42

FIFTY BLOWS ON THE PRUTH

The key to Peter’s campaign lay in the two Christian principalities, Walachia and Moldavia. Lying south of the Carpathians and north of the Danube, these regions today make up a sizable piece of the southeastern Soviet Union and a large part of present-day Romania. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, seeking security, they placed themselves under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte, retaining their internal autonomy but agreeing to pay the sultan an annual tribute in return for protection.

With the passage of time, however, the Porte began assuming the right to appoint and dismiss their native princes. Anxious to make their offices hereditary, the princes secretly began looking elsewhere for protection. During the reign of Tsar Alexis, there were preliminary discussions with Moscow about Russia assuming suzerainty, but the Tsar was still too heavily involved with Poland.

In 1711, Walachia, the stronger and richer of the two principalities, was ruled by a prince (the local title was hospodar) named Constantine Brancovo, wily and flexible, who had come to office by poisoning his predecessor and had used his talents not only to cling to his title for twenty years but to build a powerful army and great personal wealth. From the Sultan’s viewpoint, Brancovo was much too rich and powerful for a satellite prince, and the hospodar was marked for replacement once an opportunity arrived. Inevitably, Brancovo sensed this feeling and, convinced after Poltava that Peter’s star was ascending, he made a secret treaty with the Tsar. In case of a Russian war with Turkey, Walachia would side with the Tsar, putting 30,000 troops in the field and furnishing supplies for Russian troops who reached Walachia—supplies to be paid for, however, by Peter. In return, Peter promised to guarantee the independence of Walachia and the hereditary rights of Brancovo, and he made Brancovo a Knight of the Order of St. Andrew.

Moldavia was weaker and poorer than Walachia, and its rulers had changed rapidly. The latest, Demetrius Cantemir, in 1711 had been in office for less than a year, appointed by the Sultan with the understanding that he would help the Porte seize and overthrow his neighbor Brancovo, for which service he would become hospodar of both Walachia and Moldavia. Arriving in his new capital, Jassy, however, Cantemir also sniffed a shift in fortune and began negotiating in utmost secrecy with Peter. In April 1711, he signed a treaty with the Tsar, agreeing to assist a Russian invasion and furnish 10,000 troops. Moldavia, in return, was to be declared an independent state under Russian protection. No tribute would be paid, and the Cantemir family would rule as a hereditary dynasty.

It was with the promise of help from these two ambitious princes, each of whom hated the other, that Peter launched his campaign against the Turks.

Cantemir’s decision was popular in Moldavia. “You have done well in inviting the Russians to free us from the Turkish yoke,” his nobles told him. “If we had found out that you intended to go meet the Turks, we had resolved to abandon you and surrender to the Tsar Peter.” But Cantemir also knew that the Ottoman army was on the march and that, as the Grand Vizier drew closer, it would become obvious that he and his province had deserted to the Tsar. Accordingly, he sent messages to Sheremetev, who commanded the main Russian army, urging the Field Marshal to hurry. If the main body could not move faster, Cantemir pleaded for at least an advance guard of 4,000 men to shield his people from Ottoman vengeance. Sheremetev was also receiving commands to hurry from Peter, who wanted him to reach and cross the Dniester by May 15 to protect the principalities and encourage the Serbs and Bulgars to rise.

To ensure that the Moldavians would look on this arrival of foreign troops as a blessing, Sheremetev had been equipped with printed messages from the Tsar to all Balkan Christians:

You know how the Turks have trampled into the mire our faith, have seized by treachery all the Holy Places, have ravaged and destroyed many churches and monasteries, have practiced much deceit, and what wretchedness they have caused, and how many widows and orphans they have seized upon and dispersed as wolves do the sheep. Now I come to your aid. If your heart wishes, do not run away from my great empire, for it is just. Let not the Turks deceive you, and do not run away from my word. Shake off fear, and fight for the faith, for the church, for which we shall shed our last drop of blood.

Peter also gave his Field Marshal strict orders about the behavior of Russian troops during their march across Moldavia: They were to observe decorum and pay for everything they took from Christians; any pillaging was to be punished by death. Once Cantemir declared for the Russians and the first Russian troops began to appear, the Moldavians flung themselves on the Turks in their midst, first in Jassy, then throughout the principality. Many were killed; others lost their cattle, sheep, horses, clothes, silver and jewels.

Originally, Peter’s plan had been for Sheremetev to march south straight down the east bank of the Pruth River to its junction with the Danube and there to deny passage to the Turks. However, on May 30, when Sheremetev arrived on the Dniester near Soroka (two weeks behind Peter’s schedule), Cantemir begged him to march directly to Jassy, the Moldavian capital. Sheremetev yielded, and on June 5 his army camped near Jassy on the west bank of the Pruth. Sheremetev’s excuse for disregarding Peter’s order was that the army had suffered greatly crossing the steppe under the hot sun and needed replenishment. The animals had had a minimum of forage, the grass having been burned by Tatar horsemen who hovered on his flanks. Further, Sheremetev realized that he probably was already too late to prevent the Turks crossing the Danube and that by crossing the Pruth he would be in a better position to protect Moldavia from the Grand Vizier.

Peter, reaching Soroka behind Sheremetev, was angry at his Field Marshal and wrote that the old general had let the Turks outmarch him. Nevertheless, once Sheremetev had changed the original plan, the Tsar, following behind, had no choice but to accept the new route; anything else would have divided the army. Peter’s own force had suffered greatly on the march, and the men were exhausted when they reached the Pruth on June 24. Leaving them there, the Tsar rode ahead, crossing the river and entering Jassy for a conference with Cantemir. He was received with regal pomp and a huge banquet. The hospodar made a good first impression: “a man very sensible and useful in council” was the Tsar’s appraisal. While in Jassy, Peter received two emissaries bearing an offer of peace from the Grand Vizier. The offer was indirect, but it reflected the Vizier’s—and behind him, the Sultan’s—reluctance to fight a battle and provoke the Russians into sending a fleet out onto the Black Sea. Peter rejected the offer. Surrounded by his army, with assurances of Moldavian and Walachian support, and hearing reports that the Grand Vizier was reluctant to fight, the Tsar felt confident of victory. In this happy mood, Peter took Cantemir to visit the Russian army camped on the Pruth. There, with Catherine and his guests beside him, he celebrated the second anniversary of Poltava, the great victory which had made all this possible.

Even as the Tsar was celebrating, his military situation was deteriorating. The Grand Vizier had completed the crossing of the Danube at Isaccea and, informed of Peter’s rejection of peace, was marching north with an army of 200,000 men. Moreover, there was an ominous absence of news from Walachia, which, in the long run, was far more important to Peter’s campaign than Moldavia. Everything in Walachia depended on the Hospodar Brancovo. Until he raised his princely banner for the Tsar in public, the nobility and the common people could hardly be expected to follow Peter’s call to rise against the Turk. But Brancovo was fearful and therefore cautious. Knowing that a huge Turkish army was in the field, knowing also what would happen if the Turks won and he was on the losing side, he held back from public support of the Russians. His boyars agreed. “It is dangerous to declare for Russia until the Tsar’s army crosses the Danube,” they advised. When the Turkish army crossed the Danube first, Brancovo made his choice. Just as the Grand Vizier, informed of the Hospodar’s treason, was ordering his arrest, Brancovo suddenly switched sides again. Using as a pretext a letter from Peter whose tone he said offended him, Brancovo announced that he no longer considered himself bound by his secret treaty with the Tsar, and he handed over to the Turks the supplies he had amassed for the Russian army with Peter’s money. This betrayal had an immediate and devastating effect on the Russian campaign. The provisions had vanished, and the Moldavians could not make up the deficit.

Nevertheless, Peter did not give up the campaign. He was told that large supplies had been collected for the Turks and lay without guard on the lower Pruth near its junction with the Danube. As the main Turkish army had crossed the Danube and was marching north up the east bank of the Pruth to meet him, the Tsar decided to cross to the west bank and move south. If he succeeded, he would outflank the Grand Vizier, capture the Turkish supplies and cut the Ottoman army off from its base. To increase the chance of success, Peter detached Ronne with the whole of the Russian cavalry, 12,000 horsemen, to plunge ahead down the west bank of the Pruth into the Ottoman rear, capturing or burning the magazines and storehouses at Braila on the Danube. On June 27, the cavalry rode off, and three days later the infantry crossed the Pruth and began moving south down the west bank in three divisions. The first was led by General Janus, the second by the Tsar and the third by Repnin.

Janus was first to make contact with the Turks. As the Russians marched south on the west bank of the Pruth and the Turks advanced north on the opposite bank, the advance guards of the two armies caught sight of each other across the river on July 8. Both sides were startled to find themselves in such close proximity. When the Grand Vizier was told, he was frightened and his first thought was to retreat. “For as he had never before seen enemy troops and was by nature a great poltroon, he at once conceived himself as lost,” wrote Poniatowski, traveling with the Ottoman army. Together, the Tatar Khan Devlet Gerey, Poniatowski and the Aga of the Janissaries steadied his courage, and the next day the Turkish army continued its march northward. Turkish engineers rapidly threw up bridges so that the army could cross back to the western bank to meet its enemy. Peter, learning that the Turks were crossing to his side of the river, immediately ordered Janus to fall back and rejoin the main army.

Peter was holding a position behind a marsh south of Stanilesti, and Janus’ tired men fell back into these entrenchments. They got little rest. The following day, a Sunday, the Turks, who had come up quickly behind, launched repeated attacks. Cantemir’s Moldavians, despite their inexperience, stood well, and the Russians as a whole held their ground. But the Tsar’s urgent messages to Repnin to bring the third division forward to relieve the other two were fruitless. Repnin’s men were pinned down by Tatar cavalry at Stanilesti and could advance no farther.

That evening, after a long day of Turkish assaults mounting in strength, and with the Tsar alarmed by the absence of Repnin’s men and the lack of provisions, a Russian council of war was held. It had little choice: Retreat was imperative. The withdrawal began during the night and continued through the following morning in the direction of Repnin’s division at Stanilesti. The retreat was a nightmare. The Turks pressed closely behind, launching continual attacks on the Russian rear guard. Tatar squadrons galloped in and out among the Russian wagons, and most of the Russian baggage train with the remaining provisions was lost. The Russian infantry was exhausted and preoccupied by thirst. Companies and battalions formed squares and marched in this formation to the riverbank, where, by sections, some drank while others beat off the Tatar horsemen. Only late on Monday afternoon, July 9, was all the Russian infantry reunited at Stanilesti, where on a promontory they began digging shallow trenches to make a stand against the horsemen who swarmed around them.

Before dark, long lines of Turkish infantry including the Janissaries began to arrive, and, in the presence of the Grand Vizier, the Ottoman elite guards launched a major attack on the sketchily constructed Russian camp. Russian discipline held as Peter’s men poured heavy fire into the advancing ranks of Janissaries. Its first attack broken, the Turkish infantry fell back and began, in its turn, to throw up a line of entrenchments completely hemming in the Russian camp. The Turkish artillery arrived and the guns were rolled into place in a great crescent; by nightfall, 300 cannon pointed their muzzles at the Russian camp. Thousands of Tatar horsemen, together with Poles and Cossacks provided by Charles, patrolled the opposite riverbank. There was no escape: The Tsar and his army were surrounded.

The strength of the Turks was overwhelming: 120,000 infantry and 80,000 cavalry. Peter’s strength was only 38,000 infantry; his cavalry was far to the south with Ronne. He was pinned down against a river and ringed by 300 cannon which could sweep his camp with shot and shell. Most important, his men were so exhausted by hunger and heat that some of them could no longer fight. It was difficult even to draw water from the river; the men sent for the purpose came under intense fire from the Tatar horsemen massed on the opposite bank. His own earthworks were scanty, and one entire section was covered only by the bodies of dead wagon horses and makeshift chevaux de frise. In the center of the camp, a shallow pit had been dug to protect Catherine and her women. Surrounded by wagons and shielded from the sun by an awning, it was a frail barrier against Turkish cannonballs. Inside, Catherine waited calmly, while around her the other women wept.

Peter’s situation was impossible. That night he could look out all around him on the thousands of campfires of the huge Ottoman army sparkling in the low-lying hills on both sides of the river as far as the eye could reach. In the morning, when the Turks undoubtedly would attack, he would be doomed. He, the Russian Tsar, the victor of Poltava, would be overwhelmed and perhaps pulled through the streets of Constantinople in a cage. The fruits of twenty years of arduous, colossal toil were about to evaporate in a day. Could it have come to this? Yet, why not? Had not exactly the same thing happened to his enemy Charles? And for an identical reason: Too proud, too sure of his destiny, he had ventured too far onto enemy ground.

Actually, the situation was much worse than Charles’ at Perevoluchna. There, the Swedish army had not been surrounded by superior forces, and the King himself had found a way to escape. But here the Turks held every card: They could take the Russian army, the new Tsaritsa and, most important, the man on whom everything else rested, the Tsar himself. What would he have to give up, what huge sacrifices in territory or treasure would Russia have to pay to win his freedom?

There is a story that at this moment the Tsar asked whether Neculce, the commander of the Moldavian troops, could somehow escort Catherine and himself to the Hungarian frontier. Neculce refused, knowing that even if he were somehow able to pass through the surrounding lines, the whole of Moldavia was now swarming with Tatar horsemen. Some have said that this request showed cowardice on Peter’s part. But when the battle was lost and the army on the verge of surrender, the chief of state had to think of saving the nation. Peter knew that at this time he was Russia. He knew what a blow it would be to Russia if, along with the army he had so carefully built, he himself was taken prisoner. In time, the lost army could be replaced—if he was free to do it. But his own loss would be irreparable.

The next morning, Tuesday, the 10th, it should have ended. The Turkish artillery opened fire and the Russians prepared for a final stand—but the Janissaries did not attack. As a measure of desperation, Peter ordered a sortie, and thousands of weary Russians rose from their trenches and flung themselves on the first lines of Ottomans, inflicting heavy losses before they were forced to retreat. During the sortie, the Russians took prisoners, and from one of these Peter learned that the Janissaries had suffered heavily in the previous day’s fighting and were disinclined to make another full-scale attack on the Russian lines. At the very least, this might give the Tsar a little maneuverability in negotiating the terms of his surrender.

During the lull, Peter proposed to Sheremetev and his Vice Chancellor, Shafirov, that he send an envoy to the Grand Vizier to see what terms the Turks might offer. Sheremetev, clearly appraising the military situation, bluntly told his master that the proposal was ridiculous. Why would the Turks be willing to consider anything except surrender? The cat does not negotiate with the mouse. But Catherine was present at this council, and she encouraged her husband to proceed. Sheremetev was ordered to draft a proposal in his own name as commander of the Russian army.

In preparing the offer, Peter viewed his prospects with gloomy realism. Knowing that Charles was a guest and now an ally of the Sultan, he assumed that any peace would have to include a settlement of his disputes with Sweden as well as Turkey. He assumed that his concessions would have to be drastic. Ultimately, although this was not contained in his first proposal, he was prepared to surrender Azov, dismantle Tagonrog and give up everything he had won from the Turks over twenty years. To the Swedes, he would restore Livonia, Estonia, Karelia—everything he had taken in war except St. Petersburg, his “beloved paradise.” If this was not enough, he would trade away the ancient Russian city of Pskov and other territories. In addition, he was prepared to allow Charles to return home to Sweden, to recognize Stanislaus as King of Poland and to promise to cease his own intervention in Polish affairs. To tempt the Grand Vizier and other Turkish officers, he would offer large bribes: 150,000 roubles was the gift he suggested for the Grand Vizier. By afternoon, the proposals were drafted, and Shafirov was sent with a trumpeter under a white flag to present them to the Grand Vizier.

Unknown to the Russians, Shafirov’s arrival in the Grand Vizier’s camp produced a profound relief in that hesitant warrior. In his multi-chambered silken tent, the elderly Baltadji had been greatly perplexed and ill at ease. His best troops, the Janissaries, were grumbling about renewing the assault. A further attack against even a weakened Russian camp might severely deplete their numbers at a time when Hapsburg Austria was rumored to be mobilizing for another war. Further, the Grand Vizier possessed a piece of news which Peter had not yet learned: Ronne’s Russian cavalry had captured Braila, seized many of the Turkish army’s supplies and burned some of its powder magazines. At his elbow, Poniatowski and the Tatar Khan were urging him to deliver a final attack and finish at one stroke the battle, the war and the Tsar. Reluctantly, Baltadji was about to agree and give the orders for a grand assault when Shafirov was brought into his tent. The Russian Vice Chancellor handed over the letter from Sheremetev which suggested that war was not in the true interests of either party and had been brought about by the intrigues of others. The two generals, therefore, should stop the bloodshed and investigate possible terms of peace.

The Grand Vizier saw the hand of Allah. He could be a victor and a hero without risking further battle. Overriding the anguished pleas of Poniatowski and the Khan, Baltadji ordered the bombardment halted and sat down happily with the Russian envoy. The negotiations continued through the night. The following morning, Shafirov sent back word that although the Grand Vizier was anxious for peace, the discussions were dragging. Impatiently, Peter instructed his envoy to accept any terms that were offered “except slavery,” but to insist on an immediate agreement. The Russian troops were starving, and if peace was not to come, Peter wanted to use their last strength in a desperate break-out attack on the Turkish trenches.

Spurred by this threat of renewed fighting, Baltadji itemized his terms. In relation to the Turks, they were what Peter had expected: the Tsar was to give up all the fruits of his 1696 campaign and the 1700 treaty. Azov and Tagonrog were to be returned, the Black Sea fleet was to be abandoned, the lower-Dnieper forts destroyed. In addition, Russian troops were to evacuate Poland, and the Tsar’s right to keep a permanent ambassador at Constantinople would be canceled. As for Sweden, King Charles XII was to be granted free passage home and the Tsar was “to conclude a peace with him if agreement can be reached.” In return for these commitments, the Ottoman army would stand aside and permit the encircled Russian army to return peacefully to Russia.

When Peter heard these terms, he was astonished. They were not light—he would lose everything in the south—but they were far milder than he had expected. Nothing had been said about Sweden and the Baltic except that Charles should go home and that Peter should try to make peace. Under the circumstances, it was a deliverance. The Turks added one further demand: Shafirov and Colonel Michael Sheremetev, the son of the Field Marshal, must remain in Turkey as hostages until the Russians carried out their promises to return Azov and the other territories.

Peter was eager to sign before the Grand Vizier changed his mind. Shafirov took young Sheremetev and returned immediately to the Turkish camp, where the treaty was signed on July 12. On the 13th, the Russian army, still keeping its arms, formed columns and began to march out of the ill-fated camp on the Pruth. Before Peter and the army could leave, however, they passed unknowingly through one final, potentially disastrous crisis.

Throughout Baltadji’s negotiations with Shafirov, Poniatowski had done his best to delay. Charles XII’s agent had seen that Peter was trapped and that the Tsar would have to accept almost any terms dictated by the Grand Vizier. If his own master’s needs were not ignored, Sweden might regain all it had lost, perhaps more. Thus, as soon as Shafirov arrived in the Grand Vizier’s tent, Poniatowski rushed out and scribbled a letter to Charles, handed it to a courier and sent him galloping to Bender.

Poniatowski wrote the note at noon on July 11. The horseman arrived in Bender on the evening of the 12th. Charles reacted instantly. His horse was saddled, and at ten p.m. he was galloping through the darkness toward the Pruth fifty miles away. At three p.m. on the 13th, after a continuous seventeen-hour ride, Charles appeared suddenly on the perimeter of the Grand Vizier’s camp. He rode through the lines to look down on the makeshift Russian fortifications. Before him, the last of the Russian columns were marching out unhindered, escorted by squadrons of Tatar horsemen. The king saw everything: the dominating position of the Turkish cannon, the ease with which, without even the necessity of an assault, a few days’ wait would have brought the starving Russians out as prisoners.

No one knows what feelings of regret Charles, studying the panorama before him, may have had about his decision not to accompany the Turkish army. Had he been there to add his forceful voice to that of the Tatar Khan (who had wept in frustration when the Grand Vizier signed the peace treaty), a different decision might have been reached. He rode silently through the watching Turkish soldiers to the tent of the Grand Vizier. With Poniatowski and an interpreter at his side, he entered rudely, still wearing his spurs and dirty boots, and flung himself exhausted on a sofa near the sacred green banner of Mohammed. When the Grand Vizier came in, accompanied by the Khan and a crowd of officers, Charles asked that they withdraw so that he could speak to Baltadji in private. The two men drank a ceremonial cup of coffee in silence and then Charles, making an extreme effort to control his feelings, asked why the Grand Vizier had let the Russian army go. “I have won enough for the Porte,” replied Baltadji calmly. “It is against Mohammed’s law to deny peace to an enemy who begs it.” Charles asked whether the Sultan would be satisfied with so limited a victory. “I have command of the army and I make peace when I will,” answered Baltadji.

At this point, unable to contain his frustration, Charles rose from his seat and made a final appeal. As he had not been a party to the treaty, would the Grand Vizier lend him a fraction of the Turkish army and a few cannon so that he might pursue the Russians, attack and win far more? Baltadji refused, declaring that the Faithful must not be led by a Christian.

The game was over and Charles was beaten. From that moment, he and Baltadji were mortal enemies and each worked mightily to get rid of the other. The Grand Vizier stopped payment of the Swedish daily allowance, forbade merchants to sell provisions to the Swedes and intercepted the King’s mail. Charles retaliated by complaining bitterly to the Sultan about Baltadji’s behavior. In particular, he set his agents in Constantinople to spreading the rumors that the real reason the Grand Vizier had let the Tsar and his army escape was that he had been massively bribed.

The story took root in Russia, too. One version was that Catherine—some say without the knowledge of her husband, others say with Peter’s private consent—had ordered Shafirov to promise the Grand Vizier a vast sum, including her own jewels, to secure the Tsar’s freedom.

In retrospect, the story seems exaggerated. Baltadji was promised 150,000 roubles, which is a large sum, but that this was the reason he made peace on relatively mild terms seems unlikely. He had other reasons: He was not primarily a warrior, his troops were reluctant to fight, he feared a new war with Austria and was glad to end this war with Russia, he disliked the fanatical Russophobia of the Khan Devlet Gerey and wanted him leashed. Further, he had undoubtedly been told that messages had been sent to Charles XII and that at any minute the Swedish King might ride into camp, demanding a battle of annihilation. Indeed, should Charles arrive and Peter be captured, he would be in the complicated position of having two of the greatest sovereigns in Europe, both without their armies and powerless, as his “guests.” The diplomatic implications were unthinkable. And, from the Ottoman point of view, Baltadji had achieved all his objectives. The territory Russia had taken from the Sultan was now fully restored. What more should one ask from a treaty of peace?

None of this was solace for Charles. A unique opportunity, a moment when overwhelming power could be applied against an almost helpless foe, had been lost—and not just lost, but deliberately thrown away. Thereafter, although Charles worked hard and helped incite three more brief wars between the Tsar and the Ottoman Empire, the opportunity never returned. Poltava remained decisive in Peter’s war against Charles; the Pruth did not upset this. Peter realized this as well as Charles. “They had the bird in their hand there,” he said later, “but it will not happen again.”

The Grand Vizier had won the Battle of Pruth, although no one, especially the Sultan, was to thank him. Peter and Charles both lost, the former less than he might have, the latter because he gained nothing where he might have gained everything. Peter’s allies, the hospodars of Moldavia and Walachia, also lost: one his lands, the other his head.

The handing over of Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia, was one of the Grand Vizier’s original conditions for peace. The Hospodar had hidden under the baggage of the Tsaritsa Catherine in one of the wagons, and only three of his men knew where he was. Shafirov was therefore able to tell the Grand Vizier truthfully that it was impossible to surrender Cantemir as, since the first day of the battle, no one had seen him. The Grand Vizier waved the matter aside, declaring contemptuously, “Well, let us speak no more about it. Two great empires should not prolong a war for the sake of a coward. He will soon enough meet with his deserts.”

Cantemir escaped with the Russians, collected his wife and children in Jassy and, along with twenty-four leading Moldavian boyars, returned to Russia with the Tsar’s army. There, Peter showered favors on him, giving him the title of Russian prince and granting him large estates near Kharkov. His son entered diplomatic service and became Russian ambassador to England and France. Cantemir’s principality, Moldavia, was not so lucky. Baltadji gave the Tatars permission to ravage the towns and villages by fire and sword.

The fate of Brancovo, Hospodar of Walachia, who had first betrayed the Sultan and then betrayed the Tsar, had an appropriate twist: The Turks never trusted him again. Although he was warned that a tide of disfavor was running against him in Constantinople, and although he began sending large sums of money to Western Europe to prepare for a comfortable exile, Brancovo delayed his own departure. In the spring of 1714, he was arrested and sent to Constantinople. There, on his sixtieth birthday, together with his two sons, he was beheaded.

The treaty signed on the Pruth ended the war, but did not bring peace. Peter, heartsick at having to hand over Azov and Tagonrog, procrastinated until Charles XII should be sent out of Turkey. Shafirov, now superseding Tolstoy as senior Russian diplomat in Constantinople, urgently pressed the Grand Vizier to expel the Swedish King. Baltadji tried. “I wish the Devil would take him because I now see that he is king only in name, that he has no sense in him and is like a beast,” the Grand Vizier told Shafirov. “I will try to get rid of him somehow or other.” Baltadji failed because Charles flatly refused to go. Meanwhile, the King’s agents in Constantinople were working actively to undermine Baltadji himself. Peter continued to delay, sending orders to Apraxin not to destroy the fortifications at Azov just yet, but to await further instructions. When, under pressure, Shafirov promised the Turks that Azov would be surrendered within two months, Peter again wrote to Apraxin, telling him to level the walls of the fortress, but not to damage the foundations, and to keep exact plans so that, if some new change occurred, the fortress could quickly be rebuilt.

In November, five months after the Pruth signing, Azov and Tagonrog still had not been given up. Charles’ agents used this fact, skillfully blended with rumors that the Grand Vizier had let the Tsar escape because carts loaded with Russian gold had rumbled up to his tent on the Pruth, to procure the fall of Baltadji. He was replaced by Yusuf Pasha, the Janissary Aga, who, to Charles’ satisfaction, used the non-surrender of Azov and Tagonrog as a pretext for declaring a new war on Russia. Shafirov, Tolstoy and young Sheremetev were sent back to the Seven Towers. Tolstoy, at this point, wrote Peter begging to be allowed to return to Russia. He had been in Turkey under painful conditions for ten years, and the negotiations he had been conducting had now been taken over by Shafirov, his superior. Peter agreed, but the Turks did not, informing the aging diplomat that he must wait until a final treaty had been signed, whereupon he could return with Shafirov.

There was no fighting in this new war, and it ended quietly when, in April 1712, Peter finally surrendered Azov and Tagonrog. In fact, Apraxin was on such good terms with the Turkish pasha who came to occupy the forts that he managed to sell all the guns, powder, supplies and four of the Russian ships which remained, all for a handsome price, even though one Russian captain later assured Whitworth that the vessels sold were so rotten that they would “fall to pieces in the first storm.” This peace agreement quickly came to naught when Yusuf Pasha was overthrown and succeeded by Suleiman Pasha, who listened to Charles’ continuing complaints that the Tsar still had not removed his troops from Poland. On December 10, 1712, the Turks declared war a third time to enforce this article of the treaty. Again, Shafirov, backed by the envoys of Britain and Holland, successfully smoothed matters over before actual fighting began. “This war,” Shafirov wrote to Golovkin, “is disliked by the whole Turkish people and is begun by the sole will of the Sultan, who from the very beginning was not content with the Peace on the Pruth and raged greatly against the Grand Vizier because he did not profit as he ought by fortunate circumstances.”

In April 1713, Ahmed III assembled his army, declared war a fourth time and, with Poniatowski at his elbow, drew up new and even more devastating terms of peace to be imposed on Russia: The entire Ukraine was to be ceded to Turkey; all of Peter’s conquests, including St. Petersburg, were to be returned to Sweden. Peter met this threat by simply refusing to send a new envoy empowered to discuss the matter. As time passed, the Sultan’s ardor for war passed. He began to doubt the wisdom of invading Russia, and he began to see Charles as the source of many of his difficulties. The Pasha of Bender was instructed to increase the pressure on the King of Sweden to depart the Ottoman Empire and go home. Negotiations with Russia continued; grand viziers came and went—Suleiman Pasha was succeeded by Ibrahim Pasha, then by Damad Ali Pasha, the Sultan’s favorite son-in-law. Finally, on October 18, 1713, this fourth war in three years ended when the Sultan ratified the Treaty of Adrianople. Shafirov, Tolstoy and Michael Sheremetev were kept in prison, however, until the final designation of the Russian-Turkish frontier. In December 1714, the envoys were at last released and allowed to go home. The months of incarceration and suspense had overcome young Michael Sheremetev, who went mad in the Seven Towers and died on the way home; Shafirov and Tolstoy were to continue to play major roles in the reign of Peter the Great.

Looking back on the Pruth disaster, it was not difficult for Peter to understand his mistakes. He had abandoned his normally cautious tactics, the waiting game which had been so successful against Charles XII. Instead, he had adopted Charles’ role and plunged impetuously into the Ottoman Empire, trusting for support and provisions from an ally who proved unfaithful. He had been misinformed about the strength of the Turkish army, and he had miscalculated the speed with which the Grand Vizier could move. He had continued his advance even after learning that the Turkish army was across the Danube and marching north. Later, he explained that he had felt compelled to continue “in order not to place in despair the Christians who implored [my] aid.” In fact, the Christians most important to his campaign, the Walachians, had betrayed him.

Nevertheless, although it failed, Peter’s march to the Pruth heralded the opening of a new avenue in Russian history. A Russian tsar had invaded the Balkans; Russian infantry had marched to within forty miles of the Danube; Russian cavalrymen had watered their horses in the Danube 500 miles southwest of Kiev. A further presage was Peter’s summons to the Balkan Christians to rise against the infidel and welcome his Russians as liberators. This dramatic appeal planted a hardy seed and the idea that Russia would act as Orthodox champion of the Balkan Slavs took root and grew.

Defeat on the Pruth and his final treaty with the Sultan ended forever Peter’s southern ambitions. With the hauling down of the Russian flag and the destruction of the forts at Azov and Tagonrog, the dream of his youth and the work of sixteen years came to an end. “The Lord God drove me out of this place like Adam out of paradise,” said Peter of Azov. During his lifetime, there would be no Black Sea fleet. The mouth of the Don remained closed, and all Russian ships would continue to be forbidden on the sea, which would remain the Sultan’s private lake. Not until the time of Catherine the Great would Russia conquer the Crimea, open the Don, force the Strait of Kerch and finally achieve what Peter had begun.

Russia simply was not strong enough to accomplish simultaneously everything that Peter wanted. He was still at war with Sweden, he was building St. Petersburg and he was trying, through sweeping reforms and reorganization, to reshape the Muscovite tsardom into a new, technologically modern European state. In this last, overriding purpose, the Baltic and St. Petersburg were more important than the Black Sea and Azov. If Peter had chosen differently, if he had stopped the building on the Neva, if he had poured that energy and labor and money into colonizing the Ukraine, if he had withdrawn his soldiers and his seamen from Poland and the Baltic and sent them all against the Turks, then a Russian fleet flying Peter’s flag might have sailed the Black Sea in his lifetime. He chose differently. The south was abandoned for the west, the Baltic took priority over the Black Sea. The ultimate direction of Russia under Peter the Great was to be toward Europe, not toward the Ottoman Empire.

Peter himself was candid about his loss and clear about its implications: He wrote to Apraxin:

Although it is not without grief that we are deprived of those places where so much labor and money have been expended, yet I hope that by this very deprivation we shall greatly strengthen ourselves on the other side [the Baltic], which is incomparably of greater gain to us.

Later, Peter gave an even more succinct appraisal of what had happened to him on the Pruth: “My ‘good fortune’ consisted in having received only fifty blows when I was condemned to receive a hundred.”