346 VASA
So Moscow burned, with much bloodshed and incalculable loss, for it was a large and
rich city of great circumference. Indeed those who have been in foreign lands say that nei-
ther Rome nor Paris nor Lisbon was so large. The Kremlin stood intact through every-
thing; but Kitaygorod was robbed and plundered by the mob ... The churches were not
spared. The Church of the Blessed Trinity, which is held in summa veneratione by the
Muscovites, and stands very marvellously constructed in the square almost in front of the
Kremlin Gate, was stripped and plundered...^18
After that, the die was cast. The boyars abandoned their thoughts of Polish pro-
tection, and widespread popular resistance began. Smolensk surrendered to the
Poles after a two-year siege in June 1611. But in Moscow, the Polish garrison
could not be saved, even by the approach of Chodkiewicz. Reduced to selling
the Tsarist crown jewels for bread, they capitulated on 22 October 1612. Half
of them were butchered on the spot. Four months later, the fifteen-year-old
Michat Fyodorovitch Romanov, founder of the greatest Russian dynasty, was
proclaimed Tsar. In Poland, the confederated army was demanding its back
pay, and did not disperse till in 1614 it received a sixfold levy of the land-tax. A
minor expedition, mounted in 1617—18 on Prince Wladyslaw's personal initia-
tive, achieved nothing. The Truce of Dyvilino, signed on 3 January 1619 for
fourteen and a half years, left Smolensk, Siewiersk, and Czernihow to the
Republic; Wladyslaw undertook not to press his claim to the Tsarist throne. In
terms of men killed and of money squandered, the Time of Troubles was almost
as troublesome for the Republic as for Muscovy.
War with Muscovy was resumed in 1632, when a large Muscovite force
attacked Smolensk. Inspired by the call of the Ziemsky Sobor for vengeance, it
was led by Michal Borisovitch Sheyn - the same general who had defended the
city so bravely twenty years before. On this occasion when he failed to get
results, he was hanged as a traitor. The Eternal Treaty, signed on 14 June 1634
on the banks of the Polanovka River near Smolensk, repeated the territorial pro-
visions agreed at Dyvilino. Wladyslaw IV, now confirmed by election in his
Polish inheritance, was pleased to accept 200,000 roubles for relinquishing his
claim to Tsardom.
'Eternity' lasted only twenty years, however. In 1654, Moscow made its
decisive bid for revenge. Tempted by the constant upheavals of the Ukraine,
Tsar Alexi Mikhailovitch prepared his path by taking the Dnieper Cossacks
under his protection. Then he attacked, and he kept attacking for the next
twelve seasons. In this war, the Muscovites displayed that marvellous stamina
which is one of the marks of their history. Despite a short break in 1657-8
occasioned by the activities of the Swedes, they kept their double-handed
stranglehold on the Republic in place, both in Lithuania and in the Ukraine. At
the Truce of Andrusovo, on 3 January 1667, they reversed the provisions of
1634 and took Kiev and the entire left-bank Ukraine under their control. These
new terms were not confirmed till the next 'Eternal Treaty' of 1686, and were
not ratified by the Republic until 1710. But for practical purposes, left-bank
Ukraine became a dependency of Muscovy. The ancient Muscovite pretensions