Chapter 1. Old maps of St. Petersburg
Chapter 2. Ancient tale in the north of Europe
Chapter 3. Unity and monotony of monumental structures scattered around the world
Chapter 4. Capitol without a column … well, no way, why?
Chapter 5. One project, one architect or cargo cult?
Chapter 6. Bronze Horseman, who are you really?
Chapter 7. Thunder stone or submarine in the steppes of Ukraine?
Chapter 8. Falsification of most of the monuments of St. Petersburg
Promotional video:
Chapter 9. Peter the First - an ambiguous personality in the history of the whole Europe
Chapter 10. For what to say thank you, Tsar Peter?
Chapter 10-1. This "happy" tsarist era or the House of Holstein in Russia
Here is such an outfit, which proved to be excellent even under Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, tested for centuries and proved its power in battle
was replaced by Peter I with a European one, defenseless and impractical in battle.
Reference: Uniforms of soldiers and officers of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment.
From that moment, incredible losses on the battlefield begin.
I found the controversy over the form of this author very amusing.
Click on the link below, there are many interesting things. How did X's soldiers dress? X century?
I'm trying to understand and find the one who came up with tights, stockings and shoes for soldiers. You know, they fell from the sky at many armies, it's like: there was an opinion and agreed with it. But I can’t understand why the commanders went for obvious idiocy, just as I’m not trying. It may have been a parade uniform, but those who wore it were more artists than soldiers at the time.
How many officers in the new uniform do you think are needed to stop one Russian soldier in close combat? Neither the lance nor the saber took him. Imagine just a long journey across the Russian off-road of disguised soldiers, in European-style shoes, a camisole, suitable only in summer, and a squeak, where gunpowder constantly damp in the morning. And the Russian climate is harsh for a good half of the year, rains, snows, frosts. This uniform is more suitable for festivities and parades in the square, nothing more.
Note that in most of the portraits, Peter 1 appears before us from head to toe, clad in armor. Whim? It is unlikely … More like a necessity, coups, assassination attempts, etc … And for some reason Amia is dressed up as a ballet, why?
Looking at the time of Ivan the Terrible, we will see how the sovereign reformed the army.
This is what the guardsmen looked like.
And under Peter 1, a forty-thousand army of archers, trained and ready to defend the sovereign and the state, is sacrificed to his new interests, defeated by troops brought from Europe, consisting of only foreigners, and led by some foreigners.
In the comments under the article, I was reproached for the fact that the elements of protection greatly impeded the movement of the warrior, I can argue with that, watch the video:
Nevertheless, it was necessary to return to the elements of the old form a century later.
The results of the Battle of Inkerman (1854), in which the Russian infantry was shot as targets in the shooting range, and the stunning losses of the division of George Edward Pickett (1825-1875) in the Battle of Gettysburg (Battle of Gettysburg, 1863), literally decimated by the fire of the northerners, forced generals to think not only about changing the traditional tactics of battle. After all, the chest of the soldiers was protected from the deadly metal only by the thin cloth of the uniform. As long as the battles consisted of an exchange of musket salvoes followed by a hand-to-hand thresher, this did not cause much concern. But with the advent of rapid-fire artillery, which covered the battlefield with shrapnel and fragmentation grenades, rapid-fire rifles, and then machine guns, the losses of armies grew monstrously. The return to the use of the cuirass (carapace) turned out to be promising. Fortunately, the idea was right before my eyes,since at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries it was still part of the ceremonial uniform of the cuirassier regiments. It turned out that even a simple old-style cuirass (intended for protection against cold weapons) from a distance of a couple of tens of meters can withstand a 7.62-mm bullet from a Nagant revolver. Accordingly, some of its thickening (to reasonable limits) could protect a person from something more powerful.
We see an example of covering a cuirass with leather on the soldier on the left. The leather softened the impact of bullets and shrapnel, and protected the metal from tearing and cracking.
Two layers of dense calfskin with a chainmail T-shirt inside did not allow a sword or an arrow to reach the warrior's body, the bullet inflicted damage only with a direct hit, with a tangent - it ricocheted, no matter what they said. There was at least a bruise, at the very least a crack or broken rib, but vital organs remained unharmed.
It is worth noting an interesting fact: the older chain mail, which means the older one, was made more reliable, stronger, and … which raises many questions: for some reason it was more technological.
They used to know what and how, but then the knowledge disappeared somewhere.
Here is more detailed information: History of body armor.
Nowadays.
They did not forget about the good old helmet either.
The beginning of the positional period of the First World War forced the generals and the leadership of the belligerent armies to reconsider their approach to equipment and equipment of servicemen: a hail of bullets, shrapnel, shell fragments literally fell on the soldiers' heads … In addition, the "trench" nature of the fighting led to the fact that part of the infantryman's body was precisely the head, which, willy-nilly, periodically "protruded" out of the trench. Naturally, this state of affairs could not last long, so military thought began to feverishly seek a way out of this situation. As often happens in life, the emerging problem was solved according to the principle of "everything new - well forgotten old" and as a head protection they offered a version of a steel helmet, known as the optimal means of protection since antiquity and the Middle Ages.
More details here: Return to the use of helmets during the First World War.
Let's take our time
Russian soldier in the BZK.
American with full ammunition.
Swiss soldier.
Frenchman.
Continuation: Chapter 11. Ladoga Canals - witnesses of a grandiose construction
Author: ZigZag
