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start of the bad news]
Cloth
Petrian army required …er… an “uniform uniform” and it had to be of the European style [1]. Not that the Russian regular troops did not have the uniforms before Peter but they were uniform on a regimental level. Peter wanted uniformity fir the whole army. At Azov most of the soldier regiments had been wearing the shortened version of streltsy’s coats and streltsy-style headgear but now he wanted all of them dressed “European”. And there was a loud “oops!”. Not that it was a secret to anybody but so far not too much of attention had been paid to the fact that the domestic production of the cloth needed for uniforms is close to zero [2]: no cloth manufactures whatsoever. As a result, in 1700 for 23 regiments (27,250 sets of the uniforms) there was a need to buy abroad 111,323 arshin [3] and this was just a start. Of course, Peter would not be Peter if he did not come to the beautifully simple solution: create state-owned manufactures and to
order the merchants to open the private ones. A clearly set goal was “to start production of the cloth everywhere so that in five years there will be no need to buy it abroad … the merchants must form the companies voluntarily or, if they don’t want, involuntarily”.
The first state manufactures had been opened in Moscow and Voronezh and soon enough (probably
not due to the overwhelming success) manufacture in Moscow had been transferred to the private owners who had been getting 0% loans for (re)organization. The state manufactures in Vironezh and Kazan followed the suit. In 4 years 9 manufactures had been created producing 125,000 arshins of cloth and within the next 4 years number of the manufactures increased to 14 and production to 300,000 arshin, which was still not enough: Russia had to buy 150,000 arshin in Britain and Prussia. The fundamental underlying problem behind the shortages was …. shortage of the sheep producing good quality wool. The orders to increase their number had been duly issued, the experienced shepherds had been contracted in Silesia and Poland but the stupid beasts still were not breeding fast enough. Export of the wool was prohibited, import made duty free, the sheep owners had been ordered to sell all their production to the cloth manufactures and there was still not enough of a wool which could be used for manufacturing. The Russian cloth remained to be low quality but by the reasons unknown so was the cloth bought abroad [4] in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands: “It was discovered that cloth supplied fir the uniforms, the British, Prussian and Russian as well, is quite unusable”. Somehow, the cloth bought abroad tended to be even worse than the Russian one [5] so that eventually the Senate ordered to use for the uniforms only domestic production. An order had been issued telling that the Russian cloth is at least as good as the foreign one and that the manufacture owners who fail to produce cloth of the same quality as an attached sample are going to be punished. As usually, this had the expected positive effect [6] and in the years to follow the cloth production started getting close to covering the needs.
Needless to say that, as everything else, this industry had been driven by the serfs labor. Need in the qualified workers was so high that Peter forbade to return the serfs who fled to the cloth manufactures (how bad should be their life in the estates if this hell was an attractive alternative?) to their former owners.
Above is a newly-recruited soldier circa 1700. Notice the grey uniform: it is from the cheep domestic coarse un-dyed cloth. More expensive imported or higher quality domestic material (of a proper color) was for the more experienced soldiers (below).
Horses
Prior to Peter Russian cavalry amounted to approximately 70,000 but government did not spent too much money and effort on providing the horses: the nobles and irregulars had their own horses and dragoons had been receiving their horses from the peasants and monasteries and after the war these horses had been returned to those responsible for their upkeep (who had been fined 10 rubles, a big sum, if the horse died). During the war the cavalrymen had to take care of the forage. Nice and cheap (for the government 😜).
The small breeding farms already existed but they amounted only fir a small fraction of the required numbers.
Of course, the whole system had to change with the introduction of a truly regular cavalry. The Azov campaigns demonstrated an absolute inadequacy both in quality and quantity. The horses were not used to the long marches and “not trained to act against infantry and artillery” [7]. The numbers required after Azov amounted to 33,000 dragoon horses and 9,000 transport horses with the service expectation of 19-12 years. Soon enough the numbers raised to 34,000 and 10,000 correspondingly. New breeding farms had been established but they could not solve the problem overnight [7].
Especially bad was situation with the horses required for the heavy cavalry. Austrian and Polish experience during the Great Ottoman War demonstrated usefulness of a heavy cavalry against the Ottomans and it was decided to create 10 cuirassier regiments. But it found that the available big horses are enough only for 3: the fundamental problem was that Russian domestic breed of the horses was relatively small and the attempts to get enough of the big ones from the peasants and monasteries was a waste of time. Import of the big foreign horses without the taxes was authorized but they cost a lot of money.
As for the rest of the cavalry, neither traditional requisition of the peasant’s horses nor purchase from this “source” produced anything close to the needed numbers “the horses had been bought at a high price but not enough and most of them rejected and except for the working horses the peasants don’t have any other” [9]. Government had to keep expanding the breeding farms purchasing horses from Arabia, Spain and Silesia. Confiscation of the peasant horses continued with a resulting decrease of the quality of an available stock (has to be expected when the best horses kept being confiscated). The military were able to get the numbers well below the required and the peasants also found themselves in the increasingly worsening situation. Only much later, when things became really bad on both sides, the military fully switched to the purchases (by that time the state and private breeding farms finally started producing the adequate numbers). [10]
Edit: As a way to find at least some remedy, the Military Collegium started purchasing horses on the Don. While still rather small, the horses of the Old Don breed were much better used for the cavalry service than the plough horses of the Russian peasants.
Taxes
They are mentioned just to have a list of the problems more or less complete. Not to get into the details, they were heavy and Russian financial situation was not too good. [11]
[1] If Russia had to be westernized, the obvious items to start with would be smoking, wearing the wigs and having European-style uniforms fir the army regardless the questionable benefits of all three of these items. The soldiers could suffer, well, the military service was not supposed to be a picnic, but nobody would say that the army looks “barbaric”.
[2] Taking into an account that the new uniforms had been needed in the relatively small parties, regular purchases of the small amounts of cloth abroad was not such a big deal but here you have to dress the whole army.
[3] 1 arshin = 27.9” = 70.9 cm
[4] I’m tempted to make uneducated guess involving word “bribe”
[5] Unfriendly ASBs, Perfidious Albion, Sneaky Prussia or see above [4]
[6] And the sheep finally understood seriousness of the situation (well, these creatures tend to be slow upon uptake but when they figure out something only a solid stone wall can stop them).
[7] Not sure where the quoted author found the field battles during the Azov campaigns which does not mean that he was wrong. 😂
[8] Due to the generally low level of a literacy the Russian horses of that time could not read the orders issued by Peter and his Senate and asca result can’t be blamed for not taking the breeding task with all required seriousness. 😪
[9] From the report of the Military Collegium.
[10] In OTL the problem persisted all the way through the 7YW when Russian dragoons on their small horses had been a butt of the Prussian jokes (well, for a while 😜 ).
[11] But considerably better than in OTL.
