114 The Warrior Tsar, 1689-1725For the moment it is sufficient to notP th~t non-receipt cf pay and lack of
food were major causes of desertion from the forces, which seems tQ have been
almost as much of a worry for the government at the end of Peter's reign as it
had been at the height of the war. Initially the flight from the ranks \¥1lS on a
fairly modest scale, but by May 1703 Pleyer observed ubiquitous notices~arn
ing the tsar's subjects against harbouring deserters.^112 He spoke of them as
'having been discharged (sic) on the march because they find it so hard to for-
sake their home, family and [usual] food'. which was misleading to say the
least. Whitworth was more plain-spoken, and in 1707 reported. that 'the
soldiers desert in very great numbers; 700 are run away from one regiment of
dragoons which was lately sent from here [Moscow] to St. Petersburg, and of
the 11 foot regiments now here scarce one has lost less than 200 men, though
they were delivered complete about two months ago.'^113 Menshikov wrote to
Peter from Akhtyrka in the Ukraine that 'the local people arc all running off
in various directions, and if I don't stay where l am not a single man of the
regiment will be left in this town' .11^4
The military historian Bobrovsky thought that one-sixth of the army's losses
to 1709, about 25,000 men, could be accounted for by desertions, but this is no
more than a guess which cannot be reconciled with his statement that 'no less
than 10,000 men deserted each year' between 1705 and 1709.^11 ' On the other
hand Myshlayevsky probably underestimated the extent of the phenomenon
which, on the basis of certain extant records for 1703..:6, he put at J per cent of
recruits and 1.2 per cent of all those under arms.^116 One party of recruits sent
to Sevsk in 1709 started out 4,500 strong but lost 410 men, or 9 per cent;^117 and
the official who reported this does not seem to have considered such a rate
abnormally high. In Repnin's division a check in November 1708 showed 987
men absent of whom 755 were sick and 232 deserters-together about one-
quarter of his total effectives.^118 In 1710 the total number of deserters was
estimated at 20,000.^119.
The penalty for desertion was, in general, death. As early as 1700.Peter laid
down that deserters deserved to be hanged, and this penalty was indeed applied
to a soldier named Ivan Alekseyev, who belonged to a unit stationed in
Novgorod but was found at Simbirsk; another man who deserted twice was,
however, only beaten.^120 The increasing frequency of flight led to sterner
measures. In January 1705 it was decreed that every third man recaptured after
escaping was to be hanged in public before his comrades, 'so that in future
112 'Doneseniya Pleyera', in Ustryalov, /storiya, iv (ii). 608.
113 Whitworth, 'Doneseniya', SIR/O xxxix. 441; cf. I. 63.
11• PiB ix (ii). note to 2991 (Jan. 1709).
11s Bobrovsky, Voyennoye pravo, ii. 709 and note 739; cf. also Duffy, Russia's Military Way,
p. 133.
116 Myshlayevsky, Petr Velikiy, p. liv.
111 PiB ix. 2978 (31 Jan. 1709).
118 Trudy JR VIO ii. 32-3
119 Shendzikovsky, in SVM xii (1, i). 113.
120 PSZ iii. 1820, §§ 4, 18; Golikova, 'lz istorii', p. 273.