Лим Ворд - Библия Времени. Найди свое

People travel through the points of view of spiritual ancestors, the psychological Machine of Time acquires an unusual popularity, one should be prepared for such unexpected turns of the Chronology.

Ivan the Terrible suddenly dies, on the throne, according to the decision of the Zemsky Sobor his middle son Fyodor, «a fast and silent, a saint on the throne», rises. He reigns for 14 years, establishes a great peace in the Russian land with his endless prayers, while his guardian, Boris Godunov, in fact is in charge. At forty years (1598), the king is represented, leaving no heirs (the only daughter dies in infancy) and, referring to the will of God, at least of any written will. Seven years earlier, as a result of an accident, the youngest son of Grozny died from a seventh marriage, not consecrated by the church, in fact, illegitimate, and not having rights to the throne, Prince Dmitry. Would he be a good king, turn a knife in his hands, during an epileptic attack otherwise? Unknown. According to the testimony of a foreign traveler D. Fletcher, he liked to beat a gob of geese and chickens until they were exhausted, he found pleasure in watching how cattle were slaughtered. However, anyway, Dmitry Ioannovich canonized by the ROC (the patient who touched the sarcophagus died, since then access to the relics has been discontinued). The dynasty of the main, Moscow branch of the Rurik, is interrupted. The wife of Tsar Feodor, Irina – Godunov’s sister, a week after the death of her husband announces the desire to get a haircut in a monastery and, indeed, leaves for Novodevichy, freeing the way to the throne to his brother. The beginning of the reign of Godunov is quite successful, however, the prayers of his predecessor seem to be lacking; in 1601—1603, after a lot of rains and early frosts that destroyed crops, a strong famine begins. The cost of grain grows a hundred times, but many household gentlemen, as well as monasteries, keep it in barns, expecting further price increases, and the tsar does not dare to order bread for sale. Dying to half a million people.

In 1604, with a small detachment of Cossacks and Poles (about 14,000 people) begins a campaign from Poland to Moscow, False Dmitry First. The government army under the leadership of Vasily Shuisky, incl. three hundred guns with literate artillerymen, trained by alternating shooting archers, smash the army of the impostor. All is well, but next year, after a plentiful meal, the last time having examined Moscow from the tower, Godunov feels «faint», and «losing his tongue» dies. The king becomes a sixteen-year-old son Fyodor (Second), with the regency of his mother, Maria Godunova (Skuratova), by the way, the daughter of the attorney of Ivan the Fourth Grozny in all matters, Malyuta Skuratov. The Tsar does not have time to get married to the kingdom, part of the army takes the oath of allegiance to False Dmitry.

The «elected tsar», ie, Godunov, and his successors, in the opinion of the Russian people, is not equal to the tsar «hereditary, ruler of God’s will, and not human will.» For this reason, as well as the fact that the tsarist troops unleashed cruel reprisals against the impostor’s supporters on the ground, Muscovites, in their mass, are opposed to a new, at least reasonable and kind ruler. After spending a month and a half Fyodor and Maria Godunova, they perish at the hands of traitors («the people are silent»). Patriarch Job, an ally of the failed dynasty, loses his rank, goes to the monastery. His place is occupied by Archbishop Ignatius of Ryazan. Xenia Godunova, the sister of a young monarch, is rumored to become a concubine of False Dmitry for a short time, then also refers to a monastery.

So, in June 1605, False Dmitry the First, having coordinated the details with the Duma, solemnly enters the Kremlin and meets with the mother of Dmitry, Maria (in monasticism of Martha) Naga. She recognizes in her new «anointed» son, believably, with sobbing, perhaps to leave the walls of the disgusted monastery. Henceforth, Dmitry calls the Duma the Senate, and himself – the emperor («Caesar»). In general, his reign goes to the country for good – many boyars return from exile, the serfdom of peasants is suspended, taxes are reduced, and the economy rises. The obstacles to movement within the state, and beyond, are removed. The Polish king does not receive the promised Russian lands. At the same time, the plans of the war with Turkey, the still ardent Crimean-Tatar Crimea (recently on the walls of the capital the next raid is reflected), the personal guard of the king, recruited entirely from the Germans, and also some frivolous European orders are not popular among the masses.

All this would be, again, not so bad, quite tolerably, but, in mid-May 1606, at the wedding of Dmitry and his long-time lover, the daughter of Polish voivode Marina Mnishek comes two thousand Poles. During the festival, drunken haiduk soldiers grab passers-by, break into houses, attack women. This is enjoyed by the boyar Vasily Shuisky, summoning the people allegedly to protect the tsar from them; but, on the move, however, the action flows into its opposite. Escaping from the crowd, the wounded Dmitry falls into the hands of the detachment of the streltsy of the external guard, they are some time in confusion, before they join the defeating side. They send again for Maria Naga, but something comes from the mouth of the incoming messenger; «Martha answered, her son was killed in Uglich.» False Dmitri First, he, or Dmitry, is not exactly known until now – dies. On the grave of the king ominous signs are noted, because the body is digging, burning, mixing the dust with gunpowder and firing in the direction of Poland.

The crowd of adherents «calls» Vasily Shuisky (Suzdal branch of Rurikovich) king, and that he becomes, on June 1 of the same year. The Patriarch is changing, from Ignatius to Hermogenes. A new, even less legitimate ruler is expected from the very beginning to be severely tested – in October 1606, Moscow was besieged by a 100,000-strong army of the authorized representative of the next False Dmitry (Second) – the former galler oarsman, «serf», now voevoda Ivan Bolotnikov. In the camp of the insurrection a split is brewing – the boyars and runaway peasants are not able to form a stable union. Muscovites are ready to surrender, they only need to show the figure only somehow similar to the real prince, but that at the «voivode Dmitry» I. Bolotnikov at the moment is not. Mikhail Molchanov, one of the killers of Prince Fyodor, once a confidant of False Dmitri, who, incidentally, retains the royal seal and, finally, an imposter, refuses to take part in a risky fight personally. The hastily taken, in October, Bolotnikov failed to storm the capital. The army of the peasant leader, suffering in the way of defeat, retreats to Tula. It is possible to accumulate new forces, up to 38 thousand people, regroup and carry out a second campaign against Moscow. A hundred kilometers south-east of the capital, near Kashira in June 1607, there was a battle with the army of the Tsar himself, Vasily the Fourth (Shuisky). Peasant rebels are well organized, they have effective artillery, they are one step away from victory; but, a certain Tula governor with a 4-thousand detachment changes Bolotnikov, strikes the rear of the militia and sows panic. The uprising is coming to naught, however, many militiamen are involved in the struggle of the parties, for or against, the impostors of Dmitry II and the Third.

…The backlog of Mikhail Molchanov with False Dmitry for Ivan Bolotnikov’s army was, in fact, true, but the search for a real person for this role was too long. Yes, for a while, in Poland and Ukraine (actually, the protectorate of Poland), the role of the prince was played by Molchanov himself. But, in Moscow he was well known. Only at the beginning of 1607, in Byelorussia, also then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the name of the Polish-Lithuanian state, the calka from Latin res publica – «Republic»), was found suitable for the figure, age, other basic parameters, man. In a halo of mystery, first as a relative of the tsar, Andrei Nagoy, False Dmitry II appeared before the Russian people only at the end of the spring of 1607.

False Dmitry did not have time for either the first or the second campaign of Bolotnikov to Moscow. He also goes to Tula, where, on October 10, Shuisky’s troops, having changed the direction of the river to the city, forced the rest of the peasant army to surrender. But, in any case, now under his name is collected 27 thousand people – Poles, Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks, archers, nobles and fighting serfs. False Dmitriy wins several battles, but Moscow, surrounded by stone white walls (by the current Boulevard Ring) can not be taken. Having settled in Tushino, False Dmitry II tries to completely block the capital. He manages to intercept Marina Mniszek, and, after some persuasion, marry her. At the same time, the «deputy king» succeeds in attracting Metropolitan Philaret to his side – becoming from now on the understudy of the Moscow patriarch. There comes a dual power – Shuisky and False Dmitriy II (more precisely, his Polish bodyguards who believe that they control the owner) rule the country in parallel. Vasily the Fourth achieves some successes, with the help of the governor Skopina-Shuisky (whom he later, according to most historians, will poison) and some participation, dissatisfied with the strengthening of Catholic Poland, Protestant Sweden. Polish mercenaries openly show disdain for their Russian «tsarik,» and, after all, climbing into the cart under the matting, False Dmitry runs away from them to Kaluga.

In this city the spirit of the Bolotnikov uprising is still very strong. Only here the impostor begins to play an independent role, enjoys the respect of the people, finds a second wind. The Tushino camp, which remained without the tsar’s name, loses the original meaning of the second capital, is set on fire by former masters; The arrogant Polish army is dispersed.

False Dmitry is besieging Moscow already with a new army. In the milieu of boyars, the «overturners» are ripening the idea: simultaneously remove from the political field both Vasily Shuisky and the impostor, and then by the whole world choose a new king. In Moscow, the nobles of the Zemsky Sobor, indeed, overthrow Basil the Fourth, forcibly shear the king into monks and await response from the near False Dmitry II. But, they do not hurry to fulfill this promise, because now their positions are remarkably strengthened. To fill the vacuum of power, the interim government, Semiboyarschina, chooses the king of the Polish prince Vladislav Vaz, the eldest son of the Polish king Sigismund the Third. Gradually Russian society is polarized: to the False Dmitrii, pushed back to Kaluga, the poor and humiliated poor people, Cossacks and Cossacks, flock to Vladislav, or rather, his representatives in Russia – the nobles.

Without a sufficient number of representatives of the nobility, outside the hierarchy, too homogeneous masses of people enter the power of their dark instincts. The notion of justice, as such, ceases to exist. The wheel of senseless terror is developing to all the more suspicious and «wrong» people. Moreover, False Dmitry II expects to call for Crimean and Nogai (Astrakhan) Tatars, who are already moving to Central Russia, as well as Turks, in order to Moscow, so that they can quickly correct all their affairs. But, his plans are not destined to come true; in retaliation for one of the victims of terror, an impostor kills his own bodyguard.

So, Vasily Shuisky tonsured monks, along with two brothers he is kept in a castle, 100 kilometers from Warsaw. His own children do not have a former king. The three-year-old son of Mary Mniszek, Ivan, can claim the throne, but, nevertheless, he is still too small. Tsar Vladislav is unpopular among the people, in addition, he does not risk personally leaving Poland for Moscow, and himself, it seems, is cooling to the idea of becoming the ruler of Russia. The soil for the appearance of the third False Dmitri is still fertile.