By the end of the seventeenth century the boyar elite had changed from a small warrior band of about fifteen clans to an expansive elite of well over a hundred eminent families and a devaluation of boyar status. In the seventeenth century, central government was carried out by expert bureaucrats and some expert "noble officials," as well as by specialized commissions and, as always, the tsar's trusted inner circle of friends and in-laws.
GENTRY CAVALRY AND MILITARY REFORM
Moscow also co-opted the landed elite with gifts ofland, serfs, and status. Princes of the Rus' principalities like Moscow traditionally fielded a cavalry army, armed with bows and arrows suitable for their steppe enemies. They assembled these military forces from families who owned their land as family property (votchina); the wealthiest among them in turn mobilized retinues of clients and peasants. As Moscow conquered neighboring principalities, it absorbed their sovereign princes, their retinues, and local cavalry elite. In this challenging climate and natural environment, wealth was not to be had from working the land; landed elites therefore did not tend to develop regional power bases or attachments to particular territories. Rather, recognizing that winning booty in war was a more lucrative prospect, they readily joined Moscow's expanding principality. Moscow forestalled resistance from conquered princes and their men by offering generous land grants, as well as rewards in cash, gifts, and status, particularly after the conquest of Novgorod in 1478 provided a vast land fund that could be distributed as land for service (pomest'e). A string of later conquests added more land, and the state also gave free peasant villages to landlords as pomest'e. By the end of the century virtually all of the free peasants in the center where arable farming was productive enough to support a landlord had been awarded to ever more cavalrymen. Initially men did not reside on the land they were given, but merely lived off its income; gradually for most of the gentry in the provinces, their pomest'e became their home base.
The pomes 'te system allowed Moscow to centralize its army. Until then, the army was apparently retinue based, starting with the grand prince, his boyars, and their retinues, joined by other great men of the realm and their retinues (the grand prince's uncles and brothers, other sovereign princes, and forces mustered by wealthy church institutions). Text and illustrations of Ivan III's campaigns against Novgorod in the 1470s visually depict the assemblage of these disparate armies. Liberal distribution of pomest'e land allowed Moscow, over the first half of the sixteenth century, to disband private retinues and turn the army into a single grand- princely force (gradually, as appanages were eliminated). Previously sovereign princes and some oftheir men were now officers in Ivan III's army, their allegiances directly to the grand prince. Since everyone benefited, the process proceeded with little apparent resistance. The resulting army by the middle ofthe sixteenth century had a central core whose lands were near Moscow, the "Sovereign's Court," and provincial gentry mustered from major towns.
This was an old-style cavalry militia. They were entitled to an annual cash subsidy for equipment, but they equipped themselves; they mustered in local regiments under the leadership of a Moscow-appointed captain; training was father to son. Gentry mobilized for the summer battle season and returned home for the winter. In 1556 the state established norms by which any man with 400 acres of good arable land, whether pomest'e or hereditary, had to muster to service, with a reserve horse. Those with more land brought combat and baggage slaves according to that ratio. By one estimate the cavalry army in the mid-sixteenth century was composed of perhaps a third slaves. As late as 1681, the approximately 2,500 men in the tsar's regiment each brought about nine armed slaves to battle with them. Thus, in essence, the retinue principle endured in miniature, but all served the ruler directly. The cavalry army was relatively smalclass="underline" Richard Hellie estimates about 25,000 from the end of the sixteenth century into the 1660s.
The pomest'e system gave the army great stability. Distinctions gradually faded between service-tenure and hereditary land (votchina) owned by older families and clerical institutions—all required service, and all were becoming hereditary. As long as a son was able to continue the requisite service, pomest'e stayed within families. By the seventeenth century, laws allowed exchanges of pomest'e lands and de facto families were awarding them in dowry, mortgaging and exchanging them. In 1714, the distinction between them was legally abolished and all nobles were required to serve, based on salary, not land. But until then, elite status was determined by ownership of land and, even more significantly, of peasants to farm it.
Divisions developed in the cavalry army between men in the higher officer ranks and the provincial gentry. Men in the former, the "Sovereign's Court," led the army and served as envoys and governors in major towns. They came from families just below conciliar ranks. Their lands were located around Moscow and they mustered directly to the tsar's army as central officer corps; they were eligible for high pomest'e allotments and annual cash subsidies in the annual musters of officers; thus they came to be called collectively the "Moscow list." Their numbers grew as the state expanded its army, its borders, and its network of central and provincial offices. Honorific titles, some untranslatable (stolnik, striapchii, zhilets, Moscow gentry- man), distinguished ranks of prestige, and men advanced among them, although rarely to boyar rank if their clan were not a hereditary boyar clan. Their numbers grew over the seventeenth century, from about 2,500 in 1630 to about 6,000 in 1681. Their land could be distributed around the realm; by the seventeenth century, many "Moscow gentrymen" lived in provincial towns, dominating local office over local gentry and working to consolidate their landholding locally.
Provincial gentrymen were organized around regional towns where, by the seventeenth century, they were developing local cohesion—marrying locally, consolidating landholdings to their province whenever possible, and holding local office even when state policy forbade it (as in the case oflocal governors). As the pool ofpopulated land for pomest'e failed to keep pace with demand, men often received less land than their rank entitled them to and were underpaid in annual cash and grain allotments. They worked their peasants harder than larger landholders (lay and clerical) and struggled to prevent their peasants from fleeing to better landlords or to the borderlands. Starting in the 1630s they regularly petitioned the state, often collectively in the name of town-based gentry "corporations," for protection from large landholders ("strong people" or sil'nye liudi), demanding more responsive local courts and longer statutes of limitations for tracking down runaway peasants. The state extended those retrieval limits from five to up to fifteen years in the first half of the seventeenth century, ultimately abolishing limits entirely in the 1649 Lawcode, enshrining enserfment in order to support the gentry class.
Ironically, the gentry cavalry was being phased out militarily at that same time. New regiments of infantry and light cavalry on the European model were being introduced. The Moscow elite survived these challenges by reliance on landed wealth and by diversifying into high-level bureaucratic service, but provincial gentry had fewer options. Although they numbered about 25,000 from mid- sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century, their weakness was already apparent in the Smolensk campaign (1632-4), when only about 16,000 of the 100,000-strong army were old-style cavalry; at least 10,000 provincial gentry were sent to local or fortress defense, unable to equip themselves properly for field fighting. By the Thirteen Years War (1654-67), provincial gentry were being folded into regiments of light cavalry (reitary), where they were retrained. Their status was respected by their being assigned to regiments composed solely of other gentry, and they were allowed to retain pomest'e and serfs (as opposed to the billeting and salaries normal reitary received). In 1678 only the wealthiest of the old-style gentry militia in the Moscow ranks (those with twenty-four or more serf households) were allowed to muster as an old-style cavalry regiment. All the rest had been transitioned into the light cavalry or even (for the poorest gentry) into the infantry (soldaty). This elite's raison d'etre was being undermined.