Moscow: A Story of the French Invasion of 1812

by Frederick Whishaw

"I will keep a guard upon my heart, aunt," laughed Vera.

The first meeting, after many years, between the young people took place soon after this conversation at the annual reception of the corps of cadets in St. Petersburg. This corps consisted of members of the petite noblesse—the boyarin families of Russia, destined for military service in the more aristocratic regiments. The Emperor Paul, shocked by the methods of his mother, Catherine the Great, in the matter of distribution of commissions to the sons of her boyars, had instituted this corps of cadets as a much-needed measure of reform, and indeed the step was taken not a moment too soon for the good of the country.

As the great Catherine's system of distributing commissions to the members of that class of her subjects which seems to have been her enfant gâté, the petite noblesse, is somewhat unique, I will ask permission to digress for a moment in order to give the reader some idea of her method and of the abuses to which it gradually led.

The thing developed gradually and attained the height of absurdity only when the Empress was an old woman.

Commissions in the Guards were at this time regarded as gifts from the sovereign to her faithful boyars and claimable by every boyar, if he so desired, for the benefit of his children. They were issued on demand, and were not, at first, applied for until the youth destined to enjoy the privilege had reached a time of life when a commission in the army might fairly be given to him; but since the officers of the Guards received liberal pay and were treated with marked kindness and indulgence by the sovereign, it occurred to certain boyars that it would be a pity to waste several years of the best part of the lives of their sons, years which might be spent so profitably in drawing pay and accumulating seniority in the Guards. Therefore certain aspiring parents applied for commissions for their sons at the age of fifteen; and—no objection being made—it soon became the custom to issue commissions to lads of this age.

Gradually the limit of age decreased. First commissions were demanded for boys of twelve, and obtained; then the age dropped to ten, then to eight, to six, to three. No duties were required of all these young officers, who were not even obliged to draw their own pay; their fathers were permitted to do this for them. But promotion proceeded in each case with regularity, and soon it was a common thing to see a promising young officer of seven years toddling at his mother's side in the epaulettes of a captain of the Guards.

But the matter did not end here. It now became the fashion to apply for commissions for male children as soon as born. Lieutenants were to be seen carried about in their nurses' arms and captains rode in perambulators, while majors and colonels of ten and twelve strutted about the streets, to the pride and no small profit of their happy parents. One would suppose that the comedy had at this point reached the very limit of absurdity; but this was not so.

It occurred to some ingenious boyar about to enter into the delights and responsibilities of wedlock to apply for commissions for a son or two in advance. If his marriage should be blessed with offspring—well; if not, well also; for no one would be likely to inquire into the matter as long as the old Empress lived, and the pay of two or three officers of the Guards—non-existent, certainly, but steadily rising in rank for all that—would be a comfortable addition to the income of his parents that might have been.

This was the millennium of Catherine's enfants gâtés, the boyars, and it came to an end with her death and the accession of Paul, who had long watched the scandal from his retreat at Gatchina and watched it with helpless displeasure and anger. Paul was a strict disciplinarian and the sight of the degradation of the Guards maddened him. One of his first acts after his accession was to hold a review of the corps, a review at which every officer was compelled to be present or to hand in his resignation.

That must indeed have been the weirdest parade upon record. Officers in arms, officers in perambulators, officers clinging to their mothers' skirts; shy and self-conscious majors of ten wandering helplessly about the Champs de Mars, colonels of twelve and fourteen asking one another to which regiment they belonged, and the stern, angry Emperor surveying the motley scene as the executioner eyes his victim before dealing the fatal stroke which is to end him once and for all.