The defeat of Klushino was immediately followed by an insurrection at Moscow. Vasili Shuiski was deposed, and forced to become a monk; and being soon after delivered up to Sigismund, he ended his days in a Polish prison. The same event was equally disastrous to the false Dmitri. Deserted by Sapieha and his Poles, he lost all hope of ascending the throne of Moscow; he lived as a robber in Kaluga, at the head of his ferocious gangs of Cossacks and Tatars, until he was murdered by the latter in December, 1610, in revenge for the death of one of their countrymen whom he had drowned. Marina was far advanced in pregnancy when she lost her second husband. She was delivered of a son, who received the name of Ivan, and to whom the little court of Kaluga swore fealty. Zarucki declared himself the protector of the mother and the child, and put himself at the head of the still numerous remnant of the faction that remained obstinately attached to the name of Dmitri. But the cause was hopeless; for Zarucki was neither a general nor a statesman—his talents were those only of a bold leader of Cossack marauders.
Russia was without a sovereign, and the capital was in the hands of the Polish marshal. Zolkiewski used his advantages with wise moderation, and easily prevailed on the weary and afflicted Muscovites to resign themselves to the foreign yoke, and agree to offer the throne to Wladislaw, the son of Sigismund. One word from the latter’s lips might have reversed the subsequent fortunes of Russia and Poland; but in his selfish vanity he preferred the appearance of power to its reality, and claimed the crown of the czars, not for his son but for himself. Philaretes, bishop of Rostov, and other ambassadors, were sent to him at his camp before Smolensk, to make known the resolution of the Russians in favour of Wladislaw. Sigismund insisted that they should at once put him in possession of Smolensk, which he had been besieging for a year; and, this being refused, he seized the ambassadors, and afterwards carried them away to Poland, where they remained nine years in captivity.
Zolkiewski, foreseeing the consequences of his master’s folly, against which he had remonstrated in vain, retired from the government of Moscow, leaving Gonsiewski as his successor. The Polish troops seized the principal towns, proclaimed Sigismund, and observed none of that discretion by which the great marshal had won the confidence and esteem of the vanquished. National feeling awoke again among the Russians; eagerly responding to the call of their revered patriarch, Hermogenes, they took up arms in all parts of the empire, and war was renewed with more fury than ever.
[1612-1613 A.D.]
Smolensk fell after an obstinate resistance of eighteen months; but at the moment of the last assault the explosion of a powder magazine set fire to the city, and Sigismund found himself master only of a heap of ruins. The Poles in Moscow, assailed by the Russians, secured themselves in the Kremlin, after burning down the greater part of the city, and massacring a hundred thousand of the inhabitants. They were besieged by an immense levy from the provinces, consisting of three armies; but these seemed more disposed to fight with each other than to force the Poles in their intrenchments. One of them consisted chiefly of vagabonds escaped from the camp at Tushino, and was commanded by Prince Trubetskoi. Zarucki led another in the name of Marina’s son; the third army, and the only one, perhaps, whose commander sincerely desired the independence of his country, was that of Prince Procope Liapunov; but that brave leader was assassinated, and the besiegers, disheartened by his death, immediately dispersed. About the same time the patriarch Hermogenes, the soul of the national insurrection, died in his prison in the Kremlin, to which he had been consigned by the Poles.
Anarchy was rampant in Russia; every town usurped the right to act in the name of the whole empire, and set up chiefs whom they deposed a few days afterwards. Kazan and Viatka proclaimed the son of Marina; Novgorod, rather than open its gates to the Poles, called in the Swedes, and tendered the crown to Charles Philip, second son of the reigning king of Sweden, and brother of Gustavus Adolphus. Another imposter assumed the name of Dmitri, and kept his state for awhile at Pskov; but being at last identified as one Isidore, a fugitive monk, he was hanged. When all seemed lost in irretrievable disorder, the country was saved by an obscure citizen of Nijni-Novgorod. He was a butcher, named Kozma Minin, distinguished by nothing but the possession of a sound head and a brave, honest unselfish heart. Roused by his words and his example, his fellow-citizens took up arms, and resolved to devote all their wealth to the last fraction to the maintenance of an army for the deliverance of their country. From Nijni-Novgorod the same spirit spread to other towns, and Prince Pojarski who had been lieutenant to the brave Liapunov, was soon able to take the field at the head of a considerable force, whilst Minin, whom the popular voice styled the elect of the whole Russian Empire, ably seconded him in an administrative capacity.
Pojarski drove the Poles before him from town to town; and having at length arrived under the walls of the Kremlin, in August, 1612, he sustained for three days a hot contest against Chodkiewicz, the successor of Gonsiewski, defeated him, and put him to flight. Part of the Polish troops, under the command of Colonel Nicholas Struss, returned to the citadel and defended it for some weeks longer. At the end of that time, being pressed by famine, they capitulated; and on the 22nd of October, 1612, the princes Pojarski and Dmitri Trubetzkoi entered together into that inclosure which is the heart of the country, and sacred in the eyes of all true Russians. The assistance of Sigismund came too late to arrest the flight of the Poles.
Upon the first successes obtained by Prince Pojarski the phantom of Dmitri, and all the subaltern pretenders, disappeared as if by magic. Zarucki, feeling that an irresistible power was about to overwhelm him, was anxious only to secure himself a refuge. Carrying Marina and her son with him, he made ineffectual efforts to raise the Don Cossacks. After suffering a defeat near Voroneje, he reached the Volga, and took possession of Astrakhan, with the intention of fortifying himself there; but the generals of Michael Romanov, the newly elected czar, did not allow him time. Driven from that city, and pursued by superior forces, he was preparing to reach the eastern shore of the Caspian, when he was surprised, in the beginning of July, 1614, on the banks of the Iaïk, and delivered up to the Muscovite generals, along with Marina and the son of the second Dmitri. They were immediately taken to Moscow, where Zarucki was impaled; Ivan, who was but three years old, was hanged; and Marina was shut up in prison, where she ended her days.
ACCESSION OF THE HOUSE OF ROMANOV (1613 A.D.)
The deliverance of Moscow had alone been awaited in order to fill the vacant throne by a free election. This could not properly take place except in that revered sanctuary of the imperial power, the Kremlin, where the sovereigns were crowned at their accession, and where their ashes reposed after their death. Delivered now from all foreign influence, the boyars of the council, in November, 1612, despatched letters or mandates to every town in the empire, commanding the clergy, nobility, and citizens to send deputies immediately to Moscow, endowed with full power to meet in the national council (zemskii soveth), and proceed to the election of a new czar. At the same time, to invoke the blessing of God upon this important act, a fast of three days was commanded. These orders were received with great enthusiasm throughout the whole country: the fast was so rigorously observed, according to contemporary records, that no person took the least nourishment during that interval, and mothers even refused the breast to their infants.