acquired a certain freedom under the new monarch and often behaved willfully and disobediently in their relations with him.
The government tried its best to assure the people that False Dmitrii had been an impostor who had won the throne by magic and had forced the nun Martha and others to recognize him as the authentic prince. The body of False Dmitrii was exposed in Red Square and then burned, and the ashes were fired from a cannon in the direction of Poland. In addition to this, and to Basil Shuisky's and Martha's denunciations of False Dmitrii, another novel attempt at persuasion was made: in June 1606 Prince Dmitrii of Uglich was canonized and his remains were brought to Moscow.
Basil Shuisky's elevation to tsardom may be said to mark the transition in the Time of Troubles from the dynastic to the social phase. Not that dynastic issues lost their importance: in fact, the contest for the throne remained a basic aspect of the Time of Troubles to the end. But the social conflict became dominant. We have already seen how social discontent assisted False Dmitrii and how mobs in Moscow were significant in the struggle for the seat of power. With the deposition and murder of False Dmitrii, authority in the land was further weakened, whereas the forces of discontent and rebellion grew in size and strength. Indeed, the Russians had seen four tsars - Boris and Theodore Godunov, False Dmitrii, and Basil Shuisky - within thirteen and a half months, and the once firm government control and leadership had collapsed in intrigue, civil war, murder,
and general weakness. Then too, whatever advantages the changes brought to the boyars, the masses had gained nothing, and their dissatisfaction grew. In effect, Basil Shuisky's unfortunate reign, 1606-10, had no popular sanction and very little popular support, representing as it did merely the victory of a boyar clique.
Opposition to the government and outright rebellion took many forms. An enemy of Basil Shuisky, Prince Gregory Shakhovskoy, and others roused southern Russian cities against the tsar. Disorder swept towns on the Volga, and in Astrakhan in the far southeast the governor, Prince Ivan Khvoro-stinin, turned against Basil Shuisky. Similarly in other places local authorities refused to obey the new ruler. The political picture in the Muscovite state became one of extreme disorganization, with countless local variations and complications. Rumors persisted that False Dmitrii had escaped death, and people rallied to his mere name. Serfs and slaves started numerous and often large uprisings against their landlords and the state. On occasion they joined with native tribes, such as the Finnic- speaking Mordva, who on their part also sought to overturn the oppressive political and social system of Muscovite Russia.
The rebellion in the south, led by Shakhovskoy and by Bolotnikov, presented the gravest threat to the government and in fact to the entire established order. Ivan Bolotnikov was a remarkable person who was thrown into prominence by the social turmoil of the Time of Troubles: a slave, and a captive of the Tatars and the Turks from whom he escaped, he rallied the lower classes - the serfs, peasants, slaves, fugitives, and vagabonds - in a war against authority and property. Bolotnikov's manifestoes clearly indicate the importance of the social issue, not simply of the identity of the ruler, as a cause of this rebellion. The masses were to fight for their own interests, not for those of the boyars. In October 1606, the southern armies came to the gates of Moscow, where, however, they were checked by government forces commanded by the tsar's brilliant young nephew, Prince Michael Skopin- Shuisky. Perhaps inevitably, the rebels split. The gentry armies of Riazan, led by the Liapunov brothers, Procopius and Zachary, and those of Tula, led by Philip Pashkov, broke with the social rebel Bolotnikov and even in large part went over to Basil Shuisky's side. The tsar also received other reinforcements. In 1607 a huge government army invested the rebels in Tula and, after a bitter four-month siege and a partial flooding of the town, forced them to surrender. Shakhovskoy was exiled to the north; Bolotnikov was also exiled and, shortly afterwards, dispatched.
It should be noted that Shakhovskoy and Bolotnikov claimed to act in the name of Tsar Dmitrii, although they had no such personage in their camp. Later they did acquire a different pretender, False Peter, who claimed to be Tsar Theodore's son, born allegedly in 1592, although this son never
existed. False Peter was hanged after the capture of Tula. As order collapsed and disorganization spread, more and more pretenders appeared. The cossacks in particular produced them in large numbers and with different names, claiming in that strange manner, it would seem, a certain legal sanction for their bands and movements. But it was another False Dmitrii, the second, who became a national figure. Although he emerged in August, 1607, shortly before the fall of Tula, and thus too late to join Shakhovskoy and Bolotnikov, he soon became a center of attraction in his own right.
The new False Dmitrii, who claimed to be Prince Dmitrii of Uglich and also the Tsar Dmitrii who defeated the Godunovs and was deposed by a conspiracy of the boyars, resembled neither. In contrast to the first pretender, he certainly realized that he was an impostor, and his lieutenants also had no illusions on that score. Nothing is known for certain about the second False Dmitrii's identity and background. The earliest mention in the sources locates him in a Lithuanian border town, in jail. Yet, in spite of these unpromising beginnings, the new pretender quickly gathered many supporters. After the defeat of Shakhovskoy and Bolotnikov he became the focal point for forces of social discontent and unrest. He attracted a very large following of cossacks, soldiers of fortune, and adventurers, especially from Poland and Lithuania, including several famous Polish commanders. Marina Mniszech recognized him as her husband and later bore him a son; the nun Martha declared him her child.
Basil Shuisky made the grave mistake of underestimating his new enemy and of not acting with vigor in time. In the spring of 1608 the second False Dmitrii defeated a government army under the command of one of the tsar's brothers, Prince Dmitrii Shuisky, and approached Moscow. He established his headquarters in a nearby large village called Tushino - hence his historical appellation, 'The Felon of Tushino.' Prince Michael Skopin-Shuisky again prevented the capture of the capital, but he could not defeat or dislodge the pretender. A peculiar situation arose: in Tushino the second False Dmitrii organized his own court, a boyar duma, and an administration, parallel to those in Moscow; he collected taxes, granted lands, titles, and other rewards, judged, and punished. Southern Russia and a number of cities in the north recognized his authority. Moscow and Tushino, so close to each other, maintained a constant clandestine intercourse. Many Russians switched sides; some families served both rulers at the same time. The second False Dmitrii suffered a setback, however, when his forces tried to capture the well-fortified Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, one of the gateways to northern Russia. A garrison of 1,500 men, reinforced later by another 900, withstood for sixteen months the siege of a force numbering up to 30,000 troops. Also, the Felon of Tushino's rule in those northern
Russian cities which had recognized his authority proved to be ephemeral once they had a taste of his agents and measures.
In his desperate plight, Basil Shuisky finally, in February 1609, made an agreement with Sweden, obtaining the aid of a detachment of Swedish troops 6,000 strong, commanded by Jakob De la Gardie, in return for abandoning all claims to Livonia, ceding a border district, and promising eternal alliance against Poland. Throughout the rest of the year and early in 1610, Prince Michael Skopin-Shuisky, assisted by the Swedes, cleared northern Russia of the Felon of Tushino's troops and bands, lifted the siege of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, and finally relieved Moscow of its rival Tushino neighbor. The pretender and a part of his following fled to Kaluga. After his departure, and before the entire camp disbanded, the Russian gentry in Tushino asked King Sigismund III of Poland to let his son Wladyslaw, a youth of about fifteen, become the Russian tsar on certain conditions.
Sigismund III granted the request and signed an agreement in February 1610 with Russian emissaries from Tushino, who by that time had ceased to represent any organized body in Russia. The Polish king had become deeply involved in Russian affairs in the autumn of 1609, when he declared war on the Muscovite state on the ground of its anti-Polish alliance with Sweden. His advance into Russia, however, had been checked by a heroic defense of Smolensk. It would seem that from the beginning of his intervention Sigismund III intended to play for high stakes and obtain the most from the disintegration of Russia: his main goal was to become himself ruler of Russia as well as Poland. The invitation to Wladyslaw, however, gave him an added opportunity to participate in Muscovite affairs.
In March 1610 the successful and popular Prince Michael Skopin-Shuisky triumphantly entered Moscow at the head of his army. But his triumph did not last long. In early May he died suddenly, although he was only about twenty-four years old. Rumor had it that he had been poisoned by Dmitrii Shuisky's wife, who wanted to assure the throne to her husband after the death of childless Tsar Basil. New disasters soon followed. The Polish commander,
