Tthe Russian Imperial Guards founded in 1683 by Peter the Great as the first truely modern elite Russian army and fought throughout the world from Narva to Mukden.
In 1683 the eleven year old Russian Tsar Peter I (later known as Peter the Great) was allowed to assemble 50 childhood playmates into a military force. To this was later added and actual group of some 100 men to drill in play military battles. These units were known as the Droll Regiment (Drill Regiment) on the army list. In 1687 Peter formed a modern special forces group around a core of these childhood drill-mates. The first two regiments of this new Lieb Guard (Life Guards) were the Preobrazhensky Regiment and the Semenovsky Regiment -named after the villages near Moscow that the young tsar had conducted his military games. He later added a regiment of Grenadier Guards. The new corps distinguished itself during the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 against Swedish military genuis Gustavus Adolphus. Peter's Guards would outlive him and serve the country for another two hundred years.
Empress Anna of Russia added two new regiments, the Izmailovski and Egerski (Jager) as well as cavalry units during the 1730s to help provide posts for her many friends. During this time period the corps expanded further with the addition of further regiments and fought in the Swedish wars of 1739 and 1790, and against the Turks in 1742. Catherine the Great, who pulled her lovers Potemkin and Orlov from the Guards, established the Chevalier Guards in 1764. The hated pug nosed Emperor Paul I formed a unit (which he named the Pavlovsky Regiment-after himself) who wore mitre caps (like the Pope wears today) and recruited almost nothing but 'pug-nosed' men The Guards again covered itself in glory during the Napoleonic wars. Against Napoleon and his allied armies the Guards saw combat in the epic battles of Austerlitz, Friedland, Kulm, Lutzen, Borodino, and became one of many triumphant armies to march through the streets of Paris. Emperor Alexander I established a company of Palace Grenadiers in 1827 of whom every member was a veteran sergeant to guard the Winter Palace in St Petersburg to celebrate this event. Alexander clothed this company in the classic Napoleonic style grenadier uniforms with heavy gold brocade complete with the Bearskin helmets captured from Napoleons Old Guard in 1812! The amount of gold brocade was so much on each uniform that the members of the company were known as the “golden company”
The Guards fought the British and French in the Crimea, and the Turks yet another war in 1877-78. To its ranks were added a Finnish Regiment, Cossacks, Dragoons, Uhlans, Hussars and Riflemen. While the guard did not deploy as a unit in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and the Russo-Japanese War or 1904-05 for political reasons they did send hundreds of volunteers to provide replacement for line units taking losses in combat. It also detached men for special service abroad such as in exploration missions in Tibet and Ethiopia during the great period of European Colonialist exploration and as military observers during the modern era's far flung wars. The last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, would owe his throne to these men when Revolution came in 1905. They would also be the downfall of the Tsar in 1917.
Sources –
Mark Conrad's The Russian Army, 1914
Melegari, The Great Regiments, 1964
Stewart, George. The White Armies of Russia: A Chronicle Counter-Revolution and Allied Intervention. Macmillan, 1933.
Footman, David. Civil War in Russia Faber and Faber, 1961.
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