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Nevertheless, huge swathes of the country were still under rebel control, and the government’s tax income was falling steadily Then a spurious ‘Tsarevich Petr’, arrived at the rebel base of Putivl with a large entourage of Cossacks and reinforced his claim to rule by executing dozens of gentry. Before long he moved on to take the town of Tula. But there his forces found themselves besieged by tsarist troops for four months. Then a second false Dmitrii made an appearance near the Polish frontier. Who he really was is still a mystery, but he and his ‘retainers’ were well rehearsed in a repertoire of theatrical tricks designed to convince onlookers that he really was the rightful tsar, and he soon boasted an army that included mercenaries from Lithuania and Zaporozhian Cossacks, as well as the usual motley array of angry peasants and slaves, other Cossacks, and would-be Cossacks.

Tsarist forces captured Tula, Bolotnikov and ‘Petr’ in October 1607, and this persuaded the second ‘Dmitrii’ to postpone the offensive he was planning. Instead he fell back to the Polish frontier, regrouped his forces, and waited for more to join him. Then, advancing on Moscow, he established his headquarters at Tushino, less than 10 miles to the north-west. A large force of Polish troops also came up, sent by King Sigismund to secure the return of Polish prisoners captured when the first false Dmitrii was killed; then another rebel army approached as the Tsar was trying to reach an agreement with the Poles. And the chaotic chain of events only became more tangled, aided by bad faith on all sides.

The Tsar was isolated in Moscow; then Marina, widow of the first false Dmitrii, decided to ‘recognize’ the second false Dmitrii at Tushino, which bolstered the pretender’s credibility and his chances of establishing his rule over all Russia. But, although he now commanded the loyalty of more than half of the country, he lacked the funds to organize a proper government. He even lacked the wherewithal to supply and feed his own troops. They therefore had to live off the country and resort to forced confiscations and robbery in order to maintain themselves. The demands and depredations of the pretender soon seemed worse even than those of the Tsar, who had begun to confiscate Church plate.

Then the Tsar decided to cede territory to Sweden in return for the services of a force of mercenaries. The King of Poland now moved openly to capture the great frontier citadel of Smolensk. Russia’s neighbours were beginning moving in like jackals on a dying beast to dismember the Empire. And still the chaotic civil war continued. The false Dmitrii and Marina moved to Kaluga, and some of the more prominent of their erstwhile supporters, including Filaret Romanov and others of his family, thought of backing King Sigismund’s son Wladyslaw as candidate for the throne of Russia.

The damage to agriculture and the economy was as bad as the political damage. This was partly because of the disruption of the civil wars, but partly also the result of a renewal of vicious weather conditions. In 1607 there were serious floods in the Moscow region and deep frosts in western Russia, which prevented the germination of seedcorn and so precipitated yet another famine; in 1608 the crops in both central and western Russia were destroyed by a bitterly cold winter and heavy rainstorms in summer and autumn which washed out the harvest. There were epidemics and outbreaks of animal diseases that year too, and raging fires caused by lightning.

Bereft of support, the Tsar waited in the Kremlin for his fate to be decided. On 16 July 1610 the decision came. The power-brokers had decided to get rid of both him and ‘Dmitrii’ and to elect a new tsar. Vasilii Shuiskii was forced to become a monk, which emasculated him as a political actor. However, no agreement could be reached on who should succeed him, so a ministerial council of seven boyars assumed the task. In August they decided to elect Prince Wladyslaw, who had indicated his willingness to convert to Orthodoxy, as tsar. However, Wladyslaw himself now preferred to conquer Russia outright if he could, and other powerful Russians opposed his candidacy anyway. At last Zolkiewski, commander of the Polish forces which had managed to clear ‘Dmitrii’s’ army from the Moscow area, decided on a coup de main. He persuaded the more important potential Russian candidates to form a delegation to King Sigismund at Smolensk to discuss Wladyslaw’s election — and then had them arrested. So Vasilii Golitsyn, Filaret Romanov and others - including ex-tsar Vasilii Shuiskii — found themselves prisoners in Poland, where some of them were soon to die in mysterious circumstances. ²⁷