Polish-Muscovite War, or Russo-Polish War of 1605–1618
Years: 1605 - 1618
The Polish-Muscovite War takes place in the early seventeenth century as a row of military conflicts and eastward invasions carried by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or the private armies and mercenaries led by the magnates (the Commonwealth aristocracy), when the Russian Tsardom has been fragmented by a series of civil wars, the time most commonly referred in the Russian history as Time of Troubles, sparked by the Russian dynastic crisis and overall internal chaos.
The sides and their goals change several times during this conflict: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is not formally at war with Russia until 1609, and various Russian factions fight among themselves, allied with the Commonwealth and other countries or fighting against them.
Sweden also participates in the conflict during the course of the Ingrian War (1610–1617), sometimes allying itself with Russia, and other times fighting against it.
The aims of the various factions change frequently, as do the scale of their various goals, which range from minor border adjustments, to imposing upon the Russian throne the Polish Kings, or the impostors backed by Poland, and even to the creating a new state by forming a union between the Commonwealth and Russia.The war can be divided into four stages.
In the first stage, certain Commonwealth szlachta (nobility) encouraged by some Russian boyars (Russian aristocracy) — but without the official consent of the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa — attempt to exploit Russian weakness and intervene in its civil war by supporting the impostors False Dmitriy I and later False Dmitriy II against the crowned Tsars, Boris Godunov and Vasili Shuiski.
The first wave of the Polish intervention begins in 1605 and ends in 1606 with the death of False Dmitri I.
The second wave begins in 1607 and lasts until 1609, when Tsar Vasili forms a military alliance with Sweden.
In response to this alliance, the Polish King Sigismund III decides to intervene officially and to declare war upon Russia, aiming to weaken Sweden's ally and to gain territorial concessions.After such early Commonwealth victories as the Battle of Klushino, which culminates in Polish forces entering Moscow in 1610, Sigismund's son, Prince Wladislaus, is briefly elected Tsar.
Soon afterwards, however, Sigismund decides to seize the Russian throne for himself.
This alienates the pro-Polish supporters among the boyars, who can accept the moderate Wladislaus, but not the pro-Catholic and anti-Orthodox Sigismund.
Subsequently, the pro-Polish Russian faction disappears, and the war resumes in 1611, with the Poles being ousted from Moscow but capturing, after a two-year siege, the important city of Smolensk.
Due to internal troubles in both the Commonwealth and Russia, little military action occurs between 1612 and 1617, when Sigismund launches one final and failed attempt to conquer Russia.
The war finally ends in 1618 with the Truce of Deulino, which grants the Commonwealth certain territorial concessions, but not control over Russia, which thus emerges from the war with its independence unscathed.