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Anastasia Romanov, Election, Eudoxia Streshneva, King Carl IX of Sweden. Archduke Maximilian III of Further Austria, Michael Romanov, Princess Maria Vladimirovna Dolgorukova, Time of Troubles, Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible, Tsar Michael of Russia
Michael I (July 21, 1596 – July 23, 1645) became the first Russian tsar of the House of Romanov after the Zemskiy Sobor of 1613 elected him to rule the Tsardom of Russia.
Michael was the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov (later known as Patriarch Filaret) and of Xenia Shestova (later known as “the great nun” Martha). He was also a first cousin once removed of the last Rurikid Tsar Feodor I through his great-aunt Anastasia Romanovna, who was the mother of Feodor I, and through marriage, a great-nephew in-law with Tsar Ivan IV of Russia.
Michael’s grandfather, Nikita, was brother to the first Russian Tsaritsa Anastasia Romanov and a central advisor to Ivan IV the Terrible. As a young boy, Michael and his mother had been exiled to Beloozero in 1600. This was a result of the recently elected Tsar Boris Godunov, in 1598, falsely accusing his father, Feodor, of treason. This may have been partly because Feodor had married Ksenia Shestova against Boris’s wishes.
Election
Michael was eventually chosen for the throne of Muscovy due to his father’s martyr-like captivity in Polish detention, as the patriotic mood swept the Russian elite since the expulsion of the Poles during the Time of Troubles.
Michael’s youth also contributed to his election as he was seen easy to be manipulated. On February 21, 1613, 700 delegates reached a consensus for Michael to be chosen as a compromise candidate as Tsar of Russia by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613.
The delegates of the council did not discover the young Tsar and his mother at the Ipatiev Monastery near Kostroma until March 24. He had been chosen after several other options had been removed, including Polish Prince Vladislav, Austrian Archduke Maximilian III of Further Austria and the Swedish Prince Carl Philip, the second surviving son of King Carl IX of Sweden and his second spouse, Duchess Christina of Holstein-Gottorp.
Initially, his mother Martha protested, believing and stating that her son was too young and tender for so difficult an office, and in such a troublesome time.
According to Dunning, “The sixteen-year-old boy did not impress the boyars at all; he was poorly educated and not particularly intelligent. Nonetheless, those great lords consoled themselves with the knowledge that Trubetskoi would not become tsar and that Mikhail’s ambitious and highly intelligent father, Filaret, was still in Polish captivity.
One of the boyars allegedly said at the time, ‘Let us have Misha Romanov for he is young and not yet wise; he will suit our purposes.’ In fact, under the strong influence of reactionary boyars, even in preparation for his coronation, the deeply conservative new tsar revealed his true feelings about his subjects by snubbing many patriots simply because they were commoners.”
The tsar’s family relationship with False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II, and Prince Wladyslaw was covered up, even the two years Mikhail spent in the Polish-occupied Kremlin with his collaborator uncle Ivan Romanov.
Michael’s election and accession to the throne form the basis of the Ivan Susanin legend, which Russian composer Mikhail Glinka dramatized in his opera A Life for the Tsar.
In so dilapidated a condition was the capital at this time that Michael had to wait for several weeks at the Troitsa monastery, 75 miles (121 km) off, before decent accommodation could be provided for him at Moscow.
He was crowned on July 21, 1613, on his seventeenth birthday. The first task of the new tsar was to clear the land of the countries occupying it. Sweden and Poland were then dealt with respectively by the peace of Stolbovo (February 17, 1617) and the Truce of Deulino (December 1, 1618).
His accession marked the end of the Time of Troubles.
Michael’s reign saw the greatest territorial expansion in Russian history. During his reign, the conquest of Siberia continued, largely accomplished by the Cossacks and financed by the Stroganov merchant family. Russia had extended from the vicinity of the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean by the end of Michael’s reign.
Michael was married off to Princess Maria Vladimirovna Dolgorukova in 1624, but she became ill, and died in early 1625, only four months after the marriage. In 1626, he married Eudoxia Streshneva (1608–1645), who bore him 10 children, of whom four reached adulthood: the future Tsar Alexis and the Tsarevnas Irina, Anna, and Tatyana.
Michael’s failure to wed his eldest daughter, Irina, with Count Valdemar Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, a morganatic son of King Christian IV of Denmark, in consequence of the refusal of the latter to accept Orthodoxy, so deeply afflicted him as to contribute to bringing about his death. Tsar Michael fell ill in April 1645, with scurvy, dropsy, and probably depression. His doctors prescribed purgatives which did not improve his condition; and after fainting in church on July 21, he died on July 23, 1645.