Polish cannibals in the Kremlin, or Why the boyars let the troops of the interventionists into the capital

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Anything has happened over the centuries of Russian history. Unfortunately, shameful events also took place. In 1610, with the actual support of the Russian government, Polish troops entered the Moscow Kremlin. This step led to the complete loss of state independence and international influence. This turned out to be the apogee of the Time of Troubles marching across Russia.

Betrayal of Russia by its own elite and deposition of Shuisky

The Polish invaders, led by False Dmitry I, invaded the borders of the Moscow state even under Boris Godunov. During the rebellion raised by Shuisky, the impostor was killed. However, Shuisky did not enjoy great authority. By 1610, he finally lost his power, in fact, ruling only part of the Russian territories. Boyars, striving to remain in power and not lose capital, decided to enlist external support, taking advantage of the strife in their own state. Shuisky was deposed by them, and a 15-year-old Polish prince was invited to the throne. True, an ultimatum was put forward: the Pole's acceptance of Orthodoxy and the transfer of basic state powers to the Boyar Duma. In the summer of 1610, a Russian delegation came to negotiations with the Polish authorities.

Sigismund III did not object to the conditions, even agreeing to change his son's faith. He was ready to make any promises, realizing that the main thing was to get power. On August 17, an agreement was signed on the entry of the Polish prince into the kingdom, and the Russian ambassadors swore allegiance to him. In itself, Vladislav's accession to the Russian throne at first did not cause rejection among the people. It was assumed that the Moscow land would become equal to Poland without any attempts to impose Catholicism.

Dissatisfaction with new managers and violent catholicization

However, the Poles set out to curb the half-savage Russians by Catholicism, showing not the slightest respect for the traditional local faith. According to the eyewitness of Bussov, precious vestments, jewelry and decorations made of precious stones and pearls were removed in Moscow churches. Polish soldiers quickly grew rich on the plundering of Orthodox churches. Only yesterday the influential Moscow state found itself in final decline, virtually ceasing to exist in its current impotence. The boyars who contributed to this situation did not even know themselves how to be and to whom to bow.

Polish troops at that time were close enough to Moscow: in the Khodynskaya floodplain and on the Khoroshevsky meadows. The hero of the Battle of Klushin, hetman Zholkiewski, was authorized by any means to ensure the accession to the Russian capital of the young Vladislav. From that moment on, for the next two years, a Polish military garrison headed by Alexander Gonsevsky was stationed in Moscow. At the same time, the participation of the Russian boyar government in state affairs slipped to a minimum. One of the conditions of the agreement concluded with the Poles was the extradition of Shuisky. And already on October 29, 1611, the captive deposed ruler was being transported along the Warsaw streets in an open cart, who had to publicly bow before Sigismund III and openly admit himself defeated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a Polish triumph and at the same time a loss of Russian honor.

The people's militia, the defeat of Hetman Chodkiewicz and the non-intervention of Sigismund

By the spring of 1611, Trubetskoy's Cossacks, who were not indifferent to the fate of the Russian state, laid siege to Moscow. They were joined by a militia formed in the vicinity. The Polish army of Chodkiewicz moved to rescue the besieged. Taking into account the current situation, the second militia was immediately assembled in Yaroslavl by Minin and Pozharsky, also heading to the scene. In the battle that took place between the Polish conquerors and the rebellious Russian defenders, the latter won an undeniable victory. Having defended the approaches to the city, the militias took control of part of the territory of Moscow. However, the Poles barricaded themselves in the Kremlin continued to resist.

The Russian leaders decided not to waste extra energy on the assault, but to wait until the Poles, doomed to starvation, surrender themselves. Pozharsky even offered the enemy life and freedom in exchange for voluntary surrender. However, the Poles rejected these conditions, counting on the ambulance of King Sigismund. The latter, having learned about Chodkiewicz's defeat, took a wait-and-see attitude, not in a hurry to rescue his compatriots.

Hunger siege, corpses in the Kremlin and the beginning of the reign of the Romanovs

At first, the besieged Poles fed on old supplies. Further, dogs, cats and pigeons were used. As the Polish historian Waliszewski wrote, the soldiers who did not surrender were digesting the parchment found in the Kremlin, receiving a vegetable component from it as a meager food. It was not only the Poles who suffered. Together with them, the Russians who were taken hostage were starving outside the Kremlin walls. They also risked their own lives, because the aliens, distraught with despair, could take any steps.

After the Russian captivity, the enemy Colonel Budzilo, who was present in the Kremlin in those days, described terrible pictures of human despair. He argued that fathers ate their own children, gentlemen ate servants. The corpses of comrades who died of hunger were also used for food. Then the Poles switched to the Russians. Boyar families were locked in their backyards from the hungry madmen at all locks. Mikhail Romanov, the future first tsar of the Romanovs, was also hiding in one of these.

This horror was ended by the will of the Russian troops. On November 1, 1612, the people's militia took Kitay-Gorod by storm, forcing the Polish occupiers to open the gates of the Kremlin. The few survivors went under escort to the Russian prison, some of them even returned later to their homeland. The boyars with Fedor Mstislavsky at the head, one of the organizers of the surrender of Moscow to the Poles, were also rescued. On July 11, 1613, Mikhail Fedorovich was crowned reign within the walls of the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, which marked the coming to power in Russia of the Romanov dynasty.

The liberator of Moscow, Prince Pozharsky, was too good to be a new king.