Michael Fredholm von EssenCritiques

The period covered can be characterized as that during which the Muscovite army moved from a largely Mongol model to a West/Central European one. Fredholm divides it into three subperiods, an early period where the army was still mostly Mongol-style, an intermediate under Ivan the Terrible, and the Romanov period in the seventeenth century during which European influences become dominant. There's also chapters on the non-Russian peoples on the North Caucasus and Siberia, nominally because they often served in Muscovite forces, though I suspect Fredholm threw them in largely because he found them interesting - the Kalmyks get less attention even though they were surely more important.

I liked it pretty well over all.

This is something of a curious beast, it's rather academic in style, but it's published by a hobbyist/wargamer outfit and the citations, albeit plentiful, are overwhelmingly to modern secondary literature. Fredholm himself is a military historian and analyst of wide-ranging interests.

It's a good book, though. As a miniatures painter I especially appreciate the attention paid to uniforms and formations.