337 was to follow the trial and ensure that the court “proceeds in the matter in accordance with the real truth {sushchaia pravda).” The aim of the trial was thus to investigate and determine that which the court considered to be the material truth. To this end, a detailed system of so-called legal evidence was included in this legislation and gave the judge firm guidance as to how the evidence presented in the case should be weighed. Confession was described in the Kratkoe izobrazhenie protsessov as “the best evidence in the whole world,” for which reason the judge was given the right to force a confession by the use of torture if there was “sufficient suspicion. Historians have long been aware of the fact that the Petrine military articles, the Voennyi Ustav, were largely based on contemporary Swedish military law.*^** In the most recent treatment of this subject, the Swedish legal historian Erik Anners described the method used to draw up the Voennyi Ustav by saying that, “using Charles XI’s military articles as a basic pattern, they laid a mosaic of statutes, descriptions of crimes, or stipulations of punishments chipped out of other models.” To what extent the same was done concerning the drafting of the legislation on military legal procedure has not been studied in detail. P. O. Bobrovskii claimed that the draft of the legislative act was written by Ernst Friedrich Crompein, the chief auditor of, and later an assessor in, the iustits-kollegiia, and later edited by the tsar hlmself.^^® In this context it is worth noting that Crompein later demonstrated detailed knowledge of Swedish law when he was called upon by the legislative commission of 1720 to make a compilation of Swedish procedural law, among other things.^^'-’ It is pos- ” i3r. Ihid., 581. >■'5 Ihid., 595. Cf. the well-known postulate of canon law, "confessio regina probationum est.” P. O. Bobrovskii, Voeritioe pravo v Rossii pri Petre Velikoni (3 v., St. Petersburg, 1882—1898), I, 1 —18. Erik Anners, Den karolinska militärstraffrätten och Peter den Stores krigsartiklar (Uppsala, 1961), 87. A similar method was employed in the formulation of the Morskoi Ustav (naval articles) of 1720 and in the projection of a new legal code for the Russian Empire begun in 1720. For a more detailed discussion of the method of writing laws employed in Peter’s Russia, see Claes Peterson, "Der Morskoi Ustav Peters des Grossen. Ein Beitrag zu seiner Entstehungsgeschichte,” Jahrhiichcr fiir Geschichte Östeuropas, Neue Folge, 24 (1976), 345—356; A. G. Man’kov, "Ispol’zovanie v Rossii shvedskogo zakonodatel’stva pri sostavlenii prockta ulozheniia 1720—1725 gg.," Trudy Leningradskogo otdeleniia instituta istorii ANSSSR, no. 11 (1970), 112—126. P. O. Bobrovskii, Proiskhozhdenie voinskikh artikulov i izobrazbeniia protsessov Petra Velikogo po ustavti voinskomii 1716 g. (St. Petersburg, 1881); idem, Voennye zakony Petra Velikogo v rukopisiakh i pervopechatnykh izdaniiakh (St. Petersburg, i:u 138 1887), 10. TsGADA, f. 342 delo 32 chast’ 3 1. 471. See also Heinrich Pick’s information about Crompein in A. R. Cederberg, Heinrich Pick. Ein Beitrag zur russischen 1.39 22 - I’etersou
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