BORIS GODUNOV, IN RETIREMENT AT THE MONASTERY, INTREATED TO

(Painted for the HISTORIANS' HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Thure de Thulstrup)

[1598 A.D.] and the clergy, who, with a grasping avariciousness, kept aloof from the miseries that surrounded them, to open their granaries, and to sell him their stores of corn at half price, that he might distribute it gratuitously amongst the impoverished people. These exactions depressed the wealthy, and won the gratitude of the needy; but still they were insufficient to meet the whole demand of poverty. Great numbers died, and Boris, unable to provide sustenance for them while living, caused them to be buried with respect, furnishing to each corpse a suit of linen grave-clothes.

These benevolent exertions of Boris were viewed with distrust and malice by the nobility, who clearly enough discerned the policy that lay at the bottom. Their murmurs arose in private, and gradually assumed a sterner expression in public. At the feasts, and even in the court itself, the signs and words of disaffection could not be misunderstood. The insecurity of his position urged Boris to protect himself by a machinery of terror. Into a small space of time he crowded a number of executions, and consigned several of the discontented grandees to imprisonment and exile. His alarm magnified his danger, and supplied him with expedients of cruelty. At his own banquets he did not hesitate to rise up and denounce particular individuals, who were immediately seized upon by his adherents, and either put to death or cast into dungeons, or banished, and their properties confiscated to the state. Despotism penetrated to all classes; the peasantry, bound to the soil, were further oppressed by penal laws.

Amongst other sanguinary provisions, it was enacted that all the individuals of a family were held to be involved in the punishment of a single member. It was also declared that every Russian who passed beyond the frontiers was a rebel to his country and a heretic. A father was invested with all the powers of a despot in his hut, and allowed to inflict summary punishment upon his wife and children, the latter of whom he was permitted to sell four times; and this regulation was annulled only by the bondage to the fief, which substituted a worse tyranny for the domestic slavery. The merciless rule of Boris may be regarded as the consequence of his situation, which exposed him to hazards from which he could not escape except by some such decisive and terrible measures. The iron sway pressed down the expiring spirit of licentious freedom. The wandering minstrels who had hitherto travelled through the country, perpetuating in their songs the historical glories of Russia, and inspiring the people with proud sentiments of national emulation, disappeared. The metrical chronicles perished in the general dismay. The immediate result of this struggle to preserve the object of his guilty ambition was an extensive emigration of the peasantry, who fled from the scene of misery to embrace the wild freedom of the Cossacks or seek protection from the king of Poland; and an atrocious jacquerie succeeded, which was, for a short time, triumphant.9

Never had the government of Boris met with fewer obstacles; never had the authority of a czar appeared more firmly established. At peace with foreign powers, and quietly watching the conflicts of his neighbours, he applied himself to the task of civilising his people, of encouraging commerce, and of establishing an exact system of police in all the provinces of his empire. Every one of his acts was received with submission and executed with alacrity; but, nevertheless, all minds were agitated by a secret disquietude. The czar could not conceal from himself the aversion with which he was regarded by the Russians; all classes, nobles and serfs, alike detested him. He saw all his intentions, all his decrees interpreted as violations of the laws of the country. At this period of benighted ignorance the Russians, even of the

[1598 A.D.] higher classes, regarded foreigners with a kind of superstitious horror. They made no difference between a foreigner and an infidel, and applied the name of "pagan" indiscriminately to the idolatrous Tcheremiss, the Mussulman Tatar, and the Lutheran or Catholic German. Love of their country, or, to speak more correctly, of their native soil, was confounded by them with their attachment to their national religion. They called themselves the "orthodox people," and their country Holy Russia. Elsewhere than in that privileged land it was impossible, they believed, to obtain salvation. The early troubles of the Reformation in Germany had brought into Russia a large number

A FEMALE OSTIAK

of poor adventurers, who had sought to turn their superior knowledge to account. The people were not slow to perceive the pre-eminence of these foreigners in the arts and industry, but they only detested them the more on this account. The Germans were continually charged by the vulgar herd with a desire to corrupt the national faith, and to appropriate to themselves the wealth of the country. Boris, indeed, flattered them and invited them into his dominions, feeling that he had need of them to guide his subjects towards a higher stage of civilisation. But the commercial privileges and facilities which he granted to Livonian and German merchants only served as a pretext to the most terrible accusation which could be brought against a sovereign — that of betraying his country and his religion. He sent eighteen young gentlemen to study in Germany, France, and England; their families lamented them as doomed victims. On either side of the frontier all contact with foreigners was deemed a pollution.b

The False Dmitri Appears

Suddenly, a surprising rumour was brought from the frontiers of Lithuania, and spread with incredible rapidity through all the provinces of the empire. The czarevitch Dmitri, who was believed to have been assassinated at Uglitch, was still living in Poland. Having been favourably received by a palatine, he had made himself known to the principal nobles of the republic, and was preparing to reclaim his hereditary throne. It was related that he had wandered for some time in Russia, concealed beneath the frock of a monk. The archimandrite of the convent of the Saviour at Novgorod Seversk had given him a lodging without recognising him. The prince had proceeded thence to Kiev, leaving in his cell a note, in which he declared that he was Dmitri, the son of Ivan the Terrible, and that he would one day recompense the hospitality of the archimandrite. On the other hand it was stated that the persons worthy of belief had seen the czarevitch among the Zaparogian Cossacks, taking part in their military expeditions and distin

[1603 A.D.] guishing himself by his courage and address in all warlike exercises. The name of the ataman under whose orders he had enrolled himself was also given. Other authorities declared that they had seen the same person at the same time studying Latin at Huszcza, a small town in Volhinia. Though reports were contradictory as to details, they all agreed on this one pointthat Dmitri was still living, and that he intended to call the usurper to account for all his crimes.b

Who was the personage whom the Russian historians have called the "false Dmitri." Was he really the son of Ivan the Terrible, saved by the foresight of the Nogai from the assassins' knife and replaced in the coffin, as he related, by the son of a pope (Russian parish priest)? Was he, as the czar and the patriarch proclaimed him, a certain Gregori Otrepiev, a vagabond monk who was for a time secretary to the patriarch Job and was thus enabled to surprise state secrets-who in his nomadic life afterwards appeared amongst the Zaparogians, where he is said to have become an accomplished rider and an intrepid Cossack? To all these questions, in the present state of our information, no absolutely certain answer can be given. Kostomarov compared the handwriting of the pretender with that of the monk Otrepiev and affirms that they do not resemble each other. Captain Margeret knew people who conversed with Otrepiev after the pretender's death. Not to prejudge the solution we will give this last not the name of Dmitri but that of Demetrius, with which he signed his letters to the pope.

About the year 1603 a young man entered the service of the Polish pan, Adam Vichnevetski. He fell or feigned to fall ill, sent for a Catholic priest, and under the seal of professional secrecy revealed to him that he was the czarevitch Dmitri, who had escaped from the assassins of Uglitch. He showed, suspended from his neck, a cross enriched with precious stones, which he asserted that he had received from Prince Mstislavski, the godfather of Dmitri. The priest dared not keep such a secret to himself. Demetrius was recognised by his master Vichnevetski as the legitimate heir of Ivan the Terrible. Mniszek, palatine of Sandomir, promised him his help. Demetrius had already fallen in love with Marina, the eldest daughter of Mniszek, and swore to make her czarina of Moscow; the father and the young girl accepted the proposal of marriage.

Meantime the strange tidings of the resuscitation of Dmitri spread through the whole kingdom of Poland. Mniszek and Vichnevetski conducted Demetrius to Cracow and presented him to the king. The papal nuncio interested himself in his behalf; the Jesuits and Franciscans worked in concert for his conversion; in secret he abjured orthodoxy and promised to bring Moscow within the pale of the Roman church. He corresponded with Clement VIII whose least servant, infimus cliens, he declared himself to be. Thus he was recognised by the king, the nuncio, the Jesuits, and the pope. Did they really believe in his legitimacy? It is probable that they saw in him a formidable instrument of disturbance; the king flattered himself that he would be able to turn it against Russia and the Jesuits-that they might use it against orthodoxy. Sigismund dared not take upon himself to break the truce concluded with Boris and expose himself to Muscovite vengeance. He treated Demetrius as czarevitch, but only in private; he refused to place the royal troops at his disposal, but authorised the nobles who were touched by the misfortunes of the young prince to aid him as they might desire. The pans had no need of a royal authorisation; many of them, with the light-heartedness and love of adventure which characterised the Polish nobility, took arms.

H. W.-VOL. XVII. Q