And  there  were  those  at  hand  ready  to  stir  up  public
feeling  against  him,  resentful  boyars  quick  to  suspect  that
perhaps  they  had  been  swindled.  Foremost  among  these
was  the  sinister  turncoat  Shuiski,  who  had  not  derived
from  his  perjury  all  the  profit  he  expected,  who  resented,
above  all,  to  see  Basmanov — who  had  ever  been  his  rival —
invested  with  a  power  second  only  to  that  of  the  Tsar
himself.  Shuiski,  skilled  in  intrigue,  went  to  work  in  his
underground,  burrowing  fashion.  He  wrought  upon  the
clergy,  who  in  their  turn  wrought  upon  the  populace,  and
presently  all  was  seething  disaffection  under  a  surface
apparently  calm.
The  eruption  came  in  the  following  May,  when  Maryna,
the  daughter  of  the  Palatine  of  Sandomir,  made  her  splendid
entry  into  Moscow,  the  bride-elect  of  the  young  Tsar.
The  dazzling  procession  and  the  feasting  that  followed
found  little  favour  in  the  eyes  of  the  Muscovites,  who  now
beheld  their  city  aswarm  with  heretic  Poles.
The  marriage  was  magnificently  solemnized  on  the
j8th  of  May,  1606.  And  now  Shuiski  applied  a  match  to
the  train  he  had  so  skilfully  laid.  Demetrius  had  caused
a  timber  fort  to  be  built  before  the  walls  of  Moscow  for
a  martial  spectacle  which  he  had  planned  for  the  enter-
tainment of  his  bride.  Shuiski  put  it  abroad  that  the  fort
was  intended  to  serve  as  an  engine  of  destruction,  and
that  the  martial  spectacle  was  a  pretence,  the  real  object
being  that  from  the  fort  the  Poles  were  to  cast  firebrands


The  False  Demetrius  53

into  the  city,  and  then  proceed  to  the  slaughter  of  the
inhabitants.
