t quickly reached Russia, and made its way with
surprising rapidity through all the provinces. The czarevitch Dmitri had
not been murdered, after all! He was alive in Poland, and was about to
call the usurper to a terrible reckoning. The whole nation was astir
with the story, and various accounts of his having been seen in Russia
and of having played a brave part in the military expeditions of the
Cossacks were set afloat.

Boris soon heard of this claimant of the throne. He also received the
disturbing news that a monk was among the Cossacks of the Don urging
them to take up arms for the czarevitch who would soon be among them.
His first movement was the injudicious one of trying to bribe
Wiszniowiecki to give up the impostor to him,--the result being to
confirm the belief that he was in truth the prince he claimed to be.

The events that followed are too numerous to be given in detail, and it
must suffice here to say that on October 31, 1604, Dmitri entered
Russian territory at the head of a small Polish army, of less than five
thousand in all. This was a trifling force with which to invade an
empire, but it grew rapidly as he advanced. 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.
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.

But Dmitri made up for weakness by soldierly spirit. At the head of some
six hundred mail-clad Polish knights he vigorously charged the Russian
right wing, hurled it back upon the centre, and soon had the whole army
in disorder. The soldiers flung down their arms and fled, shouting, "The
czarevitch! the czarevitch!"

Yet in less than a month this important victory was followed by a
defeat. Dmitri had been weakened by his Poles being called home. Boris
gathered new forces, and on January 20, 1605, the armies met again, now
seventy thousand Muscovites against less than quarter their number. Yet
victory wou