Musketeers and Other Traditional Forces 57
should defend their hearths in an emergency, whether or not they were called
on to do so by the ruler. In some towns there were popular militias with
a rudimentary form of organization-'thousandmen·, centurions, and decur-
ions-based in part on the Tatar model. These units survived into the
Muscovite period, when the central power began to take an interest in them.
Such soldiers were officially termed pososhnye, or 'sokha men': the sokha, as
we know, was the flexible unit of assessment for direct taxation, and it was on
this basis that they too were levied. Pososhnye were provided as and when
required, without any regular norm being set. Since they had no training, they
were of less use in combat than as auxiliaries. They would help to construct
defence works, cart supplies, haul the heavy field-guns of the era, and perform
any similar task requiring physical labour. Their draught animals, carts, digg-
ing tools, and other items of equipment were provided by their community,
rural or urban, at its own expense. Sometimes the obligation could be com-
muted by a cash payment, and certain privileged persons were exempted from
it.2 Chancellor (1553) estimated at 30,000 the number of 'such as goe with the
Ordnance and Labourers'.^3 A German present at Polotsk in 1563 reckoned the
number of 'peasants' in the army at 40,000, with another 6,000 'trench-
diggers'. They formed a separate detachment (po/k) under a relatively junior
commander, who had 50 servitors to help him manage this force.^4 Twelve
thousand sokha men are known to have taken part in the campaign of 1577.'
As the 'black' taxpaying territories fell under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical
and secular landlords, the function of choosing and despatching parties of
such men for military service fell to their new masters. Accordingly they came
to be known by ·other terms as well: 'boyars' men' (boyarskiye lyudi) or
'donated men' (datochnye, peredatochnye). The former seem to have been
those who accompanied their lords (who were of course by no means all of
boyar rank) on their martial duties, whereas the latter ~ere individuals sent by
their masters, eventually often as substitutes for themselves. Donated men
lacked even that minimal protection which a lord could afford by his personal
presence and were entirely at the disposal of the authorities, whose estimate of
their human worth was likely to be even lower than that of their masters. For
simplicity's sake we may call both categories 'recruits'. Some of them per-
formed the tasks mentioned above, which although auxiliary were essential to
the army's functioning, while others acted as bodyguards and servants to gentry
cavalrymen, looking after their mounts, equipment, supplies, and so forth.^6
Occasionally they would assume a combat role. This will have depended on
whether or not. they actually had the horses and equipment with which their
2 A/ii. 145; DAii. 94; Yepifanov, 'Voysko', p. 359; Nasonov et al. (eds.), Ocherki, pp. 334-5.
l Vernadsky et al. (eds.), Source Book, i. 168.
4 Yepifanov, 'Voysko', p. 368; the independent-minded Pskov chronicler put the figure at
80,900, which is probably too high; it i~. however, repeated by Maslovsky, 'Pom. voyska', p. 8
and Chernov, Voor. sily, p. 93.
s Brix, Geschichte, p. 60.
6 Ibid., pp. 43, 94, citing AAE i. 205; ii. 78.