188 The Imperial Century, 1725-1825
personal bitterness became embroiled with bureaucratic intrigue. Some
reformers wanted to civilianize the agencies responsible, but this radical idea
did not prevail.^75 The troops fighting in East Prussia in the harsh winter cam-
paign of 1806-7 endured famiuc condition~. ·even e11ardsmen being reduced
to eating potatoes abandoned by the local peasants.^76 The next year a major
scandal broke and Alexander I ordered a thorough purge of the supply ad-
ministration.^77 The ne"W officials did their best to prepare the army for the
trials to come, but in 1812, even before the invasion began, the lack of supplies
caused dissatisfaction.^78 'The armies had to feed themselves from local
resources and by bringing up supplies from remote provinces.^179 Thanks to
these measures, by the time they camped at Tarutino, after abandoning
Moscow, they had enough-'never did the army live so well', claims one
memorialist-but further serious food shortages appeared once they neared
the western border in Napoleon's pursuit, and again after they had crossed it.^80
Of the troops fighting in France in 1814 Paskevich later wrote that
the grenadiers shuttling between Nangis and Troyes fed themselves as and how they
could, hardly getting a crust of bread, and were completely famished by all the marches
and counter-marches. In the morning the soldier leaves his billet hungry, not having
eaten the night before; nothing is made ready for him in advance, and when he arrives
at his destination he finds nothing there either. How then should he refrain from pil-
laging?B'Even after the war had ended, one general feared that the occupation forces in
France would go short because of local crop failures;^82 their home bases were
of course far away. But their comrades in Russia faced conditions that were
little better. The war had upset agriculture and trade; the government was
short of funds; and the old administrative abuses persisted. In 1817 men of the
43rd Hussars complained at an inspection that they were not receiving their
full ration and had to take what they needed from the local inhabitants. An in-
quiry revealed that their company commander had appropriated 689 quarters
of flour and 64 of grits, as well as some of the men's pay.^83 It can at least be
said that by this time such conduct met with general disapproval and that legal
proceedings were more likely to be taken against the culprit than had been the
case during the eighteenth century.
JS D. Mertvyy, 'Zapiski, 1760-1824', RA 1867 app. pp. 105-8, 135-8, 229-39; Shilder. Pa•·<'I,
p. 425; E. Yastrebtsov in RBS xvii. 54-7. Curiously, like Glebov, Obolyaninov also had a brief but
unhappy spell as Procurator-General ( 1800-1 ).
(^76) Muromtsev, 'Vospominaniya', p. 68; Kruchek-Golubov and Kul'bin, in SVM viii. 14J.
77 Stein, Geschichte, p. 330; Petrov, Russkaya voyennaya sila, ii. 326.
71 Shchukin, BumaRI, i. 18, ix. 11; cf. Maksheyev, Voyenno-admin. ustroystvo, p. 47; Beskrov-
nyy, Potentsial, p. 456.
(^79) Petrov, R11sskuya 1•oyennaya s1/a, pp. 323-4; Stein, Geschichte, p. 301; Beskrovnyy,
Potentsial, p. 457.
80 Barclay de Tolly to Kankrin, 25, 27 May 1813, in VS 292 ( 1906), 11, pp. 221-4.
81 Stcherbatow, Paskhitsch, pp. 170-1.
82 L6wenstern, Memoires, p. 456.
SJ Fedorov, Soldatskoye dvizheniye, p. 15.