THE GREAT BOYARIN
When the people of Moskva became sufficiently familiar with the fact
that their terrible Gosoudar was dead and safely buried, even if their
imagination could not picture him, as his son had, in his coronation
speech, solemnly assured them, “transformed into an angel,” they began
to take stock of the men who had replaced him in the government.
The effete and placid Thedor was supported by a Douma (Council) of
five. Of these Ivan Petrovitch Shouyskie, member of a family which
had tasted the sweets of power and drained the dregs of disgrace in
the early years of the late reign, had won new consideration and
honour by his celebrated defence of Pskov; Mstislavskie was another
Rurik-descended boyarin-kniaz; Bogdan Bielskie represented the last
of Ivan’s Vremenszhiki; Nikita Romanov was important as maternal
uncle of the new Tzar, and Boris Godounov, descendant of a Tartar
family Christianised in the fourteenth century,[175] stood nearest the
throne from the fact of being brother to the Tzaritza Irena.[176] The
Douma, thus constituted, did not long retain its original formation.
A sudden popular commotion in the capital took the form of an ugly
rush towards the Kreml; the Kitai-gorod was overrun by a surging mob
of many thousands, scarcely to be held back by the strielitz from
forcing the gates of the citadel. Mstislavskie and Romanov, fronting
this tumultuous gathering and inquiring the nature of its demands,
learned from a thousand throats that the blood of Bogdan Bielskie
was in request. A compromise was effected; the offending boyarin was
removed from the Council to the comparatively harmless post of Governor
of Nijhnie-Novgorod, and the Moskvitchi returned to their houses.
Whether this was a spontaneous ebullition, a reaction from the passive
endurance under Ivan, or whether it was set afoot by the Shouyskie
family, who had considerable influence among the merchant class, and
were not unused to such machinations, it strengthened the hands of
the one man whose authority dwarfed that of Romanov, Shouyskie, and
Mstislavskie alike. Godounov was a man capable of grasping to the full
the advantages which his position as kinsman of a weak, easily-ruled
sovereign gave him, and he was of sufficient merit to labour for the
welfare of the State as well as for his own interests. The latter were
by no means neglected; immense territorial possessions in the Dvina
district and along the valley of the Moskva, certain State revenues and
other desirable perquisites swelled his yearly income to the estimated
total of 93,000 roubles,[177] and he was reputed to be able to bring
100,000 men into the field.[178] But the man who swayed the councils
of the Tzarstvo and stood behind the puppet-monarch Thedor was far
removed from the ordinary type of Vremenszhikie, and the internal
and foreign affairs of the realm suffered nothing by the transfer
of administration from Ivan IV. to Boris Godounov. His predominance
checked, if it did not altogether repress, the boyarin struggles and
intrigues which the weakness of the Tzar invited, and at the same
time the man who was practically Regent had the address to govern as
though with the co-operation of the whole Council. One of the first
acts necessitated by the political circumstances of the Court was the
removal or banishment of the Tzarevitch Dimitri, with his mother and
the whole clan of the Nagois, to Ouglitch, a town some 90 verstas from
Moskva. Here they remained in a state of repressed disaffection, biding
their time till the day when the young Dimitri should succeed his
half-brother and the Nagois should dispossess the Godounovs. This was a
factor which Boris had always to reckon with, and which perhaps forced
his statesmanship out of the legitimate groove of throne-serving.
That his ascendancy would be accepted without a struggle by the other
members of the Council was scarcely to be expected; Romanov died
in 1586, and soon after Mstislavskie drifted over to the Shouyskie
faction, in opposition to Godounov. That intrigues would be set on foot
against his authority was extremely probable, but whether a definite
plot existed or not, one was at least “discovered,” in which the two
counsellors and several other boyarins were implicated. The offenders
were dealt with in a spirit of moderation which had been long foreign
to the Court of Moskva; Mstislavskie entered the Kirillov monastery
at Bielozero, others of his party were imprisoned or banished to
distant parts of the realm. The Shouyskie, enjoying the protection of
the Metropolitan (Dionisie), survived the storm which swept away so
many of their colleagues. Meanwhile the Regent’s diplomacy had been
exerted to defer, for the time being, hostilities with any of the four
states--Turk, Pole, Swede, and Tartar--which permanently threatened
Russia with aggression. With Sweden a prolongation of the truce for
four years was effected in December 1585; the Krimskie khanate was
weakened by civil war and dynastic revolutions, and little was to be
feared from that quarter. The chief danger lay with Poland, and Batory
was only held back by the controlling hand of the Diet and the protests
of the Lit’uanian landowners from renewing his profitable campaigns
against Moskovy. Under these circumstances it was with feelings of
relief that the Council of State, sitting at Moskva, heard, on the
20th December 1586, of the death of their enemy, which had taken place
eighteen days earlier (13th December according to the new reckoning of
the calendar, initiated by Pope Gregory and adopted throughout west
continental Europe, by which Russian--and English--time was left twelve
days behind). The death of this prince reversed the whole position of
affairs between the two countries, and instead of living in constant
apprehension of fresh inroads upon their territory, the Moskovites
were able to entertain the prospect of an advantageous union with the
neighbour State. For the third time Thedor had a chance of securing
the Polish crown by election, and Godounov hastened to support his
candidature with more vigorous measures than had been employed on the
former occasions. The Russian party, both in Poland and the grand
duchy, had gained strength since the last interregnum, and the Regent
was able to offer terms of a nature likely to appeal to many of the
electors. A perpetual peace between the two Slav powers would allow
of a vigorous and hopeful opposition to Ottoman aggression, and the
troops of Moskovy, including Kozaks, Tcherkess horsemen, and Tartars
from Eastern Russia, would be placed, free of charges, at the disposal
of the Poles. Moldavia, Bosnia, Servia, and Hungary would be wrested
from the Sultan and incorporated with Poland (an arrangement to which
the Kaiser might have had a word to say), and Estland would be snatched
in like manner from Sweden and annexed to the Lekh kingdom, except
Narva, which would be Moskovy’s modest share of the spoil. Moreover,
the rights and liberties, as well as the taxes and revenues of Poland,
would remain in the hands of the Senate. Neither of the alternative
candidates--the Archduke Maximilian, brother of the Emperor, and
Sigismund, son of King John of Sweden and of a Yagiello princess--could
hold forth such tempting inducements. The imperial Habsburg family was
held in cheap estimation on account of its failure either to defend its
hereditary dominions against the Turks, or to exert its authority over
the Protestant princes of Northern Germany, and the Emperor himself was
alluded to as “great only by title, rich only in debts.” The Archbishop
of Gniezno, who had at one time and another supported the Valois and
Habsburg parties, on this occasion exerted his influence on behalf
of the Rurikovitch. An anarchical assembly which met near Warszawa
in July (1587) under the name of a Diet, but which resembled more a
triple-divided camp, was reduced to some degree of order and coherence
by the adoption of badges distinctive of the various candidates. The
partisans of Thedor displayed a _shapka_ (conical Russian head-gear),
those of Maximilian an Austrian cap, while the sea-power of Sweden
was typified by a herring--presumably salted. The shapka carried the
day by a large preponderance, and nothing remained for the agents of
Thedor but to satisfy the final stipulations of the Polish Senate.
Besides the demand for a certain sum of money down, which would have
been conceded, the obstacles to a ratification of the election were
seemingly trifling; but they were insuperable. Thedor would not consent
to be crowned at Krakow, to put the title King of Poland before
that of Tzar of the Russias, nor to dally in any way with the Roman
Catholic religion. Without these concessions the Poles refused to
bestow their suffrages on the Russian prince, and their choice finally
fell on Sigismund Vasa, whose election brought the crowns of Poland
and Sweden, Moskva’s two hereditary enemies, into the same family.
That Godounov should have declined to bargain further with the Polish
electors on behalf of Thedor does credit to his foresight; for the
Russian sovereign to have accepted the crown under the limitations and
conditions imposed by the Senate would have been to surrender at the
outset to the turbulence and independence of the western Slavs, and
possibly to weaken his hold upon his own spell-bound subjects. He would
have ruled over the Polish palatinates as nominally as Rudolf over the
free cities of Northern Germany, and the infusion of the ideas of the
western commonwealth into Moskovite minds would have been pouring new
wine into old bottles with disastrous result.
The Regent, disconcerted by the submission of all the parties in
the Diet to the accession of the Swedish prince, managed to avert a
possible outbreak of hostilities between the countries which had so
nearly been allied by compacting for a truce of fifteen years.
While dealing with the precarious foreign affairs of the country and
superintending the domestic administration, Godounov had to fight
hard to maintain his own position. Thedor had inherited from his
father, if nothing else, a weakness for all that appertained to
religion, and the greater part of his existence alternated between
devotional exercises and the safe amusement of watching bear-fights.
Over a mind so constituted, a priest of high position would naturally
have a good chance of obtaining a dominating influence, and the
Metropolitan was quite willing to play the part of another Silvestr.
The only obstacle to this ambition was the Tzar’s brother-in-law, who
brooked no competitor for the tzarskie favour. Hence between Regent
and Vladuika lurked an animosity which drove the latter into the
arms of the Shouyskie party. Thus a powerful league of the clergy,
boyarin, and merchant interests (the latter were hand in glove with
the Shouyskie) was formed in Moskva against the Godounov rule. Boris
derived his power in the first place from his connection with the Tzar
through the Tzaritza Irena, and it was the aim of the malcontents
to break this important link on the ground of the latter’s alleged
sterility, and to wed Thedor instead to a Mstislavskie princess. The
Metropolitan favoured the scheme--Ivan the Terrible had evidently
stretched the consciences of his clergy on the marriage question beyond
retraction--but the vigilance of the Regent dragged it prematurely to
light. None of the conspirators were molested for their share in the
intrigue, but the Mstislavskie princess was compelled to become an
abiding inmate of a convent. The real or alleged discovery of a plot
against the throne, presumably, since some of the Nagoi family were
implicated, in favour of the young Dimitri, gave an excuse for the
long-deferred vengeance of Godounov. Ivan Shouyskie, the defender of
Pskov, was dispatched to Bielozero, Andrei Shouyskie to Kargopol; both,
it was said, were afterwards strangled in prison. Thedor Nagoi and six
of his companions were publicly executed, an example meant, no doubt,
to strike terror into the disaffected at Ouglitch. Batches of the
Mstislavskie were forced into religious houses, and many other boyarins
were exiled to various parts of the gosoudarstvo--some to Sibiria, the
first detachment of a long procession of political offenders which has
never since ceased to wend its way from Russia into the “land of the
long nights.” The Metropolitan was deposed and his place filled by Iov,
Archbishop of Rostov.
Godounov was for the time master of the situation. His enemies were
either dead, or deported, or devoted, in various monasteries scattered
up and down the country, to a course of religious seclusion, if not
of blessed meditation. Only at Ouglitch, growing up among the Nagoi
colony, was the child who must surely one day exact a heavy retribution
from the man whom he was taught to--omit from his prayers. Unless he
should happen meanwhile to cut his throat in a fit of epilepsy.
A renewal of the war with Sweden drew together, at an opportune moment,
the discordant forces which threatened at times to dislocate the
machinery of government. The time-honoured Moskovite foreign policy,
like the wolves’ hunting to which it has been already compared,
derived its strength from its patient persistence, rather than from
any brilliancy of rapid conception or swift action. At peace for the
time being with Poland, and not anticipating trouble from the Khan of
the Krim Horde, Godounov took up the threads which had dropped from
the nerveless hands of the failing Ivan, and returned to the struggle
for an opening into the Baltic. The truce with Sweden having expired
without either country being able to come to terms, Thedor prepared,
in January 1590, to lead the huge army which had been collected from
all quarters of his dominions, part of the way at least towards the
Estlandish and Finnish frontiers. The presence of the sovereign was
to some extent necessary to maintain order and harmony in an army
which included among its leaders a Mstislavskie (in chief command),
a Godounov, and a Romanov, besides other jarring elements. The Tzar,
however, did not venture his person farther than Novgorod, from which
point the Russian host diverged upon its double destination, one
body marching across the frozen Neva, the other directing its course
towards the disputed fortresses of the Ingermanland province. Yam was
carried by assault and a force of 20,000 Swedes defeated outside Narva,
which place was then invested. To save this important stronghold, the
representatives of the King of Sweden concluded a hasty truce, to run
for one year, ceding meanwhile Ivangorod and Kopor’e to the Tzar’s
voevodas (25th February). This sudden forward movement on the part of
Moskovy aroused the alarm and suspicion of the Poles, whose young king
especially felt bound to make a diversion on behalf of Sweden; hence
ominous mutterings filtered through to Moskva from Krakow, and the
Dniepr Kozaks (who had been organised into regiments by Stefan Batory)
began to commit depredations along the Lit’uanian border. A Polish
embassy which arrived at the capital in the autumn, after adopting a
somewhat aggressive tone, finally renewed the truce between the two
countries for a term of twelve years. The Swedes were likely, however,
to renew the struggle in the north in the coming spring, having refused
to yield to the Russian demand for the cession of Narva and Korelia,
and there were rumours afloat of a simultaneous outburst of hostilities
on the part of the treacherous Krimskie Tartars. While Moskva was thus
threatened with a double attack, a mysterious and appalling tragedy
had happened at Ouglitch. [Sidenote: 1591] At noon on the 15th of May
the inhabitants, alarmed by the furious beating of the bell at the
Nagoi Palace, rushed into the court to find the Tzarevitch Dimitri with
a gaping wound across his throat, and his mother and some servants
shrieking over his yet warm corpse. The palace and town had been for
some time haunted and overlooked by agents of the Regent, who naturally
wished to keep himself informed as to the course of events in this
hotbed of sedition and intrigue; naturally also the popular imagination
fastened the presumed murder on these Godounovskie emissaries, who were
seized and put to death, together with their servants and one or two
suspected citizens and a woman “who went often to the palace;” in all
some dozen persons. The aggrieved and excited populace easily persuaded
themselves that Boris Godounov had planned and caused to be executed
this catastrophe, and many historians have unreservedly endorsed their
judgment, though, apart from the fact that Dimitri’s death could not
have been otherwise than a joyful relief to the Regent, it is difficult
to see what evidence there is to connect him with the crime. The murder
of a Tzarevitch, the last heir in the direct Moskovite line of the
holy House of Rurikovitch, was not an event which could be passed over
without inquiry, even if the alleged instigator were a boyarin in high
Court favour; an investigation was necessary in any case, but it is
at least worthy of notice that the man selected to preside over the
collection of evidence and to sift the whole matter at the place where
it occurred was Vasili Shouyskie, brother to the princes of that family
who had suffered imprisonment and death at the hands of Godounov. The
report drawn up by this kniaz, who could scarcely be otherwise than the
enemy of the man whom the popular voice condemned, entirely exonerated
both the Regent and his supposed agents, and declared the Tzarevitch to
have killed himself in a fit of epilepsy, to which he was subject. The
subsequent massacre was laid to the charge of the Nagois. The theory
put forward by Kostomarov that Shouyskie, “a cunning and pliant man,”
conducted the investigation and distorted the evidence in a manner
which would win him the favour of Godounov in order to avoid unpleasant
consequences to himself, seems under the circumstances scarcely
plausible. The death of Dimitri left Boris more or less in the position
of a claimant to the throne of the Russias, and he would be more than
ever an object of jealousy and suspicion to the princely families who
had the blood of Rurik or Gedimin in their veins. Hence Shouyskie,
however guarded in the language of the report he was called upon to
make, would hardly go out of his way to bias the judgment of Court and
country in favour of his enemy and rival. Between the verdict of the
men who had carefully examined the evidence relating to the affair
and the wild accusations of an angry and disaffected people there was
a wide divergence. Historians have for the most part endorsed the
latter. Whatever the truth of the matter, a murderous retribution was
meted out to the people of Ouglitch for the slaughter of the Regent’s
agents; many of the Nagois were exiled or imprisoned, and Dimitri’s
mother was forced to enter a convent, while numbers of the inhabitants
were executed or sent beyond the Ourals. Ouglitch was reduced almost
to a desert. The same summer which witnessed the death of Dimitri
Ivanovitch saw Khan Kazi-Girei stealing out of the sun-parched steppes
towards Moskva at the head of a large and rapidly-moving army. The best
troops of Moskovy were far away in the north, watching the movements
of the Swedish generals; others had to be brought in all haste from
the encampments along the Oka to defend the capital from this sudden,
if not altogether unexpected attack. The slobodas surrounding the city
were hurriedly fortified and the outlying monasteries transformed into
fortresses. The Tzar, contrary to precedent, remained at the Kreml,
and was witness of the magnificent battle which ensued under the walls
of Moskva, and which recalled, while it lasted, the classic struggles
on the plains of Troy. The defence was superintended by kniaz Thedor
Mstislavskie and Godounov, the latter of whom understood the difficult
science of working in harmony with men who were his personal enemies.
[Sidenote: 4th July 1591] Although the issue of the day’s strife
was not of a decisive nature, the Khan had no stomach for further
fighting, and fled precipitately back to his own country, arriving at
Baktchisarai with scarcely a third of his army. The ignominious failure
of this invasion checked any disposition which Sigismund may have
had for annulling the truce with the Tzar of Moskovy, whose voevodas
were now free to give their undivided attention to the scrambling
hostilities which had broken out in Finland and in the neighbourhood
of the White Sea. The war dragged on in these wild and bitter regions
without any very decisive action enlivening the general torpidity of
its course; the failing health of King John of Sweden made him anxious
to obtain at least a suspension of arms, and negotiations were set on
foot for that purpose previous to his death (November 1592), which
resulted in the conclusion of a two years’ truce (each side to retain
what it then held) in January 1593. The external peace which Russia for
the moment enjoyed was clouded by the apprehension which was naturally
felt at the accession of Sigismund Vasa to his father’s kingdom, an
event which bound Poland and Sweden into a dual monarchy and made the
acquisition of a Baltic outlet more than ever a difficult task for
Moskovite statecraft. The apprehension was, however, soon allayed. The
union of crowns was by no means followed by a union of hearts, and
the close relationship into which the two kingdoms--one aggressively
Lutheran, the other preponderatingly Catholic--were drawn only served
to bring to the surface the animosities of race and creed which existed
between them. Sigismund, who was Catholic by religion and more or less
Polish in his sympathies, had a powerful Lutheran rival in his Uncle
Karl, Duke of Sudermanland, and the Skandinavian kingdom was more
likely to be involved in a civil war than to fight hand in hand with
Poland against Russia. Under these circumstances the truce between
Sweden and Moskovy was supplemented (18th May 1595) by an “eternal
peace,” the former power ceding, besides Yam, Ivangorod, and Kopor’e,
Korelia with the town of Keksholm.[179] It was probably the clearing of
the atmosphere in the north which emboldened Godounov, while lulling
the Ottoman Court with proffers of friendship, to send a substantial
contribution to Kaiser Rudolf in furtherance of the half-hearted
crusade by which he was attempting to dislodge the Turks from Hungary.
A magnificent consignment of the rich fur-products of the Sibirian
forests,--sable, marten, beaver, black fox, and other skins, in scores
of thousands, valued at 44,000 roubles,--was spread out in twenty rooms
of the imperial palace at Prague for the edification and astonishment
of the courtiers and merchants of the old Bohemian city (1595). The
inevitable clashing of the Ottoman and Russian powers, only deferred on
account of the manifold embarrassments of both, made it desirable that
Moskva should be no longer dependent in ecclesiastical matters on the
Turk-tolerated Patriarch at Constantinople, and it was perhaps partly
on this account, partly with the view of gratifying the Russian clergy
and his partisan, the Metropolitan, Iov, that Godounov in 1589 secured
the promotion of the Primate to the office of Patriarch of Moskva,
with four Metropolitans (Novgorod, Kazan, Rostov, and Kroutitsk) under
him. A more lastingly important stroke of internal administration,
effected by the Regent at this time, also fell in with his private ends
in addition to safeguarding the interests of the State. This was the
abolition of the “Ur’ev den,” or S. George’s day, on which the peasants
had been wont to decide for the ensuing year whether they would remain
with their present masters, or migrate, literally, to fresh fields
and pastures new. This right of annual “betterment” had lately shown
a tendency to work in one direction; the opening up of Sibiria and
the greater security from Tartar raids which the agriculturalist of
the south of Russia now enjoyed drew the peasants in steady streams
from their accustomed grounds, and the small proprietors, the military
backbone of the gosoudarstvo, who were unable to offer the privileges
and immunities which the richer landowners held forth, found their
estates gradually drained of the labour which alone made them valuable.
Godounov grappled boldly with the situation; he issued an edict which
forbade the serf to change his master, and thus by one stroke bound the
peasant to the soil and the grateful small landowner to his party.
The dynastic hopes of the house of Moskva had been fluttered in 1592
by a report that the Tzaritza was in a condition which might well
be termed interesting, since the birth of an heir was of such vital
importance to Russia; Irena did indeed bring forth a daughter, who was
baptized with the name Theodosia, and died. This was the last expiring
flicker of the paling torch of the Ivanovitch dynasty. On the 7th of
January 1598 Thedor himself expired, leaving his vacant throne somewhat
vaguely at the disposal of his widow, the Patriarch, the Regent, and
Thedor Romanov. “In the person of this vague and virtuous sovereign,”
sums up a French historian, “the race of bloody and violent men of
prey who had created Russia was extinguished.”[180] For the first time
in her political history Russia was fronted with an interregnum. The
widowed Tzaritza, the only remaining representative of the sovereign
authority in the eyes of the people, made the void still more
pronounced by retiring with her brother into the New Monastery of the
Virgin, which hallowed retreat promptly became the centre of anxious
solicitations and political manœuvrings. As Irena Godounov would do
nothing to remove the deadlock, Boris Godounov became indispensable,
and the Patriarch, with the assent of the principal citizens, offered
him the crown of Monomachus and, as far as he was able to speak with
authority, the sovereignty of the Russias. Boris wisely deferred the
choice of a Tzar to the decision of a representative gathering of the
Moskovite States, a step which, while it gave his enemies a longer time
to develop their opposition, would place his election, if carried,
on a surer foundation. The Sobor which assembled at the capital in
the month of February was composed of 474 members, of which 99 were
clergy, 272 of the boyarin and landowner class (of which 119 were
small proprietors), and the remainder starostas, deputies from the
provincial towns, and representatives of the merchant bodies.[181] With
the clergy and small proprietors the Godounov interest was predominant,
and men of all sections were conversant with the ability and energy
which the Regent had displayed in dealing with the foreign affairs
of the country, left by Ivan in such unpromising plight. There were
many boyarins whose pedigrees gave them a more legitimate claim to sit
on the throne of Rurik, but none who inspired such confidence as did
Godounov. The latter was unanimously elected to the sovereignty, and
only stimulated the popular voice by affecting to hold back from the
proffered dignity. [Sidenote: 1598] On the 21st of February, amid the
striking of the 5000 bells of Moskva’s many churches, the Patriarch
went forth at the head of his clergy, followed by the greater part
of the inhabitants of the city, and bearing the ikon of the Mother
of God of Vladimir, towards the monastery of the Virgin; Godounov
met this imposing outpour with another procession, bearing the less
celebrated but equally adorable Mother of God of Smolensk. Satisfied
of the solidity of his call to the throne, he at length put aside his
hesitation and allowed himself to be proclaimed Gosoudar and Tzar of
all the Russias. In effect nothing was changed, except that he ruled
in name what he had already ruled in fact; on the other hand, however,
if he exchanged the position of Vremenszhik for that of sovereign, he
lost the authority which even the weak Thedor had been able to impart
to him--the authority of a time-honoured “legend.” With the Russians
legend and ideal counted for more than an apprenticeship of capable
public service, and greater homage was paid to an Orthodox sovereign
who hid from the enemy under a haystack than to a voevoda who died
fighting superbly for his country. Crueller tortures were inflicted
upon brave and blameless men in their midst than any for which sixty
generations of Jews were held accursed, yet it was the inflictor and
not the victim who was accounted holy, and worthy to sleep beneath the
wings of the archangels. Boris, with all his record of past services
and recommendation of present ability, with all his benevolence and
dexterity, could count on nothing more than the makeshift loyalty of
his subjects.
His first action after his election, before even his coronation had
taken place, was one which bespoke alike vigour and calculation.
A rumour, possibly not without some foundation, but such as was
current at Moskva every summer, credited the Krim Khan with designs
for an immediate invasion of Russian territory. Boris did not wait
for more exact information, but forthwith assembled from all parts
of the gosoudarstvo a splendidly equipped army which was estimated
at 500,000 men. This demonstration of potential fighting power and
resource not only awed the Khan into good behaviour, but served as a
hint to the Swedes and Poles that the new sovereign of Russia, albeit
of comparatively humble origin, was not a factor to be despised in
the affairs of North-eastern Europe; it fulfilled too another purpose,
that of bringing the voevodas, boyarins, Tartar vassals, and Kozak
hetmans from distant parts of the realm into immediate contact with
their new ruler. The development of the quarrel between Sigismund and
his uncle Karl, which gradually became a struggle between Poland and
Sweden, freed Moskovy from the danger of attack from either power,
and had Boris been able to wholly shake off the cautious traditions
of his predecessors and enter into aggressive alliance with one or
other of the combatants, Riga or Revel might have fallen into his
hands and the coveted eye-hole into Europe have been secured. The
Tzar, however, clung too faithfully to the old policy which had borne
so little fruit. Nothing but sheer force would move the Swedes out of
Estland or the Poles out of Livland, and nothing short of compulsion
would make the inhabitants of these provinces receive the Russians
as saviours; yet the same blind of a vassal kinglet which had failed
disastrously in the case of Magnus was tried again, with a Swedish
prince, Gustav (son of the late Erik XIV.), as its figure-head. Gustav
created no enthusiasm among the Livlanders--who were not in a position
indeed to show any--and ended by inspiring disgust in his patrons at
Moskva. It is probable that Boris was merely staying his hand while
Poles and Swedes fought out their domestic quarrels, and hoped to
profit by the exhaustion which such conflict must necessarily entail
by plundering both parties. The opportunity never came. Little by
little the sovereign became aware that he was scarcely possessed of
the love of the people for whom he had done so much; the clergy were
offended at his suggestion of founding a university, the citizens
were aggrieved that he introduced skilled foreigners, who were so
badly needed to reorganise the sciences and arts of the country, all
classes were scandalised because he shaved off his beard. A terrible
famine, caused by inclement weather in the spring and summer of 1601,
brought out the good qualities of the Tzar, who disbursed immense
sums ungrudgingly among the starving poor, and grappled vigorously
and with partial success against the prevailing scarcity. The people,
however, saw in the calamity only the wrath of God against a prince
who had caused sacred blood to be shed; with their eyes strained
upwards to the frescoed roofs of their churches they missed the human
endeavour and the open-hearted charity which was striving to alleviate
their misfortunes. Portents of disaster and bodings of coming trouble
succeeded the famine, for the most part of a very understandable
nature. Beasts of the chase became scarce in the forests, packs of
famished dogs and wolves roamed round the villages, eagles screamed
over Moskva, and black foxes were caught about the city, in addition
to which, unknown birds and beasts, strange and therefore marvellous,
were observed throughout the country. As there had been a general
scarcity of vegetation, and as the towns were honeycombed by the
hastily-dug graves of those who had died of want--numbering some
hundreds of thousands--this sudden invasion of the forest-folk was not
inexplicable. It was also said that women and animals gave birth to
monsters; certainly about this time rumour gave birth to extraordinary
reports, of more disquieting omen than any of the rest, that Dimitri
Ivanovitch had survived the evil designs of his would-be murderers and
was yet alive. The people who had credited an irritated Deity with
exacting hecatombs of victims for the foul death of a Tzarevitch, were
equally prone to believe that the Tzarevitch was not dead, and it only
remained for the rumour to take concrete shape for Boris’s throne
to be seriously imperilled. With the taint of disaffection visible
around him, his government began to take a harsher tone. Although
never verging upon the savagery of the later Moskovite sovereigns, the
clemency of the first years of his reign was laid aside as useless.
Bogdan Bielskie, who had earned the hatred of the citizens in the days
of the Terrible, now incurred the displeasure of Boris by alleged
contumacy; it was said that his beard was plucked piecemeal from his
chin by the Tzar’s orders, but beyond this he was only banished to
another district more remote than the one he had formerly administered.
More thorough was the swoop upon the Romanov family; the five sons of
the late member of Thedor’s Douma, Nikita Romanov, stood high in the
public esteem, and stood also very near the throne. An elected prince
had some cause to fear the competition of such a powerful and popular
family, albeit they were not of Rurikovitch blood. The charge which was
suddenly brought against them, of a design to remove the sovereign by
means of poison, was probably one of those whispered calumnies which
bred freely in the half-Asiatic, wholly mediæval atmosphere of Moskva.
It was nevertheless a convenient excuse for destroying the influence of
this dangerous party; the head of the house, Thedor, was constrained
to enter a monastery, where, as the monk Filarete, he seemed safely
out of the way. The other brothers underwent more or less rigorous
imprisonment (the severities of which were eventually relaxed), while
a crowd of allied or sympathetic boyarins were ordered into captivity
or received governorships in remote parts of the country. No blood
was spilt except incidentally that of serfs and servants, tortured
to disclose incriminating information concerning their masters. That
the Tzar, who had received his earliest impressions at the Court of
Ivan the Terrible, did not act more in the spirit of his times is a
circumstance which may stand to his credit, especially when regard
is had to the influences which surrounded him. The Moskva of those
days was an environment which in itself propagated monstrous and
reactionary ideas. Here were to be seen on every hand wretched hovels,
“dwelling-places for human beings,” dark suspicion-speaking bazaars,
crowded rookeries of cramped caravansaries, wide open spaces, bleak
and untenanted, chill and massive boyarin palaces, weird and awesome
temples; and in the Kreml itself “violent juxtaposition of the German
Gothic style with those of India, of Byzantium, of Italy--the same
tangle of edifices, packed one within another like a Chinese puzzle;
the same strange wild orgy of decoration, of form, of colour; a
delirium and fever, a veritable surfeit of plastic fancy. Small rooms,
surbased vaulted roofs, gloomy corridors, lamps twinkling out of the
darkness, on the walls the lurid glow of mingled ochres and vermilions,
iron bars to every window, armed men at every door; a swarming
population of monks and warriors everywhere.”[182] Such was the capital
of Russia in the last days of the Rurikovitch dynasty; such it remained
throughout the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: PLAN OF MOSKVA at the close of the Sixteenth Century.
1. Cathedral of Mikhail the Archangel.
2. Cathedral of the Assumption (_Ouspenski_).
3. Spasskie (Saviour) gate.
4. Nikolai gate.
5. Neglina gate.
6. Borovitzkie gate.
7. The Red Place.
8-8. Markets and Bazaars.
9. River gate.
10. Strietenskie gate.
11. Tverskie gate.
12. Nikolskie gate.
13. Arbatskie gate.
14. Tchertol’skie gate.
15. Swannery.
]
FOOTNOTES:
[175] N. Kostomarov, _Rousskaya Istoriya_, etc.
[176] Karamzin distinguishes the first as Ivan Petrovitch Shouyskie,
Kostomarov as Petr Ivanovitch Shouyskie, while Solov’ev gives an
alternative of Ivan Petrovitch or Thedor Shouyskie.
[177] According to Karamzin 900,000 roubles.
[178] S. Solov’ev; N. Kostomarov, _Rousskaya Istoriya v’
jhizneopisaniyakh eya glavnieyshikh dieyatelen_.
[179] S. Solov’ev, Karamzin.
[180] Rambaud.
[181] S. Solov’ev, Kostomarov.
[182] K. Waliszewski, Peter the Great.