Part 6 (1/2)
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS OF RUSSIA.
A.D. 1603-1606.
Ivan the Terrible of Russia, having murdered his eldest son, left the crown to the next, Feodore, a prince so feeble in body and mind that the government of the country had to be committed to the care of his brother-in-law, Boris. This bold and unscrupulous man aspired to the throne, but between him and the imbecile who occupied it stood Demetrius, another child of the late monarch. The Regent left this boy to the care of his mother, the Dowager Czarina, under whose charge he attained to the age of ten. One afternoon of May 1591, the child was playing with four other boys in the palace courtyard, his governess, nurse, and another female servant being close by. According to the testimony of these persons he had a knife in his hand. For a moment he disappeared, and the next instant was discovered dying, with a large wound in his throat; he died without uttering a word. Suspicion of foul play was at once aroused, and some known emissaries of Boris being discovered in the neighbourhood, they fell victims to the fury of the populace. The Regent inst.i.tuted an inquiry, and the result was a verdict that the boy had died from a wound accidentally inflicted upon himself. The towns-people were either put to death or dispersed for their hasty judgment upon the supposed a.s.sa.s.sins, the palace was razed to the ground, the flouris.h.i.+ng town turned into a desert, and the Dowager Czarina forced into a convent. The slovenly way in which the inquiry had been made, the fact that it had been conducted by creatures of Boris, that the body was never examined, nor the knife compared with the wound, together with the attempted obliteration of all surrounding dwellings, afford very strong evidence that a murder had been done, and by the instigation of the Regent; but that Demetrius died there can scarcely be the shadow of a doubt.
After seven years Feodore died, and Boris succeeded in obtaining the vacant throne. Hated and feared by all cla.s.ses, the whole country was longing for a change from his tyrannical rule, when a rumour came from the Lithuanian frontier that Demetrius, believed to have been murdered at Uglitch, was still alive, and in Poland. Amid the many contradictory reports, one main fact was positively proclaimed--that was, the young prince was alive, and preparing to contend for the throne of his ancestors.
The story which this aspirant to empire gave to Prince Adam Wiszniswiecki, of Brahin, in Lithuania, in whose employ he was, was that the physician in attendance upon him (Demetrius), having been solicited by Boris to destroy him, consented, but instead of doing so, subst.i.tuted the body of a serf's child for that of the to-be-slain prince, and safely carried off the heir presumptive, and placed him in the charge of a faithful adherent of the royal family. Unfortunately, both the physician and the faithful guardian being dead, the tale had to be received for what it was worth; nevertheless, the unknown produced a Russian seal, bearing the name and arms of the Czarevitch, and a valuable jewelled cross. This was in the summer of 1603, when Demetrius, if living, would have been about twenty-two--an age apparently corresponding with that of the claimant to his name.
Visitors arrived who quickly recognized their resuscitated prince; warts which the late Emperor's son had had on the forehead, and under the right eye, were discovered, whilst one arm being longer than another was a still surer sign. The deportment and acquirements of the young pretender were suited to his birth, not the least of them being his good horsemans.h.i.+p and skill in fencing. The Poles, ready for mischief, espoused his cause; George, the Palatine of Sandomir, gave him his daughter in marriage, and the Pope of Rome, upon his secret confession of the Catholic faith, sanctioned his pretensions. Thus encouraged, he invaded Russia with a small force, and, a.s.sisted by a variety of conflicting circ.u.mstances, including the sudden death of Boris, in the course of a few months found himself the undisputed master of the whole empire. On the 20th of June, 1605, the adventurer entered Moscow in state, amid the acclamations of believing mult.i.tudes.
On entering the church of St. Michael, the pseudo Demetrius, according to all accounts, acted his part admirably; kneeling before the tomb of Ivan, his face suffused with tears, he clasped his hands and exclaimed, ”O father! thy orphan reigns!--this he owes to thy holy prayers!” The audience was convinced, sobbed in unison, and from all sides arose the cry, ”He is the son of the Terrible!”
But a still more formidable test was to be undergone. The Dowager Czarina forsook the convent in which she had so long been immured to behold the man claiming to be her son. Demetrius went to meet her in regal state, and their first interview took place in a magnificent tent, specially prepared for the interesting ceremony. After they had been left together for a few minutes they came out, and threw themselves into one another's arms, in the full view of the enormous mult.i.tude which had a.s.sembled. Ivan's widow had recognized her son, and the new monarch was master of the situation. He respectfully conducted the Czarina to a carriage, walking bare-headed by its side.
In the capital he treated her with every attention, visited her daily, and provided her with a competent revenue to maintain her royal dignity. A few moments after the murder of her son at Uglitch, she was on the spot and recognized the body; and yet, after having maintained for fourteen years her belief in his death, she came forward and recognized him in the successful adventurer, at the exact instant that recantation was worth any price.
Demetrius now set to work to govern with humanity and justice; both qualities quite unsuited to Russian tastes, who soon grew as tired of their new Czar as they had been of his predecessors. He appears to have been an able and forbearing man, but he outraged the n.o.bles by pointing out their educational deficiencies, and the Greek priesthood by a careless or irreverent demeanour towards their Church. This latter error was his ruin. The treasury being exhausted, he began to cast wistful glances at the swollen revenues of the clergy, who at once determined upon his destruction.
On the 29th of May, 1606, ”Death to the heretic!” rang through the streets of Moscow. The excited mobs, headed by priests and Shuiski, a discontented n.o.ble, who had previously been pardoned for conspiracy, broke into the palace, hunted their prey from room to room, until, already bleeding from a sabre wound, the unfortunate victim leaped out of a window into the court below, a height of thirty feet. He broke his leg in the fall, and fainted. The insurgents speedily found him, dragged him mid curses and blows into the palace, dressed him in a pastrycook's caftan in mockery, and taunted him as to his birth. The wretched man, collecting his strength, exclaimed, ”I am your Czar, the son of Ivan Va.s.silievitch!” when his agony was terminated by a shot from an arquebuss.
His followers were destroyed, his wife barely escaped with life, and every kind of indignity was offered to the Polish ladies in attendance upon her. The body of the murdered man, after lying exposed for some days, was unceremoniously buried without the walls, then disinterred and burnt, the ashes collected, and, to make sure of no further resuscitation, mixed with gunpowder and fired off from a cannon.
Shuiski, the leader of the revolution, was raised to the throne, but finding the memory of his predecessor still cherished by many, he sought to eradicate the feeling by proving him an impostor. The Dowager Czarina, ever complacent, gave him a written declaration that the deposed Czar was not her son; but the nation placed little reliance upon her testimony now. Shuiski then pretended to have discovered the body of young Demetrius in the ruins of Uglitch, and his clerical friends contrived a miracle for the occasion. When the body was brought to Moscow, they recognized the corpse as that of the real prince, and affirmed that by heavenly providence it had been preserved in its then condition--it being found quite uncorrupt, and the glow of life not even faded from the cheek. But this miraculous interposition did not satisfy everybody, and whilst the partizans of the late Czar were affirming that a body had been subst.i.tuted for the occasion, the whole country was roused to a state of frenzy by a rumour that the conspirators had murdered, burnt, and fired from the cannon's mouth _the wrong man_!
This time a subst.i.tuted corpse could not be produced. A civil war broke out, but it was some time before a suitable claimant could be discovered. At last a Lithuanian Jew was selected by the insurgents, who, aided by the Poles, advanced into Russia at the head of a large army. A feasible story was invented to account for the escape of the intended victim of the late ma.s.sacre; and to confirm the nation in the belief of his ident.i.ty with their late Czar, Marina, the widowed Czarina, publicly acknowledged him as her own Demetrius, lived with him as his consort, and had a child by him. Her father, the Palatine of Sandomir, also recognized him as his son-in-law, and in a short time almost the whole empire declared for him.
His reign, however, was short. Deserted by his foreign allies, he was forced to fly, and eventually was a.s.sa.s.sinated. His consort, Marina, died in prison, and Ivan, one of their children, although only three years old, was publicly hanged--the most ghastly act in the entire tragedy!
DEMETRIUS THE YOUNGER OF RUSSIA.
A.D. 1632-1653.
The account of this unfortunate young man is as romantic as any novelist could possibly desire. Its full details are probably only to be found in one work, and that one a work of great rarity and antiquity, by Jean Baptiste de Rocoles, historiographer of France in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The recital of Monsieur de Rocoles acquires greater interest from the fact that he himself derived a portion of his particulars from eye-witnesses, including the account of the hero's death, which was witnessed by an Austrian colonel named Bertrand.
According to the most reliable accounts of the defeat and overthrow of the second false Demetrius, his wife Marina was cast into prison, and their infant son, only three years old, publicly hanged. If this were true, and the following history veracious, the Czarina must have given birth to a second son whilst in captivity; but there does not appear to be any historic evidence on the point. The pretender always styled himself the son of the Czar Demetrius; not, of course, in any way admitting that there were two pseudo Demetriuses.
”The time of the confusion,” as it is styled in Russian history, was fruitful in the production of such impostors. Besides the two more important claimants already spoken of, and the man whose story claims this chapter, another false Demetrius was started, under Polish protection, in 1611; and a short time before that, a claimant to the t.i.tle of Czarevitch Peter appeared, and alleged that he was a son of the Czar Feodor the First; but after some short-lived success both perished.
According to the account of De Rocoles, the Czarina Marina, when thrown into prison by the murderers of her husband, escaped maltreatment by alleging that she was _enceinte_. This excuse was sufficient to preserve her from the terrible fate which befel many of her female attendants, but she was carefully guarded henceforth by her captors, who only waited for her child's birth to immediately put an end to its existence. Well aware of the fate which awaited her unborn babe, the ex-Czarina procured the body of a dead infant, and at her _accouchement_ had it subst.i.tuted for the male child which she gave birth to.
The newly-born boy was confided to the care of a Cossack woman, the mother of the dead babe, and was duly baptized Demetrius by a priestly confidant, and indelibly marked on the shoulder with a cross, to enable its royal birth to be proved when the opportunity arose. Some little time after this Marina found herself dying, and on her deathbed she confided to her attendants the stratagem by which she had preserved her son's life, and by them the secret was re-told to the Poles, who, four or five years later, came to Moscow with General Stanislas Solskonski.
In the meanwhile, the Cossack to whom young Demetrius had been confided, and who brought him up in ignorance of his paternity, died without having any opportunity, or at all events availing herself of it, to reveal the secret of the boy's birth.
The year 1632 arrived, and the youthful Demetrius had nearly attained his twenty-sixth year. Going one day, by chance, to bathe in a small river in the vicinity of the little town of Samburg, in Black Russia, where he lived, another bather drew attention to the marks on his shoulder, and upbraided him for coming to bathe with honest men, deeming that he had been branded for some crime. The poor young man endeavoured to excuse himself by protesting that he had been born with this cross on his shoulder, as, indeed, he believed he had; and upon his companions examining the marks, they perceived that, though they were legible, they were quite different to anything they had ever seen upon the body of a malefactor. The story of the strange cross upon the young man's shoulder was soon noised about all over the neighbourhood, and coming to the ears of John Danielonski, the Royal Treasurer, he desired to see Demetrius. A number of his domestics were sent after the unknown, and he was soon found and taken before the grand official, where the poverty of his attire, and the wretchedness of his condition, were apparent to all.
The Treasurer, having some presentiment or knowledge of the way in which the young Demetrius had been marked, spoke to the young man kindly, and bidding him cast off all fear, asked to be allowed to see the said figuring upon his shoulder. The unknown, who was of handsome form and features, drew open his poor vest, and baring his shoulder, showed the marks which had been tattooed upon him at birth.
Danielonski was enabled to trace the cross, but could not decipher the letters of which it was formed. A Russian priest, however, being found, he quickly read them, and affirmed that they stood for ”Demetrius, son of the Czar Demetrius.”