In five years Dmitri was assassinated, and his mutilated corpse was lying in the palace at the Kremlin, an object of insult and derision; and then, for Russia there came another chaos.
For a brief period Vasili Shuiski, head of one of the princely families, reigned, while two more "false Dmitris" appeared, one from Sweden and the other from Poland.

The cause of the latter was upheld by the King of Poland, with the ulterior purpose of bringing the disordered state of Russia under the Polish crown, and making one great Slav kingdom with its center at Cracow.
So disorganized had the State become that some of the Princes had actually opened negotiations with Sigismund with a view to offering the crown to his son.

But when Sigismund with an invading army was in Moscow (1610), and when Vasili Shuiski was a prisoner in Poland, and a Polish Prince was claiming the title of Tsar, there came an awakening--not among the nobility, but deep down in the heart of orthodox Russia.

From this awakening of a dormant national sentiment and of the religious instincts of the people there developed that event,--the most health-restoring which can come to the life of a nation,--a national uprising in which all classes unite in averting a common disaster.

What disaster could be for Russia more terrible than an absorption into Catholic Poland?
The Polish intruders and pretenders were driven out, and then a great National Assembly gathered at Moscow (1613) to elect a Tsar.
The name of Romanoff was unstained by crime, and was by maternal ancestry allied to the royal race of Rurik.