THE NORTHERN NATIONS FROM THE TREATY OF
OLIVA TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT
1660–1715
The rivalry between Sweden and Brandenburg--Monarchical revolution
in Denmark--Weakness of the aristocracy in Sweden--Frederick William
makes himself absolute in Prussia, Brandenburg, and Cleves--His policy
of centralisation--War between Sweden and Brandenburg--Battle of
Fehrbellin--Monarchical revolution in Sweden--The rise of Russia--The
reign of Alexis--Regency of Sophia--War with the Turks--Peter the
Great becomes absolute ruler--His character and policy--Coalition
against Sweden--Career of Charles XII.--His invasion of
Russia--Battle of Pultava--The campaign on the Pruth--Treaty of
Nystädt--Supremacy of Russia--Reign of Frederick III. of
Brandenburg--Frederick recognised as king of Prussia--Condition of the
north in 1720.
[Sidenote: =Rivalry between Sweden and Brandenburg.=]
The treaties of Oliva and Copenhagen were to the smaller nations
grouped round the Baltic, what the peace of Westphalia and the treaties
of the Pyrenees were to the great powers of Europe. They not only
put an end to a long period of war and disturbance, but also decided
the relations of the northern powers to each other for more than
half a century. To use the language of a later period they adjusted
the balance of power in the north. They mark the end of Danish
domination over the Baltic, they mark the beginning of the supremacy
of Brandenburg in northern Europe, they mark the first great failure
of Sweden to maintain the pride of place gained for her by Gustavus
Adolphus. So far the alterations in the relations of the northern
powers to each other are clearly defined. So far no sense of impending
danger from the half barbarous and distracted kingdom of Russia has
made itself felt. Until that event happens there is a breathing space
in the affairs of the Baltic states for fifty years, and during that
time the main questions of interest in their external politics are
whether Brandenburg will be able to maintain the supremacy which she
has acquired, and whether Sweden will be able to recover the lead which
she has lost. The rivalry between Sweden and Denmark is therefore no
longer the leading feature of the politics of the Baltic states, the
rivalry between Sweden and Russia is still in the womb of futurity, the
rivalry between Sweden and Brandenburg remains for the time the only
serious question unsettled.
[Sidenote: =Monarchical revolution in Denmark.=]
The respite thus gained from foreign war was occupied by all the powers
concerned in altering their domestic institutions. The first to move
was Denmark. In that country as in Poland the authority of the elected
king was completely overshadowed by that of the nobility. They were
in possession of political power as well as of social privilege. They
owned most of the wealth of the country, paid no taxes, and held all
the chief posts in the kingdom. Consequently at each election of a king
they were able not only to decide the election, but to make bargains
with the elected candidate exceedingly profitable to themselves and
burdensome to the rest of the people. There was no country in Europe
where the nobles had made themselves so justly hated by all the other
classes of the community. National misfortune led naturally to the
desire for national revenge. Frederick III. put himself at the
head of the movement, and at a meeting of the diet in 1661 successfully
carried out a _coup d’état_, with the applause of the clergy, the
burghers, and the peasantry. The revolution was entirely in favour of
the king. The Crown was made hereditary and transmissible to females
as well as to males. The privileges of the nobles were abolished,
the capitulation signed by the king on election annulled, and the
government vested in the Crown. At one blow and without bloodshed the
monarchy in Denmark was remodelled on the pattern of that of France,
and Frederick III. became an absolute king with all the powers
of government centralised in himself, and his throne secured by a
professional army.
[Sidenote: =Misgovernment of the nobles in Sweden.=]
In Sweden matters took a different turn. During the minority of Charles
XI., as during the minority of Christina, the administration
fell wholly into the hands of the great aristocratic families.
Unfortunately there was no Oxenstjerna at their head. The council of
regency, under the nominal leadership of the queen-mother, found it
necessary to propitiate the nobles in everything. The suicidal policy
of making grants of the crown lands to them was again weakly adopted,
and the Crown was impoverished while its most dangerous rivals were
enriched. The itching palms of the great nobles found in the gold of
Louis XIV. the loadstone of their country’s policy, and as
long as the French supplies lasted Sweden remained true to the French
alliance. Once only, like Charles II., in the hope of greater
spoils she showed a momentary independence, when she yielded to the
persuasions of de Witt, and joined the Triple Alliance. In a few
months she returned in penitence to her old allegiance, and when the
young king took the reins of government into his own hands in 1672, he
found that if eleven years of aristocratical rule had secured for him
abroad the friendship and support of the greatest prince in Europe, it
had made him the heir at home to an empty treasury and a discredited
administration.
[Sidenote: =Despotic policy of the Great Elector in Prussia.=]
While Sweden was falling into bankruptcy, and was being threatened with
disruption, Frederick William of Brandenburg was diligently employing
the time in making his authority over his various dominions absolute
and unquestioned. He had already succeeded in reducing the diets of
Brandenburg and Cleves to impotence, and organising an administration
dependent on himself alone outside the scope of their interference. But
in Prussia the task was far more difficult, and directly the treaty of
Oliva was signed he applied himself seriously to the business. Under
the suzerainty of Poland the nobles and burghers of Prussia had been
accustomed to exercise a considerable amount of independence, but now
that the Great Elector had been recognised as immediate sovereign over
Prussia by the treaties of Wehlau and of Oliva, both sides understood
that the old relations between the duke and his subjects would have
to be modified. The Prussian diet determined to yield as little as
possible. It refused to ratify the treaty, it drew up a constitution
to secure its own authority. By the treaty Frederick William only
succeeded to the same rights over Prussia which Poland had enjoyed,
_i.e._ those of a feudal suzerain, but he was determined if
possible to make himself absolute sovereign, and reduce the diet to
insignificance. Most foolishly the diet played into his hands. The two
parties of which it was composed, the landed gentry and the burghers,
quarrelled over the nature of a tax which was to be imposed. Each side
wanted the other to bear the burden, and Frederick William was enabled,
under cover of settling the dispute, to march troops into Königsberg,
and arrest Rhode, the leader of the burgher party, in 1662. This
display of determination awed the burghers into submission, but the
nobles and the landed gentry still remained to be dealt with. Led by
Kalkstein, and secretly favoured by Poland, they were too strong to be
crushed.
[Sidenote: =The Charter of 1663.=]
Frederick William had recourse to the arts of diplomacy and
dissimulation of which he was so consummate a master. In 1663 the
diet accepted at his hands a charter which defined its rights. It was
expressed in ample but vague phraseology. By it the Great Elector
agreed that his own powers of government should be only those formerly
enjoyed by himself and the king of Poland, that the diet should be
summoned at least once in six years, and should be consulted in all
important business, and that no new taxes should be imposed without
its consent. But by the very definition of its powers the diet lost
all which was not expressed, while the elector gained all that was not
refused. The balance of authority in the state had clearly shifted
from the diet to the elector. Frederick William had only to avoid for
a few years giving the diet the opportunity of exercising the rights
secured to it, while the authority of his own administrative officers
was being established, and he need no longer fear the diet when it did
meet, than the kings of France need fear the States-General. It might
be troublesome but it could not be dangerous. So gradually by thrifty
management and careful policy Frederick William succeeded in extending
his personal authority more and more over the country, until in 1672 he
felt himself strong enough to strike a final blow. Kalkstein, the head
and front of the opposition to him, had been banished to his estates
for treasonable correspondence with Poland in 1669, but breaking his
parole he escaped across the frontier to Warsaw. Frederick William
demanded his surrender from the king of Poland, but it was refused.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Kalkstein.=]Taking the law into his own
hands, he had him arrested on Polish ground, brought to Memel, and
there beheaded. A more flagrant breach of the rights of nations could
not have been conceived, but the Great Elector well knew it could not
fail to be successful, and with him success justified everything.
Poland was in no condition to declare war, and the death of Kalkstein
was the one thing wanted to make the submission of Prussia complete.
[Sidenote: =Establishment of personal government by the Great
Elector.=]
By these measures Frederick William succeeded in crushing all open
opposition to his will over the whole of his incongruous dominions.
In Cleves and in Prussia, as in Pomerania and Brandenburg, he was
the centre and the mainspring of government. There was no local or
constitutional authority which could legally claim superiority to
him, or practically exercise equality with him. But though he was
the supreme power in the state he had not yet gained absolute power
over the state. There were still many local bodies of advice and
administration, with well-ascertained powers, whose assistance was
necessary to him in carrying his will into effect, though they had
no right to dictate to him the policy which he was to pursue. He had
given to his state political unity, he had gained for himself and his
successors political independence, he had won for himself and his
family within his own dominions political leadership, but he had not
as yet established administrative uniformity. That was necessarily a
work of slow growth, of a century rather than a lifetime. It was not
completed till the days of Frederick William I. and Frederick the
Great, but it was begun by the Great Elector. The important department
of patronage he at once took under his personal control, and appointed
all the chief administrative officers in his various dominions. As
head of the army, he separated the military from the civil revenues,
and placed the former entirely under the management of the minister
of war, who was of course his own nominee. War expenditure was thus
wholly removed from the control of the civil authorities, and the army
was organised on a professional basis. By a series of ordinances he
established an elaborate system of social distinctions and privileges,
which tended to centralise society under him, and attach the nobles to
him by social distinction now that he had deprived them of political
power. In these ways the government of Brandenburg-Prussia received
from him that military and aristocratic character which its greater
prosperity has only increased.
[Sidenote: =Encouragement of trade and manufactures.=]
Frederick William was also by no means unmindful of the general welfare
of his people. The constant want of money under which he laboured,
was in itself enough to draw his attention to the fact, that the
real weakness of his power lay in the sterile and poverty-stricken
state of his country. To improve this, he set an excellent example
of economy in the wise and careful management of his own domains, he
promoted numerous schemes of industrial and commercial enterprise,
and he cordially welcomed the Huguenot exiles from France, after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who brought into Brandenburg many
of the finer manufactures, of which France had for some time had the
monopoly.
[Sidenote: =War with Sweden, 1674.=]
This policy of steady but quiet centralisation and industrial
development was rudely interrupted by the war of aggression undertaken
by Louis XIV. against the Dutch. Frederick William was closely
connected with the Dutch by marriage and by trade interests, and
was one of the first of European sovereigns to draw the sword in
their favour in 1673. Beaten hopelessly in the field by Turenne, he
was obliged to withdraw from the struggle six months after he had
declared war; but in the next year the increasing difficulties of
Louis emboldened him again to enter the field. Louis, however, was
prepared for this move, and the presence of 16,000 Brandenburgers on
the Rhine was the signal of the advance of Charles XI. with a Swedish
army on the road to Berlin. Frederick William at once hastened back
to defend his capital, reached the Elbe in June 1675, and, dashing
forward his cavalry between the two divisions of the Swedish army,
seized Rathenow, and prevented their junction on the Havel. [Sidenote:
=Battle of Fehrbellin, 1675.=] To do this he had been forced to leave
the bulk of his infantry behind. Nevertheless, with the brilliance
of decision which marks a great general, he determined to throw
himself with the few troops which he had with him upon the Swedish
column, which was retreating from Brandenburg, before they reached
the pass of Fehrbellin. Pursuing them by forced marches, he came up
with their rear-guard on the 17th of June, and on the 18th forced
them to accept battle. The weight of numbers was sadly against him.
He had but 6000 men against double the number of his enemies, but the
Swedes were dispirited, and the elector, in spite of the advice of
his generals, insisted on the attack. The battle was hotly contested,
but Frederick William had the better position and the more effective
artillery, and by nightfall a counter-charge, promptly delivered,
carried destruction into the ranks of the enemy. They broke and fled
in complete rout through the pass. The day of Fehrbellin is the first
great victory of the power of Brandenburg-Prussia, the first step in
the ladder which has led to Sadowa and Sedan. It is also the death-day
of the military prestige of the Swedes in Europe. From the battle
of Lützen to the battle of Fehrbellin, they had never been defeated
except by superior numbers. They were now seen not to be able to hold
their own with Brandenburg, for Fehrbellin was no isolated victory.
The elector pushed on into Swedish Pomerania, victorious and almost
unchallenged,--Wohlgart, Stettin, Stralsund and Greifswald fell
successively into his hands. By October 1678 Sweden held not a foot
of territory in Pomerania. Had it not been for her potent ally at
Paris, the work of Gustavus Adolphus and of Oxenstjerna would have been
completely undone long before the close of the century, and Frederick
William would have been admittedly the master of the north. [Sidenote:
=Treaty of S. Germain en Laye, 1679.=] But Louis XIV. insisted upon
the full restoration to Sweden of all which she had lost as the price
of peace, and the Great Elector had to sign the treaty of S. Germain
en Laye in June 1679, by which France evacuated Cleves, which she had
occupied and paid to Brandenburg the sum of 300,000 crowns, while
Brandenburg restored to Sweden all her conquests in Pomerania, except a
small strip of land on the Oder.
[Sidenote: =Monarchical revolution in Sweden.=]
Sweden thus emerged from an unsuccessful and mismanaged war, without
payment of indemnity or substantial loss of territory. As things
turned out she proved to be the gainer rather than the loser for her
misfortunes, for they enabled her to rid herself of her incapable
aristocratical government. Charles XI. did for Sweden what
Frederick III. had done for Denmark. Taking advantage of the
unpopularity of the government, he effected a revolution in favour
of the Crown without difficulty. With the help of the clergy and the
people the royal power was made absolute, and the domain lands, which
the nobles had divided among themselves, were ordered to be restored.
This destroyed at a blow a large part of the wealth of the noble class,
and reduced them to a position of dependence upon the Crown. Charles
proved himself worthy of the responsibility which he had undertaken.
Until his death in 1697 Sweden was at peace, commerce revived, the
abuses of the administration were rooted out, and the government
carried on without the assistance of French subsidies. For eighteen
years tranquillity reigned on the shores of the Baltic. The Great
Elector and his son Frederick III. were busy with schemes of
internal reform and personal aggrandisement. Denmark under Christian
V. was mainly occupied with the pleasures and extravagances of
a courtly magnificence, while Sweden was recovering from the evils of
administration, brought about by the corrupt rule of the nobles during
the king’s minority. The interest of the politics of the Baltic veers
further north, where behind the swamps of the Neva and the Dniester the
barbaric power of Russia was preparing to enter upon the stage of the
civilised world.
[Sidenote: =Condition of Russia.=]
Russia is the last-born child of European civilisation. While the
nations of the west were painfully hammering out their culture and
their polity, under the leadership of the Church, in the school of
feudalism, through the inspiration of Roman law, the thinly populated
expanse of forest and morass, which stretches between the Baltic
and the Ural mountains was subject to Tartar rule and made no claim
to civilised life. Even Christianity, which might under happier
circumstances have become a bond of union between the backward north
and the cultured south, proved rather a hindrance than a help, on
account of the enmity between the East and the West. [Sidenote:
=Ivan the Terrible.=]As long as Constantinople stood, Moscow was
its disciple and its ally; when Constantinople fell, Moscow claimed
to be its heir, and its avenger. It was not till the days of Ivan
the Terrible in the sixteenth century that the domination of the
Tartar was overthrown, and Russia began to be a nation and to enter
into relations with other nations. Its prosperity was short-lived.
[Sidenote: =The troublous times.=] Hardly had the breath left
the body of the savage autocrat in 1584, than a period of anarchy and
misery began, which has left its mark upon the country in the legal
establishment of serfdom, and was only ended by the accession of the
Romanoff dynasty to the throne in 1612.
[Sidenote: =Michael Romanoff.=]
Michael, the first of that ill-fated house, could do little more than
repress the elements of disorder, and restore the authority of the
Czar, but so well was this work done, that he was enabled to hand on
to his son Alexis, on his death in 1645, a crown which was at once
popular secure and despotic. Two dangers only threatened the infant
state; one from the turbulent spirit of the local nobles, the boyárs,
the other from the physical power wielded by the national guard,
called the Streltsi, who played the part of the Prætorian guard, or
the Janizaries, of the court of Moscow, and were always as ready to
intimidate as to protect their sovereign. [Sidenote: =Reign of
Alexis.=] In the earlier years of the reign of Alexis, however, all
went well. In 1648 he began the march of Russia towards the south-east
of Europe by assuming the protectorate of the Cossacks of the Ukraine,
then in revolt against Poland, and succeeded in obtaining legal
sanction for the absolute autocracy of the Czar, by the passing of a
code, or constitution, which concentrated all the powers of the state
in his hands. By these two measures, which established the internal
polity of Russia, and indicated the direction of her foreign policy,
Alexis may with some justice claim to have been the real founder of
the greatness of his country. Unfortunately a change soon took place.
The weak and amiable Czar fell quickly into the hands of courtiers
and favourites. Corruption and faction asserted themselves among the
boyárs. The government became disorganised. Sedition broke out in the
chief towns, and more than once Alexis had to sacrifice his ministers
to the fury of the populace, in order to save his own life. Even
the Church was split into two by an ill-managed effort to revise the
antiquated service-books, and the evils of ecclesiastical schism and
religious persecution were added to those of domestic strife.
[Sidenote: =Reign of Theodore I.=]
Such was the condition of Russia when the Czar Alexis died suddenly in
1676, leaving behind him by his first marriage two sons, Theodore and
Ivan, both extremely delicate in health; and one sturdy little boy of
four years of age, named Peter, by his second wife Natalia Naryshkin,
whom he had married in 1669. The death of Alexis was the signal for
the outbreak of a series of palace revolutions, which afflicted
the unfortunate country for some years. [Sidenote: =Recognition
of Peter as Czar, 1682.=] The Naryshkins, who had absorbed all
places of profit and influence during the later years of Alexis, were
banished at the accession of Theodore in 1676, but on the death of
that prince without children in 1682 they came back to power, and with
the assistance of the boyárs were able to procure the recognition
of the young Peter as Czar, in exclusion of his elder brother Ivan,
who was physically deformed and intellectually incapable. An act so
high-handed naturally created many enemies. [Sidenote: =Revolt of
the Streltsi.=] The opposition party among the nobles called in
the aid of the Streltsi, espoused their grievances, fanned their
discontent, and, persuading them that the life of Ivan was in danger
hurled them suddenly in riotous fury against the palace, in May 1682.
The Naryshkins were murdered. Ivan was proclaimed Czar in company with
his brother Peter, and the princess Sophia, the most capable of his
sisters, was made regent during the infancy of the Czars. The regency
lasted for seven years. [Sidenote: =Regency of Sophia.=] During
that time the real power was in the hands of prince Basil Golitsin,
the head of one of the oldest of the noble families of Russia, and
the acknowledged lover of the princess Sophia. His talent however
proved unequal to his opportunities. In 1686 a definitive peace with
Poland, called the treaty of Eternal Peace, put a finishing touch
to the truce brought about by the treaty of Andrusoff in 1667, on
terms which secured the important town of Kief to Russia, but obliged
her to join the Emperor and the Poles in their efforts to beat back
the Ottoman Turks. In consequence of this pledge, Golitsin waged two
campaigns against the Tartars of the Crimea, who were subjects of the
Porte, in 1687 and 1689, the unsuccessful issue of which filled up
to overflowing the cup of hatred which was preparing for him. Peter
allowed himself to be put at the head of the opposition. On September
17th, 1689, the regency came to an end. The princess Sophia was sent to
a convent, prince Basil Golitsin banished to an obscure village in the
inaccessible north, and the government fell into the hands of the rival
aristocratic faction.
[Sidenote: =Peter becomes the head of the government, 1689.=]
At the age of seventeen, in the year when William III. made himself
master of Great Britain, and the war of the league of Augsburg really
began, Peter the Great became nominally the head of the government of
Russia. In reality he exercised but little influence upon the fortunes
of his country for some years. He was as yet but a boy, brimming over
with health and spirits, exulting in the physical enjoyment of life,
supremely happy when he could get away from the wearisome routine of
the palace to his forge and his carpenter’s shop, or his ship-building
yards at Pereyaslavl and Archangel. The demon of ambition had not yet
waked in his breast, and his ships and his military sham fights, like
his displays of fireworks and his theatricals, were the amusements of
a spoilt child’s fancy, rather than the materials of a man’s policy.
[Sidenote: =War with the Turks, 1695.=] The rude touch of actual war
quickly brought about a change. In 1695 the government determined
to revive the slumbering war with the Turks, and attack the port
of Azof on the Black Sea. Peter threw himself into the scheme with
characteristic impetuosity, worked as a bombardier in the army like
a common soldier, and took his place as Czar in the councils of
the generals. But the result was unfortunate. Partly through sheer
bad management, partly through the inexperience and impulsiveness
of the Czar, the attack on the fortress completely failed, and the
Russian army had to retreat as best it could across the frozen steppes
amid great privations. But Peter was one of those who learn best by
experience. The campaign taught him the necessity of forethought
and preparation. Next year all was different. A flotilla of boats,
constructed especially for the river service at Voronezh, occupied the
mouths of the Don under Peter’s own orders, and prevented the Turks
from relieving Azof from the sea; while the engineering works on land
were pushed on by General Gordon. On July 29th 1696 a general assault
was ordered, but the Turks seeing that the town was no longer tenable
surrendered, and Peter found himself to his great joy the master of a
port on the Black Sea. The capture of Azof is the turning-point in the
life of Peter the Great. His imagination was fired by the opportunities
opened out to his country by the possession of an outlet for her
commerce and a harbour for her fleet in southern waters. The death of
his brother Ivan without male heirs in February left him undisputed
master of his vast dominions. From that moment he bent all the energies
of his powerful intellect and iron will to the service of Russia. He
took the reins of government into his own hands, and, without regard
to precedent, to tradition, to public or private right, he drove the
chariot of the state straight towards the goal of his own ambition, and
his country’s greatness.
[Sidenote: =Character of Peter the Great.=]
Peter himself was well fitted to become the hero of such a policy.
His friendship with Gordon and Lefort and others of the foreign
residents at Moscow had taught him how far Russia lagged behind all
other European countries in the march of civilisation. His quick wit
showed him that he must organise his country on the European model,
and make it formidable by its army and navy to its enemies, and useful
by its resources to its friends, before it could be admitted into
the brotherhood of European nations. To change the institutions and
overthrow the traditions of a country like Russia was a revolution, but
Peter was not the man to shrink back appalled at the consequences, when
he had once made up his mind to act. Sunny, jovial and open-hearted
under ordinary circumstances, in the presence of opposition, when his
blood was up, he became a fiend incarnate. No savage could be more
cruel, no tyrant more brutal, no criminal more lustful and drunken. He
knew not what it was to accept a rebuff, or deny himself a desire. To
incur his suspicion was torture, to thwart his will was death. After
the revolt of the Streltsi in 1698 more than a thousand men were put
to death and eighteen hundred tortured by the knout and roasted at the
fire, many of them in the presence of the Czar himself. He allowed
his eldest son Alexis to be knouted to death in 1718, and personally
superintended the torture of many of his alleged accomplices. His
drunken orgies lasted for days, and were worthy only of Comus and
his crew. Yet with all this hateful savagery there was much that was
attractive about Peter. When free from his fits of depression, there
was a buoyancy and vivacity of intellect, which, combined with singular
simplicity of thought, made him a most delightful companion. No one
could be a truer friend, if no one could be a more brutal enemy. He was
perfectly natural. If there was much of the barbarian about him, there
was nothing of the schemer. He was free from the civilised vices of
deceit and double dealing. Rough, honest, and quick-tempered, he moved
through society like a lion cub among pet dogs, dangerous but noble.
[Sidenote: =Objects of his home government.=]
His two years of foreign travel enabled him to see with his own eyes
the advantages of European civilisation and government, and to learn
how to make with his own hands the ships which were to spread the
greatness of the Russian name round the shores of the Black Sea.
Neither lesson was thrown away. Directly he got back to Russia he
began to foster everything western at the expense of everything
national. He introduced western dress, western habits, western dancing,
and even western shaving. He encouraged the settlement of foreigners,
and spent a good deal of his time in the German suburb of Moscow with
his foreign friends. Directly he obtained possession of the mouth of
the Neva, he built his new capital S. Petersburg, to take the place of
conservative and traditional Moscow, as the centre of his new polity.
At the same time he took good care to make the foundations of his
government secure. The revolt of the Streltsi in 1698 gave him the
opportunity of abolishing a force, which was too much mixed up with the
old aristocracy of Russia ever to be really loyal to the new regime,
and to replace them by a professional army trained on the European
model under foreign officers. He tried as much as possible to depress
the power of the boyárs, surrounding himself with friends and ministers
like Menschikoff, who were drawn from a lower class of society. So
successful was this policy that in 1711 he felt himself able to bring
the political power of the boyárs to an end by forbidding their council
to meet any longer. With a similar object he refused to nominate a
successor to the patriarch Adrian on his death in 1700, but placed the
powers of the patriarchate in the hands of a commission, afterwards
called the Holy Governing Synod, which brought the affairs of the
Church more definitely under his own control.
[Sidenote: =His foreign policy.=]
While Peter was thus engaged in winding the chains of despotism more
tightly round the necks of his subjects at home, he was equally busy in
trying to extend the frontiers of Russia to the sea, at the expense of
his neighbours abroad. No one could doubt that the first essential of
the due development of Russia was to obtain a footing upon the Baltic.
The port of Archangel on the frozen White Sea, and the port of Azof on
the Black Sea, closed as it was to the trade of the Mediterranean by
the straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in the hands of the
Turks, were not sufficient to enable Russia to expand into a commercial
nation. But since the treaties of Stolbovo and Kardis, renewed as late
as 1684 by the princess Sophia, Russia had acquiesced in the annexation
of the Baltic lands by Sweden, and it was certain that Sweden would not
tamely surrender her treaty rights. But in the year 1697 an opportunity
offered, which was too tempting for Peter’s slender stock of virtue
to resist. [Sidenote: =Coalition against Sweden, 1699.=] Charles
XI. of Sweden died, leaving as his heir and successor his
youthful son Charles XII., only fifteen years of age. Patkul,
a nobleman of Livonia, who was eager to restore the independence of
his country, applied to Denmark, Poland, and Russia, the hereditary
enemies of Sweden, for assistance. Each power, thinking only of its own
aggrandisement, caught willingly at the chance of crushing Sweden when
she was weak, and in 1699 this nefarious alliance was concluded, in
which the independence of Livonia was used merely to cloak a policy of
pure aggression.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of the allies by Charles XII.=]
But the allies soon found that they had reckoned without their host.
Charles XII. of Sweden was one of those rare spirits who
are born with a perfect genius for fighting. Without any gifts as a
strategist, without any studied knowledge of the art of war, he was
a born fighter. He loved fighting for fighting’s sake. He was never
happier than when on campaign. He enjoyed the very hardships of war,
and every soldier in his army knew that whatever might be his own
privations, his king was sharing them all. With an unlimited belief in
his own fortunes he succeeded in making every one else believe in them
too. The enthusiasm of his army was unbounded. They willingly rendered
to him an unquestioning obedience, and followed him gladly wherever
he pointed the way. A man with such gifts was not going to wait until
his unwieldy antagonists had united their forces. Early in May 1700
he sailed straight to Copenhagen and ended the Danish war at a blow.
Frederick IV. could not defend his capital, and was obliged
to accept the mediation of England and Holland, and to conclude the
treaty of Travendal, by which he withdrew from the alliance with Poland
and Russia. Leaving Denmark, Charles sailed to the Gulf of Finland
where Peter was besieging the important fortress of Narva. Although
he had only some 8000 men against Peter’s 60,000 Russians, he did not
hesitate to order an attack. The huge undisciplined masses of Peter’s
army were quickly thrown into confusion, and fled panic-stricken to
their own country, leaving Charles the undisputed master of the Baltic
coast. Turning southwards the Swedish king marched through Livonia
and Courland into Poland, occupied Warsaw in 1702, defeated the king,
Augustus the Strong of Saxony, who had been elected to the Polish
crown on the death of John Sobieski in 1697, at the battle of Clissow,
and drove him into Saxony. In 1703 he captured Thorn and Dantzig,
procured the deposition of Augustus in an assembly held at Warsaw in
February 1704, and imposed Stanislas Leczinski upon the Poles as king
in his stead. He then resumed his course of military triumph, overran
Lithuania, driving out the Russians in 1705, defeated Schulenberg at
Frauenstadt in 1706, and finally invaded Saxony in 1707, where he
forced Augustus to conclude the peace of Altranstadt in the September
of that year, by which Stanislas Leczinski was recognised as king of
Poland, and the unfortunate Patkul was surrendered as a victim to the
cruelty of Charles, who, in defiance of every principle of humanity,
had him broken on the wheel as a traitor.
[Sidenote: =Position of Charles XII., 1708.=]
When Charles XII. rested at Altranstadt in the winter of 1707–8, at the
age of twenty-five, he felt himself with reason to be the wonder of the
world. He was courted on all sides by the great powers, at that time
distracted by the throes of the war of the Spanish Succession, and had
he cared to play the rôle, might have posed as the arbiter of Europe.
From Versailles came one of the most trusted diplomatists of Louis
XIV., to remind the young prince of the long friendship of Sweden and
France, and to entreat him to acknowledge the benefits of S. Germain en
Laye by drawing his sword manfully for Louis at the crisis of his fate.
But on behalf of the allies there appeared at the court of Charles
metal still more attractive. Marlborough, the greatest soldier of the
age, came personally to Altranstadt to plead the cause of Europe before
Charles, with the laurels of Blenheim and of Ramillies still green upon
his brow. His task was the easier one. He wanted not the assistance
but the neutrality of Sweden. Charles was flattered by the attention
paid to him, fascinated by the address of the hero diplomatist, and
lent a willing ear to his suggestions. His Protestantism rejected the
idea of an alliance with the author of the ‘dragonades.’ His desire
for vengeance impelled him to come to close quarters with his enemy in
the north. His soldierly pride shrank from committing himself to a war
in which he would have to take a subordinate place. So in the spring
of 1708 he turned his back deliberately on Germany and the Rhine, and
marched to his ruin in the inhospitable north.
[Sidenote: =His invasion of Russia.=]
While Charles had been engaged in the conquest of Poland and Saxony,
Peter had well employed the breathing space allowed to him in the
diligent training of his undisciplined armies, and the occupation of
the Baltic sea-coast on either side of the Neva. He had already overrun
Ingria and Carelia, and had begun the fortifications and houses of a
town at the mouth of the Neva, which was one day to be his capital
city. Charles did not disturb himself over trifles of that sort. He
struck, as was his wont, straight at the heart of his enemies’ power,
and having made an alliance with Mazeppa, a hetman of the Cossacks, who
promised to join him with a large force of those questionable allies,
marched straight upon Moscow at the head of 30,000 men. Misfortune
dogged his steps from the first. The roads were incalculably bad, the
weather unexpectedly severe, progress was hopelessly slow. When no news
had been heard of Mazeppa for some time, Charles, in order to try and
open communications with him, left the main track, and plunged into
the expanses of forest and morass which lie between Little Russia and
the Ukraine. Winter surprised him on the march when he was still many
hundreds of miles from Moscow. Food and supplies became very difficult
to procure. Disease ravaged his army. Still with the courage of despair
he pushed on. Spring found him exhausted but with his face still set
towards Moscow. He was destined never to see it. Peter, at the head
of immensely superior forces, fell upon Levenhaupt who was bringing
a convoy to his aid and cut him to pieces. [Sidenote: =Battle of
Pultava, 1709.=] Eventually he came up with the king himself at
Pultava in the month of June 1709. The defeat of Narva was quickly
avenged. Surrounded by the Russian forces, outnumbered two to one, the
Swedes could only sell their lives dearly. Twenty thousand officers
and men surrendered. Charles himself wounded in the foot made his way
with a few companions across the frontier and took refuge with the
Turks. The dream of his ambition was shattered at a blow, the work of
Gustavus Adolphus was finally overthrown. Livonia and Esthonia with
the important towns of Riga and Revel fell into the hands of the Czar.
Russia made good her hold upon the Baltic, and took the place of Sweden
as the leading power of the north.
[Sidenote: =War between Russia and the Turks, 1711.=]
The battle of Pultava, if it destroyed the power of Sweden, did not put
an end to the war. Charles XII., from his refuge at Bender on Turkish
soil, tried to stir up his hosts to take his part and declare war
against Russia. Peter himself, flushed with triumph and ever steady
to the policy of enlarging the sea boundary of his country, was by no
means averse to the idea of driving back the Turkish empire from the
Dniester to the Danube. The intense religious spirit of the Russians,
always a potent factor in the policy of Russia in the East, impelled
the Czar to put himself forward as the liberator of the oppressed
Christians of Moldavia and Wallachia. But he was too wary to take the
first step. After much hesitation the Sultan made up his mind. Urged
on by his fear of seeing a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, he declared
war against Peter in 1710, and the next year saw the Czar at the head
of a large army on the Pruth. Fortune however now declared against him.
By sheer bad management Peter contrived to get his army completely
hemmed in between the river, the marshes, and the Turkish army, and
was completely at the mercy of his enemies. Luckily for him the grand
vizier was willing to treat for peace, and Peter was enabled to save
himself and his army from an ignominious surrender, by giving back to
the Turks the port of Azof, and destroying all Russian fortresses on
Turkish territory. Charles XII. was sent back to his own dominions,
which he found threatened from all sides by the Russians, the Danes
and the Poles. For seven years he struggled in vain against superior
forces abroad, and the disaffection of the nobles at home. [Sidenote:
=Pacification of the North, 1720.=] By 1716 he had lost every acre of
German soil. In 1718 a bullet shot by one of his own men terminated his
career as he was besieging the fortress of Friedrickshall in Norway.
The death of Charles XII. put an end to many intrigues, and made the
restoration of a general peace more easy. Sweden had learned the lesson
which her king had refused to learn. By a succession of treaties, which
culminated in the peace of Nystädt between Sweden and Russia in 1720,
Hanover became the possessor of Bremen and Verden; Augustus of Saxony
was recognised as the rightful king of Poland, Prussia obtained part of
Swedish Pomerania, with the islands of Usedom and Rugen, and the towns
of Stettin and Dantzig; Frederick of Denmark was permitted to annex
the duchy of Schleswig, but had to restore the rest of his conquests
and possessions to Sweden, while Russia, the largest gainer of all,
obtained Ingria, Esthonia, Livonia, and part of Carelia, and promised
to surrender Finland.
While Russia was engaged in claiming the supremacy of the north at
the hands of Sweden, Brandenburg-Prussia was pursuing a policy of
steady and quiet growth under her undistinguished ruler. [Sidenote:
=Creation of the kingdom of Prussia, 1700.=] It was the business
of Frederick III. to consolidate what the Great Elector had
won. Under him national prosperity quickly increased in a land which
was no longer the theatre of war. The court became more splendid,
roads and canals more numerous, manufactories more active, while the
foundation of the university of Halle in 1694 marks a distinct advance
in German culture. In foreign affairs he adhered steadily to the policy
of his father, and sent his contingent of sturdy Brandenburgers to the
assistance of the League of Augsburg with praiseworthy regularity. But
the treaty of Ryswick contributed nothing either to his dignity or
his possessions, and Frederick, profoundly dissatisfied, proclaimed
aloud that if the great powers wanted his aid again he should exact
his reward beforehand. In two years’ time the opportunity came, and
Frederick, true to his word, insisted on the title of king, as the
condition of supporting the Emperor in the matter of the partition
treaties in 1700. It was some time before Leopold gave way. The thought
of a kingdom in north Germany within the limits of the Empire itself
was hateful to him, and opposed to the traditions of the Empire. He
would have preferred to diminish, rather than to augment, the dignity
and influence of the House of Hohenzollern. But necessity knows no law.
Leopold wanted the aid of the Brandenburgers in the field, and could
get them on no other terms. To save appearances it was arranged that
Frederick should take his title from Prussia, which lay outside the
German Empire, and accordingly in the year 1700 Frederick III.
elector of Brandenburg, became Frederick I. king of Prussia.
In the following year the Grand Alliance was set on foot, and the
allied powers all recognised the new king in order to gain his help.
Frederick fulfilled his part of the bargain faithfully enough. As long
as the war lasted the Prussians fought steadily and well on the side of
the allies, and the peace of Utrecht set the stamp of an international
treaty to the newly made dignity, besides giving to Prussia the more
substantial endowment of Spanish Guelderland.
[Sidenote: =Northern Europe at the end of the century.=]
The treaties of Utrecht and Nystädt, like those of Carlovitz and
Passarovitz, mark the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.
The history of northern Europe in the seventeenth century is the
history of the effort of Sweden to obtain mastery over the Baltic
and a footing in Germany; of the successful assertion by Brandenburg
of leadership in north Germany; of the birth of Russia as a serious
political power. Those questions, fought over so strenuously during
the seventeenth century, received their final answer in the great
treaties which usher in the next epoch. Sweden, stricken from her place
of vantage, deprived of nearly all her German possessions, relegated
to her own side of the Baltic, is dismissed into the obscurity of
a third-rate power, from which she had been originally raised only
by the quarrels of her antagonists, and the unprecedented personal
ability of her sovereigns. Prussia, acknowledged as an equal by the
monarchies of Europe, stands forth without rival as the unquestioned
leader of the northern Germany, and is biding her time until the hour
shall strike, which will permit her to wrest from the House of Habsburg
the leadership of the German people, and inherit from it the duty of
defending the German Fatherland. In the far north Russia, under its
savage but capable ruler, has made her voice heard among the councils
of Europe. Seated firmly on the eastern shores of the Baltic, she is
bent on making herself into a commercial and maritime power, while in
the far south-east corner of her empire, policy has already pointed the
way along which her destiny must move. After the conquest of Azof in
1696, after the campaign on the Pruth in 1711, Turkey and Russia stand
face to face in south-eastern Europe, and the Eastern Question has
begun.