Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/172

 148 all their rights and privileges, and were as ready as ever to abuse them.

Yet Ivacha Peresviétov had not spoken in vain. In the course of that same year (1550) Ivan, though he still hesitated, scarce knowing what end he should pursue, or how he should attain it, took one decisive step on the only path open to him, if he was to enter on the inevitable struggle with any hope of victory, and reconcile a reform which had become indispensable with the maintenance of a political system of the destruction of which he could not dream. On October 10, he published a ukase for the reorganization of the upper class of the 'men who served.'

Notice the expression. It embodies the germ of the entire system of the opritchnina and of the whole internal history of Ivan's reign.

Orders were issued to collect a thousand sons of boïars, chosen among the best, and give them pomiéstia in the Moscow district and those nearest it. This elect body was to form the nobility of the capital, the nucleus of a contingent which was to be available for service of every kind, and for military service more especially. The oldest aristocratic families established in the region were included in the group, and provided, if they did not already possess them, with allotments of landed property in the immediate neighbourhood. The whole body of this aristocracy was divided into three classes, or stati, acording to seniority in the service. In this fashion, the legislator without suppressing the miéstnitchestvo, determined and limited the field of his future labours. The service to be paid for each allotment was also carefully defined and fixed: for every hundred acres (about fifty diéssiatines, or as many hectares) the holder was to supply one mounted man, and a second horse if the expedition was to be a long one. A money payment might be substituted for the man and the horse, and the Sovereign, on his part, guaranteed an indemnity for extra men supplied, in addition to the campaigning pay every man received.

Hence the theory of 'service,' which upset all positions and ruled all questions of rank and precedence, was destined, even more than in past days, to hold the foremost place in the hierarchy thus constituted. And here is an indication of the result obtained. No Princes appear on the lists of the great personages summoned to the assembly of 1566. In the course of the evolution which had carried the official class into the front rank, they had disappeared, or, officially speaking at