Domestic policies
The domestic policies of both Ivan III and Vasilii III focused on reducing the power of their brothers and on maintaining good relations with the boyars and the Church. The relationship between Ivan III and Vasilii III, on one side, and their respective brothers, on the other, was often a tense and suspicious one. Bothgrandprinces, however, required their brothers' help inmobilisingtroops. Each grand prince had four brothers and each brother could be expected to muster about 10,000 men for a campaign.
On 12 September 1472, Ivan's eldest brother, Iurii, died childless without having completed his will. The draft form ofthe will revealed only lists of goods, monetary wealth and villages that were to be distributed among his mother, brothers, separate individuals and monasteries. Nothing in the will mentioned what should happen to his lands in Dmitrov, Khotun', Medyn', Mozhaisk and Serpukhov. Ivan decided to absorb Iurii's holdings into his own instead of (as was traditionally done) dividing them with the other remaining brothers.
This action upset the brothers who received nothing, for they, according to the chronicles, then complained and were given additional lands by Ivan and his mother, Mariia. The next year, i473, Ivan concluded treaties with Boris (February) and Andrei the Elder (September) in which they acknowledged Ivan and his son Ivan as 'elder brothers'. The treaty prohibited Boris and Andrei the Elder from carrying on diplomatic or military relations with any other ruler without the knowledge of Ivan III. They, in turn, were to be kept informed of Ivan's dealings with foreign princes. In addition, they obligated themselves to protect each other and their estates. No record of such a treaty with Andrei the Younger is preserved.
In the summer of 1480, Andrei the Elder and Boris withdrew their forces and headed for Lithuania. This potential defection came at a critical moment because Khan Ahmed of the Great Horde was advancing with his army on Muscovy. After much negotiation, Andrei and Boris returned to help in the defence of Moscow. In 1481, when Andrei the Younger died, he left everything to Ivan, who may have required Andrei to draw up his will this way so he would not have to repeat the disagreement with Boris and Andrei the Elder that had occurred eight years earlier when their brother Iurii died. Significantly, one of the witnesses of Andrei's will was the grand-princely boyar Prince Ivan Patrikeev.
Ivan arrested Andrei the Elder for not supplying him with troops to aid the Crimean Tatars against an attack from the Great Horde in i49i. Andrei died in prison in 1493, and Ivan took over his estates. Boris died in 1494 and divided his estates between his two sons: Fedor and Ivan. When Ivan Borisovich died in i503, his lands reverted to Ivan III, and when Fedor Borisovich died in i5i5, his lands reverted to Vasilii III.
Mutual dislike and distrust seem to have been characteristic of the relationship between Vasilii and his brothers. In 1511, his brother Simeon was caught trying to go over to Lithuania. Vasilii's concern that his brothers would succeed him after Tsarevich Peter Ibraimov died may have led him to divorce the barren Solomoniia and marry Elena.[34] Vasilii managed to complete the task started by his father of isolating the brothers of the grand prince from power and eliminating his dependency on them for troop mobilisation.
From the mid-fifteenth century on, the grand princes placed their armies predominantly under the command of service princes. On the occasion of Ivan's visit to Novgorod in 1495, in his entourage of 170 individuals listed in the razriadnaia kniga, 60 (35.3 per cent) had princely titles. It is likely that their prominence in the sources reflects their military importance as well. At the time of the accession of Ivan III, the only prince to hold a semi-independent apanage within the Muscovite realm was Prince Mikhail Andreevich ofVereia, who had shown great loyalty to Ivan's father. Nevertheless, Ivan pressured him to give up part ofhis apanage granted him by Vasilii II. After the disagreement over who held proper jurisdiction of the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery in 1478, Ivan required Mikhail to cede to him the district of Belozersk, which was part of Mikhail's apanage. When Mikhail died in 1486, Ivan took the rest.
In 1473, one of the stipulations in Ivan III's agreements with his brothers Boris and Andrei the Elder was that Danyar Kasimovich and other Tatar service princes were to be considered 'equal in status' (s odnogo) with Ivan - that is, above the grand prince's brothers. Earlier in the century, in 1406, Vasilii I had established that the grand prince's brothers were to have a higher ranking than Rus' princes coming under Muscovite grand-princely domination or into Muscovite service.[35] Vasilii III maintained this ranking ofbrothers above service princes, and tsarevichi above brothers, as he preferred to have his brother-in- law, the tsarevich Peter Ibraimov, to be his closest adviser, to accompany him on campaigns, and to defend Moscow when it was attacked by the Crimean khan in 1521.
Ivan III and Vasilii III completed the process of incorporating the service princes as integral parts of their armies along with their own boyars. In 1462, we have the attestation of nine boyars, four of whom were princes, and in 1533, we have the attestation of twelve boyars, six of whom were princes (and three okol'nichie, one of whom was a prince). These numbers indicate that the service princes were already being merged with the boyars under Vasilii II. His son and grandson merely continued and reinforced the practice. Both Ivan III and Vasilii III treated their boyars well, let them manage their estates unhindered and regularly consulted with them on the formulation of state policies. For example, the three law codes from 1497 to 1589 include the boyars along with the grand prince/tsar as compiling or issuing the code. The Law Code (Sudebnik) of 1497 begins: 'In the year 7006, in the month of September, the Grand Prince of all Rus' Ivan Vasil'evich, with his sons and boyars, compiled a code of law . . . '[36] Numerous decrees contain the formula 'the Grand Prince decreed with the boyars . . .' or similar formulas indicating that the boyars and the grand prince on certain important matters decreed together.17 These formulas demonstrate that the boyars were fulfilling more than a mere advisory role and that their approval was required for the issuing of these acts.
The acts that the boyars participated in decreeing were the most significant acts of the government - namely, law codes, foreign treaties, and precedent- setting measures. Other, less important decrees, such as kormlenie ('feeding'), votchina, andpomest'e grants, judicial immunities, local agreements, etc., were clearly the prerogative of the ruler alone. As we might expect, there was always an in-between area - one of ambiguity - and this ambiguity could on occasion be the source of friction between the ruler and his boyars when one thought the other was transgressing the proper bounds.
In 1489, Ivan III told Nicholaus Poppel, the ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor, that he could not meet him without the boyars present.18 This declaration followed the steppe principle that the ruler could meet with foreign envoys only in the presence of representatives of the council of state. The minutes of the Ambassadorial Chancellery (Posol'skii prikaz) as well as accounts of foreign ambassadors to Muscovy attest that this practice was rarely violated. Vasilii was also accused by the court official I. N. Bersen-Beklemishev of ignoring the old boyars and of making policy 'alone with three [others] in his bedchamber'.19 But this criticism was from someone who was not a boyar and was an isolated one. Vasilii and the boyars seem to have been much in accord throughout his reign.
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