196 The Imperial Century, 1725-18251813, the troops generally enjoyed more hygienic conditions, but battle
casualties were proportionately higher than usual. No less than 22,000
Russians fell at Leipzig, half the combined Allied losses.^133 Among those
wounded in this engagement was f'amfii Nazarov. Phit:~matically and without
self-pity he describes how, with blood pouring from his leg 'like warm water',
he made his way to a village two versts away where a surgeon dressed the
wound. The bandage soon fell off. Retying it himself and using his musket as a
crutch, he walked for several days until he reached the field hospital, where his
injury was left untended for nearly two weeks and his wound became
gangrenous. Miraculously he survived and managed to enter Paris with the
victors.^134
Total battle casualties (killed and died of wounds) during this century of
Imperial expansion were in excess of % million; if so-called 'sanitary losses'
are included, the figure might well be double that.^135 One of Alexander I's
officials stated that the army renewed itself in personnel every five to six
years^1 36_which, if true, was a turnover rate comparable to that in Prussia.
m Urlanis, 'Lyudskiye poteri', pp. 161-2.
134 [Nazarov) 'Zapiski', pp. 536-9.
m When contemporary writers referred to military losses they usually meant killed and
wounded, and sometimes included prisoners of war and deserters as well. In Europe generally the
ratio of killed to wounded was about I : 2.4 in the eighteenth century and I : 3 in the early nineteenth;
of the wounded about 10-1211/o are thought to have died. Urlanis, Voyny, pp. 86-7, 470;
B. Abrahamsson, Military Professionalization and Political Power, [Stockholm, 1971?). p. 24.
Urlanis's statistics should be regarded as no more than educated guesses, and are also inconsistent;
nevertheless as a curiosity his figures are tabulated below. For a more sophisticated estimate of
post-182.5 Russian losses, see Singer and Small, Wages of War, pp. 59-75. On the unreliability of
official relyatsii: Vyazemsky, 'Zapiska', p. 7. Warnery, 'Remarques', p. 129, confirms the I: 10
ratio for wounded who subsequently died. Some scattered data (without indication of source) are
in Kersnovsky, lstoriya, passim.
wars, campaigns Urlanis•
Russo-Turkish< 215,000
Caucasus, Central Asia 150,000
Seven Years 120,000
Russo-Polish 37,000
Russo-Swedishd 2.5,000
Pugachev uprising 22,()()()<
Russo-French: 1799 7,000
Russo-French: 1805- 7 60,000
Russo-French: 1812 110,000
Russo-French: 1813-14 40,000
- 'Lyudskiye poteri', pp. 156-65.
b Voyny, pp. 55-7, 86-7.
Urlanisb
200,000
50,000
60,000
30,000
20,000
600
14,000
100,ooorc For eighteenth century, but may include war of 1806-12, for which no separate figure is given.
d Excludes Great Northern War (U•: 100,000).- Apparently includes rebel losses?
r Recalculated according to Urlanis's own criteria (360,000 killed and wounded). Beskrovnyy et al.,
'Bilan', pp. 133-4, offer a figure of 660,000 for military casualties incurred lietween 1789 and 1815.
ll6 [Obreskov] 'Ob umen'shenii', p. 246. Best, ,War and Society, p. 45, exaggerates.