incapable of being made safe. Whatever policy he might adopt--and he was
disposed, it appears, to govern wisely and well--was sure to displease
some of his subjects; and in the hands of a hostile faction, his want of
hereditary claim upon the throne was a powerful weapon. What he had
seized by crime he must keep by tyranny and violence, and a three years'
famine added greatly to his embarrassments. Whatever he did excited
discontent; and to make his wretchedness complete, he fancied himself
haunted by the ghost of the murdered Dmitri. There were symptoms of
mutiny everywhere, which daily threatened to culminate in open revolt.
It needed only a match to fire the mine.
In 1603, when matters were at their worst, there appeared in Poland a
young man who claimed to be the murdered Dmitri. His story was that, by
means of an adroit substitution, another boy had been killed in his
place; that he had escaped; and he claimed the throne of the Ruriks. He
strongly resembled the prince he claimed to be, and his identity seemed
to be established, also, by other evidence than mere personal
resemblance. There was no "strawberry mark on his left arm," but both he
and the dead prince, if, indeed, they were two distinct persons, had a
wart on the forehead, and another under the right eye, and in both one
arm was slightly longer than the other. The pretender, or real prince,
as the case may be, had also a valuable jewel which had belonged to
Dmitri; and so he was not long in winning credence for his story, both
in Poland and in Russia. Boris gave out that the young man was the monk
Otrafief, who had appeared in the army as his advocate and emissary; and
some historians--Karamsin and Bell among the number--have accepted this
theory; but a careful comparison of dates seems to contradict it.
Whoever the man was, he was an able and accomplished diplomatist as well
as a singularly bold warrior; and he succeeded presently in winning the
recognition of Sigismund, King of Poland, and putting himself at the
head of an army with which he invaded Russia. He had privately abjured
the Greek faith, and undertaken to convert Russia into a Catholic power;
and, in addition to the many other favors promised the Poles, he had
engaged to marry Marina, the daughter of a Polish nobleman.
During the autumn of the year 1604, this new Dmitri began his invasion
at the head of a small army made up of Poles and Don Cossacks. On his
march his force was swelled by accessions, and a number of towns
declared in his favor. Boris sent an army four times as great as his
own, to destroy him; and battle was joined on the last day of December.
Dmitri's case seemed utterly hopeless; but he was both able and brave.
He fought with the resolution and courage of a hero, the skill of a
consummate tactician, and the fury of a demon. And in spite of the
terrible odds against him, he won a great victory. In a military way,
its results were neutralized by the withdrawal of his Poles, and by some
other circumstances which forbade his pushing forward towards the
capital; but the moral effect was altogether in his favor. The
superstitious Russians saw in his marvellous success a miracle, and
accepted it as proof positive that this was the true prince, to oppose
whom was sacrilege. By dint of great energy Boris was able to maintain
the war till the time of his own death, which happened during the spring
of 1605. His son Feodor was crowned as his successor; but a few weeks
later he was deposed and strangled, and the new Dmitri came to the
throne.
For a time his wisdom as a statesman promised to equal his skill and
courage as a soldier, but his manifest preference for Poles to Russians
soon created jealousy; and imagining that he could overcome prejudices
by violent measures, as easily as he had conquered a throne, he spared
no pains to insult the Russian national feeling. He appointed only Poles
to high office, and lavished upon foreigners so much attention as to
breed discontent in his own capital. His apostasy from the Greek to the
Roman faith, also, was suspected, and the clergy became his implacable
enemies. The disaffection grew daily, and the efforts Dmitri made to
overawe his enemies only exasperated them. Finally, on the occasion of
his marriage with Marina, the Polish princess--which was celebrated with
great pomp by a throng of Polish soldiers and others, invited to Moscow
for the purpose--a mob, headed by Shuiski, or Schnisky--for the name is
spelled in both of these and half a dozen other ways--stormed the
palace, butchered the Poles, and impaled Dmitri on a spear. To leave no
doubt of his death this time, they kept his body transfixed with the
spear, in front of the palace, for three days, that the people might
wreak their vengeance upon the dead czar by insulting his corpse.
Schnisky profited by his victory, and while the blood of the populace
was still hot was chosen czar, as successor of the impostor he had
overthrown. His popularity was short-lived, however. His fellows among
the nobles resented his elevation above themselves, and ere long the
desire for his removal was as unanimous as his election had been. This
seemed a good time for the doubly dead Dmitri to come to life again; and
so it was presently rumored that after all he had not been killed; that
the corpse the people had spat upon and insulted was not his; that he
was alive, in Poland, and ready to claim his own. This report was
industriously circulated by the nobles; but as the people had not yet
forgotten their hatred for the usurper, he was permitted to lie down in
his grave again.
To prevent his coming to life for a third time, the dead czar's remains
were disinterred and burned. The ashes were collected and fired from a
piece of artillery, and it was supposed that further resurrection on
his part was impossible. But, as we have seen, Dmitri had a most
astonishing genius for coming to life after being thoroughly killed; and
presently he appeared again in Poland. This time, history says, he was
either a Russian schoolmaster or a Polish Jew; but however that may be,
certain it is that he so closely resembled the other two Dmitri's in
personal appearance, even to the two warts and unequally long arms, that
he imposed on everybody around him with his story. Even the Princess
Marina accepted him, and actually lived with him as his wife.
He was able, without much difficulty, to interest the King of Poland in
his behalf, and to secure a declaration of war by that potentate against
Czar Schnisky. He invaded Russia, won battles, captured Smolensko,
invested Moscow, and finally entered the city.
About this time Dmitri appeared in several other places, but only one of
him was in Moscow at the head of a victorious army; and in behalf of
this particular one Schnisky resigned his crown and retired to a
monastery, whence he was soon removed to a dungeon.
At this juncture the King of Poland, having plans of his own for the
union of Russia and his own kingdom, withdrew his countenance from
Dmitri; and that prince retired from the business of governing, and
devoted himself for the rest of his life to the less honorable, but
perhaps equally lucrative, profession of highway robbery. He was again
killed after awhile, this time by a Don Cossack. But even this public
killing had small effect. A dozen or more new Dmitri's appeared,
claiming the throne; and some of them, says the historian Bell,
"actually touched the sceptre for a moment, but only to recoil in fear
from the dangerous object of their insane ambition."
After awhile, having found the task an unprofitable one, perhaps, Dmitri
seems to have made up his mind to stay dead; but in due course a race of
his sons sprang up quite as mysteriously, if not quite as persistently,
to pester the Russians, and peace came to them only through the
elevation of the Romanoffs to the imperial throne. Connected as they
were by ties of blood with the race of Rurik, they brought legitimacy to
the rescue of a land long torn by faction. The loyalty of the people to
sovereigns whose right to rule was derived from Rurik, gave the dynasty
a strength sufficient to maintain itself; and after a little while Peter
the Great taught his Russians civilization, and a new era in Russian
history was begun.