Historical notes: who are the Boyar Sons

 By the way, who are Boyar Sons?

Those who are not familiar with muscovite military history may not understand this term correctly. Speaking short: it was a form of servitude in Muscovte tsardom - tsar granted some person noble status + some land (with villages and peasants) and that person was obliged to serve in regular military campaign as armed and armored cavalryman as well as bring 1-6 armed (and at least partly armored) servants, usually former peasants skilled with bow and melee weapons. More servants and better equipment boyar son had - more was annual compensation from the tsar.

That land was called "pomestie" and the type of cavalry was called "pomiestna cavalry" - made of the land owners and their armed servants. This model was typical for feudal forces, Ottoman sipahi used the same organization principles.

INTERESTING FACT: we still don't know why these men were called "boyar sons" because not all of them were in fact from boyar families. But this word was really used from late medieval up to 18th century.

If that feudal warrior missed campaign or regular gathering of boyar sons, tsar could take granted land from him. This system worked quite well up to the times of Ivan the Terrible, whose 20-years war with all neighbours and harsh politics threw most boyar sons into poverty. That's why at first boyar sons could not afford armed servants, then could not afford personal body armor and ocasionally even could not afford a horse. There still was some percent of rich boyars from rich families who had master-crafted weapons, good armor and a number of armed servants, but their number was very low.

On battlefield boyar sons fought in typical eastern style, riding back and forth, shooting, flanking and if neccessary charging. They also were able to fight on foot, for example, assaulting enemy positions. On favorable conditions they sometimes even defeated much stronger enemies like mercenary reiters or even winged hussars but usually they preferred to evade them.

P.S.

I've painted test batch of my 1st older set of boyar sons:

They were printed with a lot of misprints and errors and it required a nice dose of greenstuff for them to look like this.

Stay tuned, more to come!