Peter's Soldiers 103
did not expect the conflict to be so prolonged; nor could he have foreseen the
way his measures would transform the country's armed forces, and ultimately
Russian society as well.
An ukaz of 8 November called for volunteers from 'all manner of free men'.
The response was excellent. The Austrian envoy noted that 'in the taverns the
unemployed [mussige leute] are being recruited in large numbers' and attri-
buted this to the rapid rise in prices, 'for otherwise they would have nothing to
live from';^28 certainly they will have appreciated the material advantages in
prospect. They were promised pay of 11 roubles per annum, which was
generous by contemporary standards, and the same supplies of food and
clothing as were enjoyed by guardsmen. This measure was no more than a con-
tinuation of those used to recruit the poteshnye. It did not involve any innova-
tion. Nor did a decree issued on 17 November-at least on the surface. This
called for a levy of recruits (datochnye lyudi). Such drafts, as we have seen,
were a frequent occurrence during the seventeenth century. Only in its par-
ticulars did the edict depart from tradition. The obligation differed according
to social category: one man was to be provided per 25 households by the clergy
and richer merchants; one per 30 households by dvoryane in the civil service,
widows, retired men, and youths (nedorosli); and one per 50 households by
those in the armed forces; an extra levy of men with horses (one per 100
households) was imposed upon the metropolitan nobility. The recruits were to
be taken from the landowners' household serfs and slaves rather than from the
agricultural population; for the same reason the 'black' peasant communities
were exempted. Proprietors with less land than the norm could commute the
obligation by paying 11 roubles, the equivalent of a soldier's annual pay; the
others had also to .~quip '1nd provision their recruits in the traditional way.^29
The really significant innovation was not stated in the decree, and perhaps was
not even realized by its authors: these recruits, unlike their forerunners, would
never return to civilian life. They were 'immortals' (a term Peter himself used
of them),^30 destined to serve in the army for the rest of their days.
This seems to have come as a shock to the proprietors. By now they had
grown accustomed to parting with their men for a season or two, but the pros-
pect of losing their labour for all time led many to try to circumvent the law.
They concealed the existence of dependants or skimped on the provisions of
those whom they sent, perhaps on a more extensive scale than usual. The five
recruiting agencies that had been set up were inundated with petitions: for an
extension of commutation privileges, or for men who had previously
volunteered to be counted as recruits. There were also petitions by aged or
28 Pleyer to Emperor Leopold I, 10 Dec. 1699, in Ustryalov, lstoriya, iii. 643; Rabinovich,
'Formirovaniye', p. 221.(^29) Text in Opisaniye dokumentov ... MAMYu (21 vols., Moscow, 1869-1916) v (ii). 37-9.
Pleyer reported that in practice wealthy nobles might lose up to one-fifth of their domestics
(Ustryalov, lstoriya, iii. 643). Nearly 30,000 such persons were inspected, of whom 11,SOO were
enrolled (Mikhnevich, in SVMin (I, i, i), app., p. 19; Avtokratov, 'Voyennyy prikaz', p. 230).
(^30) PiB vi. 2076 (22 Nov. 1707).