een eaten, horses
and dogs devoured, even leather gnawed as food, did Bolotnikof and Peter
the pretender offer to yield, and then only on condition that the
soldiers should receive honorable treatment. If not, they would die with
arms in their hands, and devour one another as food, rather than
surrender. As for themselves, they asked for no pledges of safety.

Shuiski accepted the terms, and the gates were opened. Bolotnikof
advanced boldly to the czar and offered himself as a victim, presenting
his sword with the edge laid against his neck.

"I have kept the oath I swore to him who, rightly or wrongly, calls
himself Dmitri," he said. "Deserted by him, I am in your power. Cut off
my head if you will; or, if you will spare my life, I will serve you as
I have served him."

This appeal was wasted on Shuiski. He forgot the clemency which the czar
Dmitri had formerly shown to him, sent Bolotnikof to Kargopol, and soon
after ordered him to be drowned. Peter the pretender was hanged on the
spot. Shakhofskoi alone was spared. They found him in chains, which he
said had been placed on him because he counselled the obstinate rebels
to submit. Shuiski set him free, and the first use he made of his
liberty was to kindle the rebellion again.

Thus ended this remarkable siege, one in some respects without parallel
in the history of war. What followed must be briefly told. Though the
siege of Toula ended with the hanging of one pretender to the throne,
another was already in the field. The new Dmitri, in whose name the war
was waged, had made his appearance during the siege. Some of the
officers of the first Dmitri pretended to recognize him, but in reality
he was a coarse, vulgar, ignorant knave, who had badly learned his
lesson, and lacked all the native princeliness of his predecessor.

Yet he had soon a large army at his back, and with it, on April 24,
1608, he defeated the army of the czar with great slaughter. He might
easily have taken Moscow, but instead of advancing on it he halted at
the village of Tushino, twelve versts away, where he held his court for
seventeen months.

Meanwhile still another pretender appeared, who called himself Feodor,
son of the czar Feodor. He presented himself to the Don Cossacks, who
brought him in chains to Dmitri, by whom he was promptly put to death.
Soon afterwards Marina, wife of the first Dmitri, who had been released,
with her father, by Shuiski, was brought into the camp of the prete