THE PHANTOM TZAR
In all historical ages men have been found ready to believe in the
pretensions of the personators who seem to spring up as the natural
aftermath of a vanished dynasty or a quenched idol; pre-eminently prone
to be deluded by such deceptions were the Russians of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Inured by the exactions of their religion
to an unquestioning faith in the supernatural, incapable from their
teaching, as much as from their want of teaching, of forming a critical
opinion upon a matter which admitted of doubt, and isolated from
their own communities and from the sources of reliable information by
vast distances and bad roads, they afforded a fit germinating bed for
rumours and frauds of the flimsiest nature. Without proof many of them
had accepted the theory that Boris Godounov was responsible for the
murder of Dimitri Ivanovitch; equally without proof they were ready
to credit the reports which began to fly about the country during the
winter of 1603-1604 to the effect that the long-mourned Tzarevitch
was alive and gathering an army beyond the Lit’uanian border. The
explanation which accompanied this story was that Dimitri had been
smuggled away from his would-be assassins at Ouglitch and another child
had been killed in his stead. The fact that his mother and nurse had
shrieked and swooned over his corpse, and that his relatives and the
townsfolk who knew him well had had ample opportunity to detect any
substitution while the body lay in state awaiting Shouyskie’s inquest,
does not seem to have been taken into consideration. It was evident,
from the accumulating reports that kept pouring in, that there was
someone in Lit’uania, a tangible being, who claimed to be the veritable
Dimitri, and it was also evident that the King of Poland and numbers of
the Russ-Lit’uanian princes believed in his identity--or professed to.
The generally accepted theory among Russian historians as to the true
personality of this pretended Ivanovitch is that he was one Grigorie
Otrepiev, an enterprising monk, who had thrown off his frock to live a
life of liberty among the western Kozaks. Amid the vicissitudes of a
self-seeking career, both before and after quitting the cloister, the
idea of impersonating the dead Tzarevitch seems to have cropped up from
time to time, and finally, having entered the service of a Lit’uanian
boyarin, the adventurer, on the pretence of mortal sickness, announced
to a priest his identity with Dimitri. The chief evidence in support
of his story was the discovery of a jewelled cross on his person,
a clue which might have convicted him of sacrilegious pilfering as
convincingly as of royal parentage. His “discoverers,” however, needed
little convincing; the King of Poland, to whom he was exhibited after
a somewhat rapid recovery, welcomed him as a useful weapon of offence
against Boris; the Jesuits saw in him an instrument for the advancement
of their Church; and the banished and disgraced Russians with whom he
came in contact hailed him as the possible means of restoring them to
the state from which they had fallen. Kostomarov, in an exhaustive
monograph on the subject, throws doubt on the identity of the false
Dimitri with the somewhat nebulous monk Otrepiev, and inclines to the
belief that the pretender, whoever he was, was himself convinced of his
veritable tzarskie descent.[183]
Whatever the origin and past career of this apparition, he succeeded
in the first duty of an impostor, which is to impose. The personal
resemblance which he bore to the family to which he claimed to
belong does not appear to have been very striking; the medals and
coins afterwards struck for him give his presentment as that of a
coarse-featured thick-set man, with a heavy lower-jaw, recalling
a Habsburg rather than a Rurikovitch type.[184] But with a widely
scattered population like that of Russia, rumour, assertion, and
hearsay information weighed more than actual facts; the bulk of the
people may not have been convinced, but many of them were ready to
give the Pretender the benefit of the doubt. Besides the unofficial
but more or less open support which he received from the Poles, the
restless or uneasy spirits on the Russian side of the border hastened
to join his standard. The Don Kozaks, impatient of the control of
Boris’s strong hand, sped gleefully to join a leader in whose ranks
were already gathered numbers of their fellow-freebooters from the
Dniepr. The Tzar displayed a calmness which perhaps he did not feel,
and contented himself at first with an expostulatory message to the
King of Poland, and an address, signed by the Patriarch and all the
bishops, to their fellow-clergy in Lit’uania, counselling them to
withhold their allegiance from the unfrocked monk who was masquerading
as a Tzarevitch. While a cross-current of proclamations was being
directed from Moskva into Lit’uania and from the grand duchy into
White Russia, the adventurer was preparing for bolder measures. Though
Sigismund would not openly avow him, his cause had been warmly taken
up by Urii Mnishek, Palatine of Sendomir, who supported him with
men and money, and promised him, moreover, the hand of his daughter
Marina. Boris’s attitude of scornful indifference had left the border
province of Sieverski more or less open to an invasion, and in October
the “Ljhedimitri” (false-Dimitri) crossed with his little army into
Moskovite territory. [Sidenote: 1604] His audacity was rewarded with
a large measure of success. The frontier town of Moravsk opened its
gates to the Pretender, and the ancient city of Tchernigov followed the
example. Novgorod Sieverski, held for Boris by Petr Basmanov (son of
that angel-faced Thedor who came to such a miserable end in the days
of Ivan), administered a timely check to the invader’s progress, but
Poutivl and other neighbouring towns went over to the impostor’s cause.
The Tzar set to work in earnest to stamp out the treason which had
gained such an advantageous start, but the armed men who had sprung up
at his summons to combat the Tartar Khan did not gather in such numbers
to march against the _soi-disant_ Tzarevitch. Nor was the sovereign
sure of the fidelity either of the troops raised or of the voevodas who
were to command them. Gladly would he have seen Basmanov, the man of
his heart, who had already stood “among innumerable false, unmoved,” at
the head of the tzarskie forces, but the exigencies of his statecraft
required that he should employ the old family chiefs on this critical
service. [Sidenote: 1604-5] Accordingly kniaz Mstislavskie and kniaz
Vasili Shouyskie were entrusted with the direction of a winter campaign
in the Sieverski Oukrain, which resulted in the Ljhedimitri being
driven out of the open field and obliged to take refuge in Poutivl.
Deserted by the Palatine of Sendomir and most of the Poles, and unable
to count even on the continued adherence of the Kozaks, the bold
disputer of the throne of Moskva was indeed in desperate circumstances.
But the very despair which animated his followers made them formidable
opponents to the Tzar’s troops, whose leaders were either incapable of
following up their success or unwilling to do so. Instead of making a
determined attack on Poutivl and securing the impostor’s person, they
centred their efforts on the siege of Kromi, a gorodok held by a small
Kozak garrison. The satisfaction felt at Moskva at the first successes
of the tzarskie arms gradually evaporated as the weeks dragged on
without result, and men began to speak significantly of the marvellous
escapes and invincible tenacity of the man who claimed to be Dimitri.
That the pretender had many adherents in the capital itself was
becoming evident, and Boris is credited by the chroniclers with having
cut off the tongues of some who were indiscreet enough to voice their
sentiments; a proceeding which, though out of keeping with the Tzar’s
general methods, was too thoroughly akin to Moskovite traditions to
be unhesitatingly set down as fable. Boris was, however, wise enough
to see that he must stand or fall by Russian disposition alone, and
the loyal offer of assistance made him by the Duke of Sudermanland,
now King of Sweden, was declined. In possession of the throne and the
immense treasure appertaining thereto, enjoying the support of the
Hierarchy, feared, if not loved, by the boyarins and voevodas, and held
in esteem by the Courts of Austria, England, and Sweden, the Godounov
Tzar might well have stood his ground against the doubtful rival whom
he had hemmed into a corner of the Sieverski province. Every year that
he reigned made people more accustomed to the new dynasty, made them
look more naturally to his son Thedor as their future sovereign. If
the Ljhedimitri had secret well-wishers at the Court, if there were
within the Kreml’s precincts men who fancied Boris guilty of reaching
the throne by a hidden crime, it was by the same means that they must
vanquish him. That such a design existed would not be much to say; that
it was ever put into practice there is no proof. History merely records
that the Tzar, after transacting business all the morning, dined in
the “gilded room” in his palace, and was suddenly stricken with a
mysterious malady, of which he died two hours later (13th April 1605).
So, working and ruling to the last, passed away the great boyarin, who,
with all his faults, gave Russia one of the noblest of her Tzars. His
great crime in the eyes of the people who had chosen him to reign over
them was that he did not belong to the sacred House of Rurikovitch,
but for all his Tartar extraction he was more western in his ideas
than any of the sovereigns of Moskovy who had gone before him, and the
fifteen-year-old son whom he had educated to succeed him gave promise
of being an enlightened and gracious ruler. Since the vaunted Dimitri
Donskoi, he was the first Gosoudar who had put himself at the head of
an army to meet a Tartar invasion, and Russia was less troubled by Krim
inroads during his reign than she had been since the alliance of Ivan
III. with Mengli-Girei.
As the sorrowing Patriarch escorted his dead friend across the Kreml
square, awake with the young pulse-life of an April day, into the chill
shadows of the beautiful Cathedral of the Archangel, he might know that
he was burying more than the corpse of a monarch. With Boris had gone
the peace of an empire.
In all the wide dominions of the gosoudarstvo three centres of
interest stood out with a marked prominence: the capital, the camp
before Kromi, and the phantom Court at Poutivl. At Moskva, where the
oath of allegiance to Thedor Borisovitch was quietly taken, all the
symptoms of a minority or regency reasserted themselves. A Douma, which
included the old names and in one case a former member, was beckoned
into existence. Bogdan Bielskie, the twice-banished, recurred again
in the state council, where he should have been able to give valuable
information as to the outlying parts of the tzarstvo. Mstislavskie
and Vasili and Dimitri Shouyskie were summoned from their commands
at Kromi, less perhaps on account of any counsel they might impart
to the Tzaritza and her son, than because their withdrawal smoothed
the way for Basmanov to take over the command of the army. The latter
brought down to the camp the authentic news of the death of Boris, and
exacted from the troops an oath of allegiance to the new sovereign.
The court at Moskva felt relieved when the voevoda whom Boris had
loved, and who had given proof both of his fidelity and ability in
the defence of Novgorod-Sieverski, went down to take command of the
army of the Oukrain, and they expected to hear of some decisive blow
struck at the impostor, some victory which should open the new reign
with brilliancy. Instead of which they learned, from the mouths of
two fugitive voevodas, that Basmanov, in conjunction with the princes
Golitzuin and Saltuikov, had proclaimed the Ljhedimitri Tzar of
Moskovy. How far this was a contemplated move, how far it was a sudden
decision, born of a discovery of widespread defection among the troops,
it is impossible to say. The effect was enormous, and revolutionised
the whole struggle. The long besieged Kozak troop in Kromi found
themselves suddenly hailed as allies by the men who had for months
been working to encompass their destruction, and the bold adventurer
of Poutivl was able to come out of his retreat, and put himself at the
head of the army that was to conduct him in triumph to Moskva. The
news of these events had stirred all classes in the white-built city;
the people left their occupations to gather in agitated crowds on the
great square between the Kitai-gorod and the Kreml, and everywhere
was heard the name Dimitri. The man who wore that name was marching
with the tzarskie army, led by the ablest voevodas of the state, under
the banner of the two-headed eagle and St. George the Conqueror. His
proclamations were daily smuggled into the city and daily the popular
voice turned in his favour. The strielitz and body-guard were becoming
less and less in evidence around the Kreml, the members of the Douma
were coldly received, the Patriarch dared not show himself, even in the
sacred vestments of his office, and could only shed tears of bitter
mortification in the shelter of his palace. With the first day of June
came the forerunners of the claimant Tzar to the Krasno selo (red, or
beautiful village), where dwelt the rich merchants and tradesmen, a
class which had never been well affected towards the Godounov interest;
the Pretender was enthusiastically proclaimed, and his adherents
streamed into unguarded Moskva, shouting the magic name of Dimitri
Ivanovitch. The multitude of the city rose in response to the cry, and
clamouring crowds, giving vent to their restrained feelings, burst
armed and angry and thousand-throated into the undefended Kreml. Boris
had asked his subjects to bring him the Ljhedimitri alive or dead. They
were bringing him in alive.
The first acts of the aroused Moskvitchi were comparatively moderate.
The Tzaritza-mother, the young Thedor, and his sister were removed from
the palace and held prisoners in the private mansion of the Godounovs,
and a clean sweep was made of the relatives and adherents of the
fallen House, who were imprisoned or carried off to distant parts of
the gosoudarstvo. For the rest, the people celebrated the upheaval
by getting universally intoxicated, and to the wild fury of the day
succeeded a night of stupefied repose. The revolution, however, was
yet to claim its victims; while the new sovereign was still halting at
Toula his enemies were forcibly removed from his path. The Patriarch
was dragged from before the altar of the Cathedral of the Assumption
and dispoiled of his robes and office, and a few days later a report
was circulated that Thedor and his mother had poisoned themselves.
Their bodies, exposed to the public view, bore traces of violence,
and it was said that they had been strangled by some strielitz at the
command of the voevoda Golitzuin.[185] What hand, if any, the Pretender
had in the matter there is nothing to show. Thus ended a dynasty
which eight weeks previously had seemed in assured possession of the
throne. On the 20th of June, amid the resounding of myriad bells and
the hoarse shouting of the people who lined streets, and roofs, and
campaniles, the Phantom rode into the city of his endeavours, with a
crashing of trumpets and kettle-drums, with a glittering retinue of
Polish cavalry, German guards, Kozaks and strielitz. The long lost
Dimitri, as his subjects fondly imagined him, made solemn obeisance
at the tomb where the dread Ivan slept, and incidentally ordered
the remains of the usurper Boris to be removed to a less hallowed
resting-place. A cross-current of coffins and persons journeyed to
and from the centre-point of Moskovite life; Nagois and Romanovs,
living and defunct, came in from their monasteries or lonely graves
to dwell or decompose in the favoured places of the Kreml, while the
Godounov connections and Vremenszhiki went, literally, out into the
cold; that is to say, to Perm and Sibiria. Vasili Shouyskie, the man
who had conducted the inquest on the murdered Tzarevitch, had the
indiscretion to recall this circumstance to the minds of a people gone
wild with enthusiasm. His reminiscences were not interesting to the
Tzar, who had him promptly arrested. He was interrogated, probably
with the accompaniment of torture, and condemned, by a council of
boyarins and citizens, to death. While his head was actually awaiting
the axe-stroke a dramatically timed reprieve stopped the execution of
the sentence, which was commuted to one of banishment. The people, with
whom the Shouyskie family were more or less popular, might appreciate
the sovereign’s clemency, but it did not strengthen their conviction
that he was the son of the terrible Ivan. A new Patriarch was elected,
Ignacie, a Greek, once Archbishop of Cyprus, from which see he had
been driven by the Turks, since Archbishop of Riazan; he had been one
of the first of the Vladuikas to recognise the adventurer as Tzar.
There remained one more step towards establishing his identity, which,
though of slight historical value, it was important that the Pretender
should take. Mariya Nagoi, seventh wife of Ivan IV., was still living,
and her testimony was naturally called for as to the authenticity of
the person who posed as her son. In the middle of July the ex-Tzaritza
was summoned from the convent that had been her prison for so many
years, and was met at Tayninsk, a village near Moskva, by the man who
claimed her as mother; whom, after a private interview, she publicly
acknowledged as the true Dimitri. After thirty years of banishment and
disgrace, half of which had been spent in cloistered seclusion, the
relict might well have considered that it was a wise mother that knew
her own child in the person of a reigning and popular sovereign. The
very fact that his imposture had overturned her hated enemies, the
Godounovs, would have gone far to soothe any possible scruples. It is
significant that after her testimony the “Otrepiev” theory, first put
forward by the Patriarch in the reign of Boris, began to gain ground
in the capital. The people who had feared to oppose a forlorn and
desperate pretender, from an idea that he might be the genuine heir of
the Rurikovitches, were not comfortable at seeing him on the sacred
throne of Monomachus, from a suspicion that he might not be.
Firmly established at the Kreml, after a campaign of almost unexampled
good fortune, the new Sovereign commenced to display characteristics
disconcerting alike to his subjects and to future students of his
personality. His idiosyncrasies were not those of the House whose scion
he professed to be, but neither were they those of a partially-educated
adventurer. The boyarins of the leading families of Moskva, encased
in the complacent conceit of ignorance, were aghast at being told by
this newly-appeared Gosoudar that their great need was schooling. Boris
had talked of colleges as a desirability; Dimitri spoke of them as
urgent necessities. For their part the boyarins were of opinion that
the Tzar himself had much to learn in the way of conforming with the
manners and customs of the Moskovites. His behaviour was a growing
source of scandal to his Orthodox subjects; his hair was not dressed
in the Russian fashion; he never slept after dinner; he sat down to
dine to the sound of music instead of prayer; and he ate veal. He
drilled his soldiers himself--a thing which no Moskovite sovereign had
ever done--and he slew bears with his own hand instead of seeing them
killed from a safe distance. The precedent of David, King of Israel,
might have been quoted in extenuation of this unbecoming hardihood, but
nothing could excuse the erection of a statue of Cerberus in front of
the Tzar’s pleasure-house in the Kreml, a locality hitherto graced only
with the representations of Bogoroditzas, or at most a saint-mastered
dragon. The clergy were offended by the scant consideration with which
they were treated, by the toleration shown to Catholics and Lutherans,
and above all by a disposition which Dimitri showed to divert some
of the hoarded wealth of the monasteries to the public treasury. The
strielitz were piqued by the open acknowledgment which the Tzar made
of the superior merits of the foreign soldiery, the boyarins resented
the subordinate part they were compelled to play at the Court of
this man of new and unpalatable ideas. All this gives a glimpse of a
strong personality, an enlightened mind, healthily contemptuous of the
foibles and superstitions with which it came in contact, and a vigorous
faculty for reform and organisation. A rare character in the long list
of Moskovite sovereigns. Such a one recurs some ninety years later
and creates a new Russia. The Ljhedimitri, himself a man of straw,
appears to have tried to cram into a few months the patient efforts
of a lifetime. Probably the fact was that the extraordinary facility
with which his enterprise had been carried to a triumphant conclusion
gave him a false idea of his own powers and of the dispositions of
the Russians. In one respect only do his transactions approach, at
one and the same time, to the childish arrogance of the legitimate
Moskovite Sovereigns and the petulant vanity which might be expected of
a mushroom monarch; not only did he demand from the Pope and the King
of Poland the acknowledgment of the old disputed title of Tzar, but he
further stipulated for the style of Cæsar (Kesar), an innovation of his
own devising. It is possible that this solemn trifle, which threatened
to interrupt his good understanding with Rome and the Holy See, was
really introduced for that purpose, in order to get rid of allies who
were likely, now that he had attained his ambitious object, to become
inconvenient. That he had, from conviction or policy, privately entered
the Catholic Church during the days of his pretendership seems fairly
evident; that it was not expedient to carry the matter farther will be
readily comprehended. The Jesuit Father, Pierling, in an historical
disquisition on the subject, combats the assertion of the Russian
writers that the Ljhedimitri was “invented” or first brought forward
by the Society of Jesus, the Nuncio in Poland, or any agent of the
Pope.[186] Certainly there is no evidence on which to rest such a
charge, which probably had its origin in inter-Christian jealousy. The
fairest and most reasonable conclusion is that the Jesuits, Ragoni, and
the Holy See, allowed themselves to be somewhat easily persuaded of
the legitimacy of the claims of a pretender who might render splendid
services to their Church. Rome had ever been dazzled with the hope
of bringing the Russian Communion into her maternal embrace, and the
prospect was the more alluring now that her spiritual dominion had
been shorn and abbreviated by the Protestant heresy in the north of
Europe, and by the Mohametan encroachments in the south-east. At the
same time it should be borne in mind that the evidence on which the
Catholics and Poles grounded their ostensible faith in the Ljhedimitri
was substantially the same as that which imposed upon the whole of
Russia. The zeal of a convert--and a pensioner--showed a considerable
abatement when the adventurer was safely transformed into Tzar,
and Dimitri evinced no disinclination to continuing bowing down in
the house of Rimmon for the rest of his life. The Poles who still
hung about his person were permitted to worship freely after their
own fashion, and to penetrate into the sacred places of Moskovite
Orthodoxy; but when sounded on the subject of establishing the Latin
faith the Tzar talked evasively of educating his subjects and of
initiating a war against the Sultan, objects nearer his heart than a
revolution of dogmas. If a contemptuous clemency could have inspired
the Moskvitchi with affection for a veal-eating sovereign, the False
Dimitri would not have lacked popularity. Vasili Shouyskie and his
two brothers were recalled from their disgrace and banishment, and
the former was admitted into the Council of the Tzar. The axe and
the gibbet had a long rest, and the monarch hunted bears instead of
boyarins. Dimitri might have strengthened his position and gained time
to live down the prejudices of his subjects by effecting a prudent
marriage; by allying himself with the Romanov or even the Shouyskie
family he would have created a party for himself among the nobles and
have secured an incontestable link with the line of Rurik, either by
remote descent or recent connection. For some reason of his own he was
bent on fulfilling his betrothal vow to Marina Mnishek, and such was
his impatience to see his bride at Moskva, sharing his throne, that the
Palatine, her father, was able to exact considerable sums of money and
concessions on the question of the future Tzaritza’s religious liberty
(she was a Catholic), before escorting her to her expectant husband.
[Sidenote: May 1606] The arrival at the capital of the Polish maiden,
attended by her father and a following of some 2000 persons, together
with an embassy from King Sigismund, did not inspire the citizens with
any greater affection for their monarch, already tainted in their
eyes with partiality for foreign customs and alien faiths. The bride
made her state entry in a carriage decorated with silver eagles and
drawn by ten pied horses. The tzarskie troops, in red coats with white
cross-belts, were drawn up to receive her; cannon, bells, drums and
trumpets, sounded a welcome; only the people kept an ominous silence.
It was noted with disapproval that as she entered the Kreml through the
Saviour Gate, a portal usually crossed with deep obeisance, the Polish
band crashed out their national air, “For ever in weal as in woe.”
The wedding and coronation festivities were carried on with a lavish
display and open-handed conviviality seldom seen before in Moskva, but
they were not preceded by the elaborate religious ceremonials by which
the Grand Princes of yore had been wont to “purify” any consort they
took from un-Orthodox lands. The woman who now shared the throne of
Monomachus was a Pole and a Latin; as for the Tzar, no one knew what
or who he was--except perhaps Mariya Nogai. The popular discontent had
found a rallying-point in the Shouyskie zamok; ’Dimitri had pardoned
Vasili Shouyskie, the latter had never forgiven ’Dimitri. Before the
arrival of the bridal foreigners the boyarin had set in movement the
conspiracy which was intended to hurl the impostor from his mis-gotten
throne. The plot was a wide-reaching one and could scarcely be kept
from the Tzar’s knowledge, but the newly-wedded monarch, strong in
contemptuous security and engrossed in feasting and music, paid scant
notice to the warnings which he received from spies or the croaking
of his guests as to the temper of the people. The 18th of May he had
fixed for a sham battle around a specially constructed wooden fortress;
in the early hours of the 17th his subjects gave him a display of a
less make-believe nature. Besides the accumulated dislike for the
Tzar and all his ways, the Poles who had flocked in such numbers to
the marriage festival of Marina Mnishek gave bitter offence to the
Moskvitchi by their haughty and irreverent bearing. It was the old
history of Kiev repeating itself. The Russians chafed to see the
Kreml of their cherished capital, the Holy of Holies of the Moskovite
nation, overrun by swaggering Poles and lawless Kozaks, and the hour
of vengeance was eagerly awaited by all classes. On the night of the
16th the strangers and the Tzar’s household, weary with wine and
revelry, sought unsuspectingly their accustomed couches; otherwise “no
one slept that night in Moskva.” As the sun’s first rays touched on
the gilded cupolas an alarm bell clanged out from a church; another
and another took up the signal, till all over the watching city the
warnings resounded. The noise penetrated into the Kreml and roused
the Tzar from his bed; the body-guard hazarded the explanation that a
fire had broken out, and the Ljhedimitri returned to his chamber. But
soon above the clanging was heard the angry yelling of a blood-seeking
multitude, and Basmanov, who since his celebrated desertion of the
Godounovs had remained true to his adopted master, burst in upon the
startled Tzar and warned him to fly. The voevoda himself faced the
clamouring crowd on the palace staircase and sank beneath a shower of
murderous blows. The Ljhedimitri, hunted through his apartments, jumped
or was thrown from an upper window and lay broken and senseless in a
courtyard. His bleeding corpse, seized by some strielitz, was borne
into a chamber where his principal boyarin enemies gathered round; for
a few short moments he returned to a consciousness of agony from broken
limbs, saw pitiless scowling faces around him, heard taunts and abuse
from angry throats; then bullets and sword-thrusts closed his last
audience. His body was dragged with ropes out through the Saviour Gate,
to the striking of the same bells that had welcomed his state entry
eleven months ago, and haled to the convent of the Ascension, where
dwelt the pseudo-mother Mariya. The corpse might well have been beyond
recognition, but to the insistence of the boyarins the old Tzaritza
declared that the Ljhedimitri was not her son--a recantation as worthy
of belief as the former avowal, and nothing more. The carrion that
yesterday had been Tzar of all the Russias was dragged back to the Red
Place, where, naked and with a ribald mask on its face, it was exposed
for three days. At its broken feet lay the corpse of the voevoda who
had been faithful to the death. “They loved each other in life; let
them be together now.” So passed the Phantom Tzar from the throne he
had so strangely haunted; phantom still, even when his dishonoured body
had been flung into an unhallowed grave beyond the city walls, in “the
house of the wretched,” a waste-land where outcasts were buried. Here,
it was rumoured, mysterious fires were seen at night. The boyarins
wished to be troubled with no further resurrections; the corpse was
dug up and burned, and the ashes, mingled with gunpowder, blown to the
winds from a cannon.[187] But not thus even could they get rid of the
spirit of the impostor whom they had crowned and anointed. Already,
before his downfall, new spectres had started up in various quarters,
following on the same lines. From Poland had come a fable that Boris
had deluded the Moskvitchi with a sham death and interment and had
fled to England disguised as a merchant. A more substantial fraud was
that of a false Petr, a supposed son of Thedor Ivanovitch, who was
actually carrying on a war of petty depredation at the head of some
Volga Kozaks. With a people so easily deluded the ghost of the “child
of Ouglitch” would not be easily laid.
Kostomarov’s question, “Who was the first false Dimitri?” is one
of those problems of history that seem to become more tangled and
unsolvable the more light is brought to bear on them. A careful
study of the circumstances and nature of his career, while leading
to a strong conviction that he was not Dimitri Ivanovitch, equally
disturbs the theory that he was Grigorie Otrepiev. The man who showed
himself alike indifferent to the Greek and Latin cults, who would not
cross himself before the adored ikons--the real Dimitri would have
prostrated himself before them, if heredity and early education go for
anything--who, moreover, was earnestly concerned for the education
and welfare of his people; who strove by personal effort to raise the
fighting value of the deplorably slack Moskovite army, and who restored
the old boast of Monomachus, never to leave to subordinates what might
be done by himself, above the effete Byzantine-borrowed etiquette
of the later Russian Gosoudars; who, in the midst of feasting and
rejoicing was steadily preparing for an attack on the Sultan, and who
treated his private enemies with clemency and even distinction; the man
who displayed all these qualities in the course of a few months was
assuredly not a Rurikovitch, nor was he an adventurer who had received
his education only in a Moskovite monastery, who had seen life only
in a Kozak camp. That he was really an instrument in the hands of the
Jesuits, nursed and educated for the purpose which he was afterwards
called upon to fulfil, necessitates not only a much greater intimacy
with Russian affairs than that body are known to have possessed, but
also a foreknowledge on their part of the course those affairs were
likely to take under the Godounov dynasty. Such pretenders are not
made in a day. Each supposition takes the inquiry no farther than the
starting-point--who was the first false Dimitri? And here it must
be left. Russian historians of the Orthodox Faith at least are able
to say with absolute conviction that the Tzar of 1605-6 was not the
real Dimitri, for the latter was beatified by the Church, and many
miracles were performed at his reputed tomb. If the supposed impostor
were proved to be identical with the veritable Ivanovitch, a new and
embarrassing dilemma would arise. The history of the career of the
Ljhedimitri is instructive as to the slender evidence on which whole
peoples will base their implicit belief in a resuscitation, or even
in a resurrection. Such beliefs have lived again and again in human
history; some are living yet. Ljhedimitries, false Pucelles, Perkin
Warbecks, missing Archdukes, and others that need not be mentioned,
have their perennial Easter in the credulity of mankind.
The catastrophe which had overtaken the impostor-Tzar included in its
scope the foreign guests who were partly responsible for the outbreak.
The massacre commenced with Dimitri’s musicians and servants in the
Kreml and extended to the lodgings of the Poles and Lit’uanians in
the Kitai- and Biel-gorod. For seven hours the church-bells dinned
out their vibrating war-music, and tumultuous crowds of citizens and
strielitz put to death such of the foreigners as were unable to defend
themselves. Well to the fore in the work of butchery were the priests
and monks, who turned the occasion of the Marina marriage into a S.
Bartholomew of their own, hunting down with zealous rage the “enemies
of their religion.”[188] The houses of the Palatine and of some of the
other Polish nobles were vigorously defended by their retainers, who
fired from the windows upon their assailants. Vasili Shouyskie (who
had led the first rush into the Kreml, crucifix in one hand, sword
in another), and other boyarins rode about the streets endeavouring
to calm the tempest they had raised, and were able to save Mnishek,
the Tzaritza, the ambassadors, and those of the Poles who had been
successful in defending their thresholds. The bells were quieted, and
the people dispersed to their homes, or vented their smouldering rage
in mutilating the figure on the Red Place.
With the disappearance of the Ljhedimitri the Moskovites were again
confronted with an interregnum, and on this occasion there was no one
very obviously marked out to fill the vacant throne. By a process of
exhaustion they fixed on the Rurik-descended kniaz who had offered the
most determined opposition to the impostor, and who had engineered the
revolution which had brought about his overthrow. Vasili Ivanovitch
Shouyskie, a man of mediocre talents, widowed and past his prime, was
scarcely a promising personality with whom to start a new dynasty,
and the election of a sovereign of such an obviously stop-gap nature
almost invited new intrigues and new apparitions. Prudence suggested at
least a recourse to a national assembly, such as that which had elected
Boris, but Shouyskie preferred to take the tide of his fortune at its
flood, and was content to receive the crown of all the Russias from the
hands of the boyarins, clergy, and merchants of Moskva. Nor was this
the only error he committed in the impatience for power to which old
men are especially liable. The trail of Polish influence made itself
visible even in the electoral gathering of the nobles and citizens who
had just entered a blood-drenched protest against all that pertained to
the West-Slavonic state. An oath was exacted from Vasili to the effect
that he would swear to govern in consultation with the boyarins, and
to put no one to death without their consent; that he would listen to
no false denunciators; and that he would not confiscate the lands,
goods, shops or houses, of the relatives of condemned offenders.[189]
This concession, the first step towards the _Pacta conventa_ of Poland,
was an innovation which shook men’s ideas of the sacred nature of the
sovereign, and reduced the new Tzar more than ever to the position of
a make-shift ruler, the mere head of a boyarin douma. Without waiting
for the consecration of a new Patriarch (the Russian Primates regularly
toppled over and disappeared in the political earthquakes which
engulfed their temporal masters), Vasili’s coronation was solemnised on
the 1st of June, the earliest date by which the corpses of the victims
of the late massacre could be cleared out of the city. The first act
of the new reign was one of nervous ostentation; the remains of the
genuine Dimitri were solemnly transported from Ouglitch to the Kreml of
Moskva, where they were reinterred in the Cathedral of the Archangel.
Here, in this sacred environment, under the eye of the Tzar, it was
hoped that this troublesome Ivanovitch would sleep in peace and cease
to haunt the throne which should have been his heritage. The revolution
was completed by the election of Hermogen, Metropolitan of Kazan, to
the Patriarchate, the new head of the Church being a bitter opponent
of all that savoured of foreign heresy. Surrounded by courtiers who
had not had time to develop disaffection, by complaisant priests and
heavily-armed strielitz, encompassed on all sides by the stately and
sanctified buildings of the Kreml, and breathing an atmosphere laden
with the exhalations of centuries of accumulated homage rendered to
saints and sovereigns, Vasili may have fancied himself, in fact as well
as title, Tzar of all the wide Russias. But throughout the hot days of
July and August, when the sun blazed on the white and gold cupolas,
and the dogs slunk about with lolling tongues in the shady bazaars of
the Kitai-gorod, and frogs croaked dismally from the steamy marshes
of the Neglina, dust-coated messengers kept pouring in to the Tzar’s
paradise, by the Saviour and Nikolai Gates, with tidings of trouble and
unrest throughout the land. From the Sieverski country, from Toula,
Kalouga, from the camp at Eletz, from the Volga valley, and from far
Astrakhan came reports of sedition and open rebellion, and the burden
of each report was the magic name Dimitri. It almost seemed as if, in
scattering the ashes of the impostor to the winds, his undertakers had
sown a crop of phantoms which was now springing up in all directions.
The most persistent rumour was that Dimitri had escaped once again from
the hands of his would-be murderers and had fled into Poland, another
man having been killed in his stead; the Moskvitchi instantly recalled
the fact that the face of the corpse so ostentatiously exposed on the
Red Place had been covered by a mask. Another widely-circulated version
invented a new Dimitri who had only just emerged from the obscurity
of his exile and claimed the throne as the real child of Ouglitch.
Nowhere at the outset was there even the foundation of a pretender
round whom these legends might crystallise; he existed as yet only in
the popular imagination. The first impostor had created the belief in
a romantically restored Dimitri; the belief now called for another
impostor. Several princes and boyarins of the lesser rank (styled
dieti-boyarins, literally “children-boyarins”) took up arms in support
of what was more than ever a phantom, but the most formidable of the
war-brands which blazed out at this time was remarkable for belonging
to a class which had supplied few men of note to Russian history.
Bolotnikov, who claimed to have seen the real Dimitri in Poland and to
have been appointed his lieutenant, was a serf who had been carried
off in one of the Tartar raids by which South Russia was periodically
drained of her already sparse population, and had continued his life
of toil in a Turkish galley. Obtaining his liberty, he had wandered
back to his native country, to reappear, like a trouble-scenting beast
of prey, in the hour of mischief and calamity. His real purpose,
which underlay the Dimitri agitation, was to inaugurate a peasant
rebellion, and if an apprenticeship of hardship and suffering were
any qualification for the championship of a down-trodden class, the
enterprise was in good hands. The sedition of the voevodas and their
military followings, the loosening of the central authority over the
provincial kniazes and boyarins, and the open door which the general
dislocation offered to the free-lances and Kozaks of the borders,
swelled the insurrection to alarming dimensions. As in the long
struggle of the Fronde which distressed France in the same century, it
was difficult to say what each particular band-in-arms was fighting
for. The very vagueness of the threatened danger added to its alarm,
and the waning of the year, instead of dispersing the insurgent army
which had gathered round Bolotnikov, impelled it towards Moskva. Towns
and gorodoks surrendered to the ex-serf as they had done before to the
reputed ex-priest, and the rebels reached the village of Kolomensk on
the 2nd December. But the ambitious nobles who had thrown in their
lot with the peasant leader saw no prospect of seizing or holding the
capital on the strength of an empty name, the shadow of a shadow, nor
did they propose to install a serf and sometime galley-slave on the
throne of Monomachus. Several flitted away from the insurgent camp, and
the young voevoda Mikhail Skopin-Shouyskie defeated and dispersed the
diminished company of rebels, whose leader fled to Kalouga. [Sidenote:
1607] Relieved from the onslaught which had threatened to overturn his
throne, Vasili was able to celebrate Christmas in his capital, and the
New Year was marked by another of the coffin-movings which accompanied
every change in the dynasty, and were characteristic of a period when
the dead seemed to share the restlessness of the living. This time it
was the remains of Boris, his wife, and Thedor II. which were conducted
to the Troitza monastery, possibly as a guarantee against inconvenient
reappearances--a precaution certainly not uncalled for. Bolotnikov
meanwhile had gathered fresh adherents and joined his forces to those
of the pretended Tzarevitch Petr, who brought a large following of Don
and Volga Kozaks. The Tzar marched against this new rival in person, at
the head of an army of 100,000 men, and drove the rebels into Toula.
Bolotnikov, seeing the hopelessness of the struggle under existing
circumstances, sent a courier to the Palatine of Sendomir, urging the
immediate production of a flesh-and-blood Dimitri, without whom all was
lost.[190] The precedent of Kromi, however, was not repeated, and in
October the besieged leaders of the revolt, Bolotnikov, the “Ljhepetr,”
and two or three boyarins who had continued staunch to the movement,
surrendered the fortress on the condition that their lives should be
spared. The holy and Orthodox Tzar crowned his victory by inflicting a
signal chastisement on his too confiding enemies. Bolotnikov had his
eyes struck out and was then drowned, a fit climax to his career; the
pretended Tzarevitch was hung, and hundreds of his followers flung
into the river. The boyarins escaped with lesser punishments. Vasili
returned to Moskva “in triumph.” But the demolition of one pretender
seemed to make way for a whole crop of dragon-heads; on all sides
sprang up self-styled heirs of the vanished line of Moskva. One was a
pretended son of Ivan Groznie, another of the murdered Ivan Ivanovitch,
while in the Oukrain alone no fewer than eight apparitions disputed
the parentage of the saintly Thedor Ivanovitch.[191] It was as though
a whole baby-farm of tzarskie foundlings and unacknowledged offspring
had suddenly come to maturity and public notice. But more formidable
than any of these shadowy claimants, there appeared in the spring of
1608, in the Sieverski land, the long-demanded Dimitri--Ljhedimitri II.
of Russian historians. Who this man was is as deep a mystery as the
origin of his forerunner, but his claims received almost as ready a
recognition. His following of Dniepr Kozaks and Polish adventurers was
swelled daily by desertions from the Moskovite soldiery, and town after
town proclaimed him. He advanced as far as Toushin, a village twelve
verstas from the capital, where he pitched his camp, which instantly
became a rallying-point for all the disaffected and intractable
elements which the period of troubles had called forth. Among other
birds of sinister omen who made their appearance at the impostor’s
improvised Court were the Palatine Mnishek and his daughter, widow of
the first Ljhedimitri, and though there was little outward resemblance
between the two men, the new pretender was publicly “recognised” by
Marina as her husband.
The Moskovites by this time had lost their first enthusiasm for
romantically restored Tzarevitches and took their revolutions more
soberly. The tide of success carried the Ljhedimitri no farther than
Toushin; in Moskva itself there was no popular upheaval such as that
which swept the first pretender into the Kreml over the ruins of the
Godounov dynasty. On the other hand there was as little enthusiasm
for the cause of the Tzar, who inspired none of the reverence and
affection which the people had been wont to lavish on their legitimate
hereditary sovereigns. The mutual weakness of the rivals led to an
extraordinary situation; the Tzar of Moskva dared not march against the
“thief of Toushin,” and the pretended Dimitri dared not march against
the “usurper.” Russia was divided by two Gosoudars whose antagonistic
Courts were pitched within a few miles of each other. Many of the
Moskovite upper class, hovering in their allegiance, flitted to and fro
between Toushin and the Kreml, paying their respects to both Tzars and
gathering favours and presents from both masters--a course of action
which earned for them the designation of “péréleti” (birds of passage).
The merchant folk of the capital pursued a similar policy, and finding
a better market for their goods among the free-spending camp-dwellers
at Toushin, almost depleted the city of its necessary supplies, a state
of things further aggravated by the fact that the rebels held the roads
to the rich corn-province of Riazan. Beyond the flat meadows of the
Moskva valley the contest was waged more briskly; despite Sigismund’s
solemn assurances of a strictly enforced neutrality, numbers of Poles
flocked to the adventurer’s service, among them the voevoda Sapieha,
already distinguished by his military exploits in Transylvania and
Sweden. The rapidly moving Kozak and Polish troops of the Pretender’s
army outmatched in activity the heavily-armed and, for the most part,
slackly-led forces of Vasili. In the north-eastern province town after
town fell into the hands of the “Toushinists”; Souzdal, Vladimir, and
Péréyaslavl opened their gates or were captured after a perfunctory
resistance; Rostov, where resided Filarete Romanov, raised to the
dignity of Metropolitan of that town by the first ’Dimitri, made a
bolder stand against the conquerors. Defeated in battle outside the
walls, the garrison and citizens defended their ramparts for three
hours, and when finally overpowered took refuge with Romanov in
the cathedral. The town submitted to the impostor’s voevodas, and
the Metropolitan was dragged from his sanctuary and conducted with
indignity to Toushin, where not martyrdom but preferment awaited
him. Out of consideration for Filarete’s kinship with his “late
half-brother” (the Tzar Thedor I.), the ’Dimitri proclaimed his captive
Patriarch of Moskva and of all Russia.[192]
Unable to attempt a direct attack upon the capital, the pretender
endeavoured to possess himself of the Troitza lavra. The accumulated
wealth of this famous monastery, which had risen like a celestial city
on the site of the lonely cell from which S. Sergie had watched the
beavers playing, necessitated safe keeping. High walls and strongly
fortified towers and gates peeped out from amid the thickly growing
trees, and spoke defiance to Tartar raiders and plundering bands of
freebooters. They were now called upon to withstand an organised
siege from the batteries of the False Dimitri. In anticipation of
the threatened attack two voevodas and a detachment of soldiers were
dispatched from Moskva to the assistance of the monks, who numbered
scarcely more than 300 brothers; the monastery servants and peasants
from the neighbouring villages brought the effective of the defenders
to 2500. At the end of September 1608 a force of 30,000 men, Poles,
Russians, Tartars, Kozaks, and Tcherkesses, led by Sapieha and
Lisovski, invested this secluded haven of peace and piety, which was
suddenly transformed into a beleaguered fortress. The balls from
ninety heavy cannon crashed incessantly against the walls and towers,
which “shivered, but did not fall”; mines and assaults alike were
fruitless, and the siege dragged on month after month. The monks fought
as vigorously as the soldiers, and during the lulls in the attack
paraded their venerated ikons on the ramparts.[193] Meanwhile the tide
of the Ljhedimitri’s success had begun to ebb. The composition of
his following bore within itself the elements of defeat. The Poles,
Kozaks, and Russian outlaws, who formed the most active contingents
of his adherents, drove from his cause, by their licentiousness and
indiscriminate marauding, the people whom they had previously won
over by their energy and the renown of their arms. Wherever the
opportunity offered, the towns which had acknowledged the pretender
renounced his sovereignty and recognised that of Vasili. The reaction
was further hastened by the victorious campaign of Skopin-Shouyskie
and his Swedish allies. Vasili, less prudent than Boris, had accepted
the renewed offer of assistance which King Karl held out, and, at the
price of yielding up the town of Keksholm and district of Korelia,
had obtained the services of 5000 Swedes, led by Jacob de la Gardie,
son of the famous general. With this reinforcement Skopin-Shouyskie
proceeded to strike at the northern strongholds of the Toushinists,
and the two young captains (Mikhail was twenty-three, de la Gardie
twenty-seven) swept all before them. [Sidenote: 1609] A victory over
the rebels in May was followed by the capture of Toropetz, Kholm,
Velikie-Louki, and other places. In July the army of the False Dimitri
was driven out of Tver after hard fighting. Temporarily deserted by the
Swedes, whose demands he was unable to satisfy, Skopin continued to
organise victory; his exhausted war-chest was replenished by patriotic
disbursements from several monasteries, while the Stroganovs sent
him valuable aid in men and money from Perm. The young voevoda “whom
the people loved” had the art of opening purse-strings as well as of
forcing strongholds. In August a force detached from the siege of the
stubbornly defended Troitza was met and repulsed with loss on the
banks of a Volga tributary stream, and in October Skopin, rejoined by
the Swedes, drove his enemies successively out of Péréyaslavl and the
Aleksandrovski sloboda. The loss of the latter place threatened the
blockade which the Ljhedimitri’s voevodas had drawn round Moskva, and
Sapieha made a determined effort to beat back the indomitable pilot of
the reaction. Around the horror-haunted village where the Terrible had
amused himself with his bears and gibbets and services, a bloody battle
was fought between the armies of the rival Tzars; Shouyskie’s Moskovite
and Permskie troops and the Swedish allies crowned their campaign by
another victory, and the followers of the Thief straggled away from a
scene of defeat and slaughter. Wearily back they made their way to the
doleful camp at Toushin or to the monastery whose battered walls still
held them at bay, while the ravens and hooded corbies came barking
and croaking out of the darkening woods to interest themselves in the
corpses stiffening in the snow; and from afar, perhaps from the distant
Valdai mountains, the vultures swooped down on the same errand.
[Sidenote: 1610]
The cause of the phantom was fading; on the 12th January the defenders
of the Troitza, worn with sixteen months of siege and wasted with want
and disease, saw their foiled enemies withdraw sullenly from their
dismantled trenches and vanish from the landscape they had so long
disfigured. In February the impostor withdrew southward to Kalouga,
and by March the famous camp of Toushin was deserted. But the decline
of the Ljhedimitri’s fortunes was not followed by a corresponding
improvement in those of Vasili. Sigismund, who had secretly abetted
the cause of the second pretender, prepared to play a bolder game now
that the insurrection seemed on the wane. The calling in of the Swedes,
the “interference” of the rival branch of the House of Vasa, gave him
a diplomatic excuse for displaying open hostility towards the Tzar,
and the confusion which reigned throughout Russia furnished him with
an opportunity for intervening with specious solicitude in the eddying
course of the troubles. In September he crossed the border with a not
very numerous army, and invited the burghers of Smolensk to admit him
as a friend who wished only to stay the shedding of Russian blood. A
similar declaration was forwarded to Moskva. Shein, the governor of
Smolensk, refused to be cajoled by the benevolent overtures of the
honey-lipped King, and the city was blockaded. Sapieha and the Poles
and West-Russian Kozaks were summoned from the pretender’s service
to join the royal camp, and many of the Moskovite adherents of the
Ljhedimitri went with them. Thus a new danger trod on the heels of the
old one, and Vasili once again beheld his Sysiphus stone of subjugation
and pacification roll back from the almost-gained summit. A catastrophe
which was suspiciously like a crime deprived him at once of the
services of his ablest voevoda and of the lingering affections of the
Moskvitchi. Skopin-Shouyskie and de la Gardie had wintered their troops
at Aleksandrov; in March 1610 they made their entry into the capital,
where the young Mikhail was received with a public enthusiasm such as
had probably never been so spontaneously exhibited since the triumph
of the victor of Koulikovo. Far out into the slobodas and meadows the
populace streamed to welcome their hero, falling prostrate as he rode
by with his companion-in-arms, and calling him their saviour; some
were said to have hailed him as their Tzar. This demonstration could
scarcely fail to be displeasing to Vasili; it was the old story of a
consciously feeble monarch and a victorious and idolised warrior. Still
more would it jar upon the Tzar’s brother and natural heir, Dimitri
Shouyskie, whose chances of succession were undoubtedly threatened
by the popularity of his nephew. At a christening feast given by
the Tzar’s brother-in-law, Ivan Vorotuinskie, on the 23rd April, the
young hope of the Moskovites was seized with a deadly illness, and
expired as soon as he had been carried to his own house. His friend and
fellow-in-arms, de la Gardie, forced himself into the death-chamber,
and, gazing wofully on his stricken comrade, exclaimed, “People of
Moskva, not only in your Russia, but in the lands of my sovereign, I
shall not see again such another man.” The heart-wail of the young
soldier was echoed by the people, who mingled with their lamentations
bitter and not unreasonable accusations of foul play against the
Shouyskies. Ekaterina, wife of Dimitri Shouyskie, of the “viper brood”
of Skouratov (she was daughter of Maluta), was generally credited with
having administered poison to the unsuspecting Mikhail. To crown the
universal resentment, Dimitri Shouyskie was given the vacant command of
the tzarskie troops.
While the muttering roll of disaffection sounded louder every day on
the Red Place and in the markets of the Kitai-gorod, in the west the
Polish invaders (who had put forward Vladislav, son of Sigismund, as
candidate for the throne of Moskva) were making themselves masters
of the Russian border towns. Starodoub, Potchep, and Tchernigov were
taken by assault, Novgorod-Sieverski and Roslavl “kissed the cross” to
Vladislav. Against these advancing enemies it was necessary to oppose
such force as could be rallied on behoof of the disliked and despised
Tzar. An army of 40,000 Russians and 8000 Swedes, under the supreme
command of the incompetent Dimitri Shouyskie, moved west towards
Smolensk. They did not get far. Near Mojhaysk they were attacked by the
royal hetman Jholkiewsko on the morning of the 23rd June and completely
defeated, the Moskovite cavalry breaking at the first shock.[194]
The German troops in de la Gardie’s following deserted to the enemy
early in the battle; “the Poles advanced to their regiments crying,
Kum! Kum! and the Germans came flying like birds to a call.”[195] The
tzarskie voevodas, Shouyskie, Golitzuin, and Mezentzkie, galloped
away into the forest, the first-named leaving his baggage, money,
staff of command, and his furs in the hands of the victors. De la
Gardie, regretting more than ever his lost comrade, surrendered to
Jholkiewsko, and was permitted to return with his diminished battalions
to the north. As a result of this decisive encounter Voloko-Lamsk, the
Iosif monastery, and other places were forced to submit to the Polish
commander. In the capital the effect was to hasten the downfall of
the Shouyskie dynasty. The brothers Prokopie and Zakhar Liapounov,
Rurik-descended nobles possessing immense influence in the province
of Riazin, stirred up the Moskvitchi to depose Vasili on the ground
that his rule had not restored peace to the land nor checked the
spilling of Christian blood. The city was in a ferment; on the 17th of
July the ferment came to a head. The kolokols clanged out from their
bell-towers the curfew of the reign of Vasili Shouyskie, as they had
sounded the death-knell of the first Ljhedimitri. The people, Liapounov
led, surged in angry crowds from one point to another; gathering
first beyond the Arbatskie gate, thence to the Kreml, where the Tzar
vainly endeavoured to recall them to their fealty, back through the
Red Place, they finally swarmed outside the Serpoukhovskie gate.
There the assembled citizens--boyarins, clergy, traders, and lesser
folk--decreed that the stop-gap Tzar must go. Vasili bowed before the
storm and departed from the tzarskie palace to his hereditary mansion.
To prevent the possibility of a reaction in his favour (he was known
to be distributing money among the Strielitz) he was seized by Zakhar
Liapounov two days later and forced to undergo tonsure and frocking in
the monastery of the Ascension. Thus ignominiously disappeared the last
Tzar of the line of S. Vladimir. The government of the city devolved
upon a council of boyarins with Thedor Mstislavskie at their head;
this was naturally only a provisional arrangement, and the most urgent
business of the new Douma was to take steps to give the Moskovite
empire the ruler necessary for its cohesion and administration. The
choice lay practically between two evils; on the one hand was the
exploited and discredited “Dimitri,” with his following of Don Kozaks
and bandits, on the other the foreign Prince Vladislav, connected
by birth and association with Russia’s two historically hostile
neighbours. The common folk and peasants were ready to accept the
former and shut their eyes to the gaps in the evidence connecting him
with the child of Ouglitch; the boyarins and upper classes--the same
aristocracy that had rebelled with pious horror against the Polish and
Catholic taint of the first Ljhedimitri--turned their thoughts and
inclinations more and more towards the son of Sigismund.
Undoubtedly the near neighbourhood of the pretender (he was then at
Kolomensk) and the disposition of the people in his favour forced the
hands of the boyarins, who feared that if they did not come speedily to
terms with Vladislav the bestowal of the crown would be rudely diverted
from their disposal. Their anxiety on this score smoothed the way for
Jholkiewsko, who entered into negotiations from his camp at Mojhaysk
on behalf of the Polish candidature. He was empowered to give solemn
assurances for the upholding of the Orthodox religion, and to promise
a share of the administration to the Douma, besides guaranteeing fair
trial for all political offenders. In the teeth of the opposition of
the Patriarch, and without recourse to the counsel of the citizens
in general, still less with regard to the voices of the people as a
whole, a small group of the Douma boyarins, Mstislavskie, Golitzuin,
and Mezentzkie, and two secretaries of council, signed the treaty
which placed the throne of Moskovy conditionally at the disposal of
a Polish prince (17th August). Four years previously the Poles had
been hunted down like wolves in the Kitai-gorod and Kreml, now the
guardians of the State, fearing a popular outburst in favour of “the
thief,” were only anxious to see the Polish hetman installed with
his troops in the capital. As a precaution against another possible
revolution, which might restore Vasili from his cloister-prison to the
throne, the persons of the deposed Tzar and his brothers were handed
over to Jholkiewsko and by him transmitted to Poland. On the 27th of
August, on the road half-way between Moskva and the Polish camp, the
oath of allegiance to Vladislav was sworn by a large number of the
citizens and boyarins, and the example of the capital was followed
by the provincial towns of Souzdal, Vladimir, Rostov, and others. A
lingering hope on the part of the Russians that the new Tzar would
adopt the Orthodox religion caused a hitch in the progress of the
negotiations, and a large embassy, at the head of which was the Rostov
Metropolitan, Filarete Romanov, and the kniaz Golitzuin, set out to
wait upon Sigismund at his camp before Smolensk, which city still held
out against his attack. The anxiety of the leading boyarins to complete
a political manœuvre with which they had already gone too far to draw
back, led them to take a step which left them no power to enforce their
demands. The doubtful proposals of the Polish king, who began to covet
the Russian crown for himself, had aroused strong symptoms of patriotic
sedition in the capital, and the Douma, having for the moment appeased
the irritated citizens, invited Jholkiewsko to bring his troops into
Moskva. On the night of the 20th September the stroke was effected, and
the people awoke next morning to find the Poles quietly established in
the Kreml, Kitai-gorod, and White-town.
With a garrison at Moskva and others in some of the provincial towns,
Sigismund felt certain of securing the crown of Monomachus, which it
was now his object to obtain for himself. The voevoda and citizens
of Smolensk, though ready to kiss the cross to Vladislav, still
stubbornly defended their walls against the King, who had announced his
intention of annexing the town to Poland. The Moskovite ambassadors
stoutly refused to agree to this projected dismemberment, but in the
extraordinary state of affairs they were unable to make any show of
relieving the place. Since the days of the Mongol servitude Russia
had not been in such a humiliating position. In the north a new
trouble arose; the King of Sweden, seeing his ally Vasili deposed and
Vladislav of Poland elected in his place, changed his good relations
with the gosoudarstvo into open hostility, and sent an invading force
into Russian territory. The northern voevodas, divided in their
allegiance between the pretender and the Pole, offered an ineffective
resistance to the Swedes, and Ladoga and Ivangorod fell into their
hands. Meanwhile the weeks dragged on in lengthened negotiations, and
the royal camp before Smolensk was the scene of as many intrigues
and self-seeking subserviencies as had distinguished the impostor’s
Court at Toushin. An unlooked-for event towards the close of the year
rid Sigismund of a rival and the Moskovites of an embarrassment.
[Sidenote: 11th Dec.] The false Dimitri, decoyed out hare-hunting on to
the steppes by a Tartar who nursed against him a private enmity, was
murdered on the lonely plain; his death broke up the camp at Kalouga,
despite the efforts of the twice-widowed Marina to form a party on
behalf of her infant son Ivan. For the most part the malcontents gave
in their adhesion to the elected Tzar Vladislav. Sigismund had now no
further excuse for prolonging the uncertainties and anxieties of an
interregnum in a country already suffering from the effects of a long
period of anarchy and revolution; his object seemed to be, however,
to weary the Moskovites into an unconditional acceptance of his rule.
From the beginning of the troubles he had played an ungenerous part and
sown a fresh crop of bitter animosities between the two Slav nations--a
crop which was to yield a rueful harvest to Poland. Threatened with a
hostile league between Moskovy and Sweden, it was but natural that he
should view with satisfaction the dawning of internal troubles in the
former State, natural perhaps that he should give underhand support
to the two successive impostors; natural also that he should attempt
to secure for his son or himself the eastern Slav sovereignty. But
the double-dealing and hypocrisy which marked his policy towards the
Russian nation, before whom he posed as a friend and deliverer, while
seeking to filch from its weakness an important frontier city, was
scarcely worthy of the great House of Vasa, which was about to present
to Europe so splendid a warrior.
In long-suffering Moskva murmurs began to be heard against the Poles
and against the Jesuits, and hints of armed opposition to Vladislav
were wafted about the country. The Patriarch Hermogen, irritated by
the sound of Latin chants in the high places of Orthodoxy, sedulously
fanned the smouldering spirit of revolt and became so outspoken in
his exhortations that he was seized by the Poles in the Cathedral of
the Assumption and placed in confinement. Released on Palm Sunday in
order to take his place astride an ass in the customary procession, he
was soon afterwards sent back to his captivity and displaced from the
Patriarchal throne, which was filled by the counter-Patriarch Ignasie;
the third, counting Filarete Romanov, who disputed that office. If
the State was without a head, the Church enjoyed in that respect a
Cerberus-like superfluity. This persecution of their Vladuika did
not dispose the people more favourably towards the Poles; Liapounov
began to collect troops in the Riazan country, and in the capital an
outbreak between the citizens and foreign garrison was only a matter
of opportunity. [Sidenote: 1611] In Passion week the tension between
the two elements found vent in a massacre, but on this occasion it was
the Poles who set on foot the butchery. Mistaking an accidental brawl
for a preconcerted rising, the hetman’s troops, including the Germans
serving under him, attacked the defenceless inhabitants of the Kreml
and Kitai-gorod and slew, by all accounts, some 7000 men. The alarm
spread into the Biel-gorod, where the people, under the direction of
Kniaz Pojharskie, prepared to resist the foreigners. The streets were
hastily barricaded with timber and furniture, and furious fighting
went on round the several gates of the Kitai-gorod, while flames broke
forth in various quarters. The city was soon a blazing mass, and amid
the roar and crash of conflagration the Poles were driven back on all
sides into the Kitai-gorod and Kreml. Pojharskie, wounded in the fray,
was carried to the Troitza monastery, which became a base of operations
for the Russians, who held the Biel-gorod and all the approaches to the
city. The situation of the garrison during the Dis-like night which
succeeded the furious day has been vividly pictured by the historian
of Moskva. “Darkly gazed the Poles from the walls of the Kreml and
Kitai-gorod on the burnt ashes of Moskva, awaiting the arming people
and listening through the night to the howling of dogs, that gnawed
human bones.”[196] For days the city blazed, and within their quarters
the foreign soldiery plundered and ransacked the houses of boyarins
and merchants. Outside, the Moskvitchi, swarming like burnt-out bees,
were reinforced by drafts of Liapounov’s Riazan levies. The arrival of
the chief Zaroutzkie with a following of Don Kozaks was a source of
weakness rather than strength, and the quarrels of the ill-disciplined
children of the steppes with the Riazan troops served to inflame the
jealousy existing between their respective leaders. While the wardens
of Polish occupation were being hemmed within the walls of the Russian
citadel, Sigismund was steadily discharging his cannon against the
battered bulwarks of Smolensk. On the 3rd of June a breach was effected
and the city won. The voevoda Shein defended himself with a small body
of men in a tower, and only surrendered on a promise of the King’s
mercy. The mercy of Sigismund Vasa might be likened to the “gentle dew
from Heaven” only in the sense of a tendency to rapid evaporation,
and neither his sense of honour nor a regard for brave constancy came
to the rescue; the man who had held his forces so long at bay was put
to the torture and afterwards dispatched in fetters to a Lit’uanian
prison. This besmirched victory was celebrated by a triumphant entry
into Warszawa, graced by the presence, in the King’s train, of the
befrocked and discrowned Tzar, Vasili Shouyskie. According to the
Russian historians, who see the trail of Jesuit intrigue throughout
the duration of the Troubles, this success of the Poles had the
significance of a Papal triumph. “The success of Poland over Russia
brought joy to all the Catholic world. In Rome festival succeeded
festival.”[197] Rome was thankful for small mercies in those days. The
King found it easier to celebrate his victory than to follow it up by
any vigorous action against the Russians who were in armed opposition
to his son’s pretensions to the throne. The gosoudarstvo at this moment
was in a state of bewildering chaos, and nowhere could be seen the
elements of re-organisation. Around the Pole-held inner city of Moskva
was quartered an army of some 100,000 men, strielitz, dieti-boyarins
and their followings, and Don Kozaks, the whole under the separate
leadership of three voevodas, Prokope Liapounov, Dimitri Troubetzkoi,
and Zaroutzkie. Besides the personal jealousy which existed between
the leaders, it was impossible to say what common cause, except the
negative one of opposition to Vladislav, brought and held their forces
together. There was not even a phantom to set against the claim of
the Polish prince. It almost seems as if, like the Germans who nursed
the legend that their Red King still slept in his Untersberg and
would come forth with all his knights in the hour of his country’s
greatest need, the Moskovites persistently hoped that the real Dimitri
would at last emerge from his obscurity and give Russia once more an
Orthodox sovereign. Beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the capital,
confusion and uncertainty were naturally intensified; no town knew
whom to acknowledge and could at most only defend itself against
the attacks of the plundering bands which swarmed everywhere. The
inhabitants of Velikie-Novgorod, in the midst of their indecision, were
suddenly startled by the arrival before their gates of a Swedish army
under de la Gardie, who demanded their allegiance to Karl, his king.
[Sidenote: 1611] The old spirit of the Novgorodskie answered defiance
to their old enemies, and the Swedes were held awhile in check; on
the night of the 16th July, however, de la Gardie was admitted by
treachery into the town, and effected his entrance so stealthily
that the citizens first learned of the unexpected stroke by seeing
the Swedish guards patrolling the walls. After a faint attempt at
resistance the city submitted with as good grace as was possible to the
Swedish occupation, and swore fealty to Karl-Filip, the King’s second
son, as their sovereign. Meanwhile the army around Moskva showed
serious signs of breaking up in confusion. A forged letter, supposed
to have been concocted by the Poles, calling upon the Moskovites to
destroy the Kozaks and signed with the name of Liapounov, was found in
Zaroutzkie’s camp. Despite his denial of the authorship, the enraged
Kozaks hewed the voevoda down with their sabres, a deed which increased
the ill-feeling and distrust with which the country people and citizens
regarded them.
In this deplorable condition did the waning of the year find the
Russian land; the capital in the hands of the Polish enemy, its
outskirts and slobodas infested with scarcely more welcome Kozaks;
Smolensk and the towns of the Sieverski country held by Poles; bands of
Poles and Dniepr Kozaks ravaging and slaying in the western villages;
Great Novgorod, Ladoga, and the cities of the Finnish Gulf in Swedish
thrall; freebooters and robber gangs everywhere. To crown all, there
descended on the stricken inhabitants a winter of frightful severity,
and many of the homeless outcasts died of cold and hunger in the roads
and fields.
S. Solov’ev; Kostomarov; _Iz Istorie Moskvui_; Pierling.
FOOTNOTES:
[183] _Kto bull pervie Ljhedimitrie?_ S. Petersburg, 1864.
[184] A. Karzinkina, _O medalyakh Tzarya Dimitriya Ioannovitcha_
(_Ljhedimitriya I.)_ Moskva, 1889.
[185] S. Solov’ev, Karamzin.
[186] Le père Pierling, _Rome et Demetrius_.
[187] S. Solov’ev; Kostomarov; Le père Pierling; V. N., _Iz Istorie
Moskvui_.
[188] Karamzin.
[189] Kostomarov.
[190] S. Solov’ev.
[191] Kostomarov.
[192] S. Solov’ev.
[193] _Istoritcheskoe Opisanie sviatotroitzkiya Sergievui Lavrui._
[194] Kostomarov.
[195] S. Solov’ev.
[196] _Iz Istorie Moskvui._
[197] Kostomarov.