Russia. One million peasants from the Russian countryside are forcibly conscripted. None of them volunteer, for two valid reasons. First, it takes a great deal of patriotism to enlist for the minimum 25-year term, with very little chance of ever being promoted to non-commissioned officer, let alone joining the officer corps. Second, the peasant’s corps does not belong to him but to the Crown, so he is not authorized to volunteer: he has no freedom to do so. In this respect, too, the Tsarist and Napoleonic armies (largely composed of volunteers, including Italians, Poles, and Germans) are polar opposites.
