The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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which included the old names and in one case a former member, was beckoned into existence. Bogdan Bielskie, the twice-banished, recurred again in the state council, where he should have been able to give valuable information as to the outlying parts of the tzarstvo. Mstislavskie and Vasili and Dimitri Shouyskie were summoned from their commands at Kromi, less perhaps on account of any counsel they might impart to the Tzaritza and her son, than because their withdrawal smoothed the way for Basmanov to take over the command of the army. The latter brought down to the camp the authentic news of the death of Boris, and exacted from the troops an oath of allegiance to the new sovereign. The court at Moskva felt relieved when the voevoda whom Boris had loved, and who had given proof both of his fidelity and ability in the defence of Novgorod-Sieverski, went down to take command of the army of the Oukrain, and they expected to hear of some decisive blow struck at the impostor, some victory which should open the new reign with brilliancy. Instead of which they learned, from the mouths of two fugitive voevodas, that Basmanov, in conjunction with the princes Golitzuin and Saltuikov, had proclaimed the Ljhedimitri Tzar of Moskovy. How far this was a contemplated move, how far it was a sudden decision, born of a discovery of widespread defection among the troops, it is impossible to say. The effect was enormous, and revolutionised the whole struggle. The long besieged Kozak troop in Kromi found themselves suddenly hailed as allies by the men who had for months been working to encompass their destruction, and the bold adventurer of Poutivl was able to come out of his retreat, and put himself at the head of the army that was to conduct him in triumph to Moskva. The news of these events had stirred all classes in the white-built city; the people left their occupations to gather in agitated crowds on the great square between the Kitai-gorod and the Kreml, and everywhere was heard the name Dimitri. The man who wore that name was marching with the tzarskie army, led by the ablest voevodas of the state, under the banner of the two-headed eagle and St. George the Conqueror. His proclamations were daily smuggled into the city and daily the popular voice turned in his favour. The strielitz and body-guard were becoming less and less in evidence around the Kreml, the members of the Douma were coldly received, the Patriarch dared not show himself, even in the sacred vestments of his office, and could only shed tears of bitter mortification in the shelter of his palace. With the first day of June came the forerunners of the claimant Tzar to the Krasno selo (red, or beautiful village), where dwelt the rich merchants and tradesmen, a class which had never been well affected towards the Godounov interest; the Pretender was enthusiastically proclaimed, and his adherents streamed into unguarded Moskva, shouting the magic name of Dimitri Ivanovitch. The multitude of the city rose in response to the cry, and clamouring crowds, giving vent to their restrained feelings, burst armed and angry and thousand-throated into the undefended Kreml. Boris had asked his subjects to bring him the Ljhedimitri alive or dead. They were bringing him in alive.
The first acts of the aroused Moskvitchi were comparatively moderate. The Tzaritza-mother, the young Thedor, and his sister were removed from the palace and held prisoners in the private mansion of the Godounovs, and a clean sweep was made of the relatives and adherents of the fallen House, who were imprisoned or carried off to distant parts of the gosoudarstvo. For the rest, the people celebrated the upheaval by getting universally intoxicated, and to the wild fury of the day succeeded a night of stupefied repose. The revolution, however, was yet to claim its victims; while the new sovereign was still halting at Toula his enemies were forcibly removed from his path. The Patriarch was dragged from before the altar of the Cathedral of the Assumption and dispoiled of his robes and office, and a few days later a report was circulated that Thedor and his mother had poisoned themselves. Their bodies, exposed to the public view, bore traces of violence, and it was said that they had been strangled by some strielitz at the command of the voevoda Golitzuin.185 What hand, if any, the Pretender had in the matter there is nothing to show. Thus ended a dynasty which eight weeks previously had seemed in assured possession of the throne. On the 20th of June, amid the resounding of myriad bells and the hoarse shouting of the people who lined streets, and roofs, and campaniles, the Phantom rode into the city of his endeavours, with a crashing of trumpets and kettle-drums, with a glittering retinue of Polish cavalry, German guards, Kozaks and strielitz. The long lost Dimitri, as his subjects fondly imagined him, made solemn obeisance at the tomb where the dread Ivan slept, and incidentally ordered the remains of the usurper Boris to be removed to a less hallowed resting-place. A cross-current of coffins and persons journeyed to and from the centre-point of Moskovite life; Nagois and Romanovs, living and defunct, came in from their monasteries or lonely graves to dwell or decompose in the favoured places of the Kreml, while the Godounov connections and Vremenszhiki went, literally, out into the cold; that is to say, to Perm and Sibiria. Vasili Shouyskie, the man who had conducted the inquest on the murdered Tzarevitch, had the indiscretion to recall this circumstance to the minds of a people gone wild with enthusiasm. His reminiscences were not interesting to the Tzar, who had him promptly arrested. He was interrogated, probably with the accompaniment of torture, and condemned, by a council of boyarins and citizens, to death. While his head was actually awaiting the axe-stroke a dramatically timed reprieve stopped the execution of the sentence, which was commuted to one of banishment. The people, with whom the Shouyskie family were more or less popular, might appreciate the sovereign’s clemency, but it did not strengthen their conviction that he was the son of the terrible Ivan. A new Patriarch was elected, Ignacie, a Greek, once Archbishop of Cyprus, from which see he had been driven by the Turks, since Archbishop of Riazan; he had been one of the first of the Vladuikas to recognise the adventurer as Tzar. There remained one more step towards establishing his identity, which, though of slight historical value, it was important that the Pretender should take. Mariya Nagoi, seventh wife of Ivan IV., was still living, and her testimony was naturally called for as to the authenticity of the person who posed as her son. In the middle of July the ex-Tzaritza was summoned from the convent that had been her prison for so many years, and was met at Tayninsk, a village near Moskva, by the man who claimed her as mother; whom, after a private interview, she publicly acknowledged as the true Dimitri. After thirty years of banishment and disgrace, half of which had been spent in cloistered seclusion, the relict might well have considered that it was a wise mother that knew her own child in the person of a reigning and popular sovereign. The very fact that his imposture had overturned her hated enemies, the Godounovs, would have gone far to soothe any possible scruples. It is significant that after her testimony the “Otrepiev” theory, first put forward by the Patriarch in the reign of Boris, began to gain ground in the capital. The people who had feared to oppose a forlorn and desperate pretender, from an idea that he might be the genuine heir of the Rurikovitches, were not comfortable at seeing him on the sacred throne of Monomachus, from a suspicion that he might not be.
Firmly established at the Kreml, after a campaign of almost unexampled good fortune, the new Sovereign commenced to display characteristics disconcerting alike to his subjects and to future students of his personality. His idiosyncrasies were not those of the House whose scion he professed to be, but neither were they those of a partially-educated adventurer. The boyarins of the leading families of Moskva, encased in the complacent conceit of ignorance, were aghast at being told by this newly-appeared Gosoudar that their great need was schooling. Boris had talked of colleges as a desirability; Dimitri spoke of them as urgent necessities. For their part the boyarins were of opinion that the Tzar himself had much to learn in the way of conforming with the manners and customs of the Moskovites. His behaviour was a growing source of scandal to his Orthodox subjects; his hair was not dressed in the Russian fashion; he never slept after dinner; he sat down to dine to the sound of music instead of prayer; and he ate veal. He drilled his soldiers himself—a thing which no Moskovite sovereign had ever done—and he slew bears with his own hand instead of seeing them killed from a safe distance. The precedent of David, King of Israel, might have been quoted in extenuation of this unbecoming hardihood, but nothing could excuse the erection of a statue of Cerberus in front of the Tzar’s pleasure-house in the Kreml, a locality hitherto graced only with the representations of Bogoroditzas, or at most a saint-mastered dragon. The clergy were offended by the scant consideration with which they were treated, by the toleration shown to Catholics and Lutherans, and above all by a disposition which Dimitri showed to divert some of the hoarded wealth of the monasteries to the public treasury. The strielitz were piqued by the open acknowledgment which the Tzar made of the superior merits of the foreign soldiery, the boyarins resented the subordinate part they