In January 1598 the last tsar of an ancient dynasty died without an heir, and Russia discovered that it had no idea how to choose another. What followed was fifteen years of catastrophe so complete that Russians still call it simply the Smuta, the Troubles. A volcano erupted in Peru and the harvests failed across Muscovy for three years, killing perhaps a third of the population. A runaway monk crossed the frontier claiming to be a murdered prince and was crowned in the Kremlin. A boyar murdered him and seized the throne. A second pretender built a rival capital outside Moscow. Polish hussars shattered the last Russian army, a foreign garrison occupied the Kremlin, and the city burned.
In this sweeping narrative history, Morton Murphy follows Boris Godunov, the false Dmitrys, Vasily Shuisky, the defiant Patriarch Hermogenes, the besieged monks of the Trinity, and the unlikely partnership of a meat trader and a wounded prince who raised an army from the provinces and reclaimed Moscow in 1612.
This is the story of how a great state collapsed into civil war and foreign conquest, and how its people chose, out of the ruins, the dynasty that would rule Russia for three hundred years.
