Musketeers and Other Traditional Forces 63
was situated to the expanding southern border, the greater the role played by
soldiers in its economic life: at Putivr in the same year they held 70 per cent of
iili :.hup:; ii11u :;iiilb. A-,, 1,;(JJluiiiu11-,, lic1.:i11!1c 11101c 11u1111iii, ct 1.:iviiictn urban com-
munity (posad) could grow up.33
The men in uniform seem to have identified quite readily with the town
where they resided and whence most new recruits were drawn, even though
they did not legally belong to the community. From time to time friction might
develop with civilians over the fact that they were taxed separately, but the
evidence suggests that they usually paid an equitable share of the common
burden. Such disputes did not prevent the musketeers from becoming integrated
into their milieu in a way that privileged servitors were not. From the state's
viewpoint this created a certain security risk. If social tensions in a town
became acute, the strertsy could provide leadership for other elements of the
populace; they were armed, albeit mainly with antiquated weapons, and could
bring to bear a measure of organization and discipline. The targets of their
wrath were all those who, occupying an intermediate position between tsar and
people, were so prone to abuse their authority: the voivode, such privileged
servitors as resided within the city walls, and last but not least their own chiefs.
By the time of the first Romanovs the strertsy had become something of a
doubtful asset. In terms of military efficiency they could not stand comparison
with the new-model forces (see ch. 4), and although they continued to perform
a valuable function in the southern frontier zone many were assigned to
ceremonial and police duties. Musketeer detachments escorted foreign envoys
to and from the border and guarded them while in the capital. Adam Olearius,
who visited MosEowin 1634 in the suite of the Holstein ambassador, recorded
that on reaching Noteborg on Lake Ladoga his party 'entered a small over-
heated room, black as coal from smoke; the stre/'tsy gave a salute with their
flintlocks (which along with swords are part of their general equipment)
without the slightest semblance of order, as if each wanted to be first to
finish'. On another such occasion the salute 'was executed so carelessly that
the secretary to the Swedish resident, who was standing by us watching the
ceremony, had a large hole ~om in his jacket'. In the evenings their musketeer
escort entertained the travelling diplomats by playing the lute and disporting
themselves with a chained bear-a popular pastime in seventeenth-century
Muscovy,3^4 For a foreign ambassador one company (sotnya) was the usual
escort, but once a Muscovite envoy to Poland-Lithuania was accompanied by
an entire 500-man unit (prikaz) in full panoply of war, whose presence was
designed to lend emphasis to his arguments.^35 More routine duties included
running errands for voivodes and other officials, convoying prisoners or army
supplies, and tracking down bandits or absentee gentry servitors. (The latter
task graphically underlines the narrow distinction between privileged and non-
JJ Aleksandrov, 'Strei. naseleniye', pp. 242-3, 24S; cf. Eaton, 'Censuses', p. 21 I.
l4 Olearius, Travels, pp. 46-7, S2.
is Brix, Geschichte, p. 266.