General-in-Chief

In the 17th – 18th centuries in France, the commander-in-chief was unofficially called the commander-in-chief of the general , isolating him from a number of lieutenant-generals and even marshals of France .

In 1687 the Elector of Brandenburg , Frederick William invited himself to the service of the famous Protestant commander Friedrich Heinrich Schomburg , who was placed on two field marshals ( Prince of Anhalt-Dessau and Derflinger ) and was promoted to General en chef (General «über alle Unsere Armée und trouppen in allen Unseren Ländern und Provincien "- General" over all our armies and troops in all our lands and provinces "). But already in 1688 , after the death of the Elector, Schomberg moved to the service of William of Orange , and all subsequent commanders of the Brandenburg and Prussia troops received the rank of Field Marshal ^[1] .

In the 18th century, some other states ( Hannover , Saxony , the Netherlands ^[2] ) used the rank of chief general for commanders who did not have the title of field marshal.

• Kuno Yeshua von Bülow - from 1712, General-in-Chief of the Hanover Army, from 1728 Field Marshal of Hanover .
• Rutowski, Friedrich August von - on January 6, 1746, received the rank of General-in-Chief and placed at the head of all Saxon troops, on January 11, 1749, he was named Field Marshal .

In 1700, after the battle of Narva , the Russian military leader B. P. Sheremetev received the rank of general-in-chief from Tsar Peter I ^[3] , and in the beginning of 1702 he received the rank of Field Marshal .

According to Peter’s statute of Peter I of 1716, the general-commander is the commander-in-chief, equal to field marshal (although in practice he was below him), who led the “consile” ^[4] generals. Below was the field-marshal-lieutenant general — assistant commander-in-chief, who was always with him (this rank in the Russian army did not stick and was not appropriated since 1711), to which three generals from the arms of the army obeyed; and a general from infantry ( infantry ).

After the end of the reign of Peter I in the Russian army ceased to use the ranks of the general from cavalry and the general from infantry, the rank of general-in-chief began to denote the full general, who ranked below field marshal. In the second half of the 18th century, in the Table of Ranks, the rank of General-in-Chief corresponded to the 2nd class.

Charters of 1796-1797 the rank of the general-in-chief is replaced by the ranks by the types of troops ^[5] :

• infantry general;
• cavalry general;
• artillery general ;
• engineer general .

Russian generals

During the years of the Civil War in 1865, Robert Lee was promoted to General-in-Chief of the Army of the Confederation of the States of America .

• Military rank
• Ranking table
• History of military ranks in Russia and the USSR

• L.V. Belovinsky . General-in-Chief // Illustrated Encyclopedic Historical and Everyday Dictionary of the Russian People. XVIII - the beginning of the XIX century. / ed. N. Eremina . - M .: Eksmo, 2007. - p. 121. - 784 pp .: - ill. with. - 5 000 copies - ISBN 978-5-699-24458-4 .