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Then Peter Basmanov, whom the Tsar had charged with the defence of the region, succeeded in stopping the advance. He summoned up various detachments of musketeers, town Cossacks, service people of various ranks and recruits to his headquarters at Novgorod-Seversk, which boasted a useful battery of artillery. The town held, forcing the rebels to lay siege to it. But then Putivl declared for ‘Dmitrii’, and this prompted more defectors from all ranks - less out of love for ‘Dmitrii’ than from fear they might be lynched if they remained loyal. But Basmanov and his men held firm at Novgorod-Seversk giving time for a strong force from Moscow to approach it. When the armies met, however, the pretender’s forces got the better of the inconclusive contest.

In the weeks that followed, ‘Dmitrii’s’ supporters continued to increase, but then, perhaps afraid of what might happen to the likes of him if the common people got the upper hand, Mniszech deserted. In January 1605 Shuiskii arrived with reinforcements from Moscow and elsewhere, and at the battle of Dobrynichi the superior firepower of the Tsar’s army forced the enemy into a disorderly retreat. The insurgency might have ended there. It did not.

Shuiskii’s men ravaged the areas they recaptured, partly as punishment for the rebellion, partly to compensate themselves for the privations they had suffered at the enemy’s hands. But their behaviour made the Tsar no friends, and by the spring of 1605 most of the service ranks in southern Russia were angry. Boris’s tired troops broke off their siege of Rylsk and concentrated on trying to secure the strategic fort of Kromy, where the garrison had gone over to the enemy. Large forces were brought up to retake Kromy, but a spirited defence in which a Cossack ataman called Korela distinguished himself kept the Tsar’s forces at bay.

Then on 13 April Tsar Boris, who had been ill since January (probably with heart disease), died — and this precipitated the disasters which followed. So long as the Tsar lived he could probably count on the loyalty of most Russians. Now he was dead the chances were recalculated. Most of the troops from central Russia remained loyal, but not the men from the southern frontier, and a carefully planned mutiny among many of them stationed with the loyalist army at Kromy changed the balance of forces. Suddenly the loyalty of many senior commanders began to erode. Boris’s heir was a youth of sixteen with little experience and no personal following. And, thanks to the rumours that Boris’s enemies had been spreading, many doubted his right to succeed. People had been whispering that the Tsarevich Dmitrii was planning to take revenge on Tsar Boris; that Boris was not the legitimate tsar; that his son and successor, Tsar Fedor, was so frightened of ‘Dmitrii’ and the vengeance of the Russian people that he planned to flee to England.

As for the personable ‘Dmitrii’, whom rumour said was the true tsar — son of the grim but popular Ivan — events in the south showed him to have support. A trickle of notables, including the commander Basmanov, began to drift into ‘Dmitrii’s’ camp, and the trickle soon became a flood. Boris’s reign had been marred by catastrophes of every kind. With the false Dmitrii as tsar the people hoped for better. They were not to get it.

In May 1605 a crowd began to gather around the high point of Red Square outside the Kremlin in Moscow, the place used for official proclamations and state executions. Soon it was a multitude, including many servicemen. Letters from the pretender were brandished, and the crowd grew more restive and threatening. Ministers concluded that the situation was beyond their powers to control alone, and sent for Patriarch Job. According to the ‘New Chronicle’, composed around 1630, ²³ Job — a Godunov loyalist, who had already pronounced anathema on the pretender — tried every wile he knew, using sweet reason in an attempt to calm the throng, and threatening them with the judgement of God. But nothing worked. The mob wanted ‘Dmitrii’. Tsar Fedor, his mother, his sister, other Godunovs, relatives and the people reputedly loyal to them were seized and taken away, their houses looted. The Patriarch was seized too, and led off to imprisonment. Then ‘Dmitrii’ was sent for.

The pretender was already on his way, making a triumphal progress towards Moscow, receiving the plaudits of the people and the homage of virtually every potentate. As he approached, Prince Vasilii Golitsyn ordered the young Tsar and his mother to be suffocated. On 20 June 1605 ‘Dmitrii’ entered Moscow, heading a large parade. He was solemnly crowned tsar on the following day. But his own days were numbered, and he was not to last a year.