The scattered feeling of discontent at length gathered round the person of a singular adventurer. In the summer of 1604 the news spread through Russia that Dmitri, the third son of Ivan the Terrible, was not dead, but was approaching Moscow with a Polish army to oust the usurper and put an end to their miseries. Gregory Otrepieff, who is generally believed to have been “the false Dmitri,” had been a roving monk who had turned brigand with a band of Cossacks. From the southern steppes he had gone to Poland, and there, it was announced, he had, believing himself to be at the point of death, revealed to a Jesuit confessor the secret of his birth and shown the priest a jewelled cross which proved his identity. The Jesuits were still in their melodramatic phase of secret conspiracy for the Church, and may well have invented, or embroidered, the story. They pressed Dmitri upon the Catholic king and nobles of Poland, and in October he crossed the frontier of Russia with an irregular force. Would the Jesuits add to their many triumphs the submission of Russia to the Vatican after so many centuries of resistance? Otrepieff’s force was defeated, but there was a good deal of treachery, and presently a large body of the Cossacks came to join the army of their former companion. At this juncture, in 1605, Boris died, and priests, soldiers, and people declared that they were convinced of the genuineness of the adventurer. The late Tsar’s wife and son were murdered with the usual barbarity. The people of Moscow lustily received the monk-brigand, when he came for his coronation, and even the widow of Ivan IV publicly fell upon his neck and identified him. Her relatives were, of course, promoted to wealth and honour, and even the Romanoffs returned from the monastic shades to the sunlight of prosperity. Monk Philaret was made a Metropolitan, or Archbishop.