39
THE FRUITS OF POLTAVA
For Peter, the triumph at Poltava was so immense that, long after his victory dinner, he remained in a mood of intense excitement and festivity. It scarcely seemed possible that the perils which so long had threatened Russia had suddenly vanished as if the Ukrainian earth had simply opened up and swallowed them. Two days after the battle, the Tsar entered Poltava with his generals. He found the town in a grim condition after its two-month siege, its walls shattered and its 4,000 defenders exhausted and hungry. With the gallant Colonel Kelin, commander of the garrison, at his side, Peter gave thanks and celebrated his Name Day at the Spasskaya Church.
When Menshikov returned in triumph from the Swedish mass surrender at Perevoluchna, Peter began a distribution of rewards and decorations to the victorious army. Menshikov was promoted to the rank of field marshal; Sheremetev, already a field marshal, was given larger estates. All the generals of the Russian army received promotions or new estates, and each was subsequently presented with a portrait of Peter set in diamonds. The Tsar himself, who up to that time had held the rank of colonel in the army and captain in the navy, also allowed himself to be promoted: He now became a lieutenant general in the army and a rear admiral in the navy.
In granting these rewards and promotions, the charade with Romodanovsky was continued. Peter thanked the new Mock-Tsar for his promotion:
Sir:
The gracious letter of Your Majesty and the decree to His Excellency the Field Marshal and Cavalier [Knight of St. Andrew] Sheremetev by which I have been given in your name the rank of Admiral in the fleet and of Lieutenant General on land, have been announced to me. I have not deserved so much, but it has been given to me solely by your kindness. I therefore pray God for strength to be able to serve such honor in the future.
Peter.
Across Russia, there were celebrations; in Moscow, the citizens wept for joy. Poltava meant delivery from the foreign invader and, it was hoped, an end to the crushing taxes imposed by the war and to the prolonged absence of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. A formal celebration in the capital was postponed until the arrival of the Tsar with part of the army, but meanwhile the nineteen-year-old Tsarevich Alexis, acting in his father’s place, gave a huge banquet for all foreign ambassadors at Preobrazhenskoe. Peter’s sister, Princess Natalya, gave a great banquet for the important ladies of the capital. Tables loaded with free beer, bread and meat were placed in the street so that all could celebrate. For an entire week, church bells rang incessantly from morning to night and volleys of cannon thundered from the Kremlin walls.
By July 13, the army at Poltava had ended its celebrations. The bodies of the Russian and Swedish dead had been collected and buried in separate mass graves on the battlefield. The army was rested and it must now be moved: The region around the city had been stripped bare of provisions. (Eight days after the battle, 12,000 Kalmuck horsemen had arrived to reinforce the Russian army. They were too late to fight but they, like the rest of the army, still had to be fed.) Besides, with the Swedish army annihilated and the warrior King in flight, this was the moment to reap the harvest of victory. Two great regions, which had stubbornly thwarted the Tsar’s ambitions, the Baltic and Poland, now lay all but naked before him. At a council of war in the Poltava camp that lasted from July 14 to 16, the army was divided in two. Sheremetev with all of the infantry and part of the cavalry was to march north to the Baltic and seize the great fortress port of Riga. Menshikov with most of the cavalry would move westward into Poland to operate with Goltz against the Swedes under Krassow and those Poles who supported King Stanislaus.
Peter himself went from Poltava to Kiev. In the Ukrainian capital, he attended a service of thanksgiving in Santa Sophia Cathedral, an architectural masterpiece of layered domes, interlocking arches and glowing interior mosaics. The prefect of the cathedral, Feofan Prokopovich, preached a great, rolling panegyric to Peter and to Russia which so pleased the Tsar that he marked the priest for higher service; later, Prokopovich was to become the primary instrument of Peter’s reform of the Russian church.
Peter had not meant to remain in Kiev, but on August 6 he wrote to Menshikov that he had a fever:
For my sins, sickness has stricken me. It’s really an accursed illness, for although not now accompanied by shivering and temperatures but with nausea and pain, it lays me low unexpectedly, and so I do not think I will be able to leave here because of weakness earlier than the 10th or on the holy day of the Assumption.
Peter wanted all the world to know of his triumph. From the camp at Poltava, the Tsar sent letters to his envoys in foreign capitals, giving them details of the battle to pass along. At the Tsar’s command, Menshikov wrote a special letter, sent by the swiftest couriers, to the Duke of Marlborough. The West, accustomed to hearing of an unbroken string of Swedish triumphs, now received a deluge of letters and messages from the East, all describing the “complete victory” of the Tsar and the “total defeat” of Charles XII. From Flanders, where he had received the first news of the battle even before the arrival of Menshikov’s letter, Marlborough wrote to Godolphin in London:
We have no confirmation as yet of the battle between the Swedes and Muscovites, but should it be true of the first being so entirely beaten as is reported, what a melancholy reflection it is that after constant success for ten years, he [Charles XII] should in two hours’ mismanagement and ill success, ruin himself and his country.
On August 26, Menshikov’s letter arrived, and Marlborough wrote to Sarah, his Duchess:
This afternoon I have received a letter from Prince Menshikov, favorite and general of the Tsar, of the entire victory over the Swedes. If this unfortunate King had been so well advised as to have made peace the beginning of the summer, he might, in great measure, have influenced the peace between France and the Allies, and have made his kingdom happy; whereas now he is entirely in the power of his neighbors.
As news of the victory spread across the continent, opinion in Europe, previously hostile to and even contemptuous of Peter and Russia, began to change. The philosopher Leibniz, who after Narva had announced his hope of seeing Charles rule over Muscovy as far as the Amur, now proclaimed that the destruction of the Swedish army was one of the glorious turning points of history:
As for me, who am for the good of the human race, I am very glad that so great an empire is putting itself in the ways of reason and order, and I consider the Tsar in that respect as a person whom God has destined to great works. He has succeeded in having good troops. I do not doubt that … he will succeed in also having good foreign relations, and I shall be charmed if I can help him make science flourish in his country. I maintain even that he can do in that respect finer things than all other princes have done.
Leibniz suddenly became a bubbling fountain of ideas and suggestions for this potential new patron. Offering his services, he stressed his readiness to draw up plans for an academy of science, for museums and colleges and even for designing medals to commemorate Poltava.
In hurrying to adjust to the Tsar’s new influence, Leibniz was doing what all Europe was about to do. The diplomatic turn-around came quickly. Proposals for new arrangements and new treaties came flocking to Peter. The King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover both signaled their desire for Russian ties. The Russian ambassador in Copenhagen, Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, was informed that Louis XIV would be glad to make an alliance with the Tsar: France proposed to guarantee Russian conquests on the Baltic in order to injure British and Dutch trade. With Charles humbled, Sweden’s enemies hastened back into the field. King Frederick IV of Denmark proposed to Dolgoruky a new Danish-Russian alliance against Sweden. This was very pleasant and ironic for Dolgoruky, who had already spent many months trying in vain to negotiate exactly such an alliance. Peter agreed, and that month Danish troops crossed the sound and invaded southern Sweden while the satisfied Dolgoruky observed the landing from a ship in the invasion fleet.
The most immediate impact of Poltava was on events in Poland. As soon as news of the battle arrived, Augustus of Saxony issued a proclamation repudiating the Treaty of Altranstadt by which he had been forced to give up the Polish crown, and, with a Saxon army of 14,000, he entered Poland and summoned his Polish subjects to renewed allegiance. The Polish magnates, without Charles’ army there to compel their acceptance of Stanislaus, welcomed Augustus back. Stanislaus fled, first to Swedish Pomerania, then to Sweden, and finally to Charles’ camp inside the Ottoman Empire.
In late September, Peter, recovering from his illness in Kiev, began a long, circular journey which would last three months and take him from the Ukrainian capital to Warsaw, East Prussia, Riga, St. Petersburg and, finally, to Moscow. Early in October, after passing through Warsaw, he sailed down the Vistula, meeting Augustus on board the Polish King’s royal barge near Thorn. Augustus was nervous; the two monarchs had not met since he had broken his vows to Peter by signing the treaty with Charles, withdrawing from the war and leaving Russia to face Sweden alone. But the Tsar was gracious and good-humored, telling Augustus to forget the past; he understood that Augustus had been forced to do what he had done. Nevertheless, at dinner Peter could not resist an ironic thrust at Augustus’ faithlessness. “I always wear the cutlass you gave me,” Peter said, “but it seems you do not care for the sword I gave you as I see you are not wearing it.” Augustus replied that he prized Peter’s gift but that somehow in the haste of his departure from Dresden he had left it behind. “Ah,” said Peter, “then let me give you another.” Whereupon he handed to Augustus the same sword he had given him before, which had been discovered in Charles’ baggage at Poltava.
It was sufficient revenge. On October 9, 1709, Peter and Augustus signed a new treaty of alliance in which the Tsar once again promised to help Augustus gain and hold the throne of Poland, while Augustus again committed himself to fight against Sweden and all the Tsar’s enemies. The two agreed that their objective was not to destroy Sweden but simply to force Charles back into Swedish territory and render him powerless to attack their neighbors. Peter’s part of the bargain was carried out almost before the treaty was signed. By the end of October, Menshikov’s troops had secured the greater part of Poland without a fight. Krassow, the Swedish general, had decided that his small force could not engage the Russian army and had retreated to the Baltic coast, taking refuge in the fortified towns of Stettin and Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania. Stanislaus accompanied him as a refugee, and thereafter for many years the fiction that Stanislaus was King of Poland was maintained only in his presence.
From Thorn, Peter sailed farther down the Vistula to Marienwerder to meet King Frederick I of Prussia, who was alarmed by the emergence of Russia’s new power in Northern Europe but was eager to acquire any Swedish territories in Germany which might now be attainable. Peter understood that the King’s intention was to collect spoils without doing any fighting, and he behaved coolly. Nevertheless, the meeting was successful: A treaty was signed establishing a defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia, and Menshikov, who was present, was awarded the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle.
In his meeting with Frederick, Peter also arranged a marriage. This was the second foreign marriage Peter was then negotiating for a member of the Russian royal house, and both represented a drastic change in Russian policy. Traditionally, Russian princes married only Russian women, avoiding the contamination of bringing non-Orthodox believers into the royal line. From the time of the Great Embassy, Peter had wanted to change this, but no foreign monarch had seen much profit in marrying a relative into the Muscovite dynasty which was considered a negligible force in European affairs. Since 1707, Peter had been dickering with the minor German House of Wolfenbüttel, hoping to persuade the Duke to permit his daughter Charlotte to marry the Tsarevich Alexis. Negotiations had dragged, as the Duke was in no hurry to marry a daughter to the son of a tsar on the verge of being toppled from his throne by the King of Sweden. Obstacles to the marriage suddenly disappeared after Poltava, and dynastic links with Moscow now seemed highly attractive. Even before the Duke of Wolfenbüttel could signal his change of mind, a messenger from Vienna arrived with the Emperor’s offer of his youngest sister, Archduchess Magdalena, as a potential bride for the Tsarevich. Peter continued to negotiate with the Duke, however, and a marriage contract was drawn up.
The second foreign marriage Peter arranged was between his niece Anne, daughter of his half-brother, Ivan, and the young Duke Frederick William of Courland, a nephew of Frederick of Prussia. As part of the arrangement, Peter agreed that the Russian troops occupying the Duchy of Courland, a small principality south of Riga, would be withdrawn and that Courland would be allowed to remain neutral in future wars. Frederick of Prussia was pleased by this, as it placed a buffer between himself and the Russians on his Baltic frontier. For Peter, Anne’s marriage was important. She was the first Russian princess to marry a foreigner in more than 200 years. Her acceptance was a sign of Europe’s recognition of Russia’s new status and signaled that thereafter Peter and subsequent tsars could use marriageable Russian princesses to intervene in the complicated dynastic affairs of the German states.*
Leaving East Prussia, Peter traveled north through Courland to join Sheremetev, whose troops had completed the siege works around Riga but who had delayed opening the bombardment until the Tsar could be present. On November 9, Peter arrived and on the 13th with his own hands fired the first three shells from the mortars into the city. This act assuaged his festering sense of grievance over his treatment by Riga when he passed through thirteen years before at the start of the Great Embassy. Riga resisted fiercely, however, and before departing the Tsar instructed Sheremetev not to leave his men in the trenches through the rigors of the Baltic winter, but simply to blockade the city and put the troops in winter quarters.
From Riga, Peter continued northeast to St. Petersburg, his “paradise” now secure. He did not stay long, taking time only to issue orders for building a new church in honor of St. Samson, the saint on whose day the Battle of Poltava had been fought, to lay the keel of a new warship to be called Poltava and to give instructions for the design and embellishment of public gardens. Then he traveled south to Moscow to celebrate his triumph. He arrived at Kolomenskoe on December 12, but had to wait there for a week until the two Guards regiments which were to participate in the parade could arrive and the final decorations and arrangements could be completed. On December 18, everything was ready and the huge parade was beginning when Peter learned that Catherine had just given birth to a baby girl. Instantly, he postponed the parade and hurried with his friends to see the child, who was named Elizabeth.
Two days later, the victory celebration began. Beneath classical Roman arches trotted squadrons of Russian cavalry and horse-drawn artillery, followed by the foot soldiers of the Guards, the Preobrazhensky Regiment in bottle-green coats, and the Semyonovsky Regiment in blue. Then came Peter, his sword drawn, riding an English horse given to him by Augustus, and wearing the same colonel’s uniform he had worn at Poltava. As he passed, women threw flowers. Behind the Russian leaders were 300 captured Swedish battle flags, reversed and trailing in the dirt, then the defeated generals walking in single file, led by Field Marshal Rehnskjold and Count Piper, and finally long columns of soldiers—more than 17,000—marching as prisoners through the snowy Moscow streets. The following day, Peter attended a Te Deum mass in the Assumption Cathedral. The crowd was enormous, and the Tsar stood in the middle of the church pressed on all sides by people.
The formal announcement of victory and the presentation of awards took place with Romodanovsky on the throne. One by one, the two field marshals, Sheremetev and Menshikov, followed by Peter as a colonel promoted to lieutenant general, approached the throne and reported their victories to the seated Mock-Tsar. Sheremetev described and was given credit for the victory at Poltava and Menshikov for the capture of the Swedes at Perevoluchna. Peter described and was given credit only for his victory at Lesnaya. On hearing their reports, Romodanovsky thanked them formally and confirmed their previously announced promotions and rewards. When Rehnskjold, Piper and the other Swedish generals were brought in, they were astonished to see on the throne, not the tall man who had been their host at dinner after the battle and had led them through the streets of Moscow, but a round-shouldered, older man whom they didn’t recognize. A row of tall screens on one side of the hall was removed, revealing tables set with silver plate and candelabra. Hundreds of candles were lighted to dispel the winter gloom, and the crowd swarmed to take seats, regardless of rank. Romodanovsky sat on a dais attended by the two Field Marshals, Chancellor Golovkin and the Tsar. The Swedish generals had a separate table. Each time a toast was proposed, the master of ceremonies, standing behind Peter’s armchair, fired a pistol shot out the window as a signal to the artillery and musketeers outside. A few minutes later, as glasses were raised, the walls shook with the thunder of the cannon. The day ended with a brilliant fireworks display which, according to the Danish ambassador, was far superior to one he had witnessed in London which “had cost seventy thousand pounds sterling.”
The Swedish prisoners—those taken at Poltava and the much larger number captured at Perevoluchna—had finally reached their destination, Moscow, not as conquerors but as part of a triumphal procession led by the Tsar. The senior generals were treated with courtesy; several were allowed to return to Stockholm carrying terms of peace proposed by Peter and an offer to exchange prisoners of war. Young Prince Max of Württemberg was released unconditionally, but died of fever on his way home; Peter gave him a military funeral and sent his body back to his mother in Stuttgart. Those Swedish officers who were willing, Peter enrolled in his own army. Once they had taken the required oath of allegiance, he awarded them the same rank they had held in the Swedish army and gave them command of Russian squadrons, battalions and regiments. None was asked to serve against his own king or compatriots in the Great Northern War. Instead, they were posted to garrisons in the south or east, where they patrolled the frontiers, holding the line against incursions by the Kuban Tatars, the Kazaks and other Asiatic peoples. The rest of the officers were dispersed as internees into all corners of Russia. At first, they were allowed considerable freedom of movement, but some who had been given permission to return on parole to Sweden never came back, and a few who had entered Russian service used their Russian rank to escape. After this abuse of trust, the rest were severely restricted.
As the years passed, these Swedish officers, scattered through all the provinces of the Russian empire, often lived in want, as they had no money. The Swedish common soldiers received small allowances from their government at home, but nothing was sent to the officers. Of the 2,000 officers, only 200 received money from their families; the rest were obliged to learn a trade in order to feed themselves. In time, these former warriors, hitherto knowledgeable only in the art of soldiering, developed an astonishing number of talents. In Siberia alone, a thousand Swedish officers turned themselves into painters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, turners, joiners, tailors, shoemakers, makers of playing cards, snuffboxes and excellent gold and silver brocade. Others became musicians, innkeepers and one a traveling puppeteer. Some who were unable to learn a trade became woodsmen. Still others set up schools, teaching the children of their fellow prisoners (some had summoned their wives from Sweden to join them; others had married Russian women). These children were better educated than most in Russia, learning mathematics, Latin, Dutch and French as well as Swedish. Soon, Russians in the neighborhood were sending their own children to the foreign schoolmasters. Some of the officers embraced the Russian religion and joined the Orthodox Church, while others held fast to their Protestant religion and built their own churches in the wilderness. Although Siberia generally was a bleak and joyless landscape, the Russian governor, Prince Matthew Gagarin, had a reputation for generosity, and Swedish officers living under his jurisdiction praised his warm and forgiving nature. In time, as the Westernizing of the state administration developed, Peter needed skilled administrators and bureaucrats. A number of former Swedish officers were offered positions and came to St. Petersburg to work in the newly established Colleges (Ministries) of War, the Admiralty, Justice, Finance and Mines.
The common Swedish soldiers, over 15,000 of them, were treated more severely. They, too, were offered a chance to enter Peter’s service (an entire regiment of 600 Swedish dragoons served under a German colonel against the Kuban Tatars). But many refused and were sent to do forced labor. Some worked in the mines in the Urals and others were employed in the dockyards or on the fortifications of St. Petersburg. Although records were kept of the whereabouts of interned officers, none were kept of the common soldiers. Many were in towns or on the estates of the Russian nobility, and married and settled down to life in the Russian church and Russian society. When peace finally came in 1721, twelve years after Poltava, and the Swedish prisoners were allowed to go home, only about 5,000 of Charles’ proud grenadiers, the remnant of an army of 40,000, could be found to return to the towns and villages of their native Sweden.
In the spring of 1710, Peter plucked the military fruits of Poltava. Russian armies, unopposed by any Swedish army in the field, swept irresistibly through Sweden’s Baltic provinces. While Sheremetev with 30,000 men besieged Riga to the south, Peter sent General-Admiral Fedor Apraxin, newly made a Count and a Privy Councilor, with 18,000 men to besiege Vyborg in the north. This town at the head of the Karelian Isthmus, seventy-five miles northwest of St. Petersburg, was an important fortress and an assembly point for Swedish offensive threats against St. Petersburg. A Russian attempt on Vyborg from the land side in 1706 had failed, but now there was something new in Peter’s favor. His growing Baltic fleet, consisting of frigates and numerous galleys, the latter craft propelled by a combination of sails and oars and ideally suited for maneuvering in the rocky waters of the Finnish coast, was available both to transport men and supplies and to keep Swedish naval squadrons at bay. As soon as the Neva was clear of ice, in April, Russian ships sailed from Kronstadt with Vice Admiral Cruys in command and Peter, in his new rank as rear admiral, as Cruys’ deputy. The ships made their way through the ice floes in the Gulf of Finland and arrived off Vyborg to find Apraxin’s besieging army cold and hungry. The fleet brought provisions and reinforcements, raising Apraxin’s strength to 23,000. Peter, after studying the siege plans and instructing Apraxin to take the town no matter what the cost, returned to St. Petersburg in a small vessel, narrowly escaping capture by a Swedish warship.
During the following month, in St. Petersburg, the Tsar again was ill. At the beginning of June, learning that the siege of Vyborg was nearing an end, he wrote to Apraxin, “I hear that you intend making the assault today. If this has already been ordered, God aid you. But if it is not fixed for today, then put it off till Sunday or Monday when I can get there, for this is the last day that I take medicine and tomorrow I shall be free.”
On June 13, 1710, Vyborg with its garrison of 154 officers and 3,726 men fell to Apraxin. Peter arrived just in time to witness the surrender. The subsequent clearing and permanent occupation of Kexholm and all the Karelian Isthmus provided a northern buffer one hundred miles thick for St. Petersburg, meaning that Peter’s “holy paradise” would no longer be subjected to surprise attacks by Swedish armies from the north. Relieved and happy, the Tsar wrote from Vyborg to Sheremetev, “And thus through the taking of this town, final safety has been gained for St. Petersburg.” To Catherine, he wrote, “Now, by God’s help, it is a strong cushion for St. Petersburg.”*
All the Swedish citadels on the southern coast of the upper Baltic surrendered during the summer of 1710. On July 10, the great city of Riga with its garrison of 4,500 fell to Sheremetev after an eight-month siege. The city had been pounded by 8,000 Russian mortar shells and the garrison was decimated by hunger and disease which Peter called “the wrath of God.” Although Peter’s agreement with Augustus had assigned Livonia and Riga to Poland, Peter now decided that the city and the province had been bought with Russian blood at Poltava at a time when Augustus was no longer King of Poland and a Russian ally. The Tsar therefore determined to keep them. Of these territories, he was to become a tolerant overlord. Although requiring an oath of allegiance from the Baltic nobility and Riga merchants, he promised to respect all of their former privileges, rights, customs, possessions and immunities. The churches were to remain Lutheran, and German was to remain the language of provincial administration. For many years, the essential problem in these provinces was simple survival, the war having reduced the land and towns to a semi-desert, but the nobility and gentry were not displeased to exchange a Swedish master for a Russian one.
Three months after the fall of Riga, Reval—the last of the fruits of Poltava—capitulated. Peter was overjoyed. “The last town has surrendered and Livonia and Estonia are entirely cleared of the enemy,” he wrote. “In a word, the enemy does not now possess a single town on the left side of the Baltic, not even an inch of land. It is now incumbent upon us to pray the Lord God for a good peace.”
* Anne’s marriage was celebrated a year later in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, her nineteen-year-old bridegroom drank himself into illness during the celebrations and died on the journey home. Anne remained Duchess of Courland until 1730 when she was summoned to St. Petersburg to become Empress Anne of Russia.
* Through the years, Russians have continued to try to protect St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, from threats from this direction. For 109 years, while Finland was an Imperial Russian grand duchy, the threat was non-existent, but in 1918, Finland gained independence and Vyborg and Karelia were attached to the new state. The Soviet government felt keenly the naked exposure of Leningrad, its second largest city, now only twenty miles from the Finnish frontier, and desired, as Peter had, a larger “cushion.” In 1940, the Soviet Union attacked Finland primarily to regain this buffer territory. At first, the “Winter War” went badly for the Soviets. The Finns fought gallantly and attracted the admiration of the West. The Soviet army, its officer corps riddled by Stalin’s purges, was stopped in its tracks. Eventually, sheer weight of numbers had an effect and the Red Army ground its way through the Finnish Mannerheim Line. The peace which followed established a new frontier in approximately the same place as in Peter’s day. This extra buffer helped save Leningrad during the 900-day siege of the city between 1941 and 1943 by the Nazi and Finnish armies.