Ivan the Terrible of Russia, having murdered his eldest son, left the
crown to the next, Feodore, a prince so feeble in body and mind that
the government of the country had to be committed to the care of his
brother-in-law, Boris. This bold and unscrupulous man aspired to the
throne, but between him and the imbecile who occupied it stood
Demetrius, another child of the late monarch. The Regent left this boy
to the care of his mother, the Dowager Czarina, under whose charge he
attained to the age of ten. One afternoon of May 1591, the child was
playing with four other boys in the palace courtyard, his governess,
nurse, and another female servant being close by. According to the
testimony of these persons he had a knife in his hand. For a moment he
disappeared, and the next instant was discovered dying, with a large
wound in his throat; he died without uttering a word. Suspicion of
foul play was at once aroused, and some known emissaries of Boris being
discovered in the neighbourhood, they fell victims to the fury of the
populace. The Regent instituted an inquiry, and the result was a
verdict that the boy had died from a wound accidentally inflicted upon
himself. The towns-people were either put to death or dispersed for
their hasty judgment upon the supposed assassins, the palace was razed
to the ground, the flourishing town turned into a desert, and the
Dowager Czarina forced into a convent. The slovenly way in which the
inquiry had been made, the fact that it had been conducted by creatures
of Boris, that the body was never examined, nor the knife compared with
the wound, together with the attempted obliteration of all surrounding
dwellings, afford very strong evidence that a murder had been done, and
by the instigation of the Regent; but that Demetrius died there can
scarcely be the shadow of a doubt.
After seven years Feodore died, and Boris succeeded in obtaining the
vacant throne. Hated and feared by all classes, the whole country was
longing for a change from his tyrannical rule, when a rumour came from
the Lithuanian frontier that Demetrius, believed to have been murdered
at Uglitch, was still alive, and in Poland. Amid the many
contradictory reports, one main fact was positively proclaimed--that
was, the young prince was alive, and preparing to contend for the
throne of his ancestors.
The story which this aspirant to empire gave to Prince Adam
Wiszniswiecki, of Brahin, in Lithuania, in whose employ he was, was
that the physician in attendance upon him (Demetrius), having been
solicited by Boris to destroy him, consented, but instead of doing so,
substituted the body of a serf's child for that of the to-be-slain
prince, and safely carried off the heir presumptive, and placed him in
the charge of a faithful adherent of the royal family. Unfortunately,
both the physician and the faithful guardian being dead, the tale had
to be received for what it was worth; nevertheless, the unknown
produced a Russian seal, bearing the name and arms of the Czarevitch,
and a valuable jewelled cross. This was in the summer of 1603, when
Demetrius, if living, would have been about twenty-two--an age
apparently corresponding with that of the claimant to his name.
Visitors arrived who quickly recognized their resuscitated prince;
warts which the late Emperor's son had had on the forehead, and under
the right eye, were discovered, whilst one arm being longer than
another was a still surer sign. The deportment and acquirements of the
young pretender were suited to his birth, not the least of them being
his good horsemanship and skill in fencing. The Poles, ready for
mischief, espoused his cause; George, the Palatine of Sandomir, gave
him his daughter in marriage, and the Pope of Rome, upon his secret
confession of the Catholic faith, sanctioned his pretensions. Thus
encouraged, he invaded Russia with a small force, and, assisted by a
variety of conflicting circumstances, including the sudden death of
Boris, in the course of a few months found himself the undisputed
master of the whole empire. On the 20th of June, 1605, the adventurer
entered Moscow in state, amid the acclamations of believing multitudes.
On entering the church of St. Michael, the pseudo Demetrius, according
to all accounts, acted his part admirably; kneeling before the tomb of
Ivan, his face suffused with tears, he clasped his hands and exclaimed,
"O father! thy orphan reigns!--this he owes to thy holy prayers!" The
audience was convinced, sobbed in unison, and from all sides arose the
cry, "He is the son of the Terrible!"
But a still more formidable test was to be undergone. The Dowager
Czarina forsook the convent in which she had so long been immured to
behold the man claiming to be her son. Demetrius went to meet her in
regal state, and their first interview took place in a magnificent
tent, specially prepared for the interesting ceremony. After they had
been left together for a few minutes they came out, and threw
themselves into one another's arms, in the full view of the enormous
multitude which had assembled. Ivan's widow had recognized her son,
and the new monarch was master of the situation. He respectfully
conducted the Czarina to a carriage, walking bare-headed by its side.
In the capital he treated her with every attention, visited her daily,
and provided her with a competent revenue to maintain her royal
dignity. A few moments after the murder of her son at Uglitch, she was
on the spot and recognized the body; and yet, after having maintained
for fourteen years her belief in his death, she came forward and
recognized him in the successful adventurer, at the exact instant that
recantation was worth any price.
Demetrius now set to work to govern with humanity and justice; both
qualities quite unsuited to Russian tastes, who soon grew as tired of
their new Czar as they had been of his predecessors. He appears to
have been an able and forbearing man, but he outraged the nobles by
pointing out their educational deficiencies, and the Greek priesthood
by a careless or irreverent demeanour towards their Church. This
latter error was his ruin. The treasury being exhausted, he began to
cast wistful glances at the swollen revenues of the clergy, who at once
determined upon his destruction.
On the 29th of May, 1606, "Death to the heretic!" rang through the
streets of Moscow. The excited mobs, headed by priests and Shuiski, a
discontented noble, who had previously been pardoned for conspiracy,
broke into the palace, hunted their prey from room to room, until,
already bleeding from a sabre wound, the unfortunate victim leaped out
of a window into the court below, a height of thirty feet. He broke
his leg in the fall, and fainted. The insurgents speedily found him,
dragged him mid curses and blows into the palace, dressed him in a
pastrycook's caftan in mockery, and taunted him as to his birth. The
wretched man, collecting his strength, exclaimed, "I am your Czar, the
son of Ivan Vassilievitch!" when his agony was terminated by a shot
from an arquebuss.
His followers were destroyed, his wife barely escaped with life, and
every kind of indignity was offered to the Polish ladies in attendance
upon her. The body of the murdered man, after lying exposed for some
days, was unceremoniously buried without the walls, then disinterred
and burnt, the ashes collected, and, to make sure of no further
resuscitation, mixed with gunpowder and fired off from a cannon.
Shuiski, the leader of the revolution, was raised to the throne, but
finding the memory of his predecessor still cherished by many, he
sought to eradicate the feeling by proving him an impostor. The
Dowager Czarina, ever complacent, gave him a written declaration that
the deposed Czar was not her son; but the nation placed little reliance
upon her testimony now. Shuiski then pretended to have discovered the
body of young Demetrius in the ruins of Uglitch, and his clerical
friends contrived a miracle for the occasion. When the body was
brought to Moscow, they recognized the corpse as that of the real
prince, and affirmed that by heavenly providence it had been preserved
in its then condition--it being found quite uncorrupt, and the glow of
life not even faded from the cheek. But this miraculous interposition
did not satisfy everybody, and whilst the partizans of the late Czar
were affirming that a body had been substituted for the occasion, the
whole country was roused to a state of frenzy by a rumour that the
conspirators had murdered, burnt, and fired from the cannon's mouth
_the wrong man_!
This time a substituted corpse could not be produced. A civil war
broke out, but it was some time before a suitable claimant could be
discovered. At last a Lithuanian Jew was selected by the insurgents,
who, aided by the Poles, advanced into Russia at the head of a large
army. A feasible story was invented to account for the escape of the
intended victim of the late massacre; and to confirm the nation in the
belief of his identity with their late Czar, Marina, the widowed
Czarina, publicly acknowledged him as her own Demetrius, lived with him
as his consort, and had a child by him. Her father, the Palatine of
Sandomir, also recognized him as his son-in-law, and in a short time
almost the whole empire declared for him.
His reign, however, was short. Deserted by his foreign allies, he was
forced to fly, and eventually was assassinated. His consort, Marina,
died in prison, and Ivan, one of their children, although only three
years old, was publicly hanged--the most ghastly act in the entire
tragedy!