The Battle of Poltava
by Denis Martens the Younger painted 1726

The Battle of Poltava, 28^th June 1709

“Dread Poltowa’s day,
When fortune left the royal Swede,
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed,
The power and fortune of the War
Had passed to the triumphant Czar.” 

(George Gordon, Lord Byron)[i]

The Swedish Empire, although not comparable with the huge areas and populations that we today associate with such empires as Rome, the Mongols or the Russian and British, was nevertheless a formidable force to be reckoned with during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Her rise to the imperium can be traced back to the middle of the sixteenth century when, along with Russia, Poland and Denmark, Sweden also took advantage of the vacuum in the Baltic created after the collapse of the Teutonic Knights.[ii] The power struggle that resulted netted Sweden Livonia from Poland, West Pomerania and some of East Pomerania, Bremen, Verden and Wismar. She acquired Halland, Jämtland, Härjedalen and the Gotland and Ösel islands from Denmark, together with Skåne, Bohuslän and Blekinge, while Russia ceded Ingria and Lexholm, which effectively cut her off from the Baltic Sea.[iii]

By 1697 it had become obvious that the Danes were not prepared to take all of this land - grabbing lying down, nor for that matter would the newly elected King of Poland, Frederick Augustus II, Elector of Saxony be happy until Swedish influence had been removed and Polish land reclaimed, while the giant and far - seeing Tsar Peter I was eager to obtain a Baltic port for Russia’s burgeoning trade and was fully committed to drag his country kicking and screaming into becoming a modern state equal to any of her European neighbours.

In one way the Great Northern War may be said to have been sparked off by Swedish greed and jealousies working from within. In 1680 their King, Charles XI, realizing that the aristocracy had been steadily increasing its power and influence since the death of Gustavus Adolphus, which in turn was alienating the other classes in Swedish society, introduced the “Reduction” policy. This entailed the return of vast estates to the crown, which had been placed under the Swedish nobles for them to administer, and which many had begun to consider as being part of their own hereditary lands.[iv] Among these disillusioned nobles was a Livonian, John Reinhold Patkul who, having had his lands taken from him, offered his services to Frederick Augustus whom, in 1698, he persuaded into forming a coalition with Russia and Denmark against the Swedes.[v] With the death of Charles XI on April 5^th 1697, and the ascension of his fourteen-year-old son, Charles XII to the Swedish throne, the time did indeed seemed propitious to take action.

In March 1698 Denmark and Saxony put their respective signatures to a defensive alliance, and in July the Russian Tsar Peter joined Augustus at Rawa to consider an anti-Swedish alliance, which was discussed while downing copious quantities of wine and vodka.[vi] In 1699 Peter signed a defensive agreement with the Danes, while in September of that year he had another meeting with Augustus at Preobrazhenskoe at which he set out his plans for an attack against the Swedish province of Ingria, to take place in the spring of 1700. For their part the Danes would move against Schleswig and Holstein, while Augustus’s Saxons army would strike at Livonia. An abortive attempt by the Saxons to take Riga in December 1699 failed, but they managed to push troops across the Dvina River early in 1700 and took the town of Dünamunde in March. Meanwhile the Danes had entered Holstein-Gottorp laying siege to Tønning. The Russians were a little late off the mark, but once Peter had concluded his peace treaty with the Turks in August 1700, his army began to move.[vii]