Battles of the First Militia with the Poles At the end of the summer of 1611, the situation for both the militia and the Poles was difficult. Each side did not have enough strength to deal the final blow to the enemy. But there were small military skirmishes almost every day. They arose during forays for salt

Moscow at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century. View of the city center from the north, along the valley of the Neglinnaya River, from the Kuznetsky Bridge. Reconstruction by M. Kudryavtsev.

There have been times in the life of our country when it seemed that it was inevitably in danger of destruction. And only by joining forces, “the whole world” was able to resist the enemy. It didn’t matter what class, what nationality a person belonged to, what education he had and where he lived, the problem was the same for everyone. Saving their homeland, people donated what they had accumulated to help the army and created military detachments. Such voluntary military formations were called “militia”. There have been several of them in Russian history. The first militia of 1611. Second militia of 1611-1612. People's militia of 1812. And finally, the people's militia in the Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

What happened in Russia and Moscow in 1611-1612? Why today, almost 400 years later, was a new (or rather, the old one revived) national holiday established on November 4? Answers to questions must be sought in perhaps the most tragic page of our history, known as the “Time of Troubles” or “Troubles.”

The events of the late 16th - early 17th centuries, called the Time of Troubles, became for the Muscovite kingdom, according to V. O. Klyuchevsky, a terrible shock that shook its deepest foundations. Russian people called the last years of the Time of Troubles “the great devastation of the Moscow state,” and foreign contemporaries called them “the Moscow tragedy.”

The origins of the Troubles, which exhausted the Russian state, go back to the reign of Ivan IV. On March 18, 1584, Tsar Ivan, who went down in history under the name Grozny, died while playing chess. His father killed his eldest son, Ivan, in a fit of anger in 1581; the youngest, Dmitry, was only two years old, and he lived with his mother, the seventh wife of Ivan the Terrible, Maria Naga in Uglich, which was given to the prince as an inheritance. Grozny's successor was his second son, Tsarevich Fyodor.

Contemporaries assess the personality of Tsar Feodor almost equally. Here is the opinion of the Polish ambassador: “The Tsar is small in stature, rather thin, with a quiet, even obsequious voice, with a simple-minded face, has a meager mind or, as I heard from others and noticed myself, has none, for, sitting on the throne during the Polish reception, he did not stop smiling, admiring first his scepter, then the orb.” Others called him a “sanctified king,” who avoided worldly vanity and thought only about heavenly things. In a word, “in a cell or in a cave - as Karamzin put it - Tsar Fedor would have been more in place than on the throne.”

Ivan the Terrible. 16th century portrait (National Museum of Copenhagen).

Ivan the Terrible, realizing that the throne after him would pass to the “blessed”, created a kind of regency council under his son. At first, Nikita Romanovich Yuryev, the Tsar’s uncle, enjoyed the greatest power in him. But he died, and the influence of another guardian, Boris Godunov, who was Tsar Feodor's brother-in-law, grew. Taking advantage of the tsar's gentle character and the support of his sister-tsarina, Boris, gradually pushing aside other guardians, began to rule the state individually. And he ruled wisely and carefully throughout the 14 years of Fyodor’s reign. It was a time of rest for the state and the people, who had experienced the recent fears and horrors of the pogroms of the oprichnina.

Under Godunov, the accelerated construction of stone kremlins began in Smolensk, Astrakhan, and Kazan. Moscow received strong walls of the White and Zemlyanoy cities, and new fort cities arose on the outskirts of the state. He took care of the serving people, partially freeing them from paying taxes, and established good relations with foreign countries.

And yet, the people did not have complete trust in Godunov: he was suspected of duplicity and deceit. After the tragic death of Tsarevich Dmitry in Uglich (1591), few doubted: who, if not Godunov, benefited from the death of a possible contender for the throne? And although an investigative commission headed by Godunov’s secret enemy, Prince V.I. Shuisky, sent to Uglich, confirmed that the prince was not killed, but that he himself stabbed himself to death in an epileptic fit, alarming rumors continued to circulate around Moscow.

In January 1598, the childless Tsar Fyodor died, there was no one left from the dynasty of Ivan Kalita who could take the throne, Fyodor’s widow Irina went to a monastery. Godunov, using the support of his sister and patriarch Job, managed to rally devoted people around him - and the Zemsky Sobor elected him king.

Moscow service people. Miniature from a handwritten book.

The beginning of Boris's reign met with universal approval. The Tsar cared for the poor, cruelly persecuted “evil” people, invited foreigners to the Russian service and provided benefits to overseas merchants. He paid his attention most of all to the organization of internal order in the country. But, alas, despite all this, the new tsar was not distinguished by state farsightedness. He turned out to be the first “bookless” sovereign in Russia, that is, practically illiterate. The lack of education, despite the presence of common sense and intelligence, narrowed the range of his views, and selfishness and extreme selfishness prevented him from becoming a truly significant figure of his time.

But the main thing is that he made a big strategic mistake. Having been elected to the kingdom by the Zemsky Sobor, he, according to V.O. Klyuchevsky, “should have held on tighter to his significance as a Zemsky chosen one, and he tried to join the old dynasty...”. He aroused the indignation and anger of the well-born nobles, who had suffered a lot under Ivan the Terrible and now wanted to limit the omnipotence of the elected tsar. Boris, feeling the discontent of the boyars and fearing for his power, created a network of police surveillance, the support of which was denunciations and slander. Disgraces, torture, and executions began. The king himself now spent all his time in the palace, rarely went out to the people and did not accept petitions, as previous kings did.

The beginning of the 17th century turned out to be an unusually disastrous time for the people: crop failures followed year after year. People ate grass, tree bark, leather, and talked about cannibalism. Entire villages died out. The people became embittered. Speculation in grain began, food riots, robberies, theft, pestilence... A conviction arose among the people: the kingdom of Boris is not blessed by heaven; if the Godunov family establishes itself on the throne, it will not bring happiness to the Russian land.

Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich - reconstruction of his appearance based on the skull, made by Professor M. M. Gerasimov.

Boris Godunov. 17th century portrait.

The year is 1604. Loud news spreads across Moscow: Godunov’s agents stabbed to death a fake child in Uglich, and the real prince is alive and is coming from Lithuania to claim his ancestral throne. This is how the main figure of the Time of Troubles appears - False Dmitry I. Who this man really was is still not known exactly. Although there has long been an opinion, dating back to Godunov, that the impostor was the son of a Galician petty nobleman, Yuri Otrepiev, monastically Gregory, later a runaway monk of the Chudov Monastery.

The named Dmitry was supported by the Polish king Sigismund, however, on strict conditions: having ascended the throne, Dmitry would return Smolensk and the Seversk land to the Polish crown, allow the construction of churches, assist Sigismund in acquiring the Swedish crown and promote the unification of the Moscow state with Poland. The Polish governor Yuri Mnishek also demanded his conditions from Dmitry (despite his influential connections, this man enjoyed the worst reputation in his fatherland) - to marry his daughter Marina, give her possession of Novgorod and Pskov, and pay his, Mnishek's, debts. Dmitry made promises to both the king and Mnishek, but subsequently fulfilled only one thing - he married Marina, with whom he was madly in love.

Marina Mnishek. Unknown Polish artist of the 17th century.

So, having received 40,000 zlotys from the Polish king and taking advantage of the people's dissatisfaction with Boris, Dmitry writes letters to the Moscow people and Cossacks, in which he calls himself the legitimate heir to the Russian throne. As he approaches the Moscow borders, his strength increases, Russians arrive at him from different directions and swear allegiance. Soon there are already 15,000 people in the impostor’s army, and Russian cities continue to betray Boris one after another.

False Dmitry I. Unknown Polish artist of the 17th century.

In the midst of the fight against False Dmitry, on April 13, 1605, at the age of 53, Tsar Boris unexpectedly died of an apoplexy. The next day, his remains were buried in the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin - the tomb of the Russian tsars. The people of Moscow, it would seem, swore allegiance to sixteen-year-old Fyodor Godunov without a murmur, but everywhere they heard: “Boris’s children will not reign for long! Dmitry Ivanovich will come to Moscow.” And indeed, Fyodor Borisovich did not reign for even two months. Knowing that False Dmitry I was approaching Moscow, the Moscow boyars rebelled and brutally dealt with the Godunov family: the Queen Mother Maria was strangled, the desperately resisting Fyodor was strangled, and his sister, the beautiful Ksenia, was imprisoned in a monastery. Boris's body was thrown out of the royal tomb and, together with the bodies of the widow and son, buried in the courtyard of the poorest Varsonofevsky monastery. (Only after the Time of Troubles were the ashes of Boris, Maria and Fyodor reburied in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.)

From Serpukhov, Dmitry rode in a rich carriage, accompanied by noble persons, and stopped in the village of Kolomenskoye. Here he was greeted with bread and salt and presented with expensive gifts. “I will not be your king,” said Dmitry, “but a father, the whole past is forgotten; and I will never remember that you served Boris and his children; I will love you, I will live for the benefit and happiness of my dear subjects.”

On June 20, 1605, the jubilant people solemnly greeted the new Tsar in Moscow. Having entered the Kremlin, Dmitry first prayed in the Assumption Cathedral, then visited Arkhangelsk, where he cried so sincerely at the tomb of Grozny that no one could even imagine that this was not Ivan’s own son. True, the monks noticed that the young tsar did not apply himself to the images exactly as a Russian person does, but they quickly found an excuse - after all, he was forced to live in a foreign land for so long.

And on July 18, the queen, nun Martha, arrived in Moscow. She, of course, “recognized” her miraculously saved son. Countless people looked at this spectacle with emotion, and now no one doubted that there was a true prince on the Moscow throne - such a meeting could only be a meeting between a son and his mother.

On the throne of the Moscow sovereigns, False Dmitry was an unusual phenomenon. Small in stature, ugly, awkward, his appearance did not at all reflect his spiritual nature: richly gifted, with a flexible mind, with a lively temperament, he knew how to speak well, and displayed a fairly diverse knowledge. For the first time in the history of Russia, the young sovereign tried to change the prim order of life of the old Moscow tsars, violated the customs of sacred Moscow antiquity: he did not go to the bathhouse, did not sleep after dinner, treated everyone simply, not like a king. Easy to use, with a cheerful, gentle character, willing and able to delve into state affairs, he quickly gained affection among the people.

And yet the new king made mistakes that cost him his life and doomed the country to even worse times. Although he had not yet fulfilled, and had no intention of fulfilling, his promises to Sigismund, the Russians were offended by the preference he gave to foreigners, emphasizing their superiority and despising Russian prejudices and customs. His wedding with Marina Mnishek and her coronation caused particular irritation. It seemed that the king, in the rapture of love, forgot about everything. Meanwhile, the nobles and servants, located in the houses of Moscow residents, behaved impudently and arrogantly. “Scream, scream, inappropriate talk! - exclaims the chronicler. “Oh, how fire will not come down from heaven and burn these damned ones!”

Noble cavalry of the 16th century as depicted by Sigismund Herberstein.

But, despite the impudence of the newcomers, the Moscow people still loved their king and were unlikely to rise up against him. The death of Dmitry was predetermined by the boyar conspiracy. The high-born boyars did not like the new tsar for his independence and independence; he did not live up to the expectations of the boyars, many of whom wanted to see in him only a figure who would rid them of Godunov.

On May 17, 1606, at dawn, the alarm sounded on Ilyinka. Not knowing what was going on, other Moscow churches began calling. The main conspirators: the Shuisky brothers, V. Golitsyn and M. Tatishchev - rode on horseback to Red Square. The people, running from all sides, heard Shuisky shout: “The Poles are beating the boyars and the sovereign: go beat the Poles!” The conspirators' task was to surround False Dmitry, as if for protection, and kill him.

Dmitry, trying to hide from his enemies, jumped out of the palace window, broke his chest, sprained his leg and lost consciousness for a while. This decided the fate of the impostor: he was captured and brutally killed. The body of the dead impostor, with a mask on his chest and a pipe stuck in his mouth, was placed on Red Square and burned two days later, the ashes were poured into a cannon and fired in the direction from which the said Dmitry came to Moscow.

Thus, after eleven months, the reign of this mysterious person ended.

Tsar Vasily Shuisky, not possessing the abilities of a ruler, did not last long on the throne - from 1606 to 1610.

The main conspirator, Prince Vasily Shuisky, ascended the throne. He, who came from a noble boyar family, was privately chosen by a few supporters. He was an elderly, 54-year-old man of small stature, nondescript, with sore, blind eyes, sparse hair and a beard. A man not so much smart as cunning, accustomed to lying and intriguing, Shuisky was afraid of everything new. In the meantime, he was worried that the late Dmitry would not “resurrect” again, and Shuisky ordered the relics of the prince to be transported from Uglich to Moscow. Queen Martha publicly repented that she had involuntarily recognized Grishka Otrepyev as her son. And the death of the prince, who became a new saint in Rus', was now officially attributed to Boris Godunov.

However, despite all efforts, rumors about Dmitry’s second miraculous rescue began to circulate throughout Russia. A new unrest in the country was gaining momentum. By the summer of 1606, Vasily Shuisky managed, relying on noble boyars, to strengthen his power in Moscow. But the outskirts continued to seethe. A peasant uprising broke out under the leadership of Ivan Bolotnikov. More than 70 cities went over to his side. The army of Bolotnikov, posing as the governor of Tsar Dmitry, besieged Moscow, settling in Kolomenskoye. The siege lasted two months. But the betrayal of the noble detachments who went over to Shuisky’s side doomed the uprising to defeat. Bolotnikov was later captured, blinded and drowned in an ice hole.

But the greatest danger for V. Shuisky was the impostor, who went down in history as False Dmitry II. He was nominated by the Polish gentry, and they were joined by the Cossacks under the leadership of Ataman Ivan Zarutsky. The new impostor turned out to be, oddly enough, similar in appearance to the previous one. And it was also unknown who he really was.

In the summer of 1608, False Dmitry II approached Moscow. He was unable to take the capital and stopped 17 kilometers from the Kremlin, in the town of Tushino - hence his nickname: “Tushino thief.” Soon Marina Mnishek was there too, and “recognized” him as her husband. For twenty-one months the new False Dmitry unsuccessfully besieged Moscow.

The government of Vasily Shuisky, realizing that it was unable to cope with the second impostor, entered into an agreement with Sweden. According to it, Russia renounced its claims to the Baltic coast, and the Swedes in return provided troops to fight. Under the command of the 28-year-old commander M. Skopin-Shuisky, the Tsar’s nephew, successful actions began against the Polish invaders. In response, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth declared war on Russia. After twenty months of siege, Smolensk fell. The Tushino camp ceased to exist because the impostor ceased to interest the Polish gentry, who switched to open intervention. False Dmitry II fled to Kaluga.

In April 1610, M. Skopin-Shuisky died under mysterious circumstances. He was loved by the people and supported by the leading nobility. And it was he who had the right to claim the Russian throne under his childless uncle. According to rumor, he was poisoned, and most likely on the orders of the king.

The tsar's brother Dmitry Shuisky, who did not possess military talents, was appointed leader of the Russian army after his death and was immediately defeated by the Polish troops. The path to Moscow was open. Now the Swedes, having failed to fulfill their promises, began to capture northwestern Russian cities. A threat loomed over Novgorod. The country, torn apart by internal contradictions and external enemies, was heading towards inevitable destruction. And then the boyars, dissatisfied with Shuisky, tried to raise a rebellion against the tsar.

Patriarch Hermogenes, who was constantly at odds with Tsar Vasily, out of a sense of legitimacy, came to his defense as the acting supreme power. Responding to the reproach of the rebellious boyars that blood was being shed because of Vasily and that Moscow alone had chosen him for the kingdom, Hermogenes said this: “Until now, Moscow has indicated to all cities, but neither Novgorod, nor Pskov, nor Astrakhan, nor any other city has indicated Moscow; and that blood is shed, it is done by the will of God, and not by the will of our king.”

And yet, the king’s fate was sealed. The coup took place in the summer of 1610. The nobles overthrew Vasily Shuisky from the throne and forcibly tonsured him as a monk. (Two years later he died in Polish captivity, where he was sent along with his brothers as hostages.) Power was seized by a group of boyars led by F. I. Mstislavsky. This government, consisting of seven boyars, was called the “seven boyars”. Soon it concluded an agreement on the calling of Vladislav, the son of the Polish king Sigismund, to the Russian throne, and thus opened the way for interventionists to Moscow.

There was a direct betrayal of national interests, although the boyars tried to somehow limit the power of the Polish prince under certain conditions. For example, he was not given the right to change folk customs, deprive of property, exile and execute without a boyar sentence, he was obliged to keep only Russians in positions, and could not build churches. And Moscow swore allegiance to Vladislav.

The election of Vladislav did not bring either the long-awaited peace or tranquility. The historian I. Timofeev compared the Russia of that time, deprived of a true tsar, torn to pieces with “a house without an owner, from where greedy servants steal away goods left unattended.”

Smolensk at the beginning of the 17th century. View of Georgievskaya Street. Reconstruction by M. Kudryavtsev.

Voivode Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky. Parsun of the 17th century.

Among the cities that rose up against the Poles, Ryazan was one of the first. The governor Prokopiy Lyapunov, who came from an old family of Ryazan nobles, rebelled against the invaders and the boyar government that betrayed the country. Occupying a prominent position in his homeland, he was known far beyond the borders of the Russian region. Sanbulov's warriors initially opposed Lyapunov from the Moscow boyars, who were supposed to unite with the Cossacks, supported by Sigismund. Lyapunov, having taken refuge in the Ryazan town of Pronsk, sent out calls for help in all directions. The first to respond was Prince Pozharsky, who was sitting in the voivodeship in Zaraysk. On the way to Pronsk, his detachment was joined by detachments of residents of Kolomna and Ryazan.

Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky. 17th century portrait.

Sanbulov, seeing a significant army in his rear, retreated. Pozharsky, having rescued Lyapunov from encirclement, solemnly entered Ryazan at the head of the united army. They were enthusiastically greeted by the people, and the local archbishop blessed Lyapunov and Pozharsky to fight the foreign conquerors. This is how the First Zemstvo (Ryazan) militia was born. The uprising of the Ryazan residents turned out to be a spark - cities, one after another, declared support for the liberation movement.

Already in February 1611, Russian troops moved towards Moscow from different parts of Russia. The First Militia included nobles, archers, serving Cossacks, black-growing peasants and townspeople, as well as “Tushino” boyars, governors and military men. It numbered, according to the Poles, more than 100,000 soldiers (the Swedes believed no more than 6,000 people).

Discontent also grew among Muscovites. The Poles and their allies - Lithuanians, Germans, Swedes - behaved impudently and arrogantly. The orders issued them “lists for estates,” that is, for the ownership of villages and peasants. Officers and soldiers mocked the Orthodox faith, and entering any house, they took whatever they liked. Trying to protect themselves, Russians were forbidden to keep any weapons in the house, to walk around the city with sticks and knives, or to belt their shirts (at that time it was impossible to hide anything in their bosoms). And everywhere in Moscow there were Polish spies and informers.

The Church of the Entry of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the Temple, on Lubyanka, stood opposite the vast estate of Prince Pozharsky.

According to the agents, it was restless in Moscow, Muscovites were agitating, or, as they used to say, “shouting”: “We stupidly chose a Pole as king...”, “You won’t sit here for long...”, “We didn’t choose the prince so that every brainless Pole would push us around...” Patriarch Hermogenes, thrown into prison for refusing to cooperate with the occupiers, secretly handed over from prison a letter in which he released everyone who swore allegiance to Vladislav from the oath. Hermogenes was tortured to death in prison, but he did his job: letters continued to circulate throughout Rus', calling on the people to resist.

Having learned about militia detachments approaching Moscow, the Poles, in order to prevent them from gathering together, decided to leave Moscow and defeat them one by one. In an effort to strengthen the walls of the Kremlin and Kitai-Gorod with additional artillery, they tried to force Moscow carters to drag cannons onto the Kremlin walls on their horses. They refused. A fight broke out, the soldiers began to destroy the shopping arcades, killing everyone. The news of the massacre in Kitai-Gorod quickly spread throughout Moscow, causing anger and indignation among its residents.

On March 19, 1611, the capital rebelled against the interventionists. Stubborn fighting took place mainly in the White City - on Nikitskaya, at the Yauzsky and Tver Gates. A participant in the battles, nobleman Samuil Maskevich, wrote about the resistance of Muscovites: “We will rush at them with spears, and they will immediately block the street with tables, benches, and firewood. We retreat to lure them out of the fence, they pursue us, carrying tables and benches in their hands, and as soon as they notice that we intend to turn to battle, they immediately block the street and, under the protection of their fences, shoot at us with guns.”

A particularly stubborn battle took place at Lubyanka, near the Vvedenskaya Church. There stood a detachment of Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky, to whom the gunners who lived nearby, the masters of the Cannon Yard, came to their aid. There has long been a street fence near the temple, which was closed at night and blocked the street for fear of “dashing” people. It was here that Pozharsky set up a street barricade, or, as it was called then, a “prison.” The fierce battle lasted two and a half hours, the Poles tried to break through the Russian defenses, but they were repulsed and, in the figurative expression of the chronicler, “trampled” into Kitay-Gorod. It was not possible to oust the rebels from the capital.

The next day, seeing that they could not cope with the rebels, the Poles set fire to the settlement. The wind drove the fire towards the Russians. Moscow is a wooden city, and the fire spared no one. Hetman Zholkiewski, a participant in these battles, writes in his memoirs: “In the extreme crowd of people, a great murder took place: the crying, screaming of women and children represented something similar to the day of the Last Judgment. Many of them, with their wives and children, threw themselves into the fire, and many were killed and burned... The capital of Moscow burned down with great bloodshed and loss, which cannot be estimated. This city was abundant and rich, occupying a vast area: those who have been in foreign lands say that neither Rome, nor Paris, nor Lisbon can equal this city in the size of its circumference.”

They managed to take the seriously wounded Pozharsky from the burning Moscow to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

By origin, the Pozharskys belonged to the highest nobility - their family descended from the younger line of the Rurikovichs. The famous Moscow scholar V.B. Muravyov writes: “From the seventh son of Grand Duke Vsevolod the Big Nest, who received the city of Starodub in the Chernigov region as an inheritance and therefore was called Prince Starodubsky, a branch of the Pozharsky princes separated in the seventh generation. Their founder, Prince Vasily Andreevich, fought under the banner of Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo Field. According to legend, he received his nickname - Pozharsky - from his main estate, which was devastated by fires in those hard years, which was not restored for a long time, and they began to call it Pogar, that is, a burnt place.

It was no coincidence that Prince Pozharsky fought with his enemies on the Lubyanka: here, opposite the Church of the Presentation, there was a vast courtyard of the prince with the adjacent territory. Only house No. 14, also known as the house of the Governor General of Moscow in 1812, Count Rostopchin, has survived in its rebuilt form.

In the nearby Church of the Entry into the Temple of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose parishioners were the Pozharsky princes, a militia shrine was kept - the image of the Kazan Mother of God. And only when the Kazan Cathedral was built on Red Square, the icon was moved there in 1636.

So, the detachments of the First, or, as it was then called, the Ryazan or Zemsky militia, approached Moscow, taking possession of all the entrances to the capital. The Poles in the Kremlin could hold out no more than three weeks. However, the militia was unable to take the Kremlin or close the blockade ring around the entire city. It was not so much a lack of strength that affected this, but rather internal strife and contradictions. There was no unity in the ranks of the militia. It was sharply divided into the nobility and the Cossacks. In order to give some organization to the diverse composition of the militia, its leaders Lyapunov, Trubetskoy and Zarutsky drew up an agreement on the creation of a Provisional Council (government), which was supposed to be in charge of military affairs and deal with all emerging issues. But the document protected primarily the interests of the nobles. In addition, punishments for robbery and self-will were increased, and this could not please the “free” Cossacks.

On July 22, 1611, a Cossack revolt broke out. P. Lyapunov, without taking security, went to the Cossacks to give explanations about the forged letter, where he allegedly, in order to suppress robbery, ordered the Cossack thieves to be seized and beaten on the spot. But Lyapunov was captured and hacked to death by Ataman Karamyshev. The murder of one of the militia leaders was the signal for its collapse. Most of the nobles dispersed to their estates, and militia detachments left for the cities. A Cossack army remained near Moscow, led by Trubetskoy and Zarutsky, which existed by plundering the population, causing sharp discontent.

Kozma Minin. Artist L. Stolygvo. 1949

Meanwhile, the country remained without a government. The Poles captured the Kremlin, and the Boyar Duma was abolished by itself. The state, having lost its center, disintegrated into its component parts. By this time, the Swedes had captured Novgorod, and the Poles, after a months-long siege, had captured Smolensk. The Polish king Sigismund III announced that he himself would become the Russian Tsar, and Russia would become part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

In the fall of 1611, the townsman of Nizhny Novgorod, Kozma Minin, addressed the Russian people and called on them to create a Second Militia. The owner of a decent capital for that time, the owner of two households, a meat merchant and a fish merchant, he always enjoyed the reputation of a man of impeccable honesty. His words are known: “Orthodox people! If we want to help the state, we will not spare our bellies, and not just our bellies... We will sell our yards, we will pawn our wives and children... This is a great thing!.. I know: as soon as we rise to this, many cities will come to us, and we will get rid of the foreigners!”

Minin allocated a third of his property to organize the militia. In addition to voluntary donations, Minin proposed establishing a mandatory tax, and Nizhny Novgorod residents gave Minin the right to “impose fear on the lazy,” that is, to sell the yards of sheltering payers. The organization of the militia immediately stood on solid material foundations. All that remained was to find a worthy military leader.

At that time, Prince D. M. Pozharsky, who had barely recovered from his wounds, lived on his estate 120 versts from Nizhny. People said about him: “A man is honest, who cares for a custom, who is skilled in such matters and who has not committed treason.” It was to him that envoys from Nizhny Novgorod arrived with a request to lead the militia.

The military core of the Second Militia consisted of a well-organized and armed petty nobility. The townspeople also played a big role in it. Over time, Cossacks and then peasants began to join the militia. The soldiers of the Second People's Militia went into battle under a banner on which the motto was the words: “Get up, go, fight and win.”

They decided to go to Moscow through Yaroslavl. The people of Yaroslavl met Pozharsky with icons and offered all the property they had for the common cause. Here the militia stood for several months, replenished with newly arrived forces. A provisional government of Russia, the “Council of All the Earth,” was created in Yaroslavl, a state body similar to the Zemsky Sobor. The clergy and boyars played a rather insignificant role in it. The vast majority in the “Council” belonged to the petty nobility and the townspeople.

Prince Pozharsky was afraid to go to Moscow while the Cossacks remained there. As it turned out, not without reason: the leader of the Cossacks, I. Zarutsky, tried to organize an assassination attempt on Pozharsky by sending hired killers. The assassination attempt failed, and Zarutsky fled from Moscow in July 1612. A little later he joined forces with Marina Mnishek’s detachment. He tried to nominate her son to the throne, then led the peasant-Cossack movement in the Don and Volga region in 1613-1614. However, the Cossacks handed him over to the government, he was captured in Astrakhan and executed. Marina Mnishek was also extradited along with Zarutsky (she died in captivity). And her son and False Dmitry II were executed in Moscow, at the Serpukhov Gate.

Meanwhile, the Polish hetman Chodkiewicz was approaching Moscow with reinforced troops and provisions for the Poles holed up in the Kremlin. Moving towards Moscow slowly and carefully, on August 20, the militia of Minin and Pozharsky approached the city. On the approaches to the capital, he was joined by units of the First Militia led by Prince D. Trubetskoy. The Russian army stood along the wall of the White City to the Alekseevskaya Tower on the Moscow River. The main forces concentrated at the Arbat Gate. Khodkevich tried to cross the Moscow River at the Devichye Pole, but the Moscow archers repelled the attack, and the hetman stopped at the Donskoy Monastery.

The main battle took place a few days later in Zamoskvorechye. Khodkevich managed to reach Pyatnitskaya Street, and here a fierce battle with the Cossacks ensued. Minin at this time struck the two Lithuanian companies left in the rear, which decided the outcome of the battle. Khodkevich realized that the purpose with which he arrived in Moscow had not been achieved: he could not deliver food to the garrison. He ordered the rest of the carts to be saved and went to the Sparrow Hills. On the morning of August 25, 1612, the hetman fled from Moscow “for the sake of his shame, straight to Lithuania.” The fate of the Polish garrison in the Moscow Kremlin, abandoned to the mercy of fate, was predetermined.

On September 15, Pozharsky sent a letter to the Poles besieged in the Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, in which he urged them to surrender and promised to release the entire garrison unharmed.

The Poles responded to this generous letter with an arrogant refusal, confident that the hetman would return. Meanwhile, weeks passed - there was no hetman, famine began. In October it reached terrifying proportions. All the horses, cats, and dogs were eaten, people gnawed on their belts, and it even reached the point of cannibalism. On October 22, Trubetskoy’s Cossacks attacked Kitay-Gorod. The hungry Poles were not able to defend themselves and went to the Kremlin. This day is considered the day of the liberation of Moscow from the invaders.

The icon of the Kazan Mother of God was solemnly brought into Kitai-gorod and they vowed to build a church, which was erected opposite the Nikolsky Gate of the Kremlin. In memory of the events of October 22, the feast of the icon of the Kazan Mother of God was established. (This national holiday, established in memory of the end of one of the most tragic pages of Russian history, will henceforth be celebrated on November 4 according to the new style.)

On October 25, all the Kremlin gates stood wide open - Russian troops, preceded by a religious procession, entered the Kremlin.

After the liberation of Moscow, the leaders of the militia remained in power in the capital, and throughout Russia: Prince Trubetskoy - the head of the Cossack army, Prince Pozharsky and Minin. The government of the people's militia considered its most important task to be the restoration of state power and state unity. And in December, letters were sent to all cities of the country, notifying that the best and most intelligent people should be sent from everywhere to Moscow to elect the sovereign of all Rus'.

The exit of the Poles from the Kremlin in 1612. From a painting. E. Lissner.