Perrie M. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689
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inhabitants staged an uprising against Shuiskii, and the city governor, Prince I.
D. Khvorostinin, transferred his loyalty to Dmitrii. Pro-Shuiskii troops under
the command of F. I. Sheremetev took up camp on the island of Balchik, a few
miles upstream from Astrakhan’, where they remained for more than a year.
A number of new pretenders, apparently modelling themselves on Tsarevich
Peter, appeared in Astrakhan’ at around this time: Tsarevich Ivan Augustus,
who claimed to be a son of Ivan the Terrible; Osinovik, a son of Tsarevich
Ivan Ivanovich; and Lavr (or Lavrentii), another supposed son of Tsar Fedor
Ivanovich.
22
None of these pretenders had a real historical prototype. Ivan
Augustus’s relationship with Prince Khvorostinin, the governor of Astrakhan’,
appears to have been similar to that of TsarevichPeterwith Prince Shakhovskoi
at Putivl’; like Peter, Ivan Augustus acted in the name of Tsar Dmitrii, and his
sphere of influence extended up the Volga at least as far as Tsaritsyn.
23
Bolotnikov’s forces had been united with those of Tsarevich Peter at Tula
in May 1607;on30 June, Tsar Vasilii arrived outside the gates of the town at the
head of a large army, and laid siege to it. By the autumn of 1607 the defenders
of the town found themselves in a desperate situation. Shuiskii had built a dam
on the River Upa downstream from Tula, which caused the town to flood. All
communications were cut off, and the inhabitants suffered terrible hardship
and hunger. Eventually Tsarevich Peter and Bolotnikov opened negotiations
with Shuiskii, and on 10 October Tula surrendered. Tsarevich Peter was tor-
tured and interrogated before being executed in Moscow in January 1608.In
February 1611 Bolotnikov was exiled to Kargopol’, where he was imprisoned
for a time, and then blinded and drowned. Prince Shakhovskoi was banished
to a monastery, but soon escaped and subsequently joined the supporters of
the Second False Dmitrii.
The Second False Dmitrii
The failure of Tsar Dmitrii to put in an appearance had greatly demoralised
Bolotnikov’s forces, but a second False Dmitrii had in fact surfaced in Russia
well before the fall of Tula. This new pretender revealed himself in the town
of Starodub, in the Seversk region, in June 1607.
By the autumn of 1606 Michael Molchanov had abandoned his attempt to
adopt the identity of Tsar Dmitrii and had left Sambor.
24
The rebel camp,
22 PSRL, vol. xiv (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), p. 89,para.195.
23 Perrie, Pretenders,pp.131–4, 144–9.
24 I.O.Tiumentsev,SmutavRossiiv nachaleXVIIstoletiia: dvizhenieLzhedmitriiaII(Volgograd:
Volgogradskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1999), p. 72.
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however, was still in urgent need of a new Dmitrii. There is some evidence
that at the end of December 1606 Tsarevich Peter travelled from Putivl’ to
Lithuania, supposedly in search of his ‘uncle’ Dmitrii, and that this journey
may have been linked to the first stages of the setting up of a new pretender-
tsar: the earliest traces of the Second False Dmitrii can be found in the winter
of 1606–7 in the Belorussian lands of Poland-Lithuania which were visited by
Tsarevich Peter at about the same time.
25
There is still no agreement about the identity of the Second False Dmitrii.
Many older historians depicted him as a puppet of the Polish government; but
some recent scholars have argued that his sponsors were Russians involved in
the Bolotnikov revolt. They give greatest credence to sources which suggest
that he was a poor schoolteacher from Lithuanian Belorussia who was coerced
into playing the role of Dmitrii by some minor Polish noblemen who were in
contact with Tsarevich Peter and other Russian insurgents based in Putivl’.
26
There is evidence to indicate, however, that the Second False Dmitrii may have
initiated the intrigue himself (there were by now several precedents for him
to follow), or at least participated in it willingly.
27
Certainly the new pretender
acquired Russian supporters as soon as he crossed the border from Lithuania,
and they helped to stage the revelation of his ‘true’ royal identity at Starodub.
Therehe was also ‘recognised’ by IvanMartynovich Zarutskii, a cossack leader
from the Ukraine, who had been sent by Bolotnikov to search for Tsar Dmitrii.
Zarutskiiwassubsequentlyto becomeoneofthe mostimportantcommanders
in the pretender’s service.
At Starodub Dmitrii and his accomplices began to recruit troops to go to
the assistance of Bolotnikov and Tsarevich Peter in besieged Tula. Most of
the towns in the Seversk region soon acknowledged the new Tsar Dmitrii
and provided him with servicemen, but much of his small army comprised
mercenaries from Poland-Lithuania. In September 1607 Dmitrii left Starodub,
but he had advanced no further than Belev when he learned that Tula had
fallen on 10 October. The pretender retreated to Karachev, and then to Orel,
where he set up camp. During the winter of 1607–8 he recruited new forces.
Some of these were the remnants of Bolotnikov’s army from Tula; cossack
reinforcements came from the Don, Volga, Terek and Dnieper; and new bands
of mercenaries from Poland-Lithuania also joined him.
28
25 Skrynnikov, Smuta v Rossii,pp.191–3; Tiumentsev, Smuta v Rossii,pp.72–9; Dunning,
Russia’s First Civil War,pp.372–3.
26 Skrynnikov, Smuta v Rossii,pp.190–202; Tiumentsev, Smuta v Rossii,pp.74–9; Dunning,
Russia’s First Civil War,pp.368–72.
27 Perrie, Pretenders,p.165.
28 Tiumentsev, Smuta v Rossii,pp.112–16.
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While encamped at Orel, Dmitrii made a bid for the support of the slaves of
Shuiskii’s supporters, promising them their masters’ lands, wives and daugh-
ters if they transferred their allegiance to him. There has been considerable
scholarly controversy about the pretender’s policy towards peasants and slaves
at this time. It seems most probable that, like Bolotnikov, the Second False
Dmitrii was hoping to attract military bondsmen into his service by offering
them a share of the property confiscated from their ‘traitor’ lords. Certainly
the pretender did not pursue an ‘anti-feudal’ policy: he granted lands and peas-
ants to the Russian servicemen and foreign mercenaries who supported him.
Shuiskii responded with measures of his own in February and March 1608.
These have also been the subject of conflicting interpretations, but they seem
to have been designed to attract both servicemen and slaves to his side.
29
In March 1608 the Polish commander Prince Roman R
´
o
ˇ
zy
´
nski arrived in
Orel with a large detachment of cavalry, and ousted the hetman Mikol
aj
Miechowicki as commander-in-chief of Dmitrii’s army. Perhaps as a result
of R
´
o
ˇ
zy
´
nski’s influence, the pretender began to tone down the more socially
divisive elements of his propaganda. From the spring of 1608 onwards, he tried
to bid for the support of noble servicemen rather than that of military slaves.
In a proclamation to Smolensk in April 1608, Dmitrii condemned the reign of
terror which Tsarevich Peter had introduced at Putivl’ and Tula, and dissoci-
ated himself from the various cossack ‘tsareviches’ who had appeared on the
Volga and on the steppe.
30
He had already executed one of these – ‘Tsarevich
Fedor Fedorovich’ – at the end of 1607; he later hanged the Astrakhan’ pre-
tenders Ivan Augustus and Lavrentii at Tushino, probably in the summer of
1608. What happened to the other seven pretenders who were named in his
proclamation is unknown.
At the end of April 1608 Dmitrii marched from Orel towards Bolkhov,
where Tsar Vasilii’s army, commanded by his brother, Prince Dmitrii Shuiskii,
was encamped. R
´
o
ˇ
zy
´
nski inflicted a major defeat on Shuiskii, and occupied
Bolkhov, before advancing on the capital via Kozel’sk, Kaluga, Borisov and
Mozhaisk. The pretender’s troops set up camp in the village of Tushino, just
outside Moscow. On 25 June they defeated Shuiskii again at Khodynka, but
were unable to take the capital. Dmitrii entrenched himself at Tushino, where
he was to remain until the end of the following year.
Although the Polish troops who had joined the pretender’s camp had done
so without the official sanction of King Sigismund, Tsar Vasilii hoped to
29 Perrie, Pretenders,pp.171–3; Tiumentsev, Smuta v Rossii,pp.116–26; Dunning, Russia’s
First Civil War,pp.391–2.
30 Vosstanie I. Bolotnikova,pp.229–31.
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persuade the king to put pressure on his fellow countrymen to leave Russia.
In a treaty signed in July 1608 Shuiskii agreed to release the Mniszechs and
other Poles imprisoned in Russia; in return, Sigismund promised that all
Polish troops at Tushino would be withdrawn. In practice, after their release
the Mniszechs ended up at Tushino, where Marina was ‘reunited’ with her
‘husband’; and not only did the Polish soldiers fail to leave Tushino, but others
soon joined them. The most notable of the new arrivals was Jan-Piotr Sapieha,
a nephew of the Lithuanian chancellor Leo Sapieha.
The initial successes of the pretender’s troops undermined support for
Tsar Vasilii in Moscow, and from the autumn of 1608 many boyars and
noblemen transferred their allegiance to Tushino. Subsequently some of
these men switched sides more than once (they were described by a con-
temporary as ‘migratory birds’),
31
but Dmitrii managed to acquire a boyar
duma and sovereign’s court which included some eminent Muscovite aris-
tocrats, including the Princes D. T. and Iu. N. Trubetskoi, and the boyar
M. G. Saltykov. In October 1608 Metropolitan Filaret of Rostov (the for-
mer Fedor Nikitich Romanov) was brought to Tushino as a prisoner, and
was appointed patriarch. Various kinsmen of the Romanovs – Prince A. Iu.
Sitskii, Prince R. F. Troekurov and I. I. Godunov – became Tushino
boyars.
32
At the end of September 1608 Sapieha and his men left Tushino to lay
siege to the great Trinity-Sergius monastery, north-east of the capital. The
siege was to last until January 1610, and the heroic resistance of the defenders
constituted one of the most celebrated episodes of the Time of Troubles. The
rest of Dmitrii’s army remained at Tushino. Their blockade of Moscow was
not complete, since Riazan’, to the south-east, remained loyal to Shuiskii, and
supplies were able to enter the capital by the Riazan’ road, which led through
Kolomna.
In the autumn of 1608 Dmitrii’s commanders concentrated on securing the
allegiance of the towns which lay to the north and east of Moscow. Most of
these towns recognised the pretender as a result of the use or threat of force
by raiding parties from Tushino or from Sapieha’s camp outside the Trinity
monastery. Recent detailed research indicates that, contrary to the claims of
some older historians, there is little evidence that popular uprisings in favour
of Dmitrii took place in these towns. Pskov is a possible exception, but there
the social conflicts pre-dated the formation of the Tushino camp and were in
31 A. Palitsyn, Skazanie Avraamiia Palitsyna (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1955), p. 117.
32 Tiumentsev, Smuta v Rossii,pp.298–305, 543–5.
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maureen perrie
any case less polarised than the chronicle picture of ‘little people’ versus ‘big
people’ suggests.
33
By the end of 1608, the only major cities to remain loyal to Shuiskii were
Novgorod in the north-west and Smolensk in the west. On the Volga, Nizhnii
Novgorod and Kazan’ were still held by Shuiskii’s commanders, but overall
Tsar Vasilii’s position seemed fairly hopeless. At the beginning of 1609 the
Kolomna road was briefly blocked, impeding the supply of food to the capital
from the Riazan’ region. As food prices increased in Moscow, so did discontent
with Shuiskii. In February some of his courtiers made an attempt to overthrow
him, but the plot was thwarted, mainly as a result of Patriarch Germogen’s
stout defence of the tsar. The boyar I. F. Kriuk-Kolychev organised another
conspiracy on Palm Sunday, but this was discovered and the ringleader was
executed.
In many parts of northern Russia, support for the pretenderturned out to be
short-lived. In the north-west, Pskov continued to acknowledge ‘Tsar Dmitrii’,
but the towns of the north-east began to revolt against him from the beginning
of 1609 onwards. Kostroma rebelled against the Tushinites as early as Decem-
ber 1608, but there, and in Galich, the popular revolt was soon suppressed by
Polish troops. The situation in many places was confused, with some towns
changing sides more than once. The uprisings against the Tushinites were
fuelled by the rapacity of the Poles and the cossacks, who imposed heavy
taxes and other exactions on the townspeople, and sometimes resorted to bla-
tant looting. Government propaganda also played a part. Shuiskii denounced
Dmitrii as an impostor, and claimed that the Catholic Poles presented a threat
to Orthodoxy; these assertions helped to gain him support. In most districts
the anti-Tushino movement had a broad social base, comprising servicemen
as well as townspeople and peasants.
34
At the beginning of 1609 Shuiskii acquired additional forces from abroad. In
August1608 TsarVasilii had sent his nephew,PrinceMichaelSkopin-Shuiskii, to
Novgorod to negotiate with Karl IX for Swedish military assistance against the
Poles. In February 1609 the Swedish commander Jacob Pontus de la Gardie
arrived in Novgorod and concluded an agreement with Skopin-Shuiskii. In
early May a combined Russian and Swedish army defeated troops that had
been sent from Tushino against Novgorod. On 10 May Skopin-Shuiskii left
Novgorod to march on Moscow and lift the siege of the capital. News of his
advance encouraged those northern towns which still recognised Dmitrii to
33 Pskovskie letopisi, ed. A. N. Nasonov, vol. ii (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1955), p. 268; cf. Tiument-
sev, Smuta v Rossii,pp.198–202, 219–55.
34 Tiumentsev, Smuta v Rossii,p.419.
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transfer their allegiance toTsar Vasilii; butPskov held out,inspite of an attempt
by Prince Michael’s forces to capture the town on 18 May. In July 1609 Skopin
occupied Tver’, and then moved east to link up with the troops sent by the
north-eastern towns. At Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda they awaited the arrival of
the boyar Fedor Sheremetev, who had been liberating the Volga towns to the
south-east. Sheremetev had left his camp outside Astrakhan’ in the autumn of
1607, and had gradually moved up the Volga. He reached Nizhnii Novgorod
in the spring of 1609, and joined Skopin-Shuiskii at Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda
towards the end of that year.
In the summer of 1609 King Sigismund, angered by Swedish support for
Shuiskii, decided to intervene directlyin the Russiancivil war in order to obtain
the Muscovite throne either for himself or for his son Wl
adyslaw. In September
he laid siege to Smolensk. The Poles who were encamped at Tushino did not
welcome Sigismund’s action, and sent envoys to Smolensk to try to dissuade
the king from his undertaking. But Sigismund in his turn made a bid for the
support of the Tushinites. A delegation from Smolensk arrived at Tushino in
December 1609 to conduct negotiations with R
´
o
ˇ
zy
´
nski. The pretender was
excluded from these talks. Fearing treachery, and aware that Skopin-Shuiskii’s
army was now close to Moscow, Dmitrii fled to Kaluga.
The pretender’s flight demoralised and divided the Tushino encampment.
Some of the Russians defected to Shuiskii in Moscow; some returned to
their homes; while others followed Dmitrii to Kaluga. In January 1610 Jan-
Piotr Sapieha abandoned the siege of the Trinity monastery and retreated to
Dmitrov, where Marina Mniszech joined him from Tushino. Marina subse-
quently moved to Kaluga to be reunited with Dmitrii, while Sapieha retreated
further west after Dmitrov fell to Skopin-Shuiskii’s forces. At the end of Jan-
uary 1610 a group of Russian boyars at Tushino sent a delegation to Smolensk,
headed by M. G. Saltykov, who agreed terms with King Sigismund on 4 Febru-
ary for the offer of the Russian throne to Prince Wl
adyslaw. Finally, on 6 March
R
´
o
ˇ
zy
´
nski burned the Tushino camp to the ground and withdrew its remaining
occupants to Volokolamsk.
Soon after the abandonment of Tushino, Skopin-Shuiskii entered Moscow
in triumph. On 23 April, however, he died suddenly in the capital: according to
rumour, he was poisoned either by Tsar Vasilii or by Prince Dmitrii Shuiskii,
who were thought to be jealous of their nephew’s success and fearful that he
might become a rival candidate for the throne. Vasilii Shuiskii’s enemies, led by
Prokopii Liapunov, the governor of Riazan’, exploited these rumours in order
to mobilise further opposition to the tsar. The military situation also began
to deteriorate for Shuiskii after Prince Michael’s death. Tsar Vasilii appointed
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maureen perrie
his brother Dmitrii as commander-in-chief of his army and sent him, with the
Swedishgeneral de la Gardie,against King Sigismund’s camp at Smolensk. The
Polish commander Stanisl
aw
ˇ
Z
´
olkiewski advanced to meet them, defeated
them at Klushino, and occupied Mozhaisk. At the same time, the Second False
Dmitrii, who had successfully recruited a new army of cossacks and Poles,
including Sapieha’s mercenaries, left Kaluga and marched on the capital.
35
On
16 July 1610 he set up camp at Kolomenskoe, just outside Moscow. Some of
the pretender’s supporters approached Shuiskii’s opponents in the capital and
suggested that both sides overthrow their tsars and elect a new sovereign. On
17 July Shuiskii was deposed and tonsured as a monk, but Dmitrii’s men failed
to keep their side of the bargain.
The situation in Moscow after Shuiskii’s removal was critical. Attempts to
organise the election of a new tsar proved abortive, and power passed into the
hands of a council of seven boyars who acted as a provisional government.
ˇ
Z
´
ol
kiewski advanced to the outskirts of the capital, and began to negotiate
terms with the boyars for the offer of the Russian throne to Wl
adyslaw, in
return for Polish military assistance against Tsar Dmitrii. An agreement was
reached on 17 August, and Moscow and most of the towns which had recog-
nised Shuiskii swore an oath of allegiance to Wl
adyslaw.
ˇ
Z
´
olkiewski managed
to persuade Sapieha’s troops to defect from Dmitrii’s camp, and the pretender
fled back to Kaluga.
ˇ
Z
´
ol
kiewski moved quickly to consolidate his position.
He ensured that the Russian delegation which was sent to Smolensk to offer
the throne to Wl
adyslaw included both Prince Vasilii Golitsyn, who had been
one of the leading Russian candidates for election to the throne, and Filaret
Romanov, whose young son Michael was another favoured contender. Then,
on the pretext that the people of Moscow might revolt in favour of the pre-
tender,
ˇ
Z
´
ol
kiewski moved his troops into the capital, in direct contravention
of his agreement of 17 August with the boyars. Soon afterwards
ˇ
Z
´
ol
kiewski left
for Smolensk, escorting the deposed tsar, Vasilii Shuiskii, and his brothers into
captivity, and leaving the Polish commander Alexander Gosiewski in charge
of the capital. At Smolensk, however, it became clear that King Sigismund had
no intention of sending Wl
adyslaw to Moscow, but planned to become tsar
of Russia himself. When this proposition was rejected by the Russian envoys,
they were imprisoned, and the king resumed his siege of Smolensk.
By the autumn of 1610 most Russians realised that their prospective new tsar
wasnot the potential converttoOrthodoxy,PrinceWl
adyslaw,butthe ardently
Catholic King Sigismund; the Poles, moreover, had occupied Moscow and
35 Ibid., pp. 493–5.
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were continuing hostilities elsewhere. In these circumstances, the popularity
of the Second False Dmitrii again began to grow. At Kaluga, the pretender’s
supporters were at first primarily cossacks – including Don cossacks under
the command of the ataman I. M. Zarutskii – and Tatars. By December,
Dmitrii had recruited some mercenaries, and a number of new towns, such as
Viatka and Kazan’, had recognised him as tsar.
36
Feuding, accompanied by the
torture and execution of suspected ‘traitors’, had however become endemic in
the Kaluga camp. On 11 December the pretender was murdered by the Tatar
prince Peter Urusov, in a revenge attack for Dmitrii’s killing of the khan of
Kasimov, another Tatar leader who had entered Dmitrii’s service. A few days
later, Marina Mniszech gave birth to a son, Ivan Dmitrievich, who became
a ‘hereditary pretender’ (K. V. Chistov has described him as ‘an involuntary
pretender (samozvanets) by birth’).
37
The national liberation campaign
Even before the murder of the Second False Dmitrii, other elements in Rus-
sian society had begun to mobilise opposition to the Polish occupation of
Moscow. The death of the pretender, who had been a controversial and divi-
sive figure, provided an additional impetus to their efforts. In Moscow itself
Patriarch Germogen refused to swear loyalty to King Sigismund, and was
placed under virtual house arrest by the boyar government. None the less,
Germogen was able to have his appeals for resistance smuggled out of the cap-
ital. The patriarch’s letters found the soil particularly well prepared in Riazan’,
where Shuiskii’s old enemy Prokopii Liapunov was governor. Nizhnii Nov-
gorod was also responsive to the call. Liapunov began to recruit an army of
servicemen from various towns, and he also bid for the support of the forces
that had previously recognised Tsar Dmitrii. Prince Dmitrii Trubetskoi, the
most senior of the Second False Dmitrii’s boyars, brought troops from Kaluga;
and Zarutskii, who had fled from Kaluga with Marina and her son after the
pretender’s murder, led his Don cossacks from Tula.
As the liberation army approached Moscow, the people of the capital staged
an unsuccessful uprising against the Poles on 19 March 1611. The occupiers
withdrew into the Kremlin, burning the outlying parts of the city as they
retreated and making much of the population homeless. The national militia
set up camp outside the capital and took an oath to elect a tsar. But the
36 Ibid., pp. 508–14.
37 K. V. Chistov, Russkie narodnye sotsial’no–utopicheskie legendy XVII–XIX vv. (Moscow:
Nauka, 1967), p. 66.
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forces besieging Moscow were very heterogeneous in their composition, and
were plagued by disputes and disagreements.Theycould not even agree on the
choice of a single leader, creating instead a triumvirate of Liapunov, Trubetskoi
and Zarutskii. On 30 June an agreement was signed by the triumvirs and by
representatives of the troops, which was designed to resolve conflicts over the
remuneration of servicemen and cossacks.
38
New disputes soon broke out,
however, over their preferred candidate for the throne. Liapunov favoured one
of the sons of Karl IX, in the hope that this would guarantee military assistance
from Sweden against the Poles. Zarutskii, by contrast, promoted the cause of
Marina Mniszech’s infant son, ‘Tsarevich’ Ivan Dmitrievich. The two leaders’
support for rival candidates for the throne contributed to a conflict which
resulted in Liapunov’s murder by the cossacks on 22 July 1611. After Liapunov’s
death, many of the noble servicemen deserted the besiegers’ camp. Zarutskii
and Trubetskoi continued to blockade the capital with their predominantly
cossack forces, but their attempts to capture the city in the autumn were
unsuccessful. By the end of the year many cossacks too had drifted away from
Moscow.
39
In the course of 1611 the foreign intervention forces made considerable
advances. Smolensk finally fell to King Sigismund on 3 June, but a subsequent
offensive by the Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz failed to dislodge
Zarutskii and Trubetskoi from their camp outside Moscow. In July 1611 the
SwedishcommanderdelaGardieoccupied Novgorod, butinsteadofcomingto
the assistance of the liberation forcesbesieging the capital, the Swedespursued
their own interests, and annexed many Russian towns in the Novgorod region.
A Third False Dmitrii was active in the north-west in 1611–12.Thereal
identity of this pretender is unknown: the official chronicler describes him
as Sidorka or Matiushka, a deacon from Moscow.
40
He first appeared in
Novgorod at the beginning of 1611, before moving to Ivangorod, where he
made an unsuccessful attempt to gain support from the Swedes. He was soon
recognised by the neighbouring towns of Iam, Kopor’e and Gdov. Pskov at
first resisted him, but after Novgorod had surrendered to de la Gardie the
Pskovans invited the new Tsar Dmitrii to their town, in the hope that he
would defend them against the Swedes. The pretender arrived in Pskov on
4 December 1611, and establishedhisheadquarters there. By this time, however,
the name of Tsar Dmitrii had lost its broad social appeal, and only a handful
of towns recognised his new incarnation. The cossacks remained susceptible
38 Stanislavskii, Grazhdanskaia voina,pp.36–9; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War,pp.425–6.
39 Stanislavskii, Grazhdanskaia voina,pp.40–2; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War,pp.429–30.
40 PSRL, vol. xiv,p.115,para.279.
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The Time of Troubles (1603–1613)
to pretenders, however, and the Pskovan tsar soon established links with their
encampments outside Moscow. In March 1612 they swore allegiance to the
Third False Dmitrii.
41
After the death of Liapunov some of the towns which had previously sup-
ported the liberation army expressed their distrust of its two remaining com-
manders, Trubetskoi and Zarutskii. They were particularly concerned that
Zarutskii and his cossacks might plan to place Marina Mniszech’s son on the
throne. Patriarch Germogen sent a proclamation to Nizhnii Novgorod calling
on the townspeople to reject the infant ‘Tsarevich’ Ivan Dmitrievich.
42
The
receipt of the patriarch’s letter in Nizhnii, in August 1611, served as the impulse
for the organisation of a new liberation army. The collection of resources to
fund its recruitment was undertaken by Koz’ma Minin, a local butcher and
elected representative of the townspeople; the command of the troops was
entrusted to Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii, one of Liapunov’s generals, who had
been wounded outside Moscowin March 1611 and was convalescing near Nizh-
nii Novgorod. Over the winter of 1611–12 Minin and Pozharskii mobilised their
forces. The nucleus of the ‘second national militia’, as it is sometimes called,
was provided by the garrison of Nizhnii Novgorod and neighbouring Volga
towns, together with some refugee servicemen from the Smolensk region.
At the beginning of March 1612 Minin and Pozharskii left Nizhnii and headed
towards Moscow. At Iaroslavl’ they learned that the cossack encampments
outside the capital had taken an oath to the Third False Dmitrii. Pozharskii
immediately sent proclamations to various towns, condemning Zarutskii and
Trubetskoi for recognising the Pskov pretender and calling on all true Chris-
tians to renounce the new Tsar Dmitrii as well as Marina and her son.
The cossack encampments soon deserted the cause of the Third False
Dmitrii, who had in any case made himself very unpopular in Pskov, by
ruling through terror and intimidation. In May the townspeople overthrew
him and sent him under escort to Moscow, where he was held prisoner by
the cossacks. Trubetskoi and Zarutskii wrote to Pozharskii at Iaroslavl’ to
assure him that they had repudiated Dmitrii, and had also abandoned the
claim of Marina’s son to the throne. They were prepared to join forces with
Pozharskii in liberating Moscow from the Poles and electing a new tsar by
common agreement.
43
Pozharskii, however, reacted coldly to these concilia-
tory approaches. He had established his headquarters at Iaroslavl’, where he
headed a provisional government and continued to recruit servicemen into
41 Perrie, Pretenders,pp.211–16.
42 AAE, vol. ii,no.194.ii, pp. 333–4.
43 Perrie, Pretenders,pp.216–18.
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