ABSTRACT
The streltsy were organized on a permanent footing by I van IV; in his time they numbered about 12,000 men, of whom ;,000 were quartered in Moscow. The force was divided into regiments (prikat), usually 500 strong-commanded by golovy who were drawn from the ranks of the landed gentry. Sotniki were either landed gentry or boyars' sons. The rankers were recruited from among 'free people'; they served for life and were often themselves the sons of streltsy. They lived in special quarters (slohody) and enjoyed various fiscal privileges.
Boris Godunov was reported to have had 12,000 streltsy in Moscow. Originally archers, they soon became musketeers. During the seventeenth century, this privileged corps tended to become more and more arrogant and mutinous. Like the J anissaries of the Ottoman empire and the Mamluks in Cairo, they showed themselved politically conservative and opposed to technical innovations. The corps was finally dispersed - and many of the streltsy tortured and slaughtered - by Peter the Great on his return from western Europe in 1698. (Solovyev, Vols. II and III,passim; BSE, 1st ed., for bibliographical refs.; Allen, HGP, pp. 158 and 163, for reproductions of Castelli's drawings of streltsy apparently serving in Georgia during the first quarter of the seventeenth century). In Asafi's miniatures of Russian soldiers opposing Ozdemiroghlu Osman Pasha's passage of the Sunzha, in October 1583, the musketeers would seem to be streltsy rather than Cossacks, since their headgear re5embles that shown in Castelli's drawing (AlIen, p. 158); as in the case of Osman's janissaries, they seem to be clad in regulation uniforms.
