Vasily IV (Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky) (1552-1612), Russian Tsar (1606-1610).
Prince Vasily Ivanovich belonged to an ancient family, equal in nobility to the Moscow house of Rurikovich. The Shuiskys had enormous land wealth and colossal influence.
In the 80s XVI century they started a fight with the brother-in-law and favorite of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich Boris Godunov, which ended in failure. The Shuiskys fell into disgrace. In 1586, Prince Vasily Ivanovich was recalled from Smolensk, where he was governor, and sent into exile.
In 1591, Godunov needed the help of disgraced aristocrats. Under mysterious circumstances, Fyodor Ivanovich’s brother, Tsarevich Dmitry, died in the city of Uglich. The investigative commission was headed by Prince Vasily Ivanovich. He came to a clear conclusion - an accident.
When, ten years later, False Dmitry I invaded the Moscow state, Shuisky exclaimed: “Dmitry escaped the machinations of Boris Godunov, and instead of him the son of a priest was killed and buried in a princely manner.”
In 1605, the impostor was crowned king. The Poles gained great influence, “pushing” him to the throne. The position of the Russian aristocracy became precarious. Shuisky organized a conspiracy against False Dmitry, but the plans of the conspirators were disrupted by arrests. Shuisky himself went to the chopping block. However, at the last moment, False Dmitry pardoned him. This frivolous decision cost the impostor his power and his life. At the end of May 1606, Shuisky struck. The conspirators aroused popular discontent and broke into the royal chambers. The widespread beating of Polish soldiers began, False Dmitry and his entourage fell.
Shuisky's finest hour has come. He was elected to the throne and soon crowned. Such haste harmed the matter: the Zemsky Sobor was not convened, which could have given Shuisky’s power more legitimacy. Soon several new “royal offspring” appeared in the country; one of them, False Dmitry II, received the support of the Polish gentry. The uprising of I. Bolotnikov (1606-1607) grew in the southern lands.
Under these conditions, Vasily Ivanovich decided to take a risky step: the relics of the “innocently murdered” Tsarevich Dmitry, who was canonized as a martyr, were found in Uglich. This should have convinced everyone: the prince was dead, and the new impostors were just troublemakers.
Bolotnikov's uprising was successfully suppressed. The fight against the troops of False Dmitry II dragged on. In 1609, the Polish king Sigismund III openly invaded Russian territory and besieged Smolensk. Shuisky turned to the Swedish king for help. The combined Swedish-Russian forces, led by the talented military leader M.V. Skopin-Shuisky, inflicted a number of defeats on the enemy.
In the spring of 1610, the situation began to improve; Shuisky’s energetic policy seemed to bear fruit. However, at this moment Skopin-Shuisky unexpectedly died. On June 24, Russian troops suffered a crushing defeat from the Poles near the village of Klushina (between Vyazma and Mozhaisk).
In July 1610, representatives of other aristocratic families rebelled and overthrew Shuisky. The king was forcibly tonsured a monk. The aristocratic government handed him over to the Poles. Vasily Ivanovich died in captivity.
Why the reign of Vasily Shuisky ended with his overthrow, you will learn from this article.
Reasons for the overthrow of Vasily Shuisky
Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky (lived 1552-1612) is a descendant of the Rurikovichs and Russian Tsar from 1606 to 1610.
It is worth noting right away that those times were quite troubled. Boris Godunov, False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II and others fought for power and the throne. Shuisky himself was in secret opposition to Boris Godunov, at the same time he supported False Dmitry I and then coordinated a conspiracy against him and took the Russian throne. The tsar from the boyar circle suppressed the loud uprising of Bolotnikov and in 1607 signed a decree regarding a 15-year search for peasants. The power of Vasily Shuisky was shaken. When False Dmitry II appeared on the scene, Shuisky, wanting to deal with his competitor as quickly as possible, concluded an agreement with Sweden in 1609. The terms of the agreement ultimately did not lead to anything good. The Muscovites deposed him from the throne and forcibly tonsured him as a monk. Afterwards he was handed over to Poland as a prisoner, where he died.
Why was Vasily Shuisky overthrown?
Vasily Shuisky was overthrown for the following reasons:
- He expressed the will and interests of some of the boyars who were not included in the Boyar Duma of False Dmitry II. Shuisky's reign acquired the character of a Civil War.
- The concluded agreement with Sweden led to Polish intervention.
- Rumor has it that Vasily poisoned his nephew Skopin-Shuisky in order to get rid of another competitor.
- On June 24, 1610, a battle between the Poles and the Russians took place. Near Klushin, Shuisky's troops were defeated, which completely undermined his authority.
We hope that from this article you learned why Vasily Shuisky was overthrown.
The Troubles in Russia were gaining strength. A new king was imposed on the country - Vasily Shuisky, who passionately dreamed of the throne ever since the end of the Rurik dynasty. His unattractive appearance is visible especially in the story of Tsarevich Dmitry: in 1591, he certified that the prince stabbed himself to death; during the capture of Moscow by an impostor, he stated that Dmitry escaped; now he claimed that the boy was killed at the instigation of Godunov.
Three days after the murder of the impostor, the Moscow people gathered on Red Square to decide the fate of governing the country. Some advocated for the transfer of power to the Patriarch, others - to the Boyar Duma, but Shuisky’s people also actively worked in the crowd. It was they who shouted his name as the future king. And immediately Shuisky’s supporters took up this cry. Thus the fate of the royal crown was decided.
In 1606, Vasily Shuisky, like Godunov, became an elected Russian Tsar. Shuisky identified the Kazan Metropolitan Hermogenes, a passionate zealot of Orthodoxy, a hater of the impostor and Catholics, as the Patriarch of Rus'.
The Moscow boyars dreamed of a transition to a system of electing the supreme power by the aristocracy. This was confirmed by Vasily Shuisky’s kissing cross entry: I kiss the cross on the fact that I should not do anything bad to anyone without permission.
Thus, a powerful and contradictory movement of all layers of society determined Russia’s attempt to transition from autocracy and despotism to boyar collective rule.
Civil War
The rise to power of the boyar tsar further intensified the Troubles. False Dmitry's comrades did not want to give up what they had conquered. There was a rumor that the king had escaped and was taking refuge in a safe place.
The center of anti-boyar sentiments was the city of Putivl, where the governor was a friend of False Dmitry, Prince Shakhovskoy. Ryazan, Yelets and other cities came out in support of Putivl. And in Poland, the nobleman Molchanov appeared, one of the murderers of Fyodor Godunov and a close friend of the impostor, who began to pose as the escaped “Tsar Dmitry.”
In the summer of 1606, a powerful uprising swept all of Southern and Southwestern Russia. Essentially it started Civil War, in which the lower and middle layers of society (posad people and the nobility) opposed the upper classes. Putivl opposed Moscow.
Many counties in Russia have their own government bodies. The state government system began to fall apart. The Mari, Mordovians, Chuvash, and Tatars joined the rebel Russians, who did not accept pressure from the Orthodox clergy, the seizure of their ancestral lands by Russian patrimonial landowners, landowners and monasteries.
The rebels' march on Moscow. Ivan Bolotnikov.
By the autumn of 1606, a rebel army had formed near the city of Yelets. It was led by the nobles Istoma Pashkov, Prokopiy Lyapunov and Grigory Sunbulov.
Another army was formed in Putivl. This army was led by the experienced warrior Ivan Bolotnikov. Once he was a military servant of Prince Telyatevsky, then he fled south to the Cossacks, fought with Crimean Tatars, was captured, from where he was sold to Turkey. For some time, Bolotnikov was a forced rower on galleys. During sea battle he was freed by the Italians and ended up in Europe. He lived in Venice and headed home through Germany and Poland. In Poland, he learned about events in Russia and sided with the “true Tsar Dmitry,” although by that time the impostor was already dead. Molchanov, posing as the tsar who had escaped, gave him a letter to Putivl, and Prince Shakhovskoy appointed Bolotnikov as commander of the rebel detachment. Bolotnikov called himself the governor of Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich.
Bolotnikov's army moved towards Moscow, winning a number of brilliant victories over the tsarist troops along the way.
In October 1606, Bolotnikov united with noble detachments from near Yelets. The united army settled in the village of Kolomenskoye. There was no agreement between the people's leader Ivan Bolotnikov and the leaders of the noble detachments. The boyars and princes sought to regain the estates and privileges received from the impostor. The nobles craved new estates and increased salaries. Peasants and serfs dreamed of freedom. The townspeople expected relief from duties and taxes.
During the journey to Moscow, the Cossack-peasant-servant army destroyed the boyars and nobles loyal to Shuisky, seized their property, and freed people from serfdom and servile bondage. The noble leaders, as a rule, pardoned the captured royal governors and warily watched the reprisals that Bolotnikov’s people inflicted on the feudal lords. Pashkov and Lyapunov did not want to obey the “servant” Bolotnikov and kept their units apart.
The common people of the capital were ready to support Bolotnikov, and the rich townspeople, fearing reprisals, demanded to show them the “tsar”. He was not in the rebel camp, which weakened their position.
The outcome of the case was decided by the betrayal of the nobles, who entered into secret negotiations with Shuisky. During the battle for Moscow, Ryazan nobles led by Lyapunov and Pashkov’s troops went over to Shuisky’s side. The tsarist troops pushed back the rebels. Bolotnikov was under siege for three days, then retreated to Kaluga. Part of his army fled to Tula.
Defeat of the popular uprising
New forces approached the rebels from all sides. In Tula, with a detachment of several thousand Cossacks, serfs and peasants, another impostor appeared, calling himself the son of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich Peter.
False Peter joined forces with Bolotnikov, and together they won a number of victories near Tula and Kaluga. In May 1607, the rebel army inflicted another defeat on Shuisky's army near Tula. The rebels were commanded by Prince Telyatevsky, an associate of False Dmitry and Bolotnikov’s former master. The prince did not want to join forces with his former servant. The winners returned separately to Tula. There the rebels were surrounded by Shuisky’s huge army. The king himself led the siege. He issued a number of decrees. He granted freedom to the slaves who left the rebel camp, and also forbade turning free people into slaves without their consent. The period for searching for fugitive peasants was extended from 5 to 15 years, which was to the benefit of the nobles.
The rebels defended the stone Kremlin of Tula for four months. The royal governors blocked the Upa River with a dam, its waters flooded the city's food supplies and gunpowder. Famine began in Tula. The rebels began to grumble, their leaders went to negotiate with Shuisky. For the surrender of the city, the tsar promised life to the leaders and freedom to the ordinary soldiers. The city gates opened. Bolotnikov, as befitted a governor, laid his saber at the king’s feet.
Bolotnikov and False Peter were captured. The impostor was hanged, and Bolotnikov was exiled to the north. Six months later he was blinded and then drowned in an ice hole. Thus, Shuisky broke his promise.
The rebels' struggle with the government continued. And yet, after the defeat of Bolotnikov, it became obvious that at this stage in Russian history, the nobility, together with the nobility, won. The boyar government remained in power, which during the Time of Troubles freed itself from autocratic despotism, but at the same time suppressed the uprising of the lower classes.
This victory came at a high price for Russia. The country was falling apart, and neighbors began to interfere in its affairs. The nobility, which supported Shuisky in the fight against Bolotnikov, dreamed of crushing the power of the princely-boyar aristocracy.
The future Russian Tsar was born into a princely family in 1552 in Nizhny Novgorod. Little Vasily was not the only child in the family. He had 3 brothers: Andrey, Dmitry and Ivan.
From his youth under Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Vasily Ivanovich became interested in politics. In 1580, he became a groomsman at the last wedding of Ivan IV. Shuisky himself had two marriages. The marriage with the daughter of boyar Repin turned out to be childless. The second union with Buinosova-Rostovskaya gave Vasily Ivanovich two daughters Anna and Anastasia. Unfortunately, they both died when they were young.
In the period from 1581 to 1583, Shuisky, as a governor, participated in campaigns to the cities of Serpukhov and Novgorod. In 1584 he became a boyar and head of the court chamber in Moscow.
After the death of Ivan IV in the struggle of the court nobility, Shuisky opposed. For this he fell into disgrace and from 1587 to 1591 he was in exile in Galich. Not feeling any danger from Shuisky, in 1591 Tsar Boris Godunov brought him back from grace and entrusted him with investigating the case of mysterious death in Uglich, Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich. Fearing the sovereign, Shuisky recognized the cause of death of the heir to the throne as an accident. In the same year, Vasily Shuisky returned to the Boyar Duma. With the appearance in Russia, Shuisky, on behalf of Godunov, convinced the people on Red Square that real prince Dmitry Ivanovich rests in Uglich.
In the winter of 1605, Godunov appointed Shuisky as regimental commander in a campaign against the impostor's troops. Due to the lack of desire for the current sovereign to win this war, Shuisky took the side of False Dmitry.
With the accession of False Dmitry, Shuisky recognized the commission’s conclusions about the reasons for the death of Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich as incorrect and recognized him as a real descendant of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich.
Already in the summer of 1605, Vasily Ivanovich tried to overthrow False Dmitry through a coup, but the plot was discovered, and Vasily Ivanovich was captured and sentenced to death. However, the reigning ruler had mercy and sent Shuisky into exile along with his brothers, but six months later he brought him back.
The next year, Shuisky prepared a conspiracy against False Dmitry. The culmination of the conspiracy was a popular uprising, as a result of which the impostor died. Shuisky's supporters named him Tsar in May 1606, and on the first day of summer, Vasily Ivanovich, having received the Metropolitan's blessing, became the Russian Tsar.
The first thing the new autocrat did was transfer the relics of Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich to the capital. While Shuisky was in power in Russia, a new military manual was issued. When Shuisky came to power, he had to suppress Bolotnikov’s uprising, and in August 1607, False Dmitry II began attacking the capital. To fight the new impostor, Shuisky entered into an alliance with the Swedish king. The Tsar's nephew, Prince Skopin-Shuisky, took command of the allied army. The troops under his command lifted the siege of the Trinity Lavra and solemnly entered Moscow. The commander-in-chief was praised throughout the capital, and calls were heard to recognize him as king. However, Skopin-Shuisky soon died suddenly and the tsar was blamed for his death.
To prevent the Swedes from interfering in the unrest in Russia, in the fall of 1609, an army of Poles besieged Smolensk. The intervention of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Russia began. In June 1610, Russian troops were defeated by the army of the Polish king. Dissatisfaction with the sovereign grew, and in July Vasily Ivanovich was overthrown by the boyars and forcibly tonsured him as a monk. Time has begun
It was short in time. He reigned for only four years (1606 - 1610). His reign can be assessed ambiguously in the history of Russia. Some historians say that Vasily was capable of ruling the country, but did not have the charisma so necessary for a sovereign. In contrast to the same, he did not make open contact with the people and those close to him; he was a somewhat closed person.
If we talk about its origin, it is very noble. The Shuisky family was one of the “top 5” most famous families of the then Moscow Rus'. In addition, they were descendants of Alexander Nevsky, thus they were not the last heirs in the struggle for the throne. Vasily was not liked in Moscow. Klyuchevsky wrote about him as “a plump short man with furtive eyes.” The circumstances of Vasily's accession to the throne were new to Rus'. When ascending the throne, he gave a “kissing record”, that is, he swore allegiance to his subjects and promised to rule only according to the law.
Briefly the beginning of the reign of Vasily Shuisky
Period 1608-1610 called “Tushensky flights”. The boyars constantly moved from Vasily to False Dmitry II, and vice versa. They received estates and a salary. Some received land and money from both Vasily and False Dmitry II.
Briefly the reign of Vasily Shuisky
In fact, we can say that the state has split into two parts. False Dmitry gathered about 100 thousand people, I must say a decent number of people. In fact, Tushino became a “Bandit Settlement”; they plundered many lands. could not protect the cities from the invasion of gangs. Then the city authorities began to form security regiments in their localities - zemstvo militias. This was especially developed in the northern lands.
The second half of the reign of Vasily Shuisky became a turning point for him. Gradually, power flowed out of his hands. Many cities were either subordinate to False Dmitry II or tried to take care of themselves. In the North, a lip reform was previously carried out. Local kupas and other wealthy strata began to appoint the governing apparatus themselves. It was precisely the developed self-government that later led to the formation of the first militias.
Vasily Shuisky negatively accepted the rise of the local zemstvo movement; he did not like it at all. On the one hand, he had to confront the troops of False Dmitry, and then there were some local militias. Vasily turned to the Swedish King Charles IX. They signed an agreement. In short, according to this agreement:
- A detachment of mercenaries numbering about 5,000 people (mostly Germans and Scots), under the command of a Swedish commander, was sent to the territory of Rus';
- Shuisky promised the Vedas to cede part of the territories;
- Allowed the “circulation” of Swedish coins across Russian territory.
The Russian troops were commanded by Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, the nephew of Emperor Vasily. Mikhail advanced greatly in his career during the reign of Vasily Shuisky. He performed well in battles against Bolotnikov. Many even thought that Mikhail could subsequently lay claim to the Russian throne. But he was a very responsible man, of a military type. He served primarily the state, for the benefit of his country. It is unlikely that he would have taken part in intrigues against Vasily.
Results of the reign of Vasily Shuisky
In the spring of 1609, a united army of Russians and mercenaries launched an offensive against False Dmitry II. Near Tver, they managed to defeat the army of False Dmitry. After the victory, the mercenaries began to demand payment of the promised salary. There was no money, the Swedes did not wait, they left Skopin-Shuisky and scattered across Russian lands. In addition, seeing how the Swedes interfered in the affairs of the Russians, the Poles, led by Sigismund III, also decided to participate. The Poles besieged Smolensk, and after 21 months it fell. The camp of False Dmitry II, having learned about the approach of Sigismund III, simply disintegrated.
