After Tsarevich Peter's departure from the Volga, the region continued to support Tsar Dmitrii. The rebellion which developed on the lower Volga from the summer of 1606 was largely independent of the revolt in the Seversk lands. The first major town to reject Shuiskii was Astrakhan', the great commercial port at the mouth of the Volga, on the Caspian Sea. On 17 June 1606 its inhabitants staged an uprising against Shuiskii, and the city governor, Prince I. D. Khvorostinin, transferred his loyalty to Dmitrii. Pro-Shuiskii troops under the command of F. I. Sheremetev took up camp on the island of Balchik, a few miles upstream from Astrakhan', where they remained for more than a year. A number of new pretenders, apparently modelling themselves on Tsarevich Peter, appeared in Astrakhan' at around this time: Tsarevich Ivan Augustus, who claimed to be a son of Ivan the Terrible; Osinovik, a son of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich; and Lavr (or Lavrentii), another supposed son of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich.[353] None of these pretenders had a real historical prototype. Ivan Augustus's relationship with Prince Khvorostinin, the governor of Astrakhan', appears to have been similar to that of Tsarevich Peter with Prince Shakhovskoi at Putivl'; like Peter, Ivan Augustus acted in the name of Tsar Dmitrii, and his sphere of influence extended up the Volga at least as far as Tsaritsyn.[354]
Bolotnikov's forces had been united with those of Tsarevich Peter at Tula in May 1607; on 30 June, Tsar Vasilii arrived outside the gates of the town at the head of a large army, and laid siege to it. By the autumn of 1607 the defenders of the town found themselves in a desperate situation. Shuiskii had built a dam on the River Upa downstream from Tula, which caused the town to flood. All communications were cut off, and the inhabitants suffered terrible hardship and hunger. Eventually Tsarevich Peter and Bolotnikov opened negotiations with Shuiskii, and on 10 October Tula surrendered. Tsarevich Peter was tortured and interrogated before being executed in Moscow in January 1608. In February 1611 Bolotnikov was exiled to Kargopol', where he was imprisoned for a time, and then blinded and drowned. Prince Shakhovskoi was banished to a monastery, but soon escaped and subsequently joined the supporters of the Second False Dmitrii.
The Second False Dmitrii
The failure of Tsar Dmitrii to put in an appearance had greatly demoralised Bolotnikov's forces, but a second False Dmitrii had in fact surfaced in Russia well before the fall of Tula. This new pretender revealed himself in the town of Starodub, in the Seversk region, in June 1607.
By the autumn of 1606 Michael Molchanov had abandoned his attempt to adopt the identity of Tsar Dmitrii and had left Sambor.[355] The rebel camp, however, was still in urgent need of a new Dmitrii. There is some evidence that at the end of December 1606 Tsarevich Peter travelled from Putivl' to Lithuania, supposedly in search of his 'uncle' Dmitrii, and that this journey may have been linked to the first stages of the setting up of a new pretender- tsar: the earliest traces of the Second False Dmitrii can be found in the winter of 1606-7 in the Belorussian lands of Poland-Lithuania which were visited by Tsarevich Peter at about the same time.[356]
There is still no agreement about the identity of the Second False Dmitrii. Many older historians depicted him as a puppet of the Polish government; but some recent scholars have argued that his sponsors were Russians involved in the Bolotnikov revolt. They give greatest credence to sources which suggest that he was a poor schoolteacher from Lithuanian Belorussia who was coerced into playing the role of Dmitrii by some minor Polish noblemen who were in contact with Tsarevich Peter and other Russian insurgents based in Putivl'.[357]There is evidence to indicate, however, that the Second False Dmitrii may have initiated the intrigue himself (there were by now several precedents for him to follow), or at least participated in it willingly.[358] Certainly the new pretender acquired Russian supporters as soon as he crossed the border from Lithuania, and they helped to stage the revelation of his 'true' royal identity at Starodub. There he was also 'recognised' by Ivan Martynovich Zarutskii, a cossack leader from the Ukraine, who had been sent by Bolotnikov to search for Tsar Dmitrii. Zarutskii was subsequently to become one ofthe most important commanders in the pretender's service.
At Starodub Dmitrii and his accomplices began to recruit troops to go to the assistance of Bolotnikov and Tsarevich Peter in besieged Tula. Most of the towns in the Seversk region soon acknowledged the new Tsar Dmitrii and provided him with servicemen, but much of his small army comprised mercenaries from Poland-Lithuania. In September 1607 Dmitrii left Starodub, but he had advanced no further than Belev when he learned that Tula had fallen on 10 October. The pretender retreated to Karachev, and then to Orel, where he set up camp. During the winter of 1607-8 he recruited new forces. Some of these were the remnants of Bolotnikov's army from Tula; cossack reinforcements came from the Don, Volga, Terek and Dnieper; and new bands of mercenaries from Poland-Lithuania also joined him.[359]
While encamped at Orel, Dmitrii made a bid for the support ofthe slaves of Shuiskii's supporters, promising them their masters' lands, wives and daughters if they transferred their allegiance to him. There has been considerable scholarly controversy about the pretender's policy towards peasants and slaves at this time. It seems most probable that, like Bolotnikov, the Second False Dmitrii was hoping to attract military bondsmen into his service by offering them a share of the property confiscated from their 'traitor' lords. Certainly the pretender did not pursue an 'anti-feudal' policy: he granted lands and peasants to the Russian servicemen and foreign mercenaries who supported him. Shuiskii responded with measures of his own in February and March 1608. These have also been the subject of conflicting interpretations, but they seem to have been designed to attract both servicemen and slaves to his side.[360]
In March 1608 the Polish commander Prince Roman Rozynski arrived in Orel with a large detachment of cavalry, and ousted the hetman Mikolaj Miechowicki as commander-in-chief of Dmitrii's army. Perhaps as a result of Rozynski's influence, the pretender began to tone down the more socially divisive elements of his propaganda. From the spring of 1608 onwards, he tried to bid for the support of noble servicemen rather than that of military slaves. In a proclamation to Smolensk in April I608, Dmitrii condemned the reign of terror which Tsarevich Peter had introduced at Putivl' and Tula, and dissociated himself from the various cossack 'tsareviches' who had appeared on the Volga and on the steppe.[361] He had already executed one of these - 'Tsarevich Fedor Fedorovich' - at the end of I607; he later hanged the Astrakhan' pretenders Ivan Augustus and Lavrentii at Tushino, probably in the summer of I608. What happened to the other seven pretenders who were named in his proclamation is unknown.
355
I. O. Tiumentsev,
356
Skrynnikov,
357
Skrynnikov,
360
Perrie,