The very first 500 years ago. Comparable with Orthodoxy

2.5 MILLION YEARS AGO Volcanoes are still active; grassy plains still stretch along the rift valleys, but now only a few umbrella-shaped trees and low-growing thorny thickets break the monotonous yellowness of the landscape. Closer to the lake shore there is a flock of large

1.5 MILLION YEARS AGO This appears to be the same place as the landscape has changed quite a bit; although the climate is now much colder. Large, chimpanzee-like creatures are still feeding on berries among the bushes. These creatures are, however, larger than the earlier devourers

500,000 YEARS AGO She is a member of the first group of humanoid creatures that dispersed from Africa and spread throughout Europe and Asia. She crouched at the entrance to a cave in what would be known as China; but far from here, in the places that will be called Spain,

5000 YEARS AGO A river valley has always produced the best plants, and since most food comes from one plant or another, the river valleys of northern Europe are densely populated. Knowing that plants grow from seeds, the people of the settlement collected the seeds and planted them in fertile soil

2000 YEARS AGO Lucius Septimus chews a cracker at the entrance to his tent, cleaning his iron weapons and armor. Outside, in the rain, the swell of gray sea that washes the northern borders of Gaul is an unattractive sight. The wild Britons from the lands in the north were

1000 YEARS AGO Empire after empire appeared around Mediterranean Sea and spread across Europe, Africa and Asia, clashing with other empires that already existed there. Then they fell apart; usually the culture and technology created by each

500 YEARS AGO Sixty-nine days had passed since they set sail from Palos, and all that time they had been sailing west, except for a brief stop to resupply in the Canary Islands. Now they have arrived in India. Pablo Diego reproaches himself for not trusting the captain. It was impossible

100 YEARS AGO A train rumbles through narrow paper houses, raising thick clouds of black smoke that settles like soot on the ornamental carvings of the eaves, then chugs along the low embankment between the flooded rice fields to distant cotton mills

Forty million years ago Corals and sponges similar to modern ones live in the seas. Ammonites and belemnites disappeared, and brachiopods greatly decreased in number. Nummulites appeared in large numbers - small organisms equipped with a flat, coin-like shell (“nummulus”

Six million years ago Centuries and millennia go by. Countless generations of living beings replace each other. Every morning a chorus of bird voices greets the dawn, flowers open their corollas to meet the sun's rays, and the time when there was no

Back to childhood? We said above that the reduction of canines in males of early hominids can be considered “feminization.” Indeed, the reduction of one of the characteristic “male” ape characteristics made male hominids more similar to females. Perhaps it was

Back to Africa Extra-African humanity appears to be descended mainly from a group of sapiens who emerged from Africa through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. These people were carriers of the M and N mitochondrial lineages. As for Africans (especially those living south of the Sahara),

Muscovites, as you know, are still the same, but the housing issue has spoiled them. And this question was acute not only in the 20th century, but also in time immemorial Russian Middle Ages. How did our ancestors solve it 500 years ago?

Wooden mansions

The Italian Ambrogio Cantarini, who visited Moscow at the end of the 15th century, wrote in his travel diary:

“The city of Muscovy is located on a small hill; it’s all wooden, both the castle and the rest of the city.”

As we will see later, Cantarini is lying - by that time there were at least three stone chambers in Moscow. However, they, of course, were then lost among the massive wooden buildings. How widespread it was can be judged from the words of another foreign tourist, Sigismund Herberstein, who visited us at the beginning of the 16th century:

“The number of houses in this city that they themselves cite is incredible: they claimed that six years before our arrival in Moscow, by order of the sovereign, the houses were rewritten and their number exceeded 41,500.”

But you shouldn’t imagine Moscow as a kind of favela - the wooden mansions here could give a head start to others stone houses old ladies of Europe. The Polish intelligence officer Peter Petrei described their scope not without envy:

“Their houses are built extremely tall, wooden, with two or three rooms one on top of the other. He is considered the most noble, magnificent and big ace in the city who builds himself the highest mansions in it with a roof over the porch stairs.”

Our carpenters were great craftsmen, real artists. From a simple hut to the fabulous palace of Alexei Mikhailovich in Kolomenskoye - everything was erected without a single nail, using only an ax. Even such a skeptic as Ivan the Terrible’s guardsman, the German Heinrich Staden, remarks not without admiration:

“The ward masters or carpenters for these beautiful buildings use only an axe, a chisel, a scraper and one tool in the form of a curved iron knife inserted into the handle.”

And certainly unlike medieval European cities with their closely molded houses and narrow streets, Moscow had an unusually spacious internal layout due to extensive courtyards and garden plots. There was a saying about it among travelers: “Outside the city looks like Jerusalem, but inside it looks like Bethlehem.”

Garden plots were immodest and looked more like a real country residence rather than city housing. This is how Prince Yuri Andreevich Obolensky described his Moscow court:

“And that in Moscow, in my mansion courtyard, in the back yard there is a room with a room, in front of the room there is a canopy, in front of the room there is a wall and a canopy, and in the back yard there are two grain huts, a brewery, a cookhouse, and a soap house, and in the front yard there are two wall huts and a barn, and on the other side of the gate there are two cellars, a stable, two hay-houses and a granary.”

So, in addition to the mansion itself, there are 14 more buildings in the yard. And the rich boyars sought to turn their yards into small towns within the city - in full agreement with the medieval principle: “My home is my fortress.” As Petreius wrote:

“Some have yards so large they could fit three or four thousand people.”

What can I say: our ancestors knew how to live! There is only one bad thing - wooden buildings are burning. Medieval Moscow regularly suffered from fires, the largest of which burned out almost the entire city. Therefore, fire protection was an important part of the city economy. It has existed in Moscow since at least the 16th century. They never extinguished it with water - there were more effective means. Which ones were observed by the German traveler Adam Olearius:

“They never extinguish it with water, but they immediately break down the houses closest to the fire so that the fire loses its strength and goes out. For this need, every soldier and guard at night must have an ax with him.”

And if the house did burn down, Muscovites were not upset. Just in case of fire, they developed countermeasures:

“Those whose houses were destroyed by fire can easily acquire new houses. Behind the White Wall, on a special market (on today's Trubnaya Square - A.B.) there are many houses, some put together, some dismantled. They can be bought and cheaply delivered to the site and folded.”

Sort of the first Moscow IKEA. Bought ready house- they disassembled it for you, delivered it to your address, and immediately assembled it:

“You can buy a house and have it rebuilt in another part of the city in two days: the beams are already fitted to each other, and all that remains is to fold them and caulk the cracks with moss.”

Stone chambers

But no matter how good the wooden mansions were, still 500 years ago our ancestors began to increasingly strive to exchange them for prestigious stone housing. It is interesting that the first such housing is not acquired by the sovereign, but... by the patriarch - in those days, church power was still stronger than secular power. Metropolitan Jonah of Moscow and All Rus' in 1450 founded a chamber in his courtyard in the Kremlin, which became the first Moscow stone house.

Following the Metropolitan, the oligarchs built stone housing for themselves - in 1471, a merchant with the strange name Tarokan “laid brick floors for himself” in the Kremlin, behind the Spasskaya Tower. In the 80s, Dmitry Vladimirovich Khovrin, Vasily Obrazets and Vladimirovich Golova acquired chambers.

By the way, the word “palatya” itself, which seems so Russian, still comes from the Italian “palazzo”, that is, palace. We owe the Italians not only in word, but also in deed. The oldest surviving stone civil building in Moscow, the Chamber of Facets, was built in 1487–1492 by Italian architects Marco Ruffo and Pietro Antonio Solari.

Gradually, stone construction conquers the city. If at the beginning of the 16th century Sigismund Herberstein still wrote about the city that “it is all wooden, except for a few stone houses, temples and monasteries,” then 150 years later Pavel Aleppo would calmly say that “most of the buildings are built of brick.”

The chambers were usually built on two floors, while the first floor - the basement - was not in favor, as it is today. The owners did not live there, giving it away as warehouses or servants' quarters. From the courtyard, the “red” porch and stairs led directly to the second floor. In some modern chambers, the porches and stairs have been demolished, and now the passerby is sometimes surprised by the huge doors on the second floor, opening into the void.

In terms of plan, the chambers were built with a simple rectangle, and sometimes with a verb (the letter G) or a rest (guess which letter). The courtyard facade was usually much richer than the street one. After all, who is looking at your house from the street? All sorts of rabble. And from the yard - you and your dear guests. It happens now that, walking through the historical center of Moscow, you see a nondescript stone building, and only when you walk around the chambers from the courtyard do you notice all the beauty.

Of course, living in stone chambers was much more prestigious than even in a wooden palace. As the German traveler Augustin Meyerberg notes, “many of them began to build themselves brick houses out of vanity.” However, wood, as today, was considered more environmentally friendly: “With all this, they build themselves bedrooms from pine logs, and for communication they stitch them with moss, saying that lime always has harmful property for health, which is true.”

If Russian medieval chambers still seem like gloomy chests to you, look at what I wrote about them in mid-17th century century traveler from Syria Pavel Aleppo:

“We marveled at their beauty, decoration, strength, architecture, grace, many windows and columns with carvings on the sides of the windows, at the height of their floors, as if they were fortresses, at their huge towers, at the abundant painting with multi-colored paints outside and inside : it seems as if these are really pieces of multi-colored marble or a thin mosaic.”

Well, the masons of that time earned money to match their skills. In the contract for the construction of five chambers on the new Aptekarsky yard on Smolenskaya Street in 1674 we read regarding wages:

“And we, contractors, paid for that plate stone work one thousand five hundred rubles and supplies: fifty pounds of salt, twenty pounds of cow butter, five buckets of hemp oil, one hundred and fifty pounds of ham, fifty pounds of salted beluga fish, fifty pounds of sturgeon, ten pounds caviar, two hundred carp, five buckets of fish oil, one hundred buckets of wine..."

In other words, they knew how to live in Moscow at all times.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Muscovite Rus' was at enmity with almost all its neighbors. Crimean Tatars, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (which included the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the current lands of Belarus and Ukraine), Livonia, Sweden. Russian squads did not get out of campaigns and battles - not always successful. One of major defeats there was a battle at Orsha. After him before the King of Poland Sigismund the Old the road deep into Muscovy opened.

The king went so far as to mortgage several of his cities and use the proceeds to hire detachments of heavy infantry and military specialists: gunners and fortifiers in Hungary, the German lands and Bohemia. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (gentry militia) was convened, giving the king perhaps the best cavalrymen in Europe. Those nobles who could not march under the royal banners “on horse and in arms” had to pay a special tax for military needs.

The blow was supposed to be delivered to Pskov and the lands of the Pskov principality. The booty was supposed to cover all expenses, and a new victory would force the Moscow Grand Duke VasilyIII make serious land concessions when concluding peace. In particular, to return Smolensk, which was recently taken from the Polish crown.

On the path of the army stood the small border Russian fortress of Opochka. Having learned about it, Sigismund contemptuously called the Muscovite fortification a pork trough. He was probably depressed by the thought that the regiments, led by the three main military leaders who had distinguished themselves at the Battle of Orsha, would have to linger at such an insignificant obstacle. But there was still hope that Opochka would surrender without a fight. What can a tree-earth fortification oppose to the triumvirate of the famous leaders of Polish, Lithuanian, Czech, Serbian, Hungarian, Tatar and many other armies - the prince Konstantin Ostrogsky, his associates and assistants Yuri Radziwill And Janusz Swierczowski?

Triumvirate at the Pork Trough

On September 20, 1517, the army of Prince Ostrozhsky approached the “heroic outpost”. Never before have the walls of Opochka seen so many uninvited guests. While the garrison of the border fortress, numbering about a hundred soldiers, looked at the strangers, the enemy leaders assessed the “pork trough” and came to disappointing results. Opochka was indeed small - elongated into an ellipse, only 750 meters along the perimeter of the walls. A shaft made of limestone quarried right there and covered with earth, three blind towers, a pair of driveway gates. On one side is the water of the Velikaya River, on the other there is a deep ditch connected to it. There is only one leading to the resulting island. suspension bridge. The fortress is made of wood, but between two rows of logs it is covered with tightly compacted earth, so you can’t break it with a cannonball. Moreover, the battery cannot be placed closer than one hundred and twenty meters from the fortress, and at such a distance the core is already exhausted. And the fortress itself stands on an embankment hill 20-25 meters high. The barrel of a cannon cannot be lifted like that, and battering rams cannot fail.

All the men who lived in the settlement on the river bank, taking simple weapons, joined the garrison and prepared to fight to the end. Voivode Vasily Saltykov, who commanded the defense of the fortress, did not even want to think about surrender. Prince Ostrozhsky, having besieged the fortress, was still waiting for people to come from there to surrender. He stood there for two weeks and two more days - and finally gave the order to launch an assault.

Unexpected rebuff

The beginning of the assault instilled optimism in the attackers - the cannons and arquebuses fired from the fortress infrequently and did not cause any significant losses. Having safely crossed to the island, the mercenaries, or, as they were then called, the fellows of Pan Janusz Swierczowski, climbed up the slope. And it turned out that they were rejoicing too early. Stones and specially prepared knotty logs – “rollers” – were thrown onto their heads. And heavy oak logs - “elephants” - fell on the scholarship holders, hiding at the foot of the hill. They were hung over the wall on long slings, and then the ropes holding them were cut. Not too fancy, but very effective.

An attempt to attack the fortress gates across the bridge also ended in failure - in the literal sense of the word. The defenders of the fortress cut the ropes connecting the bridge ahead of time, and they fell apart under the attackers. Then it turned out that sharpened stakes and gouges were densely spaced in the water under the bridge. The fate of the enemies who collapsed on them was deplorable. Total losses royal troops were estimated at 60 killed and 1,400 wounded out of ten thousand personnel.

The wounded were everywhere bigger problem for the army than the dead. The priest and gravediggers were enough for the dead, but the wounded had to be taken out of the battle, risking their heads. In addition, the beaten and maimed soldiers not only required constant care - with their groans and screams they demoralized the already not very resilient Polish-Lithuanian army. The commander of the fellows, Janusz Świerczowski, was even accused of giving orders while drunk. Despair spread among the besiegers.

God help you!

After this assault, there were certain problems in the fortress. The defenders of Opochka had run out of stones, and the city could remain practically defenseless against numerical strength. superior enemy. And then, as the legend says, one woman in the fortress dreamed Saint Sergius of Radonezh, who told her that behind the altar of the local church St. Nicholas the Wonderworker available secret passage into a large cellar, full of stones. The news was told to the governor Saltykov. IN specified location he had indeed discovered a “gift from the holy men.” The fortress was again ready for defense.

The brave defense of Opochka was only part of the Russian plan. The fact is that the timing of the attack by the troops of King Sigismund the Old was not chosen by chance. The main forces of the Muscovites were thrown against the Crimean Khan at this time. To protect the exposed flank, a small army remained under the command of the experienced commander of the prince Alexander Rostovsky. However, guess what will go the way enemy, it was difficult. Intelligence reported that the king was considering the option of attacking Velikiye Luki. But standing there meant leaving other directions without cover.

As soon as it became clear that the invading army was bogged down under the walls of Opochka, detachments of light commanders - commanders of individual mobile detachments - the prince were sent to help the border fortress Fyodor Lopata-Obolensky And Ivan Lyatsky. Without getting involved in battle with the main forces of the enemy, they began to actively gut the rear of the Polish-Lithuanian army, depriving it of convoys, intercepting messengers, destroying reinforcements, suddenly attacking and quickly disappearing. During one of the forays of the besieged garrison, light commanders attacked the army from three sides. Many were killed, many were taken prisoner.

Meanwhile, Prince Ostrozhsky, already quite exhausted by the unsuccessful siege, was informed that the army of the prince’s governor was moving towards the Lithuanian lands Vasily Shuisky. There was no point or possibility to hang around further under the impregnable Opochka. It was necessary to take care of our own lands. Having abandoned most of the convoy and all the siege weapons at the walls of the unconquered fortress, Ostrozhsky rushed headlong back to Lithuania.

Sigismund's "victory"

The failure of the operation, which cost the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth more than five thousand soldiers, did not prevent the king from declaring a certain victory and huge losses Muscovites - as many as twenty thousand people! How the king counted so many killed Russian soldiers is a mystery. He never redeemed the mortgaged cities, and he was no longer able to dictate his will to Grand Duke Vasily III. And when he remembered Opochka, he invariably muttered through clenched teeth: “The Demon’s Village!”

Moscow through the eyes of an engineer:

Engineering historian Ayrat Bagautdinov talks about how Muscovites lived five centuries ago and whether they scolded their utility workers.

Airat Bagautdinov

Today, Muscovites often criticize the city's housing and communal services: either the water will be turned off in the summer, or prices will once again be raised. Complete draconian laws and the dark Middle Ages. However, it is there, in the Middle Ages, that the history of Moscow housing and communal services goes.

Plumbing

Without water, as you know, you can’t go there or go here. The water pipeline is the first infrastructure facility to appear in Moscow. True, at first he did not provide for all Muscovites, but only for residents of the Kremlin.

In 1485, a large-scale reconstruction of the main Moscow fortress began - it acquired modern look. The first tower to be built is on the Moskvoretsk side, which will later be called Taynitskaya. Why is it called that? As the chronicle writes, “a hiding place was built under it,” that is, a secret well in case of a siege.

The Sviblova (current Vodovzvodnaya) and Sobakina (Corner Arsenal) towers were equipped with the same hiding places. “But a well is not a water supply,” you say. So here it is: in Arsenal Tower underground galleries extended from the well, through which water flowed, providing for the needs of the inhabitants of the fortress - both chronicles and archaeological excavations speak about this. Thus, even during the construction of the Kremlin more than 500 years ago, a gravity (that is, flows by itself) water supply system appeared in Moscow.

Proposed diagram of the structure of the secret well of the Tainitskaya Tower. Reconstruction by N. Falkovsky

Two centuries later, either this water supply system had become dilapidated, or its volume was not enough - they began to pump water from the Moscow River. In 1621, the architect and mechanic Christopher Galovey came to us from Scotland and installed a water-lifting machine in the Sviblova Tower, after which it became known as the Vodovzvodnaya Tower.

Pressure water supply by Christopher Galovey. Reconstruction by N. Falkovsky

How did this first Moscow artificial water supply system work? Water from the Moscow River flowed through a pipe into a well at the base of the Vodovzvodnaya Tower. The water-lifting mechanism was an endless loop with buckets suspended from it, which drew water from the well and lifted it into a tank at the top of the tower. The mechanism was driven, apparently, by a horse-drawn drive, that is, the horses walked in a circle all day long, turning the wheel.

But the first water supply for city residents will appear in Moscow only in early XIX century. But that's a completely different story! We'll talk about it in other issues of our column.

Pavements

Moscow roads were the talk of the town back in the Middle Ages. Foreign travelers in their notes they compete in the expressiveness of describing Moscow dirt.

“In order to get to our horses and go home, we had to wade through mud that was knee-deep,” writes Raphael Barbarini in 1565. A hundred years later, Pavel Aleppo complains: “We could not go from home to the market, because the mud and slush were as deep as a man.” A little later - Baron Korb: “The streets in the German settlement have become impassable: they are dotted with carts deeply stuck in the swamp, from which the horses cannot pull them out.”

To be fair, already in the Middle Ages the streets began to be paved: “Most of the streets are paved with round logs placed side by side; They walk along them as if on footbridges,” German Adam Olearius shares his impressions.

Sigismund's plan. Fragment. Wooden pavements on the main streets are clearly visible

Apparently this didn't help much after all. As another foreign tourist, Yakov Reintfels, notes, these pavements “are, however, always covered with mud or a thick layer of dust, and are quite smooth only in winter, when snow and ice level everything.”

Apollinary Vasnetsov. At the Myasnitsky Gate White City in the 17th century. The artist depicted a wooden pavement

Fire safety

Until recently, Moscow was a city predominantly made of wood, and therefore was in constant danger of burning down. The German Adam Olearius coolly notes: “Not a month or even a week goes by without several houses, and at times, if the wind is strong, entire alleys, not being destroyed by fire... Shortly before our arrival, a third of the city burned down and, they say, four years ago it was the same thing again."

Question fire safety- one of the most pressing issues facing the city authorities in those days. Best treatment, as you know, this is prevention. Out of harm's way summer time it was simply forbidden to light stoves, for which purpose special services They went around the huts and sealed them. It was allowed to open the ovens only once a week, on Thursday, to bake bread - apparently for the week ahead.

The ubiquitous stands with hooks and buckets also trace their origins back to the Middle Ages. The “Order on City Decoration” of 1649 prescribes: “All mansions would be ordered, to protect against fire time, to keep measuring cups and large cauldrons with water, and brooms, and brooms.”

In the middle of the 17th century, a fire department was established in Moscow. However, this responsibility, even if now centralized, still falls on the shoulders of the townspeople themselves. The “Order” orders people to be recruited for service “from ten households, one person at a time, with spears, and with axes, and with water pipes... day and night, incessantly.”

A fire alarm was also developed - analogue, of course. It is described with delight by a traveler from the Orthodox East, Pavel Aleppsky: “If a fire happens at night or during the day, from that quarter (where the fire is) they let you know about it: they rush to the bell tower and ring the bell on one edge so that the watchmen who are constantly on the Kremlin can hear wall." There was a fire tower on each of the Kremlin walls. The watchmen, seeing the fire or hearing the alarm from one of the districts, rang the bell on their tower to gather the entire district to fight the fire.

How did you fight? Despite the constant mention in the “Nakaz” of tubs and water pipes, most often they extinguished the fire differently. Let us give the floor to the witness of this strange action, our eternal informant Adam Olearius: “They never extinguish it with water, but they immediately break down the houses closest to the fire so that the fire loses its strength and goes out. For this need, every soldier and guard at night must have an ax with him.”

Fire extinguishing. Miniature from the Facial Chronicle. It is clearly visible that they are fighting the fire with axes

God forbid you become the culprit of a fire in medieval Moscow. The measure of punishment is the highest: “Whose carelessness causes a fire: and that person will be executed by death from the Sovereign.”

However, despite all these draconian measures and the developed fire-fighting infrastructure, fires occurred frequently. Therefore, Muscovites have developed mechanisms in case of disaster. On modern Trubnaya Square there was a kind of first Moscow “IKEA” - a market of ready-made houses: “Here you can buy a house and get it ready to be built for installation in another part of the city in two days: the beams are already fitted to each other, and all that remains is to fold them and caulk them the cracks are covered with moss.”

Apollinary Vasnetsov. Bast trading on Truba in the 17th century

Law enforcement

The Moscow police can also count their history back to the distant past. Even at the beginning of the 16th century, city authorities began to think about public safety. Used at first preventive measures- since 1504, all streets in Moscow have been locked with bars at night, and watchmen stand at the bars. Well, the current side streets of Varvarka are completely closed for all nights and weekends!

Grates on Moscow streets. Miniature from the Facial Chronicle vault

However, the strictness of laws in our country has always been compensated by the non-compulsory nature of their implementation. Ivan the Terrible's guardsman, the German Heinrich Staden, cites an interesting fact in his notes - during off-hours it was possible to pass through the bars... “except perhaps by acquaintance with the watchman.”

Punishments for violations of such “public order” were very severe. As one of the first foreign tourists in Moscow, Sigismund Herberstein, notes: “If anyone is caught after this time, then he is either beaten and robbed, or thrown into prison, unless he is a famous and eminent person: such people are usually escorted to their place by guards.” home." The thing is clear - the law is not written for the elites!

Today the rules traffic They tell us to always drive with our headlights on. It turns out that this tradition also goes back to ancient times. Polish expat Maskiewicz, who served in the intervention forces in Moscow in Time of Troubles, recalls in his memoirs: “At night, or after sunset, the servant standing in front holds a large lantern with a burning candle, not so much to illuminate the road, but for personal safety: there, everyone riding or walking at night without fire is considered either a thief or a spy."

In the middle of the 17th century, along with the fire department, a patrol service was established. Its goals and objectives are succinctly described by the already mentioned “Order on the city deanery”: “Walk through the streets and alleys day and night and take care of it so that in the streets and alleys there is no theft in battles and robbery and taverns and tobacco and other things.”<…>there wasn't."

Airat Bagautdinov specially for RBC Real Estate