were to replace the death penalty.^157 But at the same time Paul's new military
;;tatute!' casually opened the way to greater use of corporal punishment (which,
lS we know, could easily prove fatal). Running the gauntlet was now expressly
nade a discretionary penalty: a unit commander could order it to be inflicted
Jn soldiers charged with disorderly conduct while on tht> march .. A.cccrding to
;ome wnters it now became the principal penalty meted out to privates, since
'1COs were more usually punished by reduction to the ranks.^158 The way in
vhich the gauntlet was administered was laid down in pedantic detail. Paul
llSO sometimes revised upwards court-martial sentences passed to him for con-
innation, although hitherto (at least since Peter I) the convention had been
or the sovereign to mitigate them. Thus an NCO found guilty of forgery,
1hom the court sentenced to exclusion from his unit, was commanded by the
mperor to be flogged.^159
By these interventions Paul made nonsense of the system of military justice,
·hich for all its defects was at least based on the assumption that courts reached
ieir decisions after conscientious examination of the evidence. Now, as
okolovsky points out, 'all written documents simply served as material on
hich the Sovereign based his own personal opinion'.^160 Paul's tyrannical
:sposition was also apparent in his concern with minutiae: he would, for
stance, take pains to specify in which prison a convicted soldier should serve
s sentence. Distrusting his officials, he closed the auditors' office (Auditor-
aya ekspeditsiya) in the War College and set up a new body, called the
ieneral-Auditoriat', under his personal supervision. This dealt with offences
- officers or dvoryane in the ranks, while for commoners the War College
mained the final reviewing instance.161
The new procedure led to endless delays and had to be modified by Alex-
der I in 1806. Thereafter a man could be made to run the gauntlet only after
nfirmation of sentence by the brigade commander, who fixed the number of
sses (up to three) through a battalion of approximately 500 men. A divi-
1nal commander could order six such passes, and commanders-in-chief. five
·ough 1,000 men; the death penalty-now restored but rarely enforced-
1uired the assent of the Auditor-General and of the sovereign.^162
)n his accession Alexander I, like Peter III and Catherine II before him,
i formally abolished torture throughout his domains and proclaimed an
nesty.^163 The consequences for those within military jurisdiction were less
7 Referred to in PSZ xx ix. 22322 ( 18 Oct. 1806).
B Shcndzikovsky (SVM xii) pp. 155-7; PSZ xxiv. 17588 (Infantry Field Regulations, 29 Nov.
1), XI, ch. VI,§§ 2-3. For 1he cavalry equivalent: xxiv. 17590.(^1) Sokolovsky, 'lz russkoy voyenno-ugolovnoy stariny', pp. 360-1; cf. Keep, 'Mil. Style',
ll-2.
Sokolovsky, 'lz russkoy ... stariny', p. 366.
' PSZ xxiv. 17588 (29 Nov. 1796). IX, ch. JV; xliii. 18308 (5 Jan. 1798).
' PSZ xxix. 22322 (18 Oct. 1806); cf. xxviii. 20878 (July 180~). strenglhening the judicial
:rs of inspcciors. The ar1icle in VE .\iii. 159-60 give> 100 favourable a picture.
PSZ xxvi. 19814, 20022 (2 Apr., 27 Sep!. 1801 ).