What is known about Marina Mnishek
Mnishek, Marina Yurievna - one of the most prominent figures of the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century. She was considered a witch and was credited with an outstanding political talent. She lived only 26 years, but in this short life, she had a chance to survive the coronation, exile, captivity in the gang of a robber. She witnessed the death of 2 of her husbands. Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich, or False Dmitry 1, and False Dmitry 2, nicknamed Tushinsky thief.
Mnishek was not loved in her homeland - in the Commonwealth, considering for a warlock and a sorceress because she wore an inverted cross. She was also hated in Muscovy for trying to introduce European etiquette, for the first time bringing a fork to Muscovy, for trying to steal the library of Ivan the Terrible, and for much more. And not only life, but also her death was shrouded in mystery.
Short biography of Marina Mnishek
Marina Mnishek (in Polish Marianna Yurievna, born about 1588, death in 1614 or 1615) - the daughter of the Sandomierz governor Jerzy Mnishek, wife of the first False Dmitry Decorated with romantic stories, her acquaintance with False Dmitry took place around 1604, and then the latter, after his famous confession, was engaged to her.
Marina agreed to become the wife of an unknown and formerly ugly slave because of the desire to become a queen and the persuasion of the Catholic clergy, who chose her as their instrument for bringing Catholicism to Muscovy. During the engagement to her, the impostor promised, in addition to money and diamonds, Novgorod and Pskov and the granting of the right to profess Catholicism and the opportunity to marry another in case of False Dmitry's failure.
1. Coronation portrait 1606. 2. False Dmitry I and Marina Mnishek. Engraving
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1605, November - Marina Mnishek was betrothed to the clerk Vlasyev, who portrayed the face of the groom-tsar. 1606, May 3 - she entered Moscow with great pomp, accompanied by her father and numerous retinue. After 5 days, the wedding and coronation of Mniszek took place. Within one week, a new queen reigned in Moscow. After the death of her husband, a stormy and full of hardships life began for her, while she showed a lot of strength of character and resourcefulness. Not killed during the massacre on May 17 only because she was not recognized and then protected by the boyars, she was sent to her father and here, they say, she entered into relations with Mikhail Molchanov.
1606, August - Tsar Vasily Shuisky settled all the Mnishks in Yaroslavl, where they lived until July 1608. In the then truce between Russia and Poland, it was decided to send Marina Mnishek to her homeland, so that she would not be called Mosk. queen. On the way, Zborovsky intercepted her and took her to the Tushinsky camp. Despite her disgust for the Tushino thief, Marina Mnishek agreed to secretly marry him on September 5, 1608 in the Sapieha detachment and lived in Tushino for over a year.
They lived poorly with their new husband, as can be seen from her letters to Sigismund and the Pope, but it became even worse with his flight on December 27, 1609 from Tushin. 1610, February - fearing for her life, she in a hussar dress, with one servant and accompanied by several hundred Don Cossacks, fled to Dmitrov to Sapega, and from there, when the Russians took the city, to Kaluga, to False Dmitry 2. A few months later after Zholkevsky's victory over the Russian troops, she appears with her husband near Moscow, in Kolomna, and after the overthrow of Shuisky begins to negotiate with Sigismund for help to occupy Moscow.
Marina Mnishek and False Dmitry I.
In the meantime, Muscovites swore allegiance to Vladislav Sigismundovich, and she was offered to abandon Moscow and confine herself to Sambor or Grodno. A proud refusal followed, and with it a new danger arose - to be captured by the Poles. Having settled in Kaluga with her husband and a new defender, Zarutsky, she lived there until the beginning of 1611, already under the auspices of one Zarutsky (Tushinsky thief was killed in December 1610) and with her son Ivan, name. Dmitrievich.
Until June 1612, she was near Moscow, mainly in Kolomna, where Zarutsky was. After the murder of Lyapunov, she forced Zarutsky and Trubetskoy to declare her son the heir to the throne and, together with Zarutsky, sent assassins to Pozharsky when Trubetskoy fell away from her.
The zemstvo militia that approached Moscow forced Mnishek to flee first to the Ryazan land, then to Astrakhan, and finally up the Yaik (Ural). At Bear Island, the Moscow archers overtook her and, fettered, together with her son, were taken to Moscow (July 1614). There her four-year-old son was hanged, and she, according to the Russian ambassadors to the Polish government, "died of longing of her own accord"; according to other sources, she was hanged or drowned.
N. Moleva