Heroic Resistance defenders Trinity Monastery troops of False Dmitry II during the Polish-Lithuanian intervention is inextricably linked with the history of the northeast of the Moscow region.
« All of the Moscow state are glad to have retreated from Moscow "...
The general situation of the country during this period was extremely difficult. Even after the Khodynka battle on June 25, 1608, the open departure of service people from Moscow to Tushino, the headquarters of False Dmitry II, began. According to a contemporary of that time, the cellarer of the Trinity Monastery, Avraamy Palitsyn, many serving landowners reasoned as follows: "Even if we stand standing together from the Poles to Moscow and the Trinity Sergius Monastery, then our estates will not be ruined"... But this calculation, as events showed, was not correct. Other servicemen left the Moscow army, going home to guard their hearths. Troubles swept the entire center, reached Vladimir-on-Klyazma, crossed the Volga. As it was written in one of the annals those formidable years: "All the cities of the Moscow state retreated from Moscow"...
"Let us go, we will humble them; but if they do not submit, then we will scatter their dwellings through the air" ...
In order to understand the significance of the events that followed in the history of Moscow and the Russian state as a whole, it is necessary to clarify the important strategic position of the monastery. In fact, its capture ensured a complete blockade of Moscow, and therefore led to the subordination of the northeastern regions of the state. As the most prominent connoisseur of the Time of Troubles, Sergei Fedorovich Platonov, correctly noted: “The Thief's troops were in Tushino between the Smolensk and Tverskaya roads and commanded both of them. Of the other roads for Moscow, all those that led to Kaluga and Tula in the regions engulfed in rebellion were useless; there was no point in occupying them with special detachments by the Tushins. On the other hand, the roads leading to the north, northeast and southeast were of great importance for Moscow, namely: the Yaroslavskaya road to the Trinity Monastery and Alexandrov Sloboda; road to Dmitrov or “Dmitrovka”; the road to the village of Stromyn, Kirzhach and further to Shuya, Suzdal and Vladimir, the so-called "Stromynka" ... All these roads were to be intercepted by the Thief's troops. " ...
False Dmitry II. Polish engraving. XVII century.
In addition, the seizure of the monastery's treasures made it possible to strengthen the financial position of False Dmitry II, and the attraction of the influential monastic brethren to his side promised the final collapse of the authority of Tsar Vasily Shuisky and the subsequent wedding of the impostor to the kingdom. Justifying False Dmitry the need for the siege of the monastery, the Polish military leader Jan Pyotr Sapega (1569-1611) allegedly told him: “Rumor has it that they are waiting for Prince Mikhail Skopin with the Swedes; when they come, they will occupy the Trinity stronghold and may be dangerous to us. While they are not yet strong, let's go and humble them; and if they do not submit, then we will scatter their dwellings through the air. "
Jan Peter Sapega (1569-1611).
From Tushino, bypassing Moscow, the regular army of Sapieha and Alexander Jozef Lisovsky (1580-1616) were sent to the northern roads, at the head of selected detachments of the Polish irregular cavalry, whose members were called "foxes."
Not receiving the salary due to regular troops, they fed only on trophies and looting. The sending of the foxes to the Russian campaign, according to the opinion of Polish historians, was due to the fact that they did not disdain to plunder the lands of their homeland, Poland.
Foxes. Colorized engraving, 1880
« There are more than two hundred people in the monastery of the Wonderworker "...
In the early years of the 17th century, the Trinity Monastery had a wide variety of weapons - from cannons to four-legged thorns, which were scattered along the roads in order to inflict damage on the enemy's horses. A deep ditch was dug along the eastern wall.
Around all the walls were built gaps, which consisted of sharpened logs, dug upright in several rows. Until the approach to the walls of Moscow, False Dmitry II, the monastery was guarded by hired Cossacks. Later, in addition to them, about eight hundred nobles and children of the boyars and about a hundred archers were sent, led by the okolnich prince Grigory Borisovich Dolgoruky-Roscha (died 1612) and the Moscow nobleman Alexei Ivanovich Golokhvastov.
Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Restoration project of the architectural ensemble... V. I. Baldin,1963.
At the time of the siege, there were 609 warriors from the children of boyars, Cossacks and archers, 300 monastic brethren, about 1000 Russian refugees who had gathered from the surrounding area. The total number of defenders of the monastery was about 2500 people. The historians learned about the number of brethren in the monastery from the message of Avraamy Palitsyn, who pointed out in his essay that 297 elderly monks died due to scurvy in the monastery during the siege.
Abraham P alitsyn.
A conclusion is also drawn about the total number of the besieged on the basis of the calculation of losses: “everyone in the monastery of the Life-Giving Trinity died under siege, the elders and military men were beaten and died from the siege weakness of the children of boyars and servants, and servicemen, and archers, and Cossacks, gunners and defenders, and "meticulous people" (monastic peasants) and servants of 2,125 people - except for women and undergrowth and weak and old. " After some time, the number of defenders was replenished with 60 military men and 20 monastic servants. During the third attack "there are no more than two hundred people in the monastery of the Wonderworker."
September 23, 1608
Even before the start of the siege of the monastery, the detachments of Lisovsky, passing to join the main forces, burned the village of Klementyevskoe located under the monastery [3]. On September 23, 1608, having defeated the Moscow army on the Trinity road between the villages of Rakhmanovo and Vozdvizhenskoye, which were on the Trinity road, the thirty thousandth army of the commander of the Polish troops Jan Peter Sapieha and Lisovsky settled not far from the monastery on the Klementyevsky field. Here they were joined by Tatars, Circassians, Cossacks and Russian traitors.
Time of Troubles. Moscow region. The Pretender's Army. Artist: S.V. Ivanov, 1908
The day before, according to the accepted defensive practice, by order of Dolgorukov, the surrounding monastic settlements, several villages and villages (Zubacheva, Annunciation, Afonasov, Chertkov) were burned. The population of the area fled behind the walls of the monastery. Sapega stationed his army from the west, and Lisovsky from the southwestern side of the monastery, building here forts and huts.
Siege of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Artist: V.P. Vereshchagin, 1891
According to S.F. Platonov: “The movement of Sapieha and Lisovsky, bypassing Moscow, transferred the entire Zamoskovye to the power of Tushin, with the exception of a few fortified points. Having laid down the Trinity Monastery, the people of Tushin began to freely dispose of on the way, which should have been covered by the strongholds of the famous monastery. " Soon Pereslavl-Zalessky and Rostov swore allegiance to False Dmitry.
"Vohon Paradox"
A few days after the start of the siege, residents of the Zamoskovsk Volost Vohna swore allegiance to the impostor, as evidenced by a number of documents from the archives of Jan Sapieha [4].It is interesting that the Vokhon peasants were the most consistent adherents of the Pretender, despite the fact that in Pavlovo-Posad regional studies there is a legend about the battle of local monastic peasants with the detachment of the fox-colonel Stanislav Chaplinsky as if it happened on the banks of the Klyazma River in September 1609.
Jan Sapieha's secretaries noted that when he approached Trinity, he twice sent parliamentarians to the monastery with a proposal to surrender. The texts of Sapieha's epistles cited by A. Palitsyn, and the text of the proud answer of the besieged, as the researchers found out, are a figment of the author's imagination and literary works.
Shelling of the Trinity Monastery. Hood .: N. Leventsev.
Having received a strong refusal on an offer to surrender without a fight, October 3 the invaders started artillery shelling the monastery from 63 cannons.
Siege
The position of the defenders of the monastery was really difficult. Despite the fact that they were provided with rye, it was not possible to grind it, since the mills were located outside the walls of the monastery. The tightness forced people to live in the open air. Pregnant women had to give birth to children in front of strangers, and "no one hid with their shame."
Yan Sapieha's camp. Lithography.
On October 13, with the onset of night, the first assault on the monastery walls began, but the besieged courageously met the attackers - the attacks were repulsed, and in the morning the siege weapons left by the enemy at the walls of the monastery were burned. On the night of October 24, another attack was repulsed. The besieged made frequent sorties.
Sortie of the besieged from the Trinity Monastery. Artist: N. Leventsev.
In a night sortie on October 8, Lisovsky himself was wounded, on October 19 a new sortie was made, which grew into a bloody battle, and on October 26 another sortie was made, during which the company of Captain Gerasim was exterminated, and Captain Bryushevsky was taken prisoner.
Siege of the Trinity-Sergius monastery on October 13, 1608
During one of the sorties, finding a tunnel, two peasants from the village of Klementyevsky blew themselves up in it, disrupting the insidious plans of the enemy.
According to an anonymous inventory of sorties that has come down to our days, from October 3, 1608 to the end of January 1609, 31 sorties were made by the besieged. Having investigated the issue, A.V. Gorsky found mention of four more.The lack of firewood, so necessary for heating the monastery during the winter cold, led to the fact that "they had to buy from the enemy at the price of blood."
On November 17, 1608, due to a lack of food, scurvy began in the monastery. At first, 10 people died per day, then 50 and even 100.On February 19 (March 1), 1609, documents from the monastery seized by Sapieha, sent to Vasily Shuisky, reported that the military and food supplies of the besieged were coming to an end.
Cattle outing. Lithograph of 1862.
By March 1609, the siege had developed into a tactical confrontation. On April 1 (11), 1609, the Sapezhins captured three archers with five hundred messages to Moscow. "The letters said that scurvy takes dozens of lives every hour, and the garrison of the monastery can no longer hold out." In May, the situation of the defenders of the Trinity was so difficult that Sapega again sent a parliamentarian to the monastery with a letter in which he demanded the immediate surrender of the fortress, but received no response.
Siege of the Trinity Monastery. The Appearance of the Monks Sergius and Nikon to the Enemies. Lithography.
On June 28 (July 8), the besieged fought off another decisive enemy attack. The leadership of individual detachments of the defenders was entrusted to three monks: Athanasius Oshcherin, Paisiy Litvin and Guriy Shishkin. After this new failure, most of Sapieha's army was forced to leave from under the walls of the monastery to join the detachments of A. Zborovsky. In July, when the Russian traitors, Saltykov and Grammatin, came to Sapieha's camp with their detachments, a new attack began three hours before dawn, but due to the fact that the messenger's gun fired a shot ahead of time, it was ripped off. Meanwhile, no more than 200 defenders remained in the monastery.
The disciples of St. Sergius Micah, Bartholomew and Naum are sent to Prince Mikhail Vasilyevich for help October 1609
Explaining the circumstances that prevented the Polish-Lithuanian troops in June 1608 from taking Moscow into a complete blockade, S.F. Platonov wrote: "First of all, this was prevented by the resistance of Kolomna, who connected Moscow with the Ryazan Territory, and then by the lack of funds for good observation of small roads like the Olshanskaya road, Khomutovka, etc." ...
Historians noted that the liberation of the Moscow region began from the northeast. Having united under Aleksandrov with the troops of Sheremetev and troops from Moscow under the leadership of I.S. Kurakin and B.M. Lykov, the troops of Skopin-Shuisky in the spring of 1610 began a slow advance towards Moscow along the largest roads in the northeast. As S.F. Platonov: “Skopin systematically resorted to the same trick on all the roads that he mastered: he built forts on them and put garrisons in them, which kept this path at their disposal. The Poles attributed the invention of this measure to the Swedish military leaders, but it was a purely Moscow technique, which found its best expression in the well-known "walk-cities". It was used not only on the Troitskaya and Stromynskaya roads, where Skopin operated, but also on the Kolomenskaya road, where Tsar Vasily "ordered the prison to put bread for the passage." With the help of such prisoners, the Moscow army knocked the Tushins out of all their positions around Moscow and reached Moscow itself. " According to the assumption of local lore M. Baev, not far from the Grebnevsky nursery there are impressive ramparts of one of such prison, but this opinion has not been confirmed archaeological excavations.
"Great dishonor, shame, shame and shameful reproach were brought on to the Polish king and his kingdom "...
In October 1609, Yaroslavl, Kostroma and Galicians came to the aid of the besieged, a total of about 900 people under the voivodeship of D. Zherebtsov. The supplies they brought in lasted another 12 weeks. Finally, Valuev with a detachment of 500 people, joining with Zherebtsov's detachment, set fire to the invaders' camp. A lot of blood was shed on Krasnaya Gora, on the Kelarsky pond, on the Volkush and Klementyevsky field. When the Poles left their camp on January 12, the monks did not dare to leave the monastery walls for another 8 days. So the siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was lifted.
End of the Siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Polish trophies of the commanders Sapieha and Lisovsky, fleeing with their army, in the hands of M. Skopin-Shuisky
As Jan Sapega wrote, summing up this bloody war: “And in the end both the throne and the whole kingdom of Moscow were released from the hands and lost in vain, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish crown is burdened with useless unpaid debts, the states are devastated, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is involved in an eternal war with this people [Russian] and in great danger from other sides; great disgrace, shame, shame and shameful reproach were brought upon the king of Poland and his kingdom "...
A. Poslykhalin, 2012. When using the material, a link to trojza.blogspot.com is required.
Isp. lit.
1.
Platonov S.F. Essays on the history of the Troubles in the Muscovite State of the 16th-17th centuries. SPb., 1906., p. 279
2.
Palitsyn A. The Legend of the Siege of the Trinity Sergius Monastery from the Poles and Lithuania. M. 1822., p. 60
3.
Gorskiy A.V. Historical description of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra. Sergiev Posad, 1910 .., p. 96
4.
Russian archive of Yan Sapega 1608-1611: experience of reconstruction and source analysis. Ed .: O.V. Inshakova. Volgograd, 2005. 133
5.
Folomeeva N.V. Land P avlovoposadskaya. Orekhovo-Zuevo, 1999, p. 233
6. Lyubavsky M.K. Lithuanian Chancellor Lev Sapega on the events of the Time of Troubles. M. 1901, p. 13.
Trinity siege- the siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery by the troops of False Dmitry II, which lasted almost sixteen months - from September 23, 1608 to January 12, 1610, when it was removed by the troops of Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky and Jacob Delagardie.
Preceding events
By the time of the Time of Troubles, the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was already an influential religious center, the owner of the richest treasury and a first-class military fortress. The monastery was surrounded by 12 towers connected by a fortress wall 1250 meters long, 8 to 14 meters high, 1 meter thick. 110 cannons were placed on the walls and towers, there were numerous throwing devices, boilers for boiling boiling water and tar, devices for overturning them on the enemy. Having fortified near Moscow, False Dmitry II and the Polish forces supporting him made an attempt to organize a complete blockade of it. The occupation of the monastery and the subsequent control over it ensured a complete blockade of Moscow from the east and control over the northeastern regions of Russia, the capture of the monastery's treasures made it possible to strengthen the financial position, and the attraction of the influential monastic brethren to its side promised the final collapse of the authority of Tsar Vasily Shuisky and the subsequent wedding to the kingdom False Dmitry II.
To solve this problem, the united Polish-Lithuanian army of Hetman Jan Sapega was sent to the monastery, reinforced by the detachments of their Russian allies, the Tushins and Cossacks, under the command of Colonel Alexander Lisovsky. Data on the number of these troops differ (according to some sources - about 15 thousand people, according to other sources - up to 30 thousand people). The historian I. Tyumentsev gives the following data on the enemy troops: Polish-Lithuanian regiments and mercenaries numbered 4.5 thousand people, Tushinians - 5-6 thousand. The army numbered 6,770 cavalry and 3,350 infantry, the total number of the army was a little more than 10 thousand people, which by the standards of that time was a significant combat force. There were 17 guns, but all of them were field guns, almost useless for conducting a siege.
The government of Vasily Shuisky sent in advance to the monastery the Strelets and Cossack detachments of the governor Grigory Dolgorukov-Roshcha and the Moscow nobleman Alexei Golokhvastov. By the beginning of the siege, the defenders numbered up to 2300 military men and about 1000 peasants of neighboring villages, pilgrims, monks, servants and workers of the monastery, who took an active part in its defense. The entire period of the siege in the monastery was the princess Ksenia Godunova, tonsured at the direction of False Dmitry I as a nun.
The beginning of the siege
The leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian army did not expect a stubborn defense of the monastery, based on the mass rejection of the reign of Vasily Shuisky by the population of Russia and the paralysis of the Russian state power. Therefore, the refusal of the Russian garrison to surrender the Trinity-Sergius Monastery without resistance put them in a difficult position. First of all, the besiegers had to hastily build their own fortified camps and prepare for the difficulties of the assault, while trying to negotiate with the besieged. However, in the last question, Sapieha was in for a failure - the archimandrite of the monastery Joasaph in his reply to him put at the forefront not the fulfillment of the oath to Tsar Vasily Shuisky, but the protection of Orthodoxy and the duty to "faithfully serve the sovereign who will be in Moscow." Copies of this message in the form of letters were widely distributed throughout Russia, playing a significant role in the growth of the national consciousness of the Russian people. Thus, from the very beginning, the defense of the monastery acquired, in the eyes of the besieged and in the eyes of Russian society of that time, a nationwide, deeply state character, multiplied by the importance of armed defense of one of the main Orthodox shrines.
From October 1608, small skirmishes began: the besiegers fought with Russian scouts, the besieged tried to cut off and destroy small groups of besiegers at construction work and harvesting forage. Construction of tunnels under the monastery towers began. On the night of November 1, 1608, the first assault attempt was made with a simultaneous attack from three sides. The besiegers set fire to one of the advanced Russian wooden fortifications. The flames of the fire lit up the orders of the advancing troops. The attackers were stopped by the aimed fire of numerous Russian artillery and put to flight. In the course of the subsequent sorties, scattered groups of Tushins who were hiding in the ditches were destroyed. The first assault ended in complete failure with significant damage to the besiegers.
The leaders of the monastery garrison adhered to the tactics of active defense. In December 1608 - January 1609, with daring sorties, it was possible to recapture some of the cattle and hay reserves from the besiegers, defeat a number of outposts, set fire to some of the fortifications of the besiegers. However, at the same time they suffered significant losses, amounting to 325 people killed and captured in December alone. There were also garrison defectors to the enemy, including nobles and archers. Apparently, thanks to their testimony, in January 1609, one of the sorties of the besieged almost ended in tragedy - the enemy attacked them from an ambush and cut them off from the monastery, and the cavalry of the besiegers attacked the open monastery gates. Part of the attackers even managed to break into the monastery. The situation was again saved by the numerous Russian artillery, which caused the confusion of the Tushin people with accurate fire, who attacked the fighters who had gone on a sortie. Thanks to this support, the archers who participated in the sortie returned to the monastery, having lost over 40 people only killed. The enemy horsemen who burst into the monastery were mostly exterminated by peasants and pilgrims, who threw stones and logs at them in the narrow streets between the buildings.
Events of 1609
From January 1609, the situation of the besieged worsened - due to the lack of food supplies, scurvy began. Already in February, the death rate reached 15 people per day. Also, a few reserves of gunpowder began to be depleted. Hetman Jan Sapega, who received information about this, began preparations for a new assault, planning to blow up the fortress gates with prepared powerful firecrackers. In turn, the governors of Vasily Shuisky tried to support the besieged by sending a trainload of 20 poods of gunpowder to the monastery, accompanied by 70 Cossacks and 20 monastery servants. The Poles managed to capture the messengers, whom the elder of this convoy sent to the monastery to coordinate a plan of action. Under torture, the messengers revealed information they knew. As a result, on the night of February 16, 1609, the convoy fell into one of the ambushes, the Cossacks guarding the convoy entered into an unequal battle. Hearing the noise of the battle, Voivode Dolgoruky-Roscha embarked on a sortie. As a result, the ambush was dispersed, the valuable convoy broke through to the monastery. Frustrated by the failure, Colonel Lisovsky ordered the next morning to take out under the walls of the monastery and brutally execute the captured messengers and four prisoners taken in the night battle. In response, Dolgoruky-Roshcha ordered to bring to the walls and hack to death all the prisoners in the monastery - 61 people, most of them Cossacks-Tushins and mercenaries. The result was a revolt of the Tushino detachments among the besiegers, who accused Lisovsky of the death of their comrades. From that time on, discord in the camp of the besiegers began to intensify.
Discord arose in the garrison of the monastery between the archers and the monks. There were facts of people fleeing to the enemy. Knowing about the difficulties of the besieged, Sapieha undertook preparations for a new assault, and to guarantee success he sent a Pole defector Martyash to the monastery with the task of gaining confidence in the Russian governor, and at the decisive moment to disable part of the fortress artillery. Taking part in sorties and firing cannons at the Tushinites, Martyash really came into the trust of Voivode Dolgoruky. But on the eve of the assault, scheduled for June 28, an Orthodox Lithuanian ran into the monastery, reporting on the scout. Martyash was captured and under torture told everything he knew about the upcoming assault. Although by that time the forces of the garrison had decreased by more than three times since the beginning of the siege, their correct placement in the places of enemy strikes this time also made it possible to defend the monastery. The attackers were repulsed in a night battle, during the subsequent sortie more than 30 people were captured. But the number of soldiers among the besieged decreased to 200 people.
Therefore, Sapega immediately began to prepare the third assault. By joining the detachments of Tushins operating in the vicinity, he brought the number of his troops to 12,000. This time, the attack had to be carried out from all four directions in order to achieve a complete fragmentation of the insignificant forces of the garrison. The signal for the attack was a cannon shot, from which a fire would start in the fortress, if a fire does not arise, then a second shot, and if even then a fire does not arise, then a third shot, regardless of the results. The assault was scheduled for July 28, 1609. The voivode Dolgoruky-Roshcha, who saw the preparations for him, armed all the peasants and monks, ordered all the gunpowder to be taken out on the walls, but there was practically no chance of success in the battle.
Only a miracle could save the besieged, and it took place. The intricate signal system for the assault played a fatal role - some detachments rushed to the assault after the first shot, others after the next. In the darkness, the orders of the storming men mingled. In one place, the German mercenaries heard the cries of the Russian Tushinians behind their backs and, deciding that they were besieged on a sortie, they entered into battle. Elsewhere, with the bursts of shots, the Polish column saw a detachment of Tushinites approaching it from the flank and also opened fire on it. The besieged artillery opened fire on the battlefield, increasing the turmoil and panic that arose. The battle between the besiegers turned into a bloody massacre of each other. The number of people killed by each other was hundreds.
End of the siege
Essentially, the inconsistency of the attackers was a watershed moment in the struggle for the monastery. Long-standing disagreements between the Tushins on the one hand, and the Poles and mercenaries on the other, have spilled out. A split occurred in the army of the besiegers. Many atamans of the Tushinites withdrew their troops from the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, in the remaining detachments desertion became widespread. Following the Tushin people, foreign mercenaries left the Sapieha camp. The besieged, on the other hand, were convinced that the miraculous salvation of the monastery was the result of divine intercession and that the end of the siege was near.
In the fall of 1609, the Russian troops of Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky inflicted a number of defeats on the Tushins and Poles, after which they began an offensive towards Moscow. Part of the forces was allocated to fight the army of Sapieha, blocking it in their own camp. Regular communication was restored between the besieged and the troops coming to the rescue.
On October 19, 1609 and on January 4, 1610, the defenders received reinforcements: the troops of the archers of the governor Zherebtsov (900 people) and Grigory Valuev (500 people) broke through to the monastery. The reinforced garrison began active hostilities. In one of the sorties, the archers set fire to the wooden fortifications of the Sapieha camp. The numerical superiority of the enemy did not allow them to break into the camp, but the outcome of the struggle was already clear. Knowing about the movement of the troops of Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky from Novgorod to the monastery, Sapega ordered to hastily lift the siege. On January 12, 1610, the Polish-Lithuanian detachments withdrew from the monastery in the direction of Dmitrov. There they were overtaken and defeated by the Russian detachment of the governor Ivan Kurakin. As a result, Sapega brought back to False Dmitry II a little over 1000 people.
In the besieged monastery by the end of the siege, no more than 1000 people remained there at the beginning of the siege, of which the number of the garrison was less than 200 people.
The successful end of the siege had a significant impact on the mood of the population, raised the morale of the troops, which for the first time during the Time of Troubles gave such a decisive rebuff to foreign invaders.
Defense of Moscow. Tushino camp
The defense of the capital was led by Tsar Vasily himself. He had accumulated 30-35 thousand warriors. In order to keep the enemy out of the city, they took up positions on Khodynka and Presnya. But Shuisky did not dare to take on a general battle. He entered into negotiations with Hetman Rozhinsky (Ruzhinsky) and the Polish ambassadors Gonsevsky and Olesnitsky detained in Moscow. Vasily Shuisky offered serious concessions: he agreed to pay Rozhinsky's mercenaries, agreed to release the Poles detained in Russia after the overthrow of False Dmitry I to their homeland, and then sign a peace treaty with Poland. At the same time, the Polish king Sigismund had to recall his subjects from the camp of False Dmitry (although many of the Polish gentry acted at their own peril and risk and in Poland were considered rebels and criminals). The Polish ambassadors also agreed to do anything to get freedom and break out of Russia.
The tsarist army relaxed for two weeks of negotiations, people were sure that they were about to sign peace. And hetman Rozhinsky took advantage of this and on June 25, 1608, attacked the tsarist governors. The Polish cavalry crushed Shuisky's regiments on Khodynka and drove off, hoping to break into the city on their shoulders. But at Vagankov, the enemy cavalry was met with fire by the Moscow archers, and forced to turn back. The tsarist troops launched a counterattack. The Polish men at arms could not break away from the light Tatar cavalry, and they were driven to the river. Khimki. Then the Poles tried to attack again, but without success. Both sides suffered heavy losses, and Rozhinsky refused further attacks and began to strengthen the Tushino camp.
Instead of the royal chambers in the Kremlin, False Dmitry had to be content with hastily felled log mansions in Tushino, located a few miles northwest of the capital at the confluence of the small river Skhodnya into the Moskva River. Here his "Boyar Duma", headed by Mikhail Saltykov and Dmitry Trubetskoy, began to sit, "orders" worked, from here detachments of Tushins left to fight and plunder Russian cities and lands that had not submitted to the "tsarik". In Tushino, the wife of the first False Dmitry, Marina Mnishek, was brought to the impostor and the tsarist detachment. She surprisingly quickly got along with the Tushino "king" and publicly recognized him as her husband. And then she secretly married him in the Sapieha detachment (the wedding was performed by her Jesuit confessor). For this, False Dmitry II granted Yuri Mnishek 14 cities, including Chernigov, Bryansk and Smolensk, and promised 300 thousand gold rubles upon accession to the throne. The conjugal union raised the authority of the impostor. However, he did not have real power: the Tushino camp was ruled by the so-called “decimvirs” acting under the “tsar” - ten gentry - representatives of the Polish army. The actual leader of the Tushino camp, acting on behalf of the nominal "tsarik", was Hetman Roman Rozhinsky. The ataman of the Cossacks, Ivan Zarutsky, stood out.
Great power was acquired by the largest Lithuanian tycoon Jan Sapega, who led a powerful detachment of 7.5 thousand people. Jan Sapega was recognized as the second hetman of False Dmitry II along with Rozhinsky. A division of spheres of influence was made between them. Hetman Rozhinsky remained in the Tushino camp and controlled the southern and western lands, and Hetman Sapega, together with Pan Lisovsky, became a camp near the Trinity-Sergius Monastery and began to spread the power of "Tsar Dmitry" in Zamoskovye, Pomorie and Novgorod land.
Finally, in Tushino appeared his own named patriarch - Filaret (Romanov), the father of the future Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. As a Rostov bishop, he was captured by the Tushino people during the capture of Rostov in October 1608 and, in disgrace, on the woods and tied to a dissolute woman, was brought to Tushino. However, False Dmitry showered him, as his imaginary relative, with favors, having appointed him patriarch. Filaret, as patriarch, began to perform divine services and send district letters to the regions. Seeing such an example, representatives of the clergy rushed to Tushino in great numbers.
The army of the impostor increased significantly, new Polish detachments, Cossacks, insurgent peasants and slaves approached. The number of Poles reached 20 thousand people, Cossacks - 30 thousand soldiers, there were about 18 thousand Tatars. In total, the army reached about 100 thousand people. However, the exact number did not even know the commanders themselves - some went on expeditions and robberies, others came.
On July 25, 1608, Tsar Vasily Shuisky concluded an armistice agreement with the Polish king Sigismund III for 3 years and 11 months. He pledged to release to their homeland the Poles detained after the May 1606 coup in Moscow, including Marina Mnishek with her father. Poland pledged to withdraw from the Russian state the Poles who fought on the side of the impostor. Tsar Vasily hoped that thus the "Tushino thief" would lose the support of strong Polish troops. But the Polish side did not fulfill the terms of the armistice. Polish troops continued to fight on the side of the impostor.
The siege of Moscow by the Tushins continued for almost a year and a half. A strange relationship was established between the capital and the Tushino camp. Both tsars, Vasily and "Demetrius", did not prevent the boyars and servicemen from leaving for their enemy, in turn, trying with generous promises and gifts to lure boyars, nobles and clerks from the enemy camp. In search of ranks, awards, estates and estates, many prominent nobles moved from Moscow to the "capital" Tushino and back, earning the apt nickname "Tushino flights" among the people.
Vast territories were under the rule of the Tushin "tsar". In the northwest, Pskov and its suburbs, Velikiye Luki, Ivangorod, Koporye, Gdov, Oreshek swore allegiance to the impostor. The main base of False Dmitry II was still Severshchina and the south with Astrakhan. In the east, the power of the Tushino "thief" was recognized by Murom, Kasimov, Temnikov, Arzamas, Alatyr, Sviyazhsk, as well as many northeastern cities. In the central part, the impostor was supported by Suzdal, Uglich, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vladimir and many other cities. Of the major centers, only Smolensk, Veliky Novgorod, Pereslavl-Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan remained loyal to Tsar Vasily Shuisky. In Kostroma, Polish detachments, forcing them to swear allegiance to False Dmitry, first ravaged the Epiphany-Anastasiin Monastery, and then occupied the Ipatiev Monastery. True, some cities swore allegiance to the impostor only in order to avoid raids by his bandit formations. And even the boyars, loyal to Tsar Shuisky, wrote to their estates so that their elders would recognize False Dmitry in order to avoid ruin. Thus, in fact, Russia at this time broke up into two warring public education.
The situation in Moscow was difficult. In the fall of 1608, the flight from Moscow took on a rampant character - especially after at the end of September Sapega defeated a detachment moved against him at Rakhmanov and laid siege to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Discontent with Tsar Vasily was already ripening in Moscow itself - they say, he had rebuilt "all the land" against himself, brought matters to a siege. Starvation worsened the situation. This led to uprisings and several attempts to overthrow Shuisky: February 25, April 2 and May 5, 1610. But the residents of the capital knew that the former "Dmitry" was no longer alive, and saw what kind of gangs and "thieves" had come to them. Therefore, they were not going to give up. Tsar Vasily Shuisky, who was not popular either with the boyars or with the nobles, held on to power because his opponents among the Moscow nobility, fearing a large-scale peasant war, did not dare to coup d'etat. It seemed easier for them to come to an agreement with the Poles or Swedes.
Heroic Defense of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery
Tushintsy, trying to completely blockade Moscow, decided to cut off all roads to it and thereby stop the supply of food. They had enough strength for this. In early September, the army of Hetman Sapieha, numbering about 30 thousand infantry and cavalry, went north from the capital to cut the roads to Yaroslavl and Vladimir. Khmelevsky's troops from Kashira went south to capture Kolomna. To the east of Moscow, they were to unite. Having defeated the army of the tsar's brother Ivan Shuisky, Sapega approached the Trinity-Sergius Monastery on September 23. The residents of Tushin anticipated abundant booty, hoping to plunder the rich monastic treasury. However, they were wrong. When asked to surrender, the Russian soldiers proudly replied that they would not open the gates, even if they had to sit under siege and endure hardships for ten years. The famous 16-month defense of the monastery began, which lasted until January 1610, when it was withdrawn by the troops of Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky and Jacob Delagardie.
The Trinity-Sergius Monastery (like many other monasteries) was a powerful fortress and it was impossible to take it on the move. At first, the Poles had 17 guns, but all of them were field guns, almost useless for conducting a siege of a strong fortress. The monastery was surrounded by 12 towers connected by a fortress wall 1250 meters long, 8 to 14 meters high. 110 cannons were placed on the walls and towers, there were numerous throwing devices, boilers for boiling boiling water and tar, devices for overturning them on the enemy. The government of Vasily Shuisky managed to send in advance the strelets and Cossack detachments to the monastery under the command of the governor Prince Grigory Dolgorukov-Roshcha and the Moscow nobleman Alexei Golokhvastov. By the beginning of the siege, the garrison of the fortress numbered up to 2300 warriors and about 1000 peasants from neighboring villages, pilgrims, monks, servants and workers of the monastery.
The leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian army did not expect a stubborn defense of the monastery and were not ready for a long siege. First of all, the besiegers had to hastily build their own fortified camps and prepare for the siege, while trying to persuade the garrison to surrender. However, Sapega was in for a failure. The archimandrite of the monastery Joasaph refused to break the oath of allegiance to Tsar Basil. From October 1608, clashes began: the besieged made sorties, tried to cut off and destroy small groups of the enemy during construction work and harvesting forage; Poles fought with Russian spies, dug under the walls of the fortress.
On the night of November 1 (11), 1608, the first attempt was made to storm the monastery with a simultaneous attack from three sides. The impostor's troops set fire to one of the advanced Russian wooden fortifications and rushed to the attack. However, by strong fire from numerous Russian artillery, the enemy was stopped and put to flight. Then the Russian garrison made a strong sortie and destroyed several detachments of the Tushins who took refuge in the ditches. Thus, the first assault ended in complete failure with significant damage to the besiegers.
Getman Jan Pyotr Sapega
Sapieha's troops went over to the siege. The Russian garrison continued to make sorties. In December 1608 - January 1609, our warriors with strong sorties captured part of the enemy's food and forage reserves, defeated and set fire to several outposts and fortifications of the besieging. However, the garrison also suffered serious losses. Discord arose in the garrison of the monastery between the archers and the monks. There were also garrison defectors to the enemy, including nobles and archers. In January 1609, the Tushins nearly took the fortress. During one of the sorties, the Tushins attacked from an ambush and cut off our detachment from the fortress. At the same time, part of the enemy troops broke into the open gates of the monastery. The situation was saved by the numerous artillery of the fortress, which upset the ranks of the enemy army with its fire. Thanks to the support of artillery, the artillery detachment that went out on the sortie was able to break through, having lost several dozen fighters. And the horsemen who burst into the Trinity-Sergius Monastery could not turn around in the narrow streets between the buildings, and fell under the blow of ordinary people, who rained down on the enemy a hail of stones and logs. The enemy was defeated and driven back.
Meanwhile, the situation worsened for the Polish-Cossack troops of Sapieha and Lisovsky. In winter it became more difficult to get food, scurvy began. A few reserves of gunpowder began to deplete. Sapieha's troops were not ready for the siege of a strong fortress, there were no corresponding supplies and equipment. Dissensions intensified in the besieging army, between Poles, mercenaries and Cossacks. As a result, Hetman Sapega decided on a second assault, planning to blow up the fortress gates with prepared powerful firecrackers.
To guarantee success, Sapega introduced the defector of the Pole Martyash into the monastery with the task of gaining confidence in the Russian governor, and at the decisive moment to disable part of the fortress artillery. Taking part in sorties and firing cannons at the Tushinites, Martyash really came into the trust of Voivode Dolgoruky. But on the eve of the assault, scheduled for July 8, a defector arrived at the monastery, who reported about the spy. Martyash was captured and under torture told everything he knew about the upcoming assault. As a result, although by that time the forces of the Russian garrison had decreased by more than three times since the beginning of the siege, Dolgorukov's soldiers withstood the attack. They were placed in places where enemy attacks were expected, this made it possible to repel the second assault. The Tushins were thrown back in a night battle.
However, the number of professional soldiers of the fortress garrison decreased to 200 people. Therefore, Sapega began to prepare the third assault, mobilizing all his forces. This time, the attack had to be carried out from all four directions in order to achieve a complete fragmentation of the weak forces of the garrison. On one of the directions, the attackers had to break through the fortifications and simply crush the small garrison of the monastery. The assault was scheduled for August 7, 1609.
The voivode Dolgoruky, who saw the enemy's preparations for him, armed all the peasants and monks, ordered all the gunpowder to be taken out on the walls, but there was practically no chance of a successful battle. Only a miracle could save the besieged, and it happened. The Tushinites got confused in the signals (gun shots), some detachments rushed to the assault after the first shot, others after the next, mixed. German mercenaries mistook the Russian Tushinites for a garrison and fought with them. Elsewhere, the Polish cavalry mistook the Tushinites for a sortie of the monastery's garrison and attacked them. The battle between the besiegers turned into a bloody massacre of each other. The number of people killed by each other was hundreds. The artillery of the fortress opened heavy fire at the sounds of the battle. As a result, the assault columns mixed, panicked and retreated. Thus, the inconsistency of the actions of the Tushins and the "friendly massacre" thwarted a decisive assault.
The failure of the assault and the mutual massacre, the general failure of the seizure of the rich monastery, which everyone hoped to plunder, finally split the camp of the Tushins, where mutual hostility had long been smoldering. A split occurred in the army of Sapieha. Many atamans of the Tushinites withdrew their troops from the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, in the remaining detachments desertion became widespread. Following the Tushin people, foreign mercenaries left the Sapieha camp. The besieged got hope of victory.
Meanwhile, Sapega was no longer able to organize a new assault on the fortress. In the fall of 1609, the Russian troops of Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky inflicted a number of defeats on the Tushins and Poles, and began an offensive towards Moscow. Russian regiments liberated Pereslavl-Zalessky and Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. Detachments from all over Russia flocked to Skopin-Shuisky. Feeling a threat, Sapega decided to strike a preemptive strike on Skopin-Shuisky. Leaving part of his army to besiege the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, he moved to the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, but was defeated in the battle on the Karinskoe field. After that, the detachments of the archers of the governor Davyd Zherebtsov and Grigory Valuev were able to break into the monastery and restore the combat capability of its garrison. The garrison of the fortress again switched to active hostilities. Hetman Sapega, taking into account the approach of the main forces of Prince Skopin-Shuisky, lifted the siege. On January 12 (22), 1610, the Polish-Lithuanian detachments retreated from the monastery and fled to the impostor.
The ruin of the Russian land
Unable to achieve a complete blockade of Moscow, the Tushins tried to seize as much of the state as possible. Pskov fell under their rule, the Novgorod regions - pyatina, many "border", Tver and Smolensk cities. Many of them were taken by surprise. Tushino bandit formations have deeply wedged themselves into the country. In the occupied territory, the Tushins behaved like conquerors. Detachments of "driven people" - the foragers of Sapieha, Lisovsky, Rozhinsky and other Polish magnates scattered across the cities and villages. All of them ruined the country in the name of "Tsar Dmitry".
The cities that remained on the side of Tsar Vasily were brought into obedience by the detachments expelled from Tushino. So, Lisovsky attacked Rostov, massacring 2 thousand people. The situation was critical. The war went on almost throughout the territory of European Russia. Only certain districts and cities held out. Ryazan, where Lyapunov was in charge. Kolomna, where the voivode Prozorovsky defeated the regiments of Khmelevsky, Mlotsky and Bobovsky sent against him. Novgorod repulsed Kernozitsky's detachment and threw it back to Staraya Russa. Kazan was held by Sheremetev, Nizhny Novgorod - by Alyabyev and Repnin. With a garrison of several hundred archers and the city militia, they beat the enemy detachments four times, and Vyazemsky, who was in charge of the Tushinites, was caught and hanged. Voivode Mikhail Shein found himself in a difficult situation in Smolensk. Gangs invaded his district from beyond the Commonwealth, robbed villages, killed, drove away full of people, and the governor received a categorical order from the king not to take action against them, so as not to break the peace with Poland. Shein found a way out in that he began to arm the peasants themselves and form them into self-defense units for the "illegal" rebuff to the bandits.
The Polish gentry turned the tsarik as they wanted, and appointed themselves fantastic salaries. Of course, False Dmitry had no money, and the gentry did not want to wait for the seizure of Moscow's wealth. In Tushino itself, on February 1, 1609, a riot even broke out, as the Poles demanded payment of salaries. Since, with all the desire, the impostor could not find the necessary amount of money, the Poles divided the country between the groups for feeding - "bailiffs", and began to rob them. On behalf of the "royal" name, decrees were issued on the collection of salaries in certain cities. All this resulted in outright robberies, pogroms and violence. For example, in the voluntarily submitted Yaroslavl, "merchants' shops were robbed, the people were beaten, and without money they bought whatever they wanted." Women and girls were raped, and those who tried to protect them or their property were killed. It happened that the settlements were robbed several times, arriving with the same decrees from either Rozhinsky or Sapega.
In addition to "collecting salaries" for the troops, a campaign began to prepare for the winter and collect food and fodder. For the organization of the Tushino camp, workers were rounded up from the surrounding villages, huts were selected and taken away, throwing the owners out into the cold. They devastated the reserves of the peasants, dooming them to death by starvation. And they not only took, betrayed everything that they met to senseless destruction: they destroyed and burned houses, buildings, slaughtered cattle, scattered sowing grain, destroyed food that they could not take with them, etc. They kidnapped beautiful women and girls, forcing husbands and relatives to bring the ransom. The abducted were not always returned.
Some pans created thieves' nests in their villages and estates, terrorized the peasants, forced themselves to be fed and watered, created harems of girls. Many, taking into account the moral foundations of that time, were then hanged or drowned from shame. Nobody put the decrees of the "tsarik" into a penny. And numerous petitions from the nobles to False Dmitry survived, that the Poles nestled in the estates granted to them, rampaging over the peasants, and even over the relatives of the landowners. We also heard complaints from the clergy that "estates, villages and villages have been ruined and plundered by military people, and many have been burned." Bandit formations of Tushins seized monasteries, tortured monks, looked for treasures, mocked the nuns, forced to serve themselves, dance and sing "shameful songs", they killed for refusal.
It is clear that this ultimately led to massive resistance from the Russian people. The same cities that swore allegiance to False Dmitry, already at the end of 1608 began to fall away from him. Punitive expeditions followed in response. Lisovsky was especially furious. The Poles burned down the Danilovsky Monastery and killed all the inhabitants. Lisovsky brutally pacified Yaroslavl, slaughtered Kineshma, and, as Petrey wrote, "reaching the cities of Galich and Kostroma, he burned them down and retreated with a huge and rich booty." Atrocities became widespread and commonplace: people were hanged, drowned, put on stakes, crucified, robbed of their clothes and driven naked into the cold, mothers and daughters were raped in front of children and fathers. But this only intensified the anger against the Tushin people. As soon as the punishers left, the uprisings resumed, and the "Lithuania" that came across, the governors and officials appointed by False Dmitry were massacred without any pity.
The districts that remained under the authority of the impostor were no better. Various bandit formations - Polish-Lithuanian detachments, lord's servants, "thieves' Cossacks", freemen of the outskirts, just robbers, also wanted to "take a walk". So, a certain Nalivaiko distinguished himself in the Vladimir region by impaling men and raping all women, so that "he beat to death with his own hands, noblemen and boyar children and all sorts of people, men and wives, 93 people." In the end, his actions prompted a response from the impostor. He was taken prisoner by the Vladimir governor Velyaminov and hanged by him on the orders of False Dmitry.
Thus, the Russian land was subjected to unprecedented devastation. Eyewitnesses wrote that "the dwellings of humans and the dwellings of wild animals changed then." In the villages, wolves and crows fed on corpses, and the surviving people fled through the forests, hiding in the thickets. In Russia came what contemporaries called "hard times".
To be continued…
It was already an influential religious center, the owner of the richest treasury and a first-class military fortress. The monastery was surrounded by 12 towers connected by a fortress wall 1250 meters long, 8 to 14 meters high, 1 meter thick. 110 cannons were placed on the walls and towers, there were numerous throwing devices, boilers for boiling boiling water and tar, devices for overturning them on the enemy. Having fortified near Moscow, False Dmitry II and the Polish forces supporting him made an attempt to organize a complete blockade of it. The occupation of the monastery and the subsequent control over it ensured a complete blockade of Moscow from the east and control over the northeastern regions of Russia, the capture of the monastery's treasures made it possible to strengthen the financial position, and the attraction of the influential monastic brethren to its side promised the final collapse of the authority of Tsar Vasily Shuisky and the subsequent wedding to the kingdom False Dmitry II.
To solve this problem, the united Polish-Lithuanian army of hetman Jan Sapieha was sent to the monastery, reinforced by the detachments of their Russian allies, the Tushins and the Cossacks, under the command of Colonel Alexander Lisovsky. Data on the number of these troops differ (according to some sources - about 15 thousand people, according to other sources - up to 30 thousand people). The historian I. Tyumentsev gives the following data on the enemy troops: Polish-Lithuanian regiments and mercenaries numbered 4.5 thousand people, Tushinians - 5-6 thousand. The army numbered 6,770 cavalry and 3,350 infantry, the total number of the army was a little more than 10 thousand people, which by the standards of that time was a significant combat force. There were 17 guns, but all of them were field guns, almost useless for conducting a siege.
The government of Vasily Shuisky sent in advance to the monastery the Strelets and Cossack detachments of the governor Grigory Dolgorukov-Roshcha and the Moscow nobleman Alexei Golokhvastov. By the beginning of the siege, the defenders numbered up to 2300 military men and about 1000 peasants of neighboring villages, pilgrims, monks, servants and workers of the monastery, who took an active part in its defense. The entire period of the siege in the monastery was the princess Ksenia Godunova, tonsured at the direction of False Dmitry I as a nun.
The beginning of the siege
The leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian army did not expect a stubborn defense of the monastery, based on the mass rejection of the reign of Vasily Shuisky by the population of Russia and the paralysis of the Russian state power. Therefore, the refusal of the Russian garrison to surrender the Trinity-Sergius Monastery without resistance put them in a difficult position. First of all, the besiegers had to hastily build their own fortified camps and prepare for the difficulties of the assault, while trying to negotiate with the besieged. However, in the last question, Sapieha was in for a failure - the archimandrite of the monastery Joasaph in his reply to him put at the forefront not the fulfillment of the oath to Tsar Vasily Shuisky, but the protection of Orthodoxy and the duty to "faithfully serve the sovereign who will be in Moscow." Copies of this message in the form of letters were widely distributed throughout Russia, playing a significant role in the growth of the national consciousness of the Russian people. Thus, from the very beginning, the defense of the monastery acquired, in the eyes of the besieged and in the eyes of Russian society of that time, a nationwide, deeply state character, multiplied by the importance of armed defense of one of the main Orthodox shrines.
From October 1608, small skirmishes began: the besiegers fought with Russian scouts, the besieged tried to cut off and destroy small groups of besiegers at construction work and harvesting forage. Construction of tunnels under the monastery towers began. On the night of November 1, 1608, the first assault attempt was made with a simultaneous attack from three sides. The besiegers set fire to one of the advanced Russian wooden fortifications. The flames of the fire lit up the orders of the advancing troops. The attackers were stopped by the aimed fire of numerous Russian artillery and put to flight. In the course of the subsequent sorties, scattered groups of Tushins who were hiding in the ditches were destroyed. The first assault ended in complete failure with significant damage to the besiegers.
The leaders of the monastery garrison adhered to the tactics of active defense. In December - January 1609, with daring sorties, it was possible to recapture some of the cattle and hay reserves from the besiegers, defeat a number of outposts, set fire to some of the besieging fortifications. However, at the same time they suffered significant losses, amounting to 325 people killed and captured in December alone. There were also garrison defectors to the enemy, including nobles and archers. Apparently, thanks to their testimony, in January 1609, one of the sorties of the besieged almost ended in tragedy - the enemy attacked them from an ambush and cut them off from the monastery, and the cavalry of the besiegers attacked the open monastery gates. Part of the attackers even managed to break into the monastery. The situation was again saved by the numerous Russian artillery, which caused the confusion of the Tushin people with accurate fire, who attacked the fighters who had gone on a sortie. Thanks to this support, the archers who participated in the sortie returned to the monastery, having lost over 40 people only killed. The enemy horsemen who burst into the monastery were mostly exterminated by peasants and pilgrims, who threw stones and logs at them in the narrow streets between the buildings.
Events of 1609
"Defense of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra" painting by Alexei Kivshenko
From January 1609, the situation of the besieged worsened - due to the lack of food supplies, scurvy began. Already in February, the death rate reached 15 people per day. Also, a few reserves of gunpowder began to be depleted. Hetman Jan Sapega, who received information about this, began preparations for a new assault, planning to blow up the fortress gates with prepared powerful firecrackers. In turn, the governors of Vasily Shuisky tried to support the besieged by sending a trainload of 20 poods of gunpowder to the monastery, accompanied by 70 Cossacks and 20 monastery servants. The Poles managed to capture the messengers, whom the elder of this convoy sent to the monastery to coordinate a plan of action. Under torture, the messengers revealed information they knew. As a result, on the night of February 26, 1609, the convoy fell into one of the ambushes, the Cossacks guarding the convoy entered into an unequal battle. Hearing the noise of the battle, Voivode Dolgoruky-Roscha embarked on a sortie. As a result, the ambush was dispersed, the valuable convoy broke through to the monastery. Frustrated by the failure, Colonel Lisovsky ordered the next morning to take out under the walls of the monastery and brutally execute the captured messengers and four prisoners taken in the night battle. In response, Dolgoruky-Roshcha ordered to bring to the walls and hack to death all the prisoners in the monastery - 61 people, most of them Cossacks-Tushins and mercenaries. The result was a revolt of the Tushino detachments among the besiegers, who accused Lisovsky of the death of their comrades. From that time on, discord in the camp of the besiegers began to intensify.
Discord arose in the garrison of the monastery between the archers and the monks. There were facts of people fleeing to the enemy. Knowing about the difficulties of the besieged, Sapieha undertook preparations for a new assault, and to guarantee success he sent a Pole defector Martyash to the monastery with the task of gaining confidence in the Russian governor, and at the decisive moment to disable part of the fortress artillery. Taking part in sorties and firing cannons at the Tushinites, Martyash really came into the trust of Voivode Dolgoruky. But on the eve of the assault, scheduled for July 8, an Orthodox Litvin ran into the monastery, reporting a spy. Martyash was captured and under torture told everything he knew about the upcoming assault. Although by that time the forces of the garrison had decreased by more than three times since the beginning of the siege, their correct placement in the places of enemy strikes this time also made it possible to defend the monastery. The attackers were repulsed in a night battle, during the subsequent sortie more than 30 people were captured. But the number of soldiers among the besieged decreased to 200 people.
Therefore, Sapega immediately began to prepare the third assault. By joining the detachments of Tushins operating in the vicinity, he brought the number of his troops to 12,000. This time, the attack had to be carried out from all four directions in order to achieve a complete fragmentation of the insignificant forces of the garrison. The signal for the attack was a cannon shot, from which a fire would start in the fortress, if a fire does not arise, then a second shot, and if even then a fire does not arise, then a third shot, regardless of the results. The assault was scheduled for August 7, 1609. The voivode Dolgoruky-Roshcha, who saw the preparations for him, armed all the peasants and monks, ordered all the gunpowder to be taken out on the walls, but there was practically no chance of success in the battle.
Only a miracle could save the besieged, and it took place. The intricate signal system for the assault played a fatal role - some detachments rushed to the assault after the first shot, others after the next. In the darkness, the orders of the storming men mingled. In one place, the German mercenaries heard the cries of the Russian Tushinians behind their backs and, deciding that they were besieged on a sortie, they entered into battle. Elsewhere, with the bursts of shots, the Polish column saw a detachment of Tushinites approaching it from the flank and also opened fire on it. The besieged artillery opened fire on the battlefield, increasing the turmoil and panic that arose. The battle between the besiegers turned into a bloody massacre of each other. The number of people killed by each other was hundreds.
End of the siege
Essentially, the inconsistency of the attackers was a watershed moment in the struggle for the monastery. Long-standing disagreements between the Tushins on the one hand, and the Poles and mercenaries on the other, have spilled out. A split occurred in the army of the besiegers. Many atamans of the Tushinites withdrew their troops from the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, in the remaining detachments desertion became widespread. Following the Tushin people, foreign mercenaries left the Sapieha camp. The besieged, on the contrary, were convinced that the miraculous salvation of the monastery was the result of divine intercession and that the end of the siege was near.
In the fall of 1609, the Russian troops of Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky inflicted a number of defeats on the Tushins and Poles, after which they began an offensive towards Moscow. Part of the forces was allocated to fight the army of Sapieha, blocking it in their own camp. Regular communication was restored between the besieged and the troops coming to the rescue.
On October 29, 1609 and on January 14, 1610, the defenders received reinforcements: the troops of the archers of the governor Zherebtsov (900 people) and Grigory Valuev (500 people) broke through to the monastery. The reinforced garrison began active hostilities. In one of the sorties, the archers set fire to the wooden fortifications of the Sapieha camp. The numerical superiority of the enemy did not allow them to break into the camp, but the outcome of the struggle was already clear. Knowing about the movement of the troops of Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky from Novgorod to the monastery, Sapega ordered to hastily lift the siege. On January 22, 1610, the Polish-Lithuanian detachments withdrew from the monastery in the direction of Dmitrov. There they were overtaken and defeated by the Russian detachment of the governor Ivan Kurakin. As a result, Sapega brought back to False Dmitry II a little over 1000 people.
In the besieged monastery by the end of the siege, no more than 1000 people remained there at the beginning of the siege, of which the number of the garrison was less than 200 people.
The successful end of the siege had a significant impact on the mood of the population, raised the morale of the troops, which for the first time during the Time of Troubles gave such a decisive rebuff to foreign invaders.
Trinity Siege - the siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery by the troops of False Dmitry II, lasted almost sixteen months - from October 3 (September 23, old style) 1608 to January 22 (01/12, old style) 1610.At the beginning of 1608, False Dmitry II and his followers, having won a number of important victories over government troops, approached Moscow and tried to organize a blockade of the capital. A special role in this regard belonged to the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius, which by the beginning of the Time of Troubles had become an influential religious and economic center - according to the medieval Polish merchant Stanislav Nemoevsky, which is confirmed by late Russian sources, the annual income of the Trinity monks was 10 thousand zlotys or 1500 rubles, huge money for those days! In the Zamoskovny Territory alone, the Troitsky brothers owned about 196 thousand acres of land (not counting the overgrown with forest), over 7000 peasant households.
The center of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was a powerful stone fortress, erected in 1540-1550 on an elevated place bordered by deep ravines. The occupation of the monastery and the subsequent control over it ensured a complete blockade of Moscow from the east and control over the northeastern regions of Russia, and the capture of the monastery's treasures made it possible to strengthen the financial position of False Dmitry II.
To solve this problem, the united Polish-Lithuanian army of Hetman Jan Sapega was sent to the monastery, reinforced by the detachments of their Russian allies, the Tushins and Cossacks, under the command of Colonel Alexander Lisovsky. Data on the number of these troops differ (according to some sources - about 15 thousand people, according to other sources - up to 30 thousand people). The historian I. Tyumentsev gives the following data on the enemy troops: Polish-Lithuanian regiments and mercenaries numbered 4.5 thousand people, Tushinians - 5-6 thousand. The army numbered 6,770 cavalry and 3,350 infantry, the total number of the army was a little more than 10 thousand people, which by the standards of that time was a significant combat force. There were 17 guns, but all of them were field guns, almost useless for conducting a siege.
True, it was not so easy to capture the monastery: the monastery fortifications consisted of 12 towers connected by walls with a total length of 1250 meters, 8-14 meters high, and one meter thick. 110 cannons were placed on the walls and towers, there were numerous throwing devices, boilers for boiling boiling water and tar, devices for overturning them on the enemy. The approaches to the fortress were barred by slingshots and slingshots. Inside the fortress there were temples, monastic cells, numerous service premises, which kept significant supplies of equipment and food. Around the citadel there was the village of Klemyatevo and the settlements, which were actually a posad at the monastery fortress.
Tsar Vasily Shuisky and his entourage perfectly understood the strategic importance of the Trinity Fortress. They promptly sent the voivode here: the okolniche prince Grigory Dolgoruky-Roshcha, the Moscow nobleman Alexei Golokhvastov, the heads of the Pereyaslavts Boris Zubov, Yuri and Afanasy Redrikov, the Kashirian Sila Marina, the Aleksinian Ivan Khodyrev, the resident of Vladimir Ivlyan Ivulyan Bolkhovsky "Hundreds" of nobles, Nikolai Volzhinsky with 110 archers and Cossacks.
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I must say that with all the understanding of the importance of the Trinity Fortress and the heroic siege, the gratitude of the sovereigns was not long and was not disinterested. Boris Godunov, False Dmitry and Vasily Shuisky took a total of 65655 rubles from the Trinity treasury [Legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. P. 203]. But after the siege was lifted, V. Shuisky sent clerk S. Samsonov to confiscate material resources to the monastery for the benefit of the state. " Archimarte Iasaph, on behalf of his brothers, took away the blame of his coming and was horrified
”. He writes to Moscow to the kelare, who turns to the tsar, “ puts before him the letter of the writing of Archimarte Iasaph
”[Ibid. S. 204.], but the king neglected this request.
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In turn, Archimandrite Joasaph and the cathedral elders mobilized all the military forces of the monastery: monks who had combat experience in the past (there were about 260-270 elders in the Trinity), 130-150 servants, gunners and peasants from the monastic estates. Many artisans and peasants of nearby settlements and villages, as well as pilgrims who arrived to celebrate the day of memory of St. Sergius of Radonezh, also took up arms and joined the ranks of the Trinity soldiers. The servants of the "great men" played an important role in the defense of the Trinity.
Thus, according to Russian and Polish data, the total number of defenders of the monastery in the fall of 1608 was 2-2.5 thousand soldiers and about a thousand old people, women and children.
The beginning of the siege
The leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian army did not expect a stubborn defense of the monastery, based on the mass rejection of the reign of Vasily Shuisky by the population of Russia and the paralysis of the Russian state power. Therefore, the refusal of the Russian garrison to surrender the Trinity-Sergius Monastery without resistance put them in a difficult position. First of all, the besiegers had to hastily build their own fortified camps and prepare for the difficulties of the assault, while trying to negotiate with the besieged. However, in the last question, Sapieha was in for a failure - the archimandrite of the monastery Joasaph, in his reply to him, placed at the forefront not the fulfillment of the oath to Tsar Vasily Shuisky, but the protection of Orthodoxy and the duty " faithfully serve the sovereign, who in Moscow will ". Copies of this message in the form of letters were widely distributed throughout Russia, playing a significant role in the growth of the national consciousness of the Russian people. Thus, from the very beginning, the defense of the monastery acquired, in the eyes of the besieged and in the eyes of Russian society of that time, a nationwide, deeply state character, multiplied by the importance of armed defense of one of the main Orthodox shrines.
From October 1608, small skirmishes began: the besiegers fought with Russian scouts, the besieged tried to cut off and destroy small groups of besiegers at construction work and harvesting forage. Construction of tunnels under the monastery towers began. On the night of November 1, 1608, the first assault attempt was made with a simultaneous attack from three sides. The besiegers set fire to one of the advanced Russian wooden fortifications. The flames of the fire lit up the orders of the advancing troops. The attackers were stopped by the aimed fire of numerous Russian artillery and put to flight. In the course of the subsequent sorties, scattered groups of Tushins who were hiding in the ditches were destroyed. The first assault ended in complete failure with significant damage to the besiegers.
The besieged made frequent sorties: the defenders of the monastery tried to cut off and destroy small groups of besiegers at construction work and harvesting fodder.
According to the monastery inventory of sorties, which has come down to our days, from October 3, 1608 to the end of January 1609, 31 sorties were made by the besieged. During one of the sorties, having discovered a tunnel under the monastery's towers, two peasants from the village of Klementyevsky blew themselves up in it, disrupting the insidious plans of the enemy. In the course of another, Alexander Lisovsky himself was seriously wounded.
Events of 1609. Scurvy
From January 1609, the situation of the besieged worsened - due to the lack of food supplies, scurvy began. Already in February, the death rate reached 15 people per day. Also, a few reserves of gunpowder began to be depleted. Hetman Jan Sapega, who received information about this, began preparations for a new assault, planning to blow up the fortress gates with prepared powerful firecrackers. In turn, the governors of Vasily Shuisky tried to support the besieged by sending a trainload of 20 poods of gunpowder to the monastery, accompanied by 70 Cossacks and 20 monastery servants. The Poles managed to capture the messengers, whom the elder of this convoy sent to the monastery to coordinate a plan of action. Under torture, the messengers revealed information they knew. As a result, on the night of February 26, 1609, the convoy fell into one of the ambushes, the Cossacks guarding the convoy entered into an unequal battle. Hearing the noise of the battle, Voivode Dolgoruky-Roscha embarked on a sortie. As a result, the ambush was dispersed, the valuable convoy broke through to the monastery.
Frustrated by the failure, Colonel Lisovsky ordered the next morning to take out under the walls of the monastery and brutally execute the captured messengers and four prisoners taken in the night battle. In response, Dolgoruky-Roshcha ordered to bring to the walls and hack to death all the prisoners in the monastery - 61 people, most of them Cossacks-Tushins and mercenaries. The result was a revolt of the Tushino detachments among the besiegers, who accused Lisovsky of the death of their comrades. From that time on, discord in the camp of the besiegers began to intensify.
Discord arose in the garrison of the monastery between the archers and the monks. There were facts of people fleeing to the enemy.
On May 9, on the feast of St. Nicholas, Archimandrite Joasaph consecrated the chapel of the Miracle Worker of Mirlikia in the northern nave of the Assumption Cathedral, after which it followed in everything “ relief”[Legend of Abraham Palitsyn. P. 177; Church Historical Months of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra. M., 1850. S. 47]. On May 27, a fierce night attack of the enemy followed, during which Archimandrite Joasaph with the cathedral elders performed a prayer service in the Trinity Cathedral. " about help for enemies
”[Legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 178.]. After repulsing the assault in the ensuing sortie, 30 people took “lords and Russian traitors. And commanding them to play with the millstones; and so it works for the brethren and for the entire Trinity army ”[Ibid. S. 179.].
(Prayer service in the Trinity Cathedral during the siege, led by Archimandrite Joasaph. Lithograph of the 19th century)
Knowing about the difficulties of the besieged, Sapieha undertook preparations for a new assault, and to guarantee success he sent a Pole defector Martyash to the monastery with the task of gaining confidence in the Russian governor, and at the decisive moment to disable part of the fortress artillery. Taking part in sorties and firing cannons at the Tushinites, Martyash really came into the trust of Voivode Dolgoruky. But on the eve of the assault, scheduled for July 8, an Orthodox Lithuanian ran into the monastery, reporting a spy. Martyash was captured and under torture told everything he knew about the upcoming assault. Although by that time the forces of the garrison had decreased by more than three times since the beginning of the siege, their correct placement in the places of enemy strikes this time also made it possible to defend the monastery. The attackers were repulsed in a night battle, during the subsequent sortie more than 30 people were captured. But the number of soldiers among the besieged decreased to 200 people.
Therefore, Sapega immediately began to prepare the third assault. By joining the detachments of Tushins operating in the vicinity, he brought the number of his troops to 12,000. This time, the attack had to be carried out from all four directions in order to achieve a complete fragmentation of the insignificant forces of the garrison. The signal for the attack was a cannon shot, from which a fire would start in the fortress, if a fire does not arise, then a second shot, and if even then a fire does not arise, then a third shot, regardless of the results. The assault was scheduled for August 7, 1609. The voivode Dolgoruky-Roshcha, who saw the preparations for him, armed all the peasants and monks, ordered all the gunpowder to be taken out on the walls, but there was practically no chance of success in the battle.
Only a miracle could save the besieged, and it happened. The intricate signal system for the assault played its fatal role: some detachments rushed to the assault after the first shot, others after the next. In the darkness, the orders of the storming men mingled. In one place, the German mercenaries heard the cries of the Russian Tushinians behind their backs and, deciding that these were the besieged, who had gone out on a sortie, entered into battle with them. Elsewhere, with the bursts of shots, the Polish column saw a detachment of Tushinites approaching it from the flank and also opened fire on it. The besieged artillery opened fire on the battlefield, increasing the turmoil and panic that arose. The battle between the besiegers turned into a bloody massacre of each other. The number of people killed by each other was hundreds.
Hunger
From that moment on, Sapega abandoned attempts to take the monastery by storm and decided to starve the defenders of the fortress to death. Historian Evgeny Golubinsky wrote: “ Teasing the appetite of the hungry Trinity inmates, they grazed the cattle along the dam side - behind the ponds, on the southern side of the monastery, along Krasnaya Gora and on the Klementyevsky field. The Poles hoped to use cattle bait to summon the besieged to a sortie, hoping to beat them. The besieged did indeed make a sortie, but it only ended in the fact that they were perfectly healthy, that is, without any loss in people, they got some of the cattle. On the very day of the Dormition of the Mother of God, August 15, the besieged sent several equestrian people to the herd that grazed on Red Mountain; the exiled, having passed secretly by the enemy of the Annunciation, unexpectedly attacked the herd guards and beat them, and the herd was driven to the monastery ».
But by the fall, a real famine broke out in the monastery - grain supplies ran out, people ate all the birds and cats.
End of the siege
In the fall of 1609, the Russian troops of Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky inflicted a number of defeats on the Tushins and Poles, after which they began an offensive towards Moscow. Moving from Kalyazin, the Russian regiments liberated Pereslavl-Zalessky and Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. In the former tsar's residence, a camp was set up to reinforce the troops by the troops flowing from all over the country. Feeling a threat, Sapega decided to strike a preemptive strike on Skopin-Shuisky. Leaving part of his army to besiege the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, he moved to the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, but was defeated in the battle on the Karinskoe field.
After that, the detachments of Skopin-Shuisky blocked the retreating hetman in his own camp. Regular communication was restored between the besieged and the troops coming to the rescue.
This was done on time. By that time, the besieged monastery was a terrible sight: a deserted fortress of ghosts, which was protected by the living dead who could barely stand on their feet. The Poles, who drove up to the fortress walls, shuddered with horror at the sight of these skeletons, covered with leather, and the icy tenacity that again and again understood them into battle.
On October 29, 1609, and on January 14, 1610, the defenders received reinforcements: detachments of the archers of the governor Davyd Zherebtsov (900 people) and Grigory Valuev (500 people) broke through to the monastery. The reinforced garrison began active hostilities. In one of the sorties, the archers set fire to the wooden fortifications of the Sapieha camp. The numerical superiority of the enemy did not allow them to break into the camp, but the outcome of the struggle was already clear. Knowing about the imminent approach of the main army of Skopin-Shuisky, Sapega ordered to hastily lift the siege. On January 22, 1610, the Polish-Lithuanian detachments withdrew from the monastery in the direction of Dmitrov. There they were overtaken and defeated by the Russian detachment of the governor Ivan Kurakin. As a result, Sapega brought back to False Dmitry II a little over 1000 people.
In the besieged monastery by the end of the siege, no more than 1000 people remained there at the beginning of the siege, of which the number of the garrison was less than 200 people.
The successful end of the siege had a significant impact on the mood of the population, raised the morale of the troops, which for the first time during the Time of Troubles gave such a decisive rebuff to foreign invaders.
After lifting the siege, Archimandrite Joasaph, with the blessing of Patriarch Hermogenes, retired to the place of his tonsure - the Paphnutiev-Borovsky Monastery, which soon experienced an enemy attack. I.O. Tyumentsev believes that the archimandrite “ Joasaph, as before in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, convinced the brethren, nobles and archers to sit under siege and repulse the enemy ”[Tyumentsev I.O. Time of Troubles in Russia ... S. 545.]. But unlike the Trinity Monastery, the Borovsk monastery was taken by the interventionists on July 5, 1610 due to the treason of the voivode. " Lithuanian people entered the church and began to share with the abbot and brothers<…>and beat all the people in the monastery ”[PSRL. T. 14.P. 98–99. See also: Ancient Russian vivliofics. Ed. 2. M., 1789. Part 11, pp. 419–422.]. At the same time, the courageous Archimandrite Joasaph also died. This is how the hero of Troitsky ended his life as a martyr. seating”.
The memory of the Monk Martyr Joasaph Borovsky is celebrated on January 12/25 and July 5/18.
Reverend our Father Sergius and the Monk Martyr Joasaph, pray to God for us!