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followed slowly by the plough, into the virgin blackearthlands that were acting as a magnet to the peasantsof central Muscovy, more and more hard pressed bylandowners and the state. But, unless they wentCossack, they could not escape from the state and theyneeded its protection.In the course of the sixteenth century the Muscovitegovernment built up an elaborate, fourfold defencesystem, initially intended to prevent the Tatars crossingthe Oka, but additionally providing security for colonization(see map 4). The system included the foundingof fortified garrison centres settled by the governmentwith military colonists, and in the last twenty years ofthe century there was rapid progress in consolidating thefrontier. The advance of settlements was along thetributaries of the Don or Oka, then navigable for smallboats, in the wooded valleys, which provided the essentialtimber and better means of defence than the swellingopen country. During the next twenty years (1600-20),owing to the Time of Troubles, the frontier 'wentCossack' and there was chaos. It was only after 1633that the defence system was thoroughly reorganized andthe planned advance resumed, marked by the foundingof more garrison centres and the construction of theByelgorod defence line roughly along the northern limitsof the present Ukraine and thence north-eastwards toVoronezh, Tambov, and the Volga at Simbirsk.The state did its utmost to control and plan the frontier,which was for long predominantly military in character:arms and horse ready saddled were as essential as ploughand axe. The settlers, in part voluntary, in part conscribed,were mostly various types of the ' men of service.'The siting and building of the garrison centres, whichdeveloped later into big towns such as Kursk, Orel, orVoronezh, were minutely planned on almost identicallines by the central authorities. They multiplied instructionson the construction and maintenance ofdefence lines (abattis in the woodlands, earth and woodedstockades in the open country studded with redoubtsand forts); on the patrol system; on how to act duringTatar raids; on the privileges and obligations of new44