What is a cavalry regiment? History of the Cavalry of Russia

It was in the past the basic kind of troops, passing through foot troops, like a knife through oil. Any cavalry regiment was able to attack the tenfold superior foot forces of the enemy, because he had maneuverability, mobility and the opportunity for a swift and powerful attack. The cavalry not only could fight in isolation from the rest of the troops, it could travel long distances in a very short time, appearing in the rear and in the flanks of the enemy. The cavalry regiment could instantly turn around and regroup depending on the situation, change one type of action to another, that is, the soldiers were able to fight on foot and horse. The tasks were solved in all the variety of the combat situation - both tactical, operational and strategic.

Classification of cavalry

Just like in the Russian infantry, there were three groups. Light cavalry (hussars and lancers, and from 1867 Cossacks joined them) was intended for reconnaissance and patrol service. Linear was represented by dragoons - originally they were called dragons, when infantry had just been planted on horses. Subsequently, it was precisely this cavalry regiment, which can also operate on foot. A special glory of the dragoons was won under Peter the Great. The third group of cavalry - irregular (in translation - wrong) and heavy - consisted of Cossacks and Kalmyks, as well as heavily armed cuirassiers, who were masters of close attacks.

In other countries, cavalry was subdivided in a simpler way: light, medium and heavy, which depended primarily on the weight of the horse. Light - mounted huntsmen, lancers, hussars (the horse weighed up to five hundred kilograms), medium - dragoons (up to six hundred), heavy - knights, riders, grenadiers, carabinieri, cuirassiers (the horse weighed more than eight hundred kilograms in the early Middle Ages). Cossacks of the Russian army for a long time were considered irregular cavalry, but gradually joined the structure of the army of the Russian Empire, taking a place next to the dragoons. It was the Cossack cavalry regiment that became the main threat to the enemy in the wars of the nineteenth century. Mounted troops were subdivided into links according to the requirements of management and assigned tasks. This is a strategic, tactical, front and army cavalry.

Kievan Rus

Kievan Rus knew two kinds of troops - infantry and cavalry, but it was with the help of the latter that battles were won, engineering and transport works were done, the rear were covered, although the main place was occupied, of course, by the infantry. Horses were used to bring soldiers to this area. This happened until the eleventh century. Next, the infantry for some time on an equal footing won with the riders, then the cavalry began to dominate. Perhaps, that's when the first cavalry regiment appeared. Permanent failures in the war with the steppe people taught the princes of Kiev a lot, and soon the Russians became the riders not the worst: disciplined, organized, united, brave.

Then the main victories of the Russian army began. Thus, in 1242 the cavalry played a huge role in defeating the Teutonic Order (the Battle of the Ice). Then there was the Kulikovo battle, where ambush reserve cavalry regiment of Dmitry Donskoy decided the outcome of the battle with the horde's army. The Tatar-Mongols had a shock, light cavalry, excellently organized (toms, thousands, hundreds and tens), perfectly owning a bow, and besides, a spear, a saber, an ax and a club. The tactic was partly Persian or Parthian - entering the light cavalry into the flanks and rear, then exact and prolonged shelling from Mongolian long-range bows, and finally attacking the crushing force that was already being carried out by the heavy cavalry. The tactics proved and almost invincible. And yet in the fifteenth century, the Russian cavalry was already formed so that it could withstand it.

Firearms

The sixteenth century brought to the fore a light cavalry armed with firearms, which changed the ways of conducting combat operations, and the ways of using it in combat. Previously, a separate cavalry regiment attacked the enemy with cold weapons, now shooting was organized by ranks directly from the horse. The structure of the regiment was deep enough, up to fifteen or more ranks, which were put forward alternately from the order of battle in the first row.

It was then, in the sixteenth century, that dragoons and cuirassiers appeared. The Swedish cavalry of the seventeenth century consisted entirely of them. On the battlefield, King Gustavus Adolf built the cavalry in two lines of four ranks, which gave the army a huge powerful force, capable of not only resolutely attacking but also maneuvering flexibly. It was from there that the army consisted of squadrons and cavalry regiments. In the seventeenth century cavalry made up more than fifty percent of the army in many countries, and in France infantry was 1.5 times less.

We have

In Russia in these centuries the cavalry was already subdivided into heavy, medium and light, but much earlier, in the fifteenth century, the local mobilization of people and horses was created, and its development was very different from the training of Russian horsemen and Western Europeans. This system of manning was replenishing the Russian troops with a very numerous noble cavalry. Even under Ivan the Terrible, she became the leader in the arms of the army, numbering eighty thousand people, and in the Livonian War , there was more than one Cossack cavalry regiment.

The composition of the Russian cavalry gradually changed. Under Peter the Great, a regular army was established, where the cavalry made up forty thousand dragoons - forty regiments. It was then that the riders were handed over to guns. The Northern War taught the cavalry to act independently, and in the battle of Poltava cavalry Menshikov acted very ingeniously and on foot. Then the decisive outcome of the battle was the irregular cavalry, which consisted of Kalmyks and Cossacks.

Charter

Petrovsky traditions were revived in 1755 by Queen Elizabeth: the Cavalry Charter was developed and implemented, greatly improving the combat use of cavalry in battle. Already in 1756 the Russian army owned the Guards Cavalry Regiment, six cuirassiers and six grenadiers, eighteen full-time dragoon regiments and two supernumerary regiments. In the irregular cavalry there were again Kalmyks and Cossacks.

The Russian cavalry was trained no worse, and in many cases and better than any European, which was confirmed by the Seven Years' War. In the eighteenth century, the number of light cavalry increased, and in the nineteenth, when massive armies appeared, the cavalry was divided into the army and the strategic. The latter was intended for combat both independently and together with other branches of the armed forces, and the troops entered from the platoon to the whole regiment into infantry formations and were needed for protection, communication and reconnaissance.

The nineteenth century

Napoleon had four cavalry corps - forty thousand horsemen. The Russian army had sixty-five cavalry regiments, including five guards, eight cuirassiers, thirty-six dragoons, eleven hussars and five lancers, that is, eleven divisions, five corps plus separate cavalry corps. The battle of the Russian horsemen was conducted on horseback, and in the defeat of the Napoleonic army they played the most significant role. In the second half of the century the power of artillery fire training increased many times, and therefore the cavalry suffered huge losses. Then the necessity of its existence was called into question.

The civil war in the US, however, showed the success of this kind of troops. Naturally, if the combat training matches and the commanders are competent. The raids on the rear and communications were profound and very successful, despite the fact that the revolvers and carbines were already not just gunshot, but also rifled. At that time, Americans practically did not use cold steel. In the US, the history of the army still enjoys great respect. So, 2 cavalry regiment (dragoon, 2nd Cavalry Regiment ) was created in 1836 and gradually, without changing the name, became first infantry, then a motorized infantry regiment. Now it is located in Europe, part of the contingent of US troops.

World War I

In the twentieth century, even at its beginning, the cavalry accounted for about ten percent of the army, with its help tactical and operational tasks were solved. However, the further saturation of the army with artillery, machine guns and aircraft, the cavalry units of it carried losses all the more huge, and therefore became practically ineffective in combat. For example, the unsurpassed combat skill was demonstrated by the German command, carrying out the Sventsyan breakthrough when six cavalry divisions were used. But this, perhaps, is the only positive example of such a plan.

The Russian cavalry of the First World War was numerous-thirty-six divisions, two hundred thousand well-trained horsemen-but successes were very insignificant even at the beginning of the war, and when the position of the position came and the maneuvers ended, the fighting for this kind of troops practically ceased. All the cavalrymen dismounted and went into the trenches. The changed conditions of the war in this case did not teach the Russian command anything: ignoring the most important directions, it dispatched the cavalry along the entire length of the front and used highly skilled fighters as supplyers. The teachings were devoted to attacks with a closed formation in the saddle, and offensive operations were practically not worked out. After the war, the armies of Western countries were motorized and mechanized, the cavalry gradually eliminated or reduced to a minimum, as in France, Italy, Britain and others. Only in Poland there were eleven full cavalry brigades.

"We are the Red cavalry ..."

The formation of the Soviet cavalry began with the creation of the Red Army, which in 1918 was difficult to do. First, all the areas that supplied the Russian army and horses and riders were occupied by foreign interventionists and whiteguards. Experienced commanders were not enough. After the end of the First World War, only three cavalry regiments of the old army were fully incorporated into the Soviet army. With weapons and equipment, too, was very bad. Therefore, as such, the first cavalry regiment of the new formations did not appear immediately. At first there were simply mounted hundreds, detachments, squadrons.

For example, B. Dumenko created in 1918 a small partisan detachment in the spring, and in the autumn it was already the First Don Cavalry Brigade, then - on the Tsaritsyn Front - a consolidated cavalry division. In 1919, the newly created two cavalry corps were deployed against Denikin's army. Red cavalry was a powerful strike force, not devoid of independence in operational tasks, but also showed itself in interaction with other compounds. In November 1919 the First Cavalry Army was established, in July 1920 - the Second. Unions and formations of the Red Cavalry beat all: Denikin, Kolchak, Wrangel, and the Polish army.

Cavalry Forever

After the Civil War, the cavalry remained for a long time numerous in the troops of the Red Army. The division was strategic (corps and divisions) and military (units in the rifle units). Also from the 1920s, the national forces were present in the Red Army - traditionally Cossacks (despite the restrictions abolished in 1936), the horsemen of the North Caucasus. By the way, after the decision of the People's Commissar of Defense in 1936, the cavalry units became exclusively Cossack. Despite the contrary information, which exists everywhere from perestroika, there is no need to restore objective truth to the country of Soviets before the Great Patriotic War: the documents say that there was no "Bodon's lobby", and the cavalry by 1937 Already reduced by more than two times, then - by 1940, it disappeared even more rapidly.

However, the roads are everywhere, and it has no edge. Zhukov repeatedly in the first weeks of the war noted that the cavalry was underestimated. And this was later corrected. In the summer and especially in the winter of 1941 the cavalry regiment of the Second World War was simply necessary practically everywhere. Under Smolensk in the summer, the raids conducted five equestrian divisions, the assistance to the rest of our troops was not just material, it simply could not be overestimated. And then, under Yelnya, already in the counteroffensive, the cavalry detained the approach of fascist reserves, and that is why success was secured. In December 1941, a quarter of the divisions under Moscow were cavalry. And in 1943 almost two hundred and fifty thousand cavalry fought in twenty-six divisions (in 1940 there were only 13, and all with a smaller number). The Don Cossack Corps liberated Vienna. Kuban - Prague.

11 separate cavalry regiment

Without it, our favorite films would not have appeared. This connection, just like all the others, belonged to the Armed Forces of the country, but was used for filming a movie. 11 separate cavalry regiment - 55605 number of the military unit, formed in 1962. The initiator was the director Sergei Bondarchuk. The first masterpiece, without the help of this regiment would not take place, the most famous and beautiful film epic "War and Peace". It was in this regiment that the actors Andrei Rostotsky and Sergei Zhigunov served. The content of the "cine" military up to the 90s was paid by Mosfilm, then, naturally, he could not continue it.

The number of riders was reduced ten-fold, there were just over four hundred, and horses less than one and a half hundred. The Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation agreed to maintain the regiment in this composition. But all the same the question of complete disbandment was very acute. Only the appeal of Nikita Mikhalkov to the president helped to save the 11th Cavalry Regiment. This helped him to make the film "The Barber of Siberia". In 2002, this was no longer the Presidential Cavalry Regiment, but an honorary escort in the Presidential Regiment. It must be remembered that movie masterpieces were born with his help! Prince Igor, White Sun of the Desert, Waterloo, Poor Hussar, Running, Battle for Moscow, First Horse, Bagration, Black Arrow, Peter Great".