The Pavlovsky Grenadiers

Arguably the unit best known to wargamers in the Russian Napoleonic army is the Pavlovsky Grenadiers and it is largely because of their headgear - they wore the eighteenth century mitre caps with a brass front plate instead of the kiwer. I had always thought that they had a long and distinguished period of service and wore that cap out of some sort of honour that probably stretched back to Peter the Great. But no, their origin was much shorter, being formed from two battalions of the Moscow grenadiers in 1796. They participated in almost every major event that the Russian Army was involved in during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, including the expedition to Holland in 1799, the Hanover Expedition, the battles in Poland in the 1806-7 campaign, making a name for themselves at Eylau, where were simultaneously attacked front an rear by French cavalry and at Friedland where they were raked by French gunfire but held their ground.

They were in the thick of things in 1812 and made their name at the Battle of Klyastitsy where Wittgenstein was surprised by Oudinot on 30 July. The following day the Russians turned to the attack and drove the French back. Unable to halt the advance Oudinot ordered his troops back across the Nishcha River and to burn the only bridge, but the 2nd Battalion of the Pavlovskys stormed across the burning bridge and routed the French, as depicted in this painting by Peter Hess.

The regiment was heavily engaged at Borodino, repulsing the initial assault by the French V Corps around the village of Utitska. In November 1812, for is service in the Patriotic War, the regiment was given the title Pavlovsky Life-Guard Regiment and served as a part of the Imperial Guard at Leipzig, in the Turkish War of 1828-29, the Polish Revolts of 1831 and 1862-3, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and the Great War. The mitre caps were retained as a part of their ceremonial uniform, complete with the bullet holes from the regiment’s Napoleonic exploits, until the very end.

Pavlovsky Grenadiers are the butt of many jokes in our group. This is mainly because part of the group’s collection is made up of old Minifigs and Hinchliffe figures originally owned by one of group founders, my dear departed friend Jim Shaw. He collected his vast armies back in the 1970s and it would be fair to say that in those days information on the organisation of the Russian Napoleonic army was hard to come by. If you were lucky a magazine like Military Modelling, Airfix or Tradition would have a snippet of detail once every two or three years. So Jim was working blind with organisation of the Pavlovsky regiment and he recruited five battalions of them - there were only ever three and of those only two ever took the field, the third remaining in garrison in St Petersburg. Whenever these figures make to the table there are the inevitable jokes about the Pavlovsky Division.

When I decided to do a brigade of grenadiers for my army, I just had to add the Pavlovsky Regiment. I had owned two battalions of them  before in my Hinchliffe army collected in the 1970s and sold in the 1990s. Until fairly recently every manufacturer made the figures with the tall grenadier mitre, but when the Soviet archives were opened new research showed that this was not the standard headgear for the regiment. Traditionally the Russian grenadier regiments consisted of three battalions, one grenadier and two fusilier battalions. In 1810 the grenadiers were restructured  and the battalions were formed of one grenadier and three fusilier companies. The fusiliers wore a shorter version of the mitre. All grenadiers were supposed to turn in their mitre caps in 1805 for the 1803 shako with that ridiculously large bottle brush plume, but true to Russian procurement capacity of the time the Pavlovskys still wore their mitres in 1807 and for their heroic efforts at Friedland the Tsar permitted them to retain their mitres.

Both battalions, the First the left and the Third on the right.

According to the Perrys each of the fusilier companies carried a standard as I have done here. One of the companies in the First battalion carries the colonel’s colour the rest are the regimental colours. 

And cyclone Gabrielle? Well it is still raging around the country, although I suspect the worst has past for Auckland. The rain has abated, but the wind is still strong. We weren’t badly hit. Our only noticeable damage was to four pots of runner beans that got blown over in a very heavy gust. 

Hopefully they can be recovered (apart from the broken pot) because they have been particularly productive plants. Other places around the country aren’t so lucky though and there is a lot of cleaning up.