Conrad Bussow, Edward Orchard Disturbed State of the Russian Realm

Annotation

Conrad Bussow (1552-1617), a soldier of fortune from Lower Saxony, spent most of his career in foreign service. He arrived in Russia in 1600 and spent the next eleven years serving under a variety of rulers and rebel leaders. He witnessed many of the sensational events of that period: the triumph of the first False Dmitry and his subsequent overthrow, the Bolotnikov rebellion (his description is the most detailed provided by any contemporary observer), the civil strife and foreign intervention which bedeviled the reign of Tsar Vasily Shuisky; the Polish occupation of the Kremlin, and the beginning of the Russian struggle for national liberation.