The Mind in the Machine 215enlightenment before critical Western opinion. There were of course excep-
tions. In 1812 Yermolov earned a bad reputation for tolerating or encouraging
atrocities-especially against Poles, for whom he harboured great contempt-
and his attitude found some emulators in the officer corps. This was a time
when nat1onahst sentiments were coming to the fore. The soldiers, on the other
hand, says one observer,
remained good and loyal [that is, observed the regulations on this score], for the
Russian is by and large generous towards his vanquished foes. [He] will kill without
remorse in the metee, but I have seen him share his bread and brandy with one who
has surrendered although he would unhesitatingly have massacred him a minute
earlier.^65
Engel' describes an incident after the battle of Leipzig when one of his men
willingly agreed to part with some of his rations for a wounded French
grenadier saying: 'Why should I not give him bread? After all the French are
men just as we are.'^66
The regulations referred to by Lowenstern went back to Peter the Great's
military statute. This prescribed heavy penalties for killing prisoners, who
were declared to be the property of the tsar and not of those who captured
them; soldiers were also under orders to spare non-combatant civilians (who
were, however, defined in such a way as to exclude males of military age unless
they were clergy).^67 Similar instructions were issued by Rumyantsev and
Suvorov.^68 But to what extent were these well-intentioned rules enforced?
There seem to have been three circumstances in which Russian troops behaved
with unwonted licentiousness and cruelty. The first occurred during the early
years of the Seven Years War, when there was a relaxation of discipline Jhat
may have owed as much to administrative inefficiency as to the ill-will of
particular commanders .(Fermor had a better reputation than Apraksin in
this regard). One historian speaks disparagingly of the troops' 'Asiatic'
behaviour.^69 The well-known memorialist A. T. Bolotov was in 1757 a sub-
lieutenant in an infantry regiment stationed in East Prussia where, he states,
soldiers in the main force 'mercilessly laid waste all the villages around' and
earned for Russia 'ill fame throughout the world'; he summarizes Prussian
accounts of outrages against civilians and remarks cautiously: 'one cannot65 Lowenstern, Memoires, i. 295. Benkendorf states that peasant guerillas rather than soldiers
were responsible-for the numerous atrocities committed against French prisoners and stragglers
during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow ('Zapiski', Kharkevich, 1812 god, ii. 110-13), but those
by Cossacks are well authenticated.
66 Shchukin, Sbornik, iv. 90-1.
67 PSZ v. 3003 (Voinskiy ustav, 22 Mar. 1716), §§ 104-5, 114. The first Petrine codes allowed
units to keep prisoners taken in minor engagements: Myshlayevsky, Petr Velikiy, p. 36 (Voinskiye
stat'i, § 99).
68 Dubrovin, Suvorov, pp. 69, 91, 102; Sukhomlin, Suvorovskiy sbornik, p. 160.
69 Bogdanovich, Russkaya armiya, p. 4. Duffy (Russia's Military Way, pp. 75, 83) compares
the Russians favourably with the Prussians but remarks that 'the Cossacks gave a lead in rapacity
and vandalism to even the best regiments'.