Tushino Camp
"[1] All those dissatisfied with the elected Tsar Vasily Shuisky, flocked to the Tushino Camp, which made it a shadow capital with its own state institutions and leaders.
False Dmitry II lived in a palace built to the west of Tushino near the Spassky Monastery on the banks of the Moskva River.
The independent detachment of Alexander Lisovsky, who was serving False Dmitry II, defeated Prince Khovansky during the Battle of Zaraisk and took Tushino.
One of his commanders, Joseph Budilo, wrote the following in his notes describing the founding of the Tushino Camp: The same year on June 24, on the feast of Saint John, the Tsar approached the capital city of Moscow.
After that, the Pretender's troops finally concentrated in Tushino, since the actual commander of Hetman Rozhinsky adopted a plan to blockade Moscow and bring it to surrender by starvation.
Initially, tents were pitched, but with the onset of winter, when snow had already begun to fill them, dugouts were dug, and stalls were made of brushwood and straw for the horses, but this turned out to be insufficient.
The last former large leather merchant, then the Duma clerk and treasurer under Shuisky, accused of abuses, was appointed by the impostor as the head of the order of the Big Treasury and concentrated the entire financial side of the Tushino government in his hands.
The actual leader of the Tushino Camp, acting on behalf of the nominal "tsarik", was hetman Roman Ruzhinsky, a young Lithuanian prince from the Gediminovichs.
Such major commanders as Alexander Lisovsky and Jan Pyotr Sapega, who came a little later with a large detachment, the Usvyatsky Headman and cousin of the Lithuanian Chancellor, acted semi–independently (however, they operated far from Tushino).
[3] As the Bishop of Rostov, he was captured by the Tushinites 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, appointing him patriarch, which Filaret did not dare to refuse – and as a patriarch began to perform divine services and send district letters to the regions.
"Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron" defines the army of the "Tushino Thief" in 7,000 Poles, about 10,000 Cossacks and "tens of thousands of armed rabble", at some moments approaching 100,000.
At the same time, as noted by Sergei Solovyov, it was not the Poles who did not feel any hatred of the local population that raged most of all, but the Russians, who had nowhere to flee in case of failure and who regarded all Shuisky's supporters as personal enemies.
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, after which he laid Siege to the Trinity–Sergius Monastery.
Since, with all their desire, the Poles could not find the required amount of coins, they divided the country between feeding units – "bailiffs", which the inhabitants compared with the former appanage principalities, and began to plunder them whenever possible.
On February 28, 1609, in Vyborg, the young nephew of the Tsar, Mikhail Skopin–Shuisky, signed an agreement with the Swedish King Charles IX, who promised to provide an army in exchange for the Korelsky District and an alliance for the conquest of Livonia.
For his part, the Polish King Sigismund III, having presented as an excuse the clearly directed alliance of Russia with Sweden, invaded Moscow's possessions and in September besieged Smolensk.
On February 11, she fled to Dmitrov to Sapega, and from there to Kaluga and Marina Mnishek – on horseback in a hussar dress, accompanied by a servant and several Don Cossacks.
This embassy was headed by Mikhail Saltykov, a prominent role in it was played by Fyodor Andropov and Prince Vasily Rubets–Masalsky; on January 31, they submitted to the King a draft treaty drawn up by Saltykov; in response, Sigismund proposed to the ambassadors a constitutional plan, according to which the Zemsky Sobor and the Boyar Duma received the rights of an independent legislative, and the Duma at the same time – and the judiciary.
In the south, in Kaluga, troops loyal to False Dmitry II were concentrated; in the north, near Dmitrov, Skopin–Shuisky and the Swedes, who were hardly restrained by Sapega, were pressing.
[5] Memories of the Tushino people now boiled down to the fact that ancient burial mounds located in the district began to be considered their graves, and the largest of them was legendary that the untold treasures of False Dmitry were supposedly hidden there.
Samples of weapons are of particular interest: barrels of arquebuses, a bullet, several bardiches and axes, spears, as well as horse comb, shishaks, chain mails, shells.
