Soon after the abandonment of Tushino, Skopin-Shuiskii entered Moscow in triumph. On 23 April, however, he died suddenly in the capitaclass="underline" according to rumour, he was poisoned either by Tsar Vasilii or by Prince Dmitrii Shuiskii, who were thought to be jealous of their nephew's success and fearful that he might become a rival candidate for the throne. Vasilii Shuiskii's enemies, led by Prokopii Liapunov, the governor of Riazan', exploited these rumours in order to mobilise further opposition to the tsar. The military situation also began to deteriorate for Shuiskii after Prince Michael's death. Tsar Vasilii appointed his brother Dmitrii as commander-in-chiefofhis army and sent him, with the Swedish general de la Gardie, against King Sigismund's camp at Smolensk. The Polish commander Stanislaw Zoikiewski advanced to meet them, defeated them at Klushino, and occupied Mozhaisk. At the same time, the Second False Dmitrii, who had successfully recruited a new army of cossacks and Poles, including Sapieha's mercenaries, left Kaluga and marched on the capital.[366] On
16 July 1610 he set up camp at Kolomenskoe, just outside Moscow. Some of the pretender's supporters approached Shuiskii's opponents in the capital and suggested that both sides overthrow their tsars and elect a new sovereign. On
17 July Shuiskii was deposed and tonsured as a monk, but Dmitrii's men failed to keep their side of the bargain.
The situation in Moscow after Shuiskii's removal was critical. Attempts to organise the election of a new tsar proved abortive, and power passed into the hands of a council of seven boyars who acted as a provisional government. Zolkiewski advanced to the outskirts of the capital, and began to negotiate terms with the boyars for the offer of the Russian throne to Wladyslaw, in return for Polish military assistance against Tsar Dmitrii. An agreement was reached on 17 August, and Moscow and most of the towns which had recognised Shuiskii swore an oath of allegiance to Wladyslaw. Zolkiewski managed to persuade Sapieha's troops to defect from Dmitrii's camp, and the pretender fled back to Kaluga. Zolkiewski moved quickly to consolidate his position. He ensured that the Russian delegation which was sent to Smolensk to offer the throne to Wladyslaw included both Prince Vasilii Golitsyn, who had been one of the leading Russian candidates for election to the throne, and Filaret Romanov, whose young son Michael was another favoured contender. Then, on the pretext that the people of Moscow might revolt in favour of the pretender, Zolkiewski moved his troops into the capital, in direct contravention of his agreement of 17 August with the boyars. Soon afterwards Zolkiewski left for Smolensk, escorting the deposed tsar, Vasilii Shuiskii, and his brothers into captivity, and leaving the Polish commander Alexander Gosiewski in charge of the capital. At Smolensk, however, it became clear that King Sigismund had no intention of sending Wladyslaw to Moscow, but planned to become tsar of Russia himself. When this proposition was rejected by the Russian envoys, they were imprisoned, and the king resumed his siege of Smolensk.
By the autumn of 1610 most Russians realised that their prospective new tsar was not the potential convert to Orthodoxy, Prince Wladyslaw, but the ardently Catholic King Sigismund; the Poles, moreover, had occupied Moscow and were continuing hostilities elsewhere. In these circumstances, the popularity of the Second False Dmitrii again began to grow. At Kaluga, the pretender's supporters were at first primarily cossacks - including Don cossacks under the command of the ataman I. M. Zarutskii - and Tatars. By December, Dmitrii had recruited some mercenaries, and a number of new towns, such as Viatka and Kazan', had recognised him as tsar.[367] Feuding, accompanied by the torture and execution of suspected 'traitors', had however become endemic in the Kaluga camp. On II December the pretender was murdered by the Tatar prince Peter Urusov, in a revenge attack for Dmitrii's killing of the khan of Kasimov, another Tatar leader who had entered Dmitrii's service. A few days later, Marina Mniszech gave birth to a son, Ivan Dmitrievich, who became a 'hereditary pretender' (K. V Chistov has described him as 'an involuntary pretender (samozvanets) by birth').[368]
The national liberation campaign
Even before the murder of the Second False Dmitrii, other elements in Russian society had begun to mobilise opposition to the Polish occupation of Moscow. The death of the pretender, who had been a controversial and divisive figure, provided an additional impetus to their efforts. In Moscow itself Patriarch Germogen refused to swear loyalty to King Sigismund, and was placed under virtual house arrest by the boyar government. None the less, Germogen was able to have his appeals for resistance smuggled out of the capital. The patriarch's letters found the soil particularly well prepared in Riazan', where Shuiskii's old enemy Prokopii Liapunov was governor. Nizhnii Novgorod was also responsive to the call. Liapunov began to recruit an army of servicemen from various towns, and he also bid for the support of the forces that had previously recognised Tsar Dmitrii. Prince Dmitrii Trubetskoi, the most senior ofthe Second False Dmitrii's boyars, brought troops from Kaluga; and Zarutskii, who had fled from Kaluga with Marina and her son after the pretender's murder, led his Don cossacks from Tula.
As the liberation army approached Moscow, the people ofthe capital staged an unsuccessful uprising against the Poles on I9 March I6II. The occupiers withdrew into the Kremlin, burning the outlying parts of the city as they retreated and making much of the population homeless. The national militia set up camp outside the capital and took an oath to elect a tsar. But the forces besieging Moscow were very heterogeneous in their composition, and were plagued by disputes and disagreements. They could not even agree on the choice of a single leader, creating instead a triumvirate of Liapunov, Trubetskoi and Zarutskii. On 30 June an agreement was signed by the triumvirs and by representatives of the troops, which was designed to resolve conflicts over the remuneration of servicemen and cossacks.[369] New disputes soon broke out, however, over their preferred candidate for the throne. Liapunov favoured one of the sons of Karl IX, in the hope that this would guarantee military assistance from Sweden against the Poles. Zarutskii, by contrast, promoted the cause of Marina Mniszech's infant son, 'Tsarevich' Ivan Dmitrievich. The two leaders' support for rival candidates for the throne contributed to a conflict which resulted in Liapunov's murder by the cossacks on 22 July 1611. After Liapunov's death, many of the noble servicemen deserted the besiegers' camp. Zarutskii and Trubetskoi continued to blockade the capital with their predominantly cossack forces, but their attempts to capture the city in the autumn were unsuccessful. By the end of the year many cossacks too had drifted away from Moscow.[370]
In the course of i6ii the foreign intervention forces made considerable advances. Smolensk finally fell to King Sigismund on 3 June, but a subsequent offensive by the Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz failed to dislodge Zarutskii and Trubetskoi from their camp outside Moscow. In July 1611 the Swedish commander de la Gardie occupied Novgorod, but instead of comingto the assistance ofthe liberation forces besieging the capital, the Swedes pursued their own interests, and annexed many Russian towns in the Novgorod region.
368
K. V Chistov
369
Stanislavskii,
370
Stanislavskii,