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Updated: May 21, 2025
He killed several with his own hands, but Basmanof was slain before him, and he and the guards were driven back from chamber to chamber, until the guards, finding that the czar had disappeared, laid down their arms. Dmitri, seeing that resistance was hopeless, had sought a distant room, and here had leaped or been thrown from a window to the ground.
Dmitri, who had only fifty guards in the palace, was aroused by the din of bells and the uproar in the streets. An armed multitude filled the outer court, shouting, "Death to the impostor!" Soon conspirators appeared in the palace, where the czar, snatching a sword from one of the guards, and attended by Basmanof, attacked them, crying out, "I am not a Boris for you!"
Basmanof was brave and obstinate, and for several weeks he held the force of Dmitri before this petty place, while Boris was making vigorous efforts to collect an army among his discontented people. On the last day of 1604 the two armies met, fifteen thousand against fifty thousand, and on a broad open plain that gave the weaker force no advantage of position.
Feodor, the son of Boris, was proclaimed czar by the boyars of the court. The oath of allegiance was taken by the whole city; all seemed to favor him; yet within six weeks this boyish czar was deposed and executed without a sword being drawn in his defence. Basmanof, the leading general of Boris, had turned to the cause of Dmitri, and the army seconded him.
Town after town submitted on his appearance, bringing to him, bound and gagged, the governors set over them by Boris. Dmitri at once set them free and treated them with politic humanity. The first town to offer resistance was Novgorod-Swerski, which Peter Basmanof, a general of Boris, had garrisoned with five hundred men.
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