Time of Troubles
The Time of Troubles was a period of
Russian history comprising the years of interregnum between the death of the last of Moscow Rurikids, Tsar
Feodor Ivanovich, in 1598 and the establishment of the
Romanov Dynasty in 1613.
After Feodor's death without issue, his brother-in-law and closest advisor,
Boris Godunov, was elected his successor by a
Great National Assembly . His short reign was not as successful as his administration under the weak Feodor. The oligarchical party, headed by the
Romanovs, considered it a disgrace to obey a simple
boyar; conspiracies were frequent, the rural districts were desolated by famine and plague, great bands of armed brigands roamed about the country committing all manner of
Encyclopedia
The
Time of Troubles was a period of
Russian history comprising the years of interregnum between the death of the last of Moscow Rurikids, Tsar
Feodor Ivanovich, in 1598 and the establishment of the
Romanov Dynasty in 1613.
After Feodor's death without issue, his brother-in-law and closest advisor,
Boris Godunov, was elected his successor by a
Great National Assembly . His short reign was not as successful as his administration under the weak Feodor. The oligarchical party, headed by the
Romanovs, considered it a disgrace to obey a simple
boyar; conspiracies were frequent, the rural districts were desolated by famine and plague, great bands of armed brigands roamed about the country committing all manner of atrocities, the
Cossacks on the frontier were restless, and the government showed itself incapable of maintaining order.
Under the influence of the great nobles who had unsuccessfully opposed the election of Godunov, the general discontent took the form of hostility to him as a usurper, and rumours were heard that the late tsar's younger brother
Dmitri, supposed to be dead, was still alive and in hiding. In 1603 a
man calling himself Dmitri, and professing to be the rightful heir to the throne, appeared in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In reality the younger son of
Ivan the Terrible had been strangled before his brother's death by orders of Godunov and the mysterious individual who was impersonating him was an impostor; but he was regarded as the rightful heir by a large section of the population, and gathered support both in Muscovy and outside its borders, in the Commonwealth and the
Vatican.
A few months later he crossed the frontier with a small force of 4,000 Poles, Russian exiles, German mercenaries and Cossacks from the
Dnieper and the
Don, in what marked the beginning of the Commonwealth intervention in Muscovy, or the
Dymitriad wars. Although the Commonwealth had not officially declared war on Muscovy , some powerful
magnates decided to support False Dmitri with their own forces and money, expecting rich rewards afterwards. Dmitri was married per procura to
Marina Mniszech and immediately after Boris's death in 1605 he made his triumphal entry into
Moscow.
The reign of Dmitri was short and uneventful. Before a year had passed a conspiracy was formed against him by an ambitious Rurikid prince called
Vasily Shuisky, and he was assassinated in the
Moscow Kremlin, together with many of his supporters. The chief conspirator, Shuisky, seized the power and was elected tsar by an Assembly composed of his faction, but neither the Muscovite boyars, nor the Commonwealth magnates, nor the pillaging Cossacks, nor the German mercenaries were satisfied with the change, and soon a new impostor, likewise calling himself Dmitri, son and heir of
Ivan the Terrible, came forward as the rightful heir. Like his predecessor, he enjoyed the protection and support of the Polish magnates. However after Shuisky signed an alliance with Sweden, the king of the Commonwealth,
Sigismund III, resolved to officially intervene in the internal affairs of Russia.
Polish troops crossed the Russian borders and lay siege to the fortress of Smolensk. After the combined Russo-Swedish forces were destroyed at the
Battle of Klushino, Shuisky was forced to abdicate. False Dmitrii II wasn't able to gain the throne, however, because the Polish commander
Stanislaw Zólkiewski put forward a rival candidate in the person of Sigismund's son,
Wladislaus. To this latter some people in Moscow swore allegiance on condition of his maintaining
Orthodoxy and granting certain privileges to them. On this understanding the Polish troops were allowed to occupy the city and
the Kremlin.
The Polish king, however, opposed the compromise, deciding to take the throne for himself and to convert Russia to
Roman Catholicism. This scheme did not please any of the contending factions and it roused the anti-Catholic and anti-Polish sentiments of the nation. At the same time it was displeasing to the Swedes, who had become rivals of the Poles on the
Baltic coast, and they declared war on Muscovy and started a false Dmitri of their own in
Ivangorod.
Russia was thus in a very critical condition. The throne was vacant, as Sigismund and Wladislaw left Moscow when the tensions grew, the great nobles quarrelling among themselves,
Patriarch Hermogenes in chains, the Catholic
Poles in the
Kremlin of Moscow and breaching Smolensk's walls, the Protestant
Swedes in Novgorod, and
enormous bands of brigands everywhere.
The severity of the crisis produced a remedy, in the form of a patriotic rising of the nation under the leadership of
Kuzma Minin, a
Nizhny Novgorod merchant, and
Prince Pozharsky. After battle for Moscow on October 22 Old Style , the invaders retreated to
the Kremlin, and on 24-27 October O.S. the invaders surrendered to the triumphant Pozharsky. On November 4 the
Russian Federation officially celebrates the Day of National Unity.
A
Grand National Assembly elected as tsar
Michael Romanov, the young son of the metropolitan Philaret, who was connected by marriage with the late dynasty and had been saved from the enemies by a heroic peasant, named
Ivan Susanin.
The
Dymitriad wars against the Commonwealth would last until the
Peace of Deulino in 1619, and the Ingrian Wars against Sweden lasted until the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617. Both forced Muscovy to make some territorial concessions, though the majority of them would be regained over the coming centuries. Most importantly, the crisis was instrumental in unifying all classes of the Russian society around the
Romanov tsars.
Notes
References
