In the summer of 1607 False Dimitry II approached Moscow with some detachments of Poles and set up camp near the village of Tushino. The Tsar, Vasily Shuisky, found himself in a very difficult situation and turned to Sweden for help. Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, the Tsar’s nephew and a talented military leader, was sent to Novgorod to negotiate. After assembling troops in the Pomorye region in the north, and accompanied by a Swedish corps led by Jacob De la Gardie, the prince set off from Novgorod in April 1609 to “save the throne”. The victories of Skopin-Shuisky and De la Gardie forced the Polish leader Jan Sapieha to lift the siege of the St Sergius Monastery of the Trinity in January 1610, and on 12 March the troops of Skopin-Shuisky and De la Gardie entered Moscow where they were welcomed rapturously as saviours.

Schwartz Vyacheslav

Schwartz, Vyacheslav Grigorievich
1838, Kursk - 1869, Kursk
Painter, graphic artist, history painter, book illus¬trator, theatrical designer. Studied at the Imperial Alexander Lyceum in St Petersburg (1853–1859), at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1859–1863). Lived in Germany and France (1861–1867), took lessons from Wilhelm von Kaulbach in Berlin (1861) and Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier in Paris (1863). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1862). Academi¬cian of history painting (from 1865). Full member of the Russian Archeology Society (from 1865).