Peter the Great (78 page)

As much as possible, Charles modeled the Swedish army on himself. He wanted an elite corps of unmarried men who thought only of duty and not of home, who saved their strength for battle rather than the pursuit of women and the cares of marriage. Married men with children were less likely to advance courageously across a field into a storm of enemy bullets and bayonets. Charles admired and faithfully sought to emulate the example of his father, Charles XI, who had conscientiously practiced abstinence during the years Sweden was at war.

As the years went by, the King's lack of interest in women became more pronounced. During the army's year of rest at Saxony, many Swedish-fathered babies were conceived, but there were no rumors from the headquarters of the twenty-five-year-old King. Later, when Charles spent five years as a prisoner-guest in Turkey, with long evenings devoted to plays by Moliere and concerts of chamber music, still there were no whispers of women. Perhaps having denied himself both love and women so long, he simply had lost the capacity for interest in either.

And if he was not interested in women, was he therefore interested in men? There is no evidence of this. In the early years of war, Charles slept alone. Later, a page slept in his room, but an orderly slept in Peter's room and sometimes the Tsar napped with his head on this young man's stomach; this did not make either Charles or Peter homosexual.

With Charles, one can only say that the fires which
burned
in him had reached the point of obsession, obliterating everything else. He was a warrior. For Sweden's sake, for the sake of his army, he chose hardness. Women were soft, a distraction. He had no sexual experience; perhaps he sensed the enormity of its power and held himself in check, not daring to test it. In this respect, Charles XII was abnormal. But we already know that in many ways the King of Sweden was not like other men.

Peter's reaction to Augustus' dethronement and the election and coronation of Stanislaus had been to immediately crown his own court fool as King of Sweden, but he knew that the events in Poland were deadly serious for Russia. Over the years, the Tsar had come to understand that he was dealing with a fanatic; that Charles was determined to overthrow Augustus, and that the Swedish King's invasion of Russia would be postponed until this victory in Poland was achieved. Therefore, realizing his own great stake in preserving Augustus' power, Peter had poured Russian money and soldiers into the effort to sustain the Elector of Saxony on the Polish throne. As long as the war was fought in Poland, it would not be fought in Russia.

When Augustus was forced to give up his claim, Peter searched for his own replacement as King of Poland—not a puppet but a stong, independent ruler who could both govern and command armies in the field. His first choice was Prince Eugene of Savoy, then at the peak of his reputation as one of the great commanders of the age. Eugene thanked the Tsar for the honor done him, but said that his acceptance would depend on the will of his master, the Emperor; he then wrote to the Emperor Joseph saying that, in accordance with the allegiance he had given his sovereign for twenty years, he left the decision strictly in the Emperor's hands. Joseph was torn: He could see the advantages of having so loyal and effective a subordinate on the Polish throne, but he dared not offend Charles, and he knew that Eugene's appointment would lead to war between Eugene and Stanislaus, with Charles supporting Stanislaus. Thus, he postponed a decision, writing to Peter that, as Eugene was about to embark on a new campaign, nothing could be decided until the following winter.

Peter could not wait. With Charles' army in Saxony preparing to march, if he was to have a new pro-Russian King of Poland, he needed him immediately. He approached James Sobieski, the son of the formed King Jan Sobieski, who quickly declined the prickly honor. Peter negotiated with Francis Rakoczy, the Hungarian patriot who had led Hungary into revolt against the imperial crown, and Rakoczy agreed to accept the crown if Peter could persuade the Polish Diet to offer it to him. But before anything further could take place, the project was forgotten. Charles had marched out of Saxony and was advancing on Russia.

Augustus' abdication removed the second of Peter's three original allies. Now, as Peter said later, "this war lay only on us." Left alone to face the Swedes, Peter intensified his efforts to offer Charles a peace settlement or, if this was impossible, to find allies who could help him avert what most of Europe regarded as his inevitable defeat.

In seeking a mediator or an ally, Peter approached both sides in the great war which had divided Europe. In 1706, Andrei Matveev proposed to the States General that if the maritime powers could persuade Sweden to accept peace with Russia, the Tsar would supply them with 30,000 of his best troops for use against France. When the Dutch did not reply, Peter approached two neutral powers, Prussia and Denmark, for help as mediators. These attempts also failed. Finally, in March 1707,'Peter sent proposals to Louis XIV, promising that if the Sun King would mediate successfully between Russia and Sweden, Peter would supply him with Russian troops to use against England, Holland and Austria. The terms which Peter offered Sweden were that he would cede Dorpat outright and pay a large sum of money to be allowed to keep Narva. He insisted only on keeping St. Petersburg and the Neva River. Louis promised to try.

Peter also approached England. As early as 1705, when Queen Anne's new ambassador, Charles Whitworth, arrived in Moscow, Peter had hoped that he could persuade his sovereign to act as mediator in the Baltic. Whitworth was favorable to Peter, but his dispatches were unable to elicit from his government any diplomatic intercession on the Tsar's behalf. At the end of 1706, Peter decided to carry the appeal directly to London and instructed Matveev to go himself from The Hague to the English capital and ask the Queen to threaten Sweden with war unless Charles made peace with Russia. Peter left the peace terms entirely up to the Queen, insisting only that he must be allowed to keep Russia's hereditary possessions on the Baltic—that is, Ingria and the course of the Neva River. Should formal negotiations fail, Matveev was to try to influence Marlborough and Sydney Godolphin, the leading English ministers, under the table. Peter was realistic about this, saying, "I do not think that Marlborough can be bought because he is so enormously rich. However, you can promise him 200,000 or more."

Before leaving Holland for England, Matveev saw Marlborough in The Hague. After the interview, the Duke wrote to Godolphin in London:

The Ambassador of Muscovy has been with me and made many expressions of the great esteem his master has for Her Majesty . . . and as a mark of it, he has resolved to send his only son into England [to be educated]
...
I hope Her Majesty will . . . [permit] it; for it is certain you will not be able to gratify him in any part of his negotiation.

Matveev's mission, thus, had little chance of success even before it began, for Marlborough's voice was authoritative. Nevertheless, the essence of diplomacy is letting each player act out his role and Marlborough not only did not dissuade Matveev from going to London but even lent the Ambassador his own yacht,
Peregrine,
to make the Channel crossing.

Matveev arrived in the English capital in May 1707, and was greeted amiably, but it was not long before he understood that nothing would happen quickly. Writing to Golovkin, who by this time had succeeded Golovin as Chancellor, he warned that progress would be slow: "Here there is no autocratic power"; the Queen could do nothing without the approval of Parliament. Finally, in September, Queen Anne gave the Russian Ambassador an audience. She was prepared, she said, to ally England with Russia by including Russia in the Grand Alliance, but first she had to have the acquiescence of her current allies, Holland and the Hapsburg empire. During this period of further delay, Matveev's hopes were kept alive by Marlborough, who wrote from Holland that he was using all his influence to persuade the States General to agree to the Russian alliance.

The game was slipping away—Charles had marched from Saxony in August to begin his long-dreaded invasion of Russia— and Matveev's exasperation grew. "The Ministry here is more subtle than the French even in finesse and intrigue," he wrote to Moscow. "Their smooth and profitless speeches bring us nothing but loss of time." In November, Marlborough himself arrived in London. Matveev visited him the evening after his arrival and asked the Duke to say plainly, as an honest man without sweet promises, whether the Tsar could hope for anything from England. Once again, Marlborough refused to give a definite reply.

Through another source—Huyssen, who was acting as a Russian diplomatic agent on the continent—a different approach to Marlborough was under construction. According to Huyssen, the Duke had said that he would be willing to arrange English help for Russia in return for a substantial Russian gift of money and land to him personally. When Golovkin reported this to Peter, the Tsar declared, "Tell Huyssen that if Marlborough wishes a Russian principality, he can promise him one of three, whichever he wishes, Kiev, Vladimir or Siberia. And he can promise him also that if he persuades the Queen to make a good peace for us with the Swedes, he shall receive as revenues of his principality 50,000 ducats for every year of his life, in addition to the Order of St. Andrew, and a ruby as large as any in Europe."

Neither Matveev's nor Huyssen's approach went further. As late as February 1708, with Charles XII already across the Vistula on his march to Moscow, Matveev issued a final appeal for an English alliance. The appeal was left unanswered. In April, Peter wrote to Golovkin: "Concerning Andrei Matveev, long ago we said it was time for him to depart, for all there [i.e., in London] is tales and shame."

Charles adamantly refused to consider any negotiations for peace with Russia. He rejected the French offer of mediation, saying that he did not trust the Tsar's word; the fact that Peter had already given the title of Prince of Ingria to Menshikov was evidence that the Tsar had no intention of returning the province and therefore could not be interested in negotiating a peace. When it was suggested that Peter might compensate Sweden in order to keep a small slice of the conquered territory on the Baltic, Charles replied that he would not sell his Baltic subjects for Russian money. When Peter offered to return all of Livonia, Estonia and Ingria except St. Petersburg and Schlusselburg-Noteborg and the Neva River which connected them, Charles declared indignantly, "I will sacrifice the last Swedish soldier rather .than cede Noteborg."

In this pre-invasion period of tentative peace offers by Peter and rejections by Charles, one specific and irreconcilable difference between them became clear to all: St. Petersburg. Peter would give up anything to keep the site which gave him access to the sea. Charles would give up nothing without first coming to grips with the Russian army. Therefore, on behalf of St. Petersburg—still scarcely more than a collection of log houses, an earth-walled fortress and a primitive shipyard—the war continued.

In fact, negotiation made no sense to Charles. At the pinnacle of success, with Europe paying court at his door, with a superbly trained, victorious army ready for action, with a grand strategy faithfully adhered to and successfully pursued up to this point, why should he be willing to cede Swedish territory to an enemy? It would be dishonorable and humiliating for him to give up provinces still formally Swedish by solemn treaty between his Grandfather, Charles X, and Tsar Alexis—territories now temporarily occupied, as it were, behind the back of the Swedish King and army. Besides, a Russian campaign offered Charles the kind of military operation he dreamed of. Through all his years in Poland, he had been caught in the fluctuating tides of European politics. Now, with a clean stroke of the sword, he would decide everything. And if the risks of marching an army a thousand miles into Russia were great, so were the possible rewards when a King of Sweden stood in the Kremlin and dictated a peace with Russia which would last for generations. And perhaps the risks were
not
so great. Among Swedes and West Europeans in general, opinion of the Russians as warriors remained low. The effect of Narva had sunk deep, and none of Peter's subsequent successes in the Baltic had erased the impression that the Russians were an unruly mob which could not fight a disciplined Western army.

Finally, there was the Messianic side of Charles' character. In Charles' view, Peter must be punished as Augustus had been punished: The Tsar must step down from the Russian throne. To Stanislaus, who was urging peace because of the misery of the people of Poland, Charles said, "The Tsar is not yet humiliated enough to accept the conditions of peace which I intend to prescribe." Later, he again rebuffed Stanislaus by saying, "Poland will never have quiet as long as she has for a neighbor this unjust Tsar who begins a war without any good cause for it. It will be needful first for me to march thither and depose him also." Charles went on to talk of restoring the old regime in Moscow, canceling the new reforms and, above all, abolishing the new army. "The power of Muscovy which has arisen so high thanks to the introduction of foreign military discipline must be broken and destroyed," the King declared. Charles looked forward to this change, and as he was leaving on his march to Moscow, he said cheerfully to Stanislaus, "I hope Prince Sobieski will always remain faithful to us. Does Your Majesty not think that he would make an excellent Tsar of Russia?"

Charles knew from the beginning that a Russian campaign would not be easy. In meant traversing vast expanses of rolling plain, penetrating miles of deep forest and crossing a series of wide rivers. Indeed, Moscow and the heart of Russia seemed to be defended by nature. One after another, the great north-south river obstacles would have to be crossed: the Vistula, the Neman, the Dnieper, the Berezina. Working from maps of Poland and from a new map of Russia given to Charles as a present by Augustus, Charles and his advisors plotted their march, although the actual route was so hidden in secrecy that even Gyllenkrook, Charles' Quartermaster General in charge of the maps, was not sure which one had been chosen.