Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on transliteration, names and dates
- Chronology of events
- Glossary of Russian terms
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Prologue: Tsarevich Dimitry and Boris Godunov
- Part 1 The First False Dimitry
- Part 2 Rebels in the name of Tsar Dimitry
- 4 Tsar Dimitry lives!
- 5 The uprising continues
- Part 3 The final stages of the Troubles
- Epilogue: After the Troubles: pretence in the later seventeenth century
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Tsar Dimitry lives!
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on transliteration, names and dates
- Chronology of events
- Glossary of Russian terms
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Prologue: Tsarevich Dimitry and Boris Godunov
- Part 1 The First False Dimitry
- Part 2 Rebels in the name of Tsar Dimitry
- 4 Tsar Dimitry lives!
- 5 The uprising continues
- Part 3 The final stages of the Troubles
- Epilogue: After the Troubles: pretence in the later seventeenth century
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rumours in Moscow
Stories of Dimitry's escape from death arose within days or even hours of his murder. Bussow says that the rumours circulated on the very day of the riot. The Dutchman Herckman reports that when Dimitry's body was publicly displayed in the marketplace a nobleman (syn boyarskii) rode up, inspected the body, and cried out, ‘The man you have killed is not the true Dimitry – he has escaped!’ The horseman then galloped off, and no-one could discover where he had gone.
There are various versions of the rumours about Dimitry's escape from death. According to Margeret:
Some days after Dmitrii's murder, there began to circulate a rumor that the emperor had not been killed, but rather it was one who resembled him, whom Dmitrii had put in his place. This was done after Dmitrii had been informed some hours in advance of what was about to happen and had left Moscow to see just what would occur.
Other sources provide variants to some of the details in Margeret's account. For example, the man who was substituted for Dimitry is variously described as a Lithuanian, a German, or ‘one of Dimitry's German bodyguards, a native of Prague, very similar to him in appearance’. Isaac Massa reports a version in which the victim was a damask weaver whom Marina Mniszech had brought with her from Sandomierz in Poland.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern RussiaThe False Tsars of the Time and Troubles, pp. 109 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995