Musketeers and Other Traditional Forces 75
exiguousness of their plots will have stimulated holders to augment them by
bringing more of the still largely virgin steppe or semi-steppe under the plough:
apart from the prospect of economic gain, this would confer improved stand-
ing in the service hierarchy. Cossacks were known as rapacious looters, but
they will have had even less capital, and probably less leisure, then their petty
gentry neighbours in this region.
Speaking very generally, the economic level of lower-grade servitors corres-
ponded to their status in the military hierarchy; but much also depended on
chance factors. Ordinary Cossacks often could not afford a horse and had to
undergo the humiliation of serving on foot. Those who lost status in this way
were obvious candidates for assignment to the new-model forces. Some 20,000
service Cossacks are said to have been transferred in this way, mainly in the
crisis years of the early 1650s,^82 but this number seems high: the total for thegroup in 1651 was around 21,000, but in 1680/1 only 7,000. (^83) Enumerated
separately in the statistics are the 'Cherkassians' (Ukrainians), who accounted
for 2,371 in 1651, 2,966 in 1662/3, but no less than 14,865 in 1680/J.84 This
rise reflects the ambiguous outcome of the war with Poland-Lithuania for the
Ukraine. Many Cossacks fled eastwards from the quasi-autonomous territory
of the Hetmanate, where social and political conditions were very disturbed,
and took service with the tsar. The hetman's forces, which were not under
Moscow's control, numbered about 50,000. Thus the service Cossacks formed
a foreign body in relation to the general mass of autonomous warriors on the
Don and Dnieper. By the time of Peter l's accession the state had woil
a foothold which could be gradually enlarged during the eighteenth century
until it encompassed all the Cossacks: a development that not only greatly
improved the.empire's security in the south but also brought it a valuable addi-
tion of cavalry strength.
Two other categories within Muscovy's traditional forces should not be
overlooked: the artillerymen (pushkar1) and the native troops. The former are
thought to have comprised about 3,500 men at the end of the sixteenth century
and double that number one hundred years later.^85 In the campaign of 1679 the
Russian army disposed of 400 cannon, a considerable quantity for that time;
already at the siege of Kazan· (1552) Ivan IV is said to have had 150 heavy or
medium-sized artillery pieces.^86 The Tsar' -pushka admired today by countless
tourists to Moscow's Kremlin, cast by Andrey Chokhov in 1585/6 and
weighing 40 tons, testifies not only to the skill of Russian ironmasters but also
to the early tsars' appreciation of the role that artillery could play in building
up the country's armed might. The origins of this development date from the
82 Hellie, Enserfmenl, p. 209, citing AMG ii. 1103, 1130; iii. 152.
83 Chernov, Voor. sily, pp. 165, 167. A list for (^1662) (Stashevsky, 'Smeta', p. 60)gives2,3l9but
it is incomplete, for about 3,500 others were in the Belgorod area alone (ibid., pp. 64-7).
84 Chernov, Voor. sily, pp. 167, 189.
8l Yepifanov, Ocherki iz isl. armii, p. 15; id., 'Voysko', p. 358. In 1651 they numbered 4,245:
Chernov, Voor. sily, p. 167; cf. Hellie, Enserfmenl, p. 269.
86 Yepifanov, Ocherki iz isl. armii, p. 15; Nasonov et al. (eds.), Ocherki, p. 451.