Peter's Soldiers 109soldiers were to share a bed or sleeping place, taking turns; they were forbidden
to leave the premises after dark except on <lury and were supposed tc beha-.c
properly toward their peasant hosts.^72 The standard term of guard duty seems
to have been 24 hours; any offence committed when on guard was punished
twice as severely as in normal circumstances.^73 A code of 1706 laid down that
soldiers should take good care of their equipment and not wager it in games of
chance; they were to refrain from feasting or drinking on Sundays and to
display 'Christian charity' towards their comrades, obey orders, respect their
superiors, keep silent on parade-and, last but not least, fight the foe 'by day
and night, by land or water, wherever military necessity and Our service
demands, exhibiting zeal, not fear, sparing no labour in the cause, since God is
the giver and sustainer of life'.^74
The reference to 'labour' was not misplaced. A soldier in Peter's army was
as likely to find himself employed on construction tasks as on military opera-
tions. One historian writes that 'Russia's great power status was built on the
bones of soldiers digging the foundations of St. Petersburg'.^7 s This is an exag-
geration: the building of the new capital was mainly the work of civilian con-
scripts, but many of these were former Ukrainian Cossacks (deported in
reprisal for Mazeppa's defection to Charles XII) and tens of thousands of
them were indeed soldiers. A decree of 1719 called for garrison troops to be
sent to the new capital for this purpose 'in lieu of the dragoons'-who must
therefore have preceded them; and recruits who had been artisans in civilian
life were liable to assignment for work on this gigantic project.^76 Soldiers were
used to escort civilian construction workers to the various sites and to prevent
them from fleeing while they were em.ployed there.^77 Troops were also engaged
in building canals, notably that to bypass Lake Ladoga,^78 and, of course, on
various fortification wbrks_,;.for example, at Pskov, Narva, Kiev, Azov, and
Taganrog. The last two places were dumping grounds for those who offended
against military discipline and were condemned to forced labour. Soldiers
assigned to construction work were in practice treated much like the forced
labourers who toiled alongside them, not least in regard to pay.^79
Another form of labour service was that whkh soldiers performed for their
officers. This practice was inherited from the Muscovite period, when it had
(^72) Voinskiye artikuly (PRP viii), §§ 85, 88; PSZ iv. 3006, ch. Ix, § S; Bobrovsky, Voyennoye
pravo, ii. 589.
n Voinskiye artikuly, §26; cf. §§ 36-49 (PRP viii. 327, 329-32).
(^74) Voinskiye artikuly (PRP viii),§§ 3, 5-6, 9, 14, 41, 48; cf. Ustav voinskiy, preamble (PRP
viii. 319).
7' Kersnovsky, lstoriya, i. SS.
(^76) Luppov, Isl. stroite~tva Peterburga, pp. 85, 88; cf. PiB vii. 2323 for an early proposal to
this effect. Between 1716 and 1722 40,000 Ukrainian Cossacks were sent to work on canal-building
or fortification projects; 30 per cent to 50 per cent of ttiem died. Subtelny, 'Russia and the
Ukraine'. p. 16.
11 PiB ix. 6389 ( 1709).
78 [Peter I) Zhurna/, ii. 180 (Oct. 1721).
79 S/R/O xi. 402; DiP iv (ii). 1042.