People’s army: what we did not know about Minin and Pozharsky

Was there unity and harmony in Rus’ at that time?

In these first days of November, we now traditionally recall the events of more than four centuries ago – the exploits of the people’s militia under the leadership of Minin and Pozharsky, who liberated the country from foreign invaders. This canonical story also has its everyday moments associated with the formation and equipment of the “people’s army”. They are mentioned much less often, meanwhile, you can find a lot of interesting details that help to better understand the events of those distant days.

It was possible to form a combat-ready army that could successfully fight against the Poles, who had almost crushed Muscovy under them, only the second time. After the failures of the first zemstvo militia in Nizhny Novgorod, by the autumn of 1611 they began to form a new army, which was led by the zemstvo headman Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. At the beginning of 1612, this army moved towards Moscow.

It is interesting to look at how our distant ancestors formed an army of volunteers and armed it.

The organizers of the militia sent letters to the cities with calls to the Russian people living there to unite and take part in the liberation of Moscow from the Polish invaders.

Of course, funds were needed to equip the troops and provide them with everything necessary. Responding to Minin’s call, people began to voluntarily donate the “third money” for this – that is, a third of their capital (Kuzma himself gave not only “his entire treasury” for a good cause, but even gold salaries from icons and his wife’s jewelry). However, in the end, there were still not so many donors, and the funds raised would clearly not be enough for a military campaign. Then they switched to coercive measures: from the inhabitants of Nizhny, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kazan … they began to take the “fifth of the money” – 20% of the income received from fishing or trade.

This money was useful, among other things, to provide salaries to the militias. And they were promised considerable “salaries” at that time. The most experienced and skillful soldiers, placed in the first category, were supposed to receive 50 rubles a year, militias of lower military qualification – the second, third, fourth category, respectively 45, 40 and 35 rubles. The sums were very serious at that time. For comparison: shortly before, during the reign of Boris Godunov, the soldiers received only 12-20 rubles a year; a good cow cost 1 ruble.

A noteworthy moment: the salary was paid without regard to the nobility of the warrior, only taking into account his combat skills. So there were cases when a certain militia nobleman received less than his brother-soldiers from the peasant class.

Many problems arose with the provision of the soldiers recruited into the militia with the equipment they needed.

The most common weapons then were, along with the “classics” preserved from grandfather’s times – spears, maces, six-guns – guns, squeaks, reeds (axes on long handles with crescent-curved blades). Mounted warriors used sabers. “Import” was especially valued – blades forged by Persian and Turkish masters. But such a product cost sky-high money: you had to pay 5-6 rubles for a Turkish saber.

Still, they managed to buy a significant part of the “advanced” weapons for the militias from the Ottomans, from the Krymchaks – fortunately, the Volga cities at that time established active trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate. The funds for the purchase of such expensive military supplies were provided by the “fifth money” already mentioned above, which is actively collected in the cities.

The total size of the militia that was eventually assembled by today’s standards does not look impressive at all: at first it included only about 5,000 people. However, for its time it was a formidable military force.

The army of Minin and Pozharsky successfully advanced to Moscow, where by that time regiments of Poles numbering up to 12 thousand people had settled. However, this army was not very combat-ready, experiencing serious hardships, for which the “Westerners” were not ready. As a result, the people’s army managed to drive the enemy out of Moscow. Thus, it was possible to defend the Russian statehood.