DEMETRIUS, Tear (Czar) of Russia, the title assumed by a suc cession of claimants at the commencement of the 17th century, the first of whom is generally spoken of in history as the False Dense trim.' Ivan the Fourth of Russia, known as ' the Terrible,' in the year 1584 killed, in ono of his customary fits of fury, his eldest son, and died in the same year, partly, it is said, from remorse. Though he had had seven wives he left but two sons, Theodore, or Feodor, who succeeded labs, and a child named Demetrius, only three years old; and these were the sole descendants of the race of Rurik, which had occupied the Russian throne for centuries. Feodor, who was a weak sovereign, was entirely governed by his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, who sent the young prince Demetrius, with his mother, away from the court of Moscow to the town of Uglich. Iu the year 1591, when Demetrius was ten years old, he was seized with au epileptic fit (to which he was subject), when playing in the courtyard with his knife, fell so that the knife entered his throat, and died immediately; his mother, who ran to the spot, alarmed by the cries of the specta tors, called out, iu the first anguish of her despair, that he was murdered, and the populace of Uglich, incited by her brothers, the uncles of Demetrius, seized on some of the household and put them to death as accomplices in his assassination. These aro the statements which appear on the evidence of numerous witnessed' in an inquiry instituted at the time, nominally under the authority of the Tsar, but in reality under that of Oodunov, which terminated in the banish went of the uncles of Demotriue, in his mother being compelled to take the veil, and iu the ruin of the town of Uglich, the inhabitants of which ware sent in a body to Siberia, than a newly-acquired pos session of the Russian crown. For semi years afterwards the reign cf Feoder continued, and in 1503, when the dynasty of the line of Rurik closed with his death, Boris Ooduuov, who had long been regent, assumed the title of Taar. By some harsh and singular measures, in particular by that of making drunkenness a capital crime, Boris rendered his name unpopular, and was generally looked on as a tyrant. lu 1603 the publics mind was suddenly stirred by the rumour that Demetrius was alive, and had shown himself in Poland. Several version, are to be found in the historians of the time of the way iu which the revelation was first made : that adopted by Kevauzio, the modern historian of Russia, is that a stranger who fell seriously ill in a Polhill town, sent for a confessor and imparted to him that he was the heir of the Russian throne, and the confessor communicated the event to Prince Adam Wiszniowiecki, and that on the stranger's recovery the prince made known his claims, and espoused his cause. It Is certain that, in 1603, tho Prince Constantine Wiszniowiecki, brother of Adam, introduced to his father-in-law Mniszek, the Palatine of Saudomir, a young man who asserted himself to be Demetrius, who gave out that, when in his tenth year, assassins had been sent by tiodunov to dispatch him, in order to clear the usurper's way to the throne ; that another boy had been substituted in his place, killed and buried as the son of Ivan, and that he, the real Demetrius, had been secretly brought np in a convent till ho had groin to the age of a man, and was capable of asserting his rights. A Russian, named Petrovekl, who saw him when with Wiszniowiecki, declared that he had known the young Prince Demetrius well, and that he recognised the stranger as the same person by two warts—one on his forehead, the other under his right eye, and by one of the arms being a little longer than the other. The Palatine of Sandomir received thdrstranger as Demetrins, and presented him to the king of Poland, Sigiamund the Third, who, at a solemn audience, after hearing a statement of his birth and his misfortunes, replied : "God preserve thee, Demetrius, prince of Muscovy, thy birth is known to us, and attested by satis factory evidence; we assign thee a pension of forty thousand florins, and, as our friend and our guest, we permit thee to accept the counsels and services of our subjects." In May 1604 Demetrius signed a promise of marriage to Marina Molszek, the daughter of the Palatine, which he engaged to confer on her the towns of Novgorod and Pokey as a wedding-gift, and to pay her father a million of Polish florins (about 160,0001.) as soon as he should have ascended his throne. In June he signed another document, by which he engaged ti cede the province of Soveria to the Palatine and the king of Poland, and iu the same mouth he privately abjured the Greek faith, and was admitted as a Roman Catholic in the palace of the nuncio. By these acts ho secured the
services of a little Polish army, with which he invaded Russia towards the close of 1604. Boris, who was of course by this time well aware of the proceedings of his opponent, stigmatised him as an impostor, affirming that he was a renegade monk of the name of Otreplev, whom an accidental personal resemblance to Demetrius had led into the idea of counterfeiting the deceased prince. Modern historians who have had the advantage of being able to compare all the circum atances (many of them too minute to be mentioned here), are gene rally of opinion that the alleged Demetrius was neither what he pretended to be, nor what Boris asserted, leaving it still a matter of mystery who he was and whence he sprung. His campaign in Russia was a mixture of successes and reverses. Ila won a battle before Novgorod which was bravely defended by Basmanov, the Lest captain in Boris's service, and loot a battle at Dobruinicki, after which he retreated to Putivl, where the face of affairs was changed by the sudden death of Boris In April 1605. The Russian populace ascribed the unexpected event to the remorse of the Tsar, which it was believed had induced him to take poison, and Baamanov, the most formidable opponent of the invader, suddenly declared for Demetrius. The commander of the Russian army threw himself at his feet at Putivl and conducted him in triumph to Moscow, which he entered early in June, and was received with shouts of welcome by the people, now thoroughly convinced that he was the real Demetrins. A great test however was now approaching. The mother of Demetrius who had been sent by Boris to a convent after the massacre of Uglich was of course released by the triumph of her supposed son, and took her way towards Moscow. The Tsar met her at the village of Toil:dusk before she entered the capital, and it was so arranged that tha first lotervlew took place in a tent with no one to witness their emotions. In a few minutes they emerged from the tent and embraced with signs of warm affection, and at the signs the multitude burst Into acclamations of joy, the last faint suspicions of doubters being now dissolved. A few days after Demetrius was crowned with great pomp at the cathedral, and he now, with Baamauov for his chief cella oilier, managed with a firm hand the reins of government. His subjects soon began to perceive with uneasiness that their new master was infected with foreign notions, that Ire surrounded himself with foreign guards, that he laughed at many of their customs, and gave the preference on all occasions to the new triumphant and insolent Pelee. Active, vigorous, and courageous, he was also generous to an Imprudent degree, which he showed by pardoning the l'rince Shuieky, who had been detected In a conspiracy against him. Meanwhile his engagements to the Poles weighed heavily upon him, not however that which pledged him to his Tearina, Marina Mniszek, to whom ho appears to have had a real attachment. The nuptial journey of Marina from Kracow to Moscow was magnificent ; it lasted three months, and on the 12th of May 1606 she made her entry into the Russian capital. That marriage was Dometrius's destruction. Tim insolence of the Poles who accompanied her, the disregard which Demetrius on various occasions, and on that of his marriage in par ticular, showed for the rites of the Russian church, roused tire indig nation of the Russians whose discontent was exasperated by Shuisky, who was convinced of the falsehood of Demetrius's story and of his antagonism to the Russian church. Shuisky told a body of Russians assembled at his palace on May 2Stb, that their hostility to the impostor was discovered, and that either they or the Tear must perish, and gave the signal for revolt. Once begun it spread like wildfire, the pent-up enmity of the populace against the foreigners swept all before it, amid cries of " Death to the heretic." The great bell of Moscow was tolled, and 3000, bells answered to the sound. Demetrius, who heard the alarm bell, aent to Shuisky'e brother who was on duty at the Kremlin to inquire the cause, and was told it was a fire, but Basmanov soon appeared with the information that it was a revolt. Basmanov fell in his defence. Demetrius, pursue-I from room to room by the infuriated populace, leaped from a window thirty feet high, broke his leg, and was put to death by the mob, protesting at the last moment that he was "the Tear—the sou of Ivan." A frightful massacre followed.