New-Model Army and Questions of Cost 83
physically fit; they were to bring picks, spades, axes, and as a rule firearms as
we11.1s
Casualty rates among these men were high. 'Many recruits have died and
ether~ have fled', a !ea.ding genera.!, _A __ N. Trub~tskoy, reported !aconira!!y !n
1655.^16 Kotoshikhin noted that 'during the course of the Polish war many
cavalrymen and soldiers have died of hunger [and] in battles and assaults,
[after] laying siege for lengthy periods to various towns'.^17 This was a new
development, for hitherto recruits' duties had been mainly of a non-combatant
character, such as constructing defence works. Moreover, they had previously
served for a short term, usually for the duration of a single seasonal campaign,
and then returned to civilian life; but from the mid-seventeenth century
onwards, so it appears, they remained under arms for life, much as recruits
would do in the eighteenth century. It is not surprising that many of them
deserted or turned to banditry. In Thomas Daliel's regiment, stationed at
Polotsk, 148 infantrymen deserted during a thirteen-month period in 1659-60
and could not be traced. This was about^10 per cent of his unit's strength. 'The
remaining soldaty here', wrote the commander, I. B. Repnin, to the tsar, 'envy
those fugitives, [in] that they are living in their own homes, and for that reason
many are fleeing your service.'^18 Escapees usually returned to their homes,
where they concealed themselves with the aid of fellow-villagers and landlords.
An idea of the scale of desertions is provided by returns from Kiev for the year
168112: out of 3,970 men in the local garrison,^207 (5 per cent) deserted while
116 (3 per cent) died.^19 One year earlier, as part of the reform programme, an
amnesty was granted to deserters. Landlords who had sheltered them were
allowed to keep them, but if they took men in after the deadline had passed,
and were deno.unced for doing so, they were to forfeit them and two of their
'best' peasants aiwell, and to pay a five-rouble fine; the men in question were
assigned to the southern border.^20 Normally deserters, if caught, were beaten
with the knout and returned to service; if they could not be found, their com-
munity had to supply substitutes and provide larger sureties for them; in other
cases deserters' wives and children were seized as hostages until they gave
themselves up.^21 More active forms of opposition were hindered by the tighter
disciplinary controls to which men in the new-model forces were subjected.
However, in 1661 soldiers in the regiments ofW. Bruce and N. von Galen, sta-
tioned near Orsha, assaulted their officers and wounded both unit com-
manders, and so/daty were prominent in the^1662 Moscow troubles.^22
15 AAE iii. 222; iv. 84; DAI iv. 26; Lappo-Danilevsky, Organizatsiya, p. 392.
16 AMG ii. 736.(^17) Kotoshikhin, 0 Rossii, pp. 133-4.
is AMG iii. 107; cf. [Khilkov] Sbornik,^86 (1668).
19 DAI x.. 33(iv).
20 DAI viii. 90(ii).
21 DAI viii. 42; Kotoshikhin,^0 Rossii, p. 132; Zagorodsky, Belgorodskaya cherta, p. 251.
22 Bobrovsky, 'K kharakteristike', p. 187.