Schlippenbach--30,000 Russians defeated 8000 Swedes. According to Peter's
official account of the battle, 5000 of his enemies were left dead on the
field, while Sheremetief lost only 400 men. This report made Europe smile,
but the Livonians found it no laughing matter. Volmar and Marienburg fell
into the hands of the victor, who ravaged the country in the most frightful
fashion. The Russians had not as yet learned any other form of warfare,
and, as we may suppose, the idea that he might ever possess these
territories had not yet occurred to Peter. His mind, indeed, was absorbed
elsewhere. His old fancies and whims were strong upon him, and he left
Apraxin to rage on the banks of the Neva, in Ingria, on the very spot where
his future capital was to stand, while he himself gave all his time and
strength to the building of a few wretched ships at Archangel. It was not
till September, when the ice had driven him out of the northern port, that
he returned to the west and took up his former course. He reached the Lake
of Ladoga, sent for Sheremetief, and the end he was to pursue for many a
long year seems at last to have taken firm root in his hitherto unstable
mind. He laid siege to Noteburg, where he found a garrison of only four
hundred fifty men, and on December 11, 1702, he rechristened the little
fortress he had captured, by a new and symbolic name, "Schluesselburg" (Key
of the Sea).
Next came the capture of Nienschantz, at the very mouth of the Neva, in
April, 1703, a personal success for the captain of Bombardiers, Peter
Mikhailoff, who there brought his batteries into play. A month later the
artilleryman had become a sailor, and had won Russia's first naval victory.
Two regiments of the guard manned thirty boats, surrounded two small
Swedish vessels, which, in their ignorance of the capture of Nienschantz,
had ventured close to the town, took possession of them, and murdered their
crews. The victor's letters to his friends are full of the wildest and most
childish delight, and there was, we must admit, some reason for this joy.
He had reconquered the historic estuary, through which, in the ninth
century, the first Varegs had passed southward, toward Grecian skies. On
the 16th of the following May wooden houses began to rise on one of the
neighboring islets. These houses were to multiply, to grow into palaces,
and finally to be known as St. Petersburg.
Peter's conquests and newly founded cities disturbed Charles XII but
little. "Let him build towns; there will be all the more for us to take!"
Peter and his army had so far, where Charles was concerned, had to do only
with small detachments of troops, scattered apart and thus foredoomed to
destruction. The Russians took advantage of this fact to pursue their
successes, strengthening and intrenching themselves both in Ingria and
Livonia. In July, 1704, Peter was present at the taking of Derpt. In August
he had his revenge for his disaster at Narva, and carried the town after
a murderous assault. Already in November, 1703, a longed-for guest had
appeared in the mouth of the Neva, a foreign trading-vessel laden with
brandy and salt. Menshikoff, the Governor of _Piterburg_, entertained the
captain at a banquet, and presented him with five hundred florins for
himself, and thirty crowns for each of his sailors.
Meanwhile Charles XII tarried in Poland, where Augustus' affairs were going
from bad to worse. A diet convened at Warsaw in February, 1704, proclaimed
his downfall. After the disappearance of James Sobieski, whose candidature
was put a stop to by an ambuscade, into which the dethroned King lured the
son of the deliverer of Vienna, Charles, who was all-powerful, put forward
that of Stanislaus Lesczynski. Though he gave little thought just then to
Russia and to the Russian sovereign, the Czar was beginning to be alarmed
as to the consequences which the Swedish King's position in Poland and in
Saxony might entail on himself. Charles was sure to end by retracing
his steps, and an encounter between Sheremetief and Loewenhaupt, at
Hemauerthorf in Courland (July 15, 1705), clearly proved that the Russian
army, unless in the case of disproportionate numerical superiority over the
enemy, was not yet capable of resisting well-commanded Swedish troops. On
this occasion Sheremetief lost all his infantry and was himself severely
wounded.
What then was Peter to do? He must work on, increase his resources, and add
to his experience. If Sheremetief and his likes proved unequal to their
task, he must find foreign generals and instructors, technical and other;
he must keep patience, he must avoid all perilous encounters, he must
negotiate, and try to obtain peace, even at the price of parting with some
of the territory he had conquered. The years between 1705 and 1707 were
busy ones for him.
A treaty of peace among his enemies took him by surprise and found him
quite unprepared. He soon made good his mistakes, took a swift decision,
and adopted the course which was infallibly to bring him final victory. He
evacuated Poland, retired backward, and, pushing forward the preparations
which Charles' long stay in Saxony had permitted him to carry on with great
activity, he resolved that the battle should be fought on his ground, and
at his chosen time. He took fresh patience, he resolved to wait, to wear
out his adversary, to draw back steadily and leave nothing but a void
behind him. Thus he would force the enemy to advance across the desert
plains he had deliberately devastated, and run the terrible risk, which had
always driven back the ancient foes of his country, whether Turks, Tartars,
or Poles--a winter sojourn in the heart of Russia. This was to be the final
round of the great fight. The Czar, as he expressed it, was to set ten
Russians against every Swede, and time and space and cold and hunger were
to be his backers.
Charles, the most taciturn general who ever lived, never revealed the
secret inspiration which drove him to play his adversary's game, by
marching afresh on Grodno. During 1707 he seemed to give the law to Europe,
from his camp in Saxony. France, which had been vanquished at Blenheim
and Ramillies, turned a pleading glance toward him, and the leader of the
victorious allies, Marlborough himself, solicited his help.
Charles may have had an idea of making Grodno his base for a spring attack
on the Czar's new conquests in the North. This supposition would seem to
have been the one accepted by Peter, if we may judge by the orders
given, just at this time, to insure the safety of Livonia and Ingria, by
completing their devastation; and these very orders may have induced the
King of Sweden to abandon his original design, in favor of another, the
wisdom of which is still contested by experts, but which, it cannot be
denied, was of noble proportions. Charles, too, had found an ally to set
against those natural ones with which Russia had furnished the Czar, and he
had found him within the borders of the Czar's country. The name of this
ally was Mazeppa.
The stormy career of the famous hetman, so dramatic, both from the historic
and domestic point of view--from that adventure with the _pan_ Falbowski,
so naively related by Pasek, down to the romance with Matrena Kotchoubey,
which colored the last and tragic incidents of his existence--is so well
known that I will not narrate it here, even in the concisest form. Little
Russia was then passing through a painful crisis--the consequence of
Shmielnicki's efforts at emancipation, which had been warped and perverted
by Russian intervention. The Polish lords, who formerly oppressed the
country, had been replaced by the Cossacks, who not only ground down the
native population, but railed at and quarrelled with their own chief. The
hetmans and the irregular troops were at open war, the first striving
to increase their authority and make their power hereditary, the others
defending their ancient democratic constitution.
The Swedish war increased Mazeppa's difficulties. He found himself taken
at a disadvantage between the claims of the Czar, who would fain have his
Cossacks on every battle-field in Poland, Russia, and Livonia, and the
resistance of the Cossacks themselves, who desired to remain in their own
country. Being himself of noble Polish birth, brought up by the Jesuits,
having served King John Casimir of Poland, and sworn allegiance to the
Sultan, he saw no reason for sacrificing his interests, much less his life,
for Peter's benefit. The approach of Charles XII made him fear he might,
like his predecessor Nalevaiko, be deserted by his own followers, and given
up to the Poles.
The appearance of Charles on the Russian frontier forced him to a definite
resolution, and, in the spring of 1708, his emissaries appeared at
Radoshkovitse, southeast of Grodno, where Charles had established his
head-quarters. The King of Sweden's idea, at that decisive moment, would
seem to have been to take advantage of the hetman's friendly inclination,
to find his way into the heart of Russia, using the rich Southern Provinces
as his base, to stir up, with Mazeppa's help, the Don Cossacks, the
Astrakhan Tartars, and, it may have been, the Turks themselves, and thus
attack the Muscovite power in the rear. Then Peter would have been forced
back upon his last intrenchments, at Moscow or elsewhere, while General
Luebecker, who was in Finland with fourteen thousand men, fell on Ingria
and on St. Petersburg, and Leszcynski's Polish partisans, with General
Krassow's Swedes, held Poland.
It was a mighty plan, indeed, but at the very outset it was sharply
checked. Mazeppa insisted on certain conditions, and these conditions
Charles thought too heavy. The hetman agreed that Poland should take the
Ukraine and White Russia, and that the Swedes should have the fortresses of
Mglin, Starodoub, and Novgorod-Sievierski, but he himself insisted on being
apportioned Polotsk, Vitebsk, and the whole of Courland, to be held in
fief. Thus the negotiations were delayed. Meanwhile Charles, perceiving
that he was not strong enough to make a forward movement, made up his mind
to send for Loewenhaupt, who was in Livonia, and who was to bring him
sixteen thousand men and various stores. But the Swedish hero had not
reckoned fairly with distance and with time. Many precious days, the best
of the season, fled by before his orders could be obeyed. And, for the
first time, he showed signs of uncertainty and irresolution which were
all too quickly communicated to those under his command. Loewenhaupt grew
slower than usual. Luebecker slackened his activity, and Mazeppa began to
play his double game again: prudently preparing his Cossacks to revolt,
in the name of the ancient customs, national privileges, and church laws,
which Peter's reforms had infringed; fortifying his own residence at
Batourin, and accumulating immense stores there, but still continuing to
pay court to the Czar, wearing the German dress, flattering the sovereign's
despotic taste by suggesting plans which would have annihilated the last
vestiges of local independence, and accepting gifts sent him by Menshikoff.
And so the summer passed away. A winter campaign became inevitable, and the
abyss which Peter's unerring eye had scanned began to gape.
It was not till June that Charles XII left Radoshkovitse, and marched
eastward to Borisov, where he crossed the Berezina. Menshikoff and
Sheremetief made an attempt to stop him, on July 3d, as he was crossing a
small river called the Bibitch, near Holovtchin. A night manoeuvre, and
a wild bayonet charge, led by the King himself, carried him once more to
victory. The town of Mohilef opened its gates to the Swedes, but there
Charles was forced to stay, and lose more time yet waiting for Loewenhaupt.
He marched again, early in August, in a southerly direction, and his
soldiers soon found themselves in the grip of one of Peter's allies. They
were driven to support themselves by gathering ears of corn, which they
ground between two stones. Sickness began to thin their ranks. Their three
doctors, so the fierce troopers said, were "brandy, garlic, and death"!
Loewenhaupt had reached Shklof, and was separated from the invading army by
two streams, the Soja and the Dnieper, between which Peter had taken up
his position. The Swedish general, after having successfully passed the
Dnieper, was met at Liesna, on October 9th, by a force three times as large
as his own, and Peter was able, on the following day, to report a complete
victory to his friends: "8500 men dead on the field, without mentioning
those the Kalmucks have hunted into the forest, and 700 prisoners!"
According to this reckoning, Loewenhaupt, who could not have brought more
than 11,000 troops into action, should have been left without a man; as a
matter of fact, he reached Charles with 6700, after a flank march which all
military experts consider a marvel. But, not being able to find a bridge
across the Soja, he was forced to abandon his artillery and all his
baggage, and he led his starving troops into a famine-stricken camp.
There was bad news, too, from Ingria, where Luebecker had also been
defeated, losing all his baggage and three thousand first-class troops.
Charles grew so disconcerted that he is reported to have confessed to
Gyllenkrook, his quartermaster-general, that he was all at sea, and no
longer had any definite plan. On October 22d he reached Mokoshin on the
Desna, on the borders of the Ukraine, where he had expected to meet
Mazeppa. But the old leader broke his appointment. He still desired to
temporize and was loath to take any decisive resolution. He was driven to
take one at last, by the Cossacks about him, who were alarmed at the idea
of the Russians following the Swedes into the Ukraine. It would be far
better, so they thought, to join the latter against the former. One of
these Cossacks, Voinarovski, who had been sent by the hetman to Menshikoff,
had returned with most terrifying news. He had overheard the German
officers on the favorite's staff, speaking of Mazeppa and his followers,
say: "God pity those poor wretches; to-morrow they will all be in chains!"
Mazeppa, when he heard this report, "raged like a whirlwind," hurried to
Batourin to give the alarm, and then crossed the Desna and joined the
Swedish army.
It was too late. The popular sentiment, on which both he and Charles
had reckoned to promote an insurrectionary movement, confused by the
tergiversations and the ambiguous actions of the hetman, had quite gone
astray and lost all consistency. All Mazeppa could reckon upon was a body
of two thousand faithful troops; not enough even to defend Batourin, which
Menshikoff snatched from him a few days later--thus depriving the Swedish
army of its last chance of revictualling. When the fortresses of Starodoub
and Novgorod-Sievierski closed their gates against him, the whole of the
Ukraine slipped from the grasp of the turncoat chief and his new allies.
His effigy was first hung and then dragged through the streets of Glouhof
in Peter's presence; another hetman, Skoropadski, was appointed in his
place, and then came winter--a cruel winter, during which the very birds
died of cold.
By the beginning of 1709 Charles' effective strength had dwindled to nearly
twenty thousand men. The Russians did not dare to attack him as yet, but
they gathered round him in an ever-narrowing circle. They carried his
advanced posts, they cut his lines of communication. The King of Sweden, to
get himself mere elbow-room, was driven to begin his campaign in the month
of January. He lost one thousand men and forty-eight officers in taking the
paltry town of Wespjik (January 6th). By this time the game, in Mazeppa's
view, was already lost, and he made an attempt to turn his coat again;
offering to betray Charles into Peter's hands if Peter would restore him
his office. The bargain was struck, but a letter from the old traitor,
addressed to Leszcynski, chanced to fall into the Czar's hands, and made
him draw back, in the conviction that Mazeppa was utterly unreliable.
In March, the near approach of the Swedish army, then advancing on Poltava,
induced the Zaporoje Cossacks to join it. But the movement was a very
partial one, and Peter soon put it down, by means of a series of military
executions, mercilessly carried out by Menshikoff, and of various
manifestoes against the foreign heretics, "who deny the doctrines of the
true religion, and spit on the picture of the Blessed Virgin." The capture
of Poltava thus became the last hope of Charles and his army. If they could
not seize the town, they must all die of hunger.
The fortifications of the place were weak, but the besieging army was
sorely changed from that which had fought under the walls of Narva. It had
spent too long a time in fat quarters, in Saxony and Poland, to be fit
to endure this terrible campaign. Like the Russian army at Narva, it
was sapped by demoralization before it was called on to do any serious
fighting. Even among the Swedish staff, and in the King's intimate circle,
all confidence in his genius and his lucky star had disappeared.
His best generals, Rehnskold and Gyllenkrook, his chancellor Piper, and
Mazeppa himself were against any prolongation of the siege, which promised
to be a long one. "If God were to send down one of his angels," he said,
"to induce me to follow your advice, I would not listen to him!" An
ineradicable illusion, the fruit of the too easy victories of his early
career, prompted him to undervalue the forces opposed to him. He knew,
and would acknowledge, nothing of that new Russia, the mighty upstanding
colossus, which Peter had at last succeeded in raising up in his path.
According to some authorities, Mazeppa, in his desire to replace Batourin
by Poltava, as his own personal appanage, encouraged him in this fatal
resolution. But it may well have been that retreat had already become
impossible.
It was long before Peter made up his mind to intervene; he was still
distrustful of himself, desperately eager to increase his own resources,
and with them his chances of victory. On his enemy's side, everything
contributed to this result. By the end of June all the Swedish ammunition
was exhausted, the invaders could use none of their artillery and hardly
any of their fire-arms, and were reduced to fighting with cold steel. On
the very eve of the decisive struggle, they were left without a leader.
During a reconnaissance on the banks of the Vorskla, which ran between
the hostile armies, Charles, always rash and apt to expose himself
unnecessarily, was struck by a bullet. "It is only in the foot," he said,
smiling, and continued his examination of the ground. But, when he returned
to camp he fainted, and Peter, reckoning on the moral effect of the
accident, at once resolved to cross the river. A report, as a matter
of fact, ran through the Swedish camp that the King, convinced of the
hopelessness of the situation, had deliberately sought death.
Yet ten more days passed by, in the expectation of an attack which the
Russians did not dare to make. It was Charles who took action at last,
informing his generals, on June 26th (July 7th) that he would give battle
on the following morning. He himself was still in a very suffering
condition, and made over the command to Rehnskold, a valiant soldier but
a doubtful leader, for he did not possess the army's confidence, and,
according to Lundblad, "hid his lack of knowledge and strategical powers
under gloomy looks and a fierce expression." After the event, as was so
commonly the case with vanquished generals, he was accused of treachery.
The truth would seem to be that Charles' obstinate reserve, and habit of
never confiding his plans and military arrangements to any third person,
had ended by gradually depriving his lieutenants of all power of
independent action. In his presence they were bereft of speech and almost
of ideas. All Rehnskold did was to rage and swear at everyone. Peter,
meanwhile, neglected nothing likely to insure success. He even went so far
as to dress the Novgorod regiment--one of his best--in the coarse cloth
_(siermiaga)_ generally reserved for newly joined recruits, in the hope of
thus deceiving the enemy. This stratagem, however, completely failed. In
the very beginning of the battle, Rehnskold fell on the regiment, and cut
it to pieces.
The Russian centre was confided to Sheremetief, the right wing to General
Ronne, the left to Menshikoff. Bruce commanded the artillery, and the Czar,
as usual, retired modestly to the head of a single regiment. But this was a
mere disguise; in real fact, he was everywhere, going hither and thither,
in the forefront of the battle, and lavishing effort in every direction. A
bullet passed through his hat, another is said to have struck him full
on the breast. It was miraculously stopped by a golden cross, set with
precious stones, given by the monks on Mount Athos to the Czar Feodor, and
which his successor habitually wore. This cross, which certainly bears the
mark of some projectile, is still preserved in the Ouspienski monastery, at
Moscow.
The heroism and sovereign contempt of death betrayed by Charles were worthy
of himself. Unable to sit a horse, he caused himself to be carried on a
litter, which, when it was shattered by bullets, was replaced by another
made of crossed lances. But he was nothing but a living standard, useless,
though sublime. The once mighty military leader had utterly disappeared.
The battle was but a wild conflict, in which the glorious remnants of one
of the most splendid armies that had ever been brought together; unable to
use its arms, leaderless, hopeless of victory, and soon overwhelmed and
crushed by superior numbers, struggled for a space, with the sole object
of remaining faithful to its king. At the end of two hours Charles himself
left the field of battle. He had been lifted onto the back of an old horse
which his father had formerly ridden, and which was called _Brandklepper_
("Run to the Fire"), because he was always saddled when a fire broke out in
the city.
This charger followed the vanquished hero into Turkey, was taken by the
Turks at Bender, sent back to the King, taken again at Stralsund in 1715,
returned to its owner once more, and died in 1718--the same year as his
master--at the age of forty-two. Poniatowski, the father of the future
King of Poland, who was following the campaign as a volunteer--Charles had
refused to take any Polish troops with him on account of their want of
discipline--rallied one of Colonel Horn's squadrons to escort the King, and
received seventeen bullets through his leather kaftan while covering the
royal retreat. Field Marshal Rehnskold, Piper the chancellor, with all his
subordinates, over one hundred fifty officers, and two thousand soldiers
fell into the victor's hands.
The Russians' joy was so extreme that they forgot to pursue the retreating
enemy. Their first impulse was to sit down and banquet. Peter invited the
more important prisoners to his own table, and toasted the health of his
"masters in the art of war." The Swedes, who still numbered thirteen
thousand men, had time to pause for a moment in their own camp, where
Charles summoned Loewenhaupt, and, for the first time in his life, was
heard to ask for advice--"What was to be done?" The general counselled him
to burn all wagons, mount his infantry soldiers on the draught-horses and
beat a retreat toward the Dnieper. On June 30th the Russians came up with
the Swedish army at Perevolotchna, on the banks of the river, and, the
soldiers refusing to fight again, Loewenhaupt capitulated; but the King
had time to cross to the other side. Two boats lashed together carried his
carriage, a few officers, and the war-chests which he had filled in Saxony.
Mazeppa contrived to find a boat for himself, and loaded it with two
barrels of gold.
At Kiev, whither Peter proceeded from Poltava, a solemn thanksgiving was
offered up in the church of St. Sophia, and a Little Russia monk, Feofan
Prokopovitch, celebrated the recent victory in a fine flight of eloquence:
"When our neighbors hear of what has happened, they will say it was
not into a foreign country that the Swedish army and the Swedish power
ventured, but rather into some mighty sea! They have fallen in and
disappeared, even as lead is swallowed up in water!"