Streltsy

The streltsy were Russia's first standing army units, firearm-armed infantry established by Ivan the Terrible beginning between 1545 and 1550, with a formal decree of October 1, 1550 creating an initial corps of one thousand service people garrisoned in Moscow and placed, from 1571, under the administration of the Streletsky prikaz. The force divided into Muscovite streltsy, who guarded the Kremlin and performed civic duties in the capital, and municipal streltsy stationed for garrison and border duty elsewhere, organized into regiments and smaller hundreds and decades, some serving mounted as dragoons and others on foot, armed with arquebuses or muskets alongside pollaxes, bardiches and sabres, and distinguished by colored regimental kaftans of red, yellow, blue or green. First committed to major combat at the siege of Kazan in 1552, the streltsy grew to a peak strength of roughly 55,000 by 1681, including some 22,500 stationed in Moscow, and became a recurring force in Russian court politics, participating in succession disputes and the violent Moscow uprising of 1682. Peter the Great steadily curtailed streltsy influence after 1689, and following the streltsy's own failed revolt of 1698, which he suppressed with mass executions and torture, the corps was effectively abolished, with most remaining units disbanded by the 1720s and replaced by the new Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Guards regiments.