Rogue people Cotton Clubfoot. Terrible eve of the coming Troubles
Hunger
As you know, at the beginning of the 4th century, the Russian state faced a large-scale famine, which lasted for 19 whole years. It is now believed that the cause of natural disasters in Russia was the eruption of the distant Peruvian volcano Huaynaputina, which occurred on February 1600, XNUMX.
A huge cloud of ash was thrown into the atmosphere, causing a sharp cooling around the world. In most areas of the Russian kingdom in those years, the sown grain simply did not have time to ripen, which caused the so-called Great Famine of 1601–1603.
The French mercenary Jacques Margeret, who served both Boris Godunov and False Dmitry I, recalled:
“There was such a great famine that, not counting those who died in other cities of Russia, more than one hundred and twenty thousand people died of starvation in Moscow.”
Famine under Tsar Boris. Lithograph by S. Ivanov from a drawing by Chorikov
I must say that Boris Godunov tried to fight hunger and provide assistance to the population of the country.
Parsuna Boris Godunov
However, it turned out that not everything in Russia depends on the tsar. Russian aristocrats and even church hierarchs not only did not support Godunov's undertakings, but tried to cash in on the misfortune of the people of their country. Here is the testimony of the Dutchman Isaac Massa:
“There were more grain reserves in the country than all the inhabitants could have eaten in four years ... Noble gentlemen, as well as in monasteries and many rich people, had barns full of bread, some of it had already rotted from long-term lying, and they did not wanted to sell it."
The limitations of tsarist power were also manifested in the fact that Godunov was unable to secure the sale of these reserves. The same Mass says:
"He did not command (the king) in the strictest way that everyone should sell their bread."
Konrad Bussov in the Moscow Chronicle writes that Boris Godunov:
“I also appealed to the princes, boyars and monasteries to take the people’s disaster to heart, put up their stocks of grain and sell them somewhat cheaper than then requested.”
It was truly the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
The only thing Godunov could do was to open the royal vaults and the state treasury for the needy. Massa reports that the king:
“Out of good zeal, he ordered alms to be distributed in many places in the city of Moscow, but this did not help, but it became even worse than before when nothing was distributed: for in order to receive a small fraction of money, all peasants and settlers, together with their wives and children rushed to Moscow ... aggravating the need in the city and dying ... moreover, the clerks appointed to distribute alms were thieves, which they all are for the most part in this country ... they sent their nephews, nieces and other relatives to those houses where they distributed alms, in torn dresses, as if they were beggars and naked, and distributed money to them, as well as to their whores, swindlers and sycophants, who also came like beggars.
Another action of the king was the search for "no one's" grain. Surprisingly, there was one. Konrad Bussow, quoted above, states that Godunov:
“He set up a search throughout the country to see if there were any stocks of grain, and then they discovered an unspeakably many stacks of grain 100 or more fathoms long, which had stood unthreshed in the fields for 50 or more years ...
The tsar ordered that this grain be threshed and transported to Moscow and to all sorts of other cities. He also ordered the opening of royal granaries in all cities and the daily sale of thousands of caddies at half price. To all widows and orphans from those who were very poor, but were ashamed to ask, and, above all, of German nationality, the tsar sent several caddies of flour free of charge to the house so that they would not starve.
The tsar ordered that this grain be threshed and transported to Moscow and to all sorts of other cities. He also ordered the opening of royal granaries in all cities and the daily sale of thousands of caddies at half price. To all widows and orphans from those who were very poor, but were ashamed to ask, and, above all, of German nationality, the tsar sent several caddies of flour free of charge to the house so that they would not starve.
However:
"The devil of greed ... so saddled the rich Muscovite hawkers that they began to quietly buy bread from the tsar through the poor ... and then resell it to the poor at a much higher price."
State stocks of grain were quickly depleted, and the money distributed by the government could not replace the shortage of bread and led, on the one hand, to an increase in grain prices, and on the other, to an influx of the poor in Moscow and other large cities.
But there was no famine in the southern regions of Russia, and this led to the appearance of a huge number of refugees here. Some moved here with their families. Moreover, since 1601, the landlords began to forcibly free both their serfs and the peasants, who had nothing to feed. And Boris Godunov in the same year restored St. George's Day. Others fled one by one, replenishing the number of Cossacks. Both of them later supported False Dmitry, who appeared on the territory of Russia in October 1604 with a small army.
Gangs
But there were also many who, having lost their families, gathered in bands of robbers that operated in the central regions of the state. Atamans, as a rule, became combat serfs left without service - people familiar with military affairs and well-versed weapons. These gangs had neither a "political program" nor common plans and goals. They did not coordinate their actions and did not want to seize power, replacing the legitimate government. Gangs of different chieftains simply robbed everyone who came across on the way - lonely travelers, merchant carts. The most numerous gangs captured villages and even cities.
In the official documents of those years, the members of these gangs were called precisely "robbers", and not "thieves": that is, the government considered them ordinary criminals, and not political criminals. Therefore, to call the activities of these bands an uprising against the tsarist government is, perhaps, still unjustified. That's just the scale of the actions of the robber gangs by 1603 became extraordinary. The total number of robbers was several thousand people.
There were several large gangs, but the robber detachments of a certain Cotton (Clap) Kosolap represented the greatest danger. As you probably guessed, this is not a name, but a nickname received by occupation (combat serf) and features of gait. Some believe that this chieftain was a native of Novgorod, and the initial place of action of his gang was the Komaritskaya volost located in the west of Russian possessions. However, with the growth in the number of members of his gang, it actually began to control vast areas even in the immediate vicinity of Moscow.
The first gangs of serfs and peasants began to appear as early as 1602, but the country literally broke out in the summer of 1603. Then the Kosolap gang managed to saddle the Smolensk road, effectively breaking the connection between the central and western regions of Russia, as well as an important trade route leading to Poland and Sweden. In addition to numerous villages, the robbers captured and plundered Volokolamsk, Vladimir, Rzhev, Mozhaisk, Vyazma, Medyn, Kolomna. The poorest part of the population of these cities, who had nothing to lose, even supported the robbers. Detachments of princes Ivan Tatev and Mikhail Turenin could not unblock the Smolensk road.
By the end of the summer, the situation was so serious that the government already seriously feared the capture of Moscow by robbers. At a meeting of the boyar Duma, it was decided to send regular troops under the command of
okolnichi Ivan Fedorovich Basmanov - the youngest son of that famous guardsman who was once the favorite of Ivan the Terrible. The defense of Moscow was entrusted to the voivode I. M. Buturlin, who divided the city into 12 sectors, the boyar or okolnichy was to lead the defense of each of them.
End of Crookshanks
Government troops moved against the Cotton gangs in September. The robbers were not soldiers and did not want to fight: it is one thing to rob defenseless people, another thing is to fight against the professional tsarist army. The most adequate took advantage of the amnesty proposed by Boris Godunov (however, they say that many of them were executed or sent into exile). Some of the rest fled, joining the Cossacks. But there were a lot of people left.
There are different versions about the number of robbers of the remnants of the gang of Cotton and Basmanov's regiment - from several hundred to thousands of people. However, it is believed that the forces of the parties were approximately equal, or the number of Cotton people was still higher. It can be assumed that the backbone of the Kosolap gang consisted of seasoned people and experienced in military affairs. And they didn't seem to have anything to lose. The following description of this last battle of the Cotton gang has been preserved:
"But they go with a fiery battle, they are not given alive in the hands."
This decisive battle took place near Moscow. At the very beginning, having fallen into an ambush, Ivan Basmanov died. However, even having lost their commander, the archers survived and eventually defeated the robbers.
Sagittarius in the figure from the book by A. Viskovatov “Historical description of clothing and weapons of the Russian troops"
After the wounded Khlopko was captured, the remnants of his gang fled from the battlefield. The clubfoot was brought to Moscow. Sources do not report on the further fate of the ataman, but it is unlikely that anything other than execution awaited him. The remaining robber gangs no longer risked open clashes with government troops.
Pretty soon they were all dispersed and ceased to exist. Moreover, the weather soon improved, and the robber chieftains ceased to receive reinforcements in the person of hungry peasants who left their homes. However, people continued to accumulate on the outskirts of the country, among whom False Dmitry I would soon find support.
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