The Time of Troubles (The period of
Russian history, not the fictional event in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons &
Dragons setting where the gods of Toril were forced to walk the earth in mortal
form, or some shit like that.) was the period of Russian history immediately
following the death of Tsar Feodor I, son and successor of Ivan the Terrible,
and the rule of the first (and almost only) Tsar of the Godunov dynasty.
Knowing that Ivan was nicknamed the
Terrible, I don’t need to go into too much detail about him; although I’ll
probably still give more than you need or want to know (I can’t turn it off,
people). Ivan started out his reign well by consolidating all the Russian
principalities under his rule, proclaiming himself Tsar of All the Russias. He
then snatched up some of the successor Turko-Mongol khanates that had split off
of Russia’s former masters of the Golden Horde. You’d think an expansive state
would be a good thing. It might have been, except for Ivan going crazy after
the death of his wife, turning into the kind of extremely brutal dictator only
a madman can be, then topping it off by picking a losing fight with his western
neighbors, and murdering his one good son and heir apparent, also named Ivan.
This left his good-natured but
simple, possibly developmentally disabled son, Feodor, in charge. Feodor, by
all accounts was a nice guy who loved to have the church bells rung, giving him
the nickname Feodor the Bellringer. Nice, but not what was needed for a nation
whose power had been spread out like too little peanut butter over too much
bread. This left Feodor’s brother-in-law, Boris Godunov in charge, first as
regent, and then as elected Tsar, after Feodor’s death in 1598.
Now here’s a detail that will be
important later. Feodor had a younger half-brother, Dmitry, the son of Ivan the
Terrible’s fifth, although some sources say seventh or eighth wife. So, you’d
think by rights, Dmitry should have inherited the throne after Feodor’s death?
Two details prevented that. One was a peculiarity of the Orthodox Church, that
every man is issued a holy punch-card for wives with only three spaces in it.
Ivan had exceeded his punch-card, so in the eyes of the Church, Dmitry was a
bastard. The second detail was a little more final, since plenty of bastards
have been legitimized throughout history; Dmitry was dead. He had been exiled
by Godunov while Feodor was still Tsar, and sure, Feodor loved his little
brother, but he had bells that needed to be rung. While in exile, Dmitry had an
“unfortunate accident”, stabbing himself in the throat by falling on a knife
during an epileptic seizure. Yeah. Right.
Boris was an effective ruler for
the most part, doing what he could to secure stability for the Russian state,
but he could not do much about the eruption in Peru of the volcano Huaynaputina
in 1600. The 1500 people directly killed by the volcano’s eruption got off
lucky compared to the possibly two million Russians – one third of the
population -- who died of starvation and illness during the volcanic
winter-induced famine which lasted from 1601-1603. Following on that, in 1605, Boris
died, leaving his 16 year old son as Tsar Feodor II.
As part of inheriting Russia, Feodor
II inherited a whole handful of political enemies who had never been happy that
Boris had been elected Tsar. This is where Dmitry becomes relevant again,
because in 1600, some dude had come forward claiming that Dmitry hadn’t cut his
own throat with a knife during an epileptic seizure. He knew this because he
was the real Dmitry, who had been smuggled out of the reach of bad old Boris
Godunov before he could be done in. Some people in the court found his claim
convincing. Boris of course ordered his arrest. Undead Dmitry, not being
totally stupid, fled west to Russia’s neighbor, the largest nation in Europe at
the time, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Now, I could write a whole other
post on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but we’ll just leave it that Poland
and Lithuania, united by sharing the same head of state since the late 1300s
had formalized that situation by effectively becoming a united nation in 1569.
Oh, yeah, and their heavy cavalry wore actual wings into battle. Yep, big
feathered wings; they were definitely the most bad-ass cosplayers in Europe at
the time.
At this point, the man who is known
to history as False Dmitry I (that’s foreshadowing) gained the backing of the
powerful Polish noble house of Wiśniowiecki. Together, they concocted a plan to
invade Russia while it was still in a weakened state. This conspiracy began
casting about for support, bringing more Polish nobles on board, and even
gaining the nominal backing of the Vatican who hoped to make inroads into
Orthodox Russia. However, the Polish-Lithuanian ruler, Sigismund III (who was actually
of Swedish origin), was at the time busy trying to reclaim the throne of Sweden
from his uncle, who had taken it from him a few years earlier. Plus the Ottoman
Turks were causing all kinds of trouble on his southern border. With all that
on his plate Sigismund couldn’t commit to backing Dmitry, so the Wiśniowieckis,
decided to launch an invasion on their own.
Their filibuster army, composed of
personal troops and mercenaries, marched into Russia in 1605, capturing towns and
picking up Russian supporters as they went. They did well at first, but their
loss to Russian forces at their second major battle might have undone the
invasion if not for the chaos resulting from the sudden death of Boris Godunov.
Within a month the people of Moscow, and the leaders of his armed forces,
revolted against Feodor II, going over to the false Dmitry. Feodor and his mother were arrested and
eventually strangled to death. Dmitry was crowned as Tsar.
Things seemed to be going well, so of
course they had to go south. Dmitry was a weird Tsar. He associated with
Catholics and Protestants, planned reforms to modernize Russia, restored rights
to serfs; the guy didn’t even wear a beard. What a freak. All of this soon
turned many Russians against him. The final straw was when he made plans to
marry the daughter of a prominent Polish noble, Marina Mniszech, later called Marinka
the Witch by Russians. Unlike tsarinas up to that point, Marina did not convert
to the Orthodox Church, retaining her Catholic faith. That was too much, and
many of Russia’s nobles, led by an exile who had been allowed back in under the
new regime, Vasily Shuisky, staged a coup, murdering Dmitry and 2,000 of his
Polish followers in a city-wide massacre. Marina managed to escape.
Shuisky was crowned as Tsar Vasily
IV, but Russia’s nobles were soon dissatisfied with him, and damn if wouldn’t
you know it, here came another Dmitry. Now, you’d think that after Shuisky had displayed
False Dmitry I’s corpse publicly, had him cremated, and then fired the ashes
out of a cannon in the direction of Poland, people wouldn’t have fallen for False
Dmitry II so easily. But hope springs eternal, or maybe more aptly, there’s a
sucker born every minute.
This second false Dmitry, like the
first, acted like a Tsar. He was seemingly well-educated and fluent in a Russian
and Polish. He soon had enough of a following to gain the attention of Jerzy Mniszech,
Marina’s father, who welcomed back his “son-in-law” and gave him his full
support, as did many of the other Polish nobles who had supported the first
false Dmitry. With the raising of another army, and False Dmitry II at its
head, they were soon near Moscow, ready to “reclaim” his throne. This is where
things get really complicated.
Tsar Vasily had earlier signed an
alliance with the Sigismund III’s uncle, that bastard who had stolen the
Swedish crown from him. Sigismund wasn’t having any of that and decided it was
time to get involved in all this Russia hoo-ha. So he marched his army into
Russia, besieging the city of Smolensk. With that, many of False Dmitry II’s Polish
followers deserted him to join up with Sigismund. False Dmitry II and his Polish
wife ran for their lives. Then another Polish noble went rogue, saying in
effect to the Russians, “Hey! Haven’t you guys had it with these fake Dmitries?
How about a real prince, huh?! How about electing Prince Władysław of Poland-Lithuania! He’ll be
a tsar you can all get behind!” You would think this would have worked
beautifully, and it did for a second. I bet you’re thinking now, “You’ve got to
be kidding me!? You’re going to spring
False Dmitry III on us!?” No, I’m not. Not because there’s not a False Dmitry
III in this story, because there is. But first, Sigismund had to mess up the
sure thing of his son’s election to the Tsardom by Russia’s nobles. He refused
to let Władysław have the keys to the car, and decided
he was going to drive this baby himself.
Sweden of course said, “Bullshit to that!” and promptly invaded Russia
also. Cue False Dmitry III. He had managed to gather an army of Cossack
supporters and capture the city of Pskov, which is why he is most well known,
since even he didn’t want to be known as False Dmitry III, as the Thief of
Pskov. While they initially supported his claim, Swedish support for him soon
dried up, and they put forward the second son of their king as a candidate for
Tsar. Nobles in northern Russia were agreeable to this but the young prince’s
mother refused to let him leave Sweden after her husband died soon after. His
older half-brother, now Sweden’s king, and also at the time up to his elbows in
dead Danes on Sweden’s western border, had no interest in his younger brother
being the reigning monarch on a throne that he himself wanted.
Russia was in chaos. Swedish troops
occupied the north, Poles occupied Moscow, the Russian nobles, who had deposed
and exiled Vasily IV were now busy trying to stick knives in each other’s
backs, Cossack revolts rose and fell, Ottoman vassals -- the Crimean Tatars -- raided
from the south, and the people were starving and oppressed. It was time for a
dude from humble origins to step up.
Kuzma Minin was a prosperous butcher
in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, was a stand up guy. When the
merchants of the city decided to raise a volunteer army in the style of one
previously raised by the nobleman Prokopy Lyapunov, naturally, Minin was the
guy they wanted in charge of organizing things. Lyapunov’s army had been
somewhat successful against the invaders until he overplayed his hand,
reinstating some of the harsh laws against the serfs that had been relaxed and
breaking his agreement with the Cossaks in his army, who proceeded to kill him.
This second people’s army, raised by Minin was put in the
charge of another noble, Dmitry Mikhaylovich Pozharsky. Unlike Lyapunov, Pozharsky
had always supported the more legitimate players in the Time of Troubles. He had
helped elect Boris Godunov and then Vasily IV. He had fought against False
Dmitry II and rebel factions who threatened to tear Russia apart. It was while
he was recovering from wounds gained in an attempted uprising in Moscow against
the Polish occupiers that he was approached by Minin and his fellow merchants
with the offer of command. Pozharsky agreed to lead the army, but only on the
condition that Minin assisted him. With that settled, they proceeded in a leisurely
manner toward Moscow, but within a year, Fall of 1612, they were outside the
walls of the city where they defeated a Polish army come to reinforce and provision
the occupiers. Within a month of that battle, the Poles barricaded in the
Kremlin had enough of starving and agreed to surrender in return for safe
passage. Pozharsky was a devout man, the molasses-like pace of his volunteer
army having been slowed even further by his frequent stops and devotions at
holy sites along the way. Apparently though, his Christian principles didn’t
extend to Polish occupiers, as they were slaughtered almost to a man when they
left the Kremlin.
The Poles still held Smolensk and the Swedes were still in
the north, and the struggles to drive them out wouldn’t end for years to come, but
Moscow was once again in the hands of Russians, who would elect a Russian Tsar;
one who wasn’t some fake dude named Dmitry. Mikhail Romanov was elected by the
assembly of Russian nobles as the new Tsar, and his family would rule Russia
until the Russian Revolution in 1917. Minin, the humble butcher, was made a
noble and awarded an estate around Nizhny
Novgorod. Pozharsky was also awarded land,
and given the title “Savior of the Motherland”. He served Russia against the
Swedes, Poles and Ottomans for another quarter century but managed to die
peacefully in his bed in 1642.
To commemorate the liberation of
Moscow and the end of the Time of Troubles, Russia celebrated Unity Day up
until 1917, when it was replaced with a celebration of the communist-led October
Revolution. In 2005 Putin reinstated Unity Day as a national holiday. To coincide
with this, the film 1612, directed by Vladimir Khotinenko and commissioned by
the Kremlin, opened. The film has predictably received some controversy, being
considered a pro-Putin propaganda piece (say that fast six times) by his
opponents. Lord knows, I can’t abide that mass-murdering, conniving sumbitch,
but I’ve seen 1612 and it’s not a bad action/adventure film. It’s got some of
the same plot of A Knight’s Tale, and isn’t very historically accurate, but if
you’ve read this far, you’ll know that when you see it.
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