You’d think the death of the first false Dmitri would be the end of it, but just one year later another man would rise up claiming to be the very same son of Ivan the Terrible
You’d think the death of the first false Dmitri would be the end of it, but just one year later another man would rise up claiming to be the very same son of Ivan the Terrible! But not only did he claim to be the young boy that died, but also to be the pretender that came before him (yes, the one they cremated and fired out of a cannon)! His first appearance was in 1607 at the town of Starodub. At first it seemed that he was claiming to be the Muscovite boyar Nagoy. But after failing to be recognised as Nagoy, mixed in with just a little bit of torture, he suddenly claimed to be Tsar Dmitri. So did people believe this man that just swapped identities under torture? Well surprisingly they did! Poles, Cossacks and Muscovites flocked to his side and soon he had an army of about 27,000 soldiers on his side. Even the widow of False Dmitri I recognised him as her husband, which gave him all the legitimacy he needed to get the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth back on his side. He rallied his ar...