Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  As seen from London, Charles' death in November 1718 created an entirely new situation in the Baltic. Until then, George I's interest had been permanent Hanoverian possession of Bremen and Verden, and the British Cabinet had been concerned about protection of British merchant trade and an assured flow of naval supplies from the Baltic. Both parties had also worried about the possibility of Charles XII offering support to a Jacobite uprising in England against the Hanoverian King. But Charles' death eliminate these fears and enabled the King and his ministers to reassess the underlying change which was taking place in the North: the decline of the Swedish empire and its replacement in the Baltic by the growing power of Russia.

  King George I conceived a plan which, if successful, would profit both England and Hanover; the Baltic would be made safe for British trade and the continued, unmolested flow of naval stores and also the possession of Bremen and Verden would be guaranteed to Hanover not just by right of conquest but by formal cession from the Swedish crown. George's goal was the preservation of sufficient Swedish power "so that the Tsar should not grow too powerful in the Baltic." His means was to be a complete reversal of the alliance system in the Baltic. Sweden in 1718 stood alone against a powerful assembly of states: Russia, Poland, Denmark, Hanover and Prussia. This alignment would now be reversed. First, Sweden would be induced to make peace with all of her enemies in the lower Baltic, then a general league of Germanic powers would together march on the Tsar and drive them away from the northern sea. Initially, the peace would be expensive for Sweden: All of its German possessions would be divided among Hanover, Prussia, Denmark and Poland. In return, however, these states would become Sweden's allies, helping it to recover all it had lost to the Tsar. Sweden was to receive back Livonia, Estonia and Finland, giving up only St. Petersburg, Narva and Kronstadt. If Peter refused these terms, still harsher ones would be imposed: He would be deprived of all his conquests and, in addition, forced to cede Smolensk and Kiev to Poland. In sum, Russia, until then the apparent victor in the war, having gained the most territory, would now become the loser and would pay for the peace. Hanover and Prussia, which had entered the war late and done almost no fighting, would become the real victors.

  In its initial stages, George I's plan was brilliantly successful. One by one, through skillful diplomacy, Peter's allies were stripped away, bribed or pressured into making a separate peace with Sweden. Fittingly, Hanover was the first in this parade. On November 20, 1719, George I, as Elector of Hanover, signed a formal treaty of peace with Sweden. By the treaty, Hanover obtained permanent cession of Bremen and Verden on payment of one million thalers. Two months later, as King of England, the same George I signed an alliance with Sweden by which England was to pay a subsidy of 300,000 thalers per year for as long as the war with Russia lasted, to assist Sweden with a British fleet in the battle, and to help Sweden reach a favorable peace with Russia.

  King Frederick William of Prussia was highly uncomfortable about the English proposition, as he considered himself a friend of the Tsar and had only recently—in August 1718—signed a new alliance with Peter. But he was strongly, and in the end decisively, tempted by the promise of permanent cession of the port of Stettin, which gave his kingdom access to the sea, plus a piece of Swedish Pomerania. As a salve to his conscience, Frederick William kept the negotiations completely aboveboard. He informed the Russians of every detail of his discussions with the English, and endeavored to convince Golovkin and, later, Tolstoy, whom Peter sent especially to Berlin, that the new treaty would not be harmful to Russia. Even after a treaty of peace was finally signed between Prussia and Sweden on January 21, 1720, the King signed a declaration that he would never act against the interest or territory of his friend Peter.*

  Denmark was cajoled into peace with Sweden by the combined influence of English money and the Royal Navy. An armistice was signed on October 19, 1719, and a Swedish-Danish peace treaty

  *Frederick William's distress at the role he found himself playing is displayed in an emotional memorandum he wrote before the treaty was signed: "Would to God that I had not promised to conclude the treaty. It is an evil spirit which has moved me. Now we shall be ruined, which is what my false friends wish. May God take me from this evil world before 1 sign it, for here on earth there is nothing but falsehood and deceit. I will explain to Golovkin that I must wear the cloak on both shoulders. To have the Tsar at my hand is my interest and if I give him money I can have as many troops as I wish. The Tsar will make just such a treaty with me. With the English everything is deceit, just as the most rascally way they deceive me in 1715. I pray God to stand by me if I must play an odd part, but I play it unwillingly for it is not one for an honest man." The King concluded that his predicament should "teach my successors to guard against accepting such friends, and not to follow my wicked. Godless maxims in this treaty, but to stick to friends that one once has, and to turn away from false friends. Therefore, I exhort my posterity to keep a still stronger army than I have; on this I shall live and die."

  on July 3, 1720. Sweden agreed henceforth to pay tolls for Swedish ships passing through the sound and to give up all support for the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Then, King Augustus, who had helped instigate the Great Northern War and whose persuasion had turned the Tsar against Sweden, signed a treaty of peace with Sweden on December 27, 1719. No territory changed hands, but by its terms Augustus was confirmed in his title of King of Poland, while Stanislaus, the other candidate for that title, was allowed to wander about Europe calling himself King Stanislaus.

  To Russia, King George I and his English ministers explained all these changes as merely the results of a British effort to mediate peace in the North. The Russians understood better. In the summer of 1719, Fedor Veselovsky, the Tsar's ambassador in London, called on General Lord James Stanhope, who conducted the foreign policy of the British government. Speaking bluntly, Veselovsky warned Stanhope that any alliance, even defensive in nature, between England and Sweden would be regarded as an English declaration of war against Russia. Stanhope protested that Russia should show more appreciation for the important services which England had rendered to the Tsar during the war.

  "What services has England rendered to Russia in the present war?" retorted Veselovsky.

  "England," said Stanhope, "has allowed the Tsar to make great conquests and establish himself on the Baltic and besides has sent her fleet and assisted his undertakings."

  "England," replied Veselovsky, "allowed His Majesty to make conquests because she had no means of preventing him, though she had no wish to aid him and from circumstances was obliged to remain neutral. She sent her fleet to the Baltic for the protection of her own trade and to defend the King of Denmark in consequences of treaty obligations to him."

  The primary means of executing England's new anti-Russian policy was to be the presence of a strong British fleet in the Baltic. The commander of the fleet would be the same Admiral Sir John Norris who for four years had commanded the Britsh squadron in those waters. Now Norris' orders were to reverse course and switch friendships. The Admiral's secret instructions frora Stanhope were to offer the mediation of Great Britian between the warring parties, Russia and Sweden.

  In July 1719, Admiral Norris' great ships sailed through the sound into the Baltic, steering northeast for Stockholm, entering the Skargard and anchoring off the Swedish capital. Norris went ashore with letters for the Queen, and on July 14 Queen Ulrika dined abroad Norris' flagship. On this occasion she informed the Admiral that Sweden accepted the British offer.

  The Russian, naturally, viewed the arrival of this British fleet with suspicion and apprehension. When it appeared in the Baltic, Peter inquired as to its purpose and demanded that Norris assure him he had no hostile intentions, otherwise British ships would not be permitted to approach the Russian coastline. The English purpose became clearer when letters from Norris and Lord Carteret, the English ambassador in Stockholm, addressed to the Tsar, were delivered. These English letters all but
commanded the Tsar to make peace with Sweden, announcing that the British fleet was in the Baltic not only to protect trade but to "support mediation." Bruce and Osterman, finding the language of the English Minister and Admiral "unusual and insolent," refused to forward the letters to the Tsar, suggesting that in a matter of such importance King George should write to Peter was indignant. He had no intention of accepting the mediation of a monarch who, as Elector of Hanover, was now an active ally of Sweden. To manifest his displeasure, the Tsar ordered both James Jefferyes, now English ambassador to Russia, and Weber, the Hanoverian representative, to leave St. Petersburg.

  While the complicated diplomatic maneuvers of George I and his English ministers were taking place behind his back, Peter proceeded straight-forwardly to try to beat the Swedes on the field of battle. Charles XII was dead and the Aland Islands negotiations had borne no fruit; Sweden, therefore, needed to be reminded that the war was not yet over. The main effort of the 1719 campaign was to be a powerful amphibious attack on the homeland coast of Sweden along the Gulf of Bothnia. The weapons were to be the same as those which had been so effective in the conquest of Finland: fleets of galleys carrying thousands of soldiers into shallow waters where big ships could not go. In May, 50,000 Russian troops marched from their winter quarters to assembly points at St. Petersburg and Reval to be moved by sea to western Finland, from where the attacks would be launched. Apraxin was to be in overall command of the Russian fleet of 180 galleys and 300 flat-bottom boats, convoyed by twenty-eight ships-of-the-line. On June 2, Peter himself left. St. Petersburg for Peterhof and Kronstadt, commanding a flotilla of thirty galleys carrying 5,000 men.

  Already that summer, Peter's fleet had had a success. On June 4, a squadron of seven Russian men-of-war sailing from Reval had intercepted three smaller Swedish ships in the open sea. Outnumbered and heavily outgunned, the Swedish ships tried running for the Stockholm Skargard, the archipelago of islands and islets which screen the Swedish capital from the sea. The Russian ships overtook them, however, and after an eight-hour fight all three Swedish ships, including the fifty-two-gun Wachtmeister, were captured. The return of this squadron with its prizes to Reval was deeply satisfying to Peter. Here was a deepwater victory, unlike the galley action at Hango.

  On June 30, Peter and the Kronstadt squadron arrived at Reval with the largest Russian men-of-war, including the ninety-gun Gangut, the seventy-gun ships St. Alexander, Neptunus and Reval and the sixty-four-gun Moscow. Meanwhile, Admiral Norris had entered the Baltic with a squadron of sixteen ships-of-the-line. Despite the potentially menacing presence of this English fleet, Peter's men-of-war sailed toward Sweden on July 13, followed a few days later by 130 galleys filled with soldiers. On the 18th, the entire Russian naval force anchored at Lemland in the Aland Islands, and on the evening of the 21st they put to sea. Fog and calm seas forced the big ships to anchor, but the galleys proceeded under oars and, with Apraxin in command, reached the first islands of the Stockholm Skargard on the afternoon of the 22nd.

  For the next five weeks, Apraxin ships and the 30,000 men they carried wreaked havoc on the eastern coast of Sweden. Finding himself unopposed at sea, Apraxin divided his force, sending Major General Lacy with twenty-one galleys and twelve sloops north up the coast, while moving the main body south. He landed a force of Cossacks to raid Stockholm, but their assault was repulsed—the Skargard was difficult, its narrow channels well defended, and a force of four men-of-war and nine frigates in the Stockholm harbor kept the Russian galleys at bay. Moving south, Apraxin again divided his ships into smaller squadrons to work along the coasts, burning small towns, industries and ironworks and capturing coast shipping. On August 4, the southernmost Russian ships reached Nykoping, and on the 10th they were at Norrkoping, where a number of Swedish merchant ships were catured, some of them loaded with copper ore taken from the nearby mines. These were sent back to Russia. In one cannon foundry, 300 cannon still undelivered to the Swedish army were seized and hauled away. On August 14, Apraxin's fleet turned north, stopping to pick up other landing detachments along the coast. Arriving again off the Stockholm Skargard, he attempted another assault on the capital, but again was beaten off. On August 21, twenty-one Russian sloops and twenty-one galleys forced one channel in the face of heavy fire from Swedish forts and ships, but then fell back.

  Meanwhile, to the north, Lacy's force had been moving with similar devastating effect along the upper coast. He had destroyed factories and ironworks, storehouses and mills, and had burned three towns. The troops had fought three small battles, winning two and being repulsed in a third, at which point he turned back.

  A large quantity of iron, forage and provisions was seized, some taken aboard, and that which could not be carried away was thrown into the sea or burned. By August 29 Lacy and Apraxin were both back in the Aland Islands, and on the 31st they departed for home, the galley fleet heading for Kronstadt and the men-of-war for Reval.

  That autumn, hoping that the lesson of the summer attacks had made itself felt, Peter sent Osterman to Stockholm under a flag of truce to see whether the Swedes were now any more ready for peace: Osterman returned to the Tsar with a letter in which Queen Ulrika offered to cede Narva, Reval and Estonia, but still demanded the returned of all of Finland and Livonia. In Stockholm, Osterman reported, the Swedes were embittered by the Russian raids, unwilling to talk peace while Cossacks rode within a few miles of their capital. Nevertheless, an extraordinary shift in power had been made plain that summer. Ten years before, Charles XII had been fighting one thousand miles away in the heat and dust of the Ukraine. Now, Peter's Cossack horsemen rode within sight of the steeples of the capital of Sweden.

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  VICTORY

  Outwardly at least, the spring of 1720 seemed to bring a grave deterioration in Peter's position relative to Sweden. All of Russia's allies had been stripped1 away by the efforts of King George I, Formidable squadrons of the British navy were entering the Baltic to hinder and overawe the Tsar. In March of that year, after a reign of only seventeen months, Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden abdicated her crown in favor of her husband, Frederick of Hesse, who was vigorously anti-Russian and determined to prosecute the war.

  In May 1720, Sir John Norris appeared in the Baltic with a more powerful British fleet than ever before, twenty-one ships-of-the-line and ten frigates. His orders this year were clearly hostile. On April 6 in London, Stanhope had once again offered Veselovsky England's services as a "mediator" between Russia and Sweden, and Veselovsky had curtly refused. In any case, Stanhope had continued magisterially, when Norris arrived in the

  Baltic, it would be up to the Russians to decide how they would treat him: They could recognize him as a friend by making peace with Sweden, or as an enemy by continuing the war.

  Norris arrived in Stockholm on May 23 and went ashore to receive further written orders from young Lord Carteret, then on a special mission to Copenhagen and the Swedish capital. Carteret's instructions were fervent:

  Sir John Norris: It is now in your power by the help of God to do the most signal piece of service to your country that any man has done in this age. The scales of the North are in your hand. ... If the Tsar refuses the King's mediation, as he probably will, a mark of which will be his continuing hostility against Sweden, I hope you will by force of arms bring him to reason and destroy that fleet which will disturb the world. . . . God bless you, Sir John Norris. All honest and good men will give you just applause. Many persons will envy you and nobody will dare say a word against you. Every Englishman will be obliged to you if you can destroy the Tsar's fleet, which I don't doubt you will do.

  While Norris was in Stockholm, he also paid his respects to the new King, Frederick I, who asked the Admiral to cruise in the sea area between the Hango peninsula and the Aland Islands to prevent the passage of Russian galleys into the Gulf of Bothnia and a repetition of the preceding summer's devastating raids against the Coast of Sweden. But Norris had no more desire to clash with Peter's galle
ys in these dangerous waters than the Swedish admirals had displayed. There were myriad rocks, ledges, fogs, fickle winds, poor charts and no pilots. An admiral who took big, ocean-going ships into such a maze would have half his bottoms ripped out by granite and lose the rest when the wind died and his becalmed behemoths faced a legion of Russian galleys rowing to the attack. Accordingly, Norris suggested firmly that he take his ships in a different direction to see whether an attack might be made on Reval, now, like Kronstadt, a main base of the Russian Baltic fleet. With a combined fleet of twenty English and eleven Swedish men-of-war, Norris cruised off Reval, making an impressive naval demonstration, and sent a letter ashore addressed to the Tsar, again offering England's mediation. The letter was returned unopened; Peter understanding that Britain was now siding openly with his enemy, had left instructions not to accept any further communications from Norris or Carteret. Apraxin further warned the British Admiral to keep his ships out of range of the guns of Russian coastal fortresses. Faced with this rebuff, and deciding that the defenses of Reval were too strong, Norris disappeared over the horizon.

  Meanwhile, as Norris was parading off Reval, Apraxin's galleys had already outmaneuvered him and descended once again on the Swedish coast. Eight thousand men, including Cossacks, moved down the coast without opposition and penetrated as far as thirty miles inland, leaving behind towers of smoke from burning towns, villages and farmhouses. Summoned by a desperate appeal from Frederick I, Norris hurried from Reval to intercept the Russian galleys, but they were already gone, slipping through the rocky islands and along the inshore waters of Finland where Norris dared not follow. The one exception had just the result Norris had feared. A Swedish flotilla of two ships-of-the-line and four frigates caught up with a force of sixty-one Russian galleys. Pursuing the galleys, trying to bring them within range before the smaller ships could reach the safety of the coast, all four Swedish frigates ran aground and were captured. The Tsar was delighted by this sea victory and rejoiced in the impotence of the British fleet. Writing to Yaguzhinsky, he said, "Our force under the command of Brigadier von Mengden has invaded Sweden and has safely returned to our shores. It is true that no very great loss was inflicted on the enemy, yet thank God it was done under the eyes of their allies, who could do nothing to prevent it."