Feodor II of Russia
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Feodor II of Russia (Russian: Фёдор II Борисович) (1589 - July 20, 1605) was a tsar of Russia (1605). He was born in Moscow, the son and successor to Boris Godunov. His mother was one of the daughters of Malyuta Skuratov, the infamous favourite of Ivan the Terrible.
Physically robust and passionately beloved by his father, he received the best available education for those days, and from childhood was initiated into all the minutiae of government, besides sitting regularly in the council and receiving the foreign envoys. He seems also to have been remarkably and precociously intelligent, and the first map of Russia by a native, still preserved, is by his hand. [1]
On the sudden death of Boris the sixteen-year-old was proclaimed tsar (13 April 1605). Though his father had taken the precaution to surround him with powerful friends, he lived from the first moment of his reign in an atmosphere of treachery. On 1 July 1605 the envoys of Pseudo-Demetrius I (or False Dmitriy I) arrived at Moscow to demand his removal, and the letters which they read publicly in the Red Square decided his fate. A group of boyars, unwilling to swear allegiance to the new tsar, seized control of the Kremlin and arrested him.
On 20 July Feodor was strangled in his apartment, together with his mother. Officially, he was declared to have been poisoned, but the Swedish historian Peter Petreius stated that the bodies, which had been on public display, showed traces of a violent struggle[1]. Although aged 16 at best, Feodor was known to be physically strong and agile and apparently it took four men to overpower him.[2]
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- ^ Peter Petreius de Erlesund: Historien und Bericht von dem Groszfürstentumb Muschkow, Leipzig, 1630
- ^ R. G. Skrynnikov: Boris Godunov, Moscow: Nauka, 1978/1983 and Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International Press, 1978/1982, ISBN 0-875-69046-7
| Preceded by Boris |
Tsar of Russia 1605 |
Succeeded by False Dmitriy I |
