Defense of Moscow. Tushino camp
The defense of the capital was led by Tsar Vasily himself. He had accumulated 30-35 thousand warriors. In order to keep the enemy out of the city, they took up positions on Khodynka and Presnya. But Shuisky did not dare to take on a general battle. He entered into negotiations with Hetman Rozhinsky (Ruzhinsky) and the Polish ambassadors Gonsevsky and Olesnitsky detained in Moscow. Vasily Shuisky offered serious concessions: he agreed to pay Rozhinsky's mercenaries, agreed to release the Poles detained in Russia after the overthrow of False Dmitry I to their homeland, and then sign a peace treaty with Poland. At the same time, the Polish king Sigismund had to recall his subjects from the camp of False Dmitry (although many of the Polish gentry acted at their own peril and risk and in Poland were considered rebels and criminals). The Polish ambassadors also agreed to do anything to get freedom and break out of Russia.
The tsarist army relaxed for two weeks of negotiations, people were sure that they were about to sign peace. And hetman Rozhinsky took advantage of this and on June 25, 1608, attacked the tsarist governors. The Polish cavalry crushed Shuisky's regiments on Khodynka and drove off, hoping to break into the city on their shoulders. But at Vagankov, the enemy cavalry was met with fire by the Moscow archers, and forced to turn back. The tsarist troops launched a counterattack. The Polish men at arms could not break away from the light Tatar cavalry, and they were driven to the river. Khimki. Then the Poles tried to attack again, but without success. Both sides suffered heavy losses, and Rozhinsky refused further attacks and began to strengthen the Tushino camp.
Instead of the royal chambers in the Kremlin, False Dmitry had to be content with hastily felled log mansions in Tushino, located a few miles northwest of the capital at the confluence of the small river Skhodnya into the Moskva River. Here his "Boyar Duma", headed by Mikhail Saltykov and Dmitry Trubetskoy, began to sit, "orders" worked, from here detachments of Tushins left to fight and plunder Russian cities and lands that had not submitted to the "tsarik". In Tushino, the wife of the first False Dmitry, Marina Mnishek, was brought to the impostor and the tsarist detachment. She surprisingly quickly got along with the Tushino "king" and publicly recognized him as her husband. And then she secretly married him in the Sapieha detachment (the wedding was performed by her Jesuit confessor). For this, False Dmitry II granted Yuri Mnishek 14 cities, including Chernigov, Bryansk and Smolensk, and promised 300 thousand gold rubles upon accession to the throne. The conjugal union raised the authority of the impostor. However, he did not have real power: the Tushino camp was ruled by the so-called “decimvirs” acting under the “tsar” - ten gentry - representatives of the Polish army. The actual leader of the Tushino camp, acting on behalf of the nominal "tsarik", was Hetman Roman Rozhinsky. The ataman of the Cossacks, Ivan Zarutsky, stood out.
Great power was acquired by the largest Lithuanian tycoon Jan Sapega, who led a powerful detachment of 7, 5 thousand people. Jan Sapega was recognized as the second hetman of False Dmitry II along with Rozhinsky. A division of spheres of influence was made between them. Hetman Rozhinsky remained in the Tushino camp and controlled the southern and western lands, and Hetman Sapega, together with Pan Lisovsky, became a camp near the Trinity-Sergius Monastery and began to spread the power of "Tsar Dmitry" in Zamoskovye, Pomorie and Novgorod land.
Finally, in Tushino, his designated patriarch appeared - Filaret (Romanov), the father of the future Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. As a Rostov bishop, he was captured by the Tushinites during the capture of Rostov in October 1608 and, in disgrace, on the woods and tied to a dissolute woman, was brought to Tushino. However, False Dmitry showered him, as his imaginary relative, with favors, having appointed him patriarch. Filaret, as patriarch, began to perform divine services and send district letters to the regions. Seeing such an example, representatives of the clergy flocked to Tushino.
The army of the impostor increased significantly, new Polish detachments, Cossacks, insurgent peasants and slaves approached. The number of Poles reached 20 thousand people, Cossacks - 30 thousand soldiers, there were about 18 thousand Tatars. In total, the army reached about 100 thousand people. However, the exact number did not even know the commanders themselves - some went on expeditions and robberies, others came.
On July 25, 1608, Tsar Vasily Shuisky signed an armistice agreement with the Polish king Sigismund III for 3 years and 11 months. He pledged to release to their homeland the Poles detained after the May 1606 coup in Moscow, including Marina Mnishek with her father. Poland pledged to withdraw from the Russian state the Poles who fought on the side of the impostor. Tsar Vasily hoped that thus the "Tushino thief" would lose the support of strong Polish troops. But the Polish side did not fulfill the terms of the armistice. Polish troops continued to fight on the side of the impostor.
The siege of Moscow by the Tushins continued for almost a year and a half. A strange relationship was established between the capital and the Tushino camp. Both tsars, Vasily and "Demetrius", did not prevent the boyars and servicemen from leaving for their enemy, in turn, trying with generous promises and gifts to lure boyars, nobles and clerks from the enemy camp. In search of ranks, awards, estates and estates, many prominent nobles moved from Moscow to the "capital" Tushino and back, earning the apt nickname "Tushino flights" among the people.
Vast territories were under the rule of the Tushin "tsar". In the northwest, Pskov and its suburbs, Velikiye Luki, Ivangorod, Koporye, Gdov, Oreshek swore allegiance to the impostor. The main base of False Dmitry II was still Severshchina and the south with Astrakhan. In the east, the power of the Tushino "thief" was recognized by Murom, Kasimov, Temnikov, Arzamas, Alatyr, Sviyazhsk, as well as many northeastern cities. In the central part, the impostor was supported by Suzdal, Uglich, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vladimir and many other cities. Of the major centers, only Smolensk, Veliky Novgorod, Pereslavl-Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan remained loyal to Tsar Vasily Shuisky. In Kostroma, Polish troops, forcing them to swear allegiance to False Dmitry, first ravaged the Epiphany-Anastasiin Monastery, and then occupied the Ipatiev Monastery. True, some cities swore allegiance to the impostor only in order to avoid raids by his bandit formations. And even the boyars, loyal to Tsar Shuisky, wrote to their estates so that their elders would recognize False Dmitry in order to avoid ruin. Thus, in fact, Russia at this time split into two warring state formations.
The situation in Moscow was difficult. In the fall of 1608, the flight from Moscow took on a rampant character - especially after at the end of September Sapega defeated a detachment moved against him at Rakhmanov and laid siege to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Discontent with Tsar Vasily was already ripening in Moscow itself - they say, he had rebuilt "all the land" against himself, brought matters to a siege. Starvation worsened the situation. This led to uprisings and several attempts to overthrow Shuisky: February 25, April 2 and May 5, 1610. But the residents of the capital knew that the former "Dmitry" was no longer alive, and saw what kind of gangs and "thieves" had come to them. Therefore, they were not going to give up. Tsar Vasily Shuisky, who was not popular either with the boyars or with the nobles, held on to power because his opponents among the Moscow nobility, fearing a large-scale peasant war, did not dare to coup d'etat. It seemed to them easier to negotiate with the Poles or Swedes.
Heroic Defense of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery
Tushintsy, trying to completely blockade Moscow, decided to cut off all roads to it and thereby stop the supply of food. They had enough strength for this. In early September, the army of Hetman Sapieha, numbering about 30 thousand infantry and cavalry, went north from the capital to cut the roads to Yaroslavl and Vladimir. Khmelevsky's troops from Kashira went south to capture Kolomna. East of Moscow, they were supposed to unite. Having defeated the army of the tsar's brother Ivan Shuisky, Sapega on September 23 approached the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. The residents of Tushin anticipated abundant booty, hoping to plunder the rich monastic treasury. However, they were wrong. When asked to surrender, the Russian soldiers proudly replied that they would not open the gates, even if they had to sit under siege and endure hardships for ten years. The famous 16-month defense of the monastery began, which lasted until January 1610, when it was withdrawn by the troops of Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky and Jacob Delagardie.
The Trinity-Sergius Monastery (like many other monasteries) was a powerful fortress and it was impossible to take it on the move. At first, the Poles had 17 guns, but all of them were field guns, almost useless for conducting a siege of a strong fortress. The monastery was surrounded by 12 towers connected by a fortress wall 1250 meters long, 8 to 14 meters high. 110 cannons were placed on the walls and towers, there were numerous throwing devices, boilers for boiling boiling water and tar, devices for overturning them on the enemy. The government of Vasily Shuisky managed in advance to send strelets and Cossack detachments to the monastery under the command of the governor, Prince Grigory Dolgorukov-Roshcha and the Moscow nobleman Alexei Golokhvastov. By the beginning of the siege, the garrison of the fortress numbered up to 2300 warriors and about 1000 peasants from neighboring villages, pilgrims, monks, servants and workers of the monastery.
The leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian army did not expect a stubborn defense of the monastery and were not ready for a long siege. First of all, the besiegers had to hastily build their own fortified camps and prepare for the siege, while trying to persuade the garrison to surrender. However, Sapega was in for a failure. The archimandrite of the monastery Joasaph refused to break the oath of allegiance to Tsar Basil. From October 1608, clashes began: the besieged made sorties, tried to cut off and destroy small groups of the enemy during construction work and harvesting forage; Poles fought with Russian spies, dug under the walls of the fortress.
On the night of November 1 (11), 1608, the first attempt was made to storm the monastery with a simultaneous attack from three sides. The impostor's troops set fire to one of the advanced Russian wooden fortifications and rushed to the attack. However, by strong fire from numerous Russian artillery, the enemy was stopped and put to flight. Then the Russian garrison made a strong sortie and destroyed several detachments of the Tushins who took refuge in the ditches. Thus, the first assault ended in complete failure with significant damage to the besiegers.
Getman Jan Pyotr Sapega
Sapieha's troops went over to the siege. The Russian garrison continued to make sorties. In December 1608 - January 1609, our warriors seized part of the enemy's food and fodder reserves with strong sorties, defeated and set fire to several outposts and fortifications of the besieging. However, the garrison also suffered serious losses. Discord arose in the garrison of the monastery between the archers and the monks. There were also garrison defectors to the enemy, including nobles and archers. In January 1609, the Tushins nearly took the fortress. During one of the sorties, the Tushins attacked from an ambush and cut off our detachment from the fortress. At the same time, part of the enemy troops broke into the open gates of the monastery. The situation was saved by the numerous artillery of the fortress, which upset the ranks of the enemy army with its fire. Thanks to the support of artillery, the artillery detachment that went out on the sortie was able to break through, having lost several dozen fighters. And the horsemen who burst into the Trinity-Sergius Monastery could not turn around in the narrow streets between the buildings, and fell under the blow of ordinary people, who rained down on the enemy a hail of stones and logs. The enemy was defeated and driven back.
Meanwhile, the situation worsened for the Polish-Cossack troops of Sapieha and Lisovsky. In winter it became more difficult to get food, scurvy began. A few reserves of gunpowder began to deplete. Sapieha's troops were not ready for the siege of a strong fortress, there were no corresponding supplies and equipment. Dissensions intensified in the besieging army, between Poles, mercenaries and Cossacks. As a result, Hetman Sapega decided on a second assault, planning to blow up the fortress gates with prepared powerful firecrackers.
To guarantee success, Sapega introduced the defector of the Pole Martyash into the monastery with the task of gaining confidence in the Russian governor, and at the decisive moment to disable part of the fortress artillery. Taking part in sorties and firing cannons at the Tushinites, Martyash really came into the confidence of Voivode Dolgoruky. But on the eve of the assault, scheduled for July 8, a defector arrived at the monastery, who reported the spy. Martyash was captured and under torture told everything he knew about the upcoming assault. As a result, although by that time the forces of the Russian garrison had decreased by more than three times since the beginning of the siege, Dolgorukov's soldiers withstood the attack. They were placed in places where enemy attacks were expected, this made it possible to repel the second assault. The Tushins were thrown back in a night battle.
However, the number of professional soldiers of the fortress garrison decreased to 200 people. Therefore, Sapega began to prepare the third assault, mobilizing all his forces. This time, the attack had to be carried out from all four directions in order to achieve a complete fragmentation of the weak forces of the garrison. On one of the directions, the attackers had to break through the fortifications and simply crush the small garrison of the monastery. The assault was scheduled for August 7, 1609.
The voivode Dolgoruky, who saw the enemy's preparations for him, armed all the peasants and monks, ordered all the gunpowder to be taken out on the walls, but there was practically no chance of a successful battle. Only a miracle could save the besieged, and it happened. The Tushintsy got entangled in the signals (gun shots), some detachments rushed to the assault after the first shot, others after the next, mixed. German mercenaries mistook the Russian Tushinites for a garrison and fought with them. Elsewhere, the Polish cavalry mistook the Tushinites for a sortie of the monastery's garrison and attacked them. The battle between the besiegers turned into a bloody massacre of each other. The number of people killed by each other was hundreds. The artillery of the fortress opened heavy fire at the sounds of the battle. As a result, the assault columns mixed, panicked and retreated. Thus, the inconsistency of the actions of the Tushins and the "friendly massacre" thwarted a decisive assault.
The failure of the assault and the mutual massacre, the general failure of the seizure of the rich monastery, which everyone hoped to plunder, finally split the Tushino camp, where mutual enmity had long smoldered. A split occurred in the army of Sapieha. Many atamans of the Tushinites withdrew their troops from the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, in the remaining detachments desertion became widespread. Following the Tushin people, foreign mercenaries left the Sapieha camp. The besieged got hope of victory.
Meanwhile, Sapega was no longer able to organize a new assault on the fortress. In the fall of 1609, the Russian troops of Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky inflicted a number of defeats on the Tushins and Poles, and began an offensive towards Moscow. Russian regiments liberated Pereslavl-Zalessky and Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. Detachments from all over Russia flocked to Skopin-Shuisky. Feeling a threat, Sapega decided to strike a preemptive strike on Skopin-Shuisky. Leaving part of his army to besiege the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, he moved to the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, but was defeated in the battle on the Karinskoe field. After that, the detachments of the archers of the governor Davyd Zherebtsov and Grigory Valuev were able to break into the monastery and restore the combat capability of its garrison. The garrison of the fortress again switched to active hostilities. Hetman Sapega, taking into account the approach of the main forces of Prince Skopin-Shuisky, lifted the siege. On January 12 (22), 1610, the Polish-Lithuanian detachments retreated from the monastery and fled to the impostor.
The ruin of the Russian land
Unable to achieve a complete blockade of Moscow, the Tushins tried to seize as much of the state as possible. Pskov fell under their rule, the Novgorod regions fell under their control, many "border", Tver and Smolensk cities. Many of them were taken by surprise. Tushino bandit formations have deeply wedged themselves into the country. In the occupied territory, the Tushins behaved like conquerors. Detachments of "driven people" - the foragers of Sapieha, Lisovsky, Rozhinsky and other Polish magnates scattered across the cities and villages. All of them ruined the country in the name of "Tsar Dmitry".
The cities that remained on the side of Tsar Vasily were brought into obedience by the detachments expelled from Tushino. So, Lisovsky attacked Rostov, massacring 2 thousand people. The situation was critical. The war went on almost throughout the territory of European Russia. Only certain districts and cities held out. Ryazan, where Lyapunov was in charge. Kolomna, where the voivode Prozorovsky defeated the regiments of Khmelevsky, Mlotsky and Bobovsky sent against him. Novgorod repulsed Kernozitsky's detachment and threw it back to Staraya Russa. Kazan was held by Sheremetev, Nizhny Novgorod - by Alyabyev and Repnin. With a garrison of several hundred riflemen and the city militia, they beat the enemy detachments four times, and Vyazemsky, who was in charge of the Tushinites, was caught and hanged. Voivode Mikhail Shein found himself in a difficult situation in Smolensk. Gangs invaded his district from beyond the Commonwealth, robbed villages, killed, drove away full of people, and the governor received a categorical order from the king not to take action against them, so as not to break the peace with Poland. Shein found a way out in that he began to arm the peasants themselves and form them into self-defense units for the "illegal" rebuff to the bandits.
The Polish gentry turned the tsarik as they wanted, and appointed themselves fantastic salaries. Of course, False Dmitry had no money, and the gentry did not want to wait for the seizure of Moscow's wealth. In Tushino itself, on February 1, 1609, a riot even broke out, as the Poles demanded payment of salaries. Since, with all the desire, the impostor could not find the necessary amount of money, the Poles divided the country between the groups for feeding - "bailiffs", and began to rob them. On behalf of the "royal" name, decrees were issued on the collection of salaries in certain cities. All this resulted in outright robberies, pogroms and violence. For example, in the voluntarily submitted Yaroslavl, "merchants' shops were robbed, the people were beaten, and without money they bought whatever they wanted." Women and girls were raped, and those who tried to protect them or their property were killed. It happened that the settlements were plundered several times, arriving with the same decrees from either Rozhinsky or Sapega.
In addition to "collecting salaries" for the troops, a campaign began to prepare for the winter and collect food and fodder. For the organization of the Tushino camp, workers were rounded up from the surrounding villages, huts were selected and taken away, throwing the owners out into the cold. They devastated the reserves of the peasants, dooming them to death by starvation. And they not only took, betrayed everything that they met to senseless destruction: they destroyed and burned houses, buildings, slaughtered cattle, scattered sowing grain, destroyed food that they could not take with them, etc. They kidnapped beautiful women and girls, forcing husbands and relatives to bring the ransom. The abducted were not always returned.
Some pans created thieves' nests in their villages and estates, terrorized the peasants, forced themselves to be fed and watered, created harems of girls. Many, taking into account the moral foundations of that time, were then hanged or drowned from shame. Nobody put the decrees of the "tsarik" into a penny. And numerous petitions from the nobles to False Dmitry survived, that the Poles nestled in the estates granted to them, rampaging over the peasants, and even over the relatives of the landowners. We also heard complaints from the clergy that "estates, villages and villages have been ruined and plundered by military people, and many have been burned." Bandit formations of Tushins seized monasteries, tortured monks, looked for treasures, mocked the nuns, forced to serve themselves, dance and sing "shameful songs", they killed for refusal.
It is clear that this ultimately led to massive resistance from the Russian people. The same cities that swore allegiance to False Dmitry already at the end of 1608 began to fall away from him. Punitive expeditions followed in response. Lisovsky was especially furious. The Poles burned down the Danilovsky Monastery and killed all the inhabitants. Lisovsky brutally pacified Yaroslavl, slaughtered Kineshma, and, as Petrey wrote, "reaching the cities of Galich and Kostroma, he burned them down and retreated with a huge and rich booty." Atrocities became widespread and commonplace: people were hanged, drowned, put on stakes, crucified, robbed of their clothes and driven naked into the cold, mothers and daughters were raped in front of children and fathers. But this only intensified the anger against the Tushin people. As soon as the punishers left, the uprisings resumed, and the "Lithuania" that came across, the governors and officials appointed by False Dmitry were massacred without any pity.
The districts that remained under the authority of the impostor were no better. Various bandit formations - Polish-Lithuanian detachments, lord's servants, "thieves' Cossacks", freemen of the outskirts, just robbers, also wanted to "take a walk". So, a certain Nalivaiko distinguished himself in the Vladimir region by impaling men and raping all women, so that "he beat to death with his own hands, noblemen and boyar children and all sorts of people, men and wives, 93 people." In the end, his actions prompted a response from the impostor. He was taken prisoner by the Vladimir governor Velyaminov and hanged by him on the orders of False Dmitry.
Thus, the Russian land was subjected to unprecedented devastation. Eyewitnesses wrote that "the dwellings of humans and the dwellings of wild animals changed then." In the villages, wolves and crows fed on corpses, and the surviving people fled through the forests, hiding in the thickets. In Russia came what contemporaries called "hard times".
