At Court

Aleksandr Borisovich Kalaushin, who compiled the family roster, called Uryadnik Andrey Kalaushin the first Cossack of the family to serve “in the Own Convoy that guarded the Imperial Family”, and its first — “perhaps its last” — chamber Cossack [◈ S001, No. 6]. The sources know of no other chamber Cossack in the family, but the road to court he had opened stayed open. From the 1850s until 1911 Kalaushins of Batalpashinskaya served at the Imperial Court: with the Tsesarevna in St Petersburg, as uryadniks (Cossack non-commissioned officers) at Gatchina, in St Petersburg and at Tsarskoye Selo; and when the Convoy celebrated its centenary, one of them came as a member of the Kuban Host’s delegation. This chapter is about them, and about the saddle which, as the family tells it, Fedot Alekseyevich made for the Shah of Persia.

His Majesty’s Own Convoy (Sobstvenny Yego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Konvoy; hereafter the Convoy) was the Emperor’s Cossack bodyguard. It counted its seniority from 1811; from 1832 Cossacks of the Caucasus Line served in it, and later its core was formed by Kuban and Terek sotnias (squadrons) [◈ S109; ◈ S188, “Sobstvenny Yego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Konvoy”]. To be chosen was an honour for the whole stanitsa (Cossack village). The Convoy’s officers made their final choice of young Cossacks every May in Yekaterinodar. The stanitsa signed a formal pledge for each man it sent, vouching for him, and the Cossack himself bought, at his own expense and from the Host crafts school, a new Guards service saddle whose tree (lenchik) had its arches trimmed with fine white horn [◈ S097, pp. 142–144]. The officers’ saddles, writes the Convoy’s historian N.V. Galushkin, were supplied by “the Cossack Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya, famous throughout the Caucasus for the work of his workshop” [◈ S097, p. 143, n. 24]. So the family was bound to the Convoy twice over: by service and by craft.

Chamber Cossack to the Tsesarevna

On 21 January 1853 a letter left the Chancellery of the Heir to the Throne in St Petersburg, addressed to the nakazny ataman (the appointed head) of the Caucasus Line Cossack Host, Major-General Prince G.R. Eristov (“Eristavi” in the letter). Colonel Count Adlerberg, head of the Chancellery, wrote that it was the wish of His Imperial Highness the Heir Tsesarevich that Uryadnik Andrey Kalaushin of the 2nd Khoper Regiment, who was serving in the Convoy and was then on leave in the Caucasus, should fill the vacant post of chamber Cossack to the Tsesarevna, transferring to the Court Department. He was to be sent to St Petersburg at once, “should he so wish, with his whole family”, given travel and subsistence money for the journey, and all written particulars about him were to be forwarded to the Chancellery [◈ S001, No. 6, from the file “On the appointment of Uryadnik Kalaushin as chamber Cossack”]. The Tsesarevna was then Maria Alexandrovna, wife of the Heir — the future Emperor Alexander II. In 1852 Count A.V. Adlerberg was temporarily managing the Heir’s household and acting as the Tsesarevna’s secretary; Prince Eristov had become nakazny ataman in 1852 [◈ S188, “Maria Alexandrovna (Empress)”, “Adlerberg, Alexander Vladimirovich”, “Eristov, Georgy Romanovich”].

From other sheets of the same file the roster’s compiler retells the details of the departure. The uryadnik’s family consisted of his wife and two daughters, Matryona and Fedosya; Fedosya was about ten. The Cossack authorities corresponded at length over whether the Kalaushins should travel by post horses or by peasant carts, and in the end sent them with two post horses. Travel money was paid for half the way, as far as Voronezh — 888¼ versts, 26 roubles 49¾ kopecks in silver — together with subsistence money from Stavropol to St Petersburg. Andrey Kalaushin was appointed chamber Cossack on 2 September 1853 [◈ S001, No. 6].

Chamber Cossacks (kamer-kazaki) were the part of the guard closest to the Imperial Family: they lived at the palace and, by virtue of their post, were constantly at the side of those they guarded. The custom of choosing them from the Convoy began in 1836 with Uryadnik Podsvirov; later the Emperor, the Heir, the Empress and the Dowager Empress each had two chamber Cossacks, who were on duty “week on, week off”. They were chosen for their height, good looks and full beards; their parade dress was scarlet, like that of the whole Convoy, and their everyday cherkeska (Circassian coat) blue. Under the establishment of 1851 there were four chamber Cossacks among the Imperial Family’s personal servants [◈ S109].

Note on the roster. The roster enters the chamber Cossack as Andrey Alekseyevich (No. 6), born in 1816, with a wife Feodosiya and nine children. The compiler himself noted that Andrey’s descent from Aleksey was “purely a speculative assumption” [◈ S001, note to No. 8]. The confessional register of Batalpashinskaya for 1848 names two Andrey Kalaushins. One is Andrey Trofimovich, aged 41, with his wife Feodosiya and six children, among them a son Fyodor. The other is Andrey, aged 30, son of Ivan, with his wife Mariya and daughters Matrona, 11, and Feodosiya, 7 [◆ S012, households nos. 275 and 92, via S180, topic 25557]. This is exactly the family named in the 1853 file — a wife and the daughters Matryona and Fedosya. In the stanitsa’s parish register for 1857 a godmother is entered as “the chamber Cossack’s daughter, maiden Fedosya Andreyevna Kalaushina” [◆ S013, ff. 178v–179v, from a transcription on S181]. The chamber Cossack was therefore Uryadnik Andrey Ivanovich Kalaushin (b. c. 1817–1819; the roster also lists him as No. 16), son of Ivan Trofimovich and brother of Nikolay Ivanovich, from whom, according to the roster, the author of this chronicle descends. △ The patronymic “Alekseyevich” in entry No. 6 most likely echoes the shift of generations that the roster inherited in its early part.

How long his service at court lasted is not known. Maria Alexandrovna became Empress on 18 February 1855 [◈ S188, “Maria Alexandrovna (Empress)”]. In 1857 the chamber Cossack’s daughter was in Batalpashinskaya, and the stanitsa’s confessional register for 1860 lists “Uryadnik Andrey Ivanov Kalaushin, 41” [◆ S014, from a transcription on S181]: the family, or at least part of it, was living in the Kuban again.

In the autumn of 1861 Alexander II was in the Caucasus, and on 18–19 September he visited the fortifications of the Laba Line and the stanitsa of Labinskaya [◈ S170, 2025]. At Labinskaya he received a deputation from six Line Cossack brigades — 60 officers and 240 veteran uryadniks and Cossacks. From some way off the Emperor recognised in the ranks an old uryadnik of his own Convoy, Potsvirov of Belomechetskaya, asked him how he was faring, answered the old man’s question about the Empress’s health, and then asked: “And do you remember Kalaushin?” An eyewitness, I.S. Kravtsov, who presented the deputies, explained in his memoirs: “Uryadnik Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya stanitsa served as chamber Cossack to the late Empress and died of consumption.” “The poor fellow is ill all the time; a pity, he is a good man,” the Emperor said [◆ S034, pp. 40–41].

Fyodor Andreyevich

According to the roster, Fyodor Andreyevich Kalaushin [S001, No. 23] also served in the Convoy. He entered service in 1857 and became an uryadnik in April 1873; by 1874 he held the silver medal for the Conquest of the Western Caucasus and the Cross “For Service in the Caucasus”, and the records for 1877 list him as an uryadnik of the 1st squadron of His Majesty’s Own Convoy [◈ S001, No. 23]. Here the compiler cites the 1877 list of uryadniks on internal service in the Batalpashinsk Department; the details of his Convoy service await a check against the original (see “Where the Documents May Be Found”).

Note on the roster. The roster makes Fyodor Andreyevich the chamber Cossack’s son, although the compiler allowed that Fyodor “was born earlier” and did not go to St Petersburg with his parents [◈ S001, No. 6]. In the 1848 confessional register the eleven-year-old Fyodor is the son of Andrey Trofimovich and Feodosiya (household no. 275) [◆ S012, via S180, topic 25557] — that is, a first cousin of the chamber Cossack.

The Alekseyevich brothers: Gatchina and St Petersburg

The sons of the master saddler Aleksey Nikolayevich [S001, No. 32] were the chamber Cossack’s great-nephews: their grandfather, Nikolay Ivanovich, was his brother [◆ S012, household no. 92, via S180, topic 25557]. Four of the five sons — Matvey, Mikhail, Fedot and Aleksandr — followed their father’s craft; the fifth, Savva (Savely), became a teacher [◈ S001, Nos. 32, 75]. Three of the four craftsmen brothers served in the Convoy. Matvey Alekseyevich, as the family remembers, served in a Cossack regiment at Labinskaya, “but not in the Convoy, because he was short” [◇ S001, No. 71]: the Convoy took tall men.

Mikhail Alekseyevich was born on 9 July 1870 in Batalpashinskaya. The name index to the orders of the Kuban Cossack Host (the Kuban Host) lists him as a Cossack of the 1st Khoper Regiment, then as a Cossack and an uryadnik of the Convoy [◈ S033, via S180, topic 855]; according to the roster, he served four years in the Convoy [◈ S001, No. 72].

Fedot Alekseyevich Kalaushin [S001, No. 73] was born in 1871. The same index lists him as a “saddler”; he took the oath in 1891 [◈ S033, via S180, topic 855] and was enrolled in the Convoy by Kuban Host Order No. 156 of 7 June 1892 [◈ S156, comment by Andro, 01.06.2013]. In the roster’s words, he served “first at Gatchina, under Alexander III, and then in the capital, St Petersburg, under Nicholas II”, as an uryadnik of the Life Guards 2nd Kuban Sotnia [◈ S001, No. 73].

Under Alexander III the Convoy kept guard at the Gatchina Palace, inside and out. Its inner guard manned nine posts — in the “Chinese” gallery, by the dining room, outside the bedrooms of the Emperor and Empress and of the Imperial children, at the spiral staircase and at the private entrance — while ten outer posts ringed the deer park [◈ S097, p. 106]. After the death of Alexander III, in November 1894, the Court moved to Tsarskoye Selo, but the Life Guards 2nd Kuban Sotnia remained on duty at Gatchina [◈ S097, p. 127]. Under Nicholas II the Convoy was based mainly at Tsarskoye Selo; one sotnia at a time was sent to St Petersburg, and it also served the court of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna at Gatchina and the Anichkov Palace. The Convoy’s St Petersburg barracks stood at No. 28 Shpalernaya Street, and attached to them were the Convoy’s own workshops — for arms, saddlery and tailoring [◈ S097, pp. 127–128, 131].

The brothers did not give up their craft while serving. At the All-Russian Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod a bronze medal for leather goods went to “Kalaushin, Fedot Alekseyevich, uryadnik, and Kalaushin, Mikhail Alekseyevich, and Fisenko, Ivan Mikhailovich, Cossacks, in St Petersburg” [◆ S044, no. 1, p. 33]. By 1896, then, Fedot Alekseyevich was already an uryadnik, and both brothers were living in the capital.

In January 1897 Kuban Host Order No. 5 recorded that Fedot Alekseyevich had been “graciously permitted to accept and wear the Mecklenburg-Schwerin silver medals of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III” [◈ S001, No. 73]; the day of the month is unclear in the roster’s text, and a commentator on Kubanskaya genealogiya gives 13 January [◈ S156, comment by Andro, 01.06.2013]. Mecklenburg awards were nothing new to the Khoper Cossacks. From 1879 the honorary chief of the 1st Khoper Regiment was Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna, wife of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and “in 1885 and 1896, at Her Highness’s request”, the Grand Duke conferred Mecklenburg orders and medals on Khoper officers and other ranks [◆ S053, pt 2, p. 339]. △ The Khoper-born Convoy uryadnik from Batalpashinskaya most likely received his medal by the same route, through the chief of his home regiment; it was probably Friedrich Franz III’s silver Medal for Merit. What exactly he was rewarded for is not yet known.

The farewell review

Active service in the Convoy lasted four years, and some of the long-serving men stayed on for extended service [◈ S097, pp. 114–116]; △ Fedot Alekseyevich, who served eight years, was probably one of them. Leaving the Convoy was a ceremony. At the end of May trainloads of young Cossacks from the Kuban and the Terek arrived at Tsarskoye Selo, and by then the old Convoy men had finished their service. Old and young were presented to the Emperor together, drawn up on foot. The Emperor walked along the ranks of the departing men, thanked them for their service, handed each of them in person the breast badge “For Service in My Convoy”, and congratulated them all on their promotion to uryadnik [◈ S097, pp. 144–145]. Galushkin calls it “the last presentation to His Majesty”. To discharge a Cossack without promotion and stripped of the Guards uniform brought shame on his stanitsa, and in the Convoy’s history such cases were very rare. At the border of the Host the nakazny ataman met the returning men and thanked them on behalf of the whole Host [◈ S097, p. 150].

In 1900 the review took place on Wednesday, 31 May Old Style (13 June New Style), at half past two in the afternoon — not at the Catherine Palace, as Galushkin describes, but at the Alexander Palace, where the Imperial Family was then living. Facing the palace stood the young Cossacks who had come as replacements — 58 from the Kuban and 45 from the Terek; among the Kubans were ten Khoper Cossacks from the escort of the late Tsesarevich, Grand Duke George Alexandrovich. With their backs to the palace stood the men going home on lgota (into the reserve), led by the acting commander of the Convoy, Colonel Kireyev. The Emperor and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna walked along the ranks. Nicholas II spoke “gracious words” to each departing man, handed out the Convoy service badges with his own hand, thanked them for their “excellent and zealous service” and wished them “happiness in the future”; the Empress gave out portraits of the Imperial Family, and the little Grand Duchesses watched from a small carriage drawn by donkeys. Beside the Emperor stood the Minister of the Imperial Court, Baron V.B. Fredericks [◆ S036, no. 150, 10.06.1900, p. 3]. That day the Emperor wrote in his diary: “On the square in front of the palace the old Cossacks going home and the new ones who have arrived for service were presented” [◆ S037, 31.05.1900].

Seventeen days later, on 17 (30) June 1900, Kuban Host Order No. 60 discharged Fedot Alekseyevich “retaining the Guards uniform and awarded the badge for service in the Convoy” [◈ S001, No. 73; ◈ S156, comment by Andro, 01.06.2013].

Note on the roster. The same entry says that Fedot Alekseyevich served in the Convoy “from 1892 to 1911” and came home “after 19 years of service” [◈ S001, No. 73]. The number and date of the order are the firmest anchor in the entry, so his years in the Convoy are 1892–1900. △ “1911” and “19 years” probably refer to his whole Cossack service liability — under the regulations a Cossack was liable for about twenty years, cut to eighteen in 1909 [◈ S184, “Kazachestvo”] — or echo, in the family’s memory, the Convoy’s centenary of 1911.

The saddle for the Shah of Persia

The barracks on Shpalernaya Street

The youngest brother, Aleksandr Alekseyevich Kalaushin [S001, No. 74], was born in 1877 or 1878. He is called an uryadnik of the Convoy both in S.V. Volkov’s database and in a collector’s caption to a photograph of the 1910 graduating class of the Maykop Military Crafts School [◈ S162, via S180, topic 855; ◈ S153, P.N. Strelyanov, 30.12.2020].

The Convoy’s centenary

18 May 1811 was regarded as the Convoy’s founding day, and in May 1911 it celebrated its centenary. The celebrations lasted from 17 to 21 May at Tsarskoye Selo. On 17 May, in the Alexander Palace, the cloth of a new jubilee standard was nailed to its staff, the Emperor driving the first nail; on 18 May, in front of the Catherine Palace, a service was held to consecrate the standard, followed by a parade of the Convoy. Up to a thousand former Convoy men came for the occasion [◈ S097, pp. 173–175].

The Kuban Host sent a delegation. Its make-up had been fixed in advance — the nakazny ataman, the chief of the Host staff, one field officer and one subaltern, and six other ranks — and the department atamans were told to look for Cossacks, whether or not they had served in the Convoy, provided they held the Insignia of the Military Order — “the more, the better” — and made a good figure. On the morning of 9 May the ten-man delegation arrived in St Petersburg; among them was Podkhorunzhy (senior NCO) Ivan Stepanovich Kalaushin [◈ S132, pp. 104–105, from GAKK, f. 332, op. 1, d. 551; f. 396, op. 1, d. 10213, 10239]. The roster calls him a Convoy man, formerly an uryadnik of the Convoy [◈ S001, No. 77]; a Convoy uryadnik Ivan Kalaushin also appears in the index of Kuban Host orders for 1880–1899 [◈ S033, via S180, topic 855]. Ivan Stepanovich (b. 1860) was Fedot Alekseyevich’s first cousin; one photograph shows the two of them together with Fedot’s father-in-law, Mikhail Ivanovich Pushkarsky [◈ S156, photo 47-0-1073]. According to the roster, Ivan Stepanovich died in that same year, 1911 [◈ S001, No. 77].

The badge of the Convoy’s centenary, according to the Druzhina forum researcher, also appears on the later portrait of Fedot Alekseyevich (see above). △ Whether he himself was among the veterans at the jubilee is not known — there is no list of them; but it seems no accident that the year 1911 is so firmly tied to the Convoy in the family’s memory. A photograph from a private collection, published on sammler.ru, shows yet another Convoy man at the centre of a “family of the Kalaushins, Cossacks of Batalpashinskaya stanitsa”: Sergey Stepanovich, “junior uryadnik of the Life Guards 2nd Kuban Sotnia”; his place in the roster remains to be established [◈ S153, topic “Vidy Batalpashintsev”, 24.12.2025].

In March 1917 the Convoy was renamed the Life Guards Caucasian Cossack Regiment and sent to the front, and in June of that year it was disbanded [◈ S001, No. 77]. With it passed into history the service at court to which the Kalaushins of Batalpashinskaya had given more than half a century.

Documents

From the letter of the Heir’s Chancellery to the nakazny ataman of the Caucasus Line Cossack Host, 21 January 1853. “It is the wish of His Imperial Highness the Heir Tsesarevich that the vacant post of chamber Cossack to Her Imperial Highness the Tsesarevna be filled, with transfer to the Court Department, by… Uryadnik Andrey Kalaushin of the 2nd Khoper Regiment, who is at present on leave in the Caucasus… That Uryadnik Kalaushin, on receipt of this, be sent at once to St Petersburg, should he so wish, with his whole family” [◈ S001, No. 6, the compiler’s transcription].

I.S. Kravtsov on Alexander II’s meeting with the Cossack deputation at Labinskaya, 1861. “‘And do you remember Kalaushin?’ the Emperor asked again. Uryadnik Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya stanitsa served as chamber Cossack to the late Empress and died of consumption. ‘How could I not, Your Majesty,’ Potsvirov answered. ‘The poor fellow is ill all the time; a pity, he is a good man; he too sends his greetings to all his old comrades’” [◆ S034, pp. 40–41].

Kavkaz, no. 150, 10 June 1900, “The Cossacks go home on lgota” — on the review of 31 May 1900 at Tsarskoye Selo. “His Majesty the Emperor deigned to address gracious words to each of them, and with His own hand presented the badges established for service in His Majesty’s Own Convoy, while Her Majesty the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna graciously gave out portraits of the August Family” [◆ S036, no. 150, 10.06.1900, p. 3].

Where the documents may be found

• The chamber Cossack (1853–1861). The file “On the appointment of Uryadnik Kalaushin as chamber Cossack” — given in the roster as “TsGVIA f. 366, op. 1058, d. 2, vol. 1, 36 ff.”; archive and reference to be confirmed (RGVIA). Service records of chamber Cossacks and Court Department files for 1853–1860s (RGIA, fonds of the Ministry of the Imperial Court). Parish registers of St Petersburg churches, 1853–1857 (TsGIA SPb, f. 19). The Batalpashinskaya confessional registers for 1854, 1856, 1857 and 1860 (RGVIA, f. 14877, op. 1, d. 2050, 2470, 2717, 3501) — whether Andrey Ivanovich is entered as “absent”.
• Fyodor Andreyevich. The 1877 list of uryadniks on internal service in the Batalpashinsk Department (given in the roster as TsGVIA f. 330, op. 56, d. 452).
• The Alekseyevich brothers and Ivan Stepanovich. Kuban Host Orders No. 156 of 7.06.1892, No. 5 (January 1897) and No. 60 of 17.06.1900 (GAKK). Convoy orders and the annual lists of Convoy ranks — those kept on for extended service and those transferred to the reserve — which the commander submitted to the Minister of the Imperial Court [◈ S097, pp. 115–116]: the Convoy archive (RGVIA; fond number to be confirmed). Parish registers of St Petersburg churches for 1904, above all the church at the Convoy barracks on Shpalernaya Street — the baptism of Boris Aleksandrovich (TsGIA SPb, f. 19).
• The Mecklenburg medal. The Regierungsblatt für das Großherzogtum Mecklenburg-Schwerin for 1896–1897; the Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin — files on awards.
• The Convoy’s centenary. GAKK, f. 332, op. 1, d. 551; f. 396, op. 1, d. 10213, 10239 (after Slobodenyuk); Kubanskiye Oblastnye Vedomosti, May 1911.
• The saddle for the Shah — see the end of the section “The saddle for the Shah of Persia”.