Organisation and composition of the Russian auxiliary corps of Lieutenant-General I.I. Hermann von Fersen in 1799.

The article is devoted to one of the least studied events of Russian military history – the Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland in 1799. This operation is a little-studied page of Russian military history. The domestic historiography has firmly established the opinion that the Russian auxiliary corps sent on this campaign under the command of Lieutenant-General I.I. Hermann von Fersen was formed randomly and had insufficiently trained and prepared units, which had a detrimental effect on the outcome of the operation, which ended with the humiliating surrender of the allied Anglo-Russian troops. At the same time, any extended analysis of the process of manning the corps to date in the domestic historical literature is unfortunately absent. In this regard, the author analysed archival documents in order to study the issue of the method of manning the corps and the quality of the troops that were part of it. At the same time, the way of the corps organisation was typical for the formation of large military formations in Russia at the end of the XVIII century and was determined primarily by the territorial proximity of the troops to the place of boarding the ships. In addition, the corps included such famous units as the grenadier regiments of Zherebtsov (Fanagoriysky) and Benkendorf (Tavrichesky), musketeer regiments of Sedmoratsky (Belozersky) and Ferzen (Tobolsk). The unit was commanded by experienced generals who had extensive military experience. The officer cadre of the regiments, as well as the lower ranks also mainly participated in several victorious campaigns. Concentration of the corps troops took place in difficult conditions of time shortage, but it was carried out competently, which eventually allowed to send the troops to the place of combat operations quite quickly.