Subject for the painting "Living Bridge" Franz Roubaud chose one of the episodes of the Russian-Persian War at the beginning of the 19th century. The canvas depicts the crossing of the guns of the Russian Jaeger Regiment, which are transported through the ravine over the bodies of living soldiers.

The plot of the picture

Today's art historians describe the events on the basis of which Roubaud wrote “The Living Bridge”:

“The plot of this work was a real event that occurred during the Russian-Persian War. A small detachment of our army of 350 bayonets, the core of which was the chief battalion of the 17th Jaeger Regiment, was retreating under the onslaught of the 30,000-strong army of Abbas-Mirza.

The path was blocked by a deep ravine, which the two guns in the detachment could not overcome. There was neither time nor materials to build the bridge. Then Private Gavrila Sidorov, with the words: “The gun is a soldier’s lady, we need to help her,” was the first to lie down at the bottom of the pit. Ten more people rushed after him. The guns were transported over the bodies of the soldiers, while Sidorov himself died from a cranial injury.”

Mentions of the feat of Gavrila Sidorov

Even before the painting, Gavrila Sidorov’s feat was mentioned in literary works. For example, in the book of the Russian writer Dmitry Begichev“The life of a Russian nobleman in different eras and circumstances of his life,” which was published in 1851.

Literary version

In Begichev’s book, the narration of Gavrila’s feat comes from the perspective of an eyewitness to the events - one of the senior officers of the detachment. However, in the literary version this feat not so tragic, as in the painting “The Living Bridge”. Begichev writes that the basis of the bridge were guns stacked along and across the ravine, and the soldiers themselves only supported the entire structure on the sides.

From archival sources

Another source that can be called more “official” for Roubaud could be the five-volume book "Caucasian War". It was published by a military historian who worked with military archives, Colonel Vasily Potto. The publication was published in 1887.

Potto does not have clear confirmation or references to sources of information for either Roubaud’s version or Begichev’s version. One thing can be assumed with a high degree of probability: in his painting “The Living Bridge,” Franz Roubaud “modified” the event itself and reflected it in his own way.

Cooler than in the movies: the Icahn case and the living bridge October 27th, 2015

Painting “The Living Bridge” by Franz Roubaud. Apparently, things were not at all as depicted. But the episode is real.

For the mood - a thematic Cossack song, just about the first episode.

The first case, the Icahn case, is impressive in its scale. quite informative and concise. Below I quote it almost in its entirety, which I confess. But you can still turn to the source itself: . In any case, everything in quotation marks are quotes from there.

Turkestan, December 1864. Campaign against the Khanate of Kokand. Commandant Zhemchuzhnikov received information that “a gang of Kokand people numbering up to 400 people had appeared in the vicinity of the city, and on December 4, 1864, he sent a hundred of Yesaul Serov, reinforced by 1 gun, to inspect the area and destroy the Kokand rebels.” It was quite reasonable to send relatively small forces against such a gang. “In total, the detachment under the command of Serov consisted of 2 officers, 5 constables, 98 Cossacks, in addition to the hundred, 4 artillerymen, a paramedic, a baggage carrier and three Kazakh messengers were attached.”

However, having reached the village of Ikan, the Cossack hundred came across not a flying detachment, but the main forces of the Kokand people - about ten thousand people! This army was going to take the city of Turkestan no less.
Having encountered such a superior enemy, the Cossack hundred did not flee and did not surrender. On the contrary, in the bare empty steppe the Cossacks took up a perimeter defense.
“For two days (December 4 and 5), without food and water, the Urals held a perimeter defense in the bare steppe, hiding behind the bodies of dead horses. A rifle company sent from Turkestan to their rescue under the command of Lieutenant Sukorko was unable to break through; they were prevented by the detachment of Sultan Syzdyk Kenesaryuly. A small cavalry detachment of Syzdyk blocked Sukorko’s company from Turkestan and circled around the city for almost two days. Then Captain Serov gave the order to the hundred to break through on their own. Early in the morning of December 6, the Cossacks stood in a square and marched through the Kokand army. Having fought about 15 versts, they finally met a new detachment from Turkestan and returned to the fortress.”
…
“The losses were: of the two officers, one was killed, Serov himself was wounded in the upper chest and shell-shocked in the head; out of 5 officers, 4 were killed, 1 was wounded; out of 98 Cossacks, 50 were killed, 36 were wounded, 4 artillerymen were wounded; a paramedic, a transport worker and one Kazakh were killed.”

“All the Cossacks who survived the battle were awarded the Insignia of the Military Order, Serov himself was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree, and promoted to military sergeant major (January 19, 1865).

On October 7, 1884, in the 4th hundred of the 2nd Ural Cossack Regiment, special insignia for the Ikansky battle were introduced on their headdresses. Subsequently, one of the streets in Tashkent was named Ikanskaya.”

A photograph of the participants in the Ikan case 25 years after the battle.
Real people.

This begs the joke: there were only a hundred Cossacks against ten thousand! If there were four hundred of them, they would have been rolled out altogether.
And here you go, there was such a case. True, half a century earlier. And, frankly, it wasn’t that they rolled it out, but the initiative was already on our side.

The next episode is also about considerable perseverance and skill - Karyagin’s campaign and the living bridge.

June 1805, Transcaucasia. The corresponding Wikipedia page (hereinafter, unless otherwise noted, quotes from there).
The Russian-Persian War of 1804-1813 is underway. Its events will become part of the Great Game between Britain and Russia in Central Asia. The same one in which “the Englishwoman shits.”

Picture from here.

On July 8, the rangers took Mukhrat. “...Three miles from it, a detachment of a little more than a hundred people was attacked by several thousand Persian horsemen, who managed to break through to the cannons and capture them. As one of the officers recalled: Karyagin shouted: “Guys, go ahead, go ahead and save the guns!” Mukhrat was taken easily, and the next day, July 9, Prince Tsitsianov, having received a report from Karyagin: “We are still alive and for the last three weeks we have been forcing half of the Persian army to chase us. Persians at the Tertara River,” immediately set out to meet the Persian army with 2,300 soldiers and 10 guns” (Wikipedia).
This campaign did more than just disturb the Persians. He literally tied up Abbas Mirza’s army with continuous battles and gave Tsitsianov the opportunity to prepare for a strike.
“On July 15, Tsitsianov defeated and drove out the Persians, and then united with the remnants of Colonel Karyagin’s detachment.” And “On the evening of July 27, a detachment of 600 bayonets under the command of Karyagin unexpectedly attacked Abbas Mirza’s camp near Shamkhor and completely defeated the Persians” (Wikipedia).
The war continued, but the Persians were no longer able to realize their overwhelming advantage. Five hundred men with several guns stopped forty thousand people. Where do cinematic inventions belong to this!

For this campaign, Karyagin received “a golden sword, all officers and soldiers received awards and salaries.” A monument to Gavril Sidorov was erected at the regimental headquarters.
This heroic campaign was not the only feat of the 17th Jaeger Regiment. For all the exploits during the Persian War in 1816, the light chasseur regiment was promoted to grenadier regiments by the highest decree and received the name of the 7th Carabinieri. Then he became the 13th Life Grenadier Erivan Regiment.

“For many regiments of the Russian army, the Caucasus was the cradle of their glory, and many honored veteran regiments maintained their military reputation, dating back to the times of Peter the Great. The Hero of Poltava - the 13th Life Grenadier Erivan Regiment, which dates back to 1636, became the most titled in the entire Russian army here, surpassing the regiments of Peter the Great's brigade - the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky Life Guards - in the number of military regalia. The Erivan warriors, “raining down” in Gimry, proved to the whole world that where “a deer cannot pass, a Russian soldier will sneak through.” - Nesterov A. From an article dedicated to the 140th anniversary of the Caucasian Military District (quote from Wikipedia from here).

Do you know any other similar examples? Share!

In 1805, the Russian Empire fought with France as part of the Third Coalition, and fought unsuccessfully. France had Napoleon, and we had the Austrians, whose military glory had long since faded, and the British, who never had a normal ground army. Both of them behaved like complete losers, and even the great Kutuzov, with all the power of his genius, could not switch the “Fail after Fail” TV channel. Meanwhile, in the south of Russia, Ideyka appeared among the Persian Baba Khan, who was purring as he read reports about our European defeats. Baba Khan stopped purring and went against Russia again, hoping to pay for the defeats of the previous year, 1804. The moment was chosen extremely well - due to the usual production of the usual drama “A crowd of so-called crooked allies and Russia, which is again trying to save everyone,” St. Petersburg could not send a single extra soldier to the Caucasus, despite the fact that there were from 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers. Therefore, having learned that 20,000 Persian troops under the command of Crown Prince Abbas-Mirza are coming to the city of Shusha (this is in today's Nagorno-Karabakh. You know Azerbaijan, right? Bottom left), where Major Lisanevich was located with 6 companies of rangers. that he was moving on a huge golden platform, with a bunch of freaks, freaks and concubines on golden chains, just like Xerxes), Prince Tsitsianov sent all the help he could send. All 493 soldiers and officers with two guns, the superhero Karyagin, the superhero Kotlyarevsky (about whom is a separate story) and the Russian military spirit.

They did not have time to reach Shushi, the Persians intercepted ours on the road, near the Shah-Bulakh River, on June 24. Persian avant-garde. A modest 4,000 people. Without being at all confused (at that time in the Caucasus, battles with less than a tenfold superiority of the enemy were not considered battles and were officially reported in reports as “exercises in conditions close to combat”), Karyagin formed an army in a square and spent the whole day repelling fruitless attacks
Persian cavalry, until only scraps remained of the Persians. Then he walked another 14 miles and set up a fortified camp, the so-called Wagenburg or, in Russian, a walk-city, when the line of defense is built from baggage carts (given the Caucasian impassability and the lack of a supply network, the troops had to carry significant supplies with them). The Persians continued their attacks in the evening and fruitlessly stormed the camp until nightfall, after which they took a forced break to clear the piles of Persian bodies, funerals, weeping and writing cards to the families of the victims. By the morning, having read the manual "Military Art for Dummies" sent by express mail ("If the enemy has strengthened and this enemy is Russian, do not try to attack him head-on, even if there are 20,000 of you and 400 of him"), the Persians began to bombard our walk - the city with artillery, trying to prevent our troops from reaching the river and replenishing water supplies. The Russians responded by making a sortie, making their way to the Persian battery and blowing it to hell, throwing the remains of the cannons into the river, presumably with malicious obscene inscriptions. However, this did not save the situation. After fighting for another day, Karyagin began to suspect that he would not be able to kill the entire Persian army with 300 Russians. In addition, problems began inside the camp - Lieutenant Lisenko and six more traitors ran over to the Persians, the next day they were joined by 19 more hippies - thus, our losses from cowardly pacifists began to exceed losses from inept Persian attacks. Thirst, again. Heat. Bullets. And 20,000 Persians around. Uncomfortable.

At the officers' council, two options were proposed: or we all stay here and die, who's in favor? No one. Or we get together, break through the Persian ring of encirclement, after which we STORM a nearby fortress while the Persians are catching up with us, and we are already sitting in the fortress. It 'warm over there. Fine. And flies don't bite. The only problem is that we are no longer even 300 Russian Spartans, but around 200, and there are still tens of thousands of them and they are guarding us, and all this will be like the game Left 4 Dead, where a tiny squad of survivors is surrounded by crowds of brutal zombies. . Everyone loved Left 4 Dead already in 1805, so they decided to break through. At night. Having cut off the Persian sentries and trying not to breathe, the Russian participants in the “Staying Alive When You Can’t Stay Alive” program almost escaped the encirclement, but stumbled upon a Persian patrol. A chase began, a shootout, then a chase again, then ours finally broke away from the Mahmuds in the dark, dark Caucasian forest and went to the fortress, named after the nearby river Shah-Bulakh. By that time, the golden aura of the end was shining around the remaining participants in the crazy “Fight as long as you can” marathon (let me remind you that it was already the FOURTH day of continuous battles, sorties, duels with bayonets and night hide-and-seeks in the forests), so Karyagin simply smashed the gates of Shah-Bulakh with a cannon core, after which he tiredly asked the small Persian garrison: “Guys, look at us. Do you really want to try? Really?” The guys took the hint and ran away. During the run-up, two khans were killed, the Russians barely had time to repair the gates when the main Persian forces appeared, concerned about the disappearance of their beloved Russian detachment. But this was not the end. Not even the beginning of the end. After taking inventory of the property remaining in the fortress, it turned out that there was no food. And that the food train had to be abandoned during the breakout from the encirclement, so there was nothing to eat. At all. At all. At all. Karyagin again went out to the troops:

Friends, I know that this is not madness, not Sparta, or anything for which human words were invented. Of the already pitiful 493 people, 175 of us remained, almost all of them were wounded, dehydrated, exhausted, and extremely tired. There is no food. There is no convoy. Cannonballs and cartridges are running out. And besides, right in front of our gates sits the heir to the Persian throne, Abbas Mirza, who has already tried to take us by storm several times. Do you hear the grunting of his tame monsters and the laughter of his concubines? He is the one waiting for us to die, hoping that hunger will do what 20,000 Persians could not do. But we won't die. You won't die. I, Colonel Karyagin, forbid you to die. I order you to have all the nerve you have, because this night we are leaving the fortress and breaking through to ANOTHER FORTRESS, WHICH WE WILL STORM AGAIN, WITH THE ENTIRE PERSIAN ARMY ON YOUR SHOULDERS. And also freaks and concubines. This is not a Hollywood action movie. This is not an epic. This is Russian history, little birds, and you are its main characters. Place sentries on the walls who will call to each other all night, creating the feeling that we are in a fortress. We'll head out as soon as it gets dark enough!

It is said that there was once an angel in Heaven who was in charge of monitoring the impossibility. On July 7 at 10 p.m., when Karyagin set out from the fortress to storm the next, even larger fortress, this angel died of bewilderment. It is important to understand that by July 7, the detachment had been fighting continuously for the 13th day and was not so much in the state of “the Terminators are coming”, but rather in the state of “extremely desperate people, using only anger and fortitude, are moving into the Heart of Darkness of this insane, impossible, incredible, unthinkable journey." With guns, with carts of wounded, it was not a walk with backpacks, but a large and heavy movement. Karyagin slipped out of the fortress like a night ghost, like a bat, like a creature from That Forbidden Side - and therefore even the soldiers who remained calling to each other on the walls managed to escape from the Persians and catch up with the detachment, although they were already preparing to die, realizing the absolute mortality of their task. But the Peak of Madness, Courage and Spirit was still ahead.

A detachment of Russian... soldiers moving through darkness, darkness, pain, hunger and thirst? Ghosts? Saints of War? faced a ditch through which it was impossible to transport cannons, and without cannons, an assault on the next, even better fortified fortress of Mukhrata, had neither meaning nor chance. There was no forest nearby to fill the ditch, and there was no time to look for forest - the Persians could overtake them at any moment.
But the resourcefulness of the Russian soldier and his boundless self-sacrifice helped him out of this misfortune.
Guys! - the battalion singer Sidorov suddenly shouted. - Why stand and think? You can’t take the city standing, better listen to what I tell you: our brother has a gun - a lady, and the lady needs help; So let’s roll her over with guns.”

An appreciative noise went through the ranks of the battalion. Several guns were immediately stuck into the ground with bayonets and formed piles, several others were placed on them like crossbars, several soldiers supported them with their shoulders, and the improvised bridge was ready. The first cannon flew over this literally living bridge at once and only slightly crushed the brave shoulders, but the second one fell and hit two soldiers on the head with its wheel. The cannon was saved, but people paid for it with their lives. Among them was the battalion singer Gavrila Sidorov.
On July 8, the detachment entered Kasapet, ate and drank normally for the first time in many days, and moved on to the Muhrat fortress. Three miles away, a detachment of just over a hundred people was attacked by several thousand Persian horsemen, who managed to break through to the cannons and capture them. In vain. As one of the officers recalled: “Karyagin shouted: “Guys, go ahead, go save the guns!” Everyone rushed like lions..." Apparently, the soldiers remembered at WHAT price they got these guns. Red again splashed onto the carriages, this time Persian, and it splashed, and poured, and flooded the carriages, and the ground around the carriages, and carts, and uniforms, and guns, and sabers, and it poured, and it poured, and it poured until until the Persians fled in panic, unable to break the resistance of hundreds of ours. Hundreds of Russians.
Mukhrat was easily taken, and the next day, July 9, Prince Tsitsianov, having received a report from Karyagin, immediately set out to meet the Persian army with 2,300 soldiers and 10 guns. On July 15, Tsitsianov defeated and drove out the Persians, and then united with the remnants of Colonel Karyagin’s troops.

Karyagin received a golden sword for this campaign, all the officers and soldiers received awards and salaries, Gavrila Sidorov silently lay down in the ditch - a monument at the regiment headquarters, and we all learned a lesson. Ditch lesson. A lesson in silence. Crunch lesson. Red lesson. And the next time you are required to do something in the name of Russia and your comrades, and your heart is overcome by apathy and the petty nasty fear of a typical child of Russia in the era of Kali Yuga, actions, upheavals, struggle, life, death, then remember this ditch.

Something strange is happening in the picture: a heavy cannon is driving through a ravine littered with the bodies of living soldiers, and is about to crush them to death.

Franz Roubaud "The Living Bridge" (1898) (clickable)

A popular description of the painting is:
The plot of this work was a real event that occurred during the Russian-Persian War of 1804-1813. A small detachment of our army of 350 bayonets, the core of which was the chief battalion of the 17th Jaeger Regiment, was retreating under the onslaught of the 30,000-strong army of Abbas Mirza. The path was blocked by a deep ravine, which the two guns in the detachment could not overcome. There was neither time nor materials to build the bridge. Then Private Gavrila Sidorov, with the words: “The gun is a soldier’s lady, we need to help her,” was the first to lie down at the bottom of the pit. Ten more people rushed after him. The guns were transported over the bodies of the soldiers, while Sidorov himself died from a cranial injury.

What really happened and whether it happened:

Historical context

The painting depicts one of the episodes of the Russian-Persian War of 1805-1813 - the heroic retreat of a small detachment of Colonel Karyagin from a huge Persian army under the command of the 15-year-old heir to the throne Abbas Mirza, which took place in Karabakh in June 1805. We don’t know exactly how many Persians there were, but according to Russian sources there were 20 thousand, which is impossible to believe. In any case, Karyagin’s detachment fought bravely with superior enemy forces, did not give up, was able to wait for help, and most of the people were saved.

The war in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia at that time was fought over the Azerbaijani khanates, which were traditionally vassals of the Qajar shahs. The Russians, who had a well-trained and armed, but small (the main war is in Europe, 5 months left before Austerlitz) army, behaved very aggressively. At first, they signed peace treaties with various rulers, and then, having gained strength, swallowed them (as just happened with the Kartli-Kakheti kingdom). The Persians, whose army was in a shameful state (everything was in a shameful state among the Qajars), acted not with skill, but with numbers - on average they had five times more troops. This led to an unstable balance, and for 7 years, Russian and Persian troops, with short breaks, drove each other back and forth across the mountains and plains of a relatively small theater of military operations, then occupying and then leaving various areas. Only in 1813 did the Russians tense up and drive out the Persians forever, and present-day Armenia and Azerbaijan were annexed to the empire.

Where did Roubaud get his story?

The first time the feat of Gavrila Sidorov was mentioned was in the book of the long-forgotten writer Dmitry Begichev, “The Life of a Russian Nobleman in Different Epochs and Circumstances of His Life” (1851). The book is a peculiar mixture of memoirs and patriotic journalism. The story about Gavrila’s feat comes from the words of a certain colonel, not named, who witnessed the incident; the narrative is obviously fictionalized.

The most unexpected thing we see from this story is that the feat is described completely differently from how it is depicted in Roubaud’s painting. When the cannon finds itself on the edge of a small but insurmountable ravine, the quick-witted Gavrila comes up with the idea of ​​building a bridge from tied guns. Guns stuck into the ground with bayonets become supports, and horizontal guns placed on them serve as beams. Guns are not good for building bridges, and soldiers support the structure from the edges to prevent it from falling apart. The first cannon crosses the improvised bridge safely, the second breaks down, hits Gavrila with a wheel, and he dies from a traumatic brain injury. All other soldiers remain unharmed.

Then Gavrila’s feat was included in the five-volume “Caucasian War” by the official military historian Colonel Vasily Potto (1887). This publication can already be considered scientific (Potto obviously worked with military archives), but, alas, it is not provided with the necessary references and is limited to Russian sources (however, no Russian historians can read Persian documents and are not going to read them to this day). The book is presented in an upbeat style and has a touch of official propaganda. It is clear that Roubaud read this book in search of suitable plots.

Potto reports that in addition to Begichev’s story, he had access to a report from a native guide, from which it is clear that “four soldiers lay down in a ditch and a cannon drove over them,” but the report of the detachment commander does not reflect the feat (Potto explains this by Karyagin’s great busyness). Potto definitely agrees with Begichev’s version.

So, we see that Roubaud, to put it mildly, modified the historical source available to him, according to which the soldier died as a result of an accident while crossing a cannon across a bridge ingeniously built from improvised means.

Is a living bridge technically possible?

A 6-pounder field gun from the early 19th century weighed (without the limber/charging box) 680 kg. It is possible to assume that from tied guns supported by people it will be possible to build some structure that can withstand a point load of 340 kg. From the story it is clear that such a design was not obvious (only one soldier had guessed it), and it worked on the verge of an accident. The length of a gun of that era (without a bayonet) was 140-150 cm, and a gun harness without any bridges could overcome obstacles up to 50-60 cm deep (the limit was the size of the wheel, four horses had a reserve of traction); therefore, in this range of obstacle depths, a bridge made of guns could be practically suitable.

Meanwhile, the idea of ​​filling a ditch with human bodies seems technically impossible. On the canvas we see eight soldiers in the ditch, the volume of which (even with loose laying) is no more than one cubic meter, that is, with a body length of 1.6 m, 0.6 m2 of the cross section of the ditch. Firstly, a cannon with 130-centimeter wheels could move through such a ditch on its own, and secondly, even if the ditch was too steep for a cannon, the 350 soldiers who made up the detachment could throw soil or stones at it in five minutes. And even if we assume that there are no stones nearby and there are no shovels in the detachment, there was clearly at least some property with a total volume of 1 m3 that could be used to fill the ditch - to begin with, charging boxes should have been used for this.

The area in which the film takes place does not at all correspond to the story. Karyagin’s detachment moved from Shahbulaq (Şahbulaq qalası) to Muhrat (Kiçik Qarabəy). Both points are connected by a road running along the Shirvan Valley; but Mukhrat himself is already in the mountains of the Karabakh ridge, 300m above the valley. It is doubtful that there was an ideal road going up to the mountains, but on the plain there was suddenly a single gulley through which it was impossible to drag the cannon. Obviously, the guns were either not carried through the mountainous terrain, or they were accompanied by sappers who had at least shovels, boards, ropes, anchor stakes and bags for carrying soil; otherwise, the soldiers whose bodies could be used to lay obstacles would soon run out. In the memoirs of participants in the Caucasian wars, stopping columns in front of obstacles and calling sappers to overcome them are constantly mentioned. We can see an example of the excellent work of sappers in the painting of the same Roubaud “Assault on Ahulgo” (in the comments).

The basis of a moral conflict: a broken carriage and a fat man

The moral conflict contained in the idea of ​​driving a cannon through a ravine over people's bodies becomes clear if we become familiar with two modern problems in applied ethics.

Problem A. An unhooked carriage rushes along the tracks. There are five people standing on the main track, oblivious to the carriage, and on the side track there is a fat man, also oblivious to the carriage. You are standing next to the arrow. Is it ethical to move the carriage onto a side track, thereby sacrificing one person to save five?
Problem B. An unhooked carriage rushes along the tracks. Five people stand on the main track, oblivious to the carriage. You are standing on a bridge over the tracks. There is a fat man standing next to you. If you push the fat man off the bridge, the carriage will brake against him, and five will be saved (if you jump off yourself, no). Is it ethical to push a fat man under a carriage, thereby sacrificing one person to save five?

If you think that it is possible to move the switch, but it is impossible to push the fat man off the bridge, you should answer one more question: what is the difference between the two cases, since the consequences are the same in both cases?

Ethics is not mathematics, and there is no single right answer. The explanation close to me is that in the first case the carriage is redirected by means of a switch, and the fat man dies as a person, he himself chose to walk along the railway tracks, an activity that contains some probability of being crushed, and this probability was realized for him. In the second case, the fat man dies not as a person, but as an object, as a living brake, but to use the person as an object, cargo, substance, container with biomaterials, etc. there is a deliberately immoral matter. Including, even if he himself agrees to such use.

For those who have not yet mastered this ethical approach, Task B will help. Five patients in the transplant department are dying because they can no longer wait for a donor organ. One needs a liver, another needs kidneys, another needs a heart, etc. The saddened doctor goes out into the corridor and sees a fat man who accidentally wandered into the department. The fat man has a completely healthy liver, kidneys, lungs....

Why was this painting painted?

We see that the authors of the mid and second half of the 19th century, who retold (or invented) the story of Gavrila Sidorov’s feat, did not at all present him as the unfortunate fat man from the examples given above. On the contrary, Gavrila’s behavior emphasized initiative and ingenuity, combined with a bold willingness to take reasonable risks. Gavrila appeared in their stories as a figure who took responsibility for himself, bypassing the dull officers.

Roubaud remade the story in a completely different way. The soldiers obediently (and even with some joy) go to the slaughter. They abandon human dignity and activity, turning themselves into building material that will now be crushed by the wheels of a gun. Gavrila Sidorov as an individual disappears, and the soldiers merge into an indistinguishable mass. But even Roubaud considered it important to emphasize that the soldiers lay under the wheels voluntarily - officers who ordered their subordinates to sacrifice themselves in this way (that is, pushing the fat man onto the rails) still seemed disgusting to him.

Why did this happen? It seems to me that, as always happens, the artist intuitively grasped the spirit of the coming era. Russia, after the long reign of the peacemaker tsar, began to sharpen its claws again. The aggressiveness of the military command and the government as a whole gradually increased. It was still unclear with whom and why to fight, but the desire grew. But the army was no longer the old recruiting army, in which soldiers who had served for 25 years considered the company their home, and the endless Caucasian War a natural way of life. The army became conscript. How will the conscripts behave if they have to fight for the Kwantung Peninsula, which the Russian peasant of 1905 did not care about, just as he did not care about the Ganja Khanate in 1805?

And here Roubaud appears on the scene with his sweet lies; Roubaud tells the tsar and the generals what they want to hear - the Russian soldier is immanently devoted to the tsar, thoughtless and heroic, he does not need anything for himself, he is ready to give up human dignity, turn into dust, throw himself under the chariot of Juggernaut for the sake of victory, meaning and benefit which he himself does not see.

The film hit the nail on the head and was a great success. Everyone enjoys sitting on the chariot of Juggernaut, under which countless Gavrils throw themselves. Nicholas II, who visited the exhibition at the Historical Museum, bought the painting for his apartments in the Winter Palace. In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began. The wheel rolled and rolled along Gavrili, increasing in size every year. Now it became known as the Red Wheel. Over the next 50 years, the Wheel moved more than 30 million Gabriels, their wives and children to Russia. In 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House, the Wheel moved and the owner of the painting.

Roubaud did not fall under the Wheel. The artist, as it turned out, knew how to revise his views. Before the war, Roubaud, a purebred Frenchman by birth, changed his national identity - he went to Munich and took German citizenship. The artist’s attitude towards the war also changed. In 1915, he painted the awkward and scary anti-war painting Dante and Virgil in the Trenches, in which war is depicted as pure evil, and the trench becomes the circle of Hell.

An image of Gavrila Sidorov's feat in its original version. The bridge of guns was drawn stupidly; according to Begichev’s text, it also had vertical supports made of guns stuck into the ground with bayonets, so that the soldiers only bore some of the weight of the gun. In the form shown in the picture, at least 170 kg of pressure is exerted on one soldier, this is already too much, these are just soldiers, not champion weightlifters.

Rubo. Assault on Ahulgo.
Pay attention to the excellent quality improvised bridge built by Russian sappers.

The path to the Mukhtar fortress. It is somehow doubtful that in such an area the road would not encounter obstacles much more serious than those depicted in the picture.

Rubo. Dante and Virgil in the trenches. 1915.

But the Indian Gavrila jumped under the chariot of Juggernaut.