22
MISTRESS OF THE NORTH
The Baltic is a northern sea, brilliant blue in sunlight, murky gray in fog and rain, and deep gold at sunset when the world turns the color of the true amber which is found only on these shores. On its northern coasts, the Baltic is fringed with pine forests, fjords of red granite, pebble beaches and a myriad tiny islands. The southern coast takes a gentler form: there, a green shore is lined with white sand beaches, dunes, marshes and low mud cliffs. Long stretches are edged with shoals and sand spits outlying shallow lagoons a dozen miles wide and fifty miles long. Through this flat and marshy country, four historic rivers make their way to the sea: the Neva, the Dvina, the Vistula and the Oder, all pouring fresh water into the sea, so that the prevailing current is out of the Baltic. For this reason, it is difficult for salt water to enter the Baltic, and there are no tides at Riga, Stockholm or the mouth of the Neva.
It is the lack of salt that brings the ice. Winter comes to the Baltic late in October with heavy frosts at night and flurries of snow. By October, in the days of sailing ships, the foreign vessels were leaving, heading down the Baltic, their holds filled with iron and copper, their decks piled high with timber. The native Baltic captains steered their ships into port, unrigged them and left the hulls locked in the ice until spring. By November, water in the bays and inlets was already covered with a thin scum of ice. By the end of the month, Kronstadt and St. Petersburg were frozen in; by December, Tallinn and Stockholm. The open sea did not freeze, but drifting ice and frequent storms made navigation difficult. The narrow sound between Sweden and Denmark was often choked by floating drift ice, and some winters the channel was sheeted over. (In 1658, a Swedish army marched across the ice to take its Danish enemy by surprise.) The northern half of the Gulf of Bothnia is solid ice from November until early May.
Spring loosens the ice and once more the Baltic comes to life. Then, in Peter’s day, the fleets of merchantmen would begin arriving from Amsterdam and London, steering through the three-mile-wide channel of the sound, with the low cliffs and the famous castle of Elsinore to starboard and the hills on the Swedish shore to port. In June, the Baltic was filled with sails: Dutch merchantmen, the cobalt-colored water creaming back from their rounded bows, the wind filling their huge mainsails; and stout, oaken-hulled English vessels, sent to load the pine masts and spars, tar and turpentine, resins, oils and flax for sails without which the Royal Navy could not survive. Through the short northern summer, under bright blue skies, ships crisscrossed the Baltic, anchored in its harbors; tied up to the quays, the captains ashore dining with merchants, the seamen drinking in bars and lying with women.
The port cities and towns of the Baltic were, and remain today, German in character, with cobbled streets and medieval stone buildings marked by high-pitched roofs, gables, turrets and battlements. The ancient town of Reval (now Tallinn), capital of Estonia, is centered on a medieval citadel perched on a great, craggy upthrust of rock. Swallows dip and soar around its high, round towers, and blond Estonian children play under the blooming chestnut trees and lilacs in the park beneath the massive walls. Riga, the capital of Latvia, is larger, more modern, but the old town on the bank of the Dvina River is also a world of cobbled streets and German drinking houses, topped by the Baroque spires of St. Peter’s and St. Jacob’s churches and the mighty Dom Cathedral. Outside the city, a wide white sand beach framed by dunes and pine trees runs for miles along the Gulf of Riga.
In Peter’s day, the architecture, the language, the religion and the entire cultural flavor of these small states were alien to those of the colossal Russian mass adjacent to them. Ruled by the Teutonic Knights and later a German aristocracy, constituents of the Hanseatic League and the Lutheran Church, they retained their cultural and religious independence even after Peter’s army marched from Poltava, captured Riga and absorbed these provinces for 200 years into the Russian empire.
To the north, in a world of forests and lakes, lies Sweden, in Peter’s time at the peak of its imperial power. From the southernmost coast on the Baltic to the north beyond the Arctic Circle, Sweden stretches for a thousand miles. It is a land of evergreens and birches, of 96,000 lakes, of snow and ice. As in northern Russia, the summers are short and cool. Ice forms in November and breaks up in April, and only five months are without frost. It is a cold, sternly beautiful land, and it has bred a race of hard, uncomplaining people.
In the seventeenth century, there were scattered over all this vastness only a million and a half people. Most were farm families, living in simple wooden cabins, using wooden plows and making their own clothes as they had for centuries. Between one farm and the next, and between the small towns and villages, travel was slow and hazardous. The roads were poor and, as in Russia, it was easier to travel in winter when a sleigh or sledge could glide over the surface of the frozen lakes. Hiding from the icy winds, Swedish peasants spent the endless winter days huddled around their warm stoves or sharing the public baths which were the most efficient means of getting the chill out of their frozen bones.
Sweden’s primary exports were the products of its mines: silver, copper and iron. Iron, essential in both peace and war, was the most important, and provided half of Sweden’s export trade. Most of this trade went through Stockholm, the capital, which in 1697 had a population of about 60,000. The city was located on Sweden’s east coast which is fringed with a belt of islands protecting the coastline from the open sea. This belt is thickest at the point where the Gulf of Bothnia joins the Baltic. From the sea, a main channel, the Saltsjö, leads for forty-five miles through the mass of islands to Stockholm on the mainland. Here, at a juncture of lakes, rivers and the Saltsjö, medieval Stockholm was built, a little walled town of narrow, winding streets, gabled fronts and thin church spires, similar to those of other North German and Baltic towns.
In the seventeenth century, Stockholm became an important commercial port. Dutch and English merchantmen thronged the harbor and tied up at the broad shipping quay to load Swedish iron and copper. As the city’s docks, shipyards, marketplaces and banking institutions grew, the town expanded to other islands. With increased wealth, the church spires and roofs of public buildings were sheathed in copper which glowed a brilliant orange when touched by the rays of the setting sun. The luxurious tastes of Versailles reached into the city’s palaces and the mansions of the nobility. Ships which had sailed from Sweden carrying iron returned from Amsterdam and London bringing English walnut furniture, French gilt chairs, Dutch Delft china, Italian and German glass, gold wallpaper, carpets, linens and ornate table silver.
This wealth was built on empire as well as on iron and copper. The seventeenth century was Sweden’s hour of greatness. From the accession of seventeen-year-old Gustavus Adolphus in 1611 to the death of Charles XII in 1718, Sweden stood at the pinnacle of its imperial history. The Swedish empire covered the entire northern coast of the Baltic and key territories along the southern shore. It embraced all of Finland and Karelia, Estonia, Ingria and Livonia, thus lapping completely around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland. It held western Pomerania and the seaports of Stettin, Stralsund and Wismar on the North German coast. It commanded the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, which were west of the Danish peninsula and gave access to the North Sea. And it held most of the islands of the Baltic.
Trade was even more important than territory. Here, Sweden’s supremacy was secured by the planting of her blue-and-yellow flag at the mouth of all but one of the rivers that flowed into the Baltic: the Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland; the Dvina, which met the sea in the marshy ground near Riga; and the Oder, which reached the Baltic at Stettin. Only the mouth of the Vistula, flowing north through Poland and emptying into the Baltic at Danzig, was not Swedish.
That these vast territories should be possessed by a crown whose own people numbered scarcely a million and a half was the achievement of Sweden’s great commanders and sturdy soldiers. The first and greatest of these was Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, savior of the Protestant cause in Germany, whose campaigns led him as far as the Danube and who was killed at thirty-eight while leading a cavalry charge.* The Thirty Years’ War, which continued after his death, ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which richly rewarded Sweden’s efforts. Here it gained the German provinces which gave control of the mouths of the Oder, the Weser and the Elbe. These German possessions also resulted in the anomaly that Sweden, Protestant Mistress of the North, was also a part of the Holy Roman Empire and occupied seats in the Imperial Diet. More significant than this hollow power, however, was the access to Central Europe which they gave Sweden. With these territories serving as beachheads on the continent, Swedish armies could march anywhere in Europe, and that made Sweden a force to be reckoned with in every European calculation of war and peace.
Sweden, in sum, was a phenomenon—a great power, but one with weaknesses. It was not only satiated with conquest, it was over-extended. It had many advantages: hard-working people, disciplined soldiers, kings who commanded brilliantly on the battlefield. Nevertheless, to maintain its position, it also needed wisdom. The nation’s strength had to be husbanded, not flung into wild, new adventures. As long as its monarchs understood this and acted wisely, there was no reason that Sweden should not remain indefinitely the Mistress of the North.
The seeds of the Great Northern War lay in history and economics as well as in Peter’s longing for the sea. The struggle between Russia and Sweden for possession of the coastal lands on the Gulf of Finland was centuries old. Sweden had been the enemy of the city-states of Moscow and Novgorod since the thirteenth century. Karelia and Ingria, which spread north and south of the Neva River, were ancient Russian lands; the Russian hero Alexander Nevsky won the name Nevsky (“of the Neva”) by defeating the Swedes on the Neva River in 1240. During Russia’s Time of Troubles following the death of Ivan the Terrible, Sweden had occupied a vast belt of territory which even included Novgorod itself. In 1616, Sweden gave up Novgorod, but kept the entire coastline anchored in such fortresses as Nöteborg on Lake Ladoga, Narva and Riga, continuing Russia’s isolation from the sea. Tsar Alexis had made an attempt to regain these lands, but he had been forced to abandon it. His more important wars were with Poland, and Russia could not fight Poland and Sweden simultaneously. Swedish possession of the provinces was reconfirmed by the Russian-Swedish Peace of Kardis in 1664.
Nevertheless, in Peter’s mind these were Russian lands, and Russia was suffering substantial economic loss from their being in foreign hands. Through the Swedish-held ports of Riga, Reval and Narva flowed a wide river of Russian trade, and on this trade Swedish handlers and toll collectors levied heavy duties, and the Swedish treasury fattened. Finally, of course, there was the pull of the sea. In Vienna, when he found the Emperor determined on peace, Peter understood that he could not make war alone on the Ottoman Empire, and realized that his access to the Black Sea was blocked. But here was the Baltic, its waves lapping a coast only a few miles from the Russian frontier, which could serve as a direct avenue to Holland, England and the West. Presented with a chance to repossess this territory by making war on a boy king in the company of Poland and Denmark, he found the temptation irresistible.
Yet, the war might still not have begun had fate not suddenly dispatched to the scene a dedicated man to stir the potent brew. Johann Reinhold von Patkul was a patriot without a country. He was a member of the old Livonian nobility, the hardy Germanic descendants of the Teutonic Knights, who had conquered and held Livonia, Estonia and Courland until the middle of the sixteenth century. After the severe defeats inflicted on the Knights by Ivan the Terrible, the Teutonic order was dissolved and Livonia fell into the hands of Poland. But the Poles were harsh masters, insisting on the Polish language, Polish laws and the Catholic religion, and eventually the Protestant Livonians sought the protection of Protestant Sweden. In 1660, after a long struggle, Livonia became a Swedish province and, as such, shared in the political affairs of the rest of Sweden. These included the famous and widely resisted “reduction” policy of Charles XI. After the early death of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish aristocracy had rapidly increased its relative power in the state, at the same time making itself hated by other classes of the population. On the accession of Charles XI, both the new King and the Swedish Parliament were determined to reduce the influence of the aristocracy by granting the King absolute power. One effective means was to demand the return to the crown of numerous lands parceled out to the nobles for administration. (The noblemen had begun to treat these lands as their own hereditary estates.) This “reduction,” begun in 1680, was applied with ruthless severity, not only to Sweden itself, but to all provinces of the Swedish empire, including Livonia. This command struck Livonia all the more painfully because only two years earlier Charles XI had solemnly affirmed the rights of the Livonian barons, expressly promising that they would not be subjected to any “reduction” which might be imposed. The barons protested the confiscation and sent emissaries to Stockholm to plead their case.
Patkul was one of these emissaries. He was a strong, handsome, cultured man who spoke numerous languages, wrote Greek and Latin and was an experienced military officer. He was also hot-tempered, single-minded and ruthless. When he spoke, his courage and fierce dedication to his cause made him a commanding, majestic figure. He pleaded his case with eloquence—Charles XI was so moved that he touched Patkul on the shoulder, saying, “You have spoken like an honest man for your fatherland. I thank you”—but the King reaffirmed reduction as a “national necessity” and declared that Livonia could not be treated differently from the rest of the realm. Patkul returned to Livonia and drafted a fiery petition which he sent to Stockholm. Its contents were deemed treasonable and he was sentenced in absentia to lose his right hand and his head. But he escaped the Swedish officers sent to arrest him and began wandering through Europe, searching for an opportunity to free his native country. For six years, he dreamed of creating an anti-Swedish coalition which might bring independence to Livonia or at least restore the power of the Livonian nobility, and when Charles XI died and a fifteen-year-old boy mounted the throne of Sweden, the opportunity seemed to present itself.
Patkul was impatient, but he was also realistic. He knew that to throw off the Swedish yoke a small province would have to accept the help and probably the sovereignty of another large power, and Poland—a republic dominated by its nobility, who elected the king—seemed a good choice. Under so loose a system, Patkul reasoned, the Livonian nobility would be more likely to maintain its rights. Further, the newly elected Polish King, Augustus of Saxony, was German and therefore could be expected to sympathize with the German nobility of Livonia.
In October 1698, Patkul secretly arrived in Warsaw and set about persuading Augustus to take the initiative in forming an anti-Swedish alliance. Patkul had already visited King Frederick IV of Denmark and found him willing. The Danes had never fully accepted the loss of territory in southern Sweden inflicted on them by Gustavus Adolphus and looked forward to restoring the days when the Oresund, the sound that separates the Baltic from the North Sea, and Denmark from Sweden, could be looked upon as “a stream that runs through the dominions of the King of Denmark.” Further, the Danes resented and feared the presence of Swedish troops on their southern border in the territory of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.
Augustus was intrigued by Patkul’s proposition, especially by his statement that the Livonian nobles were ready to acknowledge Augustus as their hereditary king. To Augustus, this opened a glittering prospect. His ambition was to make his elective Polish crown a hereditary one. By seizing Livonia with Saxon troops and then presenting the province to the Polish nobility, he hoped to gain its support in making a permanent claim on the Polish throne. Under Patkul’s spell, Augustus grew more eager. Assessing the possible reaction of the major European powers to such a war—a concern of Augustus—Patkul estimated that Austria, France, Holland and England would doubtless “make loud noises about their trade, but would probably do nothing.” As a further inducement to Augustus, Patkul assured the King that the conquest of Livonia would prove easy, and he even supplied an exact description of the fortifications of Riga, the city which would be Augustus’ major objective.
The result of Patkul’s efforts was beyond his grandest imaginings: An offensive treaty was made between Denmark and Poland against Sweden. Frederick IV was to clear the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein of Swedish troops preparatory to an attack across the sound on Scania, the southernmost of Sweden’s home provinces. Augustus was to be prepared by January or February of 1700 to march his Saxon troops into Livonia and attempt to seize Riga by surprise. Swedish forces would thus be split between North Germany, the upper Baltic and the homeland, and, in the absence of an adult king to rally the nation and lead the army, it was hoped that the Swedish empire would crumble quickly. Finally, Patkul proposed that Peter of Russia be brought into the war as an additional ally against the Swedes. Russian attacks on Ingria at the head of the Gulf of Finland would distract the Swedes. Peter might provide money, supplies and men to support the Saxon forces besieging Riga. Neither Patkul nor the others put much trust in the quality of Russian troops, but it was hoped that their quantity would make up the difference. “Russian infantry would be most serviceable for working in the trenches and for receiving the enemy’s shots,” Patkul suggested, “while the troops of the King [Augustus] could be preserved and used for covering the approaches”; i.e., the Russians would serve as cannon fodder.
The plotters did worry that, once Russian troops had entered the Baltic provinces, it might not be easy to persuade them to leave. “It would also be absolutely necessary,” warned Patkul, “to bind the hands of the Tsar in such a way that he should not eat before our eyes the piece roasted for us; that is, should not get hold of Livonia and should restrict his attack on Narva, for in that case he could threaten the center of Livonia and take Dorpat, Reval, and the whole of Estonia almost before it could be known in Warsaw.”
Under the name Kindler and hidden in a group of twelve Saxon engineers hired by the Tsar, Patkul accompanied Augustus’ personal representative, General George von Carlowitz, from Warsaw to Moscow to attempt to persuade Peter.* But in Moscow, the two conspirators found themselves in a peculiar situation. The Swedes, sensing that alliances were being formed against them, hoped to mollify Peter by sending to Moscow in the summer of 1699 a splendid embassy which would announce the accession of King Charles XII and ask for confirmation and renewal of all existing treaties, as was customary on the accession of a new monarch. The splendor of the Swedish embassy was meant to atone for the slight which the Tsar complained of having suffered when he passed through Riga in 1697. When the embassy arrived at the Russian frontier in mid-June, Peter’s uncle Lev Naryshkin received them politely, but explained that they would have to await the return of the Tsar, who was with his fleet at Azov.
Peter’s return to Moscow in early October was a dramatic moment. He found two embassies waiting for him: the formal Swedish embassy asking him to confirm the existing treaties of peace, and the secret Polish embassy of Carlowitz and Patkul asking him to make war on Sweden. Thereafter, for weeks, the two sets of negotiations continued side by side, the formal and unwelcome negotiations with Sweden being conducted openly at the Foreign Office, while the serious secret negotiations with Carlowitz were conducted personally by Peter at Preobrazhenskoe, with only Fedor Golovin and an interpreter, Peter Shafirov, present at the Tsar’s side.
The Swedes were aware of Carlowitz’ presence and knew that some kind of treaty was being discussed, but thought it was a peaceful treaty and suspected nothing of the truth. To avoid arousing suspicions, the Swedes were received with honor by Peter, to whom they presented a full-length picture of their new young King on horseback. And to bolster the deception, Peter went through the formality of confirming the previous treaties with Sweden, but, as a slight salve to his conscience, he avoided kissing the cross at the ceremony of signature. When the Swedish ambassadors noticed the omission and complained, Peter said that he had already taken an oath to observe all treaties when he came to the throne and that it was the Russian custom not to repeat it. On November 24, the Swedish ambassadors had a final audience with the Tsar. Peter was genial and gave them a formal letter from himself to King Charles XII confirming the treaties of peace between Sweden and Russia.
Meanwhile, the mission of Carlowitz and Patkul was proceeding successfully. Peter received Carlowitz (Patkul remained in disguise) and read the letter presented by Carlowitz but probably written by Patkul. In return for the Tsar’s alliance, it offered Augustus’ promise to support Russia’s claims to Ingria and Karelia. Peter then called in Heins, the Danish ambassador, who was privy to the secret negotiations as Denmark had already signed its treaty of alliance with Poland. Heins endorsed the promise of the letter. Thus it was that, only three days after the Swedish embassy left Moscow, Peter signed a treaty agreeing that Russia would attack Sweden, if possible in April 1700. The Tsar carefully refused to name a specific date, and a clause stated that the Russian attack would come only after the signing of a peace or armistice between Russia and Turkey. Once the agreement was signed, Patkul, who until now had remained in the background, was presented to the Tsar. Two weeks later, Carlowitz left Moscow for Saxony, planning to take the road through Riga and use the opportunity to examine the city’s fortifications.
Peter, having promised to attack a major Western military power within a few months, now turned to the enormous work of preparing for war. Since his return from the West, he had been primarily interested in the fleet. Overnight, he had to shift his attention from the building of ships to the accumulation of guns, powder, wagons, horses, uniforms and soldiers. With the Streltsy demoralized and only a few regiments still actually in existence, Peter’s professional army consisted primarily of the four regiments of Guards, the Preobrazhensky, Semyonovsky, Lefort and Butursky. Thus, if the Tsar was to keep his promise to Augustus, an entire new army had to be raised, trained, equipped and placed on the march within three months.
Peter acted quickly. A decree was addressed to all civil and clerical landowners. Civil landowners were required to send the Tsar one serf recruit for every fifty serf households in their possession. Monasteries and other ecclesiastical landlords were more severely taxed at the rate of one recruit for every twenty-five households. Peter also asked for volunteers from among the freemen of the population of Moscow, promising good pay: eleven roubles a year plus an allowance for drink. All these men were ordered to muster at Preobrazhenskoe in December and January, and through the wintry days a stream of recruits poured into Peter’s camp. Twenty-seven new infantry regiments were to be formed on the model of the four Guards regiments, with two to four battalions apiece. Now, Peter professionally felt the loss of Patrick Gordon. Lacking the Scotsman’s experienced hand, Peter supervised the training himself, assisted by General Avtemon Golovin, the commander of the Guard, and Brigadier Adam Weide. Meanwhile, Prince Nikita Repnin was sent to enlist and train men from the towns along the lower Volga.
Although the commanders of the three new army divisions, Golovin, Weide and Repnin, were Russian, all of the regimental commanders were foreigners, some of whom had seen action in the Crimean and Azov campaigns, others newly hired from the West. Peter’s greatest difficulty was with the older Russian officers, many of whom had no taste whatever for going to war. To replace those who were cashiered, many courtiers were enrolled as officers. They seemed to pick up soldiering so quickly that Peter exclaimed prematurely, “Why should I spend money on foreigners when my own subjects can do as well as they?” Subsequently, nearly all the court chamberlains and other palace officials entered the army.
The new soldiers were uniformed on the German model with coats of dark-green cloth, breeches, boots and three-cornered hats. They were armed with muskets and bayonets, and a beginning was made in teaching them to march in columns, deploy into line and stand firmly side by side and fire on command. The artillery, which was numerous—thanks to 300 guns sent as a present from King Charles XII to help the Tsar fight the Turks—was under the command of Prince Alexander of Imeritia. The Prince had been Peter’s companion in Holland and had devoted himself to the study of artillery at The Hague. Brigadier Weide, who had served in the Austrian army under Prince Eugene of Savoy, drew up the articles of war under which infractions of army discipline were to be severely punished.
Through the spring of 1700, Peter was caught suspended between the war he wanted to end and the war he wanted to begin. During the negotiations in February 1700, the rumors from Constantinople grew so ominous that he decided he must prepare for renewal of the war with the Sultan. He left his new regiments drilling at Preobrazhenskoe and went to Voronezh, where he worked furiously to help make his ships ready for war. Near the end of April, in the presence of his son, his sister and many boyars, he launched the sixty-four-gun ship Predestination, on which he himself had worked.
While Peter was at Voronezh, both of his Baltic allies struck their planned blows at Sweden. In February, without any declaration of war, 14,000 Saxon troops suddenly invaded Livonia and laid siege to the great fortress city of Riga. The Swedes counterattacked and drove them back, killing General Carlowitz in the process. Peter was disgusted, especially with Augustus; the King, he said, should have been in Livonia leading his troops himself instead of “diverting himself with women” in Saxony.
In March, the second of Peter’s new allies, Frederick IV, invaded the territories of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, south of Denmark, with 16,000 men and laid siege to the town of Tonning. Now, if ever, was the time for Peter to add his weight by striking at Ingria. But the Tsar’s hands were tied. “It is a pity,” he replied to Golovin, “but there is nothing to be done. I have not heard from Constantinople.”
During the spring, rumors of Turkish preparations for war grew so strong and so disturbing to Peter that he felt it necessary to re-cement his formal good relations with Sweden. Rumors of his secret treaties with Denmark and Poland were seeping out and, to reassure the Swedes of his good intentions, he proposed sending a Russian embassy to Stockholm. Thomas Knipercrona, the Swedish ambassador in Moscow, who was entirely ignorant of the plotting which had gone on under his nose the previous autumn, was pleased by the projected embassy, and Peter deliberately played on Knipercrona’s trust. On the day after his return from Voronezh, the Tsar called on Knipercrona in Moscow and jokingly rebuked the Ambassador’s wife for writing to her daughter that all the Swedes in Moscow were in terror because the Russian army was about to invade Livonia. The daughter had been visiting in Voronezh and had shown the Tsar her mother’s letter. “I could hardly calm your daughter, she was crying so bitterly,” said Peter. “You cannot think that I would begin an unjust war against the King of Sweden and break an eternal peace which I have just promised to preserve.” Knipercrona begged the Tsar to forgive his wife. Peter embraced the Ambassador affectionately and swore that if the King of Poland captured Riga from Sweden, “I will tear it from his hands.” Thoroughly convinced, Knipercrona reported in his dispatch to Stockholm that the Tsar had no thought of aggression against Sweden.*
The spring passed, then June, then July, and still no word came from Constantinople. On July 15, Peter received a Saxon envoy, Major General Baron Langen. Augustus, who finally had joined his army before Riga, begged the Tsar to begin military operations. Reported Langen: “The Tsar sent his ministers out of the room, and, with tears in his eyes, said to me in broken Dutch how grieved he was at the delay in concluding a peace with Turkey.… [He said that] he had ordered his ambassador to conclude a peace or truce in the quickest possible time even to his own loss, in order to have his hands free to aid his allies with all his forces.” Finally, on August 8, news from Constantinople arrived. The thirty-year armistice had been signed on July 3, and Ukraintsev’s messenger, traveling by the fastest means, reached Moscow with the news thirty-six days later.
Free at last to act, Peter moved with great speed. On the evening of the day Ukraintsev’s dispatch arrived, the temporary peace with Turkey was celebrated in Moscow with an extraordinary display of fireworks. The following morning, war with Sweden was declared in the manner of the old Muscovite tsars, from the Bedchamber Porch in the Kremlin. “The Great Tsar has directed,” the proclamation went, “that for the many wrongs of the Swedish king, and especially because during the Tsar’s journey through Riga he suffered obstacles and unpleasantness at the hands of the people of Riga, his soldiers shall march in war on the Swedish towns.” The proclaimed objectives of the war were the provinces of Ingria and Karelia, “which by the Grace of God and according to law have always belonged to Russia and were lost during the Time of Troubles.” That same day, Peter dispatched a handwritten letter to Augustus informing him of what had happened and saying, “We hope, by the help of God, that Your Majesty will not see other than profit.”
Thus began the Great Northern War, or, as Voltaire called it, “The Famous War of the North.” For twenty years, two youthful sovereigns, Peter and Charles, would wrestle for supremacy in a conflict that would settle the fate of both their empires. In the early years, 1700 to 1709, Peter would be on the defensive, preparing himself, his army and his state for the hour when the Swedish battering ram would be pointed toward his backward kingdom. In these years, amidst the storms of war, Russia would continue her transformation. Reforms would be made not as a result of careful planning and methodical execution, but rather as desperate, hurried measures dictated by the need to stave off a relentless enemy. Later, after Poltava, the tide would turn, but both sovereigns would fight on, the one enmeshed and distracted by largely useless alliances, the other burning to avenge his defeat and restore his crumbling empire.
* Gustavus Adolphus was succeeded by his only child, a six-year-old daughter who was to become the legendary Queen Christina. Assuming full royal power at eighteen, Christina ruled Sweden for ten years from 1644 to 1654. Her passion was learning. She rose at five a.m. to begin reading. Foreign scholars, musicians and philosophers, including Descartes, were enticed to her court by tales of her genius and her largess. Then, suddenly, at twenty-eight, she abdicated, pleading that she was ill and that the burdens of ruling were too heavy for a woman. The real reason, however, was her secret conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, which was illegal in Protestant Sweden. The throne went to Christina’s cousin, who became King Charles X and the grandfather of Charles XII. Christina herself left immediately for Rome, where she lived for the remaining thirty-four years of her life, a friend of four popes, a magnificent patroness of the arts and the lover of Cardinal Azzolini.
* The agreement at Rawa between Peter and Augustus had been only an exuberant burst of camaraderie. So far, there was no actual plan, either of alliance or of campaign.
* Then, as now, morality played a peripheral role in war and diplomacy. Most states seized whatever territories or colonies they could. In Peter’s view, these coastal regions were ancient Russian lands; now was simply the best time to reclaim them. Similarly, Peter’s simultaneous negotiations with the Swedes and the Saxons were nothing to be ashamed of in that day. Similar charades were acted out routinely in London, Paris, Vienna and Constantinople.