Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/285

 quently; and finally, while I was still at Moscow, cut off her head and her legs.

All confess themselves to be Chlopos, that is, serfs of the prince. Almost all the upper classes also have serfs, who either have been taken prisoners, or purchased; and those whom they keep in free service are not at liberty to quit at their own pleasure. If any one goes away without his master's consent, no one receives him. If a master does not treat a good and useful servant well, he by some means gets a bad name amongst others, and after that he can procure no more domestics.

This people enjoy slavery more than freedom; for persons on the point of death very often manumit some of their serfs, but they immediately sell themselves for money to other families. If the father should sell the son, which is the custom, and he by any means become free or be manumitted, the father can sell him again and again, by right of his paternal authority. But after the fourth sale, the father has no more right over his son. The prince alone can inflict capital punishment on serfs or others.

Every second or third year the prince holds a census through the provinces, and conscribes the sons of the boyars, that he may know their number, and how many horses and serfs each one has. Then he appoints each his stipend, as has been said above. Those who have the means to do so, fight without pay. Rest is seldom given them, for either they are waging war against the Lithuanians, or the Livonians, or the Swedes, or the Tartars of Cazar; or if no war is going on, the prince generally appoints twenty thousand men every year in places about the Don and the Occa, as guards to repress the eruptions and depredations of the Tartars of Precop. He generally summons some also every year by rotation out of his provinces, to fill the various offices in his service at Moscow. But in war time, they do not serve in annual rotation, or by turns, but each and all are compelled,