Moscow's Men on Horseback 21went a remarkable expansion which kept pace with the realm's territorial
~I UWLll. .1 ~I a. UUllU . .Jt~~n~ I JJV ll .... Wd:> ____ dUUU . l J .. ., ,VVV nnn :>ll ... ____ Ull!;\· -.,,,.,...,. I llC:I __ C:dllC:I r ... ... lilt: , ~dl;C: , ___:.td~ll.C:llC:U. ,_^1 1
reduced to a mere one thousand or so by the Troubles, it rose again to 3,500 by
the 1690s.^24 The courtiers did not see themselves as specialized functionaries
but as servants of their sovereign prepared to carry out assignments of any
kind. In the nature of things most of these had a war-like flavour, since there
was no clear distinction between military and civil administration.
In Ivan Ill's reign, so long as the apanage (ude/'nye) princes still retained a
vestige of their former autonomy and had their own military forces, members
of the Grand Prince's court would be attached to these contingents as
overseers.^2 s Subsequently their duties were confined to the forces under the
nominal (and sometimes actual) control of the autocrat. When the tsar went
on a major campaign, practically his entire court would accompany him. It
made a splendid sight: Richard Chancellor (1553) reported that the ruler was
'richly attyred above all measure' and that his pavilion, 'covered eyther with
cloth of gold or silver', was fairer than those of either the English or the
French king.^26 Under the young Ivan IV the court led an especially peripatetic
existence, as is clear from the official military registers (razryadnye knigi).
Thus in 1547/8 (7056 by contemporary reckoning) it marched on Kazan' and
the following year twice moved to Kolomna on the Oka, on watch for Tatar
raiders; thereafter it was stationed from time to time at Ryazan·, Murom, and
Tula.^27 When there was a pause in operations it returned to the Moscow
Kremlin. Here life assumed a more somnolent and torpid character, if the
French officer Jacques Margeret, who served in Moscow in the 1590s, is to be
believed: in summer nobles attended court from dawn to 'the sixth hour', went
home to dine and rest, and then returned from 'the fourteenth hour' until the
evening; in consequence, he noted, they were obese from lack of exercise.^28
The senior men, especially holders of the top two ranks (boyare, oko/'nichiye),
might help to frame policy in the tsar's council, rather misleadingly termed by
historians the Boyar Duma; some courtiers had administrative functions in the
palace, while others supervised the central chancelleries (prikazy), served as
provincial governors, or ran various errands. The complex ranking (chin)
system, which developed under Ivan III and was modelled in part on Byzantine
precedents, divided courtiers and senior servitors ('metropolitan nobles', in
our terminology) into two main groups, 'Duma' (dumnye) and 'Moscow'
(moskovskiye), each of which had subordinate gradations (see figure I). This
'civilian' aspect of upper-class life need not concern us further here.
The military registers recorded pedantically major appointments and assign-
ments, but gave tantalizingly few other details. All notables with command
2J Alef, · Arisrocratic Politics", p. 98.
24 Bobrovsky, 'Mestnichestvo'. p. 257.
25 Alef, 'Crisis', p. SI.
26 Vernadsky et al. (eds.), Source Book, i. 168.
21 RK, pp. 117, 127, 132, 143, 147, 151.
2R Margeret, l'Estat, p. 15.