Chapter X: The Phantom Tzar (2)

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.