Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Charles had hoped that the answer would be quick, and he did not wish to press the Cardinal or the Diet. But weeks passed, summer faded into autumn and still no answer came. When the reply at last arrived, in mid-October, it was negative: the Diet requested Charles to stay away and leave Poland to manage its own affairs; no assurance was given that Poland would not allow Augustus' Saxon army to use the country as a base the following year. Charles was furious, but it was too late in the year to take action. He moved the army once again into winter quarters, this time in the neutral Duchy of Courland, which was forced to house and feed the unwelcome army at its own expense. In January, the army shifted farther south into Lithuania.

  It was to this second Swedish winter camp, at Bielowice, that an unusual emissary came from Augustus, hoping to use her exceptional powers of persuasion to induce King Charles XII to peace. The lady was Countess Aurora von Konigsmark, the most beautiful and most famous of Augustus' many mistresses. Aurora had golden hair, lovely eyes, a rosebud mouth, a high bosom and a slender waist; she was witty, good-natured and talented. Augustus' reasoning is not difficult to discern: If this celebrated Swedish-born beauty could spend some time with the shy, awkward King of Sweden, he might be tamed and taught to soften his rough, warlike air. The fact that Charles was nineteen and Aurora nearly thirty-nine was an advantage, not a hindrance; what was needed for a mission of this kind was beauty but also tact, maturity and experience.

  The ostensible reason for Aurora's trip was to visit her many relatives among the Swedish officers in the camp. Upon arrival, she sent a flattering letter to the youthful King, asking the honor of kissing his royal hand. Charles absolutely refused to see her. Not despairing, serenely confident of the effect of her appearance, the Countess directed her carriage to a spot on the road which the King passed on his daily rides. As Charles approached, Aurora descended from her carriage and knelt before the horseman in the muddy road. Charles, astonished, raised his hat and bowed low in the saddle, then spurred his horse and galloped away. Aurora had failed; Augustus would have to find another means of distracting or deterring Charles.

  A few months later, in the spring of 1702, Charles invaded Poland, marching on Warsaw and Cracow, determined to do for himself what the Poles had refused to do: remove Augustus from the Polish throne. On July 9, 1702, at the head of 12,000 Swedish troops, Charlesi brought 16,000 Saxons under King Augustus to battle near Klissow. Nine hundred Swedes were wounded or killed—including Charles' brother-in-law, Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp—in exchange for 2,000 Saxon casualties and 2,000 Saxon prisoners. Patkul, the Tsar's representative at Saxon headquarters, was forced to flee in a peasant cart. But Charles' victory at Klissow was incomplete; once again, Augustus' army had retreated to fight another day. And thus Charles' Polish adventure, which was becoming an obsession, continued—and was to extend itself for six more years. Despite the petitions of the Baltic Provinces, the pleas of the Swedish Parliament and even the advice of his own senior officers, Charles refused to turn on Russia until his vengeance against Augustus was total. According to one of his generals, "He believes that he is an agent of God on earth, sent to punish every act of faithlessness."

  During this breathing space while Charles turned his back on Peter to chase Augustus through the forests and marshes of Poland, Russia began to enjoy some small military successes. The first was the stand-off of a Swedish naval expedition against Archangel; then three small but significant victories won by Sheremetev in Livonia. When the Swedish King marched south against Augustus, Sheremetev initiated from his base at Pskov a series of small offensive actions against the Swedish Colonel Anton von Schlippenbach, who had been left to defend Livonia with a force of 7,000 men. On receiving the assignment, Schlippenbach had also been promoted to major general, but in surveying his mission, which was to hold off the whole of Russia for an unknown period, he wistfully told the King that rather than the promotion he would have preferred an additional 7,000 men. "It cannot be," Charles loftily replied.

  In January 1702, Sheremetev won an important victory over the unfortunate Schlippenbach near Dorpat at Erestfer in Livonia. The Swedish army of 7,000 had already gone into winter quarters when Sheremetev appeared with 8,000 Russian infantry and dragoons in winter clothing, supported by fifteen cannon mounted on sledges. In a four-hour battle, the Russians not only succeeded in driving the Swedes out of their winter camp, but inflicted over 1,000 casualties by Swedish admission (the Russians claimed 3,000, and admitted losing 1,000 of their own men). More important in a symbolic sense, the Russians took 350 Swedish prisoners and sent them to Moscow. Peter was overjoyed when he heard the news, declaring, "Thank God! We can at last beat the Swedes." He promoted Sheremetev to field marshal and sent him the blue-ribboned Order of St. Andrew and his own portrait set in diamonds. Sheremetev's officers were promoted, and each of the common soldiers received one rouble of the Tsar's newly coined money. In Moscow, church bells rang, cannon fired and a Te Deum was sung. Peter gave a great banquet in Red Square and ordered fireworks. When the Swedish prisoners arrived, Peter made a triumphal entry into the capital with the captives marching in his train. Russian spirits, depressed since Narva, began to rise.

  The following summer, in July 1702, Sheremetev again attacked Schlippenbach in Livonia, this time at Hummelshof, and this time the Swedish force of 5,000 men was almost annihilated. Twenty-five hundred were killed or wounded and 300 captured, along with all the artillery and standards. The Russian losses were 800.

  After Hummelshof, Schlippenbach's mobile army ceased to exist and Livonia was left undefended except for the static garrisons at Riga, Pernau and Dorpat. Sheremetev's army and especially his savage Kalmuck and Cossack horsemen were able to move at will through the province, burning farms, villages and towns, taking thousands of civilian prisoners. Thus did Patkul's war for the liberation of Livonia wreak devastation on his homeland. So many civilians were crowded into Russian camps that they were being bought and sold as serfs. Sheremetev, writing to Peter, asked for instructions:

  I send Cossacks and Kalmucks to different estates for the confusion of the enemy. But what am I to do with the people I have captured? The prisons are full of them, besides all those that the officers have. There is danger besides because these people are so sullen and angry. . . Considerable money is necessary for their support, and one regiment would be too little to conduct them to Moscow. I have selected a hundred families of the best of the natives who are good carpenters, or are skilled in some other branch of industry— about four hundred souls in all—to send to Azov."

  Among the prisoners was an illiterate seventeen-year-old girl whom Sheremetev did not send to Azov but kept in his own house. In time, this girl would rise. Martha Skavronskaya, as she was born, would join the household of the great Prince Menshikov, become the mistress of the Tsar, Peter's wife, and, finally, sovereign in her own right, Catherine I, Empress of Russia.

  Along with his land victories, Peter, whose thoughts were never far from the sea, imaginatively devised a new means of attacking Swedish power fn the Baltic provinces: by the use of small boats on the lakes and rivers. If Sweden had incontestable supremacy in larger, conventional ships of war, Peter would build swarms of smaller ships which could overwhelm the enemy squadrons by sheer weight of numbers. He began by building small naval craft, propelled by oars and a single sail, on Lake Ladoga, Europe's largest lake, where Sweden maintained a naval squadron of brigantines and galleys. On June 20, 1702, at the southern end of the lake, 400 Russian soldiers in eighteen small boats attacked a Swedish squadron of three brigantines and three galleys. The Swedes were caught at a disadvantage; their ships were anchored and most of the crews were ashore pillaging a village when the Russian boats arrived. In the ensuing fracas, the Swedish flagship, a twelve-gun brigantine, was damaged, and the Swedes had to retreat. On September 7, the same Swedish squadron was again attacked near Kexholm, this time by thirty Russian boats. With the Russians harrying his ships like jackals, the Swedish Admiral
Nummers found his position untenable and decided to evacuate the whole of Lake Ladoga. The withdrawal of his fleet down the Neva opened the lake to unchallenged Russian movement and made possible an important Russian victory that autumn at Noteborg.

  Meanwhile, Peter's men were employing the same tactics on Lake Peipus, south of Narva. On May 31 that year, four larger Swedish vessels were attacked by nearly a hundred Russian boats. The Swedes beat them off and sank three, but had to withdraw to the northern half of the lake. On June 20 and July 21, two individual Swedish ships, running supplies and ammunition across the lake, were attacked by the Russian flotillas. One went aground and was abandoned after the captain threw his guns over the side. The other was boarded and then blew up. As a result, the Swedes withdrew completely from Lake Peipus in 1702. The following year, they returned in strength, sank twenty of the Russian boats and recaptured mastery of the lake. But in 1704, the Russians turned the tables once and for all. Catching the Swedish flotilla moored up the River Embach at Dorpat, the Russians threw a boom across the mouth of the river and placed artillery on the shore. Beyond the boom, 200 Russian boats waited for any Swedish ship which might break through. When the thirteen Swedish ships came down the river, the current carried them helplessly against the boom, where the Russian shore batteries began blowing them to pieces. The Swedish crews landed, desperately stormed one of the batteries and finally fought their way back to Dorpat. But one by one the ships were destroyed and the Swedish naval presence on Lake Peipus was annihilated. Later that year, both Narva and Dorpat were captured by the Russian army.

  In the spring of 1702, Andrei Matveev picked up intelligence in Holland that the Swedes were planning a larger attack on Archangel that summer. To make sure that his country's only port remained in Russian hands, Peter resolved to go there himself. He set out with the twelve-year-old Tsarevich Alexis at the end of April on the thirty-day trip to the north, accompanied by five battalions of the Guard, 4,000 men in all. When he arrived, the defenses were put in order and the wait began. Almost three months passed while Peter occupied himself with shipbuilding, launching the Holy Spirit and the Courier and laying the keel of a new twenty-six gun warship, the St. Elijah.

  In August, the annual fleet of Dutch and English merchantmen arrived, far more numerous than usual, for all the trade which had previously come into Russia through the Swedish Baltic ports was now diverted to Archangel. Along with their goods, the thirty-five English and fifty-two Dutch ships brought news that the Swedes had abandoned any thought of an attack on Archangel that summer. Peter immediately departed for the south. Upon reaching the northern shore of Lake Ladoga, he signaled Sheremetev, who had just won his victory at Hummelshof in Livonia, and Peter Apraxin, who was harassing the Swedes in Ingria, to rendezvous with him and the Guards in order to seize absolute control of the lake by capturing the Swedish fortress of Noteborg at the point where Lake Ladoga empties into the Neva River.

  Noteborg was a powerful fortress originally built by the city of Novgorod in the fourteenth century. The small island on which it was situated, just at the point where the Neva flows out of the lake and begins its forty-five-mile course to the sea, was shaped like a hazelnut; thus its Russian name, Oreshka, and its Swedish name, Noteborg. By dominating the mouth of the river at this vital juncture, the citadel controlled all the trade which passed from the Baltic up to Lake Ladoga and through the Russian river network to the interior. Whoever controlled Oreshka controlled trade as far as the Orient. In Russian hands, it served as a barrier to shield the Russian heartland from the Swedes. When the Swedes took it in 1611, it served them as a barrier to keep the Russians away from the Baltic. Now, its thick walls and galleries of brick and stone, its six great round white towers, were studded with 142 cannon. The Swedish garrison was small, only 450 men, but the swift current of the river made an enemy's approach by boat difficult, even without being subjected to the additional hazard of flying cannonballs. |

  Peter was enthusiastic about the prospect of seizing the fortress.

  "God gives time not to be wasted," he wrote to Sheremetev, instructing him to come in a hurry. Once the Russian soldiers and siege guns were in place, the isolated fortress, which had no hope of help from a relieving army, was doomed. The lake was covered with flotillas of small Russian boats poised to carry troops into an assault. The riverbanks—the south bank was 300 yards away— were lined with heavy siege mortars planted behind earthworks. A premature Russian assault with boats and scaling ladders was beaten off, but the mortars then began a steady devastating bombardment, methodically shattering the fortress walls. On the third day of the bombardment, the wife of the Swedish commandant sent a letter to the Russian camp asking that she and the wives of the Swedish officers be allowed to depart. Peter himself replied, explaining in an ironically gallant tone that he disliked the thought of separating the Swedish ladies from their husbands; of course they could leave, he said, on condition that they took their husbands with them. A week later, after ten days of bombardment, the survivors in the fortress surrendered.

  Peter was ecstatic at this capture of the first important fortress to be taken from Sweden by his new army and his new guns made from the melted-down church bells of Russia. Writing that night to Vinius, he said, "In truth, this nut was very hard, but, thank God, it has been happily cracked. Our artillery did its work magnificently." As a symbol of its importance as the key to the Neva and thus the Baltic, he fixed the key to the fort surrendered to him by the Swedish commandant to the Western bastion of the fortress and renamed the fortress Schlusselburg, from the word "schliis-sel" (key) in German. The Tsar celebrated the triumph with another entry into Moscow, three new triumphal arches and a laurel wreath laid on his own head. Meanwhile, he ordered the damage to the citadel repaired and the defenses enlarged and strengthened with outerworks and quarters for up to 4,000 men. Alexander Menshikov was named governor of the rechristened fortress. Thereafter, Peter always had a special place in his heart for Schlusselburg. Whenever he was in the vicinity on October 22, the anniversary of its capture, he took visitors, or even his entire court, to the site for celebrations and a banquet.

  The fall of Noteborg-Schltisselburg was a blow to Sweden. It had shielded the Neva and the whole of Ingria against Russian advance from the east. Charles, at the time far away in Poland, recognized the significance when the news was brought to him by an unhappy Count Piper. "Console yourself, my dear Piper," the King said calmly. "The enemy will not be able to drag the place away with them." Nevertheless, on other occasions the King said grimly that the Russians would pay dearly for Noteborg.

  In the spring of the following year, 1703, with Charles still in Poland, Peter determined "not to lose the time granted by God" and to strike directly at establishing a Russian coastline on the Baltic. An army of 20,000 men under Sheremetev's command marched from Schlusselburg down through the forest on the north bank of the river toward the sea. Peter followed by water with sixty boats brought from Lake Ladoga. The Neva is only forty-five miles long and is less a river than a broad, fast-flowing chute from the lake to the Gulf of Finland. Along the way, there were no serious Swedish defenses. A single Swedish settlement, Nyenskans, lay several miles upriver from the gulf. Although it was prosperous, with numerous busy mills, its fortifications were unfinished. Russian siege guns began their bombardment on May 11, 1703, and the following day the small garrison capitulated.

  On the evening Nyenskans surrendered, word reached the Russian camp that a Swedish fleet was sailing up the gulf. Nine ships commanded by Admiral Nummers appeared off the mouth of the Neva and announced their arrival to their countrymen at Nyenskans by firing two signal guns. In order to deceive the Swedish seamen, the signal was answered immediately. Uncertain, Nummers sent a boat up the river to investigate. The boat was captured. Three days later, still more puzzled, Nummers ordered two of his smaller ships, a three-masted brigantine and a galley, to enter the river and find out what was happening. The two vessels moved upstream through the tre
acherous, fast-moving water as far as Vasilevsky Island, where they anchored for the night. Meanwhile, Peter and Menshikov had embarked two regiments of Guards in thirty large boats. Slipping down the Neva, they concealed themselves in the marshy waters among the numerous islands. At dawn on May 18, they suddenly appeared, rowing to attack the Swedish ships from all sides. The battle was fierce, with the Swedes firing their cannon to smash the Russian boats crowding around them, and the Russians replying with grenades and musket fire. Eventually, Peter and his men succeeded in boarding the two ships and capturing the few Swedes left alive. The ships and prisoners were brought up to Nyenskans, now renamed Sloteburg. Peter was elated at this first naval action in which he personally had participated, and, in consequence, both he and Menshikov were awarded the Order of St. Andrew.

  With this victory, Peter gained—temporarily at least—the object for which he had declared war. He had occupied the length of the Neva River and regained access to the Baltic Sea. The province of Ingria was restored to Russia. In another triumphal entry into Moscow, one of the banners in the procession showed the map of Ingria with the inscription: "We have not taken the land of others, but the inheritance of our fathers."

  What Peter had won, he set about immediately to consolidate. It was his dream to build a city on the sea, a port from which Russian ships and Russian commerce would sail out onto the world's oceans. Thus, no sooner had he won his foothold on the Baltic than he began to build his city. To some, it seemed foolish, premature, a waste of energy. He had really only a toehold and an uncertain one at that—Charles was far away, but he had never been beaten in battle. One day, he would surely come to wrest away what Peter had taken behind his back. Then this city, so laboriously built, would be only another Swedish town on the Baltic.