Runaway Serfs in 17th-Century Estland and Livland

ABSTRACT

Adscripti glebae is a condition where peasants legally belong to a particular landholding. Its purpose was to maintain a stable labour force at the disposal of the landholder. Peasants who did not abide by this immobility requirement were termed runaways. Runaways have been episodically mentioned in medieval and early modern social history, particularly in demographic history, urban history, and histories of serfdom. Yet they have rarely been the central focus of historical studies. This paper examines the runaway on the background of the particular conditions of serfdom in the provinces of Estland and Livland. The paper describes how serfdom was practiced in these provinces, proceeds to peasant agency by considering the numerous diverse reasons for running away and outlines the reasoning behind the efforts of both nobility and government aimed at maintaining the status quo. The court records of a few extradition cases are highlighted to illustrate aspects of the issue of keeping serfs bound to the land.

KEYWORDS:

• serfdom
• adscripti glebae
• runaway serfs
• 17th-century Sweden
• Estland
• Livland

Introduction

The way coercion in its varying degrees and manifestations has historically affected the (im)mobility of the labour force is a topic of ongoing historical interest. A monumental testament to the continuing topicality of the mobility of labourers in contemporary historical research is the multivolume Cambridge World History of Slavery, the most recent volume of which was published in 2021.¹

Labour relations were in a continuous process of evolution in early modern Europe, proceeding divergently in various regions of the continent. The current paper focuses on the geographical region that corresponds roughly to the territory of present-day Estonia.² By the 17^th century, the manorial system was firmly established in Sweden’s provinces of Estland and Livland, with the institution of serfdom as its foundation. The variant of serfdom in effect in these provinces was viewed at the time as one of the harshest in all of Central and Eastern Europe. One of its key features was adscripti glebae, the binding of the peasants to the land. Any serf who left his allotted place of residence without the explicit permission of his manor lord was classified as a runaway and was subject to extradition and punishment.

The runaway serf is rarely the central research topic in historical literature.³ By and large, they are mentioned as one aspect of a broader topic. Runaway serfs appear in works on medieval and early modern social history, including urban, demographic, and labour history, as well as histories of serfdom. Such studies often highlight the medieval precept that town air makes runaways free, i.e. if a runaway peasant managed to live in a town for a year and a day, the peasant would be freed from all obligations to the peasant’s master.⁴ Runaway serfs also figure in research on the evolving concept of vagrancy and the establishment of vagrancy laws. Such studies place runaways in the same category with casual labourers, farm hands, servants, and other landless folk.⁵

The early modern Estonian peasantry is the subject of considerable historical research. Here as well, the runaway Estonian serf is for the most part mentioned episodically in other contexts. Heldur Palli touches on runaway serfs in his works on Estonian demographic history,⁶ and also in his book on the Great Northern War in the context of peasant resistance directed against their manor lords.⁷ Elina Öpik occasionally mentions runaway serfs in relation to feudal exploitation.⁸ In his study of the legal system in early modern Livland, Heikki Pihlajamäki mentions a couple of runaway serf extradition court cases in his classification of civil and criminal cases in Livonian courts.⁹ Otto Liiv considers runaways in relation to famine in his work on the Great Famine of 1695–1697.¹⁰ Famine is also the context in which Marten Seppel mentions runaway serfs in his doctoral dissertation.¹¹ They are mentioned in passing in two of his articles as well.¹² Yet Seppel is also the author of one of only two known articles by Estonian historians that focus on runaway serfs.¹³ Here he examines the question of the peasants of Livland under Swedish rule in a state of adscripti glebae. His article considers runaways from one manor to another, from manor to town, and across the provincial border into neighbouring territories.¹⁴

The current paper probes the phenomenon of runaway serfs in 17^th-century Estland and Livland, and consists of three sections. The first describes the variant of serfdom that was in effect in 17^th-century Estland and Livland. Its central pillar was adscripti glebae, which is considered in detail. The second section considers running away as a manifestation of peasant agency, illustrated by a few sample cases drawn from archival court records on disputes regarding runaway peasants. Here the numerous reasons that peasants had for running away are examined, along with the ensuing consequences. The third section outlines the reasoning behind the efforts of both the nobility and the government to preserve the status quo: economic considerations, the nobility’s wish to preserve its rights and privileges, and the doctrine that only the maintenance of the established social order could guarantee law and order.

The research method for this paper is the critical analysis of relevant historical literature and archival sources. Wherever possible, archival sources are searched for evidence on whether and to what degree normative documents were actually implemented in real life.

Serfdom in Estland and Livland

The practical manifestation of serfdom in terms of the rights of overlords and the duties of serfs has varied over time and from place to place.¹⁵ Hence there is no consensus on a definition of serfdom. The most common German term for it is Leibeigenschaft, which indicates ownership of the serf’s body. In the broadest sense, the term ‘serfdom’ has two implications: (1) persons known as ‘serfs’ are of unfree status, and (2) certain persons (or institutions) have certain rights over persons known as ‘serfs’.¹⁶ According to Markus Cerman,

the distinctive feature of serfdom was a personal bondage between the serf and his overlord in addition to their tenurial relationship. In this respect, an overlord often united powers of lordship over the land tenure (landlordship) with those of lordship over jurisdiction (jurisdictional lordship, aspects of banal lordship) and personal lordship.¹⁷

Cerman lists serfdom’s key characteristics: compulsory employment of young adults in agricultural service on demesne farms, labour rents and corvée, lack of secure property rights, and restriction of mobility.¹⁸

According to historical literature, Estland and Livland had earned a reputation among contemporaries from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries as a region of Eastern Europe with one of the harshest forms of serfdom.¹⁹ Relations between peasants and manor lords were not regulated. Consequently, manor lords were free to demand heavy labour dues, which they could arbitrarily increase whenever they pleased. Livonian serfdom was paternalistic. Serfs were treated like children in need of constant supervision, guidance, and chastisement. Pervasive and often excessive corporal punishment was integral to rearing obedient peasants. Flogging was considered normal and altogether indispensable for harmonious relations between the manor lord and his peasants.²⁰ Serfdom in the ‘Livonian manner’ (livländskt sätt or maner in Swedish) became a known expression meaning particularly strict, cruel, and arbitrary treatment of peasants. The expression was in widespread use in 17^th-century Finland, Ingria, and Sweden as a threat implying intimidation.²¹ A parallel term was simply ‘Livonian serfdom’ (Lieffländischen Leibeigenschafft). Peasants subject to it were ‘Livonian serfs’. Governmental authorities made a very clear distinction between the local ‘Livonian serfs’ and Sweden’s other subjects of Swedish and German origin in these provinces.²²

In the context of the Swedish Empire, peasants in Sweden and Finland were personally free and hence not subject to serfdom, unlike their counterparts on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. However, numerous tenant peasants in both Sweden and Finland were required to perform labour service for their noble landlords as a form of tax/rent. The amount of such labour service could in some situations be quite heavy, even on a par with Estonian serfs.²³ Numerous manorial estates in Finland had been enfeoffed to Baltic Garman nobles, who tended to treat their Finnish peasants as if they were serfs in terms of demanding labour service.²⁴ Swedish and Finnish tenant peasants could therefore potentially have to work for their landlords just as hard as Estonian serfs. Crofters in Sweden and Finland could also be subject to corporal punishment.²⁵

The provincial nobility claimed three rights over peasants under their jurisdiction: the manor lord’s ownership of the peasants, the right to keep peasants in their places of residence (preventing free movement), and the right to apply Hauszuchtrecht (domestic discipline).²⁶ These three rights define Livonian serfdom as the nobles of that time understood it. Another definition is notable because it was formulated by a contemporary Swedish government official, namely Jacob Johann Hastfer, Governor-General of Livland from 1687 to 1695 (Governor of Livland 1686–1687). He sent a letter to King Charles XI in 1694 in response to the king’s request asking Hastfer to investigate a supplication that peasants belonging to a privately-owned manor had submitted to the king. Hastfer wrote that he had no jurisdiction for processing that peasant complaint because Livland’s nobles retained their hereditary privileges, which gave them total power and control over their peasants as serfs. Nobles could pawn, sell, and exchange their serfs however they pleased, or give them away as gifts, together with their wives and children and all the possessions of the serf family. Nobles could grant serfs permission to use land belonging to the noble, and nobles could withdraw such permission at their own discretion. Nobles could manage and dispose of their serfs in any way they chose, apart from criminal cases, which were under the jurisdiction of the royal court.²⁷ This contemporary description of Livonian serfdom was not an explicit, official endorsement of serfdom, but rather the governor-general’s acknowledgement of the prevailing situation, implying acceptance of the status quo.

Adscripti glebae

The problem of securing sufficient manpower for working the manor’s demesne lands was common to all regions of early modern Central and Eastern Europe with economies firmly rooted in the manorial system. The overwhelming majority of such regions lay east of the Elbe River. The economic capacity of each manor depended primarily on the availability of land and manpower. The available supply of manpower could prove to be unstable. In her supplication demanding the return of a runaway serf to her manorial estate, Dorothea Treiden, the proprietor of a hereditary estate (Erbgut) in Livland, stated the case with the words ‘ein Gut ohne Pauren ist kein Gut’ (an estate without peasants is not an estate).²⁸ Hence, securing a stable and reliable labour force was a priority for manor lords. Binding the serfs to the land was seen as the answer to this problem. Adscripti glebae was therefore a foundational principle and a characteristic element of Livonian serfdom.

Based on practices that had taken shape by the 17^th century, adscripti glebae can be defined as a condition where peasants legally belong to a particular landholding. The proprietor of a landholding has the right to demand the return of any peasant from that landholding who has gone to live somewhere else without the proprietor’s prior consent.²⁹ Serfs were considered to be property and were treated as such. Yet they were not the personal property of their manor lords. They belonged to their landlord only by way of their landlord’s right to the land to which the serfs were bound.³⁰ The Great Reduction that was implemented throughout the Swedish realm in the 1680s corroborates this fact.³¹ Over time, the vast majority of agricultural land that originally belonged to the crown had passed into the hands of nobles. This gradual privatization process ended up depriving the crown of the revenues deriving directly from the agricultural produce of those lands. The crown additionally lost administrative control over those lands, meaning that the crown could not enact any social or administrative reforms in lands held privately by nobles. The Great Reduction reclaimed those landholdings for the crown together with their revenues. The former landlords of privately-run manorial estates did not retain any ownership rights over the peasants of those estates after the estates reverted to the crown. The peasants belonged to the estate and when the estate was returned to the direct jurisdiction of the crown, those peasants then belonged to the crown by way of the land that had become crown property.³²

Running away as peasant agency

The preceding discussion of adscripti glebae establishes that serfdom was an immobilizing institution in these provinces. Very few permissible options existed for serfs to depart of their own free will and settle down elsewhere. Emancipation was one such possibility. On rare occasions, the manor lord would issue a letter of emancipation (Freybrieff) to a serf as an act of magnanimity in recognition of some sort of exceptional service rendered by the serf.³³ Another possibility was open only to women. A female serf could marry a male serf from another manorial estate and in this way move to that other estate. Manor lords in Livland did not have the right to demand the return of such female serfs. As a general principle, a woman belonged to the same manor to which her husband belonged.³⁴

Male serfs had in practice no other choice but to break the law and run away if they wanted to live somewhere else. Runaways could become legally accepted members of their new community through praescriptio (the principle of prescription, die Verjährung in German), a statute of limitations whereby a manor lord’s right to demand the return of his runaway serf would expire after the passing of a certain amount of time.³⁵ The period could range from ten to thirty years in cases where a peasant had settled down on a farm that belonged to another manor. Livland’s police ordinance of 1668 set ten years as the limitation period.³⁶ If a manor lord took no action over the course of ten years to secure the return of his runaway serf, he would thereafter lose his right to that serf. The sixth section of this ordinance is on the extradition of runaways. It lists exemplary cases in which an agreement had to be reached regarding where the runaway serf in question belonged. As a royal commission that convened in 1694 at a conference in Riga put it, this section of the ordinance was meant to assist local judges in reaching a verdict in the event that two Livlanders disagreed about where a particular serf belonged.³⁷

Praescriptio also applied to runaways in towns. The limitation period had been a year and a day in the Middle Ages. In the 17^th century, the privilege of praescriptio biennalis applied in Tartu and Riga, among other towns in the provinces, meaning that the limitation period was increased to two years. The Swedish crown affirmed this privilege for Tartu in 1645 after the establishment of Swedish rule in the town.³⁸ However, the town and the nobility interpreted praescriptio biennalis differently. The nobility accused the town of treating those two years merely as the time interval during which the runaway had dwelled in the town. The nobles argued that the runaway’s hereditary lord had to be aware for the entire two-year period that his serf was living in town. If in full awareness of the peasant’s absence the manor lord did not take any steps during those two years to secure the return of his serf, only then would his right to the serf expire. The period of time during which a peasant lived in a town would not count towards that two-year time limit if his lord was unaware of that fact.³⁹

The fact that serfs were the property of manorial estates gave manor lords the unequivocal right to have their runaway serfs returned to their estate. If the extradition demand was uncontested, the return of the runaway came as a matter of course. In the event of disagreement, the disputing manor lords would take the matter to court arbitration.⁴⁰ Runaway extradition cases were purely property ownership disputes. They were generally conducted by way of correspondence between the court and the disputing parties, which often dragged on for years.

Regardless of the general acceptance of the extradition of runaways, surviving archival court records indicate that extradition demands were still contested on numerous occasions.⁴¹ Cases from the 1680s and 1690s indicate that tenant managers of crown manors and lords of privately owned manors alike sought the return of runaways, implying that crown peasants were not treated any differently in terms of adscripti glebae.⁴² The following examples of court records on the extradition of runaway serfs illustrate some aspects of contested extradition processes.

In a case conducted by way of correspondence in 1651–1652, Bernhard Taube, the lord of the privately owned Maydel Manor, demanded that Tois Manor extradite Leppeke Jahn and his son Simon, two runaway serfs from Maydel. The city of Reval was the proprietor of Tois Manor at that time. In his account written from Reval’s point of view, the Burgomaster of Reval explained that Leppeke Jahn went to the city to speak with Reval’s inspector of Tois Manor. He presented himself as a peasant who was born in one of the hamlets belonging to Tois Manor. Jahn reportedly claimed that his father still lived in that same hamlet. There is no testimony from either of the runaways in the court records for this case. There is also no definitive court decision. The last document in this file is a summary of the case written by the Burgomaster. At the end of the document, he invites Bernhard Taube to meet for a ‘mündlich Conferentz’ (oral discussion), indicative of the wish to abandon the correspondence, which had not led to a solution, and settle the matter conclusively by meeting face to face.⁴³

In a case from 1690, Otto Magnus von Essen, the tenant manager of Orgesall Manor, which had previously belonged to von Essen and had reverted to the crown in 1686, took two runaways, Rahiker Matz and Pallias Maddis, to court. These two runaway serfs were named as defendants, which was relatively uncommon at that time. This archival file contains only the two-page summary of charges written by von Essen himself. He claims that the serfs had run away for no reason whatsoever and demands that they be punished with a flogging.⁴⁴ The runaways presumably had a reason for running away but the surviving court record makes no effort to identify it. The file on this case is evidently incomplete and contains no information on how the case was ultimately resolved. If the case was processed to its completion, there would have had to be some sort of response from the named peasant defendants. It is possible that the plaintiff dropped the case, or that it was settled out of court.

A runaway extradition case from February of 1641 refers to an assize that was held at Fellin Manor in Viljandi County, Livland. This case is exceptional since it was far more common for extradition cases to be conducted by way of correspondence. A manor lord named Wilibald von Bergen travelled to the assize and brought his serf, named Mönnicke Michel, along with him to provide testimony. The lord of another manor, namely Karkus Manor, claimed that the serf Michel was a runaway from his manor and demanded his extradition.⁴⁵ The court ruled against the extradition demand and allowed von Bergen to keep the serf at his manorial estate. It is uncertain whether bringing the serf to the assize had any effect since the court record does not include a transcription of what Michel actually said.

Why did some serfs decide to break the law by running away? The historical literature has tended to focus primarily on flight as fight, with resistance against exploitation by the manor presented as the overriding motive.⁴⁶ Flight is one of the more daring manifestations of what James C. Scott refers to as weapons of the weak, entailing considerably greater risk than more restrained means of passive resistance such as foot-dragging, evasion, pilfering, feigned ignorance, etc.⁴⁷ Estonian historiography similarly views running away mainly as a long-established form of peasant self-defence.⁴⁸ Numerous peasant supplications from throughout the era of Swedish rule contain veiled threats to run away, always formulated in the exceedingly obsequious, deferential language typical of peasant supplications.⁴⁹ Peasants would, for example, claim that they could not survive the existing situation if their request was not met, leaving them with no other option but to run away.⁵⁰ Several 17^th-century sources corroborate the assessment of running away as resistance, indicating that serfs ran away as a direct result of hikes in rents and/or labour dues, or to escape persecution, harsh treatment, and abuse inflicted on them by the manor lord.⁵¹ Peasants were aware of the leverage that the possibility of running away gave them in their relations with the manors.⁵² It was prudent for manor lords to bear this in mind and exercise some measure of restraint in exploiting their peasants.

Peasants in Ingria similarly used the threat of running away to their advantage. It was a key factor in preventing landowners from binding the peasants to the land in the same way as Estonian peasants in Estland and Livland.⁵³ Tenant peasants in Sweden and Finland could similarly use the threat of running away as leverage to prevent noble landlords from demanding excessive labour service as tax/rent. Peasants in Finland used this threat, along with actual desertion, to avoid conscription into military service.⁵⁴

While resistance and escaping abuse were important motivations for running away, they were not the only factors. Numerous other reasons had nothing to do with relations between peasants and manor lords. Warfare, epidemics, and famine were very important reasons for running away. Any combination of these three generally created chaotic conditions, threatening the security and the very lives of peasant families. The particularities of warfare in that era meant that civilians were rarely caught up in full-scale battles, yet peasants living in areas within the theatre of war were exposed to numerous threats. Peasant households were subject to looting by marauding troops from both sides. Livestock and food reserves were common targets as armies lived off the land. Another burden was the billeting of troops on farm households. Peasants were obliged to feed the troops billeted at their farmsteads. In volatile wartime situations, soldiers not infrequently committed acts of violence against peasants. Hence peasants had every reason to run away whenever possible ahead of advancing armies.

Peasants also tried to escape outbreaks of lethal epidemics, such as the plague and smallpox, by running away when cases of infection started appearing in their localities. When crops failed and famine ensued, starving peasants would run away to less seriously affected regions in search of food. When the food crisis abated, runaways often decided against returning to their former farmsteads, especially if the soil in their new environs was more fertile. Famine often went hand in hand with epidemics, sometimes with the additional affliction of war. It was a challenge for manor lords as well to cope with the chaotic conditions that generally prevailed in such times. They would not necessarily have any clear idea of how many peasants had perished, how many had run away, and how many remained. It could take years for conditions to stabilize and allow manor lords to take stock of their serf population. The Great Famine of 1695–1697 was just such a chaotic period when large numbers of peasants ran away. The situation became so serious that in October of 1696, Erik Dahlberg, the Governor-General of Livland, informed Charles XI that, if no extraordinary measures were implemented, the high mortality rate due to starvation, and the torrent of peasants running away to Russia, Polish Livland, Courland, and Lithuania would cause irreversible economic damage to Livland.⁵⁵ On 27 November 1696, Dahlberg issued an ordinance aimed at forcing crown manors to take measures to stem the tide of runaway serfs.⁵⁶ Running away remained a serious problem throughout the famine and beyond, prompting Dahlberg to issue a further ordinance on 2 July 1697 forbidding serfs to flee from one manorial estate to another, while admonishing manor lords not to accept runaways and to fully cooperate in extraditing them.⁵⁷

Even when there was no war, epidemic, or famine, peasants could still run away, and their absence could go undetected for years. Manors were the administrative centres of quite large territories that could cover several hundred square kilometres. Alongside the core of the manor and its surrounding demesne lands, large tracts of agricultural land, with numerous villages and hamlets, were at the disposal of peasants. Manor lords generally did not have the administrative apparatus needed to keep a close eye on everyone in all parts of the manorial estate. The local population was in constant flux. Death from ‘ordinary’ endemic illness was a constant fact of life. Peasants switched from one farmstead to another as proprietors passed away or became otherwise incapacitated. The manor itself also moved peasant families around in a continuous effort to keep as much arable land as possible under cultivation by competent peasants. When a farmstead became vacant, it was not necessarily immediately apparent whether a family had run away or had simply relocated to another farmstead in the same manorial estate, or indeed if the inhabitants had died of illness.

Peasants also ran away to escape impending punishment for crimes they had committed, such as theft or even murder. A case from 1638 concerns a peasant in his early twenties who had been married to two women at the same time. Fearing punishment for bigamy, the young man ran away.⁵⁸ In sum, peasants could opt to run away for many personal reasons, including to escape personal and social problems.

Life in hamlets situated near major transportation routes could often be particularly taxing because peasants living in such locations were subject to additional transportation obligations. They were required to provide haulage services more frequently than peasants living farther from transportation routes. Manor lords could similarly require those peasants to provide postal couriers with horses. Even worse, when troops were being transferred from one place to another in peacetime, the authorities would billet them on peasant households along the route when the army was on the march. Those peasants might at the same time also have to provide the army with haulage services. Peasants naturally wanted to live in places where they would be less subjected to such additional burdens. Running away was a means of escape.

Another set of reasons for running away had to do with improving one’s lot in life. Soil quality, for instance, loomed large in the peasant’s ability to make ends meet. Hence, poor quality soil was another reason for running away if the peasant was able to find a more advantageous situation with better quality soil. The opportunity to get a better deal from another manor regarding labour dues and tenurial rental rates similarly tempted peasants to run away. Manor lords in the process of converting new tracts of virgin soil into agricultural land conducted campaigns to attract peasants to populate those lands. Such campaigns involved incentives and concessions, like offering relocating peasants a certain number of tax-free years, during which they would not have to pay tenurial rent or render labour dues. Such offers doubtlessly induced numerous peasants to run away.⁵⁹

The case for preserving adscripti glebae

Economic/financial considerations

When a serf ran away, the manor lord lost more than just the serf’s tenurial rents and labour dues. The manor lord was responsible for ensuring the payment of all state taxes on behalf of his peasants, the most important of these being the Station. This was an accommodation tax meant to provide for the upkeep and accommodation of Swedish garrisons in Livland. The king decreed that Estland and Livland themselves were to pay for the Swedish troops stationed in those provinces in peacetime. The Station was the cornerstone of this policy in Livland.⁶⁰ It was assessed as a fixed quantity of grain and hay that was to be collected in kind from each ploughland of cultivated land.⁶¹ The peasants bore the burden of this tax, and it was the responsibility of the lord of the manor to collect the Station from its serfs and forward it to the state authorities.⁶² Ploughland audits were periodically conducted in the provinces to match the number of peasants to the number of ploughlands. The required amount of the Station was calculated according to the most recent ploughland audit. As a rule, it was not recalculated between audits. When serfs ran away, the manor lord remained on the hook for paying the share of the Station that the missing peasants would have been responsible for. If a manor lost a significant number of runaway serfs between audits this could lead to financial difficulties, especially for relatively small manors. The manor lord would have to compensate for the shortfall out of his own pocket. He could possibly distribute the share of the tax that the missing serfs should have paid among the remaining peasants, increasing each peasant’s share proportionally. But this would be an unwelcome additional burden on the remaining serfs and could exacerbate discontent. Moreover, such a redistribution of the Station obligation could only be a temporary measure at best. It was in the manor lord’s financial interest to secure the return of the runaway serf or find a replacement as quickly as possible.

Conversely, landowners would stand to benefit if new peasants settled on their lands. In this case a landowner would have more peasants than were recorded in the previous ploughland audit. Ultimately, the Station amount for the manor as a whole would have to increase but this would take effect only after the next ploughland audit. In the meantime, the manor enjoyed what could be considered a discount on the Station.

Maintenance of law and order through preservation of the nobility’s rights and privileges

Starting in the 1680s, after Charles XI had established himself as Sweden’s absolute monarch, Livland’s Ritterschaft⁶³ felt all the more need to argue in favour of maintaining the status quo. It claimed that this would be in everyone’s best interests, including those of the peasants themselves. On 27 April 1681, the king presented a proposition to the Livonian Diet (Livländische Landtag) that called for granting personal emancipation to crown peasants.⁶⁴ Charles XI hoped that Livland’s Ritterschaft would follow the crown’s example by emancipating the peasants of privately owned manors. He stated in his proposal that serfdom contravened good Christian morals and customs. The king pointed out that serfs could not develop a sense of ownership since they were barred from owning land. This was a serious impediment to the prudent management of peasant farmsteads since it fostered indifference on the part of the serfs who worked the land. Finally, the continuation of serfdom would hamper efforts to attract new settlers to the countryside since the prospect of moving to an area where serfdom was in effect was unattractive.⁶⁵ Stellan Dahlgren has shown that Charles XI adhered to early cameralist principles in his approach to absolutist governance.⁶⁶ Cameralist theory held that population growth was imperative for increasing the wealth, prosperity, and welfare of the country as a whole. In order to increase Livland’s population, new settlers would have to be attracted to settle there. The king rightly saw serfdom as an impediment. Cameralist ideas can be seen as the inspiration for his proposition.⁶⁷

The Livonian Ritterschaft’s written response to the royal proposition aimed to forestall the king’s attempts to alter the status quo, arguing that peasants did not want any improvement in their condition or status. The Ritterschaft wrote in its response that when Livland was under Polish rule, King Stefan Bathory had tried to improve the peasantry’s lot in life, but they had vigorously resisted every such effort. The king wished to replace corporal punishment for minor offences with fines. The peasants, however, allegedly feared that such reform would reduce them to poverty. Hence, they had preferred to redeem their offences with their own hides instead of money, whereupon King Bathory had uttered ‘Phryges non nisi plagis emendantur’ (‘The Phrygians can only be ruled by physical force’.).⁶⁸ The peasants were further characterized as being malicious by nature (bosshafte Natur). They could not be trusted and would use every opportunity to cause mischief. Their contempt for their masters was congenital. If the peasants were to be emancipated, their newfound freedom would impel them to violence and crime. As free peasants, they would try to destroy their former masters, and unleash a wave of bloodshed. The Ritterschaft claimed that there was a long history of peasant violence. The nobility predicted that emancipated peasants would constantly switch from one manor lord to another. Conflict, unrest, and catastrophe would become a permanent state of affairs. Moreover, peasants would constantly litigate against their manor lords. Free peasants would leave the land to seek their fortunes elsewhere. As a result, the countryside would be depopulated and there would be nobody left to till the land, leading to economic ruin. The Ritterschaft reproachfully pointed out that the nobility no longer had jurisdiction over the peasants in criminal cases, leaving them only with the ownership of their serfs and the right to exercise domestic discipline to keep them in check. For all the above reasons, the Ritterschaft petitioned the crown to leave Livland’s peasants as they were.⁶⁹

Sweden’s high nobility cannot be ignored regarding the ongoing negotiations between the king and the provincial landed nobility. Fiefs covering slightly over half of all agricultural land in Livland had been enfeoffed to members of Sweden’s high nobility for the services they had rendered in the war against Poland. Livland became a province of Sweden as a direct consequence of that war. Two thirds of the starostwo (administrative district) of Tartu was in the hands of high-ranking Swedish nobles. The entire Diocese of Võnnu (Cesis) was enfeoffed to Sweden’s High Lord Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna in August of 1622.⁷⁰ Three-quarters of the island of Hiiumaa was enfeoffed to Sweden’s Lord High Constable Jakob De la Gardie in 1624. Svante, Johan, Per, and Axel Banér, Gustav Horn, Nils Stiernsköld, Måns Mårtensson Palm, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielm, Nils Brahe, and Herman Fleming are other members of Sweden’s high nobility who had gained large tracts of land in Livland through enfeoffment.⁷¹ They doubtlessly benefited from the maintenance of the status quo in the provinces, which they upheld during Sweden’s regency periods. We might assume that King Charles XI would have taken the sentiments of Sweden’s high nobility into consideration in conjunction with the debate on peasant emancipation in the provinces. Yet this is not quite the case. When Charles XI established himself as absolute monarch in 1680, he did so with the support of Sweden’s lesser nobles which broke the power of the high nobility.⁷² When the Great Reduction was implemented in the provinces, the king did not hesitate to move against the high nobles. All land that had been enfeoffed to them reverted to the crown, causing great economic difficulties for those high nobles. About 83% of all privately run manorial estates in Livland reverted to the crown in the course of the Great Reduction. The losses of Sweden’s high nobility were 100%. The provincial nobility lost slightly less than 70% of their estates, which was certainly a severe loss. Livland’s nobility nevertheless fared somewhat better than their counterparts in Sweden’s high nobility.⁷³ In brief, the sentiments and opinions of Sweden’s high nobility regarding peasant emancipation in the provinces, and indeed regarding the Great Reduction, had little impact on the king’s decisions.

Charles XI reiterated his position on serfdom in Livland in a letter that he sent a few months later to Robert Lichton, the Governor of Estland, who was serving simultaneously as head of the commission to oversee the implementation of the Great Reduction in Livland. The king declared his intention to liberate crown peasants from what he referred to as slavery despite the nobility’s arguments against it.⁷⁴ The historians Aleksander Loit and Kalle Kroon rely primarily on this letter and the king’s proposition to the Landtag when they claim that the emancipation of Livland’s crown peasants was an accomplished fact.⁷⁵ Hendrik Sepp stops short of drawing such a sweeping conclusion, yet is convinced that Charles XI fully intended to pursue the path of peasant emancipation, including the serfs of privately owned manors. In Sepp’s opinion, it was only the king’s untimely death that derailed this plan.⁷⁶ Marten Seppel disputes these claims, arguing that the king never actually intended to abolish serfdom in these provinces, but only to better regulate relations between crown peasants and manor lords by eliminating excesses and giving peasants the right to take their complaints to court.⁷⁷

After the Livonian Ritterschaft had rejected the king’s proposition from April of 1681, the crown abandoned its plan to implement the proposition on crown manors. The practical imperative to keep the labour force intact on crown manors discouraged Charles XI from doing away with adscripti glebae. At very least, the nobility’s predictions of economic ruin and violent social upheaval probably planted the seeds of uncertainty that undermined the king’s resolve. For all the king’s good intentions and concern for peasant welfare, practical considerations stood in his way. Each privately run manorial estate was like a state within a state. The king had no authority to impose his will on such private property. Even if he were to implement emancipation on crown manors, he could not do the same regarding privately-run manors. A situation where crown peasants would be personally free legal subjects while their neighbours on private manorial estates remained serfs would have been impracticable. The king would have needed the manor lords of privately-run manors to voluntarily emancipate their serfs in tandem with the emancipation of crown serfs. Such voluntary cooperation was not likely to be forthcoming from the lords of private manors. By the time Charles XI wrote to the manor reduction commission for Estland in 1687, his rhetoric had changed. He no longer talked of doing away with ‘wretched slavery’, but instead affirmed that adscripti glebae remained in effect on crown manors. Discipline still had to be maintained to preserve social control and uphold law and order. Hence the king affirmed that the tenant managers of crown manors retained the right to administer Hauszuchtrecht. At the same time, he urged them to exercise moderation and to treat the peasants with charity as fellow Christians. Peasant obligations were to be regulated fairly and no excessive exploitation was allowed.⁷⁸

Conclusion

Livonian serfdom gave the nobility three rights over their peasants: the right of ownership of the peasants; the right to restrict the mobility of their peasants, binding them to the land; and the right to administer domestic discipline in the form of corporal punishment. The state of being bound to the land, known as adscripti glebae, which prevented peasants from changing their place of residence of their own free will, was a central feature of Livonian serfdom. Manor lords stubbornly clung to these rights since they believed that they represented the only conceivable means for keeping each manor’s labour force intact. Keeping serfs in one place, however, was easier said than done. There was constant turnover in the occupancy of peasant farmsteads due to the relatively high mortality rates of that period, and the common practice of relocating peasant families from one farmstead to another to keep as much of the manorial estate’s farmland under cultivation as possible. Such factors created favourable conditions for running away and avoiding detection for sometimes lengthy periods. While its effectiveness as a deterrent for preventing peasants from running away was questionable, adscripti glebae at the very least provided manor lords with a legal basis for chasing down and getting back their runaway serfs.

Statutes of limitation applied to manor lords who tried to exercise their right to demand the return of runaway serfs. If the time limit expired before the manor lord took steps for the extradition of his runaway, the serf would no longer have any obligations towards his old master. Such statutes of limitation functioned as a mechanism, albeit a risky one, for peasants to move and settle down elsewhere. This raises the question of what would lead serfs to risk reprisals and punishment by running away. It is not surprising that peasant resistance to persecution, mistreatment, and abuse would provoke some to run away. Much scholarship proceeds from the implicit assumption that this was far and away the most important reason for running away. Heavy tax/rent and labour service burdens were another key motivation for running away. Both of these issues were rooted in relations between manor lords and peasants. However, as this article has shown, a number of other reasons, which were not connected to peasant-manor lord relations, also figured prominently in the decision to abscond. The apocalyptic triad of war, famine, and lethal epidemics, operating separately or in combination, had little to do with peasant-manor lord relations and yet drove many peasants to take to the road in desperate attempts to save themselves and their families. Disadvantageous locations were another significant reason for running away. Locations with poor quality soil, or near major roads, with the accompanying burden of having to more frequently billet soldiers on the march or provide relay horses for postal couriers, or indeed to be assigned haulage obligations by the manor lord, often drove peasants to try to move to a more advantageous location. Finally, the personal problems of serfs also figured in decisions to run away.

Charles XI wished to implement cameralist ideas and recognized that serfdom was an impediment to that aspiration. This prompted visions of emancipating the serfs in these provinces and abolishing adscripti glebae, at least on crown manors. Such a course of action would also have fit in well with the idea of promoting Christian morals. However, in its ongoing quest to preserve its rights and privileges, the provincial nobility painted a frightening picture of the potential social consequences of serf emancipation. The nobility additionally predicted that emancipation would destroy the foundations of provincial agriculture and thus cause economic ruin. These arguments appear to have created sufficient uncertainty to persuade the crown to leave serfdom intact. Thus, adscripti glebae remained in effect for all peasants for the entire period of Swedish rule in these provinces, which ended in 1710 when Russia captured them in the Great Northern War. Peasants would remain bound to the land under Russian rule until peasant emancipation in the 19^th century.

Peasants expressed their complaints and discontent in supplications that they submitted, with the help of scribes, to the provincial authorities, and sometimes to the king himself. Peasant complaints and requests for improvements in living and working conditions, and for protection from the harsh treatment of manor lords, were always expressed in the excessively deferential language that was characteristic of the supplications of that time. Such supplications often included the threat that the supplicants would run away if their requests were not met. Running away was presented as a last resort. Peasants complained that they would have no other choice but to run away because they characterized their situation as unbearable.

The extradition of runaway serfs was a question of property ownership. The serfs themselves were the property in dispute and they were not legal subjects. Consequently, they had no say in the matter. Court records of runaway extradition cases bear this out. The court acted as arbitrator and the process generally proceeded by way of correspondence. The litigants focused on proving their right to the runaway serf. The runaway’s true motivations were of little consequence and hence did not merit efforts to ascertain them. On the other hand, those motivations could still filter through in these court records when read critically and against the grain.

The immobility of serfs in Estland and Livland merits continued study to deepen our understanding of its broader economic and social implications. This article has taken some initial steps towards that objective. Historical records clearly demonstrate that there was mutual antagonism between peasants and manor lords arising from preconceptions and stereotypes on both sides. This aspect of peasant-manor lord relations provides grounds for interpreting the flight of serfs as fight. Yet the assumption that the vast majority of instances of flight are indeed cases of serfs fighting back reduces these relations to the oversimplified social model of class struggle. There was never any single monolithic nobility. Nobilities were instead stratified into higher nobles and lesser nobles. The higher nobles did not consider lesser nobles to be their equals and so did not necessarily identify with them as a unified nobility class. The peasantry was also stratified. There were peasants who were entrusted to head farmsteads. They hired other peasants to work for them as farm hands. In the broad picture, they were all serfs, but peasants who headed farmsteads did not consider their farm hands to be their equals and, for instance, would not have married their daughters off to mere farm hands. They did not see their farm hands as their peasant brethren in the struggle against their common foe, the villainous manor lord, who was not always seen by peasants as being a foe or being villainous. When discussing nobles and serfs, historians ought to make the effort to bear such stratifications in mind and strive to avoid the trap of oversimplification.

This article has drawn attention to the circumstance that peasants generally did not protest in their supplications against the injustice inherent in the system in a class-conscious manner, seeking justice for the wider collective of peasants. Peasant supplications instead prevailingly conveyed very specific, individual complaints. The decision to run away was similarly motivated by individual concerns, many of which are not connected to peasant-manor lord relations. In the historical study of individual cases of runaway serfs, awareness of the broad spectrum of motivations for running away, combined with a more specific assessment of the relative social status of the particular peasants under consideration, would contribute to a more nuanced approach.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nils Erik Villstrand for his insightful remarks on this paper and his suggestions for its improvement. I am similarly grateful to Marten Seppel and Enn Küng for their helpfulness and patience in responding to questions on the topics of this paper. I also thank my colleagues and co-authors of this special issue for their input and comments from our joint writing workshops. Finally, I thank the peer reviewers of this article for their constructive feedback and suggestions, which have helped me to significantly improve the article.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peeter Tammisto

Peeter Tammisto is a junior research fellow at the University of Tartu Institute of History and Archaeology, Tartu, Estonia. He is also a member of the Age of Sweden doctoral network at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. He has been active in the COST Action project Worlds of Related Coercions in Work (WORCK) since 2019 and is a member of its Managing Committee representing Estonia. His focus is on early modern European history. He is particularly interested in the history of political communication and political culture, confessionalisation, social and church discipline, and various aspects of cultural history. Address: Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. [e-mail: [email protected]]

Notes

1. Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2.

2. The southern boundary of the medieval dioceses of Tallinn and Saare-Lääne evolved into the southern border of the northern part of present-day Estonia. In early modern times, this region became a separate province that bore the name of Estland. The region south of this administrative border became the province of Livland. It consisted of the southern part of present-day Estonia and the northern part of present-day Latvia.

3. The topic of A Global History of Runaways is early modern runaways in general, admittedly including runaway serfs, but serfs are considered here in a relatively cursory fashion.

4. A few examples from this large segment of historical literature are: Le Goff and Rossiaud, “The City-Dweller and Life in Cities and Towns,” 138–79; Hodasz, Nowak, and Pritz, “The Overcoming of Prejudice in the Legal Order,” 375; Smelyansky, The Intolerant Middle Ages, 149–88.

5. Such issues are tied together in: Blum, End of the Old Order. Evolving concepts of vagrancy can be traced in: Nicholls, A History of the English Poor Law. Vagrancy was first mentioned in Livland as a cause for concern during the Great Famine of 1695–1697: Liiv, Suur näljaaeg Eestis 1695–1697, cit., no. 192.

6. Palli, Rahvuslikku kirjavara II.

7. Palli, Kui Raudpea läks.

8. Öpik, Eesti talurahva võitlus; Öpik, Talurahva mõisavastane võitlus.

9. Pihlajamäki, Conquest and the Law, 153–4.

10. Liiv, Suur näljaaeg Eestis 1695–1697.

11. Seppel, Näljaabi Liivi- ja Eestimaal.

12. Seppel, “Vägivalla piirid pärisorjuslikes suhetes,” 21; Seppel, “Paternalistliku pärisorjuse idee Baltikumis,” 35.

13. The other article focuses on runaway Estonian peasants from the 15^th–16^th centuries: Kruus, “Eesti talupoegade põgenemine kohtadelt”.

14. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus Liivimaal”.

15. Landsteiner, “Demesne Lordship and the Early Modern State,” 284.

16. Seppel, “Semiotics of Serfdom,” 49.

17. Cerman, Villagers and Lords, 11.

18. Ibid., 13.

19. Versions of serfdom in different regions of Europe are compared in numerous works, including the following: Kaak, Die Gutsherrschaft, 406; Lütge, Geschichte der deutschen Agrarverfassung, 126; Melton, ‘‘Gutsherrschaft in East Elbian Germany and Livonia,” 332; Seppel, “Semiotics of Serfdom,” 49; Stanziani, “Legal Status of Labour,” 375–6.

20. Seppel “Vägivalla piirid pärisorjuslikes suhetes,” 20–1.

21. A few works that highlight this expression as a euphemism for particularly harsh treatment: Hallenberg, “For the Wealth of the Realm,” 557; Kepsu, “The Unruly Buffer Zone,” 422; Kujala, The Crown, the Nobility and the Peasants 1630–1713, 107–8; Seppel, “Semiotics of Serfdom,” 51.

22. Seppel, “Semiotics of Serfdom,” 50–1.

23. Rahikainen, “Unfree labour by free peasants,” 125–6.

24. Ibid., 126–7.

25. See the article by Carolina Uppenberg in this special issue.

26. Die Recesse der livländischen Landtage, 30–1.

27. Riksarkivet (SRA, Swedish National Archives), Livonica II, vol. 92: Governor-General of Livland Jacob Johann Hastfer to King Charles XI, not dated, presumably from autumn of 1694.

28. Estonian National Archives History Archive, EAA 1.2.310, p. 310: Supplication to the Governor-General of Estland from Wilhelm Hanborn’s wife Dorothea Treiden vs. Johan Olofson, demanding the return of her runaway serf, not dated, probably from around 1625.

29. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 23.

30. Serfs could be sold apart from the land regardless of the fact that their manor lord did not personally own his serfs. There is no contradiction in this. The serfs were like trees growing on the land. When the land is sold, the trees growing on the land become the property of the new owner. The landowner can do whatever he pleases with the trees growing on his land. He can cut down some trees and sell them. Like trees, the serfs were bound to the land but could be sold separately from the land.

31. For a more in-depth description of the Great Reduction, see: Upton, Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, Chapter 4 “The Financial Reconstruction,” 51–70.

32. Seppel, “Semiotics of Serfdom,” 54.

33. Ibid., 50–1.

34. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 23–4; Lieffländische Lande-Ordnungen, 23–4, 687.

35. On the principle of prescription in medieval Europe, see: Brunner, “Luft macht frei,” 397; von Transehe-Roseneck, Gutsherr und Bauer, 74.

36. Lieffländische Lande-Ordnungen, 22.

37. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 28.

38. Treiberg, “Tartu linn Rootsi ajal,” 62–3.

39. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 37.

40. If the runaway had escaped to a town or a manorial estate belonging to a town, representatives of town councils, such as burgomasters, would be involved in the dispute.

41. The following archival files provide a sampling of such court records: EAA 2.2.147, EAA 2.2.157, EAA 2.2.186, EAA 858.2.3329, EAA 2.2.236, EAA 2.2.275, EAA 2.2.356, EAA 2.2.365, EAA 2.1.17, EAA 2.2.588.

42. The following files were reviewed: EAA 915.1.237, EAA 858.2.1042, EAA 2.2.895, EAA 2.2.1333, EAA 2.2.1517, EAA 2.2.1520, EAA 2.2.1572, EAA 2.1.17, EAA 2.2.1610, EAA 2.2.1811, EAA 2.2.1799, EAA 2.2.1842, EAA 2.2.1883.

43. Landrat und Oberst Berend Taube zu Maydel, Kirchspiel Jörden, Raplamaa contra den Rat der Stadt Reval als Besitzerin des Gutes Tois betreffend Auslieferung entlaufener Bauern: EAA 858.2.3329, pages not numbered.

44. Herr Mannrichter Otto Magnus von Essen vs. die Vormahls verlaufene Orgesallische Bauren Rahiker Matz und Pallias Maddis: EAA 2.2.986, pp. 1–1p.

45. Krausen vs. von Bergen: EAA 915.1.4, p. 18. See also: Pihlajamäki, Conquest and the Law, 153.

46. See the introduction to the collected work on a broad variety of early modern runaways in the Atlantic and South Asian regions: Lucassen and van Voss, “Introduction: Flight as Fight,” 1–21. For 18^th century Central Europe, see also: Klußmann, “Wo sie frey sein,” 121–2; Göttsch, ‘Alle für einen Mann … ’. Leibeigene und Widerständigkeit, 11–2, 33.

47. Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

48. Soom, Der Herrenhof in Estland, 221–2; Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 24. Marxist historiography adopted such interpretations as well and treated running away as an important manifestation of social (class) conflict. See Öpik, Talurahva mõisavastane võitlus, 30.

49. Peasants did not protest against serfdom itself or its particular features in their supplications. They did not complain about tenurial rents or labour dues as such. What they did complain about was sudden increases in those rents and dues that in the opinion of the peasants were unfounded and unjust. Similarly, they did not complain about being bound to the land and about not being allowed to settle down to live wherever they wished. See Seppel, “Talupoegade kaebekirjad ja kaebeõigus 17 sajandi Liivimaal,” 412. The extent to which running away is reflected in complaints from peasant supplications is limited to the threat of running away if their requests are not met.

50. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 24–5.

51. A noteworthy example of this is the large number of supplications that peasants of Põltsamaa Manor submitted concerning abuse in 1684: Liiv, “Eestimaa talunikkude palve- ja kaebekiri,” 159; Vasar, “Karl XI talupoegadekaitse,” 76–8. One of many examples from earlier in the century is found in: EAA 278.1.XVI:l, p. 51p.

52. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 25.

53. Kepsu, Den besvärliga provinsen, 133–63.

54. Villstrand, “Adaptation or protestation,” 294–5, 304–5.

55. Governor-General Dahlberg to Charles XI, 31 October 1696: EAA 278.1.IV:34:4.

56. Ordinance ‘Wegen des Mißwachses und der Bauern schuldige Pflicht’, Lieffländische Landes-Ordnungen, 660–5.

57. Ordinance, ‘Wegen Englauff-Auffnehm- und Vorenthattung der Erb-Bauern von einem Gut sum andern’, Lieffländische Landes-Ordnungen, 677–9.

58. Seppel, “Talupoegade sunnismaisuse küsimus,” 25, footnote 20.

59. Liitoja-Tarkiainen, Hajatalud ja külad Põhja-Liivimaal, 84, 140, 142.

60. The analogous permanent tax in Estland was the Mühlensteuer, or Zollkorn, established at about the same time as the Station in Livland. The Mühlensteuer was initially a tax on grain that was ground at mills. Over time it became a permanent tax levied on all peasants, regardless of whether or not they actually ground their grain at the mill. The manor lord collected this tax from his peasants and forwarded the Mühlensteuer to the state.

61. The ploughland was a land unit used to determine tax rates. It was typically up to 4 times larger in Livland than in Estland, where the ploughland was a land unit of sufficient size and with sufficient manpower to provide a man with a horse for manorial labour service for 6 days per week. Evaluation of soil quality was used in Livland, where the ploughland was calculated as the amount of land capable of providing 60 riksdalers worth of tenurial rent annually. See Tarvel, Adramaa, 6, 66, 121, 139.

62. On the Station, see: Liljedahl, Svensk förvaltning i Livland, 271–3; Piirimäe, “Statsioon Liivimaal XVII sajandil,” 307–8.

63. The Ritterschaft was the organization through which the nobility administered its own affairs in the province. The Ritterschaft held regular Diets (Landtag) to deliberate administrative policy. Estland and Livland each had its own Ritterschaft.

64. Die Recesse der livländischen Landtage, 16–19. Livland’s nobility discussed this proposition at the Diet held in July and August of 1681.

65. Sepp, Talupoegade kaitse Rootsiaja lõpul, 11.

66. Dahlgren, “Karl XI:s envälde”; Dahlgren, “Ekonomisk politik och teori,” 50–1.

67. Seppel, “Cameralist Population Policy,” 97–9.

68. Die Recesse der livländischen Landtage, 25–31, especially 30–1. The Livonian Ritterschaft’s response included this loose translation of the quotation: ‘Let them remain woodcutters and water bearers’. Marvin Ross has translated this quote as: ‘The Phrygians are not corrected otherwise than by stripes’. Ross provides a more detailed account of this encounter between Bathory and the Livonian peasants in Ross, A History of Poland, 230–1. Ross writes that Bathory assembled a great number of Livonian peasants and announced to them that he would cause them to be treated better by abrogating the custom of cruelly beating peasants with rods for any small offence, implementing the collection of a small fine in its place (or imprisonment if the peasant was unable to pay the fine). The peasants, however, had lived in a state of slavery for such a long time that all ideas of freedom had been obliterated. Their experience was that innovations never brought them any good but instead laid a heavier yoke on them. Hence the peasants begged to be left to their old custom, prompting Bathory’s quote referring to the Phrygians.

69. Sepp, Talupoegade kaitse Rootsiaja lõpul, 11–2.

70. Dunsdorfs, The Livonian Estates of Axel Oxenstierna, 1 ff, 27 ff.

71. Liljedahl, Svensk förvaltning i Livland, 43–4.

72. Upton, Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 31–50, 107–30.

73. The Reduction applied only to manorial estates enfeoffed by Sweden’s monarch. That is why all the lands of Sweden’s high nobility reverted to the crown. Some of the estates belonging to Livland’s provincial nobility had not been enfeoffed to them by the Swedish crown. If the Reduction Commission determined this to be so, then those particular manor lords were allowed to keep their estates. On the results and consequences of the Great Reduction in the provinces: Loit, Kampen om feodalräntan, 161 ff.

74. SRA, Livonica II, 259 – Estlands Generalguvernörens inkomma brev. K.Mtt till Lichton, red. i Livland, 11 September 1681.

75. Loit, “Pärisorjuse kaotamine Eestis Rootsi ajal”; Kroon, Kolme lõvi ja greifi all Põhjasõjas, 134–204.

76. Sepp, Talupoegade kaitse Rootsiaja lõpul, 16.

77. Seppel, “Kroonutalupoegade seisund Liivimaal,” 23–34; Seppel, “Mis muutus talurahva seisundis?,” 396–401.

78. SRA, Estländska Reduktionskommissionens Arkiv E: 1.