Everyone knows the Polish noblewoman Marina Mniszek as the wife of False Dmitry I, and sometimes they are sure that she was executed with him. However, the situation is somewhat different: this marriage does not exhaust her relationship with the Moscow state. It turns out that Marina's adventures in it were much longer. About them, perhaps, one could write a voluminous adventure novel or make a film.
Eight days of reign
Marina was the daughter of the Sandomierz governor Jerzy Mniszek. By the time she met Grigory Otrepiev, she was fifteen years old. She was, judging by the old images, small in stature, black-haired, somewhat prone to thinness. The face is almost ascetic, with a pointed nose, thin compressed lips and a narrow chin - in a word, not the ideal of female beauty. However, she did not experience a shortage of gentlemen. From her father, the girl inherited a frenzied ambition, indiscriminate means and love of luxury. She dreamed of a prince who would help her reach the royal throne. And fate gave such.
"Dmitry" and Marina met in the spring of 1603 in Sambor, her father's estate. The matchmaking lasted for about a year, since the future father-in-law bargained for a long time with a contender for his daughter's hand. Apparently, Marina knew about the imposture of False Dmitry I, but she, by nature an adventurer, did not bother her at all. She believed that the guy would go far. In addition, it followed from the marriage contract that the tsar "would trade by all means to bring his Muscovy into submission to the Roman throne," and this, in the eyes of the Catholics, gave her a high apostolic calling.
She entered Moscow on May 3, 1606. In her wedding cortege there was a Lviv artist Shimon Bogushovich, who left his paintings "Marina's Wedding" and "The Coronation of Marina Mnishek" as a keepsake to his descendants. On May 8, Marina and False Dmitry I arrived at the Kremlin's Assumption Cathedral, where the patriarch elevated her to the throne. Then the anointing to the kingdom took place, the wedding ceremony and, finally, the wedding celebration. For some gifts to his wife, Otrepiev spent about four million rubles these days. A series of feasts flowed, captivating Marina with their scale: a masquerade with magnificent lighting of the palaces, a staging of the storming of the fortress, a knightly tournament in honor of the newlyweds.
However, the triumph of the seventeen-year-old polka was short-lived - fate gave her only eight days to reign. On the night of May 16-17, False Dmitry I was killed, and Marina was almost trampled by the brutal crowd rushing into the royal chambers. Mnishek hid in her chambers until the boyars came and put a guard near the former queen. They demanded to return everything that the husband spent on her. Marina gave what she could without arguing. To seize the arrears from her father who had come with her to Moscow, they took ten thousand rubles in money, carriages, horses and wine. Then, after renouncing the title of the Tsarina of Moscow, they were sent to Yaroslavl, where Marina spent two years. After which she was released to her homeland.
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The wife of the half king
Eight days on the Russian throne was enough to understand: there is nothing in the world sweeter than the royal power. In modest Sambir, Marina felt like she was in a dungeon. But then False Dmitry II appeared on the horizon, also known as the Tushino thief, half-king or tsarik. He needed Marina so that those around him would believe that he was her husband, Tsarevich Dmitry, who miraculously escaped death again. Mnishek did not see the corpse of False Dmitry I and therefore willingly believed that he could be saved. She set off on the road to Tushino, but on the way, Prince Mosalsky warned her that another "Dmitry" was already sitting there. After that, she was already afraid to go to him, and Marina was brought to Tushino against her will. For five days she was persuaded to admit her “husband,” but she did not give in. Then the loving daddy went to negotiate with the thief,and he promised him three hundred thousand rubles and in addition the Seversk land with fourteen cities.
The father immediately gave his consent, essentially selling his daughter. False Dmitry II came to his "wife" the next day. Marina recoiled, and the gentlemen were forced to put a guard on her. Her father and a certain Jesuit assured her that this marriage would be a feat in the name of the Catholic Church. The woman agreed to play this comedy only on condition that the impostor would not live with her as a wife until he took possession of the Moscow throne. Then my father drove off to Poland.
After a while, the half-tsar, fearing a rebellion of the Poles, without saying anything to his wife, secretly fled to Kaluga. A month later, Marina also fled from the camp, dressed in a hussar dress and leaving a letter in which, in particular, it was said: "Once the Moscow queen, the sovereign of many nations, I cannot return to the title of Polish gentry, I will never want this." In Poland, to the exhortations of King Sigismund, she defiantly answered: “Happiness played with no one as it did with me: from a gentry family it elevated me to the throne of Moscow and from the throne plunged me into a cruel imprisonment … If happiness deprived me of everything, it remained with I have only one right - to the Moscow throne, confirmed by my coronation, recognition of me as the true and legal heiress, - a recognition, sealed by a double oath of all estates and provinces of the Moscow state."
The proud woman briefly reunited with her husband in Kaluga, but soon lost him forever: he was killed by the Tatars for drowning their sovereign, the Kasimov king. Marina was in the last month of pregnancy, but when she heard about her husband's death, she found his body and brought it to Kaluga. At night, in a torn dress, she ran through the streets with a torch in her hands and cried out for revenge. The Cossacks loyal to her killed all the Tatars in the city. And soon the adventurer had a son, who was named Ivan. Kaluga immediately swore allegiance to the new tsarevich.
Walked along the Volga
Even with the loss of her second husband, Marina did not moderate her claims to the Russian throne. She again played all-in, tying her fate with the Cossack chieftain Ivan Zarutsky. He did not pretend to be the miraculously escaped tsarevich - now the card of the heir to False Dmitry was being played. Together with Prince Trubetskoy, the Cossack atamans Lyapunov and Prosovetsky, Marina's new chosen one Mnishek swore allegiance to baby Ivan. Some historians do not exclude that this time the ambitious polka was driven not only by a cold calculation - eyewitnesses claimed that her heart really gave a slack. Marina actually fell in love with Zarutsky and even decided to give birth to a child from him.
In Nizhny Novgorod, the Zemsky militia, led by Minin and Pozharsky, rose up against Mnishek and Zarutsky. Together with the chieftain, Marina was forced to flee to Astrakhan. There they found shelter, and the adventurer was proclaimed the queen of Astrakhan. Zarutsky and his supporters wanted to arm the Persian Shah Abbas against Russia, to drag Turkey into the war, to raise the daredevils who were accustomed to unrest. For this purpose, they sent so-called lovely letters to the Don and Volga Cossacks.
At this time, a new tsar was elected in Moscow - Mikhail Romanov. Letters were sent from him and from the Sacred Cathedral to Astrakhan urging to keep up with "Marinkin the evil soul-destroying plant and intentions." Astrakhan and Kazan rose against Marina, and she had to flee to the Yaik River. There the archers grabbed her.
The trial was swift. Marina's four-year-old son was hanged in the cold outside the Serpukhov Gate, and the baby was suffocating for several hours in a noose. Zarutsky was impaled. Marina died in prison. At that time she was only twenty-five years old. In the memory of the people, she long remained as "Marinka the godless" and "heretic", a fierce robber and a witch, capable of turning into a magpie on occasion. The legend has also survived that, upon learning about the death of her son, Mnishek cursed the Romanovs and predicted that none of them would die a natural death, that crimes in their family would not stop until they all died.
Pavel BUKIN