Cavalier guards, the century is short, and that is why he is so sweet.
The trumpet sings, the canopy is thrown back, and somewhere the ringing of sabers is heard.
The string voice still rumbles, but the commander is already in the saddle …
Do not promise a young maiden
eternal love on earth!
Bulat Okudzhava. Cavalier's song
Military affairs at the turn of the eras. By the end of the reign of Paul I, the Russian cavalry had as many as 13 cuirassier regiments in its composition - a solid force. But for the sake of economy, by 1803, their number was reduced to six. These were His Majesty's regiments; Her Majesty; Military Order; Little Russian; Glukhovsky; Yekaterinoslavsky, to which in 1811 they nevertheless decided to add two more: Astrakhan and Novgorod. In 1812, two more regiments, the dragoon regiments of Pskov and Starodubovsky, were converted into cuirassier regiments, and in April 1813 His Majesty's regiment was transferred to the Guard.
All regiments had a five-squadron composition and included a chief of the regiment, a colonel, a lieutenant colonel, two majors, two captains, seven headquarters captains, ten lieutenants, 17 cadets, five senior non-commissioned officers (vakhmisters), ten warrant officers, five quartermasters, 50 non-commissioned officers, 660 soldiers, 17 musicians, three servants of the regimental church (a priest and two assistants), ten doctors, five barbers, 32 artisans, profos and 21 Furshtatsky. The reserve squadron of the regiment consisted of a major, a captain, a headquarters captain, a lieutenant, a cadet, a sergeant-major, a quartermaster, ten non-commissioned officers, 102 soldiers, two trumpeters, a barber and four carts. In 1812, first another squadron was added to the cuirassier regiments, and then a second, so there were seven of them.
Until 1803, the cuirassiers of the Russian imperial army, as if in the 18th century, continued to wear high two-cornered hats (like dragoons). But in 1803, another uniform reform began, and such cavalrymen as dragoons and cuirassiers were given high helmets made of black pumpkin leather, with high crests and visors in front and behind (and the front had a brass edging), and a metal forehead plate with the image of a two-headed eagle (on the helmets of the regiment of the Military Order, instead of an eagle, there was a St. George's star with four rays). The helmet was held in place by a black leather chin strap. In cold weather, a cloth lining was inserted under it, covering the ears. The crest of the helmet was adorned with a curved black plume that looked like a carrot.
The tunic had short coattails and a high collar and was sewn from dense white fabric - karazei. There was a black tie around his neck. Collar and cuffs - from cloth of applied color; the collar had white piping. There was only one shoulder strap, on the left shoulder.
In the dress uniform, leggings of goat or elk leather with high boots were worn. On the contrary, the hiking uniform relied on short boots, over which they wore leggings of either gray or brownish-gray color, with black leather trimmed inside and with wooden buttons covered with fabric along the seam on the side outside.
This uniform corresponded to European fashion in every way, but not even five years had passed, when in 1808 the plume caterpillar on helmets was replaced with horsehair "bristles", although the magnificent plumes were left to officers until 1812 for parades. In 1812, the cavalry guards also received black steel cuirasses and new collars: low, fastened with hooks tightly. Both the cuirassiers and the cavalry guards had their fittings and carbines taken away (in the period from 1812 to 1814, only flankers had them), leaving only broadswords and pistols.
Now let's see how effective the then cuirass was. Actually, all of them in those years in all European countries were approximately the same in structure and weight, except that they differed in appearance. For example, in Napoleonic France, where cuirasses were worn not only by cuirassiers themselves, but also by carabinieri, unlike Russian, black, painted ones, there were cuirasses, for the sake of beauty, covered with copper sheet!
And there, in 1807, they were tested by shelling. They tested a regular breastplate made of iron weighing 4.49 kg and a back plate of 3.26 kg about three millimeters thick, as well as a German steel cuirass (these were privately allowed to be acquired by gentlemen officers) and an old cuirass from the Seven Years' War, connected by forging layers of steel and iron, whose bib weighed 6, 12 kg. The shots were fired from an army infantry rifle of 17.5 mm caliber. And this is what came of it: the first cuirass made its way from distances of 105 and 145 meters, the second did not always break through, but the third, the heaviest, did not break through. The pistol was also fired from a distance of 17 and 23 meters, and the first cuirass was pierced, but the last two passed the test successfully.
By the way, the sapper cuirass from one breastplate, which weighed 7, 2 kg, at a distance of 23 m withstood all bullets, except for the Tyrolean carbine. That is, the degree of protection that the cuirass gave was quite high. And in principle, it would be possible to make a cuirass and completely impenetrable for the bullets of that time, only now its weight would be at the level of 8 kg!
However, in 1825, the French still adopted a cuirass that protected from a musket bullet from a distance of 40 m. It had a variable thickness: in the center 5, 5-5, 6 mm, and at the edges - 2, 3 mm. The dorsal part was very thin - 1, 2 mm. Weight 8-8.5 kg. It cost the treasury 70 francs.
In 1855, they decided to lighten the cuirass and began to make the bib already from hardened steel with a thickness of 3, 3 mm, and the back from the usual one. Thus, the weight has been reduced by almost 2 kg. But the problem was that, in addition to progress, there was also progress in the field of small arms in metallurgy, and the Franco-Prussian war once again showed this in the most graphic way.
However, the French army continued to use cuirasses! In the 80s of the XIX century, they began to be made of chrome steel, and now they already protected the rider from the bullets of the Gra rifle at a distance of 100 meters, and at the same weight. And since 1891, they began to be made of new chromium-nickel steel, which was not penetrated by a bullet of a standard blunt-headed with a lead core and a copper-nickel sheath bullet of the French Lebel rifle of 1886 from a distance of 375 meters. But now a bullet of the ogival form of 1898 made of tombak alloy pierced it at all distances …
