Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  But now thousands of soldiers in torn, mud-stained uniforms— the Russians in green and red, the Swedes in blue and yellow— with muskets on their shoulders or slumped in their saddles, moved in heavy columns along the roads to the south. Sheremetev and the main Russian army were moving parallel to Charles, prepared to block any Swedish move to the east, and farther west an independent cavalry force under Menshikov was moving in the same direction. As this cavalry would pass close by Baturin, Peter, believing Mazeppa's lies about being on his "deathbed," asked Menshikov to see the Hetman and consult with the Cossack elders about the election of a loyal successor. Accordingly, Menshikov sent a message to Mazeppa that he was on his way to pay a visit. When the Hetman learned that Menshikov, whom he hated and feared, was coming to see him, he grew convinced that the Tsar knew his plans and that the Prince intended to arrest or kill him. Mazeppa was seized by panic.

  In retrospect, perhaps the wisest thing he could have done, having made up his mind to join Charles, would have been to remain at Baturin until Charles' army could arrive. Even when Menshikov appeared, there was little he and his unsupported cavalry could have done against a fortress protected by cannon. But Mazeppa did not know how many Russians were approaching. He did know and fear Menshikov, and he feared even more Peter's reaction to the news of his betrayal. Deciding that the game was up, he mounted his horse, gathered 2,000 men around him, posted another 3,000 to guard Baturin, commanding them not to admit Menshikov to the town, and galloped north to throw in his lot with the King of Sweden. For Peter, the situation was saved by Menshikov's swift and decisive movements. The Prince arrived at Baturin on October 26 to find that Mazeppa had vanished and that those Cossacks still inside the town refused to permit his men to enter. Surprised and suspicious, he questioned people in the countryside and learned that Mazeppa had ridden by with a large number of horsemen on his way to cross the Desna. The ominous implications of this news were confirmed when a party of Cossack officers asked Menshikov for protection against their Hetman, who, they said, had gone to join the Swedes and betray the Tsar.

  Realizing that Peter must immediately learn what had happened, Menshikov left Prince Golitsyn with a force of cavalry outside Baturin to screen the town while he himself galloped to the Tsar, who was accompanying Sheremetev's army. When Peter heard of Mazeppa's betrayal, he was stunned, but he did not lose his head. The greater danger—to be prevented at all costs—was the spreading of Mazeppa's treason.

  The Tsar reacted vigorously to prevent this chain reaction. The night he heard of Mazeppa's betrayal, he ordered Menshikov to dispatch dragoori regiments to block any movement by the nearest bands of Ukrainian and Zaporozsky Cossacks to join Mazeppa in the Swedish camp. The following day, October 28, Peter issued a formal proclamation to the people of the Ukraine. Declaring Mazeppa's treachery, he appealed to their Orthodox faith: Mazeppa had deserted to the Swedes, he said, "in order to put the land of Little Russia [the Ukraine] as before the dominion of Poland and to turn the churches and monasteries over to the Catholics." Circulating the proclamation in all the towns and villages of the Ukraine and the lower Volga, he called on the Cossacks to support a new hetman in their fight against the Swedish invader who was the ally of their traditional enemy, the Poles. On a less exalted level, he appealed to the well-known cupidity of the freebooter Cossacks, offering rewards for Swedish prisoners: 2,000 roubles would be paid for a captured Swedish general, 1,000 for a colonel and five for an ordinary soldier. A dead Swede was worth three roubles.

  Peter quickly turned to the immediate military situation. It seemed clear that Charles would head for Mazeppa's fortified capital, Baturin, where, it was common knowledge, there were large stores of powder and food. A hastily convened war council decided that Menshikov must return to Baturin with a strong force, including artillery, and assault the town before the Swedes and Mazeppa could reach it. Peter, knowing that the Swedes were about to cross the Desna, was nervous. Repeatedly, as Menshikov was making ready, the Tsar urged him to hurry and to be firm and merciless.

  The race for Baturin was on.

  During these last days of October, as Charles' army approached the Desna, the Swedish soldiers were cheered by the arrival of Mazeppa and his strange-looking Cossacks. They had hoped that there would be more Cossacks, but these were promised once the army reached Baturin. And for both officers and men, the imminent prospect of reaching a friendly, fortified town where permanent quarters, good food and plenty of powder were waiting was sufficient to lift their spirits. Thus, despite the fact that the Russians had seized the crossing at Novgorod-Seversky and that the Swedes would be forced to cross the river in open country against a Russian force under Hallart, Charles' men were cheerful. The crossing was not easy; the Desna was a broad, fast-flowing stream with high banks, and the first freezing days of winter had already filled the river with drifting ice. On November 3, with Mazeppa at his side, Charles employed his favorite tactic. He feinted a crossing upstream to confuse the Russians, then launched a powerful assault directly across the river at the enemy's center. Late in the afternoon, having overcome the determined opposition of a smaller Russian force, the King of Sweden stepped onto the soil of the Ukraine. His objective now was clear. Baturin was to the south and the road to the Cossack capital lay open. But, unknown to Charles, on the very day the King crossed the river and set foot in the Ukraine, Baturin had ceased to exist.

  Menshikov had won the race. With a force of cavalry and mounted infantry, he arrived back at Baturin on November 2 to find the Cossacks inside caught between loyalties to their Hetman and to the Tsar. Their first response to Menshikov's demands was that the Russians could not enter until a new hetman had been elected and given them orders. Menshikov, knowing that the enemy was pressing forward, renewed his demand for immediate entry. Again the garrison refused, insisting, however, that it was faithful to the Tsar and would permit his troops to enter after a three-day wait to allow it to withdraw freely. Menshikov rejected the delay, countering that if the garrison came out at once, no harm would be done to it. Forced to a decision, the Cossacks hardened and sent the messenger back with a defiant cry: "We will all die here, but we will not allow the Tsar's troops to come in."

  At dawn the following moming, November 3, Menshikov's troops stormed Baturin, and after a two-hour battle the fortress capitulated (some say a gate was opened to the Russians by a disaffected Cossack). Peter had left to Menshikov's discretion what to do with the town. As Menshikov saw it, he had no choice. The main Swedish army and Mazeppa were approaching rapidly; he had no time and too few men to prepare the town's defenses for a siege; he could not allow Baturin and its supplies of food and ammunition to be captured by Charles. Accordingly, he ordered the city demolished. His troops slaughtered all the 7,000 inhabitants, soldiers and civilians alike, except for a thousand who fought their way free. Everything movable was distributed among Menshikov's soldiers, the supplies so desperately needed by the Swedes were destroyed and the whole town razed to the ground by fire. Baturin, the ancient stronghold of the Cossacks, disappeared.

  The fate of Baturin, Peter believed, would serve as an example to others contemplating treason. And indeed, from his viewpoint, the town's cruel destruction had a salutary effect. It was a brutal stroke, a summary punishment which Cossacks understood, demonstrating to them where the greatest power to punish lay. To further circumscribe the effect of Mazeppa's betrayal, Peter immediately summoned the Cossack elders and officers. His candidate—the Cossack colonel of Starodub, Skoropadsky—was elected hetman to succeed Mazeppa. The following day, the Metropolitan of Kiev and two archbishops arrived. With full church ceremonial, they publicly excommunicated Mazeppa and pronounced the curse of anathema on him. To make the impression even more vivid, Mazeppa's portrait was dragged through the streets, then swung from a rope on a gallows next to the bodies of the leaders of the Baturin garrison. A similar ceremony of anathema was repeated in Moscow and in all the churches of Russia and the Ukraine, and a proclamation pr
omised a similar fate to all other traitors to the Tsar.

  Thus, Peter successfully snuffed out the flame of Mazeppa's revolt before it could spread. Thereafter, instead of Mazeppa's leading the whole Ukrainian people into the Swedish camp, a split developed between the minority who followed him and the majority who remained loyal to Peter. Charles' promise to take the Cossacks under his protection had little effect. The Ukrainian people stood by the Tsar and their new Hetman, hiding their horses and provisions from the Swedes and turning over captured Swedish stragglers for the reward. Delightedly, Peter wrote Apraxin, "The people of Little Russia stand with God's help more firmly than was possible to expect. The King sends enticing proclamations, but the people remain faithful and bring in the King's letters."

  The loss of Baturin's storehouses and magazines—and of Lewenhaupt's wagons—left Swedish reserves of food and gunpowder dangerously low. Deep inside Russia, Charles now had no way to replenish his meager, dwindling stock of powder. Worse was the loss of the hope of a mass Ukrainian revolt. Far from finding refuge in a secure region, the invading army was once again surrounded by bands of ravaging and burning enemy cavalry. And there was also a growing shortage of manpower.

  The effect of these events on Mazeppa was catastrophic. Instead of brilliantly casting his lot with the victors, he had chosen destruction. He had seen his capital razed, his title taken, his followers desert. At first he told Charles that Menshikov's brutality would only enrage the Cossacks, but this proved illusory, and overnight the proud Cossack Hetman was reduced to being a defeated old man, little more than a fugitive protected by the Swedish army. Charles now became Mazeppa's sole help—only if the Swedish King won a conclusive victory and overthrew the Tsar could Mazeppa's fortunes be restored. Until the end of his life, Mazeppa remained in Charles' camp. He was no longer a potent ally, but Charles was loyal to him for what he had risked. Charles also enjoyed the wit and vivacity of the wiry little man, who, despite his age, was still full of fire and life and spoke Latin as fluently as the King himself. Through the remainder of the Russian campaign, Mazeppa's sagacity and his intimate knowledge of the country made him a valuable counselor and guide. And he and his several thousand horsemen remained loyal to Charles, inspired in their devotion by the knowledge of what would happen to them if they fell into Russian hands. But there is evidence that Mazeppa never completely gave up his scheming ways. A Cossack officer who had gone over with Mazeppa to the Swedes came back to Peter bearing an oral message supposedly from the old Hetman, offering to deliver Charles into Peter's hands if the Tsar agreed to pardon him and restore him to his rank and office of hetman. Peter sent the messenger back with a favorable reply, but nothing more was ever heard.

  35

  THE WORST WINTER WITHIN MEMORY

  On November 11, Charles XII and the advance regiments of his army arrived at Baturin. The ruins were still smoldering and the air was heavy with the stench of half-burned corpses. Following the advice of the heart-broken Mazeppa, the Swedes continued south in the direction of Romny in a district lying between Kiev and Kharkov which abounded in rich grasslands and grainfields and supported many flocks and herds. Now, as winter was approaching, the sheds were filled with corn, tobacco, sheep and cattle and there was an abundance of bread, beer, honey, hay and oats. Here, at last, both men and animals could eat and drink their fill. Gratefully, the Swedes settled into a broad square of territory bounded by the towns of Romny, Pryluky, Lokhvitsa and Gadyach, dispersing the regiments into companies and platoons and taking up quarters in houses and huts throughout the area. Although they were isolated deep in the Ukraine, so far from Sweden and Europe "as it had been outside the world," here they believed they were safe and could rest.

  Meanwhile, parallel to the Swedes but some miles to the east, Peter and Sheremetev with the main Russian army had also been moving south, always covering the Swedes and screening them from Moscow njiore than 400 miles to the northeast. When the Swedes settled down for the winter, Peter established his own winter headquarters in the town of Lebedin and distributed his forces in a northwest-southeast arc, taking positions in the towns of Putivl, Sumy and Lebedin, blocking the Kursk-Orel road to Moscow. To prevent a Swedish thrust east to Kharkov or west to Kiev, he put garrisons in other towns and villages east, south and west of the Swedish encampments. One of these towns was named Poltava.

  Skirmishing continued, but increasingly the military pattern of the two armies was being reversed. Charles, who normally favored aggressive winter campaigning, was on the defensive, while Russian patrols constantly harried and provoked the extended perimeters of the Swedish camp. Peter's purpose was not to fight a general battle but simply to maintain pressure, to whittle away at the isolated Swedes, to deplete them, wear them down and demoralize them before spring. Time, Peter knew, was on his side.

  The Tsar thus initiated new tactics designed to keep his enemies off balance, to deny them rest and a chance to spend the winter in bed with their boots off. The approaching winter was already colder than usual, and Russian irregular cavalry could cross the frozen rivers and streams with ease at any point. Because of this new mobility, the Swedish regiments found it more difficult to guard the edges of their encampments. The Russians also kept the Swedes off balance with a series of feints and diversions. Peter's tactic was to send a substantial force into the vicinity of the Swedish camp and tempt Charles to muster his troops and move out toward it, whereupon Peter's men would withdraw. This happened on November 24, at Smeloye, where Charles' troops, fully mobilized and prepared for battle, found the Russians vanishing before them. Enraged, the King gave his frustrated men permission to loot the town—systematically, with each regiment allowed a section—and burn it to the ground.

  As the Russians persisted, Charles' anger grew, and in hopes of a general battle to deal a blow to the Russians and end these harassments, he fell into a trap which Peter had prepared for him. Three Swedish regiments were quartered along with some of Mazeppa's Cossacks, in Gadyach, about thirty-five miles east of Romny. On December 7, Peter moved a substantial part of his army southeast as if to attack the town. Meanwhile, he sent Hallart with another corps toward Romny itself with instructions to attack and occupy it if the main Swedish army marched out to the relief of Gadyach. His objective was to force the Swedes to abandon their hearthsides and march out into the freezing countryside and then to steal Romny out from under them.

  When Charles heard that the Russians were swarming on the outskirts of Gadyach, his combative instincts were aroused. In vain, his generals advised him to remain where he was and let the troops in Gadyach beat off any Russian assault. Despite their advice and the fearful cold, on December 19 Charles ordered the entire army to march. He himself set out first with the Guards, hoping to catch the Russians by surprise as he had at Narva. Peter, learning that Charles' army was on the march, ordered his troops to maintain their positions near Gadyach until the Swedes were close, and then to withdraw. The Russians actually held until the Swedish advance guard was only half a mile away, and then, as planned, they simply melted away, retreating to Lebedin, where the Tsar had his headquarters. Meanwhile, once the Swedes were gone, Hallart's men stormed into Romny, occupying it without difficulty, just as Peter had anticipated.

  Now, as Peter had hoped, with the Swedish army strung out on the road between Gadyach and Romny, an enemy worse than Russia swept down on Charles and his soldiers. All over Europe, the winter that year was the worst in memory. In Sweden and Norway, elk and stags froze to death in the forests. The Baltic was choked and often solid with ice, and heavily laden wagons passed from Denmark across the sound to Sweden. The canals of Venice, the estuary of the Tagus in Portugal, even the Rhone were sheeted with ice. The Seine froze at Paris so that horses and wagons could pass across. Even the ocean froze in the bays and inlets along the Atlantic coast. Rabbits froze in their burrows, squirrels and birds fell dead from the trees, farm animals died rigid in the fields. At Versailles, wine froze in the cellars and glazed with
ice on the tables. The courtiers put fashion aside, layered themselves in heavy clothes and huddled around the great chimneys where logs blazed day and night, trying to warm the icy rooms. "People are dying of the cold like flies. The windmill sails are frozen in their sockets, no corn can be ground, and thus many people are dying of starvation," wrote Louis XIV's sister-in-law, the Princess Palatine. In the vast, empty, windswept, unprotected spaces of the Ukraine, the cold was even more intense. Through this icy hell, the ragged, freezing Swedish army was marching to the relief of a garrison which was no longer even in danger.

  The futility of the effort was compounded by a cruel fate which awaited the army at Gadyach. The Swedes struggled forward, arriving at evening, hoping to reach shelter and warmth. But they found that the only entrance to the town was a single, narrow gate, which soon was jammed and blocked by a mass of men, horses and wagons. Most of the Swedes had to spend one night, and some two or three nights, camped outside the town in the open air. The suffering was extreme. Sentries froze to death at their posts. Frostbite furtively stole noses, ears, fingers and toes. Sledgeloads of frostbitten men and long lines of wagons, some of whose passengers were already dead, crawled slowly through the narrow gate into the town. "The cold was beyond description, some hundred men of the regiment being injured by the freezing away of their private parts or by loss of feet, hands, noses, besides ninety men who froze to death," wrote a young Swedish officer who participated. "With my own eyes, I beheld dragoons and cavalrymen sitting upon their horses stone-dead with their reins in their hands in so tight a grip that they could not be loosened until the fingers were cut off."

  Inside the town, nearly every house became a hospital. The patients were crowded onto benches near a fire or laid side by side on the foor covered by a layer of straw. Amid the stench of gangrene, the surgeons worked, crudely lopping off frozen limbs, adding to the piles of amputated fingers, hands and other parts accumulating on the floor. The carnage inflicted on the Swedish army during the nights among the snowdrifts under the open sky was more terrible than any which might have come from the battle Charles had sought. Over 3,000 Swedes froze to death, and few escaped being maimed in some way by frostbite. Out of ignorance, most refused to rub their frozen extremities with snow in the manner of the Cossacks. Charles himself was caught by frostbite on the nose and cheeks and his face began to turn white, but he quickly followed Mazeppa's advice and restored himself by rubbing his face with snow.