The greatest mystery of our history remains how the person who called himself Tsarevich Dimitri left Ukraine with a detachment of Cossacks and became the "Emperor of Muscovy."
Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. False Dmitry spent some time here before declaring himself "the son of Ivan the Terrible" and asking for support from the Polish magnates
This man interested Pushkin. In The Captain's Daughter, Pugachev says to Grinev: "Grishka Otrepiev reigned over Moscow." “Do you know how he ended up? - Grinev answers. "They threw him out of the window, stabbed him, burned him, loaded a cannon with ashes and fired him!"
Pushkin dedicated a whole drama to Grigory Otrepiev. "Boris Godunov" is written, in fact, about this mysterious historical phantom, from which Tsar Boris has "bloody boys in his eyes." Either the fugitive monk Grishka, or the really miraculously escaped son of Ivan the Terrible, or someone else unknown, covered by the pseudonym False Dmitry the First.
Only the brilliant Pushkin lines remained, like scraps of an old painting: “This is our Rus: it is yours, Tsarevich. The hearts of your people are waiting for you there: your Moscow, your Kremlin, your state. " This is what Prince Kurbsky says to False Dmitry when they cross the "Lithuanian border" with the army. And here are the words of the pretender to the Moscow throne after the lost battle near Novgorod-Seversky: “How few of us survived the battle. Traitors! villains-Cossacks, damned! You, you have ruined us - not even three minutes of resistance! I already have them! I'll hang the tenth, robbers!"
What does the power of talent mean! By and large, all that the current reader knows about the mysterious "tsarevich" is Pushkin's drama. By the way, where is this “Lithuanian border” that False Dmitry crossed? Near Kiev! In 1604, when the small army of "the son of Ivan the Terrible" marched on Moscow, Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky belonged to Russia. To get to the Moscow limits by the shortest route, you just had to cross the Dnieper. This is what False Dmitry did in the Vyshgorod area, just above Kiev. His army was recruited from adventurers - small Polish gentry, who were given by the Vishnevetsky princes, and detachments of the Cossacks, ready to plunder anything - even Istanbul, even Moscow.
False Dmitry is the first "European" on the Moscow throne. Shaved off his beard a hundred years before Peter the Great
The piquancy of the enterprise is also added by the fact that only historians in the XX century called these gentry “Polish”. They called themselves "Russians" or "Ruski" and were Orthodox. The Vishnevetsky princes, who discerned the "true tsar" in the mysterious fugitive from Moscow, were also Orthodox. Only the famous Yarema Vishnevetsky will become the first Catholic in their family. But before his birth in the year of the campaign of False Dmitry, there were still eight whole years. Russia went to Russia. West to East. And, I'm afraid, only one in ten was a Catholic in the army of False Demetrius! Even the French captain Jacques Margeret, who first fought in the army of Boris Godunov against the tsarevich, and then went over to his side, could well have been a Protestant - after all, in France, religious wars between Catholics and Huguenots, who scattered "extra people" with swords in hands up to distant Muscovy.
By the way, Margeret, unlike modern historians, was convinced that Demetrius was real. No "false". He could, of course, be wrong. But, in comparison with historians, he still has one advantage: he knew this amazing person personally and even rose to the rank of captain of his guard.
The book by Margeret, published in Paris shortly after the death of False Dmitry and the author's return to France, is called at length, as was customary at that time: “The state of the Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy with a description of what happened there most memorable and tragic during the reign of four emperors, namely, from 1590 to September 1606.
Talking about the finale of Boris Godunov's reign, the brave captain writes: “In 1604, the one whom he feared so much, namely Dimitri Ioannovich, the son of Emperor Ivan Vasilyevich, who, as mentioned above, was considered killed in Uglich, was discovered. Which with about four thousand people entered Russia through the borders of Podolia”. Podolia Margeret calls the Right-Bank Ukraine, which was then part of the Polish-Lithuanian state. That is why the border is "Lithuanian". According to the memoirist, Dimitri “first laid siege to a castle called Chernigov, which surrendered, then another, which also surrendered, then they came to Putivl, a very large and rich city that surrendered, and with it many other castles, like Rylsk, Kromy, Karachev and many others, while Tsargorod, Borisov Gorod, Livny and other cities surrendered to the side of Tataria. And as his army grew, he began the siege of Novgorod-Seversky, this is a castle standing on a mountain, whose governor's name was Peter Fedorovich Basmanov (which will be discussed below), which put up such good resistance that he could not take it."
Zaporozhye freemen. Most of the four thousandth detachment of False Dmitry, who moved to Moscow, were Cossack mercenaries
The man who led this army to Moscow showed up on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth several years earlier. He came here from Moscow and spent some time in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and then moved to Zaporozhye. Contemporaries noted the good ability of False Dmitry to stay in the saddle and wield a saber. If he were just a fugitive monk, as the government of Boris Godunov claimed, then where did he get his military skills? Natural talent? Perhaps. But before turning to the princes Vishnevetsky and the Sandomierz voivode for help, and at the same time to the elder Jerzy Mniszko of Sambir, the self-styled prince, if he really was a self-styled one, had a good reason to visit the Zaporozhye Cossacks. Only among this freeman could a more or less significant contingent be found for the campaign against Moscow. It was something like intelligence. The one we know by the name of False Dimitri had to make sure that the Sich really had a sufficient number of unemployed thugs.
In Poland, more precisely, in Ukraine (then this word was called the outskirts of Zaporozhye - the border with the Wild Pole) really appeared, as the popular historian of the early XX century Kazimir Waliszewski put it, "a native of the other world." After all, the son of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Dimitri, was officially considered dead since 1591. According to the investigation, commissioned by Boris Godunov, he fell down on a knife with his throat during an epileptic seizure - that is, epilepsy. True, the rumor claimed that the boy was simply killed by the sent agents of Boris. Godunov, whose sister was married to the childless older brother of Dimitri Fyodor Ioannovich. The death of the prince opened the way to the throne.
And now the "bloody boy" rose up! Moreover, he found a patron in the person of Prince Adam Vishnevetsky, to whom the same Valishevsky gives the following description: “Prince Adam is a major tycoon, nephew of the famous Dimitry Vishnevetsky, an unfortunate candidate for the Moldovan throne, half-Russian-half-Pole, a pet of the Vilna Jesuits and, however, a jealous Orthodoxy belonged to the famous family of Condottieri”.
The possessions of the Vishnevetskys had recently crossed the Dnieper. They were just beginning to colonize the Poltava region - they had just captured Snyatin and Priluki. Then the Moscow troops recaptured these towns. The Vishnevetskys had a grudge against Moscow, a passion for adventures and good information about what was happening in the Moscow kingdom. After all, the same Dmitry Vishnevetsky, nicknamed Baida, managed to serve Ivan the Terrible for some time before setting off on the fatal Moldavian campaign. The man who claimed that he was the son of Tsar Ivan, miraculously survived and perfectly wielded a saber, was a true find for the Vishnevetskys. If Prince Ostrozhsky, having talked with False Dmitry, refused to sponsor him, then Adam Vishnevetsky gave the future Moscow Tsar a start-up capital. So that there was something to recruit the Cossacks for.
Jerzy Mniszek. Sandomierz voivode, who believed that False Dmitry is really the son of Ivan the Terrible
And here we again return to the question: who was False Demetrius? A true prince who miraculously escaped? Or a brilliant actor who played this role so well that for more than four centuries there has been debate about what the audience saw on the historical stage: a dirty trick or a truth so incredible that they simply do not dare to believe in it?
I repeat: Jacques Margeret was convinced that it was Demetrius who was in front of him. In his book, he wrote that by the end of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, various groups claimed power in Russia. One of them tried to push the son of the last wife of the Terrible, Maria Nagoya, to the kingdom of the young Demetrius. At the head of the other was the brother of the wife of another son of Ivan the Terrible - Fedor - Boris Godunov. The situation was complicated by the fact that Maria Nagaya was the unmarried wife of Ivan the Terrible. One count, seventh. In another way - even the eighth. The church did not recognize this marriage. Consequently, Demetrius was illegitimate. His rights to the throne could be challenged. Nevertheless, Godunov had even less legal grounds to take the throne.
But he had an instinct for power, real administrative talents and tried to buy the love of the people, as they would say today, with the help of PR of his own achievements: “Boris Fedorovich, then quite beloved by the people and very widely patronized by what Fedor said, intervened in state affairs and, being cunning and very sharp-witted, satisfied everyone … It is believed that from that time on, seeing that what Fyodor said, apart from his daughter, who died three years old, had no more children, he began to strive for the crown and for this purpose began to attract the people by virtue of his deeds. He surrounded the above-named Smolensk with a wall. He surrounded the city of Moscow with a stone wall instead of the former wooden one. He built several castles between Kazan and Astrakhan, as well as on the Tatar borders."
Boris convinced Muscovites with his deeds: I protect you, I built you a new fortress around the city so that you live safe from Tatar raids, what difference does it make to you whether I legally or illegally put on the Monomakh hat if I am useful to you? Indeed, quite recently, under Ivan the Terrible, the Tatars burned all of Moscow, except for the Kremlin! But, apparently, good deeds alone were not enough. After all, if the kingdom is ordered, then there will always be those who want to take it away. Demetrius, albeit illegitimate and underage, still remained a contender for the throne. Therefore, he should have been removed from Moscow.
Icon. Tsarevich Demetrius, who was killed in Uglich, is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church
Jacques Margeret was convinced that Godunov not only exiled the tsarevich and his mother to Uglich, but also ordered his murder in 1591: it was the pretext of those whom he considered his opponents. Finally, he also sent the Empress, the wife of the said late Ivan Vasilyevich, with her son Dimitri to Uglich, a city located 180 versts from Moscow. It is believed that the mother and some other nobles, clearly foreseeing the goal towards which the said Boris was striving, and knowing about the danger that the baby could be exposed to, because it had already become known that many of the nobles sent into exile were poisoned on the way, found a means to replace him and put another in his place.
After he put to death many more innocent nobles. And since he doubted no one more, except in the said prince, in order to finally get rid of, he sent to Uglich to destroy the said prince, who was replaced. This was done by the son of one man, sent by him as a secretary for his mother. The prince was seven or eight years old; the one who struck was killed on the spot, and the fake prince was buried very modestly.
Thus, the two most delicious versions of this story's set go back to a French adventurer who found himself in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. It was he who claimed that Boris Godunov tried to kill Dimitri, but, thanks to the foresight of his relatives, he escaped and fled to Poland.
In contrast to these assertions, which at that time were shared by many, the government of Boris Godunov argued that False Dmitry was a fugitive monk Grishka Otrepiev. However, the latter is also hard to believe. At the time of the campaign against Moscow in 1604, contemporaries describe False Dmitry as a young man who was barely over twenty. And the real Otrepiev was ten years older than him.
Poland and the Catholic Church stood behind Dimitri the Pretender. But even there, many did not believe in the authenticity of the "miraculously escaped" son Ivan the Terrible.
The man who called himself Tsarevich Dimitri explained his salvation to his Polish partners in this way: “Instead of me, another boy was killed in Uglich”. This version has survived in several versions. He wrote to Pope Clement VIII in the year of his campaign against Moscow: "Fleeing from the tyrant and escaping death, from which the Lord God delivered me by his wondrous providence as a child, I first lived in the Moscow state itself until a certain time between the monks."
And Marina Mnishek, whom he married, colored his adventure with romantic details. Already in the retelling of Marina herself, preserved in her diary, this version looks like this: “There was a certain doctor, a Vlach by birth, with the tsarevich. He, having learned about this betrayal, prevented it immediately in this way. I found a child who looked like a tsarevich, took him into his chambers and told him to always talk with the tsarevich and even sleep in the same bed. When that child fell asleep, the doctor, without telling anyone, transferred the prince to another bed. And so he did all this with them for a long time.
Marina Mnishek was planted with False Dmitry as a guarantee of his loyalty to the Commonwealth and the Pope
As a result, when the traitors set out to fulfill their plan and burst into the chambers, finding the prince's bedroom there, they strangled another child who was in bed, and took the body away. After which the news of the murder of the prince spread, and a great rebellion began. As soon as this became known, they immediately sent for the traitors in pursuit, several dozen of them were killed and the body was taken away.
Meanwhile, that Vlach, seeing how negligent Fyodor, the elder brother, was in his affairs, and the fact that he owned all the land, the equestrian. Boris decided that at least not now, however, someday this child expects death at the hands of a traitor. He took it secretly and went with him to the Arctic Sea itself and there he hid him, passing off as an ordinary child, without announcing anything to him until his death. Then, before he died, he advised the child not to open up to anyone until he reaches adulthood, and to become a black man. That on his advice the prince fulfilled and lived in monasteries."
The impostor and Marina. Love and politics merged together
Both stories - a short one for the pope, and a lengthy one - for Marina, differ in that there are no direct witnesses to the tsarevich's salvation. There was a Vlach doctor (that is, an Italian) and he died. Take my word for it: I am a real prince!
With the slow spread of information in 1604, when the "miraculously escaped" Dimitri told this legend, speaking in the professional language of intelligence officers, one could believe in it. At least in Ukraine and Poland - thousands of miles from Uglich, where the murder of the tsarevich took place.
But the archives preserved an investigative report on the case of the sudden death of Tsarevich Dimitri, commissioned by Boris Godunov, which is well known to historians. The investigation was conducted by Prince Vasily Shuisky. Based on the testimony of numerous witnesses, it is known that Dimitri did not die in the bedroom, but on the street - in the courtyard, where he played with a knife, throwing him into the ground. This was unanimously stated by the children who played with the Tsarevich, and by his mother and mother, Queen Maria Nagaya. According to them, death happened during the day, not at night. And not from strangulation, but from a knife. This means that an enterprising young man, posing as a tsarevich in 1604, was still False Dmitry. He heard the ringing, but did not know where he was. That is why he was so stingy with the details in the official letter to the Pope. The main thing here was not to blurt out too much. And you could lie to your beloved woman even from three boxes - alone with a girl, without witnesses, what you just say!
But if the fact that the son of Ivan the Terrible Dimitri really died in Uglich in 1591 is beyond doubt, then the official version of the investigation that Boris Godunov was not involved in it should be considered very shaky. First, the investigation was led by the great swindler Vasily Shuisky. At various times, he adhered to three mutually exclusive versions. Under Boris Godunov, he announced that the tsarevich himself fell down on the knife with his throat in a fit of epilepsy. When False Dmitry defeated, Shuisky declared that this was the true tsar - who was miraculously saved. And when, after the murder of False Dmitry as a result of a palace conspiracy in 1606, Shuisky himself became king, he pulled out the corpse of Dmitry from Uglich, transferred it to Moscow, achieved canonization and began to claim that the baby was killed by order of Boris Godunov, who was striving to become the ruler of Russia from a stable boy.
THROAT ON KNIFE. In other words, Vasily Shuisky constantly changed his point of view for political gain. Under any regime, he wanted to live well. But he lived really well only during his reign. We have no need to hesitate with the river of history - we will not drown in it. Therefore, let's analyze the reasons for the death of St. Demetrius of Uglich with an open mind.
Did you run into a knife by yourself? This happens? It is difficult to find a boy who did not amuse himself in childhood with this ancient folk fun. The author of these lines also repeatedly threw the knife into the ground. And in different companies. And in the city. And in the village. And in the pioneer camp, where the knife had to be hidden from the counselors. But I have never seen or heard that one of my peers himself ran into the edge during the game. For the first time I read about such a unique case in a school history textbook, which told about the amazing, truly unique death of Tsarevich Dimitri. Believing in his accidental suicide is as difficult as believing that the Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko shot himself with two bullets in the head. In addition, during a seizure of epilepsy, the patient's fingers are unclenched. The knife would have fallen out of the hands of the prince. He could stick into the ground. But not in the throat. So the boy was killed.
In order to establish who killed him, it is enough to use the question that the ancient Romans asked in such criminal cases: who benefits from it?
ROMAN ANSWER. Removing Demetrius was beneficial only to Boris Godunov. At the time of the unexpected death of the tsarevich, he is the tsar's equestrian and brother of the wife of tsar Fyodor Ioannovich. In reality, he is the ruler of Russia, who handled all affairs on behalf of the feeble-minded tsar, who most of all liked to ring the bells. Fyodor Ioannovich had no children. The only heir was his younger brother Dimitri. If Boris Godunov wanted the boy to inherit the throne, he would not take his eyes off him! But Boris made sure that the only heir to a great power was sent to the wilderness - to Uglich. There, far from the Muscovites, one could do anything with him, and then tell him that the little prince slashed himself with a knife on his neck. Chick - and there is no future king. Only Boriska Godunov sits in the cap of Monomakh on the throne of the Rurikovichs and bequeaths the kingdom to his son Fedenka.
Karamzin and Pushkin were convinced of the involvement of Boris Godunov in the murder of Tsarevich Dimitri. In Soviet times, Boris, on the contrary, was repeatedly tried to "wash" from the blood of the tsarevich. And the Stalinist history textbook, which was also studied by Ukrainian children, asserted that “to find out the cause of death of Tsarevich Dimitriy in a perfect way - having lost the inheritance of the unhappy vpad of chi in the knowledge of greedy people”.
However, this textbook, written by professors K. V. Bazilevich and S. V. Bakhrushin, was not such a primitive reading material for morons as our current school "reading rooms". He expounded almost all the versions and even today can be considered an example of clarity in the transmission of information: “The youngest brother of the tsar, Tsarevich Dimitriy, is alive with his mother in Uglich, having lost the 15th day of 1591 rubles. At the end of the day, nine-year-old Dimitriy gravitated with his peers with a knife "at the tichku" in the palace before the eyes of his mother and nanny. Behind these words, from Dimitryem, an epileptic seizure fell on the bottom, like a trim at the ruts. At the cry of the women, the mother of Tsarevich Maria Naga vibrated. Vona began to scream, that Dimitriya was sent to Godunov's people. The people, scho scared, killing the Moscow dyak Bityagovsky and the same kilka cholovik. From Moscow, the bully was sent with a comic on a chol with Prince Vasilyev Ivanovich Shuisky, yaka vznala, that the prince himself vypadkovo mortally wounded himself. Tsaritsa Marya Naga Bula was tonsured into a nun, relatives of the Uglich Bulys were sent for arbitrariness and revolt. The people were very sensitive to the fact that the tsarevich was driven in from the order of Boris Godunov."
FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN POLAND. The very same textbook did not dare to call Boris Godunov a murderer. After all, Boris, according to the Stalinist professors, became tsar, "pushing the policy of Ivan IV to change the sovereign harmony." And Ivan the Terrible under Stalin was considered a very positive character. Consequently, the successor of his business could not be a complete beast and "order" small children. But the whole logic of events says that it was Godunov who was the customer - there is no one else. No one else benefited from this murder. And the children themselves, even in an epileptic seizure, do not fall on the knife with their throats.
The fact that the man who called himself the "miraculously surviving Tsarevich" was really Demetrius, in Poland, too, was believed only by those who benefited from it. Princes Vishnevets, who had a long-standing border conflict with Russia in the Poltava region. Jerzy Mniszek is a ruined tycoon who, through an adventure with the return to the throne of the resurrected Demetrius, hoped to improve his affairs and marry his daughter to him. Zaporozhye Cossacks are a people ready to believe anyone who promises to justify robbery.
“The Cossacks wrote their history with a saber, and not on the pages of ancient books, but this pen left its bloody trail on the battlefields,” the French author Father Pearling stated in the book “Dimitri the Pretender”, published in Russian translation in 1911. - It was customary for the Cossacks to deliver thrones to all kinds of applicants. In Moldova and Wallachia, they periodically resorted to their help. For the formidable freemen of the Dnieper and Don, it was completely indifferent whether the real or imaginary rights belonged to the hero of the minute. For them, one thing was important - that they had good prey. Was it possible to compare the pitiful Danubian principalities with the boundless plains of the Russian land, full of fabulous riches?"
But respectable people did not believe False Demetrius from the very first word. The Polish Chancellor and Crown Hetman Jan Zamoyski made ironic remarks at the Diet: “Lord, have mercy, isn't this sovereign telling us the comedy of Plavt or Terentius? So, instead of him, they stabbed another child, killed the baby, without looking, just in order to kill? So why didn't they replace this sacrifice with some kind of goat or ram?"
Jan Zamoyski. The Chancellor of Poland laughed at the Impostor's inventions
Speaking about the dynastic crisis in Moscow, Zamoysky quite reasonably remarked: "If they refuse to recognize Boris Godunov, who is a usurper, as tsar, if they want to elevate a legitimate sovereign to the throne, let them turn to the true descendants of Prince Vladimir - to the Shuisky."
Zamoysky's opinion was also supported by the great Lithuanian hetman Sapega. The best generals of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Zolkiewski and Chodkevich were on the side of the skeptics. Bishop Baranovsky, who had great influence on the king, wrote to Sigismund III on March 6, 1604: “This prince of Moscow positively inspires suspicion in me. There are some data in his biography that obviously do not deserve faith. How did the mother fail to recognize the body of her own son?"
Illustrious warrior. Hetman Zolkevsky did not believe in the authenticity of the "Moscow Tsarevich"
Skeptics in Poland argued that it was not worth getting involved in the adventure of the suspicious Demetrius and violating the 1602 peace treaty with Moscow - Godunov would defeat the adventurer, and Poland would get a new war with Russia. "This hostile raid on Moscow, - declared hetman Zamoysky in the Seim," is just as destructive for the good of the Commonwealth as it is for our souls."
Polish Sejm. There was a heated debate about the truth of the "Tsarevich"
Many in Poland were going to support this point of view. But King Sigismund III unexpectedly sided with False Dimitri, believing, contrary to the facts, in a miraculous salvation. The king was a devout Catholic. And the mysterious prince agreed to accept Catholicism and extend the union with the Vatican to Russia. This alone was enough for the Polish king to believe in the truth of the pretender. The big intrigue has entered its final phase.
