Peter's Soldiers 111set up in 170 I under T. N. Streshnev, was formally responsible for the new
regiments, but it had only a rudimentary apparatus and could not collect
enough funds to maintain them. It submitted requests for payment to the
Ratusha, which had taken over as the main fiscal agency, but could not control
what money was actually paid since the Ratusha at first dealt directly with the
units concerned.^85 This body resorted to one desperate expedient after another
to obtain revenue but could not gather sufficient money to pay the large
number of troops that had been raised. Only in 1706 did the Office for
Military Affairs assume its proper accounting functions, but even so there was
a shortage of copper coin and in practice many units had to live off the land.
This was the case with the auxiliary corps sent to Poland and Saxony, which
was all but cut off from the Russian command. Patkul's papers contain strik-
ing testimony to the plight of these troops who, he complained, 'have no
shelter for the winter and must freeze and starve'.^86 Even in Russia itself pay
rates were far lower than they were supposed to be. In 1702 infantrymen in
Smolensk were to receive 5 roubles a year, but scattered references in official
correspondence for 1709-14 show that men were being paid at annual rates of
4, 3.60, and 3.40 roubles.^87 All these rates were lower than that given by the
publicist Ivan Pososhkov in his well-known Book on Poverty and Wealth,
completed in 1724, who tells of a recruit receiving 2 grivny (40 kopecks) a
month, taking out a knife and committing suicide.^88 In the Semenovsky guards
regiment a distinction was drawn between old soldiers and so-called 'nephews'
or newcomers, who got 5.70 and 3.20 roubles respectively.^89 Shortly after
Poltava Sheremetev reported to the tsar that some men at Chernigov 'are suf-
fering great hardship through the [non-) issue of pay. They did not receive their
(ull amount in June. apd have had nothing at all for July and August; some
detachments have had nothing for several months. '^90 In April 1710 it was
Peter's turn to complain to Sheremetev. The troops in West Prussia, he said,
'last drew pay half a year ago' and were 'extremely poor and lacking
uniforms.'^91 It is not clear what, if anything, was done.
In 1711, when the first detailed establishment table (shtat) for the army was
drawn up, pay rates were fixed at 10.98 roubles for an infantryman and 12
roubles for a cavalryman.^92 Nominally this was much the same as in 1699, but
it took no account of inflation during the intervening years, which was certainly
steep (but unfortunately not quantifiable from the sparse price data available).
From this modest sum about half was deducted for uniforms etc.-until 1719,
when this practice was apparently done away with^93 -and a few kopecks for
8' Avtokratov, • Pervye organy', pp. I 6S-6.
86 Erdmann, Patku/, pp. 200-2; cf. Bobrovsky, Voyennoye pravo, ii. t7S-6.
17 Avtokratov, 'Pervye organy', p. 173; PiB ix. 3S41; DiP i. 129, iv. 1011.
88 Pososhkov, Kniga, pp. 42-4, SO.
19 Kurakin, Arkhiv, iii. 94-S. 90 PiB ix. 3363 (S Aug. 1709).
91 PiB x. 3620, 3672 (S/6 Mar., 4 Apr. 1710); cf. Bauer to Peter I, in ibid. xii. 5085 (21 Mar.
1712).
92 PSZ iv. 2319 (19 Feb. 1711), pp. 593, 595.^9 ·' PRP viii. 394.