The Kalisch Review was a set of military manoeuvres held at

Kalisz Kalisz () is a city in central Poland, and the second-largest city in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, with 97,905 residents (December 2021). It is the capital city of the Kalisz Region. Situated on the Prosna river in the southeastern part of Gr ...

(then in the

Congress of Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established wh ...

) from 12 to 22 September 1835. It included the Prussian Army and the

Russian Imperial Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

. Its motto was "Aus inniger Vereinigung entsteht wirkliche Kraft" (From intimate union arises real power). 60,000 troops, over 7,000 horses and over 136 artillery-pieces were involved. This included over 4,500 Prussian soldiers. In the aftermath of the

November Uprising The November Uprising (1830–31) (), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in Russian Partition, the heartland of Partitions of Poland, partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. ...

of 1830-31, the two countries felt they needed to make a major public display to the rest of Europe of their continuing close political ties. Kalisch was chosen due to its links with the 1813 Treaty of Kalisch between the two countries, which paved the way for the joint Prussian-Russian pursuit of Napoleon as he retreated from Moscow. It involved both countries' officers practising manoeuvres at army and corps level, though it did not include mock-battles. Specialist troops from both sides also demonstrated their skills, most notably

Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...

and

Circassia Circassia ( ), also known as Zichia, was a country and a historical region in . It spanned the western coastal portions of the North Caucasus, along the northeastern shore of the Black Sea. Circassia was conquered by the Russian Empire during ...

n horsemen. The Prussians were commanded by the future

William I William I may refer to: Kings * William the Conqueror (–1087), also known as William I, King of England * William I of Sicily (died 1166) * William I of Scotland (died 1214), known as William the Lion * William I of the Netherlands and Luxembour ...

and the supreme commander of the Review was

Nicholas I of Russia Nicholas I, group=pron (Russian language, Russian: Николай I Павлович; – ) was Emperor of Russia, List of rulers of Partitioned Poland#Kings of the Kingdom of Poland, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 18 ...

.{{in lang, de C. v. Decker: ''Die Truppen-Versammlung bei Kalisch im Sommer 1835. Nach den besten, an Ort und Stelle eingesammelten Materialien, aus militair-historischen Gesichtspunkte bearbeitet''. elbstverlag in Kommission bei J. H. Bon, Königsberg 1835. The high-point of the review was on 18 September, with over 2,000 military musicians performing a concert, including the premiere of the previously-lost march written by

Frederick William III of Prussia Frederick William III (; 3 August 1770 – 7 June 1840) was King of Prussia from 16 November 1797 until his death in 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 6 August 1806, when the empire was dissolved ...

when he was only ten - it was later adopted as a presentation-march by most of the Prussian regiments and is still played by Germany's

Bundeswehr The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: Germ ...

. The Review concluded with a huge firework display, costing 100,000 Taler and involving 45,000 rockets and 12,000 pounds of gunpowder - the largest rockets were three-pounders.

References

19th-century military history of the Russian Empire Military history of Prussia 1835 in the Russian Empire History of Kalisz