uses, most of them being of wood. As the flames rose,
sweeping from house to house and from street to street, the
inhabitants, distracted by the endeavor to save their wives, their
children and their property, threw down their arms and dispersed. When
thus helpless, the Poles fell upon them, and one of the most awful
massacres ensued of which history gives any record. A hundred thousand
of the wretched people of Moscow perished beneath the Polish cimeters.
For fifteen days the depopulated and smouldering capital was
surrendered to pillage. The royal treasury, the churches, the convents
were all plundered. The Poles, then, laden with booty, but leaving a
garrison in the citadel, evacuated the ruined city and commenced their
march to Poland.

These horrors roused the Russians. An army under a heroic general,
Zachary Lippenow, besieged the Polish garrison, starved them into a
surrender, and put them all to death. The nobles then met, declared
the election of Ladislaus void, on account of his not coming to Moscow
to accept it, and again proceeded to the choice of a sovereign. After
long deliberation, one man ventured to propose a candidate very
different from any who had before been thought of. It was Michael
Feodor Romanow. He was a studious, philosophic young man, seventeen
years of age. His father was archbishop of Rostow, a man of exalted
reputation, both for genius and piety. Michael, with his mother, was
in a convent at Castroma. It was modestly urged that in this young man
there were centered all the qualifications essential for the
promotion of the tranquillity of the State. There were but three
males of his family living, and thus the State would avoid the evil of
having numerous relatives of the prince to be cared for. He was
entirely free from embroilments in the late troubles. As his father
was a clergyman of known piety and virtue, he would counsel his son to
peace, and would conscientiously seek the best good of the empire.

The proposition, sustained by such views, was accepted with general
acclaim. There were several nobles from Castroma who testified that
though they were not personally acquainted with young Romanow, they
believed him to be a youth of unusual intelligence, discretion and
moral worth. As the nobles were anxious not to act hastily in a matter
of such great importance, they dispatched two of their number to
Castroma with a letter to the mother of Michael, urging her to repair
immediately wit