in the tsar’s regiment each brought about nine armed slaves to battle with them.
Thus, in essence, the retinue principle endured in miniature, but all served the ruler
directly. The cavalry army was relatively small: Richard Hellie estimates about
25,000 from the end of the sixteenth century into the 1660s.
Thepomest’esystem gave the army great stability. Distinctions gradually faded
between service-tenure and hereditary land (votchina) owned by older families and
clerical institutions—all required service, and all were becoming hereditary. As long
as a son was able to continue the requisite service,pomest’estayed within families.
By the seventeenth century, laws allowed exchanges ofpomest’elands and de facto
families were awarding them in dowry, mortgaging and exchanging them. In 1714,
the distinction between them was legally abolished and all nobles were required to
serve, based on salary, not land. But until then, elite status was determined by
ownership of land and, even more significantly, of peasants to farm it.
Divisions developed in the cavalry army between men in the higher officer ranks
and the provincial gentry. Men in the former, the“Sovereign’s Court,”led the army
and served as envoys and governors in major towns. They came from families just
below conciliar ranks. Their lands were located around Moscow and they mustered
directly to the tsar’s army as central officer corps; they were eligible for highpomest’e
allotments and annual cash subsidies in the annual musters of officers; thus they
came to be called collectively the“Moscow list.”Their numbers grew as the state
expanded its army, its borders, and its network of central and provincial offices.
Honorific titles, some untranslatable (stolnik,striapchii,zhilets, Moscow gentry-
man), distinguished ranks of prestige, and men advanced among them, although
rarely to boyar rank if their clan were not a hereditary boyar clan. Their numbers
grew over the seventeenth century, from about 2,500 in 1630 to about 6,000 in
- Their land could be distributed around the realm; by the seventeenth
century, many“Moscow gentrymen”lived in provincial towns, dominating local
office over local gentry and working to consolidate their landholding locally.
Provincial gentrymen were organized around regional towns where, by the seven-
teenth century, they were developing local cohesion—marrying locally, consolidating
landholdings to their province whenever possible, and holding local office even when
state policy forbade it (as in the case of local governors). As the pool of populated land
forpomest’efailed to keep pace with demand, men often received less land than their
rank entitled them to and were underpaid in annual cash and grain allotments. They
worked their peasants harder than larger landholders (lay and clerical) and struggled
to prevent their peasants fromfleeing to better landlords or to the borderlands.
Starting in the 1630s they regularly petitioned the state, often collectively in the name
of town-based gentry“corporations,”for protection from large landholders (“strong
people”orsil’nye liudi), demanding more responsive local courts and longer statutes
of limitations for tracking down runaway peasants. The state extended those retrieval
limits fromfive to up tofifteen years in thefirst half of the seventeenth century,
ultimately abolishing limits entirely in the 1649 Lawcode, enshrining enserfment in
order to support the gentry class.
Ironically, the gentry cavalry was being phased out militarily at that same time.
New regiments of infantry and light cavalry on the European model were being
214 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801