30
POLISH QUAGMIRE
Charles XII and the Great Northern War were Peter’s main concern during these years. Having founded his new city on the Neva delta the year before, Peter moved in 1704 to control the two key Estonian towns, Dorpat and Narva, which would seal the Russian grip on Ingria and block any Swedish advance from the west against St. Petersburg. Both towns were strongly garrisoned (Narva’s defenders alone numbered 4,500), but with Charles and the main Swedish army in Poland, once the cities were besieged, neither had hope of relief.
In May 1704, Russian troops appeared before Narva, occupying the same long lines of circumvallation from which they had been routed four years before. Peter himself supervised the transport of the Russian siege artillery in barges from St. Petersburg, the boats hugging the southern shoreline of the gulf so closely that cruising Swedish warships could not reach them in the shallow water. In the Russian camp at Narva, the Tsar found Field Marshal George Ogilvie, a sixty-year-old Scot who had served for forty years in the Hapsburg imperial army and now had been hired by Patkul for service in Russia. Peter was so impressed with Ogilvie’s credentials that he immediately placed him in command of the Russian army before Narva. As the siege commenced, the Russians suffered losses, both from the cannon of the fortress and from Swedish sorties, but the defenders recognized the new determination of their enemies. “They seemed resolved to carry on their works, however great their loss might be,” said an officer of the garrison.
Leaving Ogilvie to conduct affairs at Narva, Peter rode south to Dorpat, which Sheremetev had been besieging since June with 23,000 men and forty-six cannon. He found Sheremetev’s dispositions faulty—the Russian cannon were firing at the town’s strongest bastions, which meant that all their shells were wasted. Peter quickly switched the artillery to the most vulnerable wall, and a breach was made. Russian troops entered the town, and on July 13 the Swedish garrison surrendered, five weeks after the siege began, but only ten days after the Tsar had arrived to take command.
The fall of Dorpat sealed Narva’s doom. Peter hurried back with Sheremetev’s troops to make a combined Russian force of 45,000 men and 150 cannon. On July 30, a heavy bombardment began, continuing for ten days and lashing the fortress with more than 4,600 shells. When the wall of one of the bastions crumbled, Peter offered generous terms to Arvid Horn, the Swedish commander, as prescribed by the protocol of war. Foolishly, Horn refused, making matters worse by using insulting language about the Tsar. The assault began on August 9, and although the Swedes fought fiercely, within an hour soldiers of the Preobrazhensky Guards had entered and seized a major bastion. Immediately afterward, waves of Russian infantry poured over the walls and swept through the town. Now, too late, Horn saw that resistance was futile and tried to capitulate by beating a drum for parley with his own hands. No one listened. Russian soldiers filled the streets, slaughtering men, women and children in a mindless torrent of violence. Two hours later, when Peter rode into Narva with Ogilvie, he found the streets slippery with blood and Swedish soldiers “butchered in heaps”; of a garrison of 4,500, only 1,800 were still alive. The Tsar ordered a trumpeter to ride through the town sounding the cease-fire in every street, but many Russians still would not stop. Angrily, Peter himself slashed down one Russian soldier who refused to obey orders. Stalking into the town hall to confront the frightened town councilors, Peter threw his bloody sword on the table before them and said disdainfully, “Do not be afraid. This is Russian, not Swedish blood.” But the Tsar was furious with Horn. When the enemy commander, whose wife had been killed in the assault, was brought before him, Peter demanded to know why he had not surrendered according to the rules once the first bastion had been crumbled and thus prevented all the unnecessary slaughter.
The victory at Narva had great psychological as well as strategic importance. Not only did it secure St. Petersburg from the west, but it vindicated the Russian disgrace on the same site four years before. It proved that Peter’s army was no longer merely a mass of half-trained peasants. Ogilvie said that he considered the infantry better than any German infantry, and told Charles Whitworth, the English minister, that “he never saw any nation go better to work with their cannon and mortars.” Peter wrote happily about the victory to Augustus, to Romodanovsky and to Apraxin. Four months later, when the Tsar returned to Moscow, the streets reverberated to the tramp of another Russian victory parade. Peter passed under seven triumphal arches at the head of his troops, while fifty-four enemy battle flags and 160 Swedish officer prisoners followed in his train.
Peter’s Baltic victories meant little to Charles. He fully expected that when the time came he would scatter Peter’s army easily and retake all former Swedish territory now in Russian hands. Far more disturbing to him was the fact that his own victories in Poland had not yet proved politically decisive. Augustus continued unwilling to concede defeat and give up the Polish throne, and the Polish Diet was still not prepared to force him to this action. Instead of an end, the victory over Augustus at Klissow was only the beginning of years of warfare in Poland, with the Swedish-Saxon struggle seesawing back and forth across the immensity of the Polish plain. The huge country with its eight million inhabitants was simply too vast for the Swedish or the Saxon army, neither of which ever numbered much more than 20,000 men, to exercise control over more than that region in which it happened to be at the moment.
Despite the political frustrations for Charles, the years in Poland, 1702–1706, were a time of great military glory, of heroic exploits, of enhancing the legend. In the autumn of 1702, for example, following the Battle of Klissow, Charles with only 300 Swedes rode up to the gates of Cracow and, from his horse, shouted loudly, “Open the gate!” The commander of the garrison opened the gate slightly and stuck out his head to see who was shouting. Charles instantly struck him in the face with his riding crop, the Swedes behind him pushed open the gate and the cowed defenders surrendered without firing a shot.
Inevitably, the war in Poland was hard on the Poles. On entering the country, Charles had promised to demand only those contributions absolutely essential to his army, but he kept this promise for merely three months. After Polish troops fought with King Augustus at Klissow, Charles resolved to take revenge by seeing that the Swedish army was wholly supported by the land. From Cracow, the Swedes extracted 130,000 thalers, 10,000 pairs of shoes, 10,000 pounds of tobacco, 160,000 pounds of meat and 60,000 pounds of bread within three weeks. As the war dragged on, Charles’ instructions to his generals became more implacable: “The Poles must either be annihilated or forced to join us.”
Near Cracow, Charles suffered an accident that left him with a limp for the rest of his life. He was observing cavalry exercises when his horse stumbled over a tent rope and fell on top of its rider, breaking the King’s left leg above the knee. The thigh bone did not set perfectly, and one leg became slightly shorter than the other. It was several months before the King could ride again, and when the army moved north from Cracow in October, Charles was carried on a stretcher.
Year after year, the battles and victories piled up, yet final victory never seemed closer. Meanwhile came news of other victories, Russian victories, along the Baltic: the siege and fall of Schlüsselburg, the capture of the length of the Neva River, the founding of a new city and port on the Gulf of Finland, the destruction of the Swedish flotillas on Lake Ladoga and Lake Peipus, terrible devastation of the Swedish granary province of Livonia and the seizure of whole populations of Swedish subjects, the fall of Dorpat and Narva. This grim sequence was accompanied by a stream of desperate pleas from Charles’ subjects: the despairing cries of the people of the Baltic provinces, the advice and pleas of the Swedish Parliament, the unanimous request of the army generals, even the appeal of his sister Hedwig Sophia. All begged the King to give up his campaign in Poland and march north to rescue the Baltic provinces. “For Sweden, these events have a much more important significance than who occupies the Polish throne,” said Piper.
Charles’ reaction was the same to everyone: “Even if I should have to remain here fifty years, I would not leave this country until Augustus is dethroned.” “Believe that I would give Augustus peace immediately if I could trust his word,” he said to Piper. “But as soon as peace is made and we are on our march toward Muscovy, he would accept Russian money and attack us in the back and then our task would be even more difficult than it is now.”
In 1704, events in Poland began to turn in Charles’ favor. He seized the fortress town of Thorn with 5,000 Saxon soldiers inside it. With Augustus greatly weakened, the Polish Diet accepted Charles’ thesis that Poland would be a battlefield as long as Augustus remained on the Polish throne, and in February 1704 it formally deposed him. Charles’ original candidate for the throne, James Sobieski, son of the famous Polish King Jan Sobieski, had foresightedly been kidnapped by Augustus’ agents and imprisoned in a castle in Saxony, so Charles chose instead a twenty-seven-year-old Polish nobleman, Stanislaus Leszczynski, whose qualifications included a modest intelligence and a sturdy allegiance to King Charles XII.
Stanislaus’ election was shamelessly rigged. A rump session of the Polish Diet was rounded up by Swedish soldiery and convened on July 2, 1704, in a field near Warsaw. During the proceedings, 100 Swedish soldiers were stationed at a musket shot’s distance to “protect” the electors and “to teach them to speak the right language.” Charles’ candidate was proclaimed King Stanislaus I of Poland.
Now that Augustus was displaced—Charles’ sole objective in invading Poland—Swedes and Poles alike hoped that the King would at last turn his attention toward Russia. But Charles was not ready to leave Poland. Because the Pope had opposed Stanislaus, threatening to excommunicate anyone who participated in the election of this protégé of a Protestant monarch, and because so few of the great Polish magnates had been present at the election, the new king had at best a shaky grip on his realm. Charles resolved to remain at the side of his puppet monarch until Stanislaus was properly crowned. More than a year later, on September 24, 1705, Stanislaus was crowned in a manner which, like the Diet’s proclamation of his election, provided arguments to those who said that his sovereignty was illegitimate. The new king was crowned not in Cracow, the traditional coronation site of Polish kings, but in Warsaw, because that was where Charles and his Swedish army were. The crown placed on Stanislaus’ head was not the historic crown of Poland—still in the possession of Augustus, who had not accepted his dethronement—but a new one which, along with a new scepter and new regalia, had been paid for by Charles. The Swedish King was present at the ceremony incognito, so as not to detract from the attention to be paid his new ally. But the coronation of this puppet sovereign fooled no one. Stanislaus’ wife, now Queen of Poland, felt so insecure in her husband’s turbulent kingdom that she chose to live in Swedish Pomerania.
Nevertheless, with a new king friendly to Sweden on the Polish throne, Charles believed that he had achieved his second objective. Soon after the coronation, he and Stanislaus signed an anti-Russian alliance between Sweden and Poland. Then, as if to release his long-pent-up feelings about Russia and relieve the huge weight of guilt which had fallen on him for failing to heed his subjects’ appeals, Charles suddenly struck. On December 29, 1705, the King broke his camp in the open fields near Warsaw and marched rapidly eastward over the frozen bogs and rivers toward Grodno, where Peter’s main army was massed behind the River Neman. This lunge at Grodno was not the long-awaited Swedish invasion of Russia. Charles had not done the planning or assembled the equipment and provisions for an epic march to Moscow. Nor, with Augustus still in the field and unwilling to accept his own dethronement, was Poland completely secure at Charles’ rear. Thus, Charles did not take the entire army with him; Rehnskjold was left behind with 10,000 men to watch the Saxons. But with the 20,000 men who marched behind him, Charles meant to provoke a winter battle. At long last, the Tsar was to see the glint of Swedish bayonets and his soldiers were to feel the bite of Swedish steel.
After the capture of Dorpat and Narva in the summer of 1704, Peter had spent the winter in Moscow and then gone to Voronezh in March to work in the shipyards. In May 1705, he set out to join the army, but was stricken by illness and recuperated for a month at Fedor Golovin’s house. In June, he reached the army at Polotsk on the Dvina, where it could be moved into Livonia, Lithuania or Poland as events required—an army which was developing into a formidable fighting force. There were 40,000 infantrymen, properly uniformed and well equipped with muskets and grenades. The cavalry and dragoons, 20,000 strong, were plentifully equipped with muskets, pistols and swords. The artillery was standardized and numerous. Like the Swedes, the Russian army had developed a form of highly mobile gun firing a three-pound shell which would accompany infantry and cavalry to give immediate artillery support.
The problem with the army now was at the top, in the structure of command, where there was friction and jealousy between the Russian and foreign generals. The army’s excellent training and overall discipline were due to Ogilvie who had taken command at the second siege of Narva and had been made the second field marshal (Sheremetev was the first) in the Russian army. Ogilvie’s concern for the soldiers had made him popular with the men, but he was not well liked by the Russian officers; he did not speak Russian and was forced to deal with them through an interpreter. He had particular trouble with Sheremetev, Menshikov and Repnin. The last two were his subordinates and served under him, but Sheremetev, technically his equal in rank, was often offended. Peter, seeking a solution, first tried putting all the cavalry under Sheremetev and the infantry under Ogilvie. Sheremetev felt humiliated and complained to Peter. “I have received your letter,” the Tsar replied, “and from it see how distressed you are, for which I am indeed sorry, because it is unnecessary; this was done not in any way to cause you humiliation, but to provide more effective organization.… However, because of your distress I have called a halt to this reorganization and ordered the old arrangement to stand until I arrive.”
Peter next tried to solve the problem by splitting up the army, sending Sheremetev with eight regiments of dragoons and three of infantry—10,000 men in all—to operate in the Baltic region while Ogilvie remained in command of the main army in Lithuania. On July 16, Sheremetev attacked Lewenhaupt, the commander of Swedish forces in Livonia, and the Russians were badly defeated. Peter wrote angrily to Sheremetev, blaming the defeat on the “inadequate training of the dragoons about which I have spoken many times.” Three days later, remorseful for the harsh tone of his earlier letter, he wrote again to cheer Sheremetev up: “Do not be sad about the misfortune you have had, for constant success has brought many people to ruin. Forget it and try to encourage your men.”
As it happened, just at this time came news of the trouble in Astrachan, and Sheremetev and his mounted regiments were dispatched a thousand miles across Russia to deal with the revolt. With the overall strength of the army thus weakened, Peter canceled further operations and ordered the main army into winter quarters at Grodno, on the east bank of the River Neman. Nothing was expected from Charles XII until spring.
Unfortunately, even with Sheremetev gone, the friction between Peter’s generals continued. Nominally, Ogilvie, as field marshal, was commander-in-chief and Menshikov and Repnin were his subordinates. Although Menshikov already possessed a growing military reputation because of his successes on the Neva, it was not his military experience but his personal relationship to the Tsar which made him obstreperous and insubordinate. Because he was Peter’s closest friend, he refused to accept the lesser military role. Often he invoked his special relationship with the Tsar to overrule the more experienced Ogilvie, saying simply, “His Majesty would not like that. He would prefer to do it this way. I know that.” Further, Menshikov arranged that all of Ogilvie’s letters to the Tsar should pass through his hands. Some of these he simply pocketed, later explaining to Peter that the Field Marshal was reporting news which the Tsar already knew from Menshikov himself.
This command structure, already complicated, was further confused in November 1705 when Augustus joined the Russian army. The King-Elector’s fortunes were at a low ebb. Poland was now completely occupied by the troops of Charles and the newly crowned Stanislaus, and the deposed Augustus had had to make his way by a lengthy, circuitous route through Hungary, using a false name and a disguise. Nevertheless, Peter still considered him King of Poland and, in deference to this rank, granted him overall command of the army at Grodno. Ogilvie kept the senior military command. Menshikov commanded the cavalry, and both Repnin and Carl Evald Ronne, an experienced German cavalry officer, were present as subordinate commanders. It was a situation ripe for disaster.
Charles’ march to the east was rapid. The distance from the Vistula to the Neman was 180 miles; Charles covered this ground over frozen roads and rivers in only two weeks and appeared with his vanguard before Grodno on January 15, 1706. The King crossed the river with 600 grenadiers, but, seeing that the fortress was too strong for a sudden assault, he turned and made a temporary camp four miles away. When the main Swedish army of 20,000 men arrived, Charles moved fifty miles above Grodno where he could find better provisions and forage. There he made a permanent camp, waiting to see what the Russians would do. As Charles saw it, either they could come out and fight or they could wait inside their fortress and eventually starve.
With Charles nearby, the Russian commanders held a council of war presided over by Augustus. There was no question of simply marching out to attack. Although they outnumbered the Swedes by almost two to one, Peter still was far from ready to risk his carefully constructed army even at these odds and had flatly forbidden Ogilvie to offer battle in the open field. Nevertheless, Ogilvie thought his force strong enough to remain and accept a siege, and this was the course he urged. The others disagreed: if the Swedes surrounded the fortress of Grodno, the army would be cut off from Russia and nullified as a protector of the Russian frontier; and although the fortifications were strong and the artillery numerous, they had not provisioned for a long siege. They urged retreat. Ogilvie was aghast, pointing to the size of the army and the superiority of the artillery. If they retreated, they would have to sacrifice the cannon, which could not be hauled without horses across the snow. They would leave the houses and barracks of a town for the bitter cold of open roads where many would perish. The Swedes would certainly pursue, and the field battle which Peter had forbidden would take place. Worse for Ogilvie would be the disgrace. A professional soldier commanding an army twice as strong as an enemy, he would abandon a strong fortress with a tremendous superiority in artillery. What would Europe say?
Augustus, caught between these opposing viewpoints and unwilling to take ultimate responsibility, dispatched an urgent messenger to Peter pleading for “an immediate, categoric and definite decision” from the Tsar. Before that decision could come, however, Augustus himself slipped out of Grodno. With Charles’ departure from Warsaw, he glimpsed a chance to reoccupy the Polish capital. Taking four regiments of dragoons, he departed hastily, promising Ogilvie that he would return in three weeks bringing the entire Saxon army. Then, with a combined Russian-Polish-Saxon force of 60,000 men, they would deal with Charles’ 20,000 Swedes.
Peter was in Moscow when he heard that Charles was moving toward Grodno. Skeptical of the reports, he wrote to Menshikov, “From whom did you receive this news? And can it be believed? How many reports of this kind have we had in the past?” Nevertheless, he was uneasy and declared that he would set out from Moscow on January 24. He complained of the “indescribable cold” and that his “right cheek was badly swollen,” and grumbled further that
I am mightily sorry to leave here because I am occupied with collecting taxes and other necessary things for the operations on the Volga. Therefore I beg you, if there is any change, to send someone to me, so that I may not drag myself along without reason (alas! I can scarcely do it). And if affairs do not change, I should like you to send me news every day, so that I can, if possible, hasten my journey.
The distance from Moscow to Grodno was 450 miles, and Peter had traveled over halfway when he was intercepted near Smolensk by Menshikov with the news that Charles had arrived and that the Tsar could not now reach his army. Worried, Peter wrote a new set of orders for Ogilvie which hinged on the promised arrival of the experienced Saxons. If the Saxons definitely were coming, Peter would permit Ogilvie to remain in Grodno, but if not, or if Ogilvie was unsure, then he was commanded to retreat to the Russian frontier by the shortest and quickest route. “However,” Peter added,
I leave all to your judgment, for it is impossible to give an order at the distance at which we are. While we write, your time is passing. What is best for safety and profit, that do with caution. Do not forget the words of my comrade [Menshikov], who on his departure urged you to look more to the safety of the troops than to anything else. Pay no regard to the heavy guns. If it is on account of them that retreat is difficult, burst them or throw them into the Neman.
Meanwhile, inside the Grodno fortress, the situation was deteriorating. Food and forage were rapidly giving out. Then, the Russians eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Saxons received word of another blow. On February 3, 1706, at Fraustadt on the Silesian border, a Saxon army with Russian and Polish auxiliaries totaling 30,000 men was defeated by Rehnskjold’s force of 8,000 Swedes. It was Rehnskjold’s most brilliant victory, and Charles, on hearing of it, immediately promoted Rehnskjold to field marshal and created him a count. Peter reported the news to Golovin with anger and dismay:
Herr Admiral: All the Saxon army has been beaten by Rehnskjold and has lost all its artillery. The treachery and cowardice of the Saxons are now plain: 30,000 men beaten by 8,000! The cavalry, without firing a single round, ran away. More than half of the infantry, throwing down their muskets, disappeared, leaving our men alone, not half of whom, I think, are now alive. God knows what grief this news has brought us. By giving money [to Augustus] we have only bought ourselves misfortune.… The above-mentioned calamity, as well as the betrayal of the King by his own subjects, you can tell everybody (but put it much more mildly) for it cannot remain a secret. Still, tell in detail very few.
The news of Fraustadt, further underlining the superiority of the Swedish army, sealed Peter’s decision to move his own troops away from Grodno as soon as possible. He ordered Ogilvie to retreat at the first opportunity, although, with spring now coming, he recommended that the Field Marshal delay until the ice broke on the river to hinder a Swedish pursuit. On April 4, in obedience to the Tsar’s orders, the Russian army pushed over 100 cannon into the Neman and began its retreat in a southeasterly direction toward Kiev around a region of forest and swamp known as the Pripet Marshes.
Charles was elated to discover that the Russians were moving out of the Grodno fortress and ordered his army to pursue immediately. But as soon as the floating bridge which he had prepared was swung across the Neman, it was carried away by blocks of ice riding in the flooded stream. It was a week before the King could cross, and the Russian army was far ahead. Charles tried taking a short-cut through the Pripet Marshes. “It is impossible to describe how men and horses suffered on this march,” wrote an eyewitness. “The country was covered with marshes, the spring had thawed the ground, the cavalry could scarcely move, the wagon train got so deep in the mud it was impossible to advance. The King’s carriage remained in the mire, while as to provisions, we fared so badly that everyone was happy who in that desolate country could pull a piece of dry bread out of his pocket.”
Struggling ahead through the marshes, the Swedes at last reached Pinsk without catching up to the Russian troops. There, Charles climbed to the highest church tower in the town and, gazing to the south and east, saw a watery wasteland stretching to the horizon. Resigning himself to the fact that the Russians had escaped, Charles remained in the vicinity for two months, destroying towns and villages. Finally, in midsummer 1706, uncertain of his rear and unprepared for a further major campaign to the east, the King turned back toward Europe.
Peter was overjoyed to learn that his army was safe. He wrote to Menshikov from St. Petersburg on April 29,
It is with indescribable joy that I received the … [news] when I was at Kronstadt on the vice-admiral’s ship Elephant and immediately, in thanks to God, we had a triple salute from the ships and the fort. God grant to see you and the whole army again. And how glad, and then how noisy we were on account of it.… For, although we live in paradise, still we always had a pain in our hearts. Here, praise be to God, all is well, and there is nothing new of any sort. We shall start from here next month. Don’t doubt about my coming. If God send no obstacle, I shall certainly start at the end of this month. Earlier than that is impossible, alas! not because I am amusing myself, but the doctors have ordered me to keep still and take medicine for two weeks, after bleeding me, which they began yesterday. Immediately after that I shall come, for you yourself have seen in what state I was when we separated from the army.
The retreat from Grodno was the end for Ogilvie. His quarreling with Menshikov had increased during the retreat. “The general of cavalry [Menshikov] without my knowledge in the name of Your Majesty ordered the whole army to go to Bykhov, and took on himself the air of commander-in-chief,” complained the exasperated Ogilvie. “He has about him a guard of infantry and cavalry with waving banners and takes no account of me.… Long as I have been at war, nowhere and never have people treated me as badly as here.” Pleading ill-health, he asked to be relieved of his command and allowed to leave Russia. Peter agreed, accepting Ogilvie’s resignation and paying his salary in full. Ogilvie departed for Saxony, where he entered Augustus’ service and served as a field marshal for four years until his death.
When Charles marched west from Pinsk rather than east, Peter knew that the threat of invasion had passed, at least for a while. But the Swedish King’s thrust at Grodno had been a warning. From it, Peter understood that his army, his commanders and his country were not yet ready.
Charles followed his swift lunge at Grodno with what was to be the final move of his long Polish war against Augustus. In August 1706, the King informed Rehnskjold that he had finally decided to invade Saxony itself, to strike down Augustus inside his own hereditary dominion. Four years of ricocheting around Poland in pursuit of his enemy had shown him that no decision with Augustus could be reached on Polish soil. Saxony always remained a sanctuary to which the defiant Augustus could retreat to bind up his wounds, raise new armies and await an opportune moment for reappearing in Poland.
The main diplomatic obstacle to the invasion, the opposition of the maritime powers, had now been removed by events. Marlborough’s great victories at Blenheim in Bavaria and Ramillies in the Netherlands had placed Louis XIV on the defensive, and the maritime powers no longer worried that the entry of Swedish troops into the heart of Germany could tip the scales in their war against France. Charles, for his part, had offered to desist from his planned invasion of Saxony if the maritime powers could persuade Augustus to renounce his claim to the Polish throne. They had tried and failed. Therefore, seeing no other way to compel Augustus, Charles decided to go ahead. On August 22, 1706, the Swedish army crossed the Silesian frontier at Rawicz on its march toward Saxony. Charles himself swam the Oder River, which served as a border, at the head of his Guards cavalry.
Five days later, after marching through Silesia with the cheers of the Protestant Silesians ringing in their ears, the Swedish soldiers stood on the frontier of the Electorate of Saxony. There, the arrival of the Swedes produced a feeling akin to terror. Stories of Swedish plundering and ravishment during the Thirty Years’ War were vividly retold. Augustus’ family fled in various directions: His wife hurried to the protection of her father, the Margrave of Bayreuth; his ten-year-old son went to Denmark; his elderly mother fled to Hamburg. The state treasury and jewels were hidden in a remote castle. Nevertheless, the Saxon Governing Council, empowered to govern in Augustus’ absence, had determined not to resist the Swedish invasion and to entrust the safety of the electorate to Charles’ mercy. The council had in fact had enough of their Elector’s Polish ambitions; Saxony had sacrificed 36,000 troops, 800 cannon and eight million livres in the effort to keep its sovereign on the throne of Poland. Now, Saxons were weary of the struggle and determined not to sacrifice the electorate itself on Augustus’ behalf.
Accordingly, Charles’ regiments marched unopposed into Saxony and occupied the major cities, Leipzig and the capital, Dresden. On September 14, Charles established his headquarters at the castle of Altranstadt near Leipzig, and there he negotiated the terms of a peace treaty with two Saxon ministers. Charles demanded that Augustus give up the Polish crown forever and recognize Stanislaus in his place, as well as break his alliance with Russia and turn over to Charles all Swedish subjects employed by Augustus or fighting with the Saxon army. In return, Augustus would be allowed to keep the courtesy title of king although he could not call himself King of Poland. Finally, the Swedish army was to spend the coming winter in Saxony with all costs of supplies and provisions to be borne by the Saxon government. In Augustus’ absence, the Saxon emissaries accepted these terms, and on October 13, 1706, the Treaty of Altranstadt was signed.
For Augustus, not only the terms but also the timing of the treaty were unfortunate. At exactly the moment when Charles was negotiating Augustus’ abdication with the Saxon ministers, Augustus himself was moving through Poland with a large force of Russian cavalry commanded by Menshikov, bent on attacking a smaller Swedish force under Colonel Mardefelt. Augustus complained that he was so poor that he had nothing to eat, and Menshikov gave the needy King 10,000 ducats from his own pocket. The Tsar, who had invested thousands of roubles and thousands of men in propping up this Saxon ally, was disgusted when he heard about it. “You know very well that one always hears from the King, ‘Give, give! Money, money!’ and you also know how little money we have,” he wrote to Menshikov. “However,” Peter added resignedly, “if the King is always to be in this evil plight, I think it would be best to give him strong hopes of being satisfied on my arrival, and I shall try to come by the quickest route.”
While he was still with the Russian army and had just accepted Menshikov’s generosity, Augustus learned privately of the signing of the treaty in Saxony. He managed to keep the news from Menshikov, but still he was in an extremely awkward position. The terms of the treaty called for him to break his alliance with the Tsar and give up the war, and yet here he was, in the company of a Russian army, preparing to attack a Swedish force. Trying to avert a battle, Augustus sent secret messages to Mardefelt, the Swedish commander, informing him of the treaty and begging him to retreat and not fight. Here, Augustus’ reputation finally caught up with him. The King was so well known for duplicity and chicanery that Mardefelt assumed the message was only another of Augustus’ tricks and ignored it. The result, on October 29, 1706, was the Battle of Kalisz, a three-hour fight in which the Russians, Augustus’ former allies, badly defeated the Swedes with whom his ministers had just signed a treaty of peace. For Peter, it was a significant victory. Although the Russians outnumbered the Swedes two to one, Swedish soldiers had always before coped successfully with even larger odds. And it was Menshikov’s first significant success as an independent commander. The Tsar was overjoyed.
Augustus, embarrassed by this Russian victory, scrambled desperately to adjust himself to his new position between Peter and Charles. He wrote to Charles apologizing for the battle and offering excuses for his inability to prevent its occurrence. In a more tangible gesture, Augustus persuaded the unwitting Menshikov to give him control of the entire body of 1,800 Swedish prisoners and promptly sent them on parole back to Swedish Pomerania, where they would be free to fight the following spring.
Meanwhile, Augustus tried not to anger Peter. He had a private conversation with Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, the Tsar’s representative in Poland, and explained that he had had no choice: He could not leave Saxony to be devastated by Charles’ troops, and he had seen no way to save his homeland except by stepping down from the Polish throne. He assured Dolgoruky, however, that this was only a temporary subterfuge, and that as soon as the Swedish army left Saxony, he would renounce the treaty, raise a new army and resume his place at Peter’s side.
On November 30, Augustus arrived in Saxony and visited Charles at Altranstadt. He apologized personally for what had happened at Kalisz, and Charles accepted his explanation, but insisted that Augustus confirm his abdication by writing Stanislaus to congratulate him on his accession to the throne of Poland. Being completely within Charles’ power, Augustus swallowed even this bitter pill. As Charles had written discreetly but serenely in a letter to Stockholm, “For the present, it is I who am Elector of Saxony.”
The two Kings, first cousins (their mothers were sisters, both having been born Danish princesses), got along well together. Charles wrote to his sister that his cousin was “jolly and amusing. He is not tall, but of compact build; a little corpulent also. He wears his own hair, which is quite dark.” Nevertheless, it became obvious through the winter of 1706–07 that Augustus was in no hurry to put the treaty into effect. This was especially true of Clause II, which had been especially written to apply to the Livonian firebrand Johann Reinhold von Patkul.
The man most affected by the Treaty of Altranstadt was not Augustus but Patkul. The Livonian nobleman whose dedicated anti-Swedish efforts had helped to bring about the Great Northern War was a special object of Charles XII’s hatred. Thus, Clause II had been written into the Altranstadt treaty demanding that Augustus hand over to Charles all Swedish “traitors” harbored in Saxony. Patkul’s name headed the list. In the affair that followed, Augustus’ perfidy and Charles’ vengefulness were to horrify Europe.
Patkul was a flamboyant, talented and difficult man. When the war began, he served first as a general in Augustus’ army. He was wounded and, while recovering, decided to quit the King’s service in disapproval “of the way the King has treated his allies.” Peter, admiring Patkul’s qualities, immediately invited the homeless Livonian to Moscow and persuaded him to enter Russian service as a privy councilor and lieutenant general. For the next five years, Patkul was indefatigable in Peter’s service, but his imperious manner made him many enemies. He quarreled with Matveev in The Hague and Golitsyn in Vienna. Dolgoruky in Warsaw eventually refused even to exchange letters with him, and wrote to Fedor Golovin: “I think you know about Patkul. One must examine carefully not only his words but the letters in them. If he writes when he is in ill humor, he will not even give praise to God himself.”
Ironically, the sequence of events which led to Patkul’s downfall had its origin in a kindly element of his nature, his sympathy for the pathetic condition of the Russian troops whom Peter had sent to bolster the army of King Augustus. Eleven Russian regiments, numbering 9,000 men, and a force of Cossack cavalry, numbering 3,000 men, under command of Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, had set out from Kiev in the summer of 1704 to join Augustus in Poland. When they arrived, Patkul, as a Russian privy councilor and lieutenant general, superseded Golitsyn and took command. After a brief campaign in the autumn of 1704, Patkul was instructed by Augustus to retreat with his troops into Saxony. There, he found that no one took responsibility for his men. The ministers of the Saxon government had no use for Russian troops supplied to Augustus for his wars in Poland and refused to shelter and feed them. The men had not been paid for months; even if they had been paid, Saxon merchants would have refused their Russian money as worthless. With their thin, tattered uniforms and bare feet, the Russian soldiers were such an appalling sight that people came to stare at them. It seemed likely that during the winter ahead many of them would starve. But Patkul worked indefatigably on their behalf. He accused the Saxon ministers of acting contrary to the orders of the King-Elector in not supplying provisions and winter quarters. He wrote to Peter, to Golovin and to Menshikov, saying that the condition of the troops was bringing shame on the Tsar. They replied that the men should return to Russia—plainly impossible because the route through Poland was blocked by Swedish troops. Finally, to keep the men alive, Patkul raised large sums of money on his own personal credit. In the spring, he issued them new uniforms, and by summer their appearance was so altered that the Saxons admitted that they looked superior to German soldiers. Still no money came from Russia, and Patkul’s credit was running out.
To ensure their survival, Patkul eventually proposed to rent them for a while to the Austrian government, which would become responsible for their pay and provisions. Golovin replied that the Tsar would give his approval if it was a matter of extreme necessity. In December 1705, with the agreement of the Russian officers under him, Patkul signed the troops over to the service of the imperial government for a period of one year.
Patkul’s action alarmed the Saxon ministers, who feared that both the King and the Tsar would be angry that their refusal to aid the Russians had resulted in this loss of soldiers to the common cause. Patkul had been hated for a long time in Dresden. (He was never cautious in his letters, and many of his bitter denunciations of the inefficiency and corruption of Saxon ministers made their way back to the accused.) Augustus himself was wary. “I know Patkul well,” he complained to Dolgoruky, “and His Tsarish Majesty will soon learn also that Patkul has abandoned the service of his own master [Charles] only for his own plans and profit.”
Scandalously, Patkul’s act of mercy in signing the Russian troops over to Austria was made a charge of treason against him. Although the Saxon ministers had been informed at every stage of the negotiations, they suddenly charged him with harming Augustus’ interests by signing away thousands of troops under his command. His arrest was ordered. As it happened, Patkul, tired of being caught between larger forces and despairing of his Livonian ambitions, had just become engaged and was on the point of marriage to a rich widow. He had bought an estate in Switzerland, where he intended to give up politics and live in retirement.
On his return from his betrothal, Patkul was seized, taken to the castle of Sonnenstein and put in a cell with no bed and no food for the first five days. The arrest created a sensation across Europe. A foreign ambassador in the service of a sovereign monarch had been arrested in discharge of his functions. In Dresden, the Danish and imperial ambassadors protested strongly and withdrew from the capital on grounds that they were no longer safe. The imperial ambassador rebutted the charge of treason by announcing that he personally had seen Patkul’s authorization from Moscow to transfer the troops. Prince Golitsyn, now once again the senior officer of the Russian expeditionary troops, although personally antagonistic to Patkul, protested the arrest as an affront to his master the Tsar and demanded Patkul’s immediate release.
Frightened that they had gone too far, the Saxon ministers sent word of their action to Augustus in Poland. Augustus wrote back that he approved what they had done and wrote briefly to Peter that, in order to protect their joint interests, his privy council had been forced to arrest Patkul. The task of drafting the indictment was given to the King’s adjutant general, Arnstedt, who did it with great reluctance and wrote secretly to Shafirov in Moscow, “I am doing everything to save him. You must work to the same end. We must not and cannot allow such a fine man to perish.”
Peter agreed with Augustus that Patkul should have waited for a more definite order before signing the troops over to Austria, but he nevertheless demanded that the prisoner be sent to him immediately so that he could investigate the charges against him. Patkul was, after all, in Russian service and the troops in question were Russian troops. From Augustus came excuses and delays. In February 1706, Peter wrote again, demanding the return of Patkul. But the Swedes were then encamped near Grodno, and Augustus’ Saxon ministers knew that the Tsar was physically powerless to intervene. Patkul remained a prisoner.
Then came Charles’ rapid march back from Grodno, his invasion of Saxony, Augustus’ capitulation and the Treaty of Altranstadt. The handing over of Patkul and other “traitors” to Sweden was a condition of the treaty. Augustus was trapped. Having failed to release Patkul sooner, he was now to be forced to deliver him to Charles. Squirming desperately, he sent Major General Goltz to assure the Tsar that Patkul would never be handed over to the King of Sweden. Peter, disbelieving these promises and fearing greatly for Patkul’s life, appealed to the Emperor, to the Kings of Prussia and Denmark and to the Netherlands States General. To each, he said in essence: “We trust that the King of Sweden will willingly yield to the intercession of Your Majesty and that in doing this he may gain before the whole world the reputation of a great-hearted monarch and not be partner in a godless and barbarian business.”
Augustus hesitated and delayed in carrying out this article of the treaty, but Charles was implacable. Finally, on the night of March 27, 1707, Patkul was delivered into Swedish hands. He was kept at Altranstadt for three months in a cell, fastened to a stake with a heavy iron chain. In October 1707, he stood before a Swedish court-martial which had been instructed by Charles to judge him with “extreme severity.” Obediently, the Swedish court condemned him to be broken alive on the wheel, beheaded and his body quartered. Patkul’s composure finally deserted him when he was tied to the wheel. The executioner, a local peasant, gave him fifteen blows with a sledgehammer, breaking his arms and legs, and then started on his chest. Patkul screamed and groaned, and then when he could cry out no longer, he gurgled, “Take off my head.” The inexperienced executioner gave him four blows with a country axe before the neck was finally severed. The body was cut into quarters and exposed on the wheel, and his head was set on a post by the highway.