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On the other hand, they could not undo the lastingeffects of Peter's ' table of ranks' (1722). By this longponderededict, carefully worked out on foreign (chieflyDanish and Prussian) models, status and, in effect, newlanded wealth were made dependent on a man's positionin the ladder of state service which was divided intofourteen military and naval rungs and fourteen parallelcivilian rungs. Money salaries were fixed for eachrung. Just as Peter himself chose many of his mosttrusted advisers or executants from 'ill-born persons'—many of them foreigners—on the ground of theircapacities and personal loyalty to him, so personalcapacity, not family connexions or wealth, was to be thetouchstone for advancement in the service of the state,and all were to start their careers from the bottomrung. Inevitably in fact, blood, money, and favouritismcontinued to be very powerful influences, but the doorhad been opened and was never thereafter fully closedto the admission of persons of middling or humbleposition to the officer class in the army, navy, and civilservice, and thereby to their admission to the privileged,hereditary class of serf-owners.The ' table of ranks' and Peter's new 'colleges' transformedthe old Muscovite bureaucracy, which had beenhaphazardly growing into an indispensable instrument inthe working of tsarism. Already by the mid-seventeenthcentury there were thirty-six departments of one kindand another, headed by about eighty 'secretaries,'variously recruited but mainly from the middling 'menof service,' Moscow and provincial landowners. Paywas partly by land grants, partly by fees; corruptionwas already a byword. The departments, enmeshed informulae and tradition, ground very slowly, and theirfunctions were not delimited on any one principle: somedealt with certain territorial areas, some with certainclasses of persons, others with certain categories ofsubject (e.g. particular kinds of military service, foreignaffairs).Simplification and concentration were taking placebefore Peter, but it was he who transformed this jungleby converting the more important of the old departments106