The Army Takes to the Countryside 285
and principal characteristics. Later we shall discuss the reaction of the men
concerned and the modifications which Nicholas 1 made to the system.
A beginning was made in 1810, when one battalion of an infantry regiment,
the Yelets Musketeers, was settled in former Polish territory that was now part
of Mogilev province. More than 4,000 state (that is, non-proprietorial) peasants
resident there had to sell off their possessions and move to Yelizavetgrad in
New Russia. About half of them are said to have perished en route.^4 ~ Con-
struction of the settlement had scarcely started when the area was overrun by
Napoleon's troops; the surviving buildings were then taken over by the local
peasants, who had to be ejected by the musketeers when they returned. Soon
two regiments were quartered permanently in the region, which however
remained the smallest of the four widely separated settlement areas.^43
In 1816 the organizers turned their attention to Novgorod province. Why
they chose it is not clear. Memories of the seventeenth-century precedent may
have been a factor; probably more important was its proximity to the capital,
and particularly to Gruzino. The swampy terrain was unsuited to agriculture,
but typically this point was overlooked when the first 19 villages were assigned
to the grenadier regiment that bore Arakcheyev's name. In the north-west the
residents (officially termed korennye zhiteli or 'natives') were not expelled but
turned into settlers-that is, militarized. Several months elapsed before they
were told of their impending fate, and for a time even the civil governor was
kept in the dark. By 1818 several adjacent districts along the river Volkhov and
west of Novgorod had also been taken over to accommodate five more
grenadier and cuirassier regiments, and elements of two other divisions were
settled across Lake Il'men around Staraya Rusa. The authorities tried to
make the territory compact by buying up some civilian properties in the
area.^44
This problem loomed much larger in the settlements escablished from 1817
onwards in the former Slobodskaya Ukraina. Designed for cavalry unics, they
were administered from Chuguyev, a small town souch-east of Khar'kov,
where many officers descended from Ukrainian land-militiamen had acquired
property over the years. Arakcheyev and his aides (Lieucenants-General I. 0.
Vitt [de Witt] and Linasevich) decided to expropriate them in the interescs
of uniformity, but the compensation offered stood in no relationship to the
properties' real value. This led to grumbling and evencually to active resist-
ance (see ch. 13). Even shabbier treatment was mered out to 135 Chuguyev
residents who were deported, much like the Mogilev peasants before them.
These harsh measures nullified the main advantage which Alexander I had
~2 Mel'gunov, Dela i /yudi, p. 278; von Bradke, 'Avtobiogr. zapiski', p. 51.
~J Shchepetil'nikov (SV.--1 iv) pp. 98-9; Fabrirsius, in SVM vii. 504-11; Lykoshin, 'Voyennye
poseleniya', pp. 87-8; Petrov, 'Us1roys1vo', p. 89; Yevstafyev, Vosstamye, p. 63.
+s PSZ xxxiii. 26389 (5 Aug. 1816); Shchep.:ril"nikov (SV.W iv) pp. 99-100 (with map);
Dubrovin, Sbornik, v. 70-3, 84; Kartsov, 'O voyennykh poseleniyakh', 2, pp. 146-54, 3, pp. 82-3;
Tanski, Tableau, p. 119.