Landed Army
army
The Landed Army (Russian: Поместное войско, romanized: Pomestnoe voisko) was the feudal cavalry of the Grand Principality of Moscow and Tsardom of Russia in the 15th to 17th centuries.
Background
In the second half of the 14th century, the druzhina was replaced by feudally organized units headed by boyars or dependent princes, and these units consisted of landed gentry (so called "boyar's children" or "service people") and their armed servants ("military slaves"). In the 15th century, such organization of detachments replaced the city regiments.
Foundation
A completely aristocratic army, based on this local system, was formed under Ivan III, the grand prince of Moscow. The process of reforming the army was associated with the unification of the Russian lands. Eventually, the Grand Principality of Moscow included new petty princedoms, courts of independent princes were dismissed, and "service people" passed to the grand prince. As a result, the appanage princes and boyars were transformed into state servants, who received estates for service in conditional holding ("pomestye" – military fief). In 1482, the landed army (Russian: Поместное войско) was formed, the bulk of which were noblemen and "boyar's children" ("hereditary servitors"), accompanied by their armed slaves. They were usually equipped as mounted archers.
Organization
The system of conscription, when a certain number of warriors (with horse and weapon) was provided from a certain area of the land, or a certain number of households, prevailed in the 15th–17th centuries.
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This entry incorporates text from “Landed Army” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.