Crossing of the Düna 1701 by Daniel Stawert
Charles XII is crossing the Düna
Swedish floating battery, similar used at Düna
The outbreak of war
In the hands of his gifted son, Charles XI’s army was to
prove a formidable force. It was, however, an army built for peace, not for
war, designed to provide a powerful deterrent sustained by Sweden’s own
resources, thus avoiding the need for foreign subsidy which had proved so
disastrous in the 1670s. After 1680 Charles sought peace. He married Christian
V’s daughter Ulrika Eleanora in 1680, hoping to promote rapprochement with
Denmark, and if Swedish contingents did fight against Louis XIV in the Nine Years
War, Charles was careful to keep Sweden out of direct involvement in the
quarrels of western Europe.
The stormclouds were already gathering, however, when
Charles died prematurely in April 1697. The treaties of the 1660s had left much
unsettled, while the Scanian War had revealed Sweden’s vulnerability. The long
period of peace was more due to the distraction of Poland-Lithuania and Russia
by Turk and Tatar than the emergence of stability in northeastern Europe.
Denmark was smarting from losing control of the Sound, and the English were
mounting a serious challenge to Dutch commercial hegemony in the Baltic.
Brandenburg-Prussia and Russia were increasingly concerned about their lack of
a major Baltic port, especially since Sweden’s endemic financial weakness
ensured that it sought to maximise its income from customs duties. Despite
Charles’s reconstruction of the army and navy – restored to 34 ships of the
line and 11 frigates by 1697 – Sweden’s grip on its empire remained fragile.
An age was passing. Charles XI’s death was one of a series
which saw the departure from the scene of a generation of monarchs who had
experienced the last round of the Northern Wars. The first to go, in June 1696,
was John Sobieski, who was followed into the grave by Christian V in August
1699. Alexis was long dead, but two decades of uncertainty in Russian politics
were ended by the death of his invalid son Ivan V in February 1696, which left
Ivan’s energetic half-brother Peter (1682–1725) in sole charge of a state whose
new military potential was demonstrated by the capture of Azov from the Turks
in July of that year. Charles was succeeded by his precocious fourteen-year-old
son, Charles XII, whose military talents were to prove greatly superior to
those of Frederik IV of Denmark (1699–1730) and the new king of
Poland-Lithuania, Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, who took the name
Augustus II on his election in 1697. Finally, Frederick William’s successor in
Brandenburg, Frederick III (1688–1713) transformed his status in 1701 by
securing Leopold I’s permission for his coronation as Frederick I, king in
Prussia.
European politics had changed substantially since 1667.
Statesmen in western Europe were increasingly obsessed with Spain as the
childless Carlos II shuffled towards his grave. It also affected eastern
Europe, where the long series of Turkish wars was winding down as Leopold I
prepared to contest the Spanish succession with Louis XIV. The ageing Sobieski
had lost the fire which had animated him during the 1683 Vienna campaign and
his subjects forced him to withdraw from the Holy League in 1696. Augustus, who
had led the imperial forces against the Turks in 1695–6, was keen enough, but
the Commonwealth hastened to make peace. Only Peter was still enthusiastic,
planning to extend Russian power along the shores of the Black and Caspian
seas. His diplomacy on his famous embassy to western Europe in 1697–8 was
largely devoted to reviving the anti-Turkish coalition, but he was unwilling to
fight alone. When Austria, Poland-Lithuania and Venice settled with the
Ottomans at Carlowitz (January 1699), Peter opened negotiations, securing a
twenty-year truce in June 1700.
A new Northern War had already begun. For Sweden’s perceived
weakness under its adolescent monarch had roused those with scores to settle.
Chief among these was Denmark. Despite Charles XI’s efforts at détente, neither
Christian nor Frederik accepted the losses of 1645–60. Moreover, despite Ulrika
Eleanora’s mollifying presence at court, the Holstein-Gottorp party remained
strong, led by Hedvig Eleanora, Charles X’s widow. The principal bone of
contention remained the question of whether the duchy’s sovereign rights,
confirmed in all Swedish-Danish treaties after 1645, included the jus armorum,
which for Denmark represented a permanent provocation, since the duchies
provided easy access to its vulnerable southern frontier. Ulrika Eleanora died
in 1693, and although the dying Charles XI seems to have recommended that his
son marry Christian’s daughter Sophia, Hedvig Eleanora and Frederick IV of
Holstein-Gottorp scotched the plan. Barely a month after Charles’s death,
Denmark exploited the annoyance of the Maritime Powers with Sweden on account
of its neutral stance in the Nine Years War by razing the fortresses built by
Holstein-Gottorp in Schleswig in breach of the 1689 Altona agreement, in which
the Maritime Powers upheld the rights of Holstein-Gottorp in the hope of
securing Swedish support against Louis XIV.
This was merely a shot across the bows; past experience had
shown the folly of attacking Sweden without international support. The Maritime
Powers had long sought to maintain the balance between the Scandinavian
kingdoms and, as the Spanish succession crisis built up, opposed any war in the
north which might interrupt the flow of naval supplies from the Baltic and
prevent Sweden or Denmark joining an anti-French alliance. Christian therefore
looked east for allies. The first to respond was Augustus, who sought to
strengthen his position in the Commonwealth through an active foreign policy,
coveting Livonia, which he saw as a potential hereditary duchy for the Wettin
dynasty that would improve its prospects of retaining the Polish throne.
In March 1698 the Danes and Saxons signed a defensive
alliance. Five months later Augustus met Peter at Rawa near Lwów where, between
colossal drinking bouts, they held private discussions at which an anti-Swedish
alliance was discussed. It is unlikely that any concrete plans were made; for
Augustus, Livonia was still only one of a number of possible hereditary
principalities he coveted, including Moldavia, Wallachia and Ducal Prussia:
indeed, the seizure of Elbing by Frederick III in November 1698 on the pretext
of the Commonwealth’s failure to pay its debts to Brandenburg after the Second
Northern War provoked outrage in Poland which might stimulate support for a
war. Gradually, however, an anti-Swedish alliance formed: in April 1699, Peter
signed a defensive agreement with Denmark, to come into effect after Russia had
made peace with Turkey; in September, he put flesh on the bones of his informal
pact with Augustus by signing an agreement at Preobrazhenskoe committing Russia
to an attack on Ingria in 1700. Danish enthusiasm was not dulled by Frederik
IV’s accession in August: four days after the Preobrazhenskoe treaty a new
Saxon-Danish defensive-offensive treaty was signed in Dresden. The coalition
was complete.
By the time the Russo-Ottoman peace was signed in June, the
war was well under way. The Danish army moved into Schleswig and Holstein in
late 1699 to await Augustus’s attack on Livonia. After an attempt to take Riga
by surprise in December was thwarted, a Saxon force of three infantry and four
dragoon regiments – 5,000 men – crossed the Dvina in February, and seized Dünamunde
(23 March), as Frederik moved into Holstein-Gottorp to besiege Tønning. In late
August, within days of hearing of the peace with Turkey, Peter’s armies were on
the move. For Sweden, the nightmare of a three-front war had become reality.
A surprise beginning
The allies did not expect a long war. The military odds
seemed entirely in their favour, while they hoped to exploit anti-Swedish
feelings in the Baltic provinces. For if the reduktion succeeded in Sweden
without provoking major opposition, it was a different story across the Gulf of
Finland. Livonia’s tangled history made it extremely difficult to determine
just what should be regarded as royal land, and the reduktion in Livonia, after
a comprehensive land-survey, affected 80.8 per cent of the land and 74.2 per
cent of peasant households, leaving the Crown with 72.3 per cent of the land,
compared with only 1.25 per cent in 1680. The situation was slightly better in
Estonia; nevertheless, 53 per cent of estates were affected.5 Although efforts were
made to compromise with the lesser nobility, opposition was fierce. Two
delegations led by the choleric Johann Reinhold von Patkul to Stockholm
attacked the reduktion; by late 1694, it was largely complete, but talks had
reached deadlock, which the government sought to break by trying Patkul for
lèse majesté. After delivering a passionate defence of Livonian liberties, he
slipped into exile, where he fomented anti-Swedish feeling, assuring all who
would listen that the Baltic nobility was on the point of rebellion. All was
apparently set fair for a rapid victory
Nobody expected what followed. By the time Peter declared
war on 9/20 August as the Saxons began the siege of Riga in earnest following
the arrival of their artillery, Denmark was already out of the war. Sweden,
having promised in January to back the Maritime Powers in upholding the treaty
of Rijswick against Louis XIV, was able to call on their support as guarantors
of the Altona agreement. On 13–14 July (OS), the Swedish fleet evaded a
slightly larger Danish force with a daring manoeuvre along the Swedish coast,
and joined up with an Anglo-Dutch fleet before landing a 10,000-strong army on
Zealand and marching on Copenhagen. Faced by a blockade of his capital and
under pressure from the Maritime Powers, Frederik caved in, signing the treaty
of Travendal on 7/18 August. By the time the Russian army left Moscow, the last
Swedish troops had left Danish soil.
Travendal was a serious blow. Livonia was still recovering
from the devastating effects of the great famine of 1695–6, in which some
50,000 had died, and despite Patkul’s promises, the Livonian nobility showed
little enthusiasm for the Saxons. Augustus’s siege of Riga was chaotic; without
naval support he had no means of cutting off supply from the sea, and an
administrative oversight meant that the Saxon ammunition was mostly of the
wrong calibre for the heavy siege guns.6 Having achieved nothing but the
capture of Dünamünde, optimistically rechristened Augustusburg, he raised the
siege on 29 September. By the time that the Russian army, at least 35,000-strong,
began its bombardment of Narva on 31 October, the Saxons were entering winter
quarters south of the Dvina. As the Russians laboriously constructed their
elaborate siegeworks, Charles was already heading for Estonia. In the battle of
Narva (19/30 November), the Swedes hurled themselves at the Russian defences
under cover of a fortuitous snowstorm. Outnumbered nearly three to one, they
broke through at two points, smashing the Russian line into three parts before
rolling it up. The Russians were routed; including those drowned in a desperate
stampede across the river they lost 8,000 men and 145 guns. The Swedish empire
was not as vulnerable as it looked.
Far from it: for the next six years, Charles swept all
before him. He first attacked Augustus. Deterred from invading Saxony by the
Maritime Powers, who wished to prevent diversions in Germany which Louis XTV
might exploit, Charles forced his way across the Dvina into Courland in July
1701 then invaded Lithuania in January 1702, before destroying a Saxon-Polish
army at Kliszów (July 1702). Warsaw, Cracow, Poznań, Thorn and Elbing were
occupied and in July 1704 Charles presided over the election of his own
candidate, Stanisław Leszczyński, as king of Poland-Lithuania. Two years later,
following a crushing victory by Karl Gustaf Rehnskiöld over a Saxon-Russian
army at Fraustadt (February 1706), Charles invaded Saxony where, in Augustus’s
absence, he forced the treaty of Altranstädt (September 1706) on the Saxon
Estates, by which Augustus was to abdicate his Polish throne. Augustus – who
had already secretly ratified the treaty – led a Saxon-Russian army to victory
at Kalisz a month later, but Charles’s publication of Altranstädt exposed his
duplicity and forced his compliance: in November he returned to Saxony.
Charles’s long sojourn in the Commonwealth, however, left
the Baltic provinces open. In 1703 Peter seized Ingria, where he began to build
his new capital of St Petersburg; in 1704, he took Dorpat, Narva and Ivangorod,
while Russian troops streamed into the Commonwealth to support the anti-Swedish
forces who were not reconciled to Leszczyński by Augustus’s abdication. In
1707, with three of his enemies out of the war, Charles turned east for the
showdown with Peter. With his army rested and replenished, he rejected Peter’s
offer of peace in return for the cession of Ingria, and marched east. Peter,
however, had prepared his strategy well: his armies withdrew into Russia,
devastating the country as they went. For most of the summer of 1708, Charles
sat in Lithuania waiting for Adam Ludvig Lewenhaupt to gather supplies for the
attack on Russia. In September, without waiting for Lewenhaupt, Charles decided
to turn south to winter in the Ukraine, where he hoped for support from the
rebel Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa. The risky strategy proved disastrous. Peter
pounced on Lewenhaupt at Lesnaia (28 September 1708 OS), defeating him and
seizing the supply train. Lewenhaupt joined Charles in October, but the Swedish
army suffered dreadfully in the bitter winter of 1709: constantly harried by
the Russians, soldiers died in their thousands from cold and disease. With
Polish and Russian forces blocking Leszczyński from coming to his aid, Charles
was trapped. By the time Peter was ready to give battle outside Poltava, which
Charles had been besieging since early April, the Swedes were running low on
ammunition and morale. On 27 June 1709 OS, the army built by Charles XI and
perfected by his son was shattered on the narrow plain north of Poltava. Three
days later, as Charles crossed the Dnieper into Turkish exile, 17,000
demoralised Swedes surrendered at Perevolochna. The war was to last another
twelve years, but the Stormaktstid was over.
