after his defeat on the Prut River in 1711. He immediately set off on the Grand
Embassy of 1697–8 where, along with diplomatic meetings, Peter learned ship-
building in London and Amsterdam and recruited primarily English engineers for
a planned Balticfleet. Its construction began at Lake Ladoga and shifted to
St. Petersburg soon after 1703. Peter I defeated the Swedes at Hangö in July
1714 with afleet of galleys; by the end of his reign he had a Balticfleet comprising
impressive ships of the line and frigates as well as multitudes of galleys.
Peter expanded the army to more than twice the size of the Muscovite force, with
121,000field army and 74,000 garrison troops. In contrast to west European
militaries that at the time included about 75 percent infantry, Russia (like its
neighbors the Ottoman empire, Sweden, and Poland-Lithuania) maintained half
the army as cavalry, needed for the great open distances in Ukrainian and Belarus’an
lands and the steppe frontier. Peter also improved Russia’s artillery and military
manufacturing capabilities: Russia was self-sufficient in arms by 1712 and produced
most of the textiles needed for non-commissioned officers’uniforms.
Muscovy’s old boyar families and gentry were folded into the new army as the
few remaining old-style gentry cavalry units and gentry-only light cavalry (reitar)
units were abolished. Most gentry went into one of thirty-three light cavalry or
dragoon regiments composed also of Cossacks, soldiers, even peasants; the most
impoverished of them became infantrymen. Most of Muscovy’s serf-owning gentry
became the Petrine officer corps, although naval service never had the prestige or
draw that the army did. Officers were paid salary, ending the Muscovite form of
compensation by service-tenure land (pomest’e) and serfs. By the end of the
seventeenth centurypomest’ehad de facto become hereditary, a situation made
formal law in 1714. Officer rank, rather than landholding, now determined status.
Petrine military change also regularized garrison service on the frontier. Previ-
ously staffed with Cossacks, musketeers, and odnodvortsy (as discussed in
Chapter 17, these were men descended from serf-owning gentry who now owned
few serfs, or even farmed their own lands), now disciplined, salaried regiments of
infantry and dragoons, capable offield action as well as border defense, were
assigned to fortresses. Localodnodvortsywere organized into more disciplined
land militias. This move raised professional quality and militaryflexibility on the
borders.
By the 1720s Russia’s army was more diversified and cavalry based than its
European competitors, with a more professional garrison force on the southern
frontier and Siberian fortresses. These military achievements, however, were
expensive, and in the nextfifteen years the army and navy were neglected as Peter’s
successors struggled to put statefinances in order. At the end of the Great Northern
War, Russia had 34 ships of the line, 15 frigates, 77 galleys, about a dozen smaller
vessels, and about 27,000 sailors, but shipbuilding essentially ceased thereafter; by
the early 1740s the navy had only 20 usable ships of the line and about 50 lesser
ships, primarily in the Baltic at bases in Kronstadt and Reval.
Elizabeth’s government undertook a major rebuilding effort from 1741, expand-
ing thefield army from approximately 140,000 to 344,000 between 1740 and
1756; in the ensuing Seven Years War (1756–63) the army performed well. At
Army and Administration 297