I'KMKTKIUS. 



DEMIDOV, ANATOU 



to death M accomplice* in hi* immination. These are the statements 

 which appir on the evidence of numeroui wituewo* iu an inquiry 

 iiulituted at tha time, nominally under the authority of the Taar, but 

 in reality under that of Oodunov, which terminated in the bauuh- 

 uient of tlie uncles of Demetrius, in hi* mother being compelled to 

 take the veil, and iu the ruin of the town of Uglich, tho inhabitants 

 of which were cent in a body to Siberia, then a newly-acquired pos- 

 session of the Russian crown. Fur seven yean afterwards the reign 

 of Feodor continued, and in 1698, wheu the dynasty of the line of 

 Burik doted with his death, Boris Qoduuov, who had long been 

 regent, assumed the title of Tsar. By some harsh and singular 

 measures, in particular by that of making drunkenness a capital crime, 

 Boris rendered his name unpopular, and was generally looked on as a 

 tyrant. In 1603 the public mind was suddenly stirred by the rumour 

 that Deuietriu* was alive, and had shown himself in Poland. Several 

 versions are to be found in the historians of the time of tho wuy iu 

 which the revelation was first made : that adopted by Knvauzin, the 

 modern historian of Russia, is that a stranger who fell seriously ill in 

 a 1'ulish town, sent for a confessor and imparted to him that he was 

 the heir of the Russian throne, and the confessor communicated the 

 event to Prince Adam \Yiszniowieclci, and that on the stranger's 

 recovery the prince made known his claims, and espoused his cause. 

 It is certain that, in 1603, tho Prince Constantine \Vitzniowiecki, 

 brother of Adam, introduced to his father-in-law Mniszek, tbe Palutiue 

 of Saudomir, a young man who asserted himself to be Demetrius, who 

 gave out that, when in his tenth year, assassins had been sent by 

 Oodunov to dispatch him, in order to clear the usurper's way to the 

 throne ; that another boy had been substituted in his place, killed and 

 buried as the son of Ivan, and that he, the real Demetrius, had been 

 secretly brought up in a convent till he had grown to the age of a 

 man, and was capable of asserting his rights. A Russian, named 

 Petrovski, who saw him when with Wiszniowiecki, declared that he 

 had known the young Prince Demetrius well, and that he recognised 

 the stranger as the same person by two warts one on his forehead, 

 the other under his right eye, and by one of the arms being a little 

 longer than the other. The Palatine of Sandomir received th "stranger 

 as Demetrius, and presented him to the king of Poland, Sigismund the 

 Third, who, at a solemn audience, after hearing a statement of his 

 birth and his misfortunes, replied : "God preserve thee, Demetrius, 

 prince of Muscovy, thy birth is known to us. and attested by satis- 

 factory evidence ; we assign thee a pension of forty thousand florins, 

 and, as our friend and our guest, we permit thee to accept the counsels 

 and services of our subjects." 



In May 1604 Demetrius signed a promise of marriage to Marina 

 Mniszek, the daughter of the Palatine, iu which he engaged to confer 

 on her the towns of Novgorod and Pskov as a wedding-gift, and to 

 pay her father a million of Polish florins (about 160,0001.) as soon as 

 he should have ascended his throne. In June he signed another 

 document, by which he engaged t < cede the province of Scveria to 

 the Palatine and the king of Poland, and iu the same mouth he 

 privately abjured the Greek faith, and was admitted as a Roman 

 Catholic in the palace of tbe nuncio. By these acts he secured the 

 services of a little Polish army, with which he invaded Russia towards 

 the close of 1604. Boris, who was of course by this time well aware 

 of tbe proceedings of his opponent, stigmatised him as an impostor, 

 affirming that he was a renegade monk of the name of Utrepiev, whom 

 an accidental personal resemblance to Demetrius had led into the 

 idea of counterfeiting the deceased prince. Modern historians who 

 have had the advantage of being able to compare all the circum- 

 stances (many of them too minute to be mentioned here), are gene- 

 rally of opinion that tbe alleged Demetrius was neither what he 

 pretended to be, nor what Boris asserted, leaving it still a matter of 

 mystery who be was and whence he sprung. His campaign in Russia 

 was a mixture of successes and reverses. He won a battle before 

 Novgorod which was bravely defended by Basmanov, tbe Lest captain 

 in Boris's service, and lost a battle at Dobruinicki, after which be 

 retreated to Putivl, where the face of affairs was changed by the 

 sudden death of Boris in April 1605. The Russian populace ascribed 

 the unexpected event to tho remorse of tbe Tsar, which it was 

 believed had induced him to take poison, and Basmanov, the most 

 formidable opponent of the invader, suddenly declared for Demetrius. 

 The commander of the Russian army threw himself at his feet at 

 Putivl and conducted him in triumph to Moscow, which he entered 

 early in June, and was received with shouts of welcome by the 

 people, now thoroughly convinced that be was the real Deim-trin-. 

 A gn-at tost however was now approaching. The mother of Demetrius 

 who had been sent by Boris to a convent after the massacre of Uglich 

 was of course released by the triumph of her supposed son, and took 

 her way towards Moscow. The Tsar met her at the village of 

 Toinin-k before she entered the capital, and it was so arranged that 

 the first interview took place in a tent with no one to witness their 

 motions. In a few minutes they emerged from the tent and embraced 

 with signs of warm affection, and at the signs the multitude burst 

 into acclamations of joy, the last f.iint suspicions of doubters being 

 now dissolved. A few days after Demetrius was crowned with great 

 pomp at the cathedral, and be now, with Basmauov for his chief coun- 

 cillor, managed with a firm hand the reins of government His 

 subject* soon began to perceive with uneasiness that their new master 



was infected w ith foreign notions, that he surrounded himself with 

 foreign guards, that he laughed at many of their customs, and gavo 

 the preference on all occasions to the ngw triumphant and insolent 

 1'olej, Active, vigorous, and courageous, he was also generous to an 

 imprudent degree, which he showed by pardoning the Prince Shuisky, 

 who had been detected in a conspiracy against him. Meanwhile bis 

 engagements to the Poles weighed heavily upon him, not however that 

 which pledged him to his Tsarina, Marina Mniszek, to whom ha 

 appears to have had a real attachment. The nuptial journey of 

 Marina from Kracow to Moscow was magnificent; it lasted three 

 months, and on the 1 2th of May 1806 she made her entry into the 

 Russian capital. That marriage was Demetrius' s destruction. The. 

 insolence of the Poles who accompanied her, the disregard which 

 Demetrius ou various occasions, and on that of his marriage iu par- 

 ticular, showed for the rites of the Hussion church, roused the indig- 

 nation of the Russians whoee discontent was exasperated by Shuisky, 

 who was convinced of the falsehood of Demetrius'* story and of his 

 antagonism to the Russian church. Shuisky told a body of Ruwians 

 assembled at his palace on May 2Sth, that their hostility to the 

 impostor was discovered, and that either they or the Tsar must perish, 

 and gave the signal for revolt. Once begun it spread like wildfire, the 

 pent-up enmity of the populace against the foreigners swept all beforo 

 it, amid cries of " Death to the heretic." The great bell of Moscow 

 was tolled, and 3000, bells answered to the sound. 1 >enictriii, who 

 heard the alarm bell, sent to ShuUky's brother who was on duty at 

 the Kremlin to inquire tbe cause, and was told it was a Cre, but 

 liasmauov soon appeared with tho information that it was a revolt. 

 Basmanov fell in his defence. Demetrius, pursued from room to 

 room by the infuriated populace, leaped from a window thirty feet 

 high, broke his leg, and was put to death by the mob, protesting at 

 tbe last moment that he was "tho Tsar the sou of Ivan." A 

 frightful massacre followed. 



The vacant throne was ascended by Prince Shuisky, who afterwards 

 found on unexpected opponent. In spite of a declaration which he 

 caused to be issued by the widow of Ivan, to the effect that the shun 

 Tsar was an impostor, that he was really the monk Utrepiev, and that 

 she had only acknowledged him for her son from fear of his ven- 

 geance if she had denied him, a notion gained ground not only that 

 he was the genuine Demetrius, but that he was still alive. A person 

 who is known to tbe Russian historians aa ' the second False Deme- 

 trius,' or ' tho Robber of Tushino ' (the Utter appellation derived from 

 his having established hi* camp at Tushino, a village near Mo 

 asserted that he was the Tsar Demetrius, and that another had been 

 shun for him in the massacre at Moscow, as formerly iu the assassi- 

 nation at Uglich. One of his bands took prisoner Marina Muiszek and 

 her father the Palatine, as they were, being escorted homeward by a 

 troop of Polish cavaliers ; and .Marina was required to declare if the 

 pretender was not her hu-b.md, as the Tsarina had been required 

 to declare if the pretender was not her son. Marina also gave an 

 answer in the affirmative, and the anarchy into which Kimia had 

 fallen was for years prolonged by this bandit, who on one occasion 

 besieged Moscow for seventeen mouths, and seemed ou the point of 

 making himself master. He was killed in 1610 by a Tartar cln 

 whom he had offended ; and Marina ended her days iu prison. Mean- 

 while the Poles and Swedes had invaded Russia. Shuisky, defeated 

 by the Poles at the battle of Kluchino, was compelled by his noblri 

 to resign the urown ; and an arrangement was made that Ladislaui, 

 tbe son of Sigisiuund III., should ascend the throne of the Tsars. 

 Tho Pole* were driven out iu 1612 by the insurrection of Minin and 

 Pozbarski, and the long period of confusion was terminated by the 

 election to the throne of a boy of sixteen, Michael, tho founder of tho 

 present reigning house of Romanov. 



Even tho second false Demetrius was not the last of the pretenders ; 

 and there was a false son of the Tsar Feodor who set up claims to the 

 throne ; but none of them obtained the success of the earlier claim- 

 ants. The story of tho false Demetriuaea has been a favourite one 

 with dramatist* and novelists ; the best novel on the subject is that 

 by Bulgarin, and the best plays are tho ' Boris Godunov ' of Pushkin, 

 and the unfinished 'False Demetrius ' of Schiller. Tho bent historical 

 monograph ou the subject is that by Prosper MeVimc'e, 'Demetrius 

 the Impostor,' translated into English by A. K. Scoble, L -n Inn, 1853 : 

 but, unfortunately, M. Mcrimce had never seen the most vivid 

 narrative of the termination of the first Demetrius'* career, 'The 

 Report of a bloudie and terrible massacre in the city of Mosco' 

 (London, 1607, 4to), which was reprinted a few years ago by Mr. 

 Asher of Berlin, from the copy in tho Itritish Museum. Ustrialov, 

 the Hussion historian, puuU-lud in 1 *37 a collection of translations 

 of the contemporary account* of Demetrius, which extended to 

 6 vols. Svo. 



DEMIDOV, or DEMIDOFF, ANATOL, a Russian author of some 

 eminence, is the most conspicuous living member of a family of capi- 

 talist* which occupies a position in Hu-xia similar to tint of the 

 Barings and Rothschilds elsewhere, and which is also celebrated for 

 the useful and benevolent purpose* to which its vast wealth has been 

 applied. The founder of the family was Niteita, a serf of tho 

 government of Tula in the time of Pet^r the Great, who loft his 

 native village to avoid being token as a recruit, and afterwards 

 became noted for his skill in the manufacture of arms, who origin. illy 



