SWEDEN, RUSSIA and the GREAT NORTHERN WAR

Sweden, Russia and the Great Northern War, to 1740

Sweden Defeats Peter the Great

In 1697, Sweden acquired a new monarch: a 15-year-old who took the name Charles XII. Charles had been taught to follow the warrior tradition of his father, including fencing, horseback riding and military strategy. He was a boy with courage and intelligence, and he was challenged by rivals for territory, who were encouraged by what they believed was Sweden's new weakness resulting from the death of its previous king, Charles XI. Denmark's monarch, Christian V (who also ruled Norway) wanted to win back from the Swedish monarchy the territory of Skåne (just east of Copenhagen), which his family had lost in 1658. The Elector of Saxony, a German named Augustus, was also interested in expanding against Swedish interests. It was an old story: territorial disputes among kings.

Augustus was born in Dresden - a part of what was still called the Holy Roman Empire. In the manner of Europe's interrelated royalty he was a candidate for the Polish throne. For this he became a Roman Catholic, displeasing his Protestant subjects in Saxony. He won the Polish throne over a rival contestant:the Prince of Conti -- a Bourbon prince from France. In 1699, Augustus formed an alliance with the new king of Denmark:Christian V's twenty-nine year-old son, Frederick IV -- a cousin to Charles XII of Sweden. And, from Poland, Augustus wanted to expand his rule to Livonia, where Germanic nobles were unhappy with Swedish rule.

Another interested in expanding at the expense of Sweden was Russia's monarch, Peter the Great. He was a friend of the Swedish monarchy until 1699, having sworn to observe all treaties between his kingdom and the kingdom of Sweden. Then he saw opportunity in joining an alliance with Augustus and Frederick, justifying his decision by complaining that the Swedes had stolen lands of his ancestors -- a fiction regarding Ingria, Karelia, Livonia and Estonia. And he complained of mistreatment he had suffered during his visit to Riga, when he had been examining too closely Riga's fort.

In August, 1700, Charles XII -- then eighteen -- responded to the challenge from his neighbors by landing troops a few miles north of Copenhagen, and, without putting up a fight, Frederick agreed to commit no future hostilities against his cousin.

Charles then rushed to Livonia with 8,000 men, arriving at Pernau on October 6. He turned north and eastward, marching across boggy roads, wasteland and difficult passes to do battle against the Russians. At a pass called Pyhåjoggi, with 400 horsemen he put to flight 6,000 Russian troops. On November 19 his army reached Laena, a little village about nine miles from Narva. At two in the afternoon, during a snowstorm, he began his attack on the Russian fortified camp. The Russians had around 40,000 men, but they were poorly trained, in poor shape physically and lacking self-confidence. By nightfall, Charles and his army had defeated Peter's army, Charles losing around 2,000 men and the Russians losing between 8,000 and 10,000 killed and many taken prisoner.

Charles was advised to follow through on his victory, to take advantage of the panic of Peter's forces and widespread discontent in Russia. Charles thought the Russians were imbeciles and less of a threat than Augustus and his German army. He did not want to leave a hostile German army at his rear while pushing deep into Russia, and he wanted to put a candidate of his choice on Poland's throne in place of Augustus.

In July 1701, Charles pushed Augustus and his army out of Livonia. In May1702, Charles reached Warsaw. On July 2, at Kliszów, he routed a combined Polish and German force, and three weeks later he captured the fortress at Krakow. Charles thought Augustus defeated and tried to settle with him, but Augustus refused his offers. As monarch of Poland, Charles replaced Augustus with Stanislaus Leszczynski, who became Stanislaus I, King of Poland. And in a treaty signed in 1705 with Stanislaus, Charles agreed to help the Polish monarchy regain territory lost to the Russians in 1667 and 1686.

Peter Rallies Russia

Peter is reported to have wept over the defeat near Narva. He wanted to modernize his military. The core of the most modern armies was artillery and a disciplined infantry with rifles, which was supposed to advance while firing and then charge with fixed bayonets. Such armies were the product of training, mathematics for the artillery, and a more advanced economy than Russia had. Peter's army had been more cavalry, of nobles, than it had been infantry. His officer corps had been largely generaled by foreign mercenaries, with nobles filling out the rest of the officer corps. Peter saw the need for better arms, better training, and a great number of recruits.

To enlarge his army, Peter offered good pay for those who would volunteer to join. But, unable to attract a great number of young men, he resorted to the conscription of men from all classes. Debt slaves freed by the death of their owner were forbidden to contract themselves to a new master and were enlisted as soldiers and sailors. Peter created a census to keep better track of who was available. Landlords were obliged to submit a list of those working their lands and to supply the army with one peasant soldier for every 50 peasant households and one cavalryman for every 100 peasant households on their lands. Some recruits were obliged to serve in the military for life. Peter created a regular standing army of more than 200,000, with special forces of Cossacks and foreigners numbering more than 100,000, and he raised taxes to pay for his military. During Peter's reign, eighty to eighty-five percent of his revenues would go to his army and his war efforts.

Peter had no use for precise parade-ground military drilling, for fencing practice or for the elaborate and splendid uniforms of western soldiers. He was concerned with instilling confidence and a sense of purpose into his army. He tried to instill nationalist pride in his army, telling them that they were not going to fight for him but for the interests of Russia.

This he also applied to civilians for the sake of advancing Russia economically. He wished to discourage servility to him personally, and he encouraged his subjects to demonstrate respect for the nation by better performance in their work. He decreed that men should no longer fall on their knees or prostrate themselves on the ground before him. He abolished the requirement that people remove their hats as a sign of respect when he appeared in public -- a benefit on wintry days.

Peter was also pushing on this subjects to westernize. He had a tax on beards, and in various places rebellions arose against him. He wanted more of the politeness that existed in the West. To nobles he distributed a manual on propriety. He issued decrees on dress and personal conduct for social gatherings -- more in the style that existed in Germany. And he ordered women out of their traditional seclusion.

Peter needed people with the kind of training that people were getting in the West. He needed teachers of arithmetic and navigation. He needed artillerymen and shipwrights. Peter set up schools to meet these needs, modeled on schools in England. He created an academy of science and imported professors and students from Germany. And Peter required young noblemen to learn arithmetic and geometry if they were to serve the state in any position of privilege or if they were to receive a license to marry -- a compulsory education away from home that young noblemen disliked.

In 1703, Peter started to build a fort in a desolate area on marshland that was slowly to become St. Petersburg -- named after Saint Peter. He would have preferred to build at Riga, which tended to be freer of ice in the winter. But Riga was still held by the Swedes. So St. Petersburg was planned as his port on the Baltic, to supplant the port of Archangel far to the north, which was icebound from November to May and in other months forced ships around Norway.

In building St. Petersburg, and in building roads, dredging rivers and building canals, Peter used forced labor. He had soldiers build factories. People were drafted to work in factories. There, workers who displayed laziness, drunkenness or were careless were beaten or put into prison. And Peter and the factory managers discovered that freely hired workers were more efficient than those who had been coerced.

His mind still on an approaching showdown with Sweden, Peter, a religious man, melted down church bells to help replace cannon lost at Narva. He ordered more prospecting for metals and more iron-smelting. Ships were constructed and launched, and sailcloth was manufactured.

Peter was also contending with revolts. The increased hardship and increased taxation imposed on Peter's subjects provoked a number of revolts, the most important of which was in Astrakhán in 1705-06. There, people believed rumors that Peter was a prisoner of the Swedes or dead and that an imposter had taken his place in Russia, that Peter's reforms were part of a plot to destroy the Christianity that they loved. They were upset over officials from Moscow who were taxing beards and the wearing of traditional clothing and commanding the length of women's dresses be cut above ground-level. The belief spread that the wig-blocks in the dwellings officials and military officers were idols and part of the worship of the heathen god Janus. People in Astrakhán believed a rumor that marriage for local men was to be prohibited for seven years and that in their place local girls were to be married to foreigners that would soon be arriving.

The people paid for their gullibility. Peter's military burned to the ground Astrakhán and other rebel towns. As an example for others, the people of Astrakhán were massacred. And rebel leaders were executed by beheadings or by being broken on the wheel.

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