Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/268

 244 place of all the others. At the same time it suppressed the local military bodies, thanks to which the Tsar's unruly vassals frequently made themselves more dangerous to him than to his foes; it proclaimed the law of individual service, and over all the country its rule affected it established a system of direct and indirect taxation levied for the benefit of the Treasury.

Swayed, too, by economic and financial considerations which I do not dream of denying, it most particularly sought to obtain possession of the towns along the great trade routes of the Empire, and to this change of system—this is worth observing—the traders affected were by no means opposed. The representatives of the English company craved admission to it as a favour. The Stroganovs followed the same course. The only roads between the capital-and the frontier which escaped the Opritchnina's attention were those running southward, through Toula and Riazan, and these were probably omitted because no apparent advantage was to be derived from their inclusion.

It is only with the greatest difficulty that any full inventory of the territories annexed by the Opritchnina has been drawn up, for documents precise enough to serve as a foundation for the calculation do not exist. It seems to have ended by comprising a great slice of the central and northern provinces, bailiwicks, and towns, and of the coast as well (pomorié), all the districts of the Zamoskovié (Moscow region), all the regions 'beyond the Oka,' and two districts (piatiny) out of the five which constituted the province of Novgorod—those of Obonéjé and Biéjetsk. The Opritchnina, the northern boundaries of which thus rested on the 'great ocean-sea,' as it was called in those days, cut cornerwise into the territory handed over to the old system, the Ziémchtchina (ziémia, land), as it was called, while it ran southward as far as the Oka, eastward towards Viatka, and westward up to the Lithuanian-German frontier. The provinces of Perm, Viatka, and Riazan on the east, and the dependencies of Pskov and Novgorod, with the frontier towns, Vielikié-Louki, Smolensk, and Siéviérsk, on the west, were not included in the new organization. Southwards the two zones of the Ziémchtchina were connected by the Ukraine and by wild steppes (dikoié pole).

In the centre of the country, as I have just said, the Opritchnina only affected certain localities, and the bailiwicks, towns, and town quarters under its jurisdiction were mingled in unimaginable and indescribable confusion with those of the Ziémchtchina. But of the important towns, the old system only kept Tver, Vladimir, and Kalouga, and it may be said,