution. Let's talk about it next time. Well, in general, in my opinion, even a donkey understands that things didn’t go to anything good, that they did it somehow ... It seems everything is clear why they did it that way, but it’s wrong, and it couldn’t end in anything good . Not now, but tomorrow. Well, the main thing is that they were 50-60 years late. Those. if these redemption payments, even these redemption payments, were appointed under Catherine II, or the last chance - this was a conversation last time - under Alexander I, due to the fact that we were actively growing territories at that time, we could throw off economic problems on the newly acquired territories , could get out. And the authority of the authorities at that time was both at home and abroad, at such an indisputable height that both the nobility and the peasantry could endure it. And that's all, no ... If they push you to the river, there are no guarantees. No guarantees, yes. Because at this moment, as I said, we see that the peasants have ceased to believe in the tsarist government, because it has become unclear what exactly is happening, why they are forced to pay again for their land anyway. And the nobility, it was no longer needed simply because the king threw them naturally, abandoning them as a fulcrum. Well, the bourgeoisie did not need a tsar at all from the very beginning, because the bourgeoisie belongs to a completely different era. Strongly. 1 question. Yes. Do you really think there are crocodiles in Lake Titicaca? It was a quote from Alexander Pokrovsky's book "Shoot!". There, the officers were steaming in the headquarters ... I tensed up. In the command ship until the cauldron exploded like a dead alligator off Lake Titicaca. Just a good phrase, I really like it. Thank you, Klim Sanych. We try. Enlighten us further. Necessarily. Very cool. But I'm not going to turn off the tablet, because it gives a very sinister blue glow on my snout from below, like this. I like. And that's all for today. See you again.

Origin of the concept

The concept of the Military Revolution was first proposed by M. Roberts in 1955. On January 21, 1955, he gave a lecture at Queen's University in Belfast, which was later published as an article "The Military Revolution 1560-1660". It sparked a debate in historical circles that lasted for 50 years, in which the concept was formalized. Although historians often attack Roberts's findings, they usually agree with his main conclusion that European military affairs changed radically in the early modern period.

Chronology

Ayton and Price emphasize the importance of the "infantry revolution" that began at the beginning of the 14th century. David Iltis notes that the actual change in firearms and the development of the military doctrine associated with this change took place at the beginning of the 16th century, and not at the end of it, as M. Roberts determined.

Others advocate a later period of change in military affairs. For example, Jeremy Black believes that the key period was 1660-1710. During these years there was an exponential growth in the size of European armies. While Clifford Rogers developed the idea of successful military revolutions in different periods of time: the first, "infantry", - in the XIV century, the second, "artillery", - in the XV century, the third, "fortification", in the XVI century, the fourth, "gunshot" - in the 1580-1630s, and, finally, the fifth, associated with the growth of European armies - between 1650 and 1715. Similarly, J. Parker extended the period of the military revolution from 1450 to 1800. During this period, in his opinion, the Europeans achieved superiority over the rest of the world. . Not surprisingly, some scholars question the revolutionary nature of the changes that spanned four centuries. . K. Rogers proposed to compare the military revolution with the theory of punctuated equilibrium, that is, he suggested that short breakthroughs in the military sphere were followed by longer periods of relative stagnation.

Tactics

Line tactics

Shallow formations are ideal for defense, but they are too clumsy for offensive action. The longer the front, the more difficult it is to keep the formation and avoid breaks, to maneuver, especially turning. The Swedish king Gustav II Adolf understood well that assault columns, like those used by the field marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, Count Johann Zerklas von Tilly, were faster and more agile. The Swedish king used them when it was required, for example, in the battle of Alta Vesta. As a result, armies began to use more subtle formations, but with slow evolutions and trying on tactical considerations. . Firearms were not yet so effective as to single-handedly dominate the disposition of troops, other considerations were also taken into account: for example, the experience of the units, the designated target, the terrain, etc. The discussion about the line and column went on throughout the 18th century until Napoleonic times and was accompanied by some bias towards the deep columns of the later campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Ironically, lowering the depth of cavalry formations proved to be a more permanent change that Gustavus Adolphus made. In conjunction with less emphasis on pistol fire, this measure resulted in a preference for melee fire, which was the exact opposite of the trend advocated by M. Roberts.

Trace Italy

The concept of linear tactics by M. Roberts was criticized by J. Parker, who asked why the seemingly outdated Spanish thirds defeated the Swedes in the battle of Nördlingen.

Instead of linear tactics, J. Parker proposed the emergence of a bastion system of fortifications (or trace italienne) in early modern Europe as a key technological element. According to this view, the difficulty of taking such fortifications resulted in a profound change in strategy. “Wars turned into a series of protracted sieges,” says J. Parker, “and battles in the open field became a rarity in regions where trace italienne existed. In the highest degree,” he continues, “military geography”, in other words, the existence or absence of trace italienne in this area, limited the strategy in the early modern period and led to the creation of large armies in number, necessary for the siege of new fortifications and to garrison them.Thus, J. Parker established the emergence of a military revolution at the beginning of the XVI century.He also gave to it a new significance, not only as a factor in the growth of the state, but also the main factor, together with the “marine revolution”, in the rise of the West in comparison with other civilizations.

This model has been criticized. Jeremy Black noted that the development of the state allowed the growth of the size of armies, and not vice versa, and accused J. Parker of "technological determinism" . Subsequently, the calculations presented by J. Parker to defend his idea of the growth of armies were severely criticized by D. Iltis for lack of consistency, and David Parrot proved that the trace italienne era did not give a significant increase in the size of the French troops and that in the late period of the Thirty Years war, there is an increase in the share of cavalry in the armies, which, in contrast to the thesis of J. Parker about the prevalence of siege warfare, shows a decrease in its importance.

The infantry revolution and the decline of the cavalry

Some medievalists developed the idea of an infantry revolution that took place at the beginning of the 14th century, when in some famous battles, for example, at the Battle of Courtrai, in which the vaunted English archers were easily defeated. Despite this, the experience of battles such as Courtrai and Bannockburn showed that the myth of the invincibility of the knights had disappeared, which in itself was important for the transformation of the military art of the Middle Ages.

Another change that took place in the 15th century was the improvement of siege artillery, which made the old fortifications very vulnerable. But the superiority of the attacking side in siege warfare did not last very long. As Philippe Contamaine noted, as with any dialectical process of any era, progress in the art of siege was answered in the form of progress in the art of fortification and vice versa. Charles VIII's conquest of Italy in 1494 demonstrated the power of siege artillery, but in the early years of the 16th century, fortifications began to appear in the region that were specifically designed to withstand artillery fire. The entire effect of the "artillery revolution" of the 15th century was negated soon enough by the development of the bastion system or trace italienne. But the military superiority, which gave a powerful siege park, was expressed in a considerable increase in royal power, which we observe in some European countries at the end of the 15th century.

Army size

Administrative sources

Narrative sources

Whole army size

A clear distinction must be made between the entire army, that is, all the military forces of a given political entity, and the field army, tactical units capable of moving as a single force during a campaign. The growth of the entire army is considered by some researchers as a key indicator of the Military Revolution. There are two main theses in this regard: either it is considered as a consequence of the economic and demographic growth of the 17th-18th centuries. , or - as the main reason for the growth of bureaucratization and centralization of the modern state in the same period. However, some who disagree with the main thesis dispute these views. For example, I. A. A. Thompson noted how the growth of the Spanish army in the 16th-17th centuries. rather contributed to the economic collapse of Spain and led to the weakening of the central government in opposition to regional separatism. At the same time, Simon Adams questioned the growth itself in the first half of the 17th century. Growth was noticeable in the second half of the 17th century, when states took over the recruitment and armament of their armies, abandoning the commission system that prevailed until the end of the Thirty Years' War. The organization of the system of local and provincial militia at this time in a number of countries (and the growing importance of the local aristocracy, the so-called "re-feudalization of the armies", especially in Eastern Europe) contributed to the expansion of the manpower base of national armies, despite the fact that foreign mercenaries still accounted for a significant percentage in all European armies.

Size of field armies

In the second half of the 17th century, the situation changed dramatically. Armies began to be supplied through a network of depots connected by supply lines, which significantly increased the size of the field armies. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, before the advent of railways, the size of field armies reached numbers exceeding 100,000.

Conclusion

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If we take into account the spasmodic development of military affairs and analyze the processes of change in this sphere of activity of human society, it is easy to see that the “Great Powder Revolution”, described by M. Roberts, was not a unique phenomenon in world history. Moreover, we can safely say that it is not an accident at all, but part of the world historical process as a whole, one of the links in the chain of other similar upheavals. The emergence of the army as a state, political institution that replaced the tribal militias can be considered the first military revolution. The emergence of war chariots and cavalry 39 led to significant consequences, and not only in the military sphere. Equally important for the development of military affairs and art was the so-called "hoplite" revolution, about which disputes among historians still do not subside 40, and subsequently the birth of a regular, standing army in the Hellenistic states and the Roman Empire. The introduction of stirrups and saddles with high bows into equestrian use in the early Middle Ages largely contributed to the formation of an elite heavily armed cavalry, which for a long time seized dominance both on the battlefields and in power.
Thus, numerous technological innovations throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages repeatedly changed the “face of battle” and war in general. However, for the most part, all of them, to one degree or another, were local coups, without fundamentally changing the balance of power and ultimately not making only one particular model of military construction a model for universal imitation and copying. The same regular armies of the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire were unable to overcome the resistance of the seemingly more conservative and traditional military systems of Asia, just as the infantry armies of imperial China at the end of the history of the Ancient World repeatedly suffered severe defeats from the mounted militias of the Xiongnu nomads.
It is for this reason that one can hardly consider the revolution in tactics carried out in the first half of the 14th century. the British, the military revolution of the Middle Ages, as proposed by M. Prestwich and K. Rogers 41 . The domestic author D. Uvarov rightly noted on this occasion that, in essence, “the specific English tactics, in principle, could be used by the only state in Europe due to the lack of other equally qualified archers and therefore is an exception in the pan-European military art ...” 42. Any attempts to copy the English experience, at least in the same France, were not successful. It is enough to recall the unsuccessful experience of creating the so-called corps. "Frank-archers" by the government of Charles VII of France in the last years of the Hundred Years' War 43 . The new military system had to be both simple and versatile enough to be easily assimilated and then used in various conditions, and at the same time be more effective than all previous ones. Otherwise, as was the case with the English tactics of the late 13th-15th centuries, it was doomed to extinction as it was too complex, specialized and not flexible enough, leaving no offspring.
The situation was quite different with the military revolution in Western Europe at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age. It can be said with all certainty that it, of course, was the first global military revolution in terms of its consequences. It not only led to the birth of a new system of organization of military affairs. This has happened many times before, as noted above, in various regions of the world. No, this was different. As J. Parker rightly noted, this military revolution led to a radical change in the balance of power on the world stage: “To a large extent, the “rise of the West” was predetermined by the use of force, by the fact that the balance of power between Europeans and their overseas opponents was constantly leaning in favor of the first ;… the key to European success in creating the first truly global empires between 1500 and 1750. consisted precisely in those improvements in the ability to wage war, which will later be designated as the "military revolution" ... "44. That is why we can call it the "Great Gunpowder Revolution". Although this name may seem too loud and pretentious to someone, nevertheless, these words reflect the main reason for this coup, and its scope, and truly grandiose consequences.
The military superiority won by Europeans over their potential adversaries on land and at sea, both in the Old and in the New World, contributed in many respects, according to the apt remark of the American historian W. new dimension” 45 . The intensified ties between continents, states, peoples contributed to a more intensive transfer of knowledge and cultural values than before, the intensification of interstate competition and the struggle for spheres of influence, resources, control over trade routes, etc., which contributed both to the development of human civilization as a whole, and and military affairs in particular. The development of the economy, science and technology in the Western world gave European politicians and the military the necessary means to maintain the necessary level of military power to protect their global interests, and the desire to maintain the achieved military superiority stimulated the further development of military technology and military thought, inevitably led to the next military revolution. It followed at the beginning of the 20th century, when the “war of machines and motors” was born in the fire of the First World War. Now, less than a hundred years after the First World War, another military revolution is taking place before our very eyes, radically changing the ideas about war that existed until now. And the last two revolutions, having consolidated the dominant position of the West in the military sphere, thus preserved the political, economic and cultural dominance of Western civilization over all the rest, achieved by military means at the end of the Middle Ages - early modern times.
The countries that found themselves in the sphere of influence of the West had to make their choice and respond to the challenge from the Europeans. The preservation of one's own independence, original culture and way of life was directly related to the ability of one or another non-Western society to accept the ideas of a military revolution and implement them in relation to their own conditions. However, far from all non-Western civilizations managed to give an adequate response to the challenge of Western Europe in the military sphere at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age. In this regard, it is interesting to study the experience of adopting new military technology, tactics and strategies associated with the military revolution, the states of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, primarily the Commonwealth, Russia and Turkey, who belonged to different civilizations and cultures.
The example of these three states and their response to the Western European challenge is all the more interesting because they were all on the periphery of the impetus that brought the military revolution to life. Constantly in contact with the countries of Western Europe, they were drawn into the process of rapid changes in military affairs at about the same time, with some delay against the leading Western European states, but from close starting positions. However, the response that these countries gave to the military challenge from Europe turned out to be different. Ottoman Empire, considered in the XVI century. an ideal "military" state, inspiring fear in its neighbors, by the beginning of the 18th century. already lost to a large extent its former greatness and power, and a century later it turned into the “sick man of Europe”, the fate of whose legacy the great powers were very, very worried. The Commonwealth towards the end of the 18th century. and completely disappeared from the political map of the world. Such a fall was all the more surprising, since the Polish-Lithuanian army at the end of the 16th - 1st half of the 17th century. was considered one of the most combat-ready armies in Europe. She successfully fought with the drilled Swedish army, and with the Russian armies, and with the Turkish-Tatar hordes. Toward the end of the 17th century, in 1683, the glory of Polish weapons received another striking confirmation when the small army of King Jan Sobieski, numbering only 26 thousand soldiers and officers 47, played a major role in saving Vienna, the capital of the Roman Empire, from the Ottoman invasion. However, less than 20 years have passed since the territory of Poland and Lithuania became a "passage yard" for the armies of Sweden and Russia, who fought not for life, but for death, and by the end of the 18th century. The Commonwealth was divided among its powerful neighbors.
Among those who played a fatal role in the fall of the power of the Ottoman Empire and Finis Poloniae, the Russian Empire occupied almost the first place. When at the end of the fifteenth century Russia for the first time announced its foreign policy claims, hardly anyone could have imagined that it was this practically unknown state that, as a result of the successful completion of the military revolution, would turn into a Eurasian colossus, which for more than three centuries would have a serious impact on the development of events not only in Europe and Asia, but all over the world. All this became possible, not least because, perhaps, it was in Russia, of all non-European countries, that the military revolution received its most complete embodiment, and in all major areas - military, political, economic, social and cultural. However, this success came at a high price, subsequently serving as the reason for the growing lag of Russian society and the state in socio-economic and political development from the advanced countries of Europe in the 19th century, which to a large extent contributed to the three revolutions and radical changes in the 20th century. as an attempt to catch up with the West that has gone far ahead. By the way, studying the experience of implementing the main ideas of the military revolution in Russia allows us to give an answer, albeit a somewhat paradoxical one, to the question: to which world does Russia belong - Western or Eastern? Not a single state of the East, even successfully passed the first stage of the military revolution (Ottoman Empire - bright to that example), not to mention the civilizations of America, ultimately failed to find an adequate response to the challenge from the West and eventually found itself in varying degrees of dependence on it. Russia, on the other hand, was able to learn the lessons of this military revolution, creatively rework them and create a perfect military machine. Consequently, after all, Russia, albeit a very peculiar one, is part of the European Christian civilization, part of Europe. About the same as the "Great Gunpowder Revolution" took place in different countries and regions of the world, and will be discussed on the pages of this book.

CHAPTER I
Military revolution in Western Europe and the development of Western European armies in the 2nd half of the 15th - early 18th centuries

§ 1. The development of military affairs in Western Europe in the XIV-XV centuries. The first changes in the military sphere associated with the emergence and spread of firearms

In the introduction, we already mentioned the idea of F. Engels, who linked scientific, technical and economic progress with progress in military affairs. His formula was derived just on the materials of Western Europe. Therefore, before turning to the coverage of changes in Western European military affairs both in the era of the “Great Powder Revolution”, and several centuries before it, we would like to once again draw attention to the changes that took place in Western European society at the end of the Middle Ages. Anticipating his research on the history of Western European civilization in the 17th century, the French historian P. Shonyu noted that “... the population, the total amount of wealth and resources, the time scales of land and sea roads, production technology, methods of exchange, food balance - in a word, the entire the material civilization of the 17th century, despite some, over time, an impressive number of microchanges… – the entire material civilization of classical Europe was generated by the great revolution of the 12th century…” 48 .
Having survived the Black Death, which, according to various estimates, claimed the lives of a quarter to a half of the population of the West, Europe gradually got on its feet and, approximately from the middle of the 15th century, entered a period of new growth - economic, social and cultural, accompanied by serious political changes 49 .
Having crossed the line of centuries, Europe not only did not stop in its development, on the contrary, the new century was marked by even more serious changes that affected all spheres of life in Western European society. External expansion, symbolized by the Great Geographical Discoveries, became the dominant feature in the life of European society in the 16th century. But expansion in a world where there was no free "place under the sun" could be carried out by and large in only one way - through violence. And indeed, the English historian R. McKenny wrote, “... violence and wars are constants in European history, but in the 16th century, fueled by expansion itself, they acquired a new and incredible scale ... Never before have armies and guns been used with such ferocity and scope.(highlighted by us. - P.V.)… Expansion economic, intellectual and spiritual, as well as geographically proper, and conflict- social, religious and international - run like a red thread through the whole century, uniting into a single whole the changes associated with the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and geographical discoveries ... 50 .
The economic and demographic rise associated with the beginning of the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, the formation of the world market through the inclusion of overseas sources of raw materials and precious metals in the European economic system, serious changes in the political structure of the leading European states - all this created the necessary prerequisites for accelerating the processes of change, first in military-technical field, and then in the tactics and strategy of the European armies.
This was facilitated by the continued political division of Europe into many states at war with each other. The diversity of the political map of Europe and its features geographical location and devices played a positive role in accelerating the development of European military affairs. As P. Kennedy noted, in Europe “... there were no vast plains where nomadic empires could arise ...; there were no wide and fertile river valleys, like those that stretched along the banks of the Ganges, Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Yellow River or Yangtze, providing food for many industrious and easily submissive peasants. The European landscape was more varied, with mountain ranges and large forests separating distinct densely populated areas in the valleys; its climate varied greatly from north to south and from west to east. This had many important implications. To begin with, all this created great difficulties in the way of establishing a single control, even for powerful and determined overlords, and reduced the possibility of conquering the entire continent by an external force like the Mongol horde. On the contrary, this diverse landscape contributed to the growth and continued existence of decentralized power, with local dynasties and frontier possessions, mountain clans, lowland urban confederations, which made the political map of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire look like a patchwork quilt ... 51 .
As a result, a situation arose in Western Europe that was somewhat similar to that formed in Ancient Greece in the VIII-VI centuries. BC e., when in numerous city-states, separated from each other by mountain ranges and straits, in almost continuous internecine conflicts, elements of a new military machine. Something similar was now happening in late medieval Europe, where in various regions military thought and practice tirelessly worked to create more and more perfect military systems. The political diversity that persisted and continued to develop to a large extent contributed to the fact that European military affairs continued to develop more and more rapidly, especially in the late Middle Ages, when the necessary material and other prerequisites for this arose. The ever-growing interstate competition and rivalry thus became the key to the rapid development of Western European military affairs.
Changing conditions inevitably had to lead to changes in military affairs, and they did not take long to wait. If at the beginning of the XIV century. on the battlefield, the main figure was a heavily armed knight-nobleman, then less than half a century had passed before the infantry and the first, as yet imperfect cannons, began to push him, and by the end of the 17th century. cavalry as the main impact force European armies finally left the stage. In this capacity, she was replaced by an infantryman armed with a musket and a cannon. The army-machine, organized according to the principle of manufacture, replaced the former army, which can be likened to the workshop of a medieval artisan.
However, before this happened, military affairs in Western Europe went through a long and difficult path of development. The classical "feudal" army (according to the classification proposed by J. Lynn 52) already in the XII century. began to undergo certain changes associated with the general trend of "professionalization" and "specialization", inherent in the entire Western European society of that time. First of all, this manifested itself in the spread of mercenarism.
The latter appears in the West quite early and began to progress rapidly from about the 12th century, and this was due primarily to the development of commodity-money relations, the "commercial revolution" 53 . As a result of this "revolution" in the hands of the monarchs and major seigneurs, funds appeared quite large for those times, which, according to the French historian F. Contamine, "were used to pay for various kinds of military services, while simultaneously allowing these services to be consolidated, and temporal and spatial restrictions on their implementation - eliminate(highlighted by us. - P.V.)…” 54 . The latter consideration seemed extremely important, since it ensured that the monarch or lord had a permanent military force in his hands, ready almost immediately to go on a campaign and fight under the banner of the employer until he paid the money, and where he pleased, and not 40 days and 40 nights and only on their own land.
Demand gives rise to supply, and supply stimulated demand, and mercenarism spread rapidly, step by step crowding out the former feudal militia. The latter was more and more often convened only as a last resort, when there was a serious threat to the state or to suppress internal rebellions, unrest and unrest. Usually, the crown sought to replace the service of the militia with cash payments and, with the funds raised, hire either mercenaries or conclude contracts with landowners for service during the entire period of the military campaign.
The professionalization and, to a certain extent, the "commercialization" of war inevitably led to further complication and improvement of military affairs. The era when the noble, heavily armed horseman dominated the battlefield was gradually fading into the past. The despised, though considered necessary, infantrymen played an increasing role in the military campaigns waged by Western European monarchs, not only during the sieges and defense of fortresses and castles, but also in field battles. The art of fortification underwent further improvement. This contributed to the emergence of the first detachments of specialist technicians who served the rapidly becoming more complex mechanical artillery, as well as engaged in siege work.
We add to this that the experience of campaigns and battles showed that personal professionalism alone was not enough, collective professionalism was needed, and it could only be provided by a fully mercenary army, consisting of soldiers for whom military service was a profession, the only craft, and war was way of life. An example of this is the famous battle of Crécy in 1346. Without exaggeration, Europe was shocked by the news of the catastrophe that befell the brilliant French chivalry in this battle. It is noteworthy that the defeat of the army of King Philip VI was due not so much to the inability to fight and the lack of courage of the French chivalry, and not even to the fragmentation and disorganization of the attacks of the French knightly cavalry, but to mistakes in the use of professional mercenaries-crossbowmen and the lack of a properly developed interaction between knightly cavalry, shield bearers - paveziers and crossbowmen. And all this was the result of the fact that the French army was too loose, not knocked together, did not turn into a real combat mechanism, a machine, all parts of which would be well ground to each other. It turned out that knightly prowess and honed weapon skills alone were no longer enough to win. And it is by no means accidental that the Liege chronicler Jean Le Bel, who lived and worked in the 1st half of the 14th century, wrote with regret that if in the years of his youth “... seniors did not take into account mounted warriors, if they did not have helmets, crowned with a heraldic figure ... ", then by the beginning of the Hundred Years War, in his words," ... the troops are counted on horsemen with spears, with shells, with chain mail and with iron helmets. So it seems to me that in my memory times have changed a lot(highlighted by us. - P.V.). For horses covered with heraldic blankets, helmets adorned with heraldic pommel, armor and cloaks with coats of arms, by which one could recognize their owners, are a thing of the past, they were replaced by chain mail, now called shells, underarms and iron helmets. Now some miserable servant can be armed as soundly and beautifully as a noble knight...” 55 .
What else, if not this phrase, can more eloquently testify to the beginning of the decline of noble chivalry and the growth in the importance of mercenaries, from whom their employers demanded not a noble origin, but above all the ability to fight and endure hardships military service. Now, more and more often, not even the quantity, but the quality of warriors is taken into account, and war itself is becoming more and more a craft, the lot of professionals, and not the entertainment of noble knights. All this inevitably led to a further complication of military affairs and to a change in the very nature of war. After all, the spread of mercenarism brought into the war, already a bloody and cruel thing, notes of a certain infernality. “Speaking of a medieval war,” wrote the French historian Z. Oldenburg, “it is impossible not to say about the unaccountable horror that was caused by the mere mention of a rutier - a creature without God, outside the law, without rights, without pity and without fear. They feared him like a rabid dog and treated him like a dog… His name alone served as an explanation for all the cruelties and sacrileges, he was perceived as a living embodiment of hell on earth…” 56 . In fact, usually recruited from the lower classes of society and often from various rabble, lumpen, marginal people who found themselves outside the traditional hierarchy of medieval "estates" -tats, mercenaries - routiers were really a real "bastard", "rabble" in the original sense of these terms, to which the customs of a "correct" war were inapplicable. For them, in fact, "the laws were not written." With this in mind, it becomes clear why wars are becoming more and more bloody. “On the one hand,” D. Uvarov wrote, “this is due to the growing role of foot commoners: they could not count on a ransom, so they were destroyed without mercy and were not inclined to spare knight opponents, even to the detriment of the wallet. On the other hand, the changed tactics, especially massive archery in the squares, as well as massive close infantry combat using polearms, made mutual beating a difficult process to manage” 57 .

Observer - Observer 2001 № 10

REVOLUTION IN MILITARY

V. SLIPPCHENKO,

doctor of military sciences, professor

In military and political journalism, one can come across the very often used concept of "revolution in military affairs." Since there is no strictly scientific definition of this category, its interpretation is usually associated with the appearance of almost any new type of weapon: an assault rifle, a tank, an aircraft, a ship project, a space-based sensor, etc. But in fact, we cannot talk about any revolution here, since not every new weapon revolutionizes military affairs.

A revolution presupposes a radical change, a sharp leap-like transition from one qualitative state to another. The appearance of even the latest weapons and military equipment very rarely led to a radical change in the forms and methods of armed struggle and warfare in general. At best, a new weapon could lead to a change in tactics or, which is very rare, operational art. In this article, this concept of "revolution in military affairs", which is very important for science and practice, is considered for the first time from a strict position. changes in the war in general.

1. First revolution in military affairs occurred when, instead of stones and sticks, warriors began to use specially made spears, swords, bows, arrows, and armor for military confrontation. Three and a half thousand years of the total five thousand years of the existence of civilization on our planet were contact wars first generation in the form of hand-to-hand combat using edged weapons. Of course, over this long period of time, the weapons themselves changed many times: swords, chain mail, helmets were made from more durable materials, but numerous wars did not change the qualitative state of weapons and continued to be fought using the first generation methods.

2. Only in the XII-XIII centuries. the first generation of wars gave way to wars second generation. Second revolution in military affairs was associated with the invention gunpowder, and with him - firearms: rifles, pistols, cannons. There was a sharp, radical transition from one war to another. The wars of the second generation were also contact wars, but they were already conducted in a completely different way than in the first generation. The defeat of the enemy could be carried out at a certain distance. Second generation wars lasted about 500 years.

3. Approximately 200 years ago, scientific and technological progress contributed to the invention rifled weapons. The weapon has become more accurate when hitting targets, more long-range, multi-shot and multi-caliber. This led to another third revolution in military affairs and the emergence of contact wars third generation, which acquired a trench character, operational scale and required a large amount of manpower that owns these weapons.

4. More than 100 years ago there was another fourth revolution in military affairs. She was associated with the invention automatic weapons, which began to be installed on tanks, aircraft, ships. The contact wars of the fourth generation acquired a strategic scope, and their conduct also required a lot of manpower, weapons and military equipment. Fourth generation wars continue to this day.

5. In 1945 there was fifth revolution in military affairs. She led to the emergence nuclear weapons, and with it the possibilities of a non-contact nuclear missile war fifth generation. Now a number of nuclear countries are in constant high readiness for such a war. However, there is hope that nuclear weapons will not be used in future wars, since no goals can be achieved with their help.

6. In the last decade of the last century, another sixth revolution in military affairs. It is associated with the appearance precision weapons, and with it contactless wars absolutely new sixth generation. Non-contact wars are characterized by the fact that the attacking side, with the help of prolonged massive strikes, can deprive the economy of any enemy, in any region of our planet. The ability to kill others with impunity, but not to die yourself, will certainly become a powerful destabilizing factor in the world.

Thus, a revolution in military affairs is such fundamental and qualitative changes occurring under the influence of scientific and technological progress in the means of armed struggle, which fundamentally change the organizational development and training of the armed forces, the methods of conducting military operations and war as a whole.

Starting from the fourth generation, the revolution in military affairs manifests itself, first of all, through the strategy of warfare as the main constituent part military art. The first three generations of warfare manifested themselves mainly through tactics and the operational art of warfare.

Paradoxically, but the strategy is actually needed to correct political mistakes and mistakes, to pay for the sins of politicians. If in modern wars the strategy of warfare does not change, but only operational art or tactics change, then it cannot be considered that fundamental changes have taken place and a revolution has taken place in military affairs. Most likely, we are talking only about the results of scientific and technological progress or the military-technical revolution.

Thus, the use of jet aircraft for the first time in the world in the war in Korea 50 years ago led to a change in the form of the struggle for air supremacy, but this did not change the strategy of the war as a whole. In the Vietnam War, for the first time, combat helicopters were used in large numbers, which led to a change in combined arms combat - it acquired an air-ground character, but again, the nature of this war did not change, and both of these wars did not go beyond the fourth generation. In the 1980s, experimental launches of high-precision weapons were carried out in the wars in the Middle East, but the nature of the war did not change here either.

But the war in Yugoslavia in 1999 changed the nature of the war as a whole. It was carried out mainly in a non-contact way, which quite convincingly indicates the beginning of the sixth revolution in military affairs in the United States, although there are those who, for various reasons, would not like to notice this.

Now the world is undergoing a continuous process of military-technical revolutionary transformations in military affairs, and despite the fact that it is very significant in a number of countries, not everyone, even from the most developed countries, has yet been able to extend its results to the field of strategy. This will take at least 10 years. This means that there are currently no countries that are fully prepared for the wars of the next, sixth generation.

There are no funds to train the armed forces of many economically weak nuclear and non-nuclear countries for new-generation wars, and there will be no funds for a very long time to come. At the beginning of the XXI century. states will not be fully capable of waging armed struggle in the forms and methods of sixth generation wars. And it is absolutely clear that all the measures taken in the nuclear countries lagging behind in military development will most likely be connected only with an increase in the stake on nuclear weapons. Here we should expect further modernization of nuclear missile weapons, as well as toughening in military doctrines of the provision on the rejection of the principles of non-first use of nuclear weapons.

The next sixth revolution in military affairs is closely connected with the further development of military space, computerization, the use of ultra-fast circuit switches, artificial intelligence, lasers, microwaves, elementary particles. Advanced technologies already now make it possible to create practically new space-based weapons that have no analogues, which will help change the nature of armed struggle and wars in general. Not only can there be an increase in the number of countries using military space, but prohibitive actions are also expected from some countries - leaders in space. Military operations in space are very likely with the aim of creating a large-scale space infrastructure without hindrance to ensure the conduct of non-contact wars.

Here the danger is not excluded, connected with the fact that the advantages achieved before at the quantitative level of the correlation of forces and means, created for the past fourth and fifth generations of wars, taking into account all the restrictions and reductions in troops and weapons, can be quickly lost. This will immediately expose the helplessness of states that are a generation behind in wars, and will immediately destabilize the international and strategic situation.

The ability of countries prepared for the new sixth generation of wars to deliver sudden massive, long-term, high-precision strategic strikes at any range and against any enemy on our planet reduces the importance of the forward basing factor and removes the need for the constant presence of military forces. But at the same time, the difficulties of distinguishing and recognizing nuclear and conventional weapons systems and means of delivery to targets will increase significantly, which will undoubtedly increase the risk of authorized use of nuclear weapons.

The sixth revolution in military affairs is dangerous, first of all, because the world community on our planet will inevitably be split into those who are separated from the rest by a generation of wars and those who remain in the past fourth and fifth generations. We should expect great resistance from the nuclear countries, which are a generation behind in the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. The desire of non-nuclear countries to become nuclear can manifest itself.

Now all international treaty agreements are concluded around conventional weapons of the fourth generation of wars and nuclear weapons of the fifth generation of wars. But there are absolutely no agreements related to high-precision weapons and non-contact methods of their use. This weapon can destroy the entire existing treaty base. The UN should already be developing individual and joint tools for early warning of a split in the world community for global control of all processes related to the next revolution in military affairs. The time has come for a "revolution in disarmament".

Origin of the concept

Chronology

Tactics

Line tactics

Trace Italy

The infantry revolution and the decline of the cavalry

Army size

Administrative sources

Narrative sources

Whole army size

Size of field armies

Conclusion

Notes

Links

Encyclopedic YouTube

Subtitles

Origin of the concept

Chronology

Tactics

Line tactics

Trace Italy

The infantry revolution and the decline of the cavalry

Army size

Administrative sources

Narrative sources

Whole army size

Size of field armies

Conclusion

Notes // Scientific Bulletin of BelSU. - Template: Belg., 2008. - Issue. 7. - No. 5 (45) . - S. 67-73.

CHAPTER I Military revolution in Western Europe and the development of Western European armies in the 2nd half of the 15th - early 18th centuries

§ 1. The development of military affairs in Western Europe in the XIV-XV centuries. The first changes in the military sphere associated with the emergence and spread of firearms

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CHAPTER I
Military revolution in Western Europe and the development of Western European armies in the 2nd half of the 15th - early 18th centuries