The Tsar fell ill in 1597 and died in the Kremlin the following year, and his widow then at once retired to the Novo Devichi convent mourning her bereavement and blaming herself that through her the sovereign race had perished, for her only child, Theodosia, died in 1592, when but ten months old.
The enmity the reigning princes had shown their own kindred, produced the unexpected result that there were now no legal heirs to the throne; the line of which Andrew Bogoloobski Dolgoruki was the founder, was extinct. The Tsar Theodore when on his death-bed said that God would provide the next Tsar, and refused to nominate a successor. The States’ Council convened for the purpose of appointing a ruler, unanimously chose Boris Godunov. It was impossible that the throne could escape him. He hung back, wishful to have an expression of the desire of the people of Moscow, as well as of the delegates. The people required him. They went to the Novo Devichi convent, whither he had gone, begged him to accept the position to which he had been appointed; his sister “blessed him for the throne,” and with great show of reluctance, he at last consented. In due course he was crowned; reigned wisely and well, but was not liked. A chronicler has it that “he presented to the poor in a vase of gold the blood of the innocents, he fed them with unholy alms.”
Those of his subjects who remembered the tyranny of Ivan should have blessed their elected ruler. They could not forget his Tartar origin: he was not of royal descent, was no Tsar. Nor could he win popularity. His first act was to conclude an honourable peace with Kazi Ghiree and the invading Tartars; his policy was to avoid war, that “there might be neither widows nor orphans of his making.”
Horsey wrote of him:—
“He is nowe become a Prince of subjects, and not of slaves, kept within duty and loyalty by love and not by feare and tyranny. He is comely of stature, of countenance well-favoured and majesticalle withal; affable in behaviour and yet of great courage, wyse, politick, grave; merciful, a lover of virtue and goodness, a hater of wicked men, and a severe punisher of injustice. In summa, he is a most rare prince as ever reigned over these people as any I have ever read of in their chronicles, which are of great antiquity.”
In 1601 Moscow was in a state of famine, the like of which it had never known. In a short time 3 roubles would not buy as much food as 15 copecks had done formerly. Driven wild by hunger the Muscovites committed fearful atrocities. Men were entrapped, killed and eaten. It is said that some mothers killed and ate their own children; pies of human flesh were sold openly; many thousand corpses remained unburied in the streets; chroniclers state that half a million perished of famine and disease. To alleviate some of the misery, Boris caused the granaries and stores to be burst open, and the food avarice withheld sold at normal prices.
Boris built two new palaces of stone within the Kremlin; had made a map of the Russian dominions, and a plan of Moscow. To find employment for the poor he caused the belfry tower of Ivan Veliki to be constructed, and did his utmost to win the love of the citizens. He had to combat treason and intrigue; his reprisals were severe, but the victims suffered in secret.
