19 Facts About Mikhail Dragomirov

In 1856, Mikhail Dragomirov was promoted to staff-captain and in 1858 to full captain, being sent in the latter year to study the military methods in vogue in other countries.

Mikhail Dragomirov visited France, England, and Belgium, and wrote voluminous reports on the instructional and manoeuvre camps of these countries at Chalons, Aldershot, and Beverloo.

Mikhail Dragomirov played a leading part in the reorganization of the educational system of the army, and acted as instructor to several princes of the imperial family.

Mikhail Dragomirov was present at the battles on the upper Elbe and at Koniggratz, and his comments on the operations which he witnessed are of the greatest value to the student of tactics and of the war of 1866.

The 14th division led the way at the crossing of the Danube at Zimnitza; Mikhail Dragomirov being in charge of the delicate and difficult operation of crossing and landing under fire, and fulfilling his mission with complete success.

Mikhail Dragomirov was wounded at the Shipka Pass, and, though promoted lieutenant general soon after this, was not able to see further active service.

Mikhail Dragomirov was made adjutant general to the tsar and chief of the 53rd Volhynia regiment of his old division.

For eleven years thereafter General Mikhail Dragomirov was chief of the Nicholas Academy, and it was during this period that he collated and introduced into the Russian army all the best military literature of Europe, and in many other ways was active in improving the moral and technical efficiency of the Russian officer-corps, especially of the staff officer.

In 1889, Mikhail Dragomirov became commander-in-chief of the Kiev military district, and governor general of Kiev, Podolia, and Volhynia, retaining this post until 1903.

Mikhail Dragomirov was promoted to the rank of general of the infantry in 1891.

Mikhail Dragomirov was, in formal tactics, the head of the orthodox school.

Mikhail Dragomirov's conservatism was not the result of habit and early training, but of deliberate reasoning and choice.

Mikhail Dragomirov's model was, as he admitted in the war of 1866, the British infantry of the Peninsular War, but he sought to reach the ideal, not through the methods of repression against which the advanced tacticians revolted, but by means of thorough efficiency in the individual soldier and in the smaller units.

Mikhail Dragomirov inculcated the offensive at all costs, and the combination of crushing short range fire and the bayonet charge.

Mikhail Dragomirov carried out the ideas of Suvorov to the fullest extent, and many thought that he pressed them to a theoretical extreme unattainable in practice.

Mikhail Dragomirov's critics did not always realize that Dragomirov depended, for the efficiency his unit required, on the capacity of the leader, and that an essential part of the self-sacrificing discipline he exacted from his officers was the power of assuming responsibility.

Mikhail Dragomirov was a friend of the painter Ilya Repin, and posed in the center of one of Repin's most famous paintings, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.

Mikhail Dragomirov portrays one of the leaders of the Cossacks as they allegedly drafted a highly-insulting letter to the Turkish sultan.

Repin painted a more formal portrait of Mikhail Dragomirov, found at the top of this article.