Peter's Soldiers 107
areas or social categories. The most unusual of these pressed into army uniform
prie~t" ~nt:i other rlergy deemed ~urp!us tc the ecclesiastical cstablishn1cni.
officially laid down in 1721. Altogether 53 levies, 21 general and 32 partial ones,
were raised during Peter's reign; the grand total of recruits must have exceeded
300,000.^53
This heavy burden fell predominantly on the servile population-including
those field workers whom the government had initially tried to protect. 'The
army swallowed up the best elements of the village', remarks Beskrovnyy
flatly.^54 The wealthier peasant householders might, if their proprietor approved,
be able to hire a substitute as townspeople could; but they were forbidden to take
fugitives, the most obvious source. If a substitute deserted, the peasant who had
hired him was fined, beaten and sent into exile.^55
Selection was carried out by the landowners (or, ifthey were absent on service,
by their agents), who thereby obtained an important new lever of power over
their dependants. The same was true of village and district authorities. In the
earlier part of Peter's reign the recruiting officials (naborshchikt) were mainly
civilian functionaries, but then regular serving officers, seconded from their
units for the purpose, took over. They submitted recruits to physical examina-
tion, swore them in, and collected their sureties (krugovye poruki)-docu-
ments whose purpose was to make the men exercise surveillance over one
another, and so to hinder defection; if they failed to act as they were supposed
to, they were liable to severe punishment.^56 This turned out to be a very crude
and inefficient control mechanism. It may even have swollen the desertion rate
by giving recruits an incentive to flee en masse; at any rate in 1712 the practice
of branding recruits in much the same way as common criminals was intro-
duced: the mark ofa £ross was burned into their left arm and the wound rubbed
with gunpowder.57
There are also many reports of recruits (and not just deserters) being chained
together.^58 One foreign observer states that they were 'taken to Moscow or
some other rendezvous, and then on to St. Petersburg or the [field] army,
bound together two by two'.^59 Senior officials expressed disapproval of the
practice,^60 but it does not appear to have been formally banned; on the con-
trary, Peter actually issued an order (which has not been published) that
recruits should be put in irons while en route, adding insouciantly that their
escorts should take 'great care' of them.^61 In 1714 the Senate investigated a
53 Bcskrovnyy, however, puts it at 284, 187 (in Kafengauz and Pavlenko (eds.), Rossiya, p. 347).(^54) Beskrovnyy, Russkaya armiya, p. 29.
5l DiP iv (i). 68 (pp. 46-7); cf. PSZ v. 2709 (2 Sept. 1713).
l^6 PSZ iv. 2467 (16 Jan. 1712).
l7 PSZ iv. 2456, § 17 (p. 268); PiB xii. 5024, § 8; Anisimov and Zinevich, lstoriya, p. 21.
58 'A te rekruty po se chislo skovany', order to Capt. I. Neyelov in Novgorod (1711 ), in
Shchukin, Sbornik, ii. 194.
59 [MUiier[, Nouveaux memoires, p. 84.
(^60) Dolgorukiy to Chirikov (1712), cited by Beskrovnyy, Russkaya armiya, pp. 30-1.
(^61) Beskrovnyy, in Kafengauz and Pavlenko (eds.), Rossiya, p. 348, citing unpublished archival
source.