The average Russian is off course national history In my head, as a rule, the impression remains that our country was ruled by two dynasties - the Rurikovichs and the Romanovs. Well, Boris Godunov also “wedged in” somewhere between them. However, we also had another king, although he belonged to one of the branches of Rurik’s descendants, but he bore a separate and famous family surname, about whom few people remember. Why did it happen that Vasily Shuisky was forgotten by the people?
On October 29, 1611, the former Russian Tsar Vasily Shuisky was transported through the streets of Warsaw to a meeting of the Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in an open carriage. He was not an honored guest: for the first and last time in the history of our country, its autocrat humiliatedly appeared before the elected king, senators and “zemstvo ambassadors” of a neighboring power as a prisoner. The sovereign bowed to his conqueror, holding his cap in his hands, and had to listen to a solemn speech in honor of Hetman Stanislav Zolkiewski, who, as the Poles believed, had forever broken the power of the Moscow state.
Sigismund III announced that Russia was defeated: “Now the capital is occupied, and there is no corner in the state where the Polish knighthood and the warrior of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania do not feed their horse and where their hands do not stain the blood of their hereditary enemy.” Then the king “mercifully forgave” the Shuiskys, and the former crown bearer bowed low again, touching the ground with his right hand, while his brothers “beat with their foreheads” nearby. The youngest of them, Ivan, could not stand the tension and burst into tears. After all this, the members of the defeated dynasty were given a new velvet dress and allowed to approach the royal hand - as contemporaries said, “this was a great, amazing and pitiful spectacle.” The captive “master of the Russian land” looked like an old man; he was gray-haired, short, round-faced, with a long, slightly hooked nose, a large mouth and a long beard. He looked from under his brows and sternly. He had no one or anything to rely on: the loyal troops were defeated, yesterday’s servants themselves gave him into the hands of foreigners and swore allegiance to the son of the enemy - Prince Vladislav. Could he have imagined this in a nightmare a year ago?..
From “fur coat makers” to the sovereign’s cronies
In the official genealogy of the Shuiskys, the third son of Alexander Nevsky, Andrei Alexandrovich, is named as their ancestor, but later historians believed that the Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal princes (this powerful clan included them) descended not from a son, but from the brother of the winner in the Battle of the Ice, Andrei Yaroslavich. In the chronicles, the two Andreevs were often confused, and perhaps the confusion was deliberately created precisely in the 30s of the 16th century, when the Shuiskys actually ruled the state under the young Ivan the Terrible. Be that as it may, these aristocrats considered themselves older than the Moscow dynasty, since it went back to junior Alexandrov son, Daniel.
However, for decades the Danilovichs successfully collected lands around their capital, while the Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod residents split up their possessions, so that by the middle of the 15th century, the Principality of Suzdal lost its independence altogether, and its former owners were forced to enter the service of their younger relatives. This is how the princes Hunchback, Glazaty, and Nogotkov ended up at the Moscow court. The eldest in the family, the Skopins and Shuiskys, were still invited to reign in Novgorod and Pskov until the end of the century, but after these cities also lost their sovereignty, they also found themselves in a hopeless situation. From the vast family estates, the Shuiskys retained only a few dozen villages in the district of the same name and the city of Shuyu itself (60 kilometers from Suzdal), from which their surname came. They say that the local population was then successfully engaged in soap making and icon painting, and also made good sleighs, carts and furrier's goods - hence, probably, the popular nickname of the future Tsar Vasily - “fur coat maker”.
The service of some Rurikovichs to others was “honest” - the same Shuiskys were usually listed as boyars and governors. But their ambitions and habit of independence still drew them into political intrigue. So, after the death of Elena Glinskaya, the mother of Ivan IV, the brothers Vasily and Ivan Vasilyevich Shuisky, and then their relatives Andrei and Ivan Mikhailovich, immediately moved to the court. The powerful grandfather of the future Tsar Vasily, Andrei Mikhailovich, however, soon suffered a fiasco: in December 1543, the young Grand Duke and the clan competitors standing behind him ordered their hounds to kill him. Not long ago, the all-powerful minister “lay naked in the gate for two hours.”
However, oddly enough, this disgrace did not affect the position of the entire family: in the subsequent years of Ivan’s reign, he, unlike many noble families, did not suffer particularly. Vasily’s father, Prince Ivan Andreevich, regularly served as a governor in Velikiye Luki and Smolensk during the oprichnina years. In 1571, Ivan became a boyar and governor, at the same time the wedding of his son Dmitry with the daughter of the tsar’s closest henchman Malyuta Skuratov took place... Probably, his career would have continued to go uphill, but in January 1573, during the next campaign in Livonia, he died, and 20-year-old Vasily remained the eldest in the family.
From that time began his long, changeable, risky, but marked by a persistent striving to the top, court service. In 1574, the young prince was invited to the wedding of the Sovereign of All Rus' with Anna Vasilchikova, and on the campaign he henceforth performed the position of “rynda with a large saadak” - that is, he carried the royal bow and quiver. In 1575, he and his brother Andrei received rich Novgorod estates taken from relatives former queen Anna Koltovskaya, tonsured a nun. In addition, in their privileged service in the royal court, the Shuiskys must now “become the sovereign’s bed and be the night watchman in their heads.” At the Tsar's wedding to Maria Naga in September 1580, Vasily was the groom's main groomsman (Boris Godunov acted as the bride's groomsman). His wife Elena Mikhailovna, née Repnina, and other relatives also sat in places of honor at the banquet table.
"Respected as smart"
True, on a short time the influential prince nevertheless fell into disgrace, but quickly received forgiveness and in 1583 officially headed the permanent regiment of the right hand, that is, he became the second person in the army after the commander-in-chief. However, unlike the legendary warrior Shuisky, Prince Ivan Petrovich, who became famous for the unprecedented defense of Pskov from the troops of Stefan Batory, Vasily Ivanovich did not particularly show himself on the battlefield. But, we repeat, he established himself so firmly at court that in local terms he was already superior to the famous commander.
This stable career growth was not hindered by the death of Ivan the Terrible in March 1584. Quite the contrary: in the same year Vasily became the head of the Moscow Court Order; his brothers - Andrei, Alexander and Dmitry - received boyars. The elders, Vasily and Andrei, expelled the oprichnina promoters of the late Ivan - Bogdan Belsky and his comrades - from the government. And then the inevitable squabble began for power and influence on Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, who almost demonstratively did not want to deal with the affairs of the state and divided his time between prayers, trips to monasteries and bear baiting.
The Shuiskys were not going to cede primacy to Fedorov's brother-in-law Boris Godunov and decided to take advantage of the fact that Tsarina Irina, his sister, could not bring her husband an heir. Vasily participated in this intrigue, but not openly (he was then in the voivodeship in Smolensk), but lost first place to Andrei Ivanovich and Ivan Petrovich. And, as practice has shown, he acted very far-sightedly.
At first, the “conspirators” managed to win over to their side not only the merchants and townspeople of Moscow, but also Metropolitan Dionysius himself. In the fall of 1586, a letter was drawn up in which Fyodor Ioannovich was asked “that he, the sovereign, for the sake of childbearing, accept a second marriage, and release his first queen to the monastic rank.” It was, of course, not only a matter of “childhood” and the desire to remove the Godunovs, but also of determining the strategic path of development of the country. Lithuanian Chancellor Lev Sapieha reported in messages from Moscow that some boyars did not hide their “inclination” towards Stefan Batory, and the translator of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, Zaborovsky, notified the same king in 1585 that this “party” was actually headed by the Shuiskys. We note that in their own eyes it was not about treason at all, but simply about the union of two related Eastern European states under the rule of a single dynasty. The elective throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth allowed such a possibility, and the Moscow nobility knew well the political orders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which limited individual power. Poland and Lithuania united under a single crown.
But (according to foreign reports again) in the fall of 1586, Godunov declared in the Duma that Andrei Shuisky allegedly went hunting to the border and met with Lithuanian lords there - a crime against kissing the cross to Tsar Feodor. The proceedings almost ended in a fight between both “ministers” right at the meeting. Boris immediately surrounded himself with guards, began to go everywhere with them - and not in vain: soon in the battle with the Shuisky people who attacked his estate, there were casualties.
Uglich epic
However, the organizers of the intrigue miscalculated. The rumor of betrayal compromised them in the eyes of many. And besides, the son of Ivan the Terrible sincerely loved his wife, appreciated her cunning brother and did not tolerate interference in the family affairs of the dynasty. Posad people who “took care of their own business” were executed; the metropolitan was “reduced” from the throne, and Ivan and Andrei Shuisky were sent into exile. There they died very suspiciously in the spring of 1589; most likely, watchmen-“bailiffs” were involved in their deaths - such “quiet” reprisals are considered the signature style of Godunov, who is not prone to public bloody performances in the spirit of Grozny. The eldest of the Shuiskys, as we see, did not let down his political instincts. In general, he did not like open and risky actions, so he got off with a slight fright - he went into exile in Galich, but soon returned safely. It was important to wait for your chance to take off in your career.
In May 1591, Dmitry, the last son of Ivan the Terrible, died in Uglich. The incomprehensible death of a 7-year-old child gave rise to an uprising of the townspeople, led by the relatives of the Dowager Queen Maria Naga, who claimed that assassins had been sent to the prince. Fyodor Ioannovich (or rather, the official “ruler of the state” Boris Godunov - he received such a title while the sovereign was still alive!) ordered the creation of a commission to investigate the death of his brother - headed by Krutitsy Metropolitan Gelasius, as well as Vasily Shuisky, who had just returned to Moscow . Godunov's people were appointed to help them - okolnichy Andrei Kleshnin and clerk Elizar Vyluzgin.
Shuisky, four days after Dmitry’s death, arrived in Uglich and began interrogations to establish “how the prince died and what kind of illness he had.” In a few days, 150 people passed “through his hands,” and he came to the conclusion: Nagikh’s version of the murder of the prince by the people of the city clerk Mikhail Bityagovsky is false. The witnesses - the “mother”-boyar Volokhova, the nurse, and the boys with whom the prince played in the yard - showed the same thing (even though they had previously shouted the opposite to the people): the boy himself stabbed himself with a knife in a fit of epilepsy. Having collected all the questioning speeches and buried Dmitry in the local cathedral as a suicide, without honors, the commission left for Moscow, where the Duma, in the presence of the autocrat and Patriarch Job, heard the results of its work.
Prince Vasily Ivanovich completed the responsible assignment - the Nagi were accused of “negligence,” because of which a precious life was cut short, and of inciting the “Uglitsky men” to revolt. Queen Mary, naturally, was tonsured, and her brothers were sent to prison. The residents of Uglich, some were executed, others were exiled to Siberia, the city was almost deserted. An influential boyar declared authoritatively: there was no murder, it was an accident. And apparently, he did not bend his heart then - numerous researchers of the “Uglich case” did not find anything dubious in the documentation. True, in June 1605 Vasily already said that Dmitry was saved. And then he claimed that the supposedly “saved” prince was the “thief” and heretic Grishka Otrepiev, and the real one did not die, but was stabbed to death on the orders of the villain Godunov. These “confessions,” of course, damaged the posthumous assessment of the affairs of Tsar Boris, hardly adding historical points to Tsar Vasily. But it seems that for the first time he told the truth. Moreover, it seems that there was no need for Godunov to eliminate the boy in 1591 - his sister Irina was expecting a child... In any case, Shuisky again took an honorable place at court - he was present at royal exits, receptions and festive dinners, he commanded the troops in Novgorod and in the south.
 Tsar Boris Fedorovich Godun |
In February 1598, Godunov was elected tsar. The first families of the state, who had lost power, resisted, but the service people lost all doubts immediately after receiving three years’ salary “for the campaign against the Tatars” (it never took place).
The new sovereign turned out to be very talented and did a lot for his country, sometimes ahead of his era: he cut taxes by half, sought to eliminate “white” (non-tax-paying, privately owned) settlements and courtyards in cities, and founded the main port of pre-Petrine Russia - Arkhangelsk. Having concluded peace in the West with Sweden (1595) and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1600), he turned to affairs in the East and strengthened the southern border. A new chain of guard posts and forts, the most important of which was Tsaritsyn, extended far into the “wild field.” The first of the Russian tsars to marry his daughter Danish prince and 100 years before the “eternal worker on the throne” he invited foreign specialists to Russia: doctors, ore miners, and military personnel. He sent noble “children” to Vienna and Oxford to study foreign languages and other sciences.
The Shuiskys prospered in those years - especially since one of them, Dmitry, was married to the queen’s sister. They, apparently, had come to terms with the justice of the new situation in the country - and indeed, the sedate boyar Prince Vasily did not become famous as a commander, his political talents were clearly inferior to Godunov, and he was certainly not fit to be a reformer. His real place was “in the council” - in the Duma, in the retinue when receiving ambassadors, in long and difficult negotiations. It is no coincidence that the tsar constantly entrusted him with the consideration of complex local disputes among the Moscow nobility.
Godunov's grief
Another ten quiet years - and the new dynasty would have strengthened, and Boris’s young son, Fedor, would calmly continue his father’s work. But the “legacy” of Ivan the Terrible - a course towards serfdom - alas, laid the foundation for future upheavals: by the decrees of 1592 and 1593, St. George’s Day was universally abolished (the day when peasants, without fear of persecution, could leave their landowners for others), in 1597 - they introduced a five-year period for searching for “missing” men. On the newly developed, previously “no man’s” outskirts of the state, Moscow governors appeared - and the fugitive “Cossacks” again fell into bondage.
This combustible mass was waiting in the wings. And it came when the streak of success was interrupted by the famine of 1601-1603. The catastrophic pestilence forced the tsar to restore St. George's Day, but only a new conflict naturally arose. The common people passionately rushed away from the owners, who, in turn, wanted to retain the workforce at any cost. Runaway slaves gathered in large detachments, against which troops had to be sent in 1603. In general, the consequences of famine and fluctuations in government policy destroyed the never-fulfilled dynasty. In the eyes of the nobility, Boris had previously been a “rootless upstart” - but now he turned out to be “bad” for both servicemen and plowmen.
Natural disasters and social hardships were experienced by the people of that time as punishment for serving the “untrue” king. And in such an atmosphere the “true”, the “natural” simply had to appear. The “promotion from the ranks” of impostors begins - long before Otrepyev. Well, in the fall of 1604, this last one, a former nobleman in the service of the Romanov boyars, under the name of Tsarevich Dmitry, crossed the Polish-Russian border.
To the credit of Vasily Shuisky, he did not betray his former rival and even rendered him one last favor: first, he publicly declared on Red Square that the son of Grozny who had appeared was an impostor, and he supposedly buried the real one with his own hands in Uglich; and then went to the army to help the wounded commander, Prince Mstislavsky. In January 1605, a large Moscow army defeated Otrepyev near Dobrynichi. But it was not possible to end the war victoriously - one after another, “Ukrainian” cities began to go over to the side of False Dmitry. The army got bogged down in the sieges of Rylsk and Krom, and in the meantime Boris suddenly died suddenly.
The heir Fyodor Borisovich and his relatives recalled both governors to Moscow. Here Prince Vasily had to decide what to do. He was ready to serve Godunov, but not his too young son and mediocre relatives.
Meanwhile, the commanders Vasily Golitsyn and Pyotr Basmanov, sent to the troops to replace him, without thinking twice, went over to the side of the “prince”; part of the army followed them, the rest fled.
In May, news of these events arrived in the capital.
On June 1, ambassadors from “Dimitri” Naum Pleshcheev and Gavrila Pushkin arrived and with Execution Place they read a letter about his miraculous rescue from assassins sent by Godunov, about his rights to the throne and the need to overthrow the usurpers.
Here, as they say, boyar Vasily Shuisky finally “broke” - he declared that the prince had escaped, and that some priest was buried in his place. Of course, it was not these words that decided the fate of the unfortunate orphaned Godunovs: everything was already stacked against them. And yet - after all, the prince knew better than anyone that the applicant approaching Moscow had nothing in common with the Rurikovichs. However, he did not find the strength not only to tell the truth, but at least to remain silent... The reputation of the future king was formed from such steps - lies and betrayal later turned against him.
Last step upOf course, the Godunovs did not retain power: a crowd of Muscovites rushed to destroy their property. That’s why it turned out to be a holiday: “Many people got drunk in the courtyards and wine cellars and died...” The heir, his mother and sister were captured, and a few days later they were strangled by supporters of the impostor under the command of Prince Vasily Golitsyn. Meanwhile, the Duma sent an embassy to “Dmitry Ivanovich”, but did not include any of the three Shuisky brothers in it - they only came with the second “boyar commission”. In Tula, False Dmitry graciously received them; but again he did not invite him to be one of his closest advisers - the same places under his person were taken by the same Basmanov and Golitsyn, Prince Vladimir Koltsov-Mosalsky, “relatives” Nagiye and the Poles, the Buchinsky brothers.
If the Shuiskys had been treated kindly, perhaps they would have served the impostor faithfully and a year later the uprising that cost him his throne and his life would not have happened. But remaining in second or third roles with the false tsar and his noble favorites was still unthinkable for the aristocrat Vasily Shuisky; he could not even hide his attitude towards such a situation. Already on June 23, three days after False Dmitry entered the Kremlin, the prince was captured. As if he announced to the trading people that the sovereign was “not a prince, but a rossriga and a traitor.”
The whole family was judged by a cathedral court - representatives of all classes, including the clergy. False Dmitry himself, in an accusatory speech, recalled the past betrayals of the Shuiskys, including the sins of their grandfather Andrei Mikhailovich, who was executed by the Terrible. The boyar was right about imposture; It can be assumed that other members of the cathedral also suspected the “prince,” but, according to the “New Chronicler” (compiled already under the Romanovs), “at the same cathedral there were no authorities, no boyars, no ordinary people, and neither did they (the defendants. - Ed.) complicitly, I keep screaming at them.” The outbreak of the Troubles was already turning the heads of contemporaries. The brothers were found guilty of conspiracy. The eldest, our hero, was sentenced to death - they took him out to the square, laid his head on the block, and the executioner already raised the ax. But only the accomplices' heads rolled. The Tsar pardoned the Shuiskys. To begin the reign with the execution of the “good and strong” would be short-sighted.
All three were sent into exile, but were quickly forgiven again: less than a few months later, they found themselves at court. The position of the new sovereign had become greatly shaken. Having promised everyone a “prosperous life,” he could not fulfill his promise. For example, cancel serfdom. Or hand over Novgorod and Pskov to the future father-in-law, Polish senator Yuri Mniszek - the people would not forgive such a thing. As a result, relations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became complicated, and only the peasants of the Komaritsa volost and the Putivl townspeople, who were the first to recognize “Dmitry,” received benefits. Landowners were again allowed to return runaways starting in 1600.
False Dmitry was brave, young, energetic. But he did not fit into the image of the “natural” Moscow Tsar. He hurt the national and religious feelings of his subjects: he surrounded himself with foreigners, did not sleep after lunch, did not go to the bathhouse, and was planning to marry a Catholic on the eve of Lenten Friday. In such conditions, the boyars, led by Shuisky, organized a new conspiracy, and this time successful. Back on May 7, 1606, the crafty boyar at the royal wedding led the new empress Marina Yuryevna by the arm and made a welcoming speech on behalf of the Moscow nobility - and a few days later Otrepyev was killed. Eyewitnesses said that while the townspeople were beating the Poles who had “come in large numbers” for the wedding (the conspirators raised the people with shouts: “The gentlemen are slaughtering the Duma boyars!”), Prince Shuisky, at the head of a detachment of loyal people, burst into the Kremlin and ordered the nobles to storm the monarch’s chambers. In a lengthy speech, he convinced them to quickly finish what they started, otherwise, if they did not kill this “thief Grishka,” he would order their heads to be taken off.
This time the old fox took the initiative, acted boldly and prudently - having destroyed the impostor, he took care of saving the lives of noble guests from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And - I emerged victorious from the intrigue. On May 19, 1606, the boyar Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky was “shouted out” by the Tsar on Cathedral Square by a crowd of Muscovites.
"Constitutional" monarchUpon ascending the throne, Shuisky gave a “kissing record” - the first in Russian history the legal obligation of a sovereign to his subjects. But the country remained split - dozens of cities and counties did not recognize the “boyar king”: for them, “Dmitry” remained the “true” sovereign. They pinned so many hopes on the name of the young sovereign, Ivan’s son. To turn the situation around, the new ruler had to prove himself, captivate the crowd or amaze them with truly royal greatness. The late Ivan the Terrible carried out large-scale demonstration executions - but he knew how to have mercy and elevate his faithful servants. Boris attracted service people by promising to give away his last shirt during the coronation. Vasily, alas, was devoid of charisma. And what is it like for a member of an ancient family who personified “old times” to act as a public agitator or to renounce the right to “lay opals”?
In calmer times, Shuisky might have sat on the throne and even - who knows? - would have received praise from historians, but in an era of severe crisis, not only resourcefulness and perseverance were required. In the struggle for power that immediately began, he could not even fulfill his own promises - he had to immediately, without any church court, remove Patriarch Ignatius, appointed by False Dmitry, from the pulpit...
Arrived new stage Troubles - Civil War. The elderly owner of Monomakh's hat did everything he could: he replaced unreliable governors, sent out letters exposing the “slave thief and rostroga.” It seems that the old boyar really did not understand what was happening: how can people continue to believe in an impostor if there is irrefutable evidence of his origin and collusion with the Poles? If he is torn to pieces in Moscow in front of everyone? And the relics of the prince who died in Uglich were declared a miraculous shrine...
Shuisky managed to gather troops and find money - the church authorities, interested in maintaining order, gave him considerable monastic funds. On the advice of Patriarch Hermogenes, general repentance and mass prayer services were organized, which were supposed to rally the nation around the church and the sovereign of All Rus', Vasily Ivanovich. The latter approved new law about peasants from March 9, 1607: the period for searching for fugitives was increased by 10 years. In this way he wanted to split the fragile alliance of men and nobles. Shuisky’s people even lured the detachments of Lyapunov and Pashkov to his side...
But the successes turned out to be ephemeral. Already in the summer of 1607, the second False Dmitry appeared - a mysterious person to this day. A completely motley company gathered in his camp: local rebels expelled from Poland, hetmans Ruzhinsky and Sapega, who recognized the “resurrected” husband Marin Mnishek, the Bolotnikovsky atamans Bezzubtsev and Zarutsky, the boyars Saltykov, Cherkasy, Rostov Metropolitan Filaret Romanov (father of the future Tsar Mikhail), Zaporozhye Cossacks and Tatars. Pskov and Rostov, Yaroslavl and Kostroma, Vologda and Galich, Vladimir went over to their side, the siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery began...
It was at this time that Vasily decided to get married in order to quickly continue the family line and leave an heir. In January 1608, his wedding took place with the young princess Maria Buinosova-Rostovskaya - the Pskov chronicler claims that the old tsar was passionately in love with his young wife and for her sake began to neglect his affairs at such an inopportune moment. Already in May, government troops suffered a heavy defeat near Bolkhov, and Moscow again found itself under siege. Two full-fledged capitals were formed in the country - Moscow and the headquarters of False Dmitry II, the village of Tushino - two governments and two patriarchs - Moscow's Hermogenes and Tushino's Filaret.
The siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery by the Poles lasted from September 1609 to January 1611. (Painting by Vasily Vereshchagin “Defenders of the Trinity
In the ocean of turmoil
It is worth noting that in addition to the two False Dmitrys mentioned in textbooks, at least 15 more impostors appeared in different parts of the country in those years: False Dmitry III and IV, other “children” and “grandsons” of Grozny - “princes” Osinovik, Ivan-August, Lavrentiy... Such an abundance of “relatives” gave rise to competition: the “Tushino thief” alone hanged seven of his “nephews”, the “sons” of Tsar Fedor - Clementy, Savely, Simeon, Vasily, Eroshka, Gavrilka and Martynka.
Famine began in Moscow. People gathered in a crowd and “noisily” approached the Kremlin palace. The king patiently and humbly persuaded: be patient, do not surrender the city yet. But patience was running out. The next defectors who appeared in Tushino in September 1608 reported: “Shuisky has been given a deadline until the Intercession to come to an agreement with “Lithuania” or leave the state to them.” By the way, as can be seen from these testimonies, the Moscow boyars did not see Vasily as an autocrat, but as “the first among equals” and did not hesitate to set conditions for him. He sincerely tried to fulfill them - to come to an agreement with Poland as soon as possible and remove foreigners from the camp of False Dmitry II. He released the Polish ambassadors captured in Moscow home and begged them to sign a peace treaty, according to which Sigismund III was to recall his subjects from Russian territory. But, of course, no one was going to fulfill the agreement - neither the king nor the supporters of the impostor. Direct negotiations with the Tushins also ended fruitlessly.
Subjects had betrayed Tsar Vasily before; now they began to organize open riots. On February 17, 1609, rebels led by Grigory Sunbulov, Prince Roman Gagarin and Timofey Gryazny demanded that the boyars overthrow Shuisky and forcibly dragged Patriarch Hermogenes to the square. Accusations were poured against Vasily: that he was elected illegally by his “indulgents” without the consent of the “land”, that Christian blood was being shed for an unworthy and worthless person, a stupid, wicked, drunkard and fornicator. The nobility, as usual, fled to their homes, but the patriarch, contrary to expectations, did not lose his presence of mind and stood up for the king. Then the monarch himself came out to the crowd to ask menacingly: “Why did you, oathbreakers, burst into me with such impudence? If you want to kill me, then I’m ready, but you cannot remove me from the throne without the boyars and the whole land.” The faltering conspirators did a simple thing - they went to Tushino.
Camp of False Dmitry II in Tushino. (Painting by Sergei Ivanov “In Time of Troubles
Agony
Shuisky made new concessions and tricks. He allowed service people, as a reward for the “seat of siege,” to transfer a fifth of their estates to votchina, that is, to hereditary property. He skillfully waged a propaganda war - his letters accused the impostor and his “Lithuanian” army of fighting against Orthodoxy: “... they will deceive everyone and deceive our peasant faith to ruin, and beat all the people of our state and capture them completely, and the people they deserve in their Latin faith convert." He pledged to forgive those who “hurriedly,” “unwillingly,” or out of ignorance kissed the cross to someone who called himself by the name of Dmitry. He promised everyone who would support his fight “for the entire Orthodox peasant faith” and “will help the thieves” with a “great salary.”
Other cities, having experienced the atrocities of the false Dmitry’s fellows, followed the call, but this only exacerbated the split in the local noble communities and pitted the townspeople against each other. Even well-meaning people in these “submitted” points did not forget to remember the unfortunate sovereign: he took the throne with the help of his supporters and for this he suffered disaster. “Without the consent of the whole earth, he made himself king, and all the people were embarrassed by his quick anointing...” - clerk Ivan Timofeev later wrote in his reflections on the Troubles...
But, in desperate attempts to save itself, the government in February 1609 concluded the Treaty of Vyborg with Sweden: for the cession of the city of Korela and its suburbs, the Swedish king provided Moscow with a 10,000-strong detachment under the command of Colonel Delagardie. With the help of these troops and the last loyal Russian forces, the tsar’s nephew, the young governor Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, successfully began to liberate the northern districts from the “Tushins”. This, however, served as a reason for direct intervention on the part of the Polish Sigismund: in the fall of the same year, his army invaded Russian borders and besieged the most important fortress on the western border - Smolensk. But still, on March 12, 1610, Skopin-Shuisky’s army solemnly entered Moscow. The impostor had to retreat from Tushin to the south. Residents joyfully greeted their liberator. The Shuisky family had a historic chance... But in April, at a feast at Prince Vorotynsky, the hero, 23-year-old Mikhail, felt unwell and died a few days later. According to the suspicion of contemporaries and historians, he was poisoned by the wife of his other uncle Dmitry Ivanovich, who saw him as an obstacle to the throne in the event of the death of the childless sovereign.
Of course, Skopin's death was a real blow for Vasily. On the eve of the decisive battles, he was left without a brave and successful commander. And it was not difficult to understand that it was impossible to put the mediocre and cowardly Dmitry at the head of the army, but... in essence, who else could the tsar rely on? After all, only the closest relatives were vitally interested in preserving the dynasty. So Shuisky made a fatal decision: the army under the command of his brother moved to Smolensk.
The commander fled, foreign mercenaries easily went into the service of the king. The winners received the entire convoy, artillery and the treasury collected to pay salaries. A few months later, Vasily’s last allies left the camp - the Crimean Tatars of Khan Bogadyr-Girey, whom he sent against the impostor to the south.
There was no strength left for resistance at all. Popular support has also dried up. In Moscow, at the Arbat Gate, a meeting of boyars, servicemen and townspeople took place, which finally decided “to the former sovereign... Vasily Ivanovich of All Rus', not to be in the sovereign’s court and not to sit in the state in the future.” A crowd of nobles and Duma officials headed to the Kremlin. Prince Vorotynsky announced a decision to Shuisky: “The whole earth beats you with its brow; leave your state for the sake of internecine warfare, because they don’t love you and don’t want to serve you.”
Posthumous wanderings
Boris Godunov died a king. False Dmitry I, oddly enough, too. Vasily Shuisky was not even overthrown, but “displaced” from the throne and sent first under house arrest to his own courtyard, and then - on July 19 - he was forcibly tonsured a monk in the Chudov Monastery. A letter from the Boyar Duma sent to the cities announced that he voluntarily agreed to leave the throne - as a resigning official who had been at fault and received guarantees of immunity: “... and against him, the sovereign, and over the empress, and over his brothers, no murder will be committed and no harm will be done.” "
And then - the scale of the Troubles and the threat of the collapse of the state forced the nobility to look for a way out. In February and August 1610, treaties were concluded with Sigismund III, according to which the prince Vladislav was invited to the Russian throne subject to the following conditions: not to build Catholic churches, not to appoint Poles to positions, to maintain the existing order (including serfdom) and to change laws only with the sanction of the Zemsky Sobor. In order to prevent False Dmitry from entering the capital, the boyars allowed the Polish garrison there in September. The prince himself was in no hurry to go to Russia (they never agreed on his conversion to Orthodoxy), but his father finally took Smolensk and, on behalf of “Tsar Vladislav Zhigimontovich,” began to distribute estates and provinces.
In the new political combination, the living, albeit former, Tsar Vasily turned out to be an extra figure. The involuntary monk was first sent to a more distant monastery, Joseph-Volokolamskaya, and in October, when the Moscow embassy left to negotiate with the king, Hetman Zholkiewski took him with him to the royal camp near Smolensk. From there he was transported “like a trophy” to Warsaw...
Well, after a humiliating performance at the Diet, the prisoner and his brothers were imprisoned in Gostyn Castle above the Vistula. There, on September 12, 1612, the former Tsar and Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich died. Two months later, Dmitry died. The surviving youngest of the Shuiskys, Ivan, began to serve Vladislav until he was released to Moscow. A few years later, he said that “instead of death, the most eminent king gave him life,” which can be understood as an acknowledgment of the violent death of his older brothers.
The former tsar was buried first in his prison, but then Sigismund ordered the remains of the Shuiskys to be transferred to a mausoleum specially built in the Krakow suburb, and on a marble slab at the entrance they carved the name... of the Polish king and a list of his victories over Russia: “how the Moscow army was defeated at Klushin, how the Moscow capital was taken and Smolensk returned... how Vasily Shuisky, the Grand Duke of Moscow, and his brother, the chief governor Dimitri, were taken prisoner by force of military law.” But the Romanovs remembered their predecessor and wanted to rebury him in his homeland. This was possible after the Smolensk War of 1632-1634. Vladislav finally officially renounced the title of Tsar of Moscow and allowed the ashes of the one who once held this title to be transferred to his homeland. In 1635, in all cities along the route of the funeral procession, honors were given to the remains of the former sovereign, and then they found rest - finally eternal - in the royal tomb of the Kremlin Archangel Cathedral.
The name of Vasily Shuisky somehow remained in memory, but not everyone knows and remembers that he was a king. It was a Time of Troubles. Vasily Shuisky comes from the Rurikovich family.
Vasily Shuisky was born in 1552, exact date birth - unknown. He comes from the Suzdal princes Shuisky, who in turn descended from Alexander Nevsky. Son of Prince Ivan Andreevich Shuisky. In 1584 he became a boyar. In 1587 he became the head of the opposition to Boris Godunov. As a result, he fell into disgrace and was even exiled to Galich, but he managed to regain the favor of the king and was forgiven.
In May 1591, it was he who headed the investigation into the cause of death of Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich, who was in Uglich. The investigative commission, led by Shuisky, announced that Tsarevich Dmitry lost his life as a result of illness; according to other sources, his death was accidental, and the people grumbled that it was Boris Godunov who set everything up.
Vasily Ivanovich apparently wanted power, but at first he did not have enough strength - it was necessary to get the Godunovs out of the way. After the death of Boris Godunov, with the direct complicity of Shuisky, among others, False Dmitry I ascended the throne.
False Dmitry I He did not reign for long and was killed during the next conspiracy, organized by Vasily Shuisky.
Ascension to the throne
False Dmitry I almost executed Shuisky - he found out that he was conspiring. But even here Shuisky got out of it, False Dmitry forgave him (to his grief). As a result, on May 17, 1606, False Dmitry was killed.
In addition to Prince Vasily Shuisky, the boyar Vasily Golitsyn (?-1619) began to lay claim to the Russian throne. A small but strong party of Moscow boyars stood behind Shuisky, and they “shouted” Shuisky as king on May 19, 1606, as a result of which he was elected to the Russian throne. 
Shuisky tried to immediately introduce something unusual - for the first time in the history of Russia, he swore allegiance to his subjects. This happened during the coronation.
Board of Vasily Shuisky
At the very beginning of his reign, confrontations between the capital's nobility and the boyars intensified (an uprising led by Bolotnikov). 
Bolotnikov was badly battered in a battle near the village of Kotly near Moscow in December 1606. In October 1607, after Bolotnikov’s retreat, the uprising was finally defeated. Shuisky felt more confident, but not for long.
In August 1607, a man appeared in Russia who called himself, once again, the saved Tsarevich Dmitry. This is how False Dmitry II appeared, who went to war against Moscow.
False Dmitry 2 besieged Moscow in the spring of 1608 and settled with his headquarters in Tushino.
Tsar Vasily Shuisky against False Dmitry II
In fact, the Russian Kingdom split into two parts. In Tushino, approximately 100 thousand people gathered in the camp of False Dmitry. But in essence it was a bandit settlement. The army of Tsar Dmitry brutally plundered the population, and not only around Moscow, but also went, for example, to Vologda, Yaroslavl and other cities. From False Dmitry II, gangs spread throughout the country. And not only gangs of Poles and interventionists, as it is written in many textbooks, but also Cossacks and Russian people robbed and killed their own. 
Shuisky could not do anything about it. He had no power or troops. And then the cities began to take care of themselves. They began to create their own Zemstvo militias. These militias were especially strong in the north and northeast of the country.
The rise of the Zemstvo movement began. It posed a danger to Shuisky’s autocracy and he began to look for a way out of this situation. He did not want to share power with the zemstvo. And then Shuisky decided to turn to the Swedish king Charles 9.
The Swedes help the king
In February 1609, an agreement was signed in the city of Vyborg. Sweden sent a detachment of 5,000 soldiers to the Russian Tsar, but not Swedes. These were mainly French, Germans and Scots - the main striking force of all mercenaries in Europe in the 17th century. The only Swedes in this contingent were the commander.
For this help, Shuisky, in addition to paying army salaries, agreed to cede part of the territory to the Swedes, and, most importantly, allowed Swedish coins to circulate in Russia. These were very serious concessions. You need to understand that Vasily Shuisky’s reign as a tsar was very limited. And so much so that he actually committed betrayal of Russia.
In the spring of 1609, a united European- Russian army against False Dmitry II. The Russian army was commanded by a talented commander, 24-year-old Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky. This was the nephew of the Tsar, who showed himself very well in battles with Bolotnikov’s army.
They defeated the Tushins near Tver in 1609, after which the Swedes demanded immediate payment of money. Although, according to the terms of the agreement, they were supposed to receive the money only after the end of the war. Since there was no money, Shuisky tried to increase taxes, but did not collect the required amount. Then the Swedes abandoned Skopin-Shuisky and the army dispersed throughout Russia, starting to rob the population.
Skopin-Shuisky continued on his way alone. Under these conditions, many began to wonder whether Skopin-Shuisky had been heralded to the Russian throne? But he rejected this idea. He did not want to sit on the throne, at least in that situation.
Polish intervention
Sigismund III took advantage of the situation with scattered and weakened troops in Russia and brought Polish troops into our territory. On September 16, 1609, Sigismund besieged Smolensk. The Smolensk people stubbornly resisted and held the siege for 21 months. The city fell only when the Smolensk residents blew up the powder tower out of despair, in order to harm the enemy as much as possible before surrendering.
Filaret and the clergy, Saltykov and the Tushino Duma at first did not know what to do, and then they decided to make a very clever move (at least it seemed so to them). They sent ambassadors to Sigismund III and asked to give Sigismund's son, Prince Vladislav, as king to Moscow. Please note that Filaret and the Moscow boyars are asking for a Polish prince to take the Russian throne.
Meanwhile, Skopin-Shuisky continues his military operations, beats the enemy and in March 1610 solemnly enters Moscow. Once again, Muscovites are starting to say that this is exactly what a Russian Tsar should be like. Naturally, Vasily Shuisky did not like his nephew, but his brother, Dmitry, did not like him even more. In April 1610, at the baptismal feast of Prince Vorotynsky, Skopin-Shuisky was poisoned. Apparently, he was poisoned on Dmitry’s order.
Skopin-Shuisky died. Dmitry Shuisky, the king's brother, was appointed the new commander. With such joy, Dmitry Shuisky went to fight the Poles. And Dmitry Shuisky’s Russian army was 2 times larger, he was shamefully defeated, since the governor did not have proper training. And the Poles, inspired by success, began a march on Moscow. Having learned about this, False Dmitry II, who was on his own and sitting in Kaluga, and who also began to move towards Moscow, was very happy.
End of reign
By the summer of 1610, False Dmitry with the lower classes and ragamuffins approached Moscow from the south, and Hetman Zholkiewski with the Poles was moving from the west. Palace conspiracies against Shuisky began.
On July 17, 1610, Vasily Shuisky was overthrown by the nobles, led by one of the Lipunov brothers, Zakhar, with the active support of the townspeople. Shuisky is tonsured a monk. Then, together with his brothers Dmitry and Ivan, they send him to the Poles. This is how Tsar Vasily Shuisky ended his reign.
In captivity among the Poles, the Shuiskys experienced the most severe humiliation. At a meeting of the Sejm they were forced to their knees and forced to publicly ask for mercy from the Polish king. Physical and moral hardships undermined the Shuiskys’ health. In 1612, brothers Vasily and Dmitry die in Warsaw.
The ashes of Vasily Shuisky in 1635 were transferred to Moscow under Mikhail Fedorovich and reburied in the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin.
The traditional characterization of Vasily Shuisky as a “cunning boyar” is gradually becoming a thing of the past. The years of his reign coincided with one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of Russia - the Time of Troubles. The shocks of the state were reflected in the personal tragedy of the last of the Rurikovichs.
Portrait
In the eyes of historians and playwrights, Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky often appears as a figure devoid of attractiveness. “More cunning than smart, utterly deceitful and intrigued,” is how the historian Vasily Klyuchevsky sees the tsar.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, although he pays tribute to Shuisky’s courage and strength of character, admits that his best qualities the courtier preserves not during his life, but during his fall. Nikolai Karamzin echoes the poet: “he fell with greatness in the ruins of the State.”
Contemporaries also did not favor Vasily Shuisky with good epithets, calling the boyar either Shubnik or Shubin, hinting at the support he provided to the merchants and townspeople when they came to power.
Prince Ivan Katyrev-Rostovsky finds attractive features in Shuisky, noting that he is “satisfied with book teaching and very intelligent in reasoning.” In his description of the young Shuisky, the English ambassador Giles Fletcher called him the most intelligent among other representatives of the family.
Shuisky’s resourcefulness and irrepressible thirst for power is rather a cliche that has become established in the historiography of the “Romanov era”. It was the caricature portrait of the last Tsar Rurikovich that best contrasted with the beginning of a new dynastic era. The image of the real Shuisky is much more complex and at the same time tragic - in tune with the turbulent times in which the king ruled.
Genus
In terms of nobility, the Shuisky family, whose patrimony was the Suzdal lands, was always inferior to the ancestors of Ivan Kalita, who established themselves in the Moscow reign. Nevertheless, in Austria and Poland it was the Shuiskys who were called “princes of the blood.” And for good reason. After all, the Shuiskys had the primary right to the Moscow table: their family, according to one version, originated from the third son of Alexander Nevsky, Andrei, while the Moscow princes descended from the fourth son, Daniel.
According to another version, the Shuisky family tree goes back to the younger brother of Alexander Nevsky, Andrei Yaroslavich, which also gave them the formal right to supremacy among the Rurikovichs. In 1249, it was Andrei, and not Alexander, who received the label for the great reign of Vladimir.
The immediate founder of the Shuisky family was Yuri Vasilyevich, who inherited part of the Suzdal principality - the town of Shuya with its surroundings. Since then, two branches of the Rurikovichs - the Shuiskys and the Danilovichs - have been waging a hidden war for leadership. The Shuiskys, of course, received the richest feedings and awards, but this was not enough for them.
During the time of the young Ivan IV, boyar Andrei Shuisky, the grandfather of Vasily Shuisky, managed to actually find himself at the pinnacle of power for a while, the temptations of which he could not withstand. For which he paid, becoming the first victim of Grozny.
Between disgrace and mercy
Vasily Shuisky also had to go through the costs of inter-clan rivalry. Not only with the Danilovichs, but also with other boyar families - the Belskys, Mstislavskys, Godunovs and Romanovs. Under Fyodor Ioanovich, Shuisky headed the Moscow Court Order, which added to his influence among the serving nobility. The Godunovs and Romanovs did everything to ensure that Shuisky lost such an important post. In the spring of 1585, the unwanted boyar was sent to the voivodeship in Smolensk.
The Smolensk exile turned out to be only a preamble to the Shuisky-Godunov confrontation. In 1586, the Shuiskys, accused of having relations with Lithuania, were persecuted. Vasily is exiled to Galich, and his older brother Andrei, one of the most prominent representatives of the dynasty, dies under mysterious circumstances. This could not have happened without Boris Godunov, historians are sure.
However, the still influential Vasily Shuisky turned out to be beneficial to Godunov: the exile was suddenly canceled and the disgraced boyar returned to Moscow to investigate the death of Tsarevich Dimitri. But there was probably another reason - the confrontation between the Godunovs and the Romanovs, who were gaining political weight. Vasily Shuisky was seen by the Tsar's brother-in-law as an advantageous ally.
During the reign of Boris Godunov, Shuisky remained in the shadow of the monarch, was forced to moderate his ambitions and bide his time. He waited for him at a not very opportune time, when many Russian cities were gripped by famine and a series of popular unrest. But the main shock for the state was the arrival of False Dmitry I.
When False Dmitry took the Moscow throne, he did not forget about Shuisky, who convinced the people that the “legal heir” was not true. It was Shuisky who at one time led the investigation into the death of Tsarevich Dmitry in Uglich, and he did not know that the last son of John IV died. The boyar was sentenced to death, which was commuted to exile. Again, months of uncertainty, forgiveness and a sudden return to court. But now Shuisky knew that he could act: the position of the “natural king” by that time had noticeably weakened.
Reign
As historian Vyacheslav Kozlyakov notes, Shuisky knew how to say in time what was expected of him. Say and do. The boyar could only push the masses to overthrow the impostor. But he did not let the process take its course and showed prudence: he protected Marina Mniszech and the ambassadors of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the angry crowd in order to avoid conflict with a dangerous neighbor.
Then the main conspirator makes another important step- makes a proposal for the canonization of Tsarevich Dmitry and the transfer of his remains from Uglich to Moscow. By doing this, he solves three problems: he compromises the already deceased Godunov, he tries to put an end to rumors about the allegedly saved prince, but most importantly, he prepares the ground for his accession to the throne. Metropolitan Filaret first had to participate in the reburial of the remains of the prince, and then, after his elevation to the rank of patriarch, crown Shuisky as king.
Already at the very beginning of his reign, Shuisky took an oath that was not typical for previous monarchs. The “cross-kissing record” of the newly-crowned king clearly establishes the protection of a representative of any class from arbitrariness, and guarantees a legal trial. The Tsar also promised to put an end to denunciations: for perjury the death penalty now she was threatening the informers themselves.
The “Decree on Voluntary Slaves,” which appeared on March 7, 1607, was dictated by the hungry and troubled times. Thus, slaves who for some reason fell into bondage were given the right to leave their master, getting rid of the townsman or peasant tax.
But the “Code”, which was published two days later, already forever assigned the peasants to their owners. The author of “Essays on the History of the Time of Troubles in the Moscow State,” S. F. Platonov noted that “Tsar Vasily wanted to strengthen in place and subject to registration and supervision the social stratum that was causing trouble and seeking change.”
The Tsar did not leave the Church unattended either. Many monasteries were given back their possessions and benefits that had been lost during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. But here, of course, one can see Shuisky’s desire to thank the “sacred rank” for supporting the current government.
End of the dynasty
Vasily Shuisky returned the Rurikovichs to the throne during one of the most crisis periods of Russian society. If Godunov accepted a generally stable and prosperous state, in which the beginnings of the great unrest were only ripening, then Shuisky inherited an inheritance that called into question the very concept of the “Russian state.” Famine, internal and external strife, and finally, the epidemic of imposture that swept Rus' at the dawn of the seventeenth century - in such conditions, few could maintain their common sense and political will.
Shuisky did everything he could. He tried to codify the law and consolidate the position of slaves and peasants. But his concessions in a difficult situation were akin to weakness.
The king looked into the past. His efforts to subjugate the Boyar Duma were doomed: everything had changed, and in the new conditions, not only it decided who to rule and who to overthrow. Attempts to reform the moribund system resulted in blows from popular uprisings and Polish-Lithuanian intervention.
Shuisky failed to cope with the historical challenge. His death far from his homeland symbolized the collapse of old Rus' - the state of the Rurikovichs. But what is noteworthy is that the revival of the Russian state came from the lands that served as the stronghold of Shuisky’s power - Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod. It was here that the zemstvo movement began, which ultimately led to the liberation of Moscow from Sigismund III, who usurped the Russian throne.
The Romanovs who ascended the throne did not forget about the deposed tsar. In 1635, on the initiative of Mikhail Fedorovich, the remains of Vasily Shuisky were transported from Poland and reburied in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.
Tsar Vasily Shuisky
On the southern outskirts of Russia, the coup carried out in Moscow by Vasily Shuisky caused strong discontent. Democratic principles in these places were more developed than in the center of the country. The population on the southern borders was half made up of Cossacks. Continuing to believe that False Dmitry was " people's king", the Cossacks, townspeople and minor nobility saw Shuisky as a protege of the hostile boyar class. Exiled by Shuisky to Putivl for his loyalty to the impostor, Prince Grigory Shakhovskoy began to spread rumors there that False Dmitry I was not killed in Moscow, but again miraculously escaped. Putivl rebelled against Shuisky. The governor of neighboring Chernigov, Telyatevsky, also joined the outbreak of the rebellion. Fermentations against Shuisky began in Moscow as well. They were gradually fanned by some boyars who dreamed of seizing the throne from Vasily.
In the south, the rebels gathered an entire army. With the consent of Telyatevsky and Shakhovsky, Ivan Bolotnikov became its head. A daring man who has seen a lot, Bolotnikov spent many years in Tatar-Turkish captivity, was in Western Europe and now he assured that he had met Dmitry, who had survived, abroad. With 1,300 Cossacks, Bolotnikov defeated Shuisky’s 5,000-strong army near Kromy, and the entire southern half of Russia quickly joined the uprising: the cities of Venev, Tula, Kashira, Kaluga, Orel, Astrakhan. The Lyapunov nobles raised the entire Ryazan region against Vasily Shuisky.
In the fall of 1606, Bolotnikov’s army marched on Moscow “to return the throne to Tsarevich Dmitry.” The Ryazan detachments of the Lyapunovs also moved to the capital. On December 2, Bolotnikov entered the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow, but here the forces of the rebels split. In Bolotnikov’s army, the poor, the robber class and other social scum took first place. These people were terribly outrageous, robbed everyone, establishing bloody anarchy everywhere. The noble militia of the Lyapunovs, horrified by the actions of their original allies, decided to break with them and, in the name of restoring order, unite with Vasily Shuisky. The noble detachments left Bolotnikov and moved to Moscow to Shuisky, although their leaders continued to dislike the boyar tsar. Bolotnikov, driven away from the capital by Shuisky’s young nephew, Mikhail Skopin, retreated to Kaluga, where he was besieged by Prince Mstislavsky.
The battle between Bolotnikov's army and the tsarist army. Painting by E. Lissner
The Troubles in Russia were gaining strength. A new king was imposed on the country - Vasily Shuisky, who passionately dreamed of the throne ever since the end of the Rurik dynasty. His unattractive appearance is visible especially in the story of Tsarevich Dmitry: in 1591, he certified that the prince stabbed himself to death; during the capture of Moscow by an impostor, he stated that Dmitry escaped; now he claimed that the boy was killed at the instigation of Godunov.
Three days after the murder of the impostor, the Moscow people gathered on Red Square to decide the fate of governing the country. Some advocated for the transfer of power to the Patriarch, others - to the Boyar Duma, but Shuisky’s people also actively worked in the crowd. It was they who shouted his name as the future king. And immediately Shuisky’s supporters took up this cry. Thus the fate of the royal crown was decided.
In 1606, Vasily Shuisky, like Godunov, became an elected Russian Tsar. Shuisky identified the Kazan Metropolitan Hermogenes, a passionate zealot of Orthodoxy, a hater of the impostor and Catholics, as the Patriarch of Rus'.
The Moscow boyars dreamed of a transition to a system of electing the supreme power by the aristocracy. This was confirmed by Vasily Shuisky’s kissing cross entry: I kiss the cross on the fact that I should not do anything bad to anyone without permission.
Thus, a powerful and contradictory movement of all layers of society determined Russia’s attempt to transition from autocracy and despotism to boyar collective rule.
Civil War
The rise to power of the boyar tsar further intensified the Troubles. False Dmitry's comrades did not want to give up what they had conquered. There was a rumor that the king had escaped and was taking refuge in a safe place.
The center of anti-boyar sentiments was the city of Putivl, where the governor was a friend of False Dmitry, Prince Shakhovskoy. Ryazan, Yelets and other cities came out in support of Putivl. And in Poland, the nobleman Molchanov appeared, one of the murderers of Fyodor Godunov and a close friend of the impostor, who began to pose as the escaped “Tsar Dmitry.”
In the summer of 1606, a powerful uprising swept all of Southern and Southwestern Russia. Essentially, a civil war began, in which the lower and middle strata of society (posad people and the nobility) opposed the upper classes. Putivl opposed Moscow.
Many counties in Russia have their own government bodies. State system control began to fall apart. The Mari, Mordovians, Chuvash, and Tatars joined the rebel Russians, who did not accept pressure from the Orthodox clergy, the seizure of their ancestral lands by Russian patrimonial landowners, landowners and monasteries.
The rebels' march on Moscow. Ivan Bolotnikov.
By the autumn of 1606, a rebel army had formed near the city of Yelets. It was led by the nobles Istoma Pashkov, Prokopiy Lyapunov and Grigory Sunbulov.
Another army was formed in Putivl. This army was led by the experienced warrior Ivan Bolotnikov. Once he was a military servant of Prince Telyatevsky, then he fled south to the Cossacks, fought with Crimean Tatars, was captured, from where he was sold to Turkey. For some time, Bolotnikov was a forced rower on galleys. During a naval battle he was freed by the Italians, and he ended up in Europe. He lived in Venice and headed home through Germany and Poland. In Poland, he learned about events in Russia and sided with the “true Tsar Dmitry,” although by that time the impostor was already dead. Molchanov, posing as the tsar who had escaped, gave him a letter to Putivl, and Prince Shakhovskoy appointed Bolotnikov as commander of the rebel detachment. Bolotnikov called himself the governor of Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich.
Bolotnikov's army moved towards Moscow, winning a number of brilliant victories over the tsarist troops along the way.
In October 1606, Bolotnikov united with noble detachments from near Yelets. The united army settled in the village of Kolomenskoye. There was no agreement between the people's leader Ivan Bolotnikov and the leaders of the noble detachments. The boyars and princes sought to regain the estates and privileges received from the impostor. The nobles craved new estates and increased salaries. Peasants and serfs dreamed of freedom. The townspeople expected relief from duties and taxes.
During the journey to Moscow, the Cossack-peasant-servant army destroyed the boyars and nobles loyal to Shuisky, seized their property, and freed people from serfdom and servile bondage. The noble leaders, as a rule, pardoned the captured royal governors and warily watched the reprisals that Bolotnikov’s people inflicted on the feudal lords. Pashkov and Lyapunov did not want to obey the “servant” Bolotnikov and kept their units apart.
The common people of the capital were ready to support Bolotnikov, and the rich townspeople, fearing reprisals, demanded to show them the “tsar.” He was not in the rebel camp, which weakened their position.
The outcome of the case was decided by the betrayal of the nobles, who entered into secret negotiations with Shuisky. During the Battle of Moscow, Ryazan nobles led by Lyapunov and Pashkov’s troops went over to Shuisky’s side. Tsarist troops pushed back the rebels. Bolotnikov was under siege for three days, then retreated to Kaluga. Part of his army fled to Tula.
Defeat of the popular uprising
New forces approached the rebels from all sides. In Tula, with a detachment of several thousand Cossacks, serfs and peasants, another impostor appeared, calling himself the son of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich Peter.
False Peter joined forces with Bolotnikov, and together they won a number of victories near Tula and Kaluga. In May 1607, the rebel army inflicted another defeat on Shuisky's army near Tula. The rebels were commanded by Prince Telyatevsky, an associate of False Dmitry and former owner Bolotnikova. The prince did not want to join forces with his former servant. The winners returned separately to Tula. There the rebels were surrounded by Shuisky’s huge army. The king himself led the siege. He issued a number of decrees. He granted freedom to the slaves who left the rebel camp and also forbade them to turn free people into slaves without their consent. The period for searching for fugitive peasants was extended from 5 to 15 years, which was to the benefit of the nobles.
The rebels defended the stone Kremlin of Tula for four months. The royal governors blocked the Upa River with a dam, its waters flooded the city's food supplies and gunpowder. Famine began in Tula. The rebels began to grumble, their leaders went to negotiate with Shuisky. For the surrender of the city, the tsar promised life to the leaders and freedom to the ordinary soldiers. The city gates opened. Bolotnikov, as befitted a governor, laid his saber at the king’s feet.
Bolotnikov and False Peter were captured. The impostor was hanged, and Bolotnikov was exiled to the north. Six months later he was blinded and then drowned in an ice hole. Thus, Shuisky broke his promise.
The rebels' struggle with the government continued. And yet, after the defeat of Bolotnikov, it became obvious that at this stage in Russian history, the nobility, together with the nobility, won. The boyar government remained in power, which during the Time of Troubles freed itself from autocratic despotism, but at the same time suppressed the uprising of the lower classes.
This victory came at a high price for Russia. The country was falling apart, and neighbors began to interfere in its affairs. The nobility, which supported Shuisky in the fight against Bolotnikov, dreamed of crushing the power of the princely-boyar aristocracy.