Part 15

"I am Dmitri, son of Ivan IV., and the rightful czar of Russia."

Surprised by this extraordinary statement, the prince questioned him, and was told a plausible story by the young man. He had escaped the murderer, he said, the boy who died being the son of a serf, who resembled and had been substituted for him by his physician Simon, who knew what Boris designed. The physician had fled with him from Uglitch and put him in the hands of a loyal gentleman, who for safety had consigned him to a monastery.

The physician and gentleman were both dead, but the young man showed the prince a Russian seal which bore Dmitri's arms and name, and a gold cross adorned with jewels of great value, given him, he said, by his princely godfather. He was about the age which Dmitri would have reached, and, as a Russian servant who had seen the child said, had warts and other marks like those of the true Dmitri. He possessed also a persuasiveness of manner which soon won over the Polish prince.

The pretender was accepted as an illustrious guest by Prince Wiszniowiecki, given clothes, horses, carriages, and suitable retinue, and presented to other Polish dignitaries. Dmitri, as he was thenceforth known, bore well the honors now showered upon him. He was at ease among the noblest; gracious, affable, but always dignified; and all said that he had the deportment of a prince.

He spoke Polish as well as Russian, was thoroughly versed in Russian history and genealogy, and was, moreover, an accomplished horseman, versed in field sports, and of striking vigor and agility, qualities highly esteemed by the Polish nobles.

The story of this event quickly reached Russia, and made its way with surprising rapidity through all the provinces. The czarevitch Dmitri had not been murdered, after all! He was alive in Poland, and was about to call the usurper to a terrible reckoning. The whole nation was astir with the story, and various accounts of his having been seen in Russia and of having played a brave part in the military expeditions of the Cossacks were set afloat.

Boris soon heard of this claimant of the throne. He also received the disturbing news that a monk was among the Cossacks of the Don urging them to take up arms for the czarevitch who would soon be among them. His first movement was the injudicious one of trying to bribe Wiszniowiecki to give up the impostor to him,--the result being to confirm the belief that he was in truth the prince he claimed to be.

The events that followed are too numerous to be given in detail, and it must suffice here to say that on October 31, 1604, Dmitri entered Russian territory at the head of a small Polish army, of less than five thousand in all. This was a trifling force with which to invade an empire, but it grew rapidly as he advanced. Town after town submitted on his appearance, bringing to him, bound and gagged, the governors set over them by Boris. Dmitri at once set them free and treated them with politic humanity.

The first town to offer resistance was Novgorod-Swerski, which Peter Basmanof, a general of Boris, had garrisoned with five hundred men. Basmanof was brave and obstinate, and for several weeks he held the force of Dmitri before this petty place, while Boris was making vigorous efforts to collect an army among his discontented people. On the last day of 1604 the two armies met, fifteen thousand against fifty thousand, and on a broad open plain that gave the weaker force no advantage of position.

But Dmitri made up for weakness by soldierly spirit. At the head of some six hundred mail-clad Polish knights he vigorously charged the Russian right wing, hurled it back upon the centre, and soon had the whole army in disorder. The soldiers flung down their arms and fled, shouting, "The czarevitch! the czarevitch!"

Yet in less than a month this important victory was followed by a defeat. Dmitri had been weakened by his Poles being called home. Boris gathered new forces, and on January 20, 1605, the armies met again, now seventy thousand Muscovites against less than quarter their number. Yet victory would have come to Dmitri again but for treachery in his army. He charged the enemy with the same fierceness as before, bore down all before him, routed the cavalry, tore a great gap in the line of the infantry, and would have swept the field had the main body of his army, consisting of eight thousand Zaporogues, come to his aid.

At this vital moment this great body of cavalry, half the entire army, wheeled and quit the field,--bribed, it is said, by Boris. Such a defection, at such a moment, was fatal. The Russians rallied; the day was lost; nothing but flight remained. Dmitri fled, hotly pursued, and his horse suffering from a wound. He was saved by his devoted Cossack infantry, four thousand in number, who stood to their guns and faced the whole Muscovite army. They were killed to a man, but Dmitri escaped,--favored, as we are told, by some of the opposing leaders, who did not want to make Boris too powerful.

All was not lost while Dmitri remained at liberty. Lost armies could be restored. He took refuge in Putivle, one of the towns which had pronounced in his favor, and while his enemies, who proved half-hearted in the cause of Boris, wasted their time in besieging a small fortress, new adherents flocked to his banner. Boris was furious against his generals, but his fury caused them to hate instead of to serve him. He tried to get rid of Dmitri by poison, but his agents were discovered and punished, and the attempt helped his rival more than a victory would have done.

Dmitri wrote to Boris, declaring that Heaven had protected him against this base attempt, and ironically promising to extend mercy towards him. "Descend from the throne you have usurped, and seek in the solitude of the cloister to reconcile yourself with Heaven. In that case I will forget your crimes, and even assure you of my sovereign protection."

All this was bitter to the Russian Macbeth. The princely blood which he had shed to gain the throne seemed to redden the air about him. The ghost of his slain victim haunted him. His power, indeed, seemed as great as ever. He was an autocrat still, the master of a splendid court, the ruler over a vast empire. Yet he knew that they who came with reverence and adulation into his presence hated him in their hearts, and anguish must have smitten the usurper to the soul.

His sudden death seemed to indicate this. On the 13th of April, 1605, after dining in state with some distinguished foreigners, illness suddenly seized him, blood burst from his mouth, nose, and ears, and within two hours he was dead. He had reigned six years,--nearly the full term predicted by the soothsayers.

The story of Dmitri is a long one still, but must be dealt with here with the greatest brevity. Feodor, the son of Boris, was proclaimed czar by the boyars of the court. The oath of allegiance was taken by the whole city; all seemed to favor him; yet within six weeks this boyish czar was deposed and executed without a sword being drawn in his defence.

Basmanof, the leading general of Boris, had turned to the cause of Dmitri, and the army seconded him. The people of Moscow declared in favor of the pretender, there were a few executions and banishments, and on the 20th of June the new czar entered Moscow in great pomp, amid the acclamations of an immense multitude, who thronged the streets, the windows, and the house-tops; and the young man who, less than two years before, had had his ears boxed by a Polish prince, was now proclaimed emperor and autocrat of the mighty Russian realm.

It was a short reign to which the false Dmitri--for there seems to be no doubt of the death of the true Dmitri--had come. Within less than a year Moscow was in rebellion, he was slain, and the throne was vacant. And this result was largely due to his generous and kindly spirit, largely to his trusting nature and disregard of Russian opinion.

No man could have been more unlike the tyrant Ivan, his reputed father. Dmitri proved kind and generous to all, even bestowing honors upon members of the family of Godunof. He remitted heavy taxes, punished unjust judges, paid the debts contracted by Ivan, passed laws in the interest of the serfs, and held himself ready to receive the petitions and redress the grievances of the humblest of his subjects. His knowledge of state affairs was remarkable for one of his age, and Russia had never had an abler, nobler-minded, and more kindly-hearted czar.

But Dmitri in discretion was still a boy, and made trouble where an older head would have mended it. He offended the boyars of his council by laughing at their ignorance.

"Go and travel," he said; "observe the ways of civilized nations, for you are no better than savages."

The advice was good, but not wise. He offended the Russian demand for decorum in a czar by riding through the streets on a furious stallion, like a Cossack of the Don. In religion he was lax, favoring secretly the Latin Church. He chose Poles instead of Russians for his secretaries. And he excited general disgust by the announcement that he was about to marry a Polish woman, heretical to the Russian faith. The people were still more incensed by the conduct of Marina, this foreign bride, both before and after the wedding, she giving continual offence by her insistence on Polish customs.

While thus offending the prejudices and superstitions of his people, Dmitri prepared for his downfall by his trustfulness and clemency. He dismissed the spies with whom former czars had surrounded themselves, and laid himself freely open to treachery. The result of his acts and his openness was a conspiracy, which was fortunately discovered. Shuiski, its leader, was condemned to be executed. Yet as he knelt with the axe lifted above him, he was respited and banished to Siberia; and on his way thither a courier overtook him, bearing a pardon for him and his banished brothers. His rank was restored, and he was again made a councillor of the empire.

Clemency like this was praiseworthy, but it proved fatal. Like Cæsar before him, Dmitri was over-clement and over-confident, and with the same result. Yet his answer to those who urged him to punish the conspirator was a noble one, and his trustfulness worth far more than a security due to cruelty and suspicion.

"No," he said, "I have sworn not to shed Christian blood, and I will keep my oath. There are two ways of governing an empire,--tyranny and generosity. I choose the latter. I will not be a tyrant. I will not spare money; I will scatter it on all hands."

Only for the offence which he gave his people by disregarding their prejudices, Dmitri might have long and ably reigned. His confidence opened the way to a new conspiracy, of which Shuiski was again at the head. Reports were spread through the city that Dmitri was a heretic and an impostor, and that he had formed a plot to massacre the Muscovites by the aid of the Poles whom he had introduced into the city.

As a result of the insidious methods of the conspirators, the whole city broke out in rebellion, and at daybreak on the 29th of May, 1606, a body of boyars gathered in the great square in full armor, and, followed by a multitude of townsmen, advanced on the Kremlin, whose gates were thrown open by traitors within.