[2] He was the first, and most successful, of three impostors who claimed during the Time of Troubles to be the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich, who supposedly escaped a 1591 assassination attempt when he was eight years old.

[citation needed] With the support of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, False Dmitry invaded Russia in 1605, but the war ended with the sudden death of Boris Godunov.

Dmitry fled to Prince Constantine Ostrogski at Ostroh, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and subsequently entered the service of the Wiśniowieckis, a polonized Ruthenian family.

[3] The princes Adam and Michał Wiśniowiecki in particular showed interest in the stories Dmitry told, and who he purported to be, as they gave the Poles an opportunity to capitalize on the political rancor in Moscow.

Dmitry's own story was that his mother, Tsar Ivan's widow, anticipated Boris Godunov's assassination attempt, and put him into the care of a doctor, who hid him in various monasteries through the years.

Whether or not Dmitry's tale was accurate, the Wiśniowiecki brothers, Samuel Tyszkiewicz, Jan Sapieha, Roman Różyński, and several other Polish noblemen agreed to back him, and his claim, against Boris Godunov.

To attract the powerful Jesuits to his cause, Dmitry publicly converted to Roman Catholicism on 17 April 1604, and convinced papal nuncio Claudio Rangoni to also back his claim.

When he asked her father for her hand, he was promised it in return for granting the Mniszechs full rights to the Russian towns of Pskov, Novgorod, Smolensk, and Novhorod-Siverskyi upon his ascension.

The death of the unpopular tsar swept away the last impediment to Dmitry; the victorious Russian troops defected to his side, and others swelled the Polish ranks as they marched in.

On 1 June, the disaffected boyars of Moscow staged a palace coup and imprisoned the newly crowned tsar Feodor II and his mother Maria Skuratova-Belskaya, widow of Boris Godunov.

[citation needed] Many of the noble families Tsar Boris had exiled – such as the Shuiskys, Golitsins and Romanovs – were pardoned and allowed to return to Moscow.

Feodor Romanov, sire of the future imperial dynasty, was soon appointed as metropolitan of Rostov; the old patriarch Job, who did not recognize the new tsar, was sent into exile.

The resentful Prince Vasily Shuisky, head of the boyars, began to plot against the tsar, accusing him of spreading Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and sodomy.

[5] Shuisky's adherents had spread word that Tsar Dmitry was about to order his Polish retainers to lock the city gates and massacre the people of Moscow.