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Great Northern War

Ch. 1 of 8
— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

Contents

Great Northern War

8 sections

  • The Great Northern War lasted from 1700 to 1721, and by its end it had reshuffled the entire order of power across northern, central, and eastern Europe. Sweden had been the undisputed master of the Baltic Sea. A generation later, it was something closer to a spent force. Russia, which had been locked out of the Baltic since the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617, had not only reclaimed that coastline but had become a new kind of European power. How did a conflict that began with three kingdoms attacking a country led by a fourteen-year-old king end in such a total reversal? The answers lie in a military genius who refused to make peace, a tsar who learned from defeat, a Ukrainian hetman whose gamble failed, and a winter so brutal it broke an army. Those are the stories this documentary follows.

  • Between 1560 and 1658, Sweden assembled a Baltic empire built around the Gulf of Finland, adding the provinces of Karelia, Ingria, Estonia, and Livonia. During the Thirty Years' War, Sweden also gained territory in Germany, including Western Pomerania, Wismar, and the duchies of Bremen and Verden. By the mid-17th century, it had also taken Danish and Norwegian provinces north of the Sound. What made this expansion possible was not Swedish numbers but Swedish method. The army, which during the Thirty Years' War contained more German and Scottish mercenaries than ethnic Swedes, could sustain rapid marches across vast distances and maintain an unusually high rate of small arms fire through rigorous drill. Civilian and military administration had also been modernized across the 17th century, letting the monarchy extract resources from its empire with unusual efficiency. The weakness hiding inside that strength was strategic: campaigns were expected to pay for themselves through plunder and taxation of conquered land. When wars ran long and occupied territories could not cover their costs, Sweden's treasury and manpower reserves began to drain. That structural fragility would take decades to fully reveal itself, but the man who would expose it most brutally was already growing up in Moscow.

  • Peter the Great became tsar in 1682 upon the death of his elder brother Feodor, though he did not hold actual power until 1689. His ambitions were clear: modernize Russia into an empire built on trade, a professional army, and a powerful navy, and above all reclaim access to the Baltic Sea. The instrument that brought his ambitions and those of Denmark and Saxony together was an adventurer named Johann Patkul, who in the late 1690s brokered the secret Treaty of Preobrazhenskoye, aligning the three powers against Sweden. The timing was deliberate. Sweden was now ruled by Charles XII, who had inherited the throne in 1697 at age fourteen. Charles XII was the son of Charles XI, a king who had concentrated on internal reforms that strengthened both the monarch's authority and the empire's military capacity. The coalition's founders, Peter I, Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway, and Augustus II the Strong of Saxony-Poland-Lithuania, were all cousins of Charles XII in one sense or another, which gave the conflict an almost dynastic bitterness. Augustus II, who had taken the Polish crown after the death of John III Sobieski in 1696, met Peter I in Rawa Ruska in September 1698, where the plans to attack Sweden were laid. That meeting became notorious for its extravagance. In 1700, Denmark, Saxony, and Russia attacked.

  • Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway opened the war by directing his army against Holstein-Gottorp, a Swedish client state whose sovereignty had been guaranteed by England, the Dutch Republic, and Sweden under the Convention of Altona in 1689. In March 1700, a Danish army laid siege to Tönning. Charles XII responded with a speed that astonished the coalition. The Swedish navy outmaneuvered the Danish Sound blockade, and from the 20th to the 26th of July, Swedish ships bombarded Copenhagen in conjunction with an Anglo-Dutch fleet. Charles then landed an army at Humlebæk near the Danish capital, while a Swedish-Hanoverian force broke through Danish defenses at Reinbek to relieve Tönning. Denmark-Norway withdrew from the war in August 1700 under the terms of the Peace of Travendal. Charles then wheeled east. A Russian army under Peter I had besieged Narva in October. In November the two sides met at the First Battle of Narva, where the Russians suffered a crushing defeat. The Swedish chancellor Benedict Oxenstjerna immediately saw an opportunity, proposing to use the bidding for Swedish favor by France and the Maritime Powers, then on the eve of the War of the Spanish Succession, to end the conflict and install Charles as an arbiter of European affairs. Charles refused. He turned south instead, toward Augustus II.

  • Charles XII crossed the Duna River in 1701 and defeated the Saxons and Russians in what became known as the Crossing of the Duna, then occupied the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, a Polish vassal state. He invaded Poland and Lithuania, defeating the Saxon-Polish forces decisively at Kliszow in 1702 and at Pultusk in 1703, before dethroning Augustus II and forcing the Polish sejm to crown Stanislaw Leszczynski as Stanislaw I in 1705. A Swedish-Polish treaty signed afterward effectively subordinated the Commonwealth to Sweden, both economically and militarily. Augustus II refused to yield until Charles invaded Saxony itself. At the Battle of Fraustadt in 1706, sometimes compared to the ancient Battle of Cannae because of the Swedish forces' use of double envelopment, the Saxon army was devastated. Augustus signed the Treaty of Altranstadt in October 1706, renouncing his claim to the Polish crown, accepting Leszczynski as king, and ending his alliance with Russia. The treaty also secured the extradition of Johann Patkul, the man who had engineered the original anti-Swedish coalition. Patkul was executed by breaking on the wheel in 1707. The brutality of the punishment, given that Patkul had held diplomatic immunity, turned opinion against Charles across Europe. Charles was now the favorite to win the war. Only one hostile power remained: Peter's Russia. And Peter had not been idle.

  • The defeat at Narva in 1700 staggered Peter the Great, but Charles XII's shift to the Polish-Saxon front gave him years to rebuild. Russian victories at Erastfer and Noteborg by 1703 opened Ingria. Peter captured the Swedish fortress of Nyen, guarding the mouth of the River Neva, and then demolished it. In its place he began building Saint Petersburg. By 1704, Russian fortifications had spread to the island of Kotlin and the surrounding sand flats, forming the bases later known as Kronstadt and Kronslot. In the summer of 1706, Swedish General Georg Johan Maidel crossed the Neva with 4,000 troops and defeated a Russian force but made no move on Saint Petersburg. Peter I then led 20,000 men toward the Swedish fortress at Viborg in the autumn of that year, only to be turned back by impassable roads that stopped his heavy siege guns. By 1707, Peter offered to return everything he had occupied except Saint Petersburg and the Neva line. Charles refused. Instead he marched from Saxony toward Moscow. The winter of 1708-1709 was one of the most severe in modern European history, and Peter's scorched earth tactics stripped the Swedish army of food and shelter. The Ukrainian Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa had defected to Charles in 1708, bringing estimates of between 2,000 and 4,000 Cossacks, but a Russian force destroyed the supplies and reinforcements Mazepa had left at Baturyn, killing or capturing roughly 5,000 men stationed there. A second Swedish column carrying supplies and reinforcements was routed at Lesnaya. Weakened, cold, and cut off, Charles met Peter at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. The main Swedish army was destroyed. Charles fled to the Ottoman town of Bender. Mazepa died that same year in Ottoman exile.

  • Charles XII arrived at Bender in present-day Moldova and established a provisional court there, lobbying the Ottoman sultan to join a Swedish-Ottoman assault on Russia. Peter I demanded Charles's eviction. When the sultan refused, Peter invaded the Ottoman Empire. At the Pruth River, however, the tables turned: a Russian army under Peter was trapped by an Ottoman force and faced destruction. Peter negotiated his way out, making territorial concessions and promising to withdraw his forces from the Holy Roman Empire, and to allow Charles to return to Sweden. These terms were formalized in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1713. Charles showed no interest in going home. The sultan eventually lost patience. In 1713, Ottoman soldiers arrested the Swedish king in an episode that became known in Swedish as the kalabalik, a Turkish word for tumultuous fighting. Charles was confined first at Timurtash and then at Demotika. He eventually abandoned his hopes for an Ottoman alliance and in 1714 made a famous 14-day ride back to Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania, returning to a war that had transformed entirely in his absence.

  • After Poltava, the anti-Swedish coalition reconstituted itself with additions. Hanover joined through the Treaty of Hanover in 1710; Brandenburg-Prussia joined through the Treaty of Schwedt in 1713. By 1715, George I of Great Britain and Hanover had concluded three more alliances: with Denmark-Norway, with Brandenburg-Prussia, and with Russia. Sweden's last major German stronghold, Stralsund, fell in December 1715. Wismar surrendered in 1716. Sweden's Finnish territories fell to Russian forces in 1713-1714, with the brutal occupation period that followed known as the Great Wrath. Charles XII was killed on the 30th of November 1718 while besieging Norwegian Fredriksten, shot dead. His successor, his sister Ulrika Eleonora, began negotiating. The Swedish-Hanoverian and Swedish-Prussian Treaties of Stockholm in 1719, the Dano-Swedish Treaty of Frederiksborg in 1720, and the Russo-Swedish Treaty of Nystad, signed on the 30th of August 1721 in Uusikaupunki, formally ended the conflict. By those treaties, Sweden ceded its exemption from the Sound Dues and lost its Baltic provinces, Ingria, Kexholm, and a portion of Karelia. Finland was returned to Sweden, but the territorial losses were vast. Sweden ceased to be a major European power. Within Sweden, Charles XII's death ended the absolute monarchy; the country entered what became known as the Age of Liberty. The Baltic Fleet Russia launched from Saint Petersburg during the war had grown by 1721 to 37 battleships, nine frigates, and two bomb vessels, totalling 55,000 tonnes. The tsar who had once been chased out of Narva now controlled the sea his predecessors had been locked out of for a century.

Updated

Common questions

What was the Great Northern War and when did it take place?

The Great Northern War was a conflict from 1700 to 1721 in which a coalition led by Russia successfully contested Sweden's supremacy in northern, central, and eastern Europe. It ended with Sweden's defeat and the rise of Russia as the dominant power in the Baltic region.

Who were the main leaders on each side of the Great Northern War?

The anti-Swedish coalition was initially led by Peter I of Russia, Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway, and Augustus II the Strong of Saxony-Poland-Lithuania. Sweden was led by Charles XII, who also had allies including Holstein-Gottorp, Polish magnates under Stanislaw I Leszczynski, and Cossacks under the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa.

What happened at the Battle of Poltava in the Great Northern War?

The Battle of Poltava in 1709 resulted in the destruction of the main Swedish army by a larger Russian force under Peter I. Charles XII fled to the Ottoman Empire, and the remnants of his army surrendered at Perevolochna. The defeat revived the anti-Swedish coalition and effectively decided the outcome of the war.

How did the Great Northern War end and what were the peace terms?

The war ended through a series of treaties: the Swedish-Hanoverian and Swedish-Prussian Treaties of Stockholm in 1719, the Dano-Swedish Treaty of Frederiksborg in 1720, and the Russo-Swedish Treaty of Nystad on the 30th of August 1721. Sweden ceded its Baltic provinces, Ingria, Kexholm, and a portion of Karelia to Russia, lost its exemption from the Sound Dues, and gave up most of its overseas holdings.

How did Charles XII of Sweden die during the Great Northern War?

Charles XII was shot dead on the 30th of November 1718 while besieging the Norwegian fortress of Fredriksten. He was succeeded by his sister, Ulrika Eleonora, who began peace negotiations with the warring powers.

What role did Ivan Mazepa play in the Great Northern War?

Ivan Mazepa was a Ukrainian Cossack hetman who had fought for Russia but defected to Charles XII of Sweden in 1708. He brought estimates of between 2,000 and 4,000 Cossacks, though Russian forces destroyed his supplies at Baturyn. Mazepa died in 1709 in Ottoman exile after the Swedish defeat at Poltava.

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