The militia, summoned in the first decade of the 19th century, was immense if compared to the European standards - it totaled 612,000 men. The role of militia during Napoleon's invasion into the Russian empire was therefore considerable.
The militiamen formations were to support regular units, as opposed to warring against the enemy independently. It was not infrequent however, that the situation forced militiamen to fight independently in unequal combat with units of the enemy.
The equipment of Russian militiamen of that period was truly poor: most frequently they were armed with hastily forged pikes or even agricultural tools such as scythes, pitchforks and hatchets.
In many regiments, militia was allocated hats with a copper monogram and a cross. Sometimes they received a kind of uniform, though typically the majority of militiamen wore their normal clothes.
Militia frequently defeated enemy regiments, catching them on a march or by a sudden ambush attack. But when it came to clashes in open terrain, they would always suffer terrible losses.