Cavalry girl: what really was the woman officer who became the prototype of the heroine of the "Hussar Ballad"

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At Shurochka Azarova from the famous film by E. Ryazanov "Hussar Ballad" was real prototype - one of the first female officers in the Russian army, hero of the war of 1812 Nadezhda Durova … Only this ballad should have been called not a hussar, but an "ulan" one, and in the fate of this woman everything turned out much less romantic.

Nadezhda was an unwanted child: her mother wanted a boy, and subsequently could not fall in love with her daughter. Once she threw the girl out of the carriage window simply because she was screaming and crying a lot. After that, the father, who commanded a squadron in the hussar regiment, took the child from his mother and gave her to the care of a wet nurse and his orderly. Therefore, from childhood, she learned to ride a horse and wave a saber. “The saddle was my first cradle, and the horse, weapons and regimental music were the first children's toys and fun,” Nadezhda admitted. Her father gave her a Cossack uniform and a Circassian horse Alcides, with whom she never parted.

At 18, she was forcibly married off to a 25-year-old official with whom she was never happy. Wanting to find freedom, Nadezhda ran away from home with the Cossack captain. She left her clothes on the bank of the river so that her relatives would consider her drowned, and she changed into a men's uniform and left with the Cossack regiment.

Later, she explained her difficult decision as follows: “Maybe I would finally forget my hussar habits and become an ordinary girl, like everyone else, if my mother did not represent the fate of a woman in the most bleak form. She spoke to me in the most offensive terms about the fate of this sex: a woman, in her opinion, should be born, live and die in slavery; that she is full of weaknesses, devoid of all perfection and not capable of anything! I decided, even if it cost me my life, to separate from this sex, which, as I thought, was under the curse of God."

Nadezhda Durova entered the Uhlan regiment as a private, under the name of Alexander Sokolov. Perhaps the decisive factor in choosing a duty station was that the lancers did not wear beards. Along with men, the girl participated in battles, striking everyone with despair and courage. Once she carried a wounded officer from the battlefield, for which she was presented to the St. George Cross and the rank of non-commissioned officer.

Perhaps the secret of the cavalry girl would never have been revealed, but one day Nadezhda wrote a letter to her father, where she asked forgiveness for her escape and asked for help. The father forwarded the letter to his brother in Petersburg, and he handed it over to the military office with a request to return the cavalry girl home.

Struck by this story, Alexander I approved the woman's desire to serve her country and allowed her to remain in the active army. Nadezhda was transferred to the Mariupol hussar regiment with the rank of second lieutenant, under the name of Alexander Alexandrov. After 3 years, Nadezhda was forced to transfer from there to the Lithuanian Uhlan regiment. Two versions are named among the reasons. According to one of them, the woman was forced to move, as the daughter of the regiment commander fell in love with her. Not knowing the secrets of the hussar, the colonel was very unhappy with the fact that Alexander Alexandrov was delaying his marriage proposal. The second version sounds much more prosaic: Durova's life in hussars was too expensive.

As part of the Lithuanian Uhlan regiment, Durova took part in the battles with Napoleon during the Patriotic War. In the battle of Borodino, Nadezhda was wounded by a cannonball in her leg, but remained in the ranks - she was afraid to turn to doctors in order to avoid exposure. Then, in the rank of lieutenant, she was appointed an adjutant to Kutuzov himself. Durova took part in the battles during the liberation of Germany, having distinguished herself in the capture of Hamburg.

In 1816, Nadezhda Durova retired with the rank of staff captain. For 5 years she lived in St. Petersburg, doing literary work, and then moved to Elabuga. In 1840 her works were published in 4 volumes. She told about her adventures in memoirs, which A. Pushkin published under the title "Notes of a cavalry girl", revealing her secret. But until the end of her days she wore men's clothes, smoked a pipe and demanded to call herself Alexander Alexandrov.

Women served not only in the Russian army: Prussian cavalry girls were awarded a specially established order