The Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore named after Ivan Goncharov houses a cuirass — an element of body armor. In the early periods of history, the cuirass was just a part of armor, but in the 18th century, it began to be used independently.
The cavalry cuirass consists of a breastplate and a backplate (sometimes there was only a breastplate), made to perfectly fit a person’s chest and back. The edges are decorated with copper nail heads. The shoulder straps connecting the breastplate and backplate are painted black and have copper buckles at the ends. The edges of the cuirass were covered with red cord, and the inside was lined with wadded white canvas. Along with a helmet, a broadsword and a pair of pistols, the cuirass was a distinctive feature of the cuirassier units — the heavy cavalry of the 17th–19th centuries.
The cuirass was quite heavy, ranging from six to eight kilograms. One of the reasons for this is that cuirasses needed to withstand musket fire, so the breastplates were made very thick — 5-6 millimeters each. But even a cuirass this thick could still be pierced at close range. Cuirasses that were less thick were pierced even at long distances. However, given that cuirassiers were heavy cavalry, their armor was first and foremost to protect them from edged weapons. In the era when armor almost went obsolete, cuirassiers were used as shock troops and were pure terror to their opponents in hand-to-hand combat. Because of all the dangers, being a cuirassier was quite life-threatening.
By the end of the reign of Paul I, the Russian cavalry included 13 cuirassier regiments. However, their number was reduced to six by 1803. In 1812, two more regiments, the Pskov and Starodubov dragoon regiments, were converted into cuirassiers. All regiments consisted of five squadrons. At the beginning of his reign in 1801, Alexander I abolished cuirasses as a mandatory element of the cuirassier uniform, which led to terrible losses in these units during the Napoleonic Wars that followed in 1805–1807. Cuirasses were brought back only in 1811, a year before the Patriotic War started.
