Ivan Buchenko (Napoleon's World)

Ivan Pavlovich Buchenko (1848 - November 10, 1930) was an Alaskan War infantry officer best known for designing and mastering the art of defensive trench warfare during the First Battle of Mikhailgrad in 1884, in which the Alaskans were able to significantly inflict casualties upon the Americans with low casualties of the their own, eventually withdrawing and handing the Americans a pyrrhic victory.

While surrendering to General Sam White and spending ten months in an American prisoner-of-war camp in Illinois, Buchenko was released in 1885 to return to Alaska, where he promptly reentered service and assisted in the design of Anasenko's defensive trenches in the West near Sahalee, participating in all of the major battles at Delta. He was captured again while attempting to return to an assignment in the Dakotas under Zukhov and spent the remainder of the war in a San Francisco jail, including the entirety of the year-long ceasefire in 1887.

He was returned along with other Alaskan prisoners in 1888 per the terms of the Treaty of Sofiyagrad, which he found repulsive. He twice refused civilian service before agreeing to a military promotion from Zukhov. He eventually replaced Zukhov as Grand Marshal of Alaska following the latter's retirment in 1894 and served in that position until 1910 and significantly modernizing the Alaskan military, with substantial help from France, Ireland and Naples. After his retirement, he lived in a modest home in Aleksandrgrad largely out of the public eye until his death in 1930 at the age of 82, making him the last significant Alaskan officer of the war to die. While celebrated for his 16-year service as Marshal, the longest of any man in that position, his contributions to the Alaskan War itself are often overlooked and many of his innovations are credited to Konstantin Orlov, his immediate superior at Mikhailgrad, and whom he later conspired with Boris Anasenko to publicly humiliate and exile.