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manorial administration of the princes and court offices,is not known. Nor is it known whether the frequentMuscovite fusion of civil and military powers in thesame hands, so unlike the general Byzantine practice, wasa legacy from the Tatars, with whom it was regular.In the Golden Horde the despotism of the khandepended upon his personal qualities, above all as amilitary leader. It was normally limited by the existenceof a council of his blood relatives and leading retainers(in the khanate of Kazan also by the upper clergy), andin addition in fact by the economic and military powerof the semi-independent, hereditary, big stock- andland-owners. Yet in the Golden Horde and most of thekhanates that succeeded it the personal power of akhan was overriding and ubiquitous so long as he wasfeared, and, whether he were strong or not, most of hissubjects were only too well accustomed to arbitrarycaprice and despotic subjection. For one half of Ivanthe Terrible's mixed forest-steppe empire, after thecapture of Kazan and Astrakhan, 'the White Tsar'figured as the heir of the Tatar Khan. To the Europeanenvoys penetrating sixteenth-century Muscovy it appearedas a country governed by an autocrat similar toan Asiatic despot or the Turkish sultan. "He uses hisauthority as much over ecclesiastics as laymen, and holdsunlimited control over the lives and property of all hissubjects. ... It is a matter of doubt whether thebrutality of the people has made the prince a tyrant, orwhether the people themselves have become thus brutaland cruel through the tyranny of their prince.'' 16. The Growth and Functioning of TsarismThe arbitrary ruthlessness of the tsar and the servilityof his subjects which so much impressed Europeanenvoys to Muscovy in the sixteenth century continuedto be striking features of tsarism, but they were com-1There is a translation of Herberstein's Notes upon Russia, fromwhich the above quotation is taken, by R. H. Major in Hakluyt SocietyWorks, first series, vols. 10 and 12 (1851-52). The account of Herberstein,who went twice to Moscow on diplomatic missions, was first publishedin 1549.92