THE
FALSE DEMETRIUS.
The interest of a romantic story is always heightened
when some of its details are involved in mystery, for not only is the mystery in
itself an element of romance, but it presents an opportunity for the exercise of
the ingenuity of readers and spectators which attracts and fixes their attention
much more surely than a simple series of tragic incidents. When, in addition to
the uncertainty of the original facts of the case, there is a double uncertainty
as to the motives and character of the principal actors, and we have a choice
between an indefinite number of conflicting explanations even of the same
hypothesis, there will be amateur jurymen enough to settle all the causes in
Christendom prepared to pronounce upon the tangled web. The story of the false
Demetrius is an almost typical instance of the fascination which this kind of
mystery possesses for the critical mind. The
general outlines of this obscure episode of Russian history, are sufficiently
familiar to most readers, but it is in its less known details , u that we see
most plainly what conditions are necessary to enable an improbable story to
obtain belief, and what positive attraction its improbability has for the
popular imagination. There must be some one to tell the story, and some one to
listen to it. People who, like the needy knife-grinder, have no story, do
not find their sincerity a pass to the compassion of the curious; and when the
public has once a settled down to listen composedly to a tale of wonder, for
very consistency's sake it likes to have the improbabilities laid on as thick as
possible. But a true story, however strange, can always have its strangeness
explained away, and therewith half its charm is gone.
Human nature and physical possibilities are the same all the world over, and we only want to know all the facts of a romantic adventure in
order to realise that it could not have fallen out otherwise than it did. To
make a promising romance of real life, there must be gaps between the points of
historical certainty which some person or persons unknown have undertaken to
fill up with passages of suitable fiction. Then the falsehood becomes an
influential fact and the truth, robbed
of its explanation and credited with imaginary consequences, becomes as
incomprehensible as the most ardent students of the marvellous can desire.
This, at least, is the history of many of the puzzles bequeathed to us by the
past, and the, one to which we referred more particularly, far from being an
exception to the rule, supplies some general reasons in favour of its
universality.
Demetrius Ivanovitch, third and youngest son of Ivan surnamed [End
Page 258] the Terrible, by a seventh (or sixth) marriage* , was about seven
years old on the 15th of May, 1591, old style. It is well to begin at the
beginning of things, and the fact just recorded has a further claim to our
attention as it sums up all that from first to last is certainly
known about the poor little boy. Ivan haring, it was universally said and believed, killed his eldest son in a fit of passion,
was succeeded by Feodor, a gentle and pious prince who was content to leave the
reins of government in the strong hands of his favourite and
brother-in-law, Boris Godounoff. By a natural inference from
the powers which Boris certainly
exercised, he was supposed to be at the bottom
of most acts of the government, and amongst others he was generally held responsible for the decree of quasi-banishment,
which sent the heir-presumptive, Demetrius, to reside pat the
town of Ouglitch, under the
guardianship of his mother, the dowager empress,
and his uncles, Michael, Gregory, and Andrew Nagoi. When there,
disputes seem to have arisen about the expenses of the princely
household and similar subjects, and one Bitiagofski, who is always mentioned as a creature of Boris, was sent donor to act as
steward and governor to the young
prince. One day, it was dinner-time on
the 15th of May, Demetrius was playing in the courtyard behind the
house; he had a small knife in his hand and teas sticking it in the
ground, four of the pages, his playfellows, were with him, and so was his nurse and her daughter.
Their account of what followed'was sworn
to before a commission sent down a few days afterwards to
examine into and perhaps conceal the facts of the ease. The prince,
Mill playing with his knife, went out of sight for a moment, and then was
heard to cry out; the nurse rushed to the spot, and found him with a wound in
his throat, which he had given himself with his knife, struggling on the ground
in a fit of epilepsy. She raised an
alarm, his mother came and had the inanimate body carried to the church,
the tocsin was sounded, the inhabitants of Ouglitch rose, and directed
as it would seem by the Nagoi, murdered Bitiagofski, Joseph, the son of
the nurse, and ten or twelve of their friends and followers all
renounced as accomplices in the murder of the child. It was in vain they
protested that Demetrius was subject to fits, daring which he did not know what he was doing, that he bit those who tried to hold
him, and that only a few days before he had wounded his mother in a
similar attack. The populace was firmly convinced that there had been foul play,
and in confirmation of the belief they pointed to the heap of bloodstained
weapons lying at the foot of the corpse, which,
a dozen witnesses were presently ready to swear; were brought there by
order of the Nagoi, and sprinkled with the Wood of a slaughtered
man. Even the bereaved
mother's resentment chose its objects by chance,
for after having slapped and mauled the nurse with her own
*The Russian church does not allow more than four wives, therefore, strictly speaking, Demetrius was illegitimate; but this objection was not much insisted upon in the case of the Pretender. [End Page 259]
imperial hands for
conniving at the assassination of her charge, we find her two days later giving
orders to drown an old woman who had lately seen the prince, and might,
therefore, be supposed to have cast an evil eye upon him, of which his fit and
suicide were the manifest consequences.
In a word, all Ouglitch had lost its head, but the
prince was no more, and Boris Godounoff was the only person who had an interest
in his death. Yet the conduct of the Government was perfectly decorous. A
commission was sent to enquire into the causes of the riot and the death of the
officers of the household, but it was headed by Schouiski, a noble of high rank
and independent position, and there was to all appearance nothing to prevent the
charges against Bitiagofski being substantiated by evidence, if they had rested
tin any other foundation than popular fury and delusion. Instead of this the
official report shows us one witness after, another repeating almost verbatim
the same story with the same improbabilities unimpaired and unexplained. The
prince was not left alone, yet no one saw him wound himself; he struggled for
some time in a fit, yet no one took the knife out of his hand. His supposed
assassins were seized and executed without enquiry into their motives or their
instigator, and his uncles who had every motive to bring the crime, if crime
there was, home to its influential perpetrator, instead of appealing to the czar
for justice on his brother's murderer, amused themselves by arranging an absurd
tableau of which half Ouglitch could betray the unreality. Told in this wise the
story scarcely dwells on the death of Demetrius, by the dispensation of
Providence, as a jury would say, while the murder of Bitiagofski and the others
appears as a wanton crime calling for judgment and punishment. The latter was
exemplary. Two hundred of the inhabitants of Ouglitch were
executed at once, thousands were banished, some were flogged, others were
deprived of their property, the empress was compelled to take the veil, the
church bell which had sounded the alarm was taken down and sent to Siberia, a
flourishing town was reduced to ruin, and it was said that Boris Godounoff had
done all this to make away with the witnesses of his crime.
Against the universal belief of the age, we can set
the records of the Ouglitch
commission which were not made public at the time; and the internal difficulties
are nearly the same, whichever view is taken of Boris and the Nagoi. If the
witnesses before the commission spoke the truth, and if their evidence was
faithfully recorded, the death of the prince would be a singular accident and
all the rest a misunderstanding factiously aggravated by his uncles.
But unfortunately we have no reason at all for believing that both or
either of those conditions was satisfied. The Russians are a loyal people, and a
fine instinct tells them what truths will be unwelcome to their rulers. In
Russia a prince of the reigning dynasty dies of apoplexy, when an ordinary
mortal would seem to be strangled, for it is no use recognizing the existence of
crimes which the supreme power perhaps [Eng Page 260] commits, but which
no power could adequately punish. The witnesses probably did their best to say
what should be agreeable, and the judges followed the spirit of their evidence
in correcting it if it took an awkward direction. It is hopeless to rest an
argument on the result. On the other hand, common fame is credulous, and some
people who believed that Boris plotted the death of the young Demetrius believed
that he set fire to Moscow, and bribed the Tartars
to invade Russia, in order that men's minds might be diverted from the
thought of his iniquities, (and this though he repulsed the invaders with great
skill and energy, and made lavish donations to those whose shops and houses were
burnt down) ; that he substituted a female child for the son born by his sister
the Empress Irene, though he would have been named regent without opposition ;
that he poisoned the child, though his power depended on Irene's, and hers
upon her being the mother of an heir-apparent ; and so on, through a
number of accusations which answer themselves, or would do so if they did not
point to a strange condition of the national mind, in which clumsy and
objectless actions seemed perfectly natural, and none the less so for being
complicated with crime. The nurse's story is improbable as it stands, but
supposing the child to have been wounded, by accident or design, without her
knowledge, she would naturally attempt to shield herself by some such invention
from the suspicion of negligence. Then, though Boris had au intelligible motive
for the crime in the wish to have only his sister and her children between
himself and the throne, the conduct of the Nagoi is inexplicable on the
hypothesis of his guilt. Had they been concerned in the murder themselves, they
could not have done more to play into the hands of those interested in hushing
up the whole affair. Altogether, the first act in the drama is as mysterious as
any which follow it, but this much at least is evident, since Boris was believed
to have murdered Doi and Demetrius was believed to be dead.
We may now pass over several years. In 1598 Feodor died childless, and Boris was elected czar. Contemporary memorials describe in full the tears which were shed on both sides while the comedy Nolo episcopari was played out at remorseless length, "and those who could not weep, wetted their eyes with their saliva and we are given to understand that, when the father of the people at last consented to acknowledge the relationship, it was the worse for such of his children as had been backward in imploring his compassion. Boris was an able sovereign, but he made the fatal mistake of alienating the peasantry. It is an exaggeration to say that the serf had not been bound to the soil before his reign, but he imposed additional restrictions upon emigration from province to province, and he abolished the most cherished privilege of the Russian boor, the "right of St. George," or the power of changing his servitude on that one day in the calendar. These innovations were supposed to be for the interest of the smaller employers of labour who were harder [End Page 261] masters than the great landowners, and therefore had greater difficulty in engaging or retaining servants who had any freedom of choice. But then, as now, the peasants were the staunchest supporters of the crown, and it was a suicidal policy to grudge them one of their few securities against their many oppressors.
For these and other reasons, Boris was not beloved by
his subjects, but he reigned in peace for five years. In 1603, strange rumours
began to fill the air, though no one could tell from whence they came; gradually
they gathered substance and it was confidently whispered from one to the other,
that Demetrius, the son of Ivan, was still alive and would soon return to claim
the throne of his ancestors. No one knew certainly, either then or afterwards,
how he had been saved at Ouglitch, where he had spent the intervening years, or
who was now spreading these reports concerning him ; but human curiosity abhors
a vacuum, and before the story of his escape had had time to get itself properly
invented, there were thousands who knew how it might have, how it mast have, how
it actually had happened. At this distance of time, intuition naturally appears
a less infallible guide than to the peasants and Cossacks who had never heard of
the Ouglitch commission, and who perhaps if they had, would have known better
than we do, how little credit could be attached to its declarations. But, if we
try to collect the evidence of contemporaries, there is an embarras de
richesse which is as bewildering as total silence. The most popular theory
seems to have been that a fire broke out in the palace at night, and that the
confusion, which the agents of Boris meant should cover the perpetration of
their crime, really served to favour the escape of a faithful monk or servant
and the young prince, while some nameless boy was murdered in his stead. But a
more circumstantial, and not much less authentic account is given by an Italian,
Barezzo-Barezzi, who wrote in 1605 under the dictation of a Jesuit father
Possevino, who had been papal agent in Russia, and was well acquainted with the
new Demetrius. This version omits
the alarm of fire, but says that Demetrius's tutor, a German, had received
warning that an attempt would be made to assassinate him, and could think of no
better remedy than, like Hop- o'-my-Thumb, in the Ogre's
Castle, taking away the prince and putting a child of the same age in his place
in the bed where the murderers would come to seek him.
All accounts agree that Demetrius was sheltered for some time in a monastery which was never identified, that he became impatient of restraint, threw off the monastic garb, and took service, in the kitchen of a Pole Golski according to some, according to others, with Prince Adam Wismowiecki. The time and manner in which he disclosed the secret of his extraction are variously reported. Karamzine, who followed tradition, and has been followed by most dramatists who have treated the, subject, makes him reveal his birth to a Jesuit confessor, with the well-founded conviction that the confidence would not [End Page 262] be respected. But Martin Baer, a contemporary Lutheran minister, who seems to have preserved the Polish account of the transaction, takes no notice of this version, but says that Prince Adam struck his equerry for some piece of negligence, and that the youth retorted, “If he knew who was serving him, he wood not dare to offer such an insult;" and then declared himself to be the Czarowitch Demetrius. 'The good pastor goes on to describe, in the spirit of the Arabian Nights, how the prince sent six magnificent horses, twelve servants, and rich apparel to correspond, as a gift to his quondam domestic, who, in the other legend, but not, it is noticeable, in this, is also his godson, and rests the proof of his identity chiefly on his possession of a cross set with brilliants, such as a princely sponsor would give for a christening present. At this point a Russian fugitive turns up, and identifies the pretender--we must call him Demetrius, since he has no other name known to history--by personal signs. He had one arm longer than the other, and two warts, one on the forehead and one under the right eye. It is true that no mention is anywhere made of these peculiarities as having belonged to the murdered boy; but it would be a one-horse kind of hero who had no identifying marks, and it is hard to prove a negative, so that when the adult Demetrius had these tokens, no one was in a position to say he ought not.
At
this point we return for a space to the region of fact.
Constantine, the brother of Adam Wismowiecki, had married the daughter of
George Mniszek, Waiwode of Sendomir, and, through his influence, Demetrius was
received and recognised by that important personage.
A new witness, a Polish prisoner returned from Russia, whose dates,
however, were a little out of order, also identified him, and his cause was
become so far popular with the nobility of Poland as to cause serious uneasiness
to Boris, and to lead him to offer bribes for his surrender.
It will be best to follow his career to its close before considering the
general questions of his identity ; but this is the place to ask what persons or
parties were interested in the success of his claim, whether founded upon right
or on imposture. Mniszek, after having once embraced his cause, was playing for
high stakes, for in Way, 1604, Demetrius promised to marry his daughter, Marina,
of whom w e shall presently hear a good deal, as soon as lie made his entry into
Moscow. From that time all the Waiwode's wealth and influence were expended in
raising troops for the invasion. There does not appear to have been any open
confidence between him and Demetrius, and certainly, with his daughter an
empress and he himself with a rich government on the border-land, it would
not have occurred to him to question the divine right of the czar. He certainly
did not invent the pretender, and being a prudent man, he would scarcely have
irked his fortune on the success of one whom he believed to be an in impostor.
Sigismund, King of Poland, again, was wary and suspicioust o a degree : he
received Demetrius as a cheap and efficacious [End Page 263] menace to
Boris, and he allowed his subjects to enlist for a campaign in Russia, since,
when they were plundering a foreign country, they could not be troublesome at
home ; otherwise his policy was that of a masterly inaction, which served his
purpose better than he knew, for he was the natural heir of whatever conquests
Demetrius made by his connivance and failed to keep. He does not seem to have
been capable of a deep laid scheme to use Demetrius as a tool for the conquest
of Russia, and Russian patriotism as a tool for the overthrow of Demetrius, in
order that the ensuing anarchy might make it easier for him to win the battle of
Klowchino. He was not, perhaps, the dupe, scarcely the accomplice, certainly not
the originator, of the fraud ; but it was not unnatural to suspect Polish
ambition of a plot which seemed for a moment about to end by giving Poland the
vast empire of the czars.
Before that moment and after it, there was another
theory favoured by those who believed Demetrius to be an impostor, but thought
his imposture too clever to be the unaided work of all ignorant adventurer. We
have already alluded to the report which connected a Jesuit confessor with the
first announcement of his claims, and in the
seventeenth century nothing was more natural than to suppose that the
whole intrigue was planned, prepared, and executed ad majorem Die gloriam
by those faithful sons of Loyola and Rome. It is a fact that the Catholic clergy
watched the fortunes of Demetrius with deep interest, and that as late as 1608
the reports, which represented him as still alive, were gravely discussed and
almost credited by the politicians of the papal court. Cilli an Italian, who
published an history of Russia in 1627, and was actually present at the first
interview between Sigismund and Demetrius, also describes as from his own
personal knowledge a solemn ceremony in which he abjured the errors of the Greek
church. Cilli's description of his mind and person is much less favourable than
any other which has been left us by those who knew him personally, and so public
a fact as his conversion could not well have been kept from the knowledge of the
Russians to whom of course it would have been the unpardonable sin. But the
Jesuits certainly hoped to be admitted into Russia by his authority; they
intended when there to do their utmost to heal the schism which divided the East
and Vest, and it was possible for a good Catholic,
The
official Russian view of the case was not much more carefully coroborated than
Demetrius' own story, but it was the only one which attempted seriously to show
who the pretender was if he was not the Czarowitch, and it incorporated with
itself all the features of romantic condition which arose spontaneously amongst
the people apart from foreign invasion. It is Russian legend that tells how
before any had seen the prince or knew where he was, traces of his passage and
promises of his return were scattered broadcast ; he had slept at a monastery,
and left a scroll to say the emperor world repay its hospitality ; he had
crossed a river and told the ferryman at parting to claim a royal recompense
when he came into his inheritance ; and though his agents were as invisible as
himself, it appeared to be certain that the Cossacks of the Don had heard and
were prepared to obey a voice which summoned them to overthrow the usurper and
proclaim their lawful sovereign. The same tradition designates one Gregory a
monk, or Outrepief, a monk who had cast off his frock, as chief director of this
agitation; the same individual bears both names, and such a person to all
appearance did run away from his monastery in the year 1603, and with two
companions of the same fibre subsisted for a time by robbery. This man, by all
accounts a drunken and ignorant reprobate, undertook, according to Boris, to
impersonate the dead Demetrius, and had very likely stolen the cross by which he
claimed to be recognised. The interval between the admitted dates of his flights
and his appearance at the court of Sigismund seemed, however, too short for the
mere son of a Russian pope to have learnt Polish and become a proficient in all
martial arts; and a fresh reason for doubting the sincerity of Boris' belief in
the suggestion supplied by an ambassador whom he sent to detach Sigismund from
the cause of the impostor. This person, Khroutschof by name, reported that an
uncle of the renegade Outrepief was at that moment in the service of the czar,
and even high in his favour, which proved conclusively that none of his
relations could be engaged in rebellion, since that was a crime always visited
on a whole family. This
consideration, which showed an intimate knowledge of the usages the Russian
court, encouraged the messenger to recognise in Demetrius the living image and
majesty of the terrible Ivan, and as soon after this the claimant's prospects
began to brighten, his low-life trouble vanishes from view. He was vaguely
supposed to have fallen into disgrace and returned to his monastery, where he
always maintained the truth of his first story ; if this were so it would prove
at last that Demetrius employed him without putting it in his power to betray
him, and a conspirator without a confidant is certainly a curiosity of history;
but our information as to his end is anything but precise, and it is just as
possible to infer from the uncertainty [End Page 265] which envelops his
whole career, that there never was such a person at all.
At this time Demetrius is described by those who knew
him intimately for several months as of middle height, with ugly, distinctly
Tartar features, dark, reddish hair and complexion, and an intelligent
expression; a perfect equestrian, brave to imprudence; active to restlessness ;
as little inclined to be governed by his friends as thwarted by his enemies; in
fact, a born ruler if taste and talent for the part could make one. This is how
he appeared to Captain Jacques Margeret, a Huguenot soldier of fortune, who,
after fighting under Henry of Navarre against the League, served against the
Turks in Transylvania and Hungary, and in 1600 proceeded to Russia
and received command of a company of cavalry from Boris Godounoff, whom
he served faithfully in the first encounters with Demetrius who made him captain
of his guards on his accession. Fortunately; for himself he was ill during the
Moscow massacre, after which he obtained leave to return to France, and gave De
Thou most of his information relating to Russian affairs. At the request of King
Henry IV. he wrote an interesting little work on the state of Russia, from which
many of our facts are derived. He was an impartial and intelligent observer, and
his admiration for Demetrius' soldierly and princely qualities is deep and
unfeigned. Cilli indeed, who
depreciates him systematically, says that he appeared awkward and confused
when first admitted to make his claim in the presence of the Diet; but against
this impression which might be the result of prejudice we may set the report
originated by Polish nobles as a salve to their national vanity. Those who had
entered Demetrius' service, in the hope of finding him a docile leader who would
distribute the treasures of Muscovy amongst his followers, found to their
surprise that they had given themselves a master who was not to be trifled with;
but they readily consoled themselves by asserting him to be a natural son of
their great king Stephen Batthori, since it was less shame to obey a Polish
bastard than a Russian prince. From all this it appears that Demetrius, se
non fit vero fu ben trovato, and his gallantry and unfortunate end have
naturally made him a favourite with the poets. Their view of the situation is of
course modified by theatrical exigencies ; but, where everything is guesswork or
divination, they should perhaps be consulted as better versed in those arts than
the historians.
Schiller's
dramatic fragment is sufficiently well known. His hero was brought up in
obscurity and ignorance of his parentage ; with a soul above his apparent
position, he fought and killed a Polish noble, was sentenced to death, and
recognised as the czarowitch by three boyars who happened to be present, and saw
the gold cross, already mentioned, hanging from his neck as he bared it to the
executioner. He had always been in
love with Marina, though hitherto hopelessly; he believes in the story of his
origin, which has been told him, and [End Page 266] while some are
convinced and others not, Marina and her father to make him serve the purpose of their ambition.
Hebbel, whose Demetrius was also a posthumous work, follows the
same plan thus far. Both represent him as acting in good faith, until after his
triumph; but neither ventures to admit the justice of his claims; they combine
the enthusiasm of his friends for his person, with the disapprobation of foes
for his cause. Schiller intended to herald the fall of Demetrius by his
discovery of the man who had really murdered the boy prince, but being badly
paid by Boris, carried off the cross which he wore, and adopted a child, not
unlike the family of Ivan in person, whom he caused to be brought up secretly,
to be an instrument of his revenge. Hebbel
had a brighter thought still. Ivan
had two sons of the same age ; the Empress Marfa was mother of one, and die
schone Barbara (a quite unhistorical personage) of the other. Nothing is
easier than to suppose first, that the faithful adherents of Ivan's dynasty
should try to save the last representative of it from the machinations of Boris,
by secretly causing these two children to be changed, and, secondly, that their
calculations should be falsified by the maternal affection of the said Barbara,
who faithlessly allows the lawful Ivanowitch to be murdered in his own person,
while her son survives to claim the empire.
Of
course it was natural enough for loyal and uncritical Russians to assert that
Demetrius had been recognised by his family, and by old domestics, who had had
full means of becoming. acquainted with his features. But later writers could
not help feeling that the "recognition" of a child of seven in a young
man of one and twenty, (who looked much older,) must have a good deal of opinion
and parti pris about it. The Dowager-czarina Marfa, to whose
evidence the common people attached much weight at the time, is therefore an
important character with our dramatists. She had seen her son murdered almost
before her eyes, but after fourteen years the evidence of the senses loses some
of its irresistibleness, and Schiller makes her resolve to acknowledge the
invader as her son, that she may be revenged upon Boris, partly for having
murdered that son, and partly for having kept herself a prisoner. T he Demetrius
who calls her mother is all that she could have wished her son to become, but
she does not know him--as, indeed, how should she ?--and he is murdered at
last, because she will not satisfy the rioters who have broken into the palace,
by swearing upon the cross, that he is indeed her child. Hebbel works the same
idea harder still. Marfa believes that nature will assert itself as soon as she
meets her son. She finds a hopeful young prince, whom she has every reason to
wish to recognise, but the voice of nature is obstinately silent; however, the
relations between the two are amicable, and it is generally believed in the army
that she has acknowledged him. In a scene with a confidante, she explains, that
her last hope of ascertaining the truth is to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of
the murdered child, whom she had so [End Page 267] long looked upon as
her own. The historical Demetrius was int[word unintelligible] at Ouglitch with
very little ceremony, and not molested until it occured to Schouiski to open the
grave, and see if his relics would show themselves to be those of a real son of
Ivan, by worldy miracles. Most opportunely, his body was then found to be [word
unintelligible] free from decay, and so was a bough of nuts which had been
buried with him, the very nuts (though this is the first we hear of them,) which
he had been trying to open with the fatal knife wounded him. The new saint,
however, failed to become popular the new czar rather overdid his part by
showing the same respect to the remains of Boris, and to those of his victim.
But this is parenthetical and premature. According to Hebbel the bones of
Demetrius rested in the church at Moscow where his father and brother were
buried; and there Marfa prays and weeps but without any effect so far as the
voice of nature is concerned. But just as she is leaving the church, a
suspicious mob takes umbrage at her visit to a tomb [words unintelligible] ought
not to have any interest for her now, and she is called upon for the sake of
Demetrius to command the removal of the plebeian.
Then at last, and most inconveniently, the voice of nature makes itself
heard ; she cannot bring herself to give the order, and though Demetrius himself
respects and shares her scruples, the popular in him is much shaken by them. The
final catastrophe is brought about by Barbara, the real mother, who accidentally
discloses herself and so shatters her son's confidence in himself and his
destiny, that he refuses to punish the most dangerous conspirators, and falls
victim to his clemency.
In resuming the thread of our narrative we need not
follow Demetrius through the varying success of his first military operation in
Russia, where he was accompanied by his future father-in-law a body
of Polish troops. His progress was slow, and in spite of his
defections--for the loyal Russians still looked upon Boris as
usurper--his success seemed doubtful, when the aspect of affairs changed
in 1605 by the death of Boris, from poison--self-administered, all
the world hastened to conclude. He left a son, Feodor, a youth of seventeen, to
whom the officers of the army swore fealty,[word unintelligible] except in
Moscow, the new government had no friends, and Barman one of the ablest of
Boris' generals, who had been sent again to Demetrius, suddenly joined his
standard, carrying with him the bu[word unintelligible] of the army, which was
not strong enough either in artillery or convictions to wish to measure its
strength against the invader. Resistance was at an end; Moscow opened its gates,
Schouiski, who had presided at the Ouglitch commission, declared that the body
which he had seen there was not that of the Prince Demetrius.
The sons of Boris were put to death, and his daughter Axinia was allowed
to take shelter in a convent, but not (so M. Merimee affirms of Russian
authority) till the arrival of Marina obliged the czar to break a liaison which
must have begun in the insolence of conquest, but [End Page 268]
threatened to become dangerously absorbing. We are told that Henry IV. was the
prince whom Demetrius had proposed to himself to model, but his career was too
short to test his fidelity to this [word unintelligible]lle. In other respects
his resemblance to the French king [word unintelligible] calculated to serve him
with his new subjects. His indifference to etiquette, his laxity in religious
matters, his preference for [word unintelligible] or " pagan "
customs, and above all his neglect of the Machiavellian precept, never to strike
when he did not mean to kill, developed in secret to prepare his downfall. The
arrival of his Polish [word unintelligible] hastened the crisis. Marina may have
been a clever and [word unintelligible]ous woman, but it is much more certain
that her vanity was [word unintelligible]ous and exacting. Contrary to the usage
of the czars, Demetrius believed that she should be crowned at the same time as
himself; it was scarcely possible to induce her to adopt, even on that one
condition, the national head-dress of Russian maidens and brides ; the
[word unintellible] of her adopted country failed equally to find favour in her
[word unintelligible] and it was looked upon as a grievous scandal by the
serious-minded portion of the community that the convent, where she was to
stay until the marriage was solemnised, had to receive foreign [word
unintelligible] musicians, and other frivolous ministers to her pleasures, at a
[word unintelligible] when she should have been piously preparing for her
reception at the orthodox church. The marriage, however, passed off without
[word unintelligible]er, though there were some sharp diplomatic encounters
between the czar and the ambassadors of Sigismund who had accompanied Marina, in
which Demetrius showed himself resolved to allow the dignity of the empire to
suffer any abatement under guardianship. The ambassadors kept a journal of their
travels and, besides giving many curious details about the barbaric [word
unintelligible]dour of the court of Moscow, is so explicit on this point, that
the common explanation of Demetrius' fall, jealousy of his leaning [word
unintelligible]rds Poland, appears scarcely intelligible. His real imprudence,
[word unintelligible]es those already alluded to, and a number of trifling cases
in which he had irritated or alarmed the susceptibilities of his people, and the
pardon of Schouiski, convicted of conspiracy, condemned to death, and then
released with the memory of unpardonable indignities
The first meeting between the czar and his adopted
mother did not actually take place till after his reception at Moscow, and of
course no one knows what passed between them in the short private interview
which was followed by a public embrassade.
Demetrius was at any rate prepared to do his duty to his relations, and
not very particular as to their number, for when about this time the Cossacks
set up another candidate for the throne under the name of Peter Feodorowitch,
that imaginary son of Irene and Feodor, whom Boris was accused of changing for a
girl--the czar only wrote to incite his supposed [word unintelligible]ew
to his court, promising to examine into his claims. Peter was too prudent to accept this generous offer, but it
was looked upon [End Page 269] as a fresh proof of Demetrius' mildness of
disposition to have it. He held that men could be governed either by severity or
liberality, and both methods being equally efficacious he preferred the latter.
The most serious of the charges made against him way he dissipated the treasures
of the Kremlin instead of, like his predecessors, adding something to the hoard
; but this may have been a necessity of his position in which he had to buy both
the savor his foreign auxiliaries and the suffrages of his own countrymen at
least, of their chiefs.
A conspiracy in Russia is not so rare an event that
we need [word unintelligible] far for its explanation. In his history of Russia
dated the year [word unintelligible] Levesque speaks once of a rebellion, adding
in apologetic parenthesis that it is merely allowable to use the word of
republicans who dispute about the name of their chief.
Demetrius was as much victim of a seditious rebellion as if his title to
the crown had been above dispute. In May 1606, when he had reigned nearly eleven
months, the outbreak took place. Schouiski and other discontent nobles were at
its head, but it is a significant fact that the cry which they used to raise
Moscow was not "Down with the impostor," but " The Lithuanians
(the Poles) are murdering the czar." While loyal Russians prepared to
massacre the strangers who were quartered in different parts of the city, the
conspirators proceeded to storm the palace which was almost undefended.
Basmanoff offered a gall resistance, and was cut down ; Demetrius tried to
escape, but leaping from a window fell heavily and broke his leg. His cries
brought the insurgents to the spot, and for a moment it seemed as if he would
succeed in inspiring them with compassion and respect. But leaders called for
the death of the usurper; he was stabbed, and once fallen every one was willing
to strike. The mangled body was laid upon a table with its feet resting on the
corpse of Basmanoff defender, and one who saw it lying there afterwards, told a
captain his guard that to the best of his judgment the dead man had a beard
while Demetrius' chin was smooth. Meanwhile, the rioters had broken into the
women's apartments, calling for the empress with horrid menaces. Marina crept
under the farthingale (on this point all authorities agree) of the chief duenna,
who, at the risk of her life, asserted that she had already fled. The Polish
waiting-maids were carried off, it is best not to ask to what fate. The
conspirators were completely triumphant, and their first care was to demand
declaration from the Czarina Marfa to the effect that she had only acknowledged
Demetrius from terror and under compulsion, and that she knew he was not her
son. According to the Polish ambassadors her answer was:--" You
should have asked me when he was alive, but
now that he is dead he is no longer mine ;" a speech which has a
ring of reality about it, and is not without a kind of plaintive dignity.
Schouiski (Vasilowitch, he reigned as Basil) caused
himself to be elected czar, but his authority was disputed by the Cossacks, who
[End Page 270] again brought forward the czarowitch, Peter, and by the
King of Poland, who prepared to avenge the massacre of his subjects in Moscow.
Marina and her father were prisoners; but, according to Cilli, the Italian
historian, she had given out on the very night of the riot that her husband was
not killed, but had made his escape by a secret door. His body had been made
unrecognisable when it was exposed to the public, and this view, as we have
already seen, found credit with some. Such prompt thought for the future is not
perhaps conceivable on the part of a woman just escaped from death herself; but
the report is curious, as one more instance of the causes which make this
passage of history so exceedingly obscure. We have to do al1 throughout with
parallel duplicate versions of the fact as it was and the fact as some one
wished it to have been, and when only one of these has been preserved, we are
sometimes at a loss to know to which class it belongs. The belief that Demetrius
was still alive seemed to spread of itself, though another account traces it to
a parts of Polish nobles, flying from Moscow, who sent the news as a Parthian
shot against their national foe. An army was kept together in his name, with
Peter as regent; but a year passed; and nothing was heard of his whereabouts.
The town of Toula, which had been defended for some months against Schouiski,
was reduced to extremities; and Bolotnikoff, a Polish adventurer, and the
pseudo-czarowitch who had directed the resistance, surrendered on
condition that their followers might depart unmolested. Peter was hung and his
lieutenant drowned ; but they were less regretted than the gallantry of their
end deserved, for in July, 1601, the long looked-for Demetrius was found.
According to Baer, this man at first only claimed to be one of the Nagoi, and
related to the czar, on whose behalf he professed to be acting ; but he and his
party became the objects of suspicion, and he had greatness thrust on him by the confession under
torture of one of his companions. A Pole, Zaroutski, sent by Bolotnikoff
joined and recognised him, and he established his headquarters at
Touchino, twelve versts from Moscow, whence the name
audit of Touchino, by which he is generally known in history. Margeret,
who left France intending to join his old employer, was less accomodating than
Zaroutski, and transferred his allegiance to Sigismund.
The adventurer, strange as it may seem, succeeded in
making himself very dangerous to the new czar; and Basil, in the hope of
discrediting him with his supporters, resolved upon releasing Marina and her
father, Mniszek, on condition that they would return at once to Poland, and
testify to the death of the real, or at least their real, Demetrius. He appears
not to have known that they had already been in communication with his
successor, and had received letters from the robber in which he did not even
take the trouble to imitate the handwriting or the forms of address used by
Demetrius. They accepted
Schouiski's proposals, and started with a small escort of [End Page 271]
cavalry; but, most probably by arrangement with him of Touch, they were waylaid
and brought to his camp. He invited Marina to acknowledge him as her husband,
and to share his fortunes instead of returning to Poland to face the contempt of the world. [Word unintelligible] scruples suggested by
self-respect, morality, pride of birth, (the [word unintelligible] was
credibly reported to be an escaped convict,) may readily be imagined. Mniszek,
though he was completely ruined by his unsuccessful
adventure, opposed the shameful bargain. Marina consented.
The strange step has been explained as the recklessness of a desperate
ambition, and extenuated by the statement of two contemporaries that her consent
was conditional upon the promise of her support of her husband to defer all
claims upon her till after his triumphal entry into Moscow, after which the
marriage ceremony was to be performed privately. If such a treaty were ever
made, it was certainly not observed, and what we know of Marina's former life
seems to show that her bandit spouse judged rightly in making his first
appearance her vanity ; she had left Poland to share the throne of the czar, and
rather than return to be pitied as the dupe of one impostor, she was willing to
become the victim of another. What is called her ambition seems rather to have
been a confused instinct, leading her as long as there was a pretender to the
crown unmarried or unhung wish to link her destiny with his.
The second Demetrius did not resemble the first in
point of bravery; his army was being hard pressed, and fearing perhaps the fate
of the pretender Peter he took to flight, leaving Marina behind.
We are not concerned with the troubles of Russia, which are matter of
common history, and it is enough to say that the headless are dispersed, part
joining Sigismund and part Basil, while the Cossa under Sapieha offered to
conduct Marina to Poland before enlisting with whoever bid highest for their
services. With infatuation [word unintelligible] almost heroic she refused,
harangued the Cossacks and with faithful body of fifty rode off, disguised as a
man, to join her brig who had taken refuge at Kalouga. He seems from this time
to have abandoned himself to intemperance and the passions of a petty tyranny.
The Lutheran minister Baer, who, like Captain Margeret, is our informant
respecting what took place under his own eyes, owed his life and that of his
congregation to Marina's intercession with her husband, and we are told that a
duplicate Peter Fedeorowitch was hung by command of his putative uncle. The
cause of Basil was [word unintelligible] by the battle of Klouchino, won for
Sigismund by the gallantry of the Hetman Zollkiewski, and followed by the
defection of Bay mercenaries. The advance of the Poles made the profession of
[word unintelligible] tender diminishingly profitable, and the troops which
still followed Demetrius were compelled to confine their ravages within narrow
limits. His end was on this wise.
The father of one of his followers invited his son to desert the impostor, the
son denounced him, and the father was executed by being thrown into a hole in
the ice of [End Page 272] Oka. There was little honour or humanity in the
camp, but still the spectacle of a son betraying his father to death excited
indignant murmurs. A Tartar prince resolved to punish the parricide, but misled
by the dress killed some one else instead; he was thrown into prison, and though
soon afterwards released, continued to meditate vengeance on Demetrius : in
December 1610 the opportunity presented itself; the two were out riding
together, and as the impostor stooped
to drink at a stream he was shot down.
Shortlv afterwards Marina gave birth to a son, and
with this new claimant to the imperial dignity and the Hetman Zaroutski she
continued to wander about the Kirghiz steppes for some years, trying without
much success to raise the Cossacks. It must have been during a short
disagreement that Zaroutski gave his support to the third Demetrius, or tyrant
of Pskof, which town acknowledged him a short time; this adventurer had scarcely
time to arise from obscurity ; he is said to have been a fugitive deacon,
Isidore, and he as denounced as an impostor by some persons who had known the
first Demetrius, and promptly hung. Meanwhile, the disorders of Russia were
drawing to a close. The danger of a Polish conquest had awakened whatever
patriotism was left in the country, Michael Romanoff was elected Czar, and in
July 1614 Zaroutski was surprised and brought to Moscow. He was impaled as a
traitor and rebel, Marina was imprisoned in a monastery, where it is not likely
that she as allowed to survive long, her son a child of three years old was
strangled. The last echo of the whole wild story died out thirty years later
with an attempt to reproduce the incidents of its opening chapter. In 1644 a man
calling himself Ivan Dimitrowitch professed that the Cossack chief Sapieha had
adopted him, intending if possible change him for the person of Marina's infant
son, if not to bring him up as that son, but the invention made little noise and
its author afterwards confessed the fabrication and stated his real name to be
John Faustin.
The
first reflection suggested by this chapter of historical romance, will perhaps
be one on the amazing credulity of mankind, but the second will not less
certainly be on the helplessness of the critical judgment. Either the Demetrius
who married Marina and was owned czar was the son of Ivan, or he was not. Half
his contemporaries took one view, and half the other, and neither side seems to
have had the slightest rational ground for their conviction. Impartial
posterity, after all the attention it has given to the law of evidence, is just
as much at the mercy of the hardest swearing as ever. If Demetrius had lived at
the present day, he would have had to describe his nursery at Ouglitch and to
tell the names of some of his playfellows, and perhaps what prayers he said at
bed-time; but one nursery is very like another, and out of a certain
number of boys one sure to be John or Peter, so that his cross-examination
would not [End Page 273] have thrown much light on the subject. When a case arises, as it sometimes will, in which the truth
of a disputed statement is only certainly known to two or three people, it is a
matter of mere accident whether any extraneous circumstances comes to light or
not, which might serve to test the conflicting accounts inspired by conflicting
interests. Demetrius by his own
admission, had been lost sight of for so long that he had little to fear from
indirect tests of his veracity. It
was perhaps a little strange that a boy of seven, or as some say ten, should not
have remembered persons or incidents which would place his identity beyond a
doubt, but some people have a way of forgetting, and an inobservant child might
yet be nobly born. It was strange
that he should speak his mother tongue (Russ) like a foreigner, and Polish,
which he was supposed to have learnt as a youth, with ease and fluency.
It was strange that none of the persons amongst whom he had lived from
year to year, were summoned to tell what they knew and what was formerly
believed about him, but if for greater security they had purposely been misled,
of course the discrepancy between their accounts and his would prove nothing.
Things as strange as the escape and seclusion of Demetrius can be
believed upon trustworthy evidence, but what the critics of the time failed to
see with sufficient clearness was the essential untrustworthiness of an
interested witness. There were two
alternatives: to believe a strange
story on the authority of the person benefited by its truth; or to assume
provisionally without positive evidence what is not strange at all, that a
clever rogue should covet a rich inheritance.
The onus probandi certainly lay with the pretender, but as we have
seen, public opinion was not exacting in its calls on his invention; Captain
Margeret tells us as an illustration of the primitive simplicity of Russian
manners, that if anyone, even the czar himself, made an erroneous assertion, his
companion, instead of “I beg your pardon,” or such polite form of dissent,
would respond in plain Russ, “Thou liest.”
While such Arcadian frankness prevailed, of couse an honest Russian would
believe what he heard, for no better reason that that somebody said it; the
consequence was, that people said a good deal which was not precisely true, and
the consequence of that was that the belief which they inspired was not perhaps
quite as hearty as it seemed to be unanimous.
It is perfectly true, as Levesque argues, that if Demetrius, using a
little more caution and severity, had suppressed the insurrection in which he
actually fell, he would have gone down to posterity as a legitimate and
illustrious prince, and the romance of his early life would have ranked in
history with the adventures of Gustavus Vasa, or Kind Alfred.
But an appeal to the vox populi proves too much; under Feodor,
Demetrius was murdered, under Boris he died in a fit, under Demetrius, of course
he was alive, and after the death of his representative, though a change of
dynasty left [End Page 274] opinion free as to details, it was
self-evident that a czar who had been murdered was a usurper.
Seriously considered, the case for Demetrius hardly amounts to more than
that his enemies failed to prove his identity with Outrepief; the disappearance
of Outrepief, we may admit, proves very little, because on the hypothesis of
imposture, we should look for the original of the claimant, amongst persons of
obscure birth and doubtful history, and such persons may have many motives for
keeping out of sight. But the
obscurity of his antecedents is a sufficient explanation of the difficulty, or
as it may be, the impossibility of tracing them.
The undoubted personal merits of the first Demetrius have contributed to
make historians reluctant to denounce him as a common impostor, and we have
already pointed out one loophole for a charitable construction.
Supposing him to have been entirely ignorant of his parentage, he could
not be certain that he was not Marfa’s son, and as a foundling always hopes to
be of noble descent, it is just barely possible, that he was a willing dupe of a
rumour which said that the Czarowitch Demetrius was of his age, was in his
neighbourhood, was unknown to himself, and to everyone else; so many points of
resemblance were surely enough to convince a man of what he wished. Margeret, who believed in him, concludes his discussion of
the Jesuit theory, by arguing that if they had taken one boy by chance out of
five hundred, and trained and tutored him for the part, they could have had no
reasonable expectation that their pupil would be able at twenty to do all that
Demetrius did. But this reasoning savours rather too much of divine right to
seem conclusive now, for if the whole of his story had been true, nothing in his
situation would have been changed, except his parentage, and descent from a
peculiarly ferocious lunatic is a doubtful advantage. On the whole, we may say that Demetrius’s success, so far
as he did succeed, was owing to the faculty of the Russians for believing in
flocks, while his fall was really the indirect consequence of his baseless
claim, for if he had been heartily believed in by his new subjects, the
conspiracy against him would have broken down; and, he would have been believed
in, if there had been a knot of faithful followers, watching over him from
childhood, and preserving the tradition of his identity unbroken.
H. Lawrenny.