#false dmitry i

[pechenlaf]

Happy St. Valentine from Dmitry & Marina and Mata & Philipp's mom (my favourite rareship lmao)

[ersh-of-history]

the idea for the animatic came about a very long time ago, and this year i found a reason to make it - 420 years since the death of False Dmitry I

happy holiday everyone

watch on youtube with english subtitles

[thepastisalreadywritten]

1. Anna Anderson as Anastasia Romanov

In 1918, Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the Russian princess Anastasia, along with the rest of her family.

However, rumors persisted of her alleged survival for decades and over the years, several different impostors claimed to be Anastasia Romanova.

None gained as much fame as Anna Anderson.

The would-be royal first surfaced in the early 1920s in a Berlin mental asylum, where she announced that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the deceased Czar Nicholas II.

Although most of the surviving Romanovs dismissed her as a fraud, the girl bore a striking resemblance to the princess and even knew many personal details of her life.

She soon won the support of a coterie of wealthy Russian emigrants, many of whom believed she was the legitimate heir to the throne.

The supposed princess eventually moved to America in 1968 and took the name Anna Anderson.

But while her story inspired several books and even a Hollywood movie, she failed to win recognition in court due to a lack of evidence.

Her story remained the source of much debate until 1994, when a posthumous DNA test finally proved she was not related to the Romanov family.

Anderson was likely a Polish factory worker who disappeared in 1920, but her true identity has never been confirmed.

2. Gregor MacGregor as the "Cazique of Poyais"

In the early 1820s, a dashing Scotsman named Gregor MacGregor rose to the top of London’s high society on the basis of a most unusual claim.

A former soldier and mercenary who had fought in South America, MacGregor presented himself as the “cazique” or prince, of a small Central American country he called Poyais.

As evidence, the faux royal produced several maps, drawings and even a book, all of which described the mysterious country as a fertile paradise with a working government and friendly native population.

MacGregor’s tiny principality seemed the perfect destination for European settlers, except for one small detail: It didn’t exist.

Far from being a “cazique,” MacGregor was actually a con man who had cooked up a fairy tale country as a way of bilking investors out of huge sums of money.

He eventually sold thousands of pounds worth of land rights for his phantom nation.

In 1822, the first would-be “Poyers” set sail across the Atlantic Ocean.

Arriving in Central America and finding only unsettled jungle, the pioneers—many of whom had converted their life savings into phony Poyais currency—soon realized they had been swindled.

The stranded colonists were eventually rescued but not before some 180 people perished from disease.

Not surprisingly, MacGregor fled the country soon after the news reached England.

He later resurfaced in France but was arrested after he tried to set up a second Poyais-related scheme.

3. False Dmitry I

The man known as False Dmitry I not only successfully posed as a prince, he managed to con his way onto the royal throne of Russia.

The pretender first became known to history in the early 1600s, when he appeared in Poland declaring himself to be Dmitry, the youngest son of the deceased Ivan the Terrible.

The real Dmitry had supposedly been assassinated as a boy, but the imposter claimed he had escaped his would-be murderers and fled the country.

The alleged royal went on to charm the Russian people, eventually riding a wave of public support all the way to Moscow.

False Dmitry was crowned czar in July 1605, but his rule was ultimately short-lived.

The pretender’s policies proved too radical for Russia’s elites, and he was overthrown and assassinated less than a year later.

Many have since speculated that his real name may have been Grigory Otrepyev, but this has never been proved.

Amusingly, he was not the only impostor who claimed to be the real Dmitry.

Two more pretenders emerged over the next decade, though neither succeeded in winning the throne.

4. Perkin Warbeck as Richard of York

Not only did young Perkin Warbeck masquerade as a prince, he nearly succeeded in overthrowing King Henry VII of England.

In 1491, Warbeck appeared in Ireland claiming he was Richard of York, the youngest son of the former King Edward IV.

The real Richard was most likely murdered in the Tower of London as a boy, but at the time, there was still much speculation about his fate.

Capitalizing on this mystery, Warbeck presented himself as the missing prince and eventually won support among Henry VII’s political enemies, who included such powerful figures as James IV of Scotland and Maximilian I of Austria.

Warbeck landed in Cornwall in 1497, and he soon galvanized his supporters into a rebel army of several thousand men.

But when faced with the possibility of a battle with the king’s forces, the pretender lost his nerve and fled to the coast.

He was eventually captured and later admitted he was an impostor before being executed by hanging in 1499.

Warbeck is widely regarded as a famous fraud, but some historians have noted that Henry VII could have fabricated the pretender’s backstory in an attempt to discredit him.

With this in mind, there remains at least a small possibility that Warbeck may have actually been Richard of York.

5. Mary Baker as “Princess Caraboo”

For several months in 1817, the village of Almondsbury, England fell under the spell of a phony island princess.

The young woman had first appeared in the town clad in a black turban and speaking a mysterious language.

Through a Portuguese translator, she identified herself as Princess Caraboo, a member of the royal family of Javasu, a small Indian Ocean atoll.

Even more astonishing, she claimed she had been kidnapped from her homeland by pirates, and had only escaped by plunging into the freezing Bristol Channel and swimming ashore.

The story of Princess Caraboo quickly took the town by storm.

People flocked to get a look at the visiting royal, who slept on the floor, swam naked in a nearby lake and climbed trees to pray to a god called “Allah Tallah.”

The fascination continued until a woman from a neighboring town noticed that Her Highness Princess Caraboo was in fact Mary Baker, an English girl who had previously been employed in her house as a servant.

Baker later admitted that she had invented the princess and her bizarre language as part of an elaborate con, and the story of the hoax went on to become a minor sensation in the British press.

6. Yemelyan Pugachev as Peter III

In 1773, a royal impostor sparked one of the largest revolts in Russian history.

Capitalizing on his striking resemblance to the murdered Peter III, a former soldier named Yemelyan Pugachev took on the identity of the late emperor and incited a massive peasant uprising against Catherine the Great.

As Peter III, Pugachev promised populist reforms, including autonomy for Russia’s Cossack population and an end to the feudal system.

Soon, thousands of serfs had rallied to his standard.

Initially catching the empress by surprise, Pugachev’s army laid siege to the city of Orenburg in late 1773 then proceeded to raze Kazan the following year.

Despite these early successes, by late 1774, Catherine’s generals had started to turn the tide of the conflict.

Following a decisive defeat at Tsaritsyn, a group of Pugachev’s lieutenants betrayed him and turned him over to the empress.

The impostor was executed in early 1775, and his revolt crumbled soon thereafter.

7. Karl Wilhelm Naundorff as Prince Louis-Charles

Although he spent his life as a watchmaker and clock salesman, German swindler Karl Wilhelm Naundorff went to his grave insisting he was the rightful King of France.

Naundorff arrived in Paris in the 1830s claiming to be Prince Louis-Charles, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, both of whom were beheaded during the French Revolution.

Naundorff was only one of several men who professed to be the long-dead dauphin, but he soon succeeded in winning the confidence of many high profile figures including the prince’s former governess.

Despite having several physical characteristics in common with the Prince Louis-Charles, Naundorff never provided sufficient evidence for his assertion, and he was eventually branded a fraud.

Even Princess Marie Therese—his supposed sister—refused to meet with him.

After being expelled from France, Naundorff lived out his later years in the Netherlands, where he was recognized as Louis-Charles until his death in 1845.

The mystery of his true identity would endure for another 150 years, but Naundorff was finally exposed as an impostor in the early 21st century, when DNA evidence proved he was not related to Marie Antoinette.

[autodidact-adventures]

Siberian History (Part 6): The Time of Troubles

By the late 1500s, Russia was one of the largest nations on earth. Its many principalities had been united by stealth & force under the reign of Moscow, and now that the Khanates of Kazan & Astrakhan on the Volga River had been subjugated, Russia was now a multinational state.

From Ivan the Terrible onwards, the tsar claimed to rule by “divine right”.  This was already common in Europe, but the Russian tsar's power was autocratic and absolute.  One contemporary wrote about Ivan, “like Nebuchadnezzar, he slew, had beaten, elevated, or humbled whomsoever he wished.”

The state bureaucracy was growing, and near the top was the Boyar Dumar, the royal council made up mostly of men of noble birth.  There was also an inner cabinet of councillors, whom the tsar could consult.  But it was said of Ivan that he often did so “in the manner of Xerxes, the Persian Emperor, who assembled the Asian princes not so much to secure their advice...as to personally declare his will.”

Russia had a population of about 13 million people, mostly impoverished peasants who worked on large estates, or worked their garden-like plots in tiny hamlets across the land.

The old aristocracy had been humbled somewhat, and the service gentry had arisen to take its place.  The difference between the two was that the old aristocracy inherited their titles & land by inheritance, whereas the service gentry were awarded estates for service to the tsar.  However, the service gentry would eventually acquire many of the prerogatives of the aristocracy, including titles and inheritable estates.

Russia had no true middle class, independent merchant guilds, or any mercantile economy of the sort that was beginning to grow in many European countries.  The gosts (“great merchants”) were appointed by the Crown.  All offices & positions were in the employ of the state, i.e. “state service”.

Travel within Russia was restricted, and travel abroad was almost unknown, “that Russians might not learn of the free institutions that exist in foreign lands.”  Police surveillance was widespread, and people had the “duty to denounce” – no matter what rank or standing people had, they had to politically inform on each other, and report whatever they knew or heard about disloyal acts or thoughts.

Punishments were harsh, and torture was common.  People could be torn to pieces with iron hooks, beheaded or impaled, branded with red-hot irons, have their limbs cut off, or beaten with the knout.  The “knout” was a short whip with a tapered end, and attacked to this tapered end were three tongs of hard tanned elk hide, which cut like knives.

The roads were poor, and there were no inns between towns for travellers.  Alcoholism was a major problem throughout the nation.  There was little intellectual curiosity – even a simple knowledge of astronomy, such as the ability to predict eclipses, could lead to a charge of witchcraft.

One foreign diplomat said that the habit of oppression had “set a print into the very mindes of the people.  For as themselves are verie hardlie and cruellie dealte withall by their chiefe magistrates and other superiours, so are they as cruell one against an other, specially over their inferiours and such as are under them.  So that the basest and wretchedest [peasant] that stoupeth and croucheth like a dog to the gentleman, and licketh up the dust that lieth at his feete, is an intollerable tyrant where he hath the advantage.”

Foreigners saw the Russians as a semi-barbaric, insular people and state, arrogantly self-assured as the true bearer of Christianity, but rife with ignorance, supersitition and immorality.  One visitor to Muscovy made up a rhyme about it:

Churches, ikons, crosses, bells, / Painted whores and garlic smells, / Vice and vodka everyplace – / This is Moscow's daily face.

To loiter in the market air, / To bathe in common, bodies bare, / To sleep by day and gorge by night, / To belch and fart is their delight.

Thieving, murdering, fornication / Are so common in this nation, / No one thinks a brow to raise – / Such are Moscow's sordid days.

But it was not as bad as foreigners claimed.  The common people were genuinely religious, and a renaissance was taking place – through trade and other contracts, Western cultural influences were beginning to have an effect.  These influences, combined with Russia's rich Byzantine heritage, might have brought about a true renaissance, but these currents would be overwhelmed by the bloody legacies of the immediate past.

Ivan the Terrible's tyrrany had divided the nation in two; and the social enmities he had created would outlive him.  In 1581, he killed his eldest son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, during an argument.  When he died himself in 1584, his son Fyodor succeeded him.

Fyodor I was absent-minded and reluctant to be monarch, and he relied heavily on the boyars appointed to be his guardians.  Plots sprung up, a power struggle ensued, and Boris Godunov became the dominant figure behind the throne.  Boris was a noble of Tatar origin, and his sister was married to Fyodor.  Soon, he was recognized as Lord Protector (as the English called him), and the de facto head of state.

Under Godunov's reign, trade prospered, revenue increased, taxes decreased, and peace returned. Fugitive peasants returned to their homesteads, more arable land was cultivated, grain prices fell, and granaries recorded large surpluses.  Construction increased, with stone walls around Moscow and Smolensk; many new churches, expanded port facilities at Arkhangel, and the completion of the Ivan the Great Belltower in the Kremlin, reaching upwards in three tapering octagonal tiers.

There was military progress as well.  Godunov made headway against the nomadic peoples in the southern steppes (between Russia and the Crimea), established a series of important fortified towns, recoered territory lost to Sweden during the Livonian War, and pushed Siberian conquest eastwards from the Ob River.

When Fyodor died in 1598 without an heir, Godunov was offered the crown.  He denied it three times, to demonstrate the inevitability of his succession, and looked to the masses for his support.  At his coronation (in the Dormition Cathedral on September 1st, 1598) , he declared: “As God is my witness, there will not be a poor man in my stardom!” and tore the jewelled collar froms his gown.  Jealous nobles called him Rabotsar, which means “the Tsar of slaves”.

There are no known contemporary portraits of Godunov, but this is what he probably looked like.

After Godunov's coronation, favours were announced, army & administration officials received a substantial salary increase, merchants were granted tax breaks, and the natives of Western Siberia were exempted from taxes for a year. Godunov said: “We take a moderate tribute, as much as each can pay...And from the poor people, who cannot pay the tribute, no tribute is to be taken, so that none of the Siberian people should be in need.”

But this could not solve all the problems.  The biggest problem was the competition among landed proprietors for peasants to work their estates.  The more prosperous of them tempted peasants away from their smaller holdings.  Many of these small holdings were held on military tenure, so their decline affected the security of the nation.

The government tried to solve this problem by binding the peasants to the soil.  Peasants' freedom of movement had already been severely curtailed over the years, but now new decrees pushed them towards serfdom.

The service gentry squeezed everything they could from their peasants, who were already near breaking point because of state taxation.  As a consequence, violence spread.  In Russia's heartland, bands of highwaymen (who were once peasants) ransacked monasteries & manorial estates.  Along the southern frontier, legions of the disaffected accumulated.  Things were moving towards rebellion.

From 1601 – 03, protracted crops failures led to famine and mass starvation.  Godunov distributed money and grain from the public treasury to those who were destitute, but widespread hoarding & profiteering by landlords & merchants (including the Stroganov family) not only negated his actions but made it worse.  

Whole villages were wiped out. People ate cats, dogs and rats, as well as bark and straw.  Human flesh was sold in public markets.  An eyewitness wrote that every day in Moscow, “people perished in their thousands like flies on winter days.  Men carted the dead away and dumped them into ditches, as was done with mud and refuse, but in the morning, “bodies half devoured, and other things so horrible that the hair stood up on end” could be seen.  A court apothecary rescued a little girl from starvation, and entrusted her to a peasant family; he later learned that they had eaten her.

Thousands of unemployed labourers, and peasants abandoned to their fate by uncaring masters, scavenged throughout the countryside, or fled into the wilderness. This was the Time of Troubles, which lasted from 1598 to 1613.

It was beyond Godunov's control, and his standing fell.  He was a legitimate tsar, properly elected; but he couldn't claim any dynastic link with Russia's “sacred” past.  People soon began to see him as a ruthless usurper who had taken the throne through violence, crime and deceit.  Rumours spread that he'd murdered Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich (Ivan the Terrible's 9-year-old son by his seventh wife); that he'd poisoned his own sister; that he'd poisoned Fyodor I himself.  Godunov's spy network uncovered many plots, but discontent was still growing stronger.

There was an uprising in 1603 by peasants, fugitive slaves and bandits, which the army put a stop to. The people began to long for the protection of a “born tsar”, romanticizing even the worst parts of their past.

Then a rumour sprang up that Tsarevich Dmitry had miraculously survived his assassination, and was about to retake the throne.  The pretender (known later as False Dmitry I) was backed by the Poles, and in October 1604 he crossed into Muscovy, leading an army of mercenaries and volunteers.  This False Dmitry was conventionally ugly, “a strange and ungainly figure with facial warts and arms of unequal length”.  He was a charismatic leader, and many people joined his cause.  His army was over 16,000 men by November.  Godunov, feeling helpless, turned to sorcery & divination to try and alter his fate.

False Dmitry I.

Godunov died on April 13th, 1605, from poison or a stroke.  His wife and son were murdered within the next few weeks, and the Kremlin was stormed.  False Dmitry I ruled for nearly a year, from June 10th, 1605, to May 17th, 1606.

Then he was toppled by Vasily Shuisky, who became Tsar Vasily IV.  Shuisky had the right pedigree, but not popular support.

New uprisings and foreign invasions followed this.  In June 1607, False Dmitry II, again backed by the Poles, advanced on Moscow.  This led to Vasily IV's deposition in July 1610, and the installation of a Polish tsar, Vladislav I (he would later become King of Poland, in 1632).

Vasily IV (17th-century painting).

It seemed as if Muscovy would be partitioned.  Russian popular armies rose up in the north and east, and advanced with patriotic fervour.  On October 25th, 1612, the Polish garrison in the Kremlin capitulated, and the foreigners were driven out.

On February 21st, 1613, a national assembly elected a new tsar.  This was Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov (Mikhail I), the grand-nephew of Anastasia Romanova, Ivan the Terrible's first wife.  The Time of Troubles then came to an end.

[mostly-history]

Portrait of Tsar Boris Godunov (17th century).

Boris Godunov ruled Russia as its de facto regent during the reign of Fyodor I, and succeeded him upon his death.  During his rule, he improved Russia's trade with other countries, recovered some of the territory lost to the Swedes during the Livonian War, expanded Russia's domain further eastwards into Siberia, and attempted to reduce poverty.  Some called him Rabotsar, which means “the Tsar of Slaves”.  However, he also issued a decree binding peasants to the soil, as too many were leaving their smaller holdings (held on military tenure) to work for wealthy landowners.  This led to the institution of serfdom.

A famine began in 1601, leading to famine and mass starvation. Godunov distributed money and grain to the destitute, but widespread hoarding and profiteering by landlords and merchants more than undid his actions.  The famine was severe enough that many turned to cannibalism.

The situation was out of Godunov's control, and the people turned against him.  Although a legitimately elected tsar, he could claim no dynastic link with Russia's past.  Rumours spread that he had murdered Fyodor I and his younger brother; even that he'd poisoned his own sister.  An uprising in 1603 was quashed, but the first False Dmitry advanced on Russia the next year.  Godunov turned to sorcery and divination to try and alter his fate, but he died in 1605, either from poison or a stroke.  His wife and son were murdered within weeks of his death.

[untitledhistoryblog]

You ever been so done with somebody that you fired their ashes from a cannon in the direction of Poland?

[pechenlaf]

Also i've recently realised that I am, in fact, capable of free will and therefore can make k-pop-stars-like cartholders with my historical sweethearts. So now my colleagues at work, my uni classmates and everyone in the coffee shops near me are forced to witness the result if it :'D

I do not regret anything.

[ersh-of-history]

it is this time of year--