Sigismund III of Poland receives the homage of Prince Dmitry.
In this scene by Nikolai Nevrev (1830–1904), ‘Prince Dmitry’ (on the right) swears loyalty to Sigismund III of Poland (on the left) watched with keen anticipation by Claudio Rangoni, Bishop of Reggio Emilia (1592–1606) and Apostolic Nuncio to Poland (1598–1606), who was instrumental in securing Dmitry’s conversion. The Popes were keen to persuade or force the Greek and Russian Churches to acknowledge the high titles and privileges that Rome had awarded herself since the ninth century (invoking Christ’s appeal for unity) and Dmitry seemed to afford the ideal opportunity. But the Russian Church, like the newly-established Church of England, was steadfastly opposed to any such arrangement.
Part 1 of 3
AFTER Ivan the Terrible died in 1584,* Boris Godunov* took responsibility for his surviving sons: sensitive Feodor, who now became Tsar at twenty-six,* and Feodor’s half-brother Dmitry, not yet two.* Dmitry died in mysterious circumstances seven years later. In 1598, Feodor also died, and Moscow’s National Assembly crowned Boris in his place, though he was not of Rurik’s royal blood.*
Boris was an able administrator, but recently had enacted a horrible law. Hitherto, Russian peasants had been free to sell their labour wherever they pleased. Godunov thought this destabilising, and copied his western neighbours by making each peasant a serf, doomed to farm one plot of land for one noble lord forever.* Revenues fell, emigration rose, fields lay untilled, peasants starved, and barns stood empty. Anger grew towards the upstart Godunov.
Amidst this unrest a young man appeared calling himself Prince Dmitry, Ivan’s youngest son. He was eight, he said, when his mother, dowager Queen Maria, foiled Godunov’s assassins, and another boy died in his place. Patriarch Job in Moscow liked him. Russia’s dissatisfied noblemen liked him. Most importantly, Sigismund III, King of Poland, liked him, and saw in him a rare opportunity.
* Ivan IV ‘the Terrible’ was Grand Prince of Moscow (r. 1533-1547) and the first Tsar of all Russia (r. 1547-1584). He died on March 18th, 1584. For a similar but less successful imposture in the reign of England’s Henry VII, see Perkin Warbeck.
* Boris Godunov (1552-1605) was a close confidant of Ivan IV, a leading figure in his intelligence service, and an able administrator who (among other things) continued Ivan’s policy of encouraging English merchants by scrapping duty on their goods. See also Merchants of Muscovy.
* Feodor I Ivanovich (r. 1584-1598) was not physically strong nor was he a leader of men, but sensitive and deeply religious, happiest when in monasteries and churches. He would beg to hear their bells, and so he is also known as ‘the Bellringer’. Day-to-day administration was in the hands of Boris Godunov.
* Prince Dmitry of Moscow (1582-1591) was the son of Maria Nagaya, Ivan’s last wife, and hence Feodor’s half-brother. Dmitry’s death on May 15th, 1591, at the age of eight (his birthday was in October) was the subject of an official inquiry, which concluded that Dmitry had suffered a seizure while playing svaika, a popular throwing game involving a large and heavy spike, during which he accidentally pierced his own throat. Rumours flew of a cover-up, but on the whole modern scholars exonerate Godunov.
* Rurik was the Viking (Varangian) who settled Veliky Novgorod in the seventh century, and to whom generations of Princes of Moscow and Kiev, including Ivan IV, traced their descent. See Invitation to a Viking.
* Russian serfdom was finally abolished by Emperor Alexander III in 1861. Serfdom had died out in Britain and France by the fourteenth century, though it persisted in Prussia until 1807, Austria until 1848, and Poland until 1864. A few years after Godunov introduced serfdom in Russia, Britain followed Spain’s example and began tolerating slavery in her New World colonies, a wrong not righted until 1833. The USA tolerated slavery even on home soil until 1861. On Russia’s attitude to the slave trade, see True Colours.
Précis
Boris Godunov became Tsar of Russia in 1598, but unrest was already spreading thanks to his decision to introduce serfdom to the country. Sigismund III of Poland seized the opportunity to support a young man in his claim to be Prince Dmitry, Ivan the Terrible’s son, whom everyone assumed had died seven years before. (53 / 60 words)
Part Two
The death of Dmitry the Pretender.
The death of Dmitry the Pretender, by Konstantin Makovsky (1839–1915). Dmitry was a natural leader and might have made a good Tsar had he really been Ivan’s Dmitry, and not an impostor dedicated to delivering Russia into the hands of his backers, Sigismund of Poland, the Pope (Clement VIII, then from 1605 Paul V) and the Mniszech family. His chosen Patriarch of Moscow, a Cretan ecumenist named Ignatius, rang loud alarm bells in the Church, and his closely related programme of Polonisation was symptomatic of Western Europe’s pharisaical attitude for ‘lesser’ races and cultures. See William Gladstone on the claim to be An Exceptional Nation.
IN March 1604, this Dmitry presented himself at Sigismund’s court. There, Jesuits taught him to submit to the Pope, Sigismund furnished him with some 3,500 Polish-Lithuanian troops, and Dmitry promised them Russia in return.
Tsar Boris despatched Peter Basmanov to repel Dmitry, but after Boris died suddenly in April 1605, Basmanov switched sides and brought Dmitry into Moscow as Ivan’s triumphant heir. Sensationally, dowager Queen Maria acknowledged him. Dmitry had Boris’s son and heir, Feodor, prudently strangled.
On July 21st, 1605, Tsar Dmitry was crowned in the Dormition Cathedral.* Then he brought over his Polish retinue, his Polish ways, and finally Marina,* his Polish wife, and set about making Russia a Polish and Papal land. Almost a year had passed, when suddenly the people of Moscow awoke as from a dream. Remembering their land, their heroes, and their Orthodox faith,* they slew the impostor on May 17th, 1606, leaving him a mangled corpse, cleared out the intruders, and gave the crown to Vasily Shuisky,* a Rurikid prince.
There the matter should have ended. But two years later, in the Spring of 1608, to everyone’s utter amazement Tsar Dmitry reappeared with a Polish army at Tushino, a few miles from Moscow.
* The coronation was conducted by Patriarch Ignatius, a Cretan bishop who had come to Russia as an envoy of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The previous Patriarch, Job, had refused to recognise Dmitry as Tsar, and been deposed. Ignatius had been one of Dmitry’s early supporters, and was moreover an enthusiastic ecumenist, keen for the Greek and Russian churches to follow Dmitry’s example and acknowledge the supreme headship of the Pope, a position known as Uniatism.
* Marina Mniszech (?1588-1614), a devout Roman Catholic, dedicated to bringing the Russian Orthodox Church under the control of the Pope. She was the daughter of powerful Polish nobleman Jerzy Mniszech (1548-1613), to whom Dmitry had promised a controlling interest in Veliky Novgorod and other wealthy Russian cities in return for his support. The marriage was solemnised in a Roman Catholic church in November 1605.
* Just as England’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1563) had recently declared that ‘the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England’, so too the Russian Church, as indeed it had done since the ninth century, flatly refused to recognise the Roman Church’s supposed authority over the world’s kings and bishops, whether in politics or belief. Several of Russia’s heroes had gained their hero status for resisting the Pope’s pursuit of Christian unity aided by Western military power: see for example The Trials of Alexander Nevsky.
* Vasily Shuisky (?1552-1612), Tsar of Russia from 1606 to 1610. Shuisky was the man who conducted the official inquiry into eight-year-old Dmitry’s death in 1591, and concluded that it was an accident. After ‘Dmitry’ took the crown in 1605, Shuisky backtracked and agreed that Godunov had ordered the bungled assassination; but as Dmitry’s star began to fall he emerged as a leading rebel.
Précis
Backed by Sigismund and the Pope, and emboldened by the Boris’s sudden death, in 1605 the impostor won over the people of Moscow, and the following year claimed the crown. Thanks to his aggressive programme of Polonisation, however, he wore it only briefly before he was publicly assassinated, making it all the more surprising when he reappeared in 1608. (57 / 60 words)
Part Three
‘At the Time of Troubles’ (1908) by Sergey Ivanov (1864–1910) shows ‘Dmitry’ (usually called Dmitry II, but Dmitry I’s wife said he was her husband) riding through his camp at Tushino, where he set up his court in 1608. Like his predecessor in the role, Dmitry was a cat’s paw, there to help Sigismund III overthrow Tsar Vasily and then take control of Russia for Poland and the West. But as Lord Salisbury would later say, for any nation to be forced to accept the rule and laws of a foreign Power is The Supreme Indignity.
YET again Dmitry had defied death! The mangled corpse of two years ago was not his, but a servant’s. The Tsar lived! At any rate, devoted Marina called him husband, and many Russians were convinced.* For nearly three years Russia had two Tsars, two Parliaments and two Patriarchs. Dmitry never won Veliky [Great] Novgorod, Kazan, Smolensk or Nizhny [Lower] Novgorod, but he controlled most of the rest.
In Moscow, a council of Seven Boyars elected Sigismund’s son Vladislav in place of Tsar Vasily, before opening the gates to the Polish army. Dmitry, now surplus to requirements, was murdered in December 1610, and Sigismund claimed Moscow for himself. Sweden meanwhile seized Veliky Novgorod, and everywhere was chaos.
At last the Church stepped in. The Trinity Monastery near Moscow, following a sixteen-month siege,* circulated a call to arms; and the mayor of Nizhny Novgorod, a butcher named Kuzma Minin, answered it. He collected a few men, and by the time they had reached Moscow they were an army. There they besieged the Poles, and in 1612 drove them out amid scenes of public joy. The following year, the National Assembly elected young Michael Romanov, just sixteen but of true royal blood, to be their Tsar.
* ‘Patriarch’ Ignatius, who had supported Dmitry in 1605-6, was another who spoke up for this Dmitry redux. He also established a rival Patriarchate in opposition to the canonical Patriarch, Hermogenes (in office 1606-1612). Ignatius eventually became an Eastern-rite Roman Catholic.
* The siege lasted from September 23rd, 1608, to January 12th, 1610.
Précis
Surprisingly, this Dmitry also enjoyed widespread popularity in Russia, but he never took the crown. Instead, Moscow’s nobles offered it to Sigismund’s son; Dmitry was forgotten, and murdered in 1610. Sigismund moved to take the crown himself but was foiled by the Russian Church, which roused a rebellion, and in 1613 Russia’s National Assembly gave the crown to Michael Romanov. (58 / 60 words)
.jpg ){kind=link}