Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  The tailors of Saxony were busy stitching these proud and well-fed soldiers into new Swedish uniforms. The Swedish veterans who had been described as looking like gypsies when they marched into Saxony in their ragged, weather-beaten uniforms were now fitted into new boots and new blue-and-yellow uniforms with cloaks of dark blue or gray. In some regiments of cavalry, cloth breeches were replaced by elkskin, better adapted to long days in the saddle. New Bibles and hymnbooks were brought from Sweden, and medical supplies accumulated. Generous amounts of food were stockpiled and distributed between the regimental wagons. Swedish soldiers were accustomed to hearty rations: almost two pounds of bread and two pounds of meat a day, along with two and a half quarts of small beer, some peas or grain, salt, butter and a weekly issue of tobacco.

  By mid-August, all was ready. Charles ordered all the women who had found their way into the Swedish camp to leave, and then attended a solemn prayer service for the army. And at four o'clock in the morning on August 27, 1707, Charles XII of Sweden rode out of Altranstadt at the beginning of his greatest adventure. Behind, in a stream of cheerful men and spirited horses, marched the largest and finest army ever commanded by a King of Sweden. As the long blue-and-yellow columns moved along the dusty Saxon roads in those late August days, they made an impressive sight. "To human eyes these brave, sturdy, well-trained, well-equipped fellows looked invincible," exulted one Swedish observer. "I cannot express how fine a show the Swedes make: broad, plump, sturdy fellows in blue-and-yellow uniforms," reported a Saxon. "All Germans must acknowledge that they are incomparable. And there had been a deal of grieving among the Leipzig women. They are not content to weep and cry out, but must swoon and fall down at parting. ... It is the same in all the other small towns ... for the freedom our Swedes have used in such matters is past belief. Some, nay all, are spoiled. Should they ever return home, I pity wives who are to welcome such pampered men; and were a girl my worst enemy, I would not counsel her to take one of these officers for a husband—no not though he were a colonel."

  The first stage of the march, through Protestant Silesia, became more of a triumphal progress than the opening of an arduous campaign. The population, whose Protestant churches had been reopened thanks to Charles, regarded the King as their special savior. Crowds of people attended the daily open-air services in the army's encampments, hoping simply to catch a glimpse of their hero. The sight of Charles kneeling among his men made a

  deep impression, and many young men wholly untrained as soldiers sought to accompany the army as if it had been a band of passing crusaders. Charles welcomed and even bathed in this wave of popular feeling, instructing his chaplains to choose only hymns which had been translated from German so that the population visiting the camp would recognize the music and be able to join in singing.

  The campaign on which the King embarked would be a maximum test for his superb war machine. From the beginning, it was clear that this was to be an epic march. To take an army from deep in Germany in the heart of Europe eastward more than a thousand miles to Moscow required an audacity equal to Hannibal's or Alexander's. In Marlborough's famous march up the Rhine before the Battle of Blenheim, three years before, the Englishman had moved 250 miles from the Netherlands into Bavaria. But Marlborough's men had tramped through populated regions, staying close to the great river which carried his supply barges and which, had the situation begun to deteriorate, would have provided a watery avenue on which to embark and float downstream to their original base. Charles was setting out on a journey four times as long, across plains, swamps, forests and rivers, where the roads were few and the population scarce. If misfortune or disaster struck, there was no way to retreat except to walk.

  Nevertheless, Charles' own attitude was more than confident; it was light-hearted. Even as the Swedish columns of infantry, cavalry, cannon and supply wagons were rippling along the Saxon roads, Charles, accompanied by only seven Swedish officers, rode incognito into Dresden to spend an afternoon with his former enemy, the Elector Augustus. Charles' visit was so sudden that he found the Elector still in his dressing gown. The two monarchs embraced, Augustus put on a coat, and together they went for an afternoon ride along the Elbe. It was a pleasant meeting between the two first cousins and Charles bore no personal ill-will against the man who had attacked him six years before and whose dethroning he had pursued so relentlessly for so many years across the plains of Poland. Now that Augustus was punished, Charles' attitude toward him was sunny. At the end of their ride, Charles inspected the famous Green Vault collection that had so fascinated Peter nine years before, and visited his aunt, Augustus' mother, the Dowager Electress of Saxony. It was the last time the King would see either his aunt or his cousin.*

  *In fact, during Charles' thirty-six years of life, Augustus was the only man of kingly rank whom the King of Sweden would ever meet.

  Despite these pleasantries, the Swedes around Charles worried about the King's reckless decision to ride into the capital of a former enemy accompanied by only seven men. Charles later put their fears aside, smiling and saying, "There was no danger. The army was on the march."

  32

  THE GREAT ROAD TO MOSCOW

  That Charles meant to march across Poland and invade Russia was no surprise to Peter. Charles had finished with Denmark and Poland; Russia was surely next. As early as January 1707, the Tsar had given orders to create a belt of devastation so that an advancing army would have difficulty living off the land. Into western Poland, which would be first to see the advancing Swedes, rode Cossacks and Kalmucks with instructions to lay waste the countryside. Polish towns were burned, bridges were broken and destroyed. Rawicz, which had been Charles' headquarters in 1705, was razed and its wells poisoned by the corpses of Poles who resisted.

  Behind this shield of scorched earth, Peter worked tirelessly to expand and improve his army. New agents were sent out to bring in fresh recruits. Sometimes, potential soldiers were not easy to find and Peter needed help. A nobleman named Bezobrazov, for example, reported from his district of Bryansk that lately there had been a remarkable increase in the number of church servitors who might make excellent dragoons. Peter responded by enrolling all who could march or ride. A Swedish atrocity was used to help motivate the men. Forty-six Russian soldiers, taken prisoner by the Swedes, had had the first two fingers of their right hands cut off by their captors and had then been sent back to Russia. Peter was outraged at this cruelty perpetrated by a nation which "represents him and his people as barbarous and unchristian." Further, reported Whitworth, he meant to turn the act against the Swedes: "For he intended to put one of [the maimed soldiers] in every regiment, who might be a living remonstrance to their companions what usage they could expect from their merciless enemies in case they suffered themselves to be captured."

  Preparing for the worst, the Tsar ordered new fortifications for

  Moscow itself. In mid-June, the engineer Ivan Korchmin arrived in the city with instructions to put its defenses, especially those of the Kremlin, in good order. Despite these efforts, the city trembled at the prospect of a Swedish occupation. "Nobody spoke of anything except of flight or death," wrote Pleyer, the Austrian envoy in Moscow. "Many of the merchants, under pretext of going to the fair, took their wives and children to Archangel whither they had usually gone alone. The great foreign merchants and capitalists hastened to go to Hamburg with their families and property while the mechanics and artisans went into service. The foreigners, not only of Moscow but of all the neighboring towns, applied to their ministers for protection, as they feared not only the harshness and rapacity of the Swedes, but even more a general uprising and massacre in Moscow, where people are already embittered by the immeasurable increase of the taxes."

  In the early summer of 1707, while the fortification of Moscow was proceeding and while Charles was making his final preparations in Saxony, Peter was in Warsaw. His two months in the Poland capital were not entirely voluntary; during most of his time there, he was once again in bed
with fever. At the end of August, he received word that the Swedish King was finally marching east, and, soon after, the Tsar left Warsaw, traveling slowly through Poland and Lithuania, stopping to inspect fortifications and talk to troop commanders along the way.

  A council of Russian commanders joined by Peter and Menshikov generally confirmed the Tsar's defensive strategy. They decided not to risk a battle in Poland, certainly not a big, classically conducted battle in the open field, as Peter thought his Russian infantry was still not ready and he adamantly refused to endanger the army without which Russia was helpless. Accordingly, the bulk of the infantry was withdrawn from Poland and placed under Sheremetev's command near Minsk.

  In line with this strategy, the Russian command in Poland was given to Menshikov, the best of Peter's native Russian cavalry commanders. Menshikov's dragoon regiments would try to delay the Swedes at the river crossings: behind the Vistula at Warsaw, on the Narew at Pultusk and on the Neman at Grodno.

  Peter reached St. Petersburg on October 23 and immediately threw himself into action. He inspected the fortifications of the city itself—on the sea approaches at Kronstadt and on the Neva-Ladoga flank at Schlusselburg. He was constantly at the Admiralty, and drew up a complete shipbuilding program for the following year. He continued to issue orders for the coming campaign and gave numerous instructions for recruiting, clothing and supplying the troops. At the same time, he found time to send condolences to the father of Prince Ivan Troekurov, killed in battle, and to write a friendly note to Darya Menshikov begging her to take better care of her husband: "Fatten him up so he looks not so thin as when he was at Meretch." He ordered Latin books sent to Apraxin to be translated into Russian and gave orders for training the puppies of his favorite dogs.

  And yet, with all his work, Peter was almost overwhelmed during this autumn and early winter by feelings of anxiety and depression. He had reason enough, for, while contemplating the Swedish invasion, he had been greeted on his arrival in St. Petersburg by news of the revolt among the Bashkirs and Don Cossacks, and an account of the massacre of Dolgoruky and his battalion by Bulavin on the River Aidar. This disaster threatened to cut short his stay in Petersburg, as he seemed urgently needed in Moscow or even on the Ukrainian steppe, but as he was preparing to leave, further ne.vs arrived that Bulavin's army had been destroyed.

  In addition to these worries, Peter was never completely well during these critical months. He was in bed for weeks with attacks of fever, he was often irritable and his temper frequently flared. At one point he was angry at Apraxin for not punishing governors who sent the army fewer than the required number of recruits: "That you have done nothing to those governors who have not brought men as ordered, that you throw the blame of this on the departments of Moscow which is not to your credit, is due only to one of two causes: either to laziness or that you did not wish to quarrel with them." Apraxin was deeply hurt, and Peter, recognizing his unfairness, replied: "You feel aggrieved at what I wrote to you about the governors. But for God's sake have no grief about it, for really I bear no malice toward you, but since I have been here the slightest thing which thwarts me puts me into a passion."

  Possibly because of his feelings of depression and loneliness, Peter realized his need and dependence on the one person who could truly relax him in his moments of greatest anxiety. It was in November 1707, as soon as he returned to St. Petersburg, that he finally married Catherine.

  Late in November, Peter left for Moscow to pass the Christmas holidays and to visit his capital, which he had not seen for more than two years. And he was anxious to inspect the fortification which Korchmin was constructing with 20,000 men laboring day and night. The earth was frozen, and in order to thaw the ground to cut out the sods of earth used to build the ramparts, Korchmin's workers had to build great fires directly over the area to be cut. During the month he spent in Moscow, Peter also regulated the making of silver coins, and visited the printing office to see the new type which he had ordered from Holland and which had just arrived. He concerned himself with standardizing the salaries of his ambassadors and with sending more young Russians abroad. He renewed his insistence on the education of the clergy and on ensuring that clothes and hats being made in Moscow follow approved patterns. Preoccupied, he showed his annoyance with what he regarded as petty matters raised by others. When Whitworth unwisely brought up some minor grievances on behalf of English merchants in Russia, Peter replied brusquely that he would see what could be done, but not to expect much, because "God has given the Tsar twenty times more business than other people, but not twenty times more force or capacity to go through with it."

  On January 6, 1708, Peter left Moscow to rejoin the army. On the road to Minsk, he learned from Menshikov that Charles was advancing swiftly across Poland, and he hurried to Grodno. The ability of the Swedish army to move rapidly in the depth of winter and strike surprise blows added to Peter's anxiety. Four days later, he wrote to Apraxin to "hasten to Vilna ... but if you have already come to Vilna, go no further, for the enemy is already upon us.

  The Swedish army, marching in six parallel columns, had crossed the border from Silesia into Poland at Rawicz. Here, inside the Polish frontier, King and army had their first taste of what lay ahead. The town of Rawicz was burned to the ground and corpses floated in the wells and streams; Menshikov's Cossack and Kalmuck cavalry had begun to spread a carpet of destruction before the advancing Swedish army as it marched eastward. Across Poland, the air reeked with the acrid smell of fire and smoke over farms and villages put to the torch by Menshikov's horsemen. The Russian cavalry avoided contact, staying just out of reach and withdrawing eastward toward Warsaw, where Menshikov was digging in behind the Vistula.

  Screened by their own cavalry and dragoons, the Swedes advanced directly toward Warsaw at a leisurely pace. Then, west of Warsaw, Charles turned north. At Posen, the army halted and Charles established a semi-permanent camp, where he remained for two months awaiting the arrival of reinforcements and an improvement in the weather. Here, Charles detached 5,000 dragoons and 3,000 infantry under Major General Krassow to remain in Poland to bolster the shaky throne of Stanislaus.

  The autumn weeks passed and winter approached. With the Swedish army still inert and the Swedish King apparently lapsed into another of his long periods of lassitude, the Russians around

  Warsaw began to feel more confident. Surely, with winter at hand, the Swedes would remain in their present encampment until spring. But Charles had no such intention. He had not left the comfortable quarters in Saxony at the end of the summer only to winter in a more desolate place a few miles farther east. In fact, while drilling his new troops, he was only waiting for the end of the autumn rains which had turned the roads into quagmires. Once the frost had come and the roads were hard, the King would move.

  But not toward Warsaw. In the early stages of this campaign, Charles deliberately laid aside the impetuous frontal attack which was part of his reputation. He was anxious to avoid a major clash this far from his distant goal and his strategy in Poland was to allow the Russians to establish defensive positions behind a river, then himself march north, cross the stream, outflank the entrenched defenders and force them to withdraw without a battle.

  The first time, it was easy. At the end of November, after two months' preparation, the Swedes broke camp at Posen and marched fifty miles northeast to a point where the Vistula curved westward in their direction. Here, the river flowed empty and wide; not a Russian soldier or Cossack horseman was to be seen anywhere on the snowy, windswept landscape. But the Swedes had to contend with nature. The snow was deep, but the river was still flowing. Because of drifting ice, it was impossible to throw a bridge across, and Charles was forced to wait impatiently another month for ice to form. On Christmas Day, the temperature dropped and the surface of the river glazed. On the 28th, the ice was three inches thick. By adding straw and boards sprayed with water and frozen into the ice, the Swedes strengthened the surface sufficiently to bear the w
eight of wagons and artillery, and between the 28th and the 31st, the entire army crossed the Vistula. "They have executed their design," wrote Captain James Jefferyes, a young Englishman with the army,* "without any loss

  *Jefferyes was a soldier-diplomat with strong ties in Sweden. He was born in Stockholm during his father's long period of service to Charles XI; his elder brother was killed with the Swedish army at Narva; and Jefferyes himself had served as secretary to the British ambassador to Sweden. When he joined the Swedish army in 1707 as a "volunteer," it was a device arranged by Charles XH's Swedish ministers to get around the King's objections to having foreign diplomats accompany his army. In fact, although Jefferyes' sympathy lay with the Swedes, his real mission was to observe and report objectively to Whitehall the progress of Charles' invasion of Russia. Captured at Poltava, and allowed to return to Britain, Jefferyes reappeared briefly in Russia in 1719 as King George I's ambassador to St. Petersburg. Jefferyes' last twelve years were spent living in Blarney Castle, County Cork", Ireland, which he had inherited from his father.

  other than that of two or three wagons which went to the bottom of the river."

  Thus, on New Year's Day 1708, the Swedish army stood east of the Vistula. The Warsaw line was outflanked, and Menshikov evacuated the city and withdrew to new positions behind the Narew River at Pultusk. Knowing from his scouts that this position was defended, Charles again applied his strategy of moving northeast and sliding around the Russian defenses.