Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/33

 Rh aristocratic element this was assuredly the case. Here, as in the West, the higher stratum of society found its first nucleus in the Prince's immediate following. Etymologists disagree as to the origin of the word boïar. Whether it comes from boï (fight), or from bol, boliï, bolchyï (greater), it was used, in the first instance, to designate the comrades of the leader of the primitive band, his droojinniki (droojina, suite, company), who played, at his side, the part played by the anthrustions of the first Frankish chiefs, the Anglo-Saxon thanes, the ministeriales in the heart of feudal Germany. But whereas in the West the relations thus formed between the Princes and their vassals were solidified by the establishment of each and all on domains, in political and social functions, clear, fixed, hallowed by law, by custom, and by habit, the same relations here continued vague, and shared thegenerathe general [sic] mobility of all things. For a long time the Prince was a nomad, and his droojina followed, or did not follow, him. There was no rule nor any obligation in this matter. The chief could dismiss his comrades, and they could leave him if they chose. They frequently used their right. When the Prince of Volhynia undertook a campaign against the Prince of Kiev, in 1149, his droojina failed him, and exposed him to disaster. No constraint was recognised. When Russia was all cut up amongst a number of Sovereigns, the boïars had no scruple about going over from one ruler to another, according to their own interest or fancy, and these desertions were no disgrace whatever. They were not regarded as felonious acts. The deserters continued to hold their lands, and carried them into the pale of the authority of the new chief, chosen of their own free will.

When Moscow began to play her part in history, she did not hesitate to take advantage of these habits, which she recognised as a wonderful instrument to serve her policy of unification—a means of ruining the neighbouring States by their disaggregation, and strengthening her own sovereignty at their expense. She had become an unrivalled centre of attraction, so the game held no risk for her; everything came to her, none dreamed of leaving her. Thus, from one neighbour to another, she gathered up the remnants of the lesser planets absorbed into her own sun—all the wreckage from scattered Courts and disbanded troops—and found in them an eminently plastic substance, easily shaped in her own chosen mould.

The Sovereign had fresh companions—not even the comrades who had shared his perils and his triumphs, but beaten men, captives, rooted up from their own soil. Further, the whole aristocracy in the heart of this North-Eastern Russia, even that which had remained on its hereditary domains,