Peter the Great (60 page)

By mid-April, Charles was ready to depart Stockholm. On April 13, 1700, he came at night to say goodbye to his grandmother and his two sisters. It was a sad occasion, but it would have been much sadder had any of those present known what the future held. The eighteen-year-old King was leaving two of these dear relatives forever. Although Charles would live another eighteen years, he would never see his grandmother, his older sister or Stockholm, his capital, again.

The King to whom these women bade farewell had grown from an adolescent to a young man. He was five feet nine inches—tall by the standards of the day—with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He carried himself with almost rigid straightness, yet he was enormously supple: On horseback, he could bend down from the saddle and pick up a glove at a full gallop. His open face had a jutting nose, full lips and pink skin, although campaign life was soon to darken and harden it. His eyes were deep blue, lively and intelligent. He wore his hair short and brushed up from the sides to form a crown. Its color varied as the sun bleached it from auburn to dark blond in the summer. Over the years it turned to gray streaked with white and began to recede, exposing a full, domed forehead.

Leaving his sisters and grandmother, the King hurried south, visiting military depots along the way On June 16, at Karlskrona, he embarked on board the
King Charles,
flagship of the Swedish Admiral Wachtmeister. The Anglo-Dutch fleet of twenty-five ships-of-the-line had now arrived off the western Swedish port of Goteborg, and as Charles set sail from Karlskrona, the allied fleet moved down the Kattegat. The two fleets were now approaching each other, but in the middle lay the formidable barrier of the sound with its three-mile-wide channel, its shoals and its defensive cannon. In addition, the Danish fleet of forty men-of-war lay at the Baltic entrance to the main channel, determined to bar the uniting of their opponents.

It was Charles who solved the problem. Standing on the deck of the flagship, he instructed Admiral Wachtmeister to take the fleet through the shallow and more treacherous subsidiary channel close to the Swedish shore. Wachtmeister was reluctant, fearing for the safety of his ships, but Charles took the responsibility, and, one by one, the great ships bearing the blue-and-yellow flag passed slowly up the channel. Three of the largest ships drew too much water and had to be left behind. Nevertheless, at a single stroke, the Anglo-Dutch and Swedish fleets had joined to make a combined force of sixty men-of-war to face the forty Danish ships. It was a superiority which the Danish admiral did not wish ;:o challenge, and it permitted the next phase of the Swedish pla
n to
unfold. Charles and his generals planned to move a Swedish
a
rmy across the sound onto the Danish island of Zealand, on which the capital, Copenhagen, was situated. As the main Danish iirmy was far away with King Frederick, fighting the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, the Swedes hoped to march swiftly on Copenhagen, threaten and perhaps seize the capital and thus bring King Frederick to terms. The plan, devised by Charles' leading commander, Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskjold, had the King's enthusiastic support. The Dutch and English admirals were less enthusiastic, but eventually they, too agreed.

On July 23, the assault force of 4,000 men was embarked in transports and sailed in rain and high wind. Although the force was smaller than the 5,000 Danes defending Zealand, the Swedes had the advantage of mobility and could choose their landing spot. Feinting first to mislead the defenders, the Swedish landing parties came ashore in small boats and found themselves opposed by only 800 men. Covered by heavy cannon fire from the men-of-war, the Swedish soldiers quickly established a beachhead. Charles himself came ashore by boat, wading the last few yards. To his chagrin, he found that by the time he arrived the enemy had already withdrawn.

The Swedish build-up was rapid. Within the following ten days, another 10,000 Swedish troops including cavalry and artillery were ferried across the sound. The outnumbered Danish forces withdrew into the city of Copenhagen, and Charles' army followed, setting siege lines around the city and beginning a bombardment. It was this dismaying situation which the King of Denmark found when he hurried back from the south: his fleet outnumbered and useless, his capital under siege, his main army engaged far to the south. Frederick knew that he was beaten and quickly came to terms. On August 18, 1700, he signed the Peace of Travendal, by which he gave back the Holstein-Gottorp territories he had taken and dropped out of the war against Sweden. Charles was satisfied—he had no designs on Danish territory, and could now turn his attention to Augustus. The English and Dutch were satisfied—the war on the boundaries of Germany and the Hapsburg empire had been snuffed out. The status quo had been restored.

Charles' first campaign of the war, thus, had been swift, successful and almost bloodless. Within two weeks, two bold decisions—to force the lesser channel with the Swedish fleet, and to land troops on the island of Zealand behind King Frederick's back—had restored the rights of his ally, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and driven one enemy from the war. Not all the success in this brief, brilliant campaign can be credited to Swedish arms alone; it was the presence of the Anglo-Dutch fleet that made the descent on Zealand possible.

And so Denmark was out of the war. Charles realized that, given a promising chance, Frederick might reopen hostilities, but not for a while. At least the Swedish thrust into Zealand had gained valuable breathing time. Now, Charles could make ready to hurl himself on a second enemy. At the end of the Danish campaign, he thought that his next adversary would be Augustus of Poland. But events dictated differently. In fact, the second Swedish blow was to fall on Peter of Russia.

NARVA

The
Tsar's declared objective in attacking Sweden was to seize the Baltic provinces of Ingria and Karelia. Ingria was a comparatively narrow strip of land extending seventy-five miles along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, from the mouth of the Neva to the town of Narva; Karelia was a much larger expanse of forest-and-lake country between the gulf and Lake Ladoga, extending as far west as Vyborg. Together, the two provinces, which had been taken from Russia during the Time of Troubles, would give Peter an adequate opening to the Baltic.

Narva, a coastal town and fortress in Estonia on the border of Ingria, had not been included in Peter's original war aims; it was part of the territory which Patkul and Augustus had designated to go to Poland. Nevertheless, Peter felt that the surest way of securing Ingria would be to capture this town. And as he studied his maps of the region, it seemed that a thrust at Narva would not
be
difficult; the Russian frontier lay only twenty miles to the southeast of the town, a short march for an invading army.

Peter's decision was received unhappily by Patkul and Baron Langen, Augustus' representative in Moscow. They were not eager to see Swedes replaced in Estonia by Russians, even if, for (he moment, the Russians were their allies. As Baron Langen reported to Patkul, "I have done everything possible, with the help of the Danish ambassador, to distract him [the Tsar] from this intention. We found him so stubborn that we feared to touch any more on such a delicate subject and must be satisfied with the Tsar's break with Sweden in the hope that in time Narva will be in our hands." Patkul worried that, having taken Narva, Peter would move down the Baltic coast, swallowing the whole of Livonia without Augustus being able to prevent him. But there was nothing to be done; the Tsar was determined.

By mid-September 1700, Prince Trubetskoy, Governor of Novgorod, had received orders to march on Narva and invest the city with an advance guard of 8,000 men. Command of the main army was given to Fedor Golovin, who had served as ambassador, foreign minister and admiral and now was to be a field marshal.

Under Golovin, the army was divided into three divisions, to be commanded respectively by Avtemon Golovin, Adam Weide and Nikita Repnin. In all, the army totaled over 63,000 men, but the troops were widely scattered. As Trubetskoy's men were moving slowly in the direction of Narva, Repnin's division was still assembling on the Volga, a thousand miles away. By October 4, 35,000 Russians were building trenches before the town and Peter himself had arrived to oversee the siege. He was awaiting only the arrival of cannonballs and powder to begin the bombardment.

The town of Narva, built by the Danes in the thirteenth century, had been a flourishing seaport in the time of the Hanseatic League, and even in Peter's day it handled a substantial amount of Russian trade from Pskov and Novgorod. It was like many another Baltic German town, with gabled brick houses and the thin spires of Lutheran churches rising above tree-lined streets. Situated on the west bank of the River Narova on a neck of land made by a wide bend in the river, the town was in effect surrounded on three sides by water, and because it was so close to the Russian frontier, it was strongly defended. A high wall of stone laced with bastions encircled the city. Across a stone bridge was the squat, powerful castle of Ivangorod, built by the Russians in 1492 when the river was the frontier. Then, Ivangorod was intended to overawe the town of Narva, but now town and castle formed a single, integrated defense system. The garrison consisted of 1,300 infantry, 200 cavalry and 400 armed civilians.

Under the direction of Lieutenant General Ludwig von Hallart, a Saxon engineer lent to Peter by Augustus, the Russians established siege lines opposite the land walls on the western side of Narva. There, astride the only road by which a relief force could approach the town, the Russians entrenched themselves between double walls which cut off the town from the west and at the same time protected their own siege lines against attack from the rear. In time, these walls developed into earthworks four miles long, nine feet high, with a trench six feet deep in front.

The siege went more slowly than Peter had hoped. Although Narva was only twenty miles from the Russian frontier, it was well over a hundred miles from the nearest Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov. The meager roads, sodden from the autumn rains, caused the transport wagons to mire and become bogged down. There were too few artillery harnesses, the carts went to pieces and the horses collapsed. Golovin did his best to move the soldiers quickly, seizing local horses and carts, but it was not until the end of October that most of his troops were in position.

The Russian artillery bombardment began on November 4. Meanwhile, Sheremetev was sent westward with 5,000 horsemen to report any sign of a Swedish rescue force. For two weeks, the Russian cannon battered the ramparts and towers of Narva with little success; the gun carriages were so badly made or so damaged in transport that many fell to pieces after three or four shots. Two Russian infantry assaults on Ivangorod were easily repulsed. By November 17, there was not sufficient ammunition to continue the bombardment beyond a few days, and the guns were silenced until new supplies could arrive. At the same time, two distressing reports arrived in Peter's camp: King Augustus had given up the siege of Riga and retired into winter quarters. And King Charles XII had landed with a Swedish army at Pernau on the Baltic coast, 150 miles southwest of Narva.

Once the Peace of Travendal was signed, the Swedish army was rapidly withdrawn from Zealand. Charles' officers were not anxious to leave their troops on the Danish island once the Dutch and English squadrons had departed for home, and these great ships were preparing to sail. True, the Danes had made peace, but who could tell what temptations might occur to them if the small Swedish expeditionary force was left alone and exposed on the wrong side of the sound. In addition, the King was eager to transfer the soldiers quickly in order to use them in a second campaign before winter. By August 24, the last Swedish soldier had been embarked and transported back to southern Sweden. During the last days of August and the first weeks of September, Charles refused to listen to any suggestions of peace, thinking only of deciding on the place where his counterblow against Augustus should fall. It was generally assumed that the army would sail for Livonia to relieve the city of Riga and drive the Saxon armies out of the province. But word began to reach him of Russian troops massing on the frontier of Ingria in such numbers that there could be little doubt of Tsar Peter's warlike intentions. And in fact, before the end of September, Charles received the Tsar's declaration of war and the news that a Russian army had crossed the frontier and appeared before the Swedish fortress of Narva.

The Swedish decision was for Livonia. Two enemies, Augustus and Peter, were attacking in that region; two major Swedish fortresses, Riga and Narva, were in danger. The king thereafter closed his mind to everything else and devoted his energy to getting his expedition under way before storms and ice on the Baltic made movement by sea impossible. In a letter from Swedish headquarters, one of Charles' officers declared, "The King is resolve
d to go to Livonia. He refuses
to see the French and

Brandenburg ambassadors lest they be carrying peace proposals. He wishes at any price to fight with King Augustus and is annoyed at anything which seems likely to hinder his doing this."

On October 1, spurning all warnings of danger from autumn storms on the Baltic, Charles sailed from Karlskrona for Livonia. Although the troops were crowded aboard the ships, there still were only enough transports to carry 5,000 men on this first voyage. On the third day, with the fleet in mid-Baltic, a storm swept down as predicted and scattered the ships far and wide. Some anchored and rode out the storm off the coast of Courland, others foundered and were lost. Many of the cavalry horses were crippled as the ships heaved and rolled in the waves, and Charles was desperately seasick.