Smolensk Fortress (Russia)
In January of 1603, the term of the peace treaty with Poland expired. That is why right after signing a treaty with Sweden Moscow made a decision to turn Smolensk into a well-fortified fortress.
From December 15, 1595, a preparation for its building began. The Tsar’s order commissioned prince V. A. Zvenigorodsky, S. V. Bezobrazov, deacons P. Shipilov and N. Perfiriev, “a city craftsman Fedor Saveliev Kon” to hurry up and by Christmas (December 25) to arrive in Smolensk to erect a stone city.
The overseers of construction received a detailed instruction how to organize work. They had to enroll on a list all specialists of stonework and bricklaying, all the “workshops and brick kilns where brick was made”; to find out places where quarry stone and pile wood were; to determine the ways of transportation and figure out the distances; to calculate the number of people needed on the construction site and to hire them paying them for their work form the Tsar’s treasury. As early as in the current winter, very high norms of pile processing for the foundation were set for peasants; the piles had to be delivered to the construction site with the coming of spring.
In spring of 1596, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich approved the cost sheet and sent “a boyar of his, and his servant and equerry Boris Fyodorovich Godunov”, who fulfilled the Tsar’s order solemnly and with much pomp.
Because of the amount of construction work and the special importance of the fortress being built, Tsar’s order charged to send masons, bricklayers and even potters “from all of Russian land” to Smolensk.
Moreover, under the threat of capital punishment it was strictly forbidden to carry out any stone construction in the Moscow state until the works in Smolensk were finished.
The scale and urgency of the construction required from the state a great concentration of efforts. In a chronicle it was noted that Smolensk was made “by all the cities of the Moscow state. Stone was brought from all cities…” Limestone, that was used to line the low ledgement of the wall and to make lime as well as quarry stone for the inner layer and foundation, was delivered from remote places because nearby Smolensk these materials were not handy. In Smolensk only brick was made. It is calculated that for the construction of the wall 320 thousand piles, 100 million pieces of brick, a million carts of sand alone were used.
The most costly and difficult to accomplish works (preparation and delivery of building materials) were turned into the state labor taxes. For transportation of building materials the government mobilized peasants with their carts even from the Moscow district. However, it placed its stake on using hired workmen and used this labor during the fortresses construction on a large scale which contradicted the administrative principles of that time. Moreover, to hasten the work it raised the daily pay of qualified masons — up to 16 kopeks per day, which was much higher than the usual level of those times.
Because of these extraordinary measures the fortresses construction was finished within scheduled time. In the end of 1602, a solemn ceremony of its official sanctification took place.