The Cossacks were the main force of the army of the impostor Grigory Otrepiev
The events of the initial period of the Russian Troubles (1600-1605) are usually considered as a struggle between three political forces: the Tsar of Moscow Russia Boris Godunov, the political allies of the impostor Grigory Otrepiev - governor Yuri Mnishek and other Polish gentry, as well as the Polish king Sigismund III. The tradition of such a hierarchy of the main characters at the beginning of the Troubles dates back to the official ideology of the Romanov dynasty that reigned in Russia since 1613. The kings of this dynasty, not too well-born and seizing the Russian throne due to external circumstances, did not want to include in the official chronicle of Russia the truth that was hard for them. The truth that the Romanov dynasty, for its accession to Moscow, is wholly and entirely indebted to military actions and the tyranny of the Cossack people.
The Romanovs thought the more prestigious version was that they received power from the hands of the national Zemsky Sobor, which allegedly crowned the struggle of all sensible people of Russia against the crimes of Tsar Boris Godunov and the tyranny of the Polish interventionists. The Cossacks, with their reputation as born adventurers and lovers of plundering their Great Russian sworn brothers on occasion, went through the department of the "sane" with great difficulty. Consequently, their active participation in the events of the Troubles should, in modern terms, be somewhat retouched.
Anti-Kazakh Sovereign of All Russia
The Russian poet Maximilian Voloshin called Emperor Peter I "the first Bolshevik on the throne." The characteristic, although figurative, is extremely accurate. If so, then the Tsar of Moscow Russia Boris Godunov can be poetically called "the first chick of Petrov's nest." Indeed, all major domestic political undertakings of Tsar Boris were heralds of Peter's more consistent, decisive and invariably bloody reforms.
Having completely taken over the reins of government of the Russian state in the year of the death of Ivan the Terrible (1584), Boris Godunov showed himself as an intelligent creator of the state, a talented builder and an experienced diplomat. At the direction of Boris Godunov, the White City was built in Moscow - a fortification of a scale unique for Europe. In 1602, the almost impregnable Smolensk fortress was completed in Smolensk, which later became the main outpost of Russia on the western borders. Under Tsar Boris, the first socio-economic description of the Moscow state was made, the first map was drawn up. Under him, the first regiments of the "foreign system" were established - the prototype of the future military brainchild of Peter I. Godunov brilliantly, with little blood, completed the long Russian-Swedish war (1590-1593). According to the Tyavzin Peace Treaty, Russia regained Ivangorod, Yam, Koporye - practically all the lands seized by Sweden following the unsuccessful Livonian War for Russia.
Boris Godunov, to the great misfortune for the whole country, was pursued by an evil fate: the absurdity, methodically spread by the slanderers boyars, about the responsibility of the Godunov family for the death of Tsarevich Dimitri, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible. This boy, suffering from a very severe form of epilepsy (the last seizure before his death lasted three days continuously) fell during another seizure of convulsions on a sharp narrow knife with which he was playing a "poke". Godunov very carefully investigated the case of the death of the tsarevich, and the main investigator, who worked for almost three months, was the main political opponent of the Godunovs - Rurikovich by origin, Prince Vasily Shuisky.
Tsar Boris perfectly prepared for the coming reign of his son Fyodor, who, if he had to rule in Russia, could probably anticipate the "bone-breaking" reforms of the extravagant Peter I. Smart, strong-willed, versatile educated, having excellent health Fyodor Godunov could become the best autocrat for the whole history of Russia-Russia. Could. But he didn't …
Fyodor Godunov was brutally murdered on June 11, 1605 by order of a criminal clique of Russian boyars headed by Vasily Golitsyn, Bogdan Belsky and Peter Basmanov. The renegades tried to buy with the innocent blood of the "enlightened prince" a place in the retinue of the rapist and murderer, the rootless "Lyash thief" Grigory Otrepiev. Surprisingly, only hired German officers remained completely loyal to Tsar Fyodor Godunov, who, unlike the Muscovites, did not lose their male honor and human appearance.
What was the root cause of the rapid extinction of the Godunov dynasty - a dynasty that gave such good hopes and collapsed so unkindly? This reason, as it seems, was the consistent anti-Kazak policy of Tsar Boris Godunov, who tried to diminish the military might of the Cossack people as much as possible and seize the Cossack lands. In his anti-Nazi policy, as in many other initiatives, Boris Godunov was the predecessor of Peter I, who, as you know, drowned the Zaporozhye Sich in blood and threw the state military tax on the Don Army. In the events of the Troubles, in the words of Leo Tolstoy, the Cossacks "became a fuse in the Russian barrel of gunpowder."
The oldest Slavic people of Eurasia
The official history of the Russian Empire tried to confirm in public opinion the version that the Cossacks are, they say, not an original people, but the descendants of Russian peasants who fled from serfdom and state tax on the Dnieper and Don. True, this version did not explain in any way why these "peasants" in the fertile lands of the south grabbed not for their usual plows and harrows, but for muskets and sabers. It was also unclear how the “peasants” could have qualified for approval by the Military Circles of the law on the unconditional punishment of death for any Cossack who dared to plow the land and grow grain.
Cossacks on guard duty. Epifan. XVII century. Artist - O. Fedorov
The deliberate mythological character of the semi-official versions of the origin of the Cossack people was already clear to the court historiographer of the House of Romanov, Nikolai Karamzin. “Where the Cossacks came from,” wrote Karamzin, “it is not known exactly, but it is, in any case, older than Batu's invasion in 1223. These knights lived in communities, not recognizing the power of either the Poles, or the Russians, or the Tatars over themselves."
If you believe Karamzin, and there is no reason to doubt the knowledge of the largest Russian historian, it turns out that the Cossacks are the most ancient Slavic people of the southeast of Russia. This conclusion is obvious, if only because the beginning of the ethnic folding of modern Russians and Ukrainians is attributed by all ethnologists to the time "after the Batu invasion", that is, after the defeat of Kievan Rus by the Mongol troops and the beginning of the independent existence of North-Eastern Vladimir Rus. And if the Cossacks, according to the authoritative opinion of Karamzin, are “older than Batu's invasion,” then how can they be the descendants of Russian peasants enslaved only at the end of the 16th century?
At the end of the reign of Ivan the Terrible and much later the Cossacks, Zaporozhye and Don, were essentially a single ethnosociety, and the Zaporozhye Sich on the Dnieper was its territorial, cultural and political center. It is enough to look at the excellent, ancient writing of the Parsuns (portraits) of the Don atamans of the 16th-17th centuries, exhibited in the Starocherkassk Museum of the History of the Cossacks, to understand that in terms of the anthropological type of faces, hairstyles and clothes, the Donets did not differ from the Cossacks even in the middle of the 18th century.
Tsar Ivan the Terrible viewed the Cossack Army State as a dangerous and unpredictable neighbor, with whom it is easier to be friends than to fight. The Zaporozhye Sich was far from Russia, the tsarist emissaries rarely reached it, but the Don Cossacks were practically close to Moscow - in the 16th century, even north of modern Voronezh, the Don Cossacks of the Chiga family lived. The need to hide behind the Cossacks from the raids of the Crimean and Volga Tatars, and even more the fear of Muscovy itself to become the object of predatory military raids by the Cossacks gave rise to the procedure of annual payments to the Cossacks of "sovereign leaves", that is, in fact, a veiled tribute.
This tribute of Muscovite Rus to the Great Don Army was quite large for that time and was paid mainly with gunpowder, lead and grain bread. The size of grain deliveries to the Don in the first half of the 17th century reached 200 tons, having increased to 500 tons by the end of this century. In addition, the Donets annually received from the Treasury of Muscovy: 5 thousand rubles (a very large amount for that time), 430 halves of German Hamburg cloth (at a price of 5 rubles 50 kopecks for a half), 230 poods of rifle and cannon powder (1 pood is equal to 16 kilograms), 115 pounds of lead, 10 pounds of iron forgings for sabers, 6.5 thousand quarters (1 quarter is equal to 210 liters) rye flour, 500 buckets of wine (1 bucket - 18 liters). As you can see, the payment of Muscovy to the Don people for their peace of mind was very generous in the era of Ivan the Terrible.
A different kind of "sovereign's salary" was under Grozny the procedure for receiving the Don Winter village in Moscow. Usually, once a year, in winter, the Don Cossacks sent their embassy to Moscow, called Zimovaya stanitsa, for "sovereign leave". This embassy included from 120 to 150 tribal Cossacks belonging to the noble Don foreman. Since the trip to Moscow was associated with various privileges and benefits for its participants, every Cossack strove to get into the Winter village.
Upon arrival in Moscow, the Cossacks first of all went to the Ambassadorial Prikaz - the then Ministry of Foreign Affairs: here the date of the audience with the Great Sovereign was agreed. On the appointed day, in the Small Throne Room, the Tsar himself received the Winter Cossack on the rank of a foreign embassy. Then followed a sumptuous dinner with the participation of the tsar, at which each participant in the Winter village received weapons, money, silk taffeta, German cloth, and sometimes sables as gifts. The chieftain of the village was personally presented with a silver ladle inlaid with gems or a handcrafted pishchal of rare work. The Cossacks lived in Moscow on the "sovereign's salary" almost all winter and before spring, having received "sovereign leave" for the Army and gifts for the road, they went home.
And there is no way to sell reserved goods to the Cossacks
With the strengthening of the state power of Muscovite Russia, these relations of veiled tributaries began to irritate the Muscovites more and more. With the accession of Boris Godunov in 1598 to the throne of the "autocrat of All Russia", it was decided to completely revise the Russian policy towards the Cossack people.
The first anti-Kazak law, approved by Boris Godunov, eliminated the right of duty-free trade for the Cossacks on Russian territory. This right was given to the Cossacks "for eternity" by a special decree of Ivan the Terrible - as a gift for the military diligence of the Cossacks in the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, which ultimately ensured the success of these military expeditions of Russia.
In the future, Tsar Boris constantly strengthened the anti-Kazak trade rules, as well as the responsibility for their failure to comply: the Russian people were forbidden to sell gunpowder, lead to the Cossacks, and since 1601 - bread. As the well-known Russian historian S. M. Soloviev, in 1601 Tsar Boris "ordered to ask the children of the boyar Ryazanians: who sent wine, potion, sulfur, saltpeter and lead to the atamans and Cossacks to the Don atamans and Cossacks, squeaks, shells and helmets and all sorts of supplies, reserved goods?"
Boris Godunov. State Historical Museum in Moscow.
The investigation found out that the clan of the Ryazan nobles Lyapunov was engaged in this. The eldest of the Lyapunovs, Zakhar, was "mercilessly whipped." Subsequently, Tsar Boris probably very much regretted this execution, for the Lyapunov brothers during the Time of Troubles became consistent and implacable enemies of the Godunov dynasty.
In 1602, Russian legislation began to require from the district governors of the regions bordering the Don Cossack, the unconditional arrest of all Cossacks who found themselves on the territory of Muscovy, followed by imprisonment in prison to conduct a search for their origin. At the same time, all and all forms of "state leave" for the Don Cossacks were abolished, which, of course, practically eliminated the procedure for accepting the Winter villages of the Don Host in Moscow.
All these measures of Boris Godunov's administration in a new way highlighted in the minds of the Cossacks a large-scale construction campaign, begun back in 1585, to build strongholds and even Muscovite cities on the Cossack lands. In 1585, the Russian fortress Voronezh was built for the first time on the land of the Cossack Prisud. In 1586 Livny and Samara were built, then Tsaritsyn (1589) and Saratov (1590). With the construction of Belgorod on the Donets in 1596, and in 1600 the Tsarev-Borisov fortress, Muscovy Rus actually completed the strategic coverage of the Don Cossack lands with a chain of fortified forts and fortresses.
At the beginning of this construction campaign, the Don people welcomed the arrival of the Muscovites on the Cossack lands. However, after Boris Godunov introduced discriminatory trade rules and police measures against the Cossacks, the entire Don Army saw in the construction initiatives of Moscow Rus an attempt to decisively attack the primordial liberties of the Cossacks. And on the Don, hitherto quiet for the Muscovites, the shafts of Cossack anger leaped high.
Damned defrocked and lyashsky thief
The history of the monstrous adventure of the monk (monk) Grishka Otrepiev begins in the middle of 1600. At the very beginning of this year, Tsar Boris Godunov fell seriously ill. By the fall, the tsar's health became critical: he could not receive foreign ambassadors or even walk on his own. In Moscow, talk began about the already predetermined death of the autocrat.
During this period, the numerous, although not too well-born, old Moscow clan of the Romanov-Zakharyins began almost openly to prepare a coup d'etat. The initiator of the attempt on "the sovereign's word and deed" was the famous Moscow dandy Fyodor Nikitich Romanov, who later became Philaret, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. From the numerous Romanov estates, fighting slaves and dependent nobles began to arrive in Moscow. One of them was Yuri Bogdanovich Otrepiev - the future False Dmitry I, he was also defrocked and the "Lyash thief" Grishka.
Withered from illness, Boris Godunov nevertheless managed to prove that an attempt to remove the skin from a lion that has not yet died is always punishable. On the night of October 26, 1600, the archers surrounded the Romanovs' estate on Varvarka and began an assault. Several dozen supporters of the Romanovs were killed during the assault, and the main instigators of the coup were brought to justice.
The Boyar Duma court, in view of the evidence of the evidence, found the Romanovs guilty of an attempt on the life of the tsar and high treason. The punishment for such a crime could only be the death penalty. Boris Godunov hesitated for a long time, but in the end, apparently due to his illness, he decided to spare the traitors. With this, he, hitherto not mistaken in major issues of domestic policy, signed the death warrant of his own dynasty. The subtle intriguer and ambitious Fyodor Romanov was forcibly tonsured into a monk, and his relatives - brothers Alexander, Mikhail, Vasily, Ivan, as well as the sons-in-law of the princes Cherkassky and Sitsky were sent into exile.
All these events did not affect Grishka Otrepiev, who, due to his ignorance, could count not on forgiveness, but only on the executioner's block. Otrepiev, who miraculously escaped from the Romanov estate, swiftly took monastic dignity - the only method of the Middle Ages that allowed him to escape from the block. His further wanderings are well known: Otrepiev fled from the Chudov Monastery to Galich, then to Murom, and then to the Rzeczpospolita. Here, in the estate of the richest magnates Vishnevetskys, Otrepiev talentedly imitated a serious illness and on the "death core" confessed that he was the very same Tsarevich Dimitri, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, who miraculously escaped the black intrigues of Tsar Boris.
The Poles, cunning in political intrigues, took the rogue's words with irony, and Grishka Otrepiev for a long time wandered aimlessly around Poland, surrounded by traitors like him - the Khripunov brothers. The Poles, apparently, did not consider Otrepiev's political potential seriously, and they did not want to quarrel with the powerful Godunov for the sake of an adventurer who had no real support. It got to the point that the Polish prince Adam Vishnevetsky finally decided to arrest the impostor and hand him over to Tsar Boris: only the personal intervention of King Sigismund III saved the monk Grishka at the last moment.
The humiliated position of Otrepiev in crown Poland changed dramatically only after he pulled the Cossack trump card from the greasy sleeve of his robe. Having familiarized himself with the customs and moods of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the renegade realized that he could not cook porridge with the Polish gentry on "good life", and therefore made his main political stake on the Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks, who were extremely angry with Tsar Boris.
Mobilization of the Cossack horde
In the spring of 1603 Grishka Otrepiev, unexpectedly for the Poles, disappeared from the territory of crown Poland. And he appeared in the Zaporizhzhya Sich in the company of the Cossack foreman Gerasim Evangelik. A few incendiary speeches - and the Zaporozhye Sich, always ready for war and plunder, began to boil. The Cossacks, known for their organizational talent, instantly changed the humiliated groans of the monk Gregory to the uncontested order "Spolokh" - a symbol of the general Cossack mobilization. The Sich began to vigorously purchase weapons, to recruit hunters from the Ukrainian peasants into the Cossack squads. By the end of the year, the scale of the formation of the rebel army of False Dmitry I frightened King Sigismund himself: on December 12, 1603, by a special decree, the king prohibited the sale of weapons to the Cossacks. The Cossacks did not pay the slightest attention to the formidable manifesto.
"Dmitry the Pretender at Vishnevetsky." Painting by Nikolai Nevrev, 1876
Since the interaction of Zaporozhye and the Don Army was carried out in that era on an ongoing basis, with the mediation of the Dinskoy (Donskoy) Zaporozhye kuren, very soon the Don people joined the military preparations of False Dmitry I. Their participation in the upcoming military expedition was not only a "call of the heart to plunder", as among the Cossacks, but, perhaps, a vital measure. Having stopped the supply of gunpowder and lead to the Don, as well as forbidding the sale of these goods to the Cossacks, Boris Godunov left the Don Cossacks without any "weapon potion" in the event of a war with the Tatars, Nogais and Turks. Under no circumstances could the Don people come to terms with such a situation.
The genius of Pushkin perfectly conveyed the atmosphere of a sincere readiness of the Don people to go to the end in the war with the hated Boris Godunov. In the drama of the same name, the Cossack emissary at Otrepiev's headquarters, the ataman Korel to the impostor's question: "Who are you?" - answers:
Cossack, I was sent to you from the Don
From free troops, from brave chieftains, From horseback and grassroots Cossacks …
And he immediately receives political guarantees of comprehensive consideration of the vital interests of the Don Cossack people:
We thank our Don army.
We know that now the Cossacks
Unjustly oppressed, persecuted;
But if God helps us to enter
On the throne of the fathers, then we are in the old days
Welcome to our faithful free Don.
It is clear that, having heard such or similar words from False Dmitry, Ataman Andrei Korela immediately recognized the renegade as a "true sovereign." As the famous historian of the Cossacks V. D. Sukhorukov, ataman Korel "in the name of all his brothers beat the impostor with his forehead as a lawful sovereign, presented gifts and encouraged all the Cossacks in loyalty and devotion."
Having received the corresponding report from Korela, the Don Troops Circle rejoiced and through the accidentally captured boyar Semyon Godunov, who was then released to Russia, ordered the following words to be conveyed to the Russian autocrat: “Our persecutor, Boris! Soon we will be before you, in Moscow, with Tsarevich Dimitri."
Boris Godunov was very excited about this message. He immediately sent his close boyar Pyotr Khrushchev to the Don with an extract of the decision of the Boyar Duma on the death of the real Tsarevich Dmitry, as well as with a proposal to immediately restore the "sovereign leave" to the Don. Alas, this sensible proposal was too late. The already mobilized Don, together with the Zaporozhye Sich, was ready for war and only wanted war. The Donets, without reading the Tsar's extract, immediately tore it up, and the poor beaten Khrushchev, being shackled and seated backwards on a horse, was sent to False Dmitry. Seeing the impostor, Petrushka Khrushchev burst into tears and immediately recognized him as "the sovereign son of Demetrius."
However, the miserable recognition of Khrushchev and other Moscow lackeys was no longer necessary for Otrepiev's uncutting: his well-armed rebel army crossed the Dnieper and approached Moravsk, the first Russian fortress on the way to Moscow. An inexorable Cossack horde was advancing on Russia, which the Godunov dynasty, undermined by the betrayal of the Moscow boyars, unfortunately, could not stop it.
