the true religion and the empire. Like the cry of the figurative pelican re-echoing through the wilderness, the warlike summons from the Troitza passed along the wasted land; and met at length with response. The city of Nijhnie-Novgorod, advantageously situated at the confluence of the Volga with the Oka, had, since the reduction of Kazan and the decline of the Tartar power, advanced greatly in prosperity and importance. At a moment when Moskva, Velikie-Novgorod, and Novgorod-Sieverski were in alien hands the eastern city stood forth with enhanced prominence as the rallying-point of Russian freedom, and it was here that the exhortations and entreaties of the Troitza hegumen were most effective. As was usual in times of popular commotion, visions and portents were not wanting, and the religious enthusiasm of the people was wrought up to a high pitch. The anger of heaven, it was said, as the noise of these apparitions was spread from town to town and from monastery to monastery, had been visited on the land on account of the sins of its inhabitants; the Russian people had lightly sworn allegiance to successive sovereigns, and had as lightly shed their blood or driven them from the throne. Impious hands had been raised against the Lord’s anointed—hence these afflictions. It was decreed that before the work of liberation could be begun the people should purge themselves of their iniquities by a solemn and universal fast; for three days every one was to abstain from food, even the infants at the breast, though what measure of political responsibility could be brought home to the latter for the intrigues and revolutions of the past five years it would be difficult to say. The ideal of a God is usually that of a being who derives some not very comprehensible satisfaction from the contemplation of self-inflicted sacrifice or suffering of some sort, and it was quite in keeping with accepted ideas that the only remedy for the misery of a nation was—more suffering. At Nijhnie-Novgorod the patriotic upheaval produced more than unstable visions of the night, it brought to the surface of political action a man; princes and boyarins there were as usual, and some among them doubtless men of ability, but the most remarkable figure in the group of Nijhniegorodskie regenerators was one of humbler extraction, torn by the circumstances of the time from his normal rank in life, like a low-growing ocean-weed uprooted by the action of some violent pelagic disturbance. Kozma Minin-Soukhorouk, who arose as the apostle of the movement which had started into being in response to the beacon blaze from the Troitza, was a provincial starosta,
198 and by trade a cattle-dealer or, according to some accounts, a butcher. Like the peasant-girl of Domremy, his certificate for assuming the direction of affairs usually yielded to those of higher station was a supernatural “call”; S. Sergie had appeared to him and entrusted him with the task of arousing the slumbering consciences and national ardour of the Russian folk. Having convinced his fellow-men of the sacredness of the cause, Minin proceeded to convert their enthusiasm into practical support of its furtherance. “Give” was the cry, give every one, and give to depletion; goods, money, service, were asked of all, and those who had restricted ideas on the subject were brought into line by forced contributions. The emerged cattle-dealer, though good enough as an awakening influence, was scarcely fitted to conduct a campaign against the war-seasoned Polish troops, and the soldiery clamoured for a voevoda in whom they might have confidence. Such a one was forthcoming in Kniaz Dimitri Pojharskie, still weak from the wound he had received in the fight around Moskva, and under his command an army was formed which only delayed taking the field till it should have received sufficient support in men and money from the neighbouring lands. 1612Not till the end of April were the equipped forces ready to march, and by that time new dangers had begun to crop up like noxious weeds on a land that had too long lain fallow of settled government. The Kozaks around Moskva had begun to talk of Marina’s infant as the rightful heir to the throne, while at Ivangorod had arisen another phantom Dimitri, Ljhedimitri III., who had established himself at Pskov. It was time for the army of regeneration to be moving, though what it “carried in its stomach” was difficult to foreshadow. With the melting of the snows Pojharskie unfurled his standard, blazoned with a swarthy eastern Christ and thickly bestrewn with inscriptions, and led his troops towards Moskva. Vague as his political objective was, his crusade attracted adherents. At Kostroma, which a Russian kniaz held in the name of Vladislav, the people had arisen and declared themselves for Pojharskie. At Yaroslavl the citizens came forth to welcome the approaching army, with ikons and provisions and gifts for the voevoda in command. It seemed probable that a Dimitri might yet mount the throne of Monomachus. Here, however, the onward movement came to a sudden halt; Pojharskie was unwilling to lead his men direct upon Moskva, where Zaroutzkie and his Kozaks were encamped, lest they should be seduced, from sheer lack of alternative, to give in their allegiance to the adventuress Marina and her child, on whose behalf the Kozak leader was working. Pojharskie in fact, in the helplessness of a negative undertaking, was waiting upon Providence, and was not loth to receive the proposals which came from Velikie-Novgorod for the election of the King of Sweden’s brother to the tzarstvo. (Karl IX. had died in the winter, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Gustav-Adolf, brother of Karl-Filip.) But here again the double-edged difficulty arose which confronted every attempted solution of the succession problem; the House of Moskva, since the extinction of the independent Russian principalities and the disappearance of the Paleologi, was the only reigning family in Europe which professed the Greek faith, and with the dying out of the Ivanovitch line the supply of Orthodox Princes of the Blood came to an end. Hence the Russians must either submit to the elevation of a Tzar from the boyarin ranks, or persuade some foreign prince to adopt the indispensable dogmas. Pojharskie met the proposals of the Novgorodskie and Swedish agents with an inquiry on this matter of religion, and professed himself willing, if satisfied in this respect, to accept Karl-Filip’s candidature. It was doubtful, however, if the Lutheran Vasa would be more open to embrace Orthodoxy than his Catholic cousin had shown himself, and meanwhile, from the Troitza and the capital, kept coming urgent expostulations as to the dangerous stagnation on the part of the Russian vanguard. In July Pojharskie at last put his troops in motion and moved slowly towards Moskva, but turned aside from the army at Rostov to make a pilgrimage to the Souzdalskie monastery of the Saviour, where reposed the bones of his ancestors. The campaign was suddenly quickened out of its irresolute lethargy by the news that the hetman Khodkievitch was approaching Moskva with a relief force and the much-needed supplies for the Polish garrison. The Russian voevoda, still holding aloof from the Kozak encampment, threw his forces into the western end of the Biel-gorod, leaving to Zaroutzkie the eastern quarter confronting the walls of the Kitai-gorod. On the 22nd August the Lit’uanian army appeared on the western approaches of the city, and a wild scrambling engagement ensued, Pojharskie’s soldiery and the strielitz defending their lines from the attacks of the relieving force on the one hand, and the sorties of the Polish garrison on the other, while the Kozaks remained for the most part inactive. Along the banks of the Moskva on the south, at the Tverskie gate on the north-west, under the ramparts of the Kreml, and beneath the western walls of the Biel-gorod the combat was hotly waged, and evening found the Russians still interposed between the besieged and their succours. After a lull of a day’s duration the fighting was resumed at daybreak on the 24th; the hetman’s forces came into collision with Zaroutzkie’s Kozaks, and the freebooters of the Dniepr found themselves opposed by their fellows of the Don. The Russians, if fighting without cohesion, had the advantage of numbers and position, and the Poles were hampered by the baggage train which it was their object to convoy through the enemy’s lines into the Kreml. At mid-day, after having suffered enormously in his repeated attempts to force a passage through the Biel-gorod, Khodkievitch drew off his discomfited forces and retired to the Vorob’ev mountains, leaving his baggage and provision train in the hands of the enemy. Four days later he retreated towards Lit’uania. The effect of this national victory was to infuse more spirit into the measures taken to dislodge the Poles from the citadel; ill-feeling and suspicion still existed between the various elements composing the blockading army, but the leaders were at least able to arrange a concerted plan of action against the beleaguered garrison. The latter, who had seen with sinking hearts the Polish standards fade away down the Moskva valley, held out for some time against the assaults and summonses of their attackers, notwithstanding the sufferings they endured from lack of sufficient provisions. The stories recounted of parents feeding on the flesh of their children were probably exaggerations, and the starving to death of the hapless Patriarch Hermogen early in the year was a measure of severity rather than necessity, but the defenders and their Russian prisoners were undoubtedly in sore straits, and their surrender, unless relieved, a mere matter of time. In October the Kozaks under
