Shuysky - Military Heroes

Military Heroes

Andrey Mikhailovich's elder brother, Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Pleten', was one of the leading Muscovite generals between 1531 and his death in 1559. During the regency of Elena Glinskaya he served as the governor of Moscow and of Kholmogory. In 1540, he was put in charge of the Russian army operating in Livonia. In 1542 he routed the Crimean Tatars. Two years later, he was recorded as operating against Kazan. In the late 1540s, he administrated the royal palaces. In 1553, Ivan Pleten' signed an armistice with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

During the later part of Ivan IV's reign, the Shuyskys stood aloof from the macabre politics of the Oprichnina. Probably the most skillful of Ivan's generals was Prince Alexander Borisovich Gorbaty-Shuysky, who advised the Tsar on military reform in the 1550s and presided over the Russian army during the siege and capture of Kazan in 1552. He was executed on fabricated charges in February 1565.

Prince Ivan Petrovich Shuysky, also from a cadet line of the family, commanded the defence of Pskov during its prolonged siege by Stefan Báthory. Tsar Feodor, upon making Ivan Petrovich his military advisor, devolved on him enormous revenues supplied by Pskov's merchants. Soon enough, however, the Pskovian hero was found guilty of conspiring against Boris Godunov and exiled into Belozersk, where he died on November 16, 1588.