History of Russia
Heads of the stateTsar Basil IV Ivanovich Shuisky (1552 - 1612)
Reign 1606-1610
Son
of unknown woman and Ivan Andreyevich Shuisky (1533-1673), a boyar
descended from Andrei of Suzdal, the third son of St Alexander Nevsky.Wives:
Princess Elena Mikhailovna Repnina.
Princess Ekaterina (Elena) Petrovna Buinosova-Rostovskaya (? - 1626).
Married on 17 January 1608.
His second wife, who became Tsarina Maria, bore him two daughters, Anna and Anastasia, who both died in infancy. When he was overthrown, he was separated from his wife. She was forced into a nunnery as Sister Helen and died in 1626.
Important events:
- 1606-07 - Uprising led by Ivan Bolotnikov.
- 1608-09 - False Dmitry II sets up camp at Tushino outside Moscow.
- 1608-10 - Polish forces besiege the St Sergius Monastery of the Trinity. Alliance with Sweden.
- 1609 - Polish and Swedish intervention.
- 1609-11 King Sigismund III of Poland besieges Smolensk.
- 1610 - Basil Shuisky was overthrown by a group of boyars led Prince Fedor Mstislavsky. He was replaced by a new government of seven boyars, known as the semiboyarschina.
......1606 Ascending the throne, Basil Shuisky swore on the cross to preserve the privileges of the boyars and not to pass sentence on any of them without the calling the duma of boyars. Patriarch Ignatius, who had been elected by False Dmitry I, was overthrown by the new tsar and imprisoned at the Monastery of the Miracle. Russia remained without a patriarch
......1608 While Basil Shuisky was besieging Tula, a new pretender appeared. False Dmitry II advanced towards Moscow in summer 1608 and set up camp at Tushino, earning him the nickname of the "thief of Tushino". The pretender besieged Moscow for twenty-one months.
Prince Boris Ivanovich Shuisky came from an old branch of the Suzdal princes descended from Rurik. Becoming a boysr in 1584, he headed the unsuccessful opposition to Boris Godunov in 1587. After falling into disfavour, he managed to win back the tsar's trust and was forgiven.
In May 1591, Shuisky headed the committee of investigation into the death of Tsarevich Dmitry in Uglich. The commission came to the conclusion that the tsarevich had died naturally, as a result of illness.
Basil Shuisky took part in the campaign against the False Dmitry I (1604-05). After death of Boris Godunov, however, he crossed sides and joined the pretender. On two occasions, Shuisky headed a plot against False Dmitry I. The first time he was sentenced to death, but forgiven. The second plot ended in the False Dmitry's murder on 17 May 1606. (After burning the pretender's body, the boyars placed the ashes in a cannon and fired them in the direction of Poland.)
Two days later, on 19 May, a crowd gathered and proclaimed Basil Shuisky the new tsar - without a council or reference to representatives of the people. Ascending the throne, Basil Shuisky swore on the cross to preserve the privileges of the boyars and not to pass sentence on any of them without calling the duma of boyars. Patriarch Ignatius, who had been elected by False Dmitry I, was overthrown by the new tsar and imprisoned at the Monastery of the Miracle. Russia remained without a patriarch. Basil was crowned by Metropolitan Isidor of Novgorod on 1 June 1606. The fifty-tour year-old tsar was a puny man with poor eyesight and a stoop. Cunning and mean, he believed in magic and relied on a web of informers. Shortly after Shuisky's coronation, a second pretender called Dmitry emerged, also claiming to be the son of Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan Bolotnikov led a popular uprising in support of False Dmitru II in the south of Russia in autumn 1606. When his forces attempted to march on Moscow, they were defeated by government troops near the village of Kotly in December 1606 and finally routed in autumn 1607.
The False Dmitry II began his own march on Moscow in August 1607. In the spring of 1608, his troops besieged Moscow from their headquarters in Tushino.
In an attempt to defeat the False Dmitry II, Basil Shuisky signed an alliance with Sweden in February 1608. Sweden agreed to help the tsar in return for territorial concessions. In spring 1609, fifteen thousand Swedish troops entered Russia from the north, while Poland took advantage of the situation by invading Russia from the west. When the Polish army was at the gates of Moscow in July 1610, a group of boyars led by Prince Fedor Mstislavsky overthrew Shuisky and forced him to become a monk. He and his family were sent to Poland as prisoners.
Shuisky was replaced by a new government of seven boyars, known as the semiboyarschina. In August 1610, they agreed to recognise Prince Wladyslaw, son of King Sigismund of Poland, as tsar of Russia. Under the command of Hetman Stanislaus Zolkiewsky, the Poles captured and looted Moscow. Zolkiewski demanded that the boyars recognise Prince Wladyslaw of Poland as the tsar of Russia. The boyars consented, on condition that Wladyslaw convert to Orthodoxy. The Poles agreed, but failed to keep their promise. The Polish army entered the Kremlin and the boyars swore an oath of allegiance to Wladyslaw on 27 August 1610. This was an enormous betrayal of the national interests. Polish soldiers ransacked the country, robbing and killing the population. Smolensk and other west Russian towns were annexed by Poland, while Swedish forces occupied Novgorod. The reign of Basil Shuisky ended in the bankruptcy and foreign occupation of Russia.
Kuzma Minin, the burgomaster of Nizhny Novgorod, responded by forming a popular militia in autumn 1611. Funds were collected and an army of national liberation was created, headed by Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Russian nation rallied in the face of the foreign aggression. The Poles were expelled from Moscow in October 1612 by the volunteer militia led by Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and citizen Kuzma Minin and a Cossack army led by Prince Trubetskoi.
On 22 October 1612, the feast day of the icon of the Mither of God of Kazan, the Russian militia captured Kitai-Gorod (the place inside Moscow known as "kita"-town or wall-town). Four days later, the Polish garrison in the Kremlin surrendered. In memory of the liberation of Moscow, Prince Pozharsky built the Church of the Mother of God of Kazan on Red Square. (In 1818, a monument to Minin and Pozharsky by sculptor Ivan Martos was opened in front of St Basil's Cathedral.)
In November 1612, Basil Shuisky died in Warsaw. In 1635, his ashes were returned to Russia, along with an indemnity of sables worth 3,674 rubles. The remains of Basil and his family were buried in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.
The Land Council met in Moscow in 1613 and offered the throne to the sixteen-year-old Michael Romanov.
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