Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/62

 38 and which became so numerous as to necessitate the establishment, in the sixteenth century, of a special office—the Tchelobitnyï prikaz, the germ of the future 'secret chancery'—to deal with them.

Consequently, the Sovereign was, in actual fact, the real and only government, and his councillors, like his 'service men,' were only so many soldiers whom he ordered about—pawns pushed hither and thither on the chess-board, without any possible resistance or control of theirs. In an army, the Council of War attains importance, makes itself heard, even imposes its decisions, as long as the campaign goes ill; but when victory comes, the General-in-Chief, successful and conscious of his power, soon sends his staff to the right-about. A Napoleon's plans are not subject to discussion. Moscow was victorious; she passed from triumph to triumph, and the heirs of Kalita, having no account to render for the past, claimed the privilege of rendering none in future.

Such was the central situation, and a similar type of military organization was repeated round it.

It essentially depended on the possession of the land. The possession of land entailed two kinds of obligations on its proprietors. If they were peasants, they owed taxes; if they held freeholds (vottchiny) or fiefs (pomiéstia), they owed service, they were sloojilyié—that is to say, besides the civil functions with which they might be invested, they constituted the Sovereign's army, quartered on their territorial possessions in time of peace, and instantly mobilized in time of war. Service began when a boy was fifteen. At that age the son of a pomiéchtchik received a portion of the paternal domain, or, if the family was too numerous to permit of that, a fresh allotment. When the pomiéchtchik died, his lands were divided up among his sons, the girls, too, receiving shares in which they had a life-interest only, and which they had to relinguish if they married. If the land did not suffice, an additional allotment could be claimed. The exchange of pomiéstia was allowed, on condition the State suffered no damage; for its service, every man must be replaced by another. In the case of the vottchiny, the State nominally did not intervene in matters of inheritance, but it took care that each lot of land should be represented by a man capable of service.

The system was evidently more easily applied in the case of the pomiéchtchiki. The Sovereign, who was master of their fortunes, had them much more completely in hand.