To add to his perplexities, another claimant of the crown appeared, who declared himself to be the son of the late tzar, Feodor, son of Ivan IV.  This young man, named Peter, was seventeen years of age.  He had raised his standard on the other side of the Volga, and had rallied four thousand partisans around him.  In the meantime, Dmitri had made arrangements for his marriage with Mariana Meneiski, a Polish princess, of the Roman church.  This princess was married to the tzar by proxy, in Cracow, and in January, 1606, with a numerous retinue set out on her journey to Moscow.  She did not reach the capital of Moscow until the 1st of May.  Her father’s whole family, and several thousand armed Polanders, by way of guard, accompanied her.  Many of the Polish nobles also took this opportunity of visiting Russia, and a multitude of merchants put themselves in her train for purposes of traffic.

The tzarina was met, at some distance from Moscow, by the royal guard, and escorted to the city, where she was received with ringing of bells, shoutings, discharge of cannons and all the ordinary and extraordinary demonstrations of popular joy.  On the 8th of May, the ceremony of blessing the marriage was performed by the patriarch, and immediately after she was crowned tzarina with greater pomp than Russia had ever witnessed before.  But the appearance of this immense train of armed Poles incensed the Russians; and the clergy, who were jealous of the encroachments of the church of Rome, were alarmed in behalf of their religion.  An intrepid noble, Zuski, now resolved, by the energies of a popular insurrection, to rid the throne of Dmitri.  With great sagacity and energy the conspiracy was formed.  The tzarina was to give a grand entertainment on the evening of the 17th of May, and the conspirators fixed upon that occasion for the consummation of their plan.  Twenty thousand troops were under the orders of Zuski, and he had led them all into the city, under the pretense of having them assist in the festival.

At six o’clock in the morning of the appointed day these troops, accompanied by some thousands of the populace, surrounded the palace and seized its gates.  A division was then sent in, who commenced the indiscriminate massacre of all who were, or who looked like Polanders.  It was taken for granted that all in the palace were either Poles or their partisans.  The alarm bells were now rung, and Zuski traversed the streets with a drawn saber in one hand and a cross in the other, rousing the ignorant populace by the cry that the Poles had taken up arms to murder the Russians.  Dmitri, in his chamber, hearing the cries of the dying and the shrieks of those who fled before the assassins, leaped from his window into the court yard, and, by his fall, dislocated his thigh.  He was immediately seized, conveyed into the grand hall of audience, and a strong guard was set over him.