An impression of how the
Russian army looked like in the battle of Lesnaya is shown on this page. The
uncertainties are however many because the pieces of information about
Russian uniforms are few and fragmentary. The uniform colours also changed
frequently when regiments were issued new uniforms, which happened within
regular intervals. All
uniforms shown on this page are therefore more or less specualtive.
But the known uniform information is listed on special pages which you can
access by clicking on the images.
The Russian force at Lesnaya
consisted of ten battalions from Russian elite infantry regiments as well as
ten dragoon regiments. This was a mobile army totalling 13 000 men in which
both the infantry and artillery were on horseback. Later an additional 5 000 dragoons
commanded by major general Bauer arrived as reinforcements in the middle of
the battle. These figures
come from Einar Lyth's and Pavel Konovalchuk's book "Vägen till Poltava" from
2009. According to them the Russian army was much larger than previously
thought because the Russians underreported their own strength for propaganda
reasons so that they and the Swedish army would appear to be of equal
strength.
