Polish–Russian War (1609–1618)
The war resumes (1611)

A 1611 uprising in Moscow against the Polish garrison marked the end of Russian tolerance for the Commonwealth intervention. The citizens of Moscow had voluntarily participated in the coup in 1606, killing 500 Polish soldiers. Now, ruled by the Poles, they once again revolted. The Moscow burghers took over the munition store, but Polish troops defeated the first wave of attackers, and the fighting resulted in a large fire that consumed part of Moscow. From July onward the situation of the Commonwealth forces became grave, as the uprising turned into a siege of the Polish-held Kremlin. Reportedly, the Poles had imprisoned the leader of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Hermogenes. When the Russians attacked Moscow, the Poles ordered him, as the man with the most authority with the Russians at the time, to sign a statement to call off the attack. Hermogenes refused and was starved to death. The Polish Kremlin garrison then found itself besieged.

In the meantime, in late 1611, prince Dmitry Pozharsky was asked to lead the public opposition against the Poles, organized by the merchants' guild of Nizhny Novgorod. The respected town butcher (literally, a meat-trader) Kuzma Minin oversaw the handling of funds donated by the merchants to form the Second Volunteer Army (Russian: Второе народное ополчение). When part of the Polish army mutinied in January 1612 due to unpaid wages and retreated from Russia towards the Commonwealth, the forces of the Second Volunteer Army strengthened the other anti-Polish Russian forces in Moscow. The 9,000-strong Polish army under hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz attempted to lift the siege and clashed with Russian forces, attempting to break through to Polish forces in the Kremlin on 1 September. The Polish forces used cavalry attacks in the open field, exercising tactics that were new to them: escorting a mobile tabor fortress through the city. After early Polish successes, the Russian Cossack reinforcements had forced Chodkiewicz's forces to retreat from Moscow.

Russian reinforcements under Prince Pozharsky eventually starved the Commonwealth garrison (there were reports of cannibalism) and forced its surrender on 1 November (though some sources give 6 November or 7 November) after the 19-month siege. A historian (Parker) writes vividly of the Polish soldiers: "First they ate grass and offal, then they ate each other, and the survivors finally surrendered. The Moscow Kremlin fell on 6 November 1612." On 7 November, the Polish soldiers withdrew from Moscow. Although the Commonwealth negotiated a safe passage, the Russian forces massacred half of the former Kremlin garrison forces as they left the fortress. Thus, the Russian army recaptured Moscow.

On 2 June 1611 Smolensk had finally fallen to the Poles. After enduring 20 months of siege, two harsh winters and dwindling food supplies, the Russians in Smolensk finally reached their limit as the Polish–Lithuanian troops broke through the city gates. The Polish army, advised by the runaway traitor Andrei Dedishin, discovered a weakness in the fortress defenses, and on 13 June 1611 Cavalier of Malta Bartłomiej Nowodworski inserted a mine into a sewer canal. The explosion created a large breach in the fortress walls. The fortress fell on the same day. The remaining 3,000 Russian defenders took refuge in the Assumption Cathedral and blew themselves up with stores of gunpowder to avoid death at the hands of the invaders. Although it was a blow to lose Smolensk, the defeat freed up Russian troops to fight the Commonwealth in Moscow, and the Russian commander at Smolensk, Mikhail Borisovich Shein, was considered a hero for holding out as long as he had. He was captured at Smolensk and remained a prisoner of Poland–Lithuania for the next nine years.
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