Whether the pretender were a runaway monk or a Jesuit emissary, the fact remained no less extraordinary. He was Tsar of Russia. His wisdom was soon seen to be folly. He preferred foreigners; he surrounded himself by a body-guard of three hundred Germans, Poles, and Scotchmen, whom he dressed in all magnificence. He offended the boyars by his raillery. "Travel and get learning," he said; "you are savages, you need to be polished." He won the hatred of the clergy by his scorn of their rites and ceremonies; he went to church on horseback, he forgot to salute the holy images, he ridiculed the monks, he borrowed money of the monasteries to pay his soldiers; he replaced the Patriarch Job by Ignatius of Cyprus, at heart a Roman Catholic; he allowed the Catholics to build a church in the Kreml. He also shocked the people by his habits: he ate veal, which was believed to be an unclean meat; he was often impious enough to rise from table without washing his hands; he never napped after dinner, but took the time to walk the streets unattended; he visited shops, talked familiarly with artisans, was fond of foreign music and arts; he gave balls and concerts at a convent. At the entrance of his new palace he placed a bronze Cerberus, which made a frightful noise if touched. The people saw in this "the sign of hell, and the darkness thereof." He entered the arena and fought with bears, he pointed cannons with his own hand. He organized sham-fights with snowballs, and was pleased when his foreign mercenaries defeated the national troops.
The false Dimitri sent to Poland for his bride, Marina, who, escorted by armed Poles, entered the city in a carriage drawn by eight horses, with painted manes and tails. "One would think she were entering a conquered town," murmured the Russians; "why these cuirasses and lances? Do you cover yourselves with iron at a wedding?" At the coronation, which was on a Friday, the Poles leaned on the sacred screens and tombs. Although Martha Nagoi publicly acknowledged him as her son, the people began to doubt him. Within a month after Marina's arrival they were ripe for revolution. Basil Shuiski, nearest to the race of Rurik, put himself at the head of a conspiracy. He was denounced to the Tsar and brought into his presence and condemned to death. The executioner had taken off the Prince's kaftan and was brandishing his hatchet when a reprieve came. Shuiski was restored to honor. The Tsar's advisers remonstrated. "I have sworn not to shed innocent blood," was his reply. "I will keep my oath."
The pretender's over-confidence was his ruin. One night, after a feast, the boyars attacked the Kreml; the guards played traitor; the tocsin sounded. The False Dimitri fled, and leaping out of a high window, fell and broke his leg. He was discovered and stabbed; Basmanof, who tried to defend him, was also killed. The people took him to his chamber, covered him with a cook's kaftan. Behold the Tsar of all the Russias!" they cried. They then exposed the two corpses on the place of execution, with the impostor's feet resting on Basmanof's breast. They threw over his face a ribald mask which was said to have been found in his chamber in the place usually occupied by the holy images. A flute was thrust into his mouth, and a bagpipe was placed under his arms. After three days the juggler, the sorcerer, was flung into the "poor-house," the winter receptacle of friendless dead. After this more prodigies: a hurricane, blue lights, an earthquake, a fearful, untimely frost. The people believed that he was a sort of vampire which would come to life again; they took his body, burned it, charged a cannon with the ashes and scattered them to the winds.
The Story of a Brigand,
A PRINCE, AND A BUTCHER
The people of Moscow thought that the "Vampire "was forever laid when they scattered the ashes of the false Dimitri to the four winds. It was rather like sowing seed.
Prince Basil Shuiski was made Tsar, but he was scarcely on the throne before the report came that three men in disguise had crossed the Oka by night. One of them gave the ferryman an extra fee, saying,—
"You have just ferried the Tsar over: when he comes back with a Polish army, he will not forget your services." Again the turbulent cities of the South and West arose. The tribes of the Volga revolted under the pretext of sustaining the son of Ivan the Terrible. The flower of Polish cavalry came to his aid. The Kazaks of the Don joined him. In his ranks were five or six impostors, all of whom claimed to be relations of Ivan the Terrible. The seed of the Vampire was of quick growth. During the next century hundreds of impostors re-enacted the same folly.
The name of the second false Dimitri is not known; his origin is uncertain; it was said by some that he was a Jew, by others that he was the son of a priest. At all events he was a bold and crafty impostor.
With all his forces he marched against Basil, defeated the Tsar's army, and established his court at a village near Moscow. Hence he is known in Russian history as the "Brigand of Tushino."
His camp soon became a city of 100,000 inhabitants. An ambitious crowd of Russians flocked to his standard. The beautiful Marina, in hopes of getting her crown again, flew to his arms. Famous Polish captains came to his aid, and besieged the Trinity Monastery, which, with its seven hundred friars and one hundred and ten thousand souls, or male peasants, sheltered behind its solid ramparts and towers, was able to resist the Polish artillery. The peasantry, whose cattle were driven off, organized themselves into little bands for self protection. Woe befell the Poles who came into their hands. They plunged them under the ice, saying savagely, "There, you wretches, you have eaten our cows and our calves, now eat our fish."
Basil turned to Sweden for help; his nephew, with five thousand Swedes, began to make headway against the Brigand. Suddenly Skopin Shuiski died, and the people declared that his uncle had poisoned him. The King of Poland openly declared in favor of the impostor; his army defeated the Tsar's brother, Dimitri Shuiski; the mercenaries, after trying in vain to retrieve the day, passed over to Sigismond's service. Basil, never very popular, was utterly ruined. The people dragged him from his palace and forced him to become a monk.
KAZAK CAVALRY.
Russia was now without a Tsar. Who should fill the vacant throne? The "Brigand "was plainly a brutal impostor. One of the boyars suggested the son of the King of Poland. The citizens of Moscow went so far as to take the oath to the Polish Tsar, who promised to maintain orthodoxy and secure the Russian people their rights and liberties.
When the "Brigand "heard of this proposition he marched upon Moscow. The boyars then invited the Polish troops to enter the Kreml; the Brigand," deserted by his foreign troops and in danger of capture, fled, crying, "If I get my crown once more, I will not leave one foreigner alive in my states." He was soon after assassinated by a Tartar prince. King Sigismond, a vain and ambitious man, and a tool of the Jesuits, determined to claim the throne for himself, and refused to send his son to Moscow. The Patriarch Hermogenes, a patriotic old man of eighty, was the first to raise the alarm; he was arrested and starved to death by the Poles. Prince Liapunof put himself at the head of a new band, called himself the defender of the faith and the White Tsar. "Where his horse passed, the grass grew no more." At his approach a quarrel broke out in Moscow, between the Russians and the Poles. The Poles massacred seven thousand Russians, set Moscow on fire, and then shut themselves into the Kreml, where they were besieged by a hundred thousand men. Discord broke out among the besiegers; the Kazaks of the Don fell upon Liapunof and cut him to pieces; the great army was scattered. Meantime Novgorod the Great gave itself to a son of Charles IX. of Sweden; Kazan and Viatka proclaimed the son of Marina and the Brigand of Tushino; Sigismond reduced Smolensk by fire and famine, and tortured its brave defender. On hearing of the revolt of Moscow, he imprisoned the Russian hostages and went back to Warsaw in triumph, dragging Basil Shuiski a prisoner in his train.