At the end of 1572 King Johan III contracted with a Scottish nobleman, Archibald Ruthven, for the services of 3,000 Scottish mercenaries for the war in Estonia. They were to be mostly infantry needed for the siege work typical of the war in Livonia. Although Ruthven received a government license for only 1,600 men, he was able to more than fill his commission with some 3,000 infantry and 760 cavalry. In June and July these forces were transported from Scotland to Älvsborg where they began the overland march to the Östergötland ports of Söderköping and Norrköping where they were to embark for Estonia. The trek did not go well.
The overland march was accomplished piecemeal, breaking the army up into groups of a few hundred men each. After slowing their march and doing some pillaging, to get wages from Johan, the Scots did get to port, most in Östergötland, but a few made it up to Stockholm. Joined by another 300 Scottish cavalry recruited from troops already in Sweden, the Ruthven army eventually arrived at Reval. Here they joined Swedish and Finnish troops and German mercenaries, mostly cavalry and artillery crewmen. They were under the overall command of Marshal Klas Åkesson Tott, but the field commander was Pontus de la Gardie, “Colonel of troops in Livland.”
De la Gardie moved his combined army out of Reval and laid siege to the Russian stronghold of Wesenberg in January 1573. The infantry dug in, the artillery was brought to bear and the cavalry scouted the perimeter to cut off any relief effort.
Two attempts to storm the walls in January failed. An attempt in early March to attack through a breach in the walls was repulsed with over 1,000 men lost. An attempt to tunnel under the wall was foiled by the defenders and an incendiary attack intended to set fire to the town inside the walls came to nothing. By mid–March morale was low, supplies were running out and hostilities between the army factions were boiling over.
On March 17, insults led to a brawl and the brawl turned into a battle. The Scottish infantry wrested the artillery from the German gunners and turned them on the German cavalry. The German horse retaliated, charging the Scots. Neither the German or Swedish infantry intervened, so the Scots got off one round at most before the German cavalry was among them. Thirty Germans were killed, but over 1,500 Scottish infantry were cut down. The slaughter ended Johan’s 1573 campaign in dismal failure.
The effects of the disaster were far reaching. Never again would Johan rely so heavily on mercenaries. Tott was removed as overall eastern commander and replaced with de la Gardie. The siege was lifted by the end of March and the army returned to Reval where recriminations, investigations, and even a few trials crippled Johan’s efforts to take the offense for over a year.
At the same time the German mercenaries were threatening Johan for lack of back pay. In early 1573 the situation was so bad that it produced an outright mutiny. Johan offered three fortresses, Hapsal, Leal and Lode in the Wiek, as collateral against full payment by mid-summer on condition they not be turned over to Ivan or his puppet, Magnus. When payment was not made, the mercenaries promptly turned over the castles to Frederick, effectively giving control of eastern Estonia to the Danes. Johan’s situation in Swedish Livonia had reached low ebb. He controlled only Reval and its environs. Even here he was again threatened by a Muscovite force in 1575. Fortunately this army moved off to the south and captured Pernau from the Poles in July. Even the Reval burghers began scouting for a new champion when Russian forces again laid siege in January 1577. The siege was lifted in March before a full fledged revolt took place.
Ivan now demanded that Frederick turn over the three fortresses acquired from Sweden to Magnus in his behalf. The Danish king refused and the tsar himself led a 30,000 man invasion force that first took Polish Dünaburg, then devastated Danish Livonia, including the island of Ösel. Hapsal, Lode and Leal were surrendered without contest as the German mercenaries were getting no more pay from Frederick than they had from Johan. Kokenhausen, on the Düna, tried a ploy to avoid Russian attack by surrendering to Magnus. Ivan sent a force anyway and captured the fortress, executing the commander.
Some of Ivan’s success can be attributed to a new dimension introduced by him into the Livonian war: numbers of troops. Whereas, a good sized army in the Baltic region had previously been a few thousand men, Ivan brought a force of tens of thousands including the feared Tartar and Cossack cavalries. Instead of the usual highly trained, professional mercenaries, Ivan used mostly native troops in armies of a larger size.
By late August, Ivan had pushed on to Wenden, the very heart of Livonia, the old capital of the Brothers of the Sword and symbol of the country itself. Here Magnus, who was conducting an ineffective siege, was arrested. Ivan quickly took the city, but the castle managed to hold out for some time. Finally, with Russian troops isolating the fortress and closing in, the remaining three hundred men, women and children assembled in the main tower and blew themselves up with four tons of gunpowder. Irregardless of the Stettin peace treaty, Ivan now controlled all of Livonia-Estonia except Reval, held by Johan III; Riga, still under Polish control; and Ösel Island, Frederick’s last outpost. Magnus, terrified for his own safety, escaped and fled to Kurland where he died five years later.
Frederick negotiated with Sweden, renouncing Danish claims to Estonia granted under the Stettin peace treaty in exchange for Johan giving up claim to Ösel. He accepted payment from Poland for Livonian lands they occupied, but were claimed by Magnus at the time of his abdication. Thus Frederick II withdrew from the Livonian war, leaving it to the other three belligerents.
As Johan’s fortunes in Estonia deteriorated, he cast about for an ally. He was approached by William the Silent of the rebellious Netherlands, but Johan had little interest in helping a struggling revolution involving the troublesome Calvinists and competing Dutch merchants. Their oppressor, the Spanish, however, was another matter.
Philip II had gold from the New World pouring into his treasury and Johan had ships and guns to trade, commodities that Philip could use in the Americas, in his war with the revolting Dutch, and in his intermittent wars with Elizabeth I. Spain also wanted to gain control of the Sound to shut off Dutch and English trade to the Baltic in hopes of crippling their economies. Taking the Sound away from Denmark was in Johan’s interests, of course, but for different reasons. He wanted to end the toll on Swedish ships and gain unimpeded access to the west. A great coalition began to take shape. Philip II sent an embassy to Stockholm where the two countries worked out a plan that would include Poland in a three nation, anti–Danish alliance. According to the plan Helsingør and Helsingborg would be captured with Spanish troops carried and backed by the Swedish navy. The Sound would be in the hands of the triple alliance. A treaty draft was approved by Johan and forwarded to Philip, but there it died. Perhaps such an adventure was just too far afield for the Spanish monarch. Johan did not push the issue, being reluctant to take action that would certainly precipitate a new war with Frederick.
The two Scandinavian kings were being careful to avoid conflict and even cooperating in patrolling the Baltic for pirates. West of the Sound, Huguenot and Netherlands rebel privateers were harassing merchantmen. Frederick sent ships to patrol these waters, but with only limited effectiveness. East of the Sound, however, where Danish and Swedish navies dominated, the seas were made safe for commerce. Russia and Poland, having no navies of their own, offered privateer licenses to any ship owners willing to risk attacking ships in Baltic waters. Russia was after Swedish commerce and Poland hoped to cut off Prussia and Danzig from resupply by sea. But Denmark, with Sweden’s cooperation, worked to clear the seas, treating any privateers caught as common pirates. So effective were their efforts that the Baltic became one of the safest maritime areas in the world. Scandinavian, Dutch and English ships could sail these waters with small crews and no armament, increasing profits, encouraging investment and further rendering the Hanseatic League obsolete. The Hansa was dead, Baltic trade boomed and the Scandinavian navies dominated.
To the west Johan’s foreign policy was stymied, but in t
he east there was new hope. Following Sigismund II Augustus’ death and Henry’s abdication, the Polish Sejm elected a skilled and courageous military leader as king, Stephen Bathory of Transylvania. After his coronation, Bathory was occupied with an insubordinate Danzig. When this was settled, by the end of 1577, he was able to turn his attention to the Russian incursions. The capture of Wenden had been a huge symbolic and strategic victory for Ivan and here the Swedes and Poles collaborated in an attack. The allies struck in early 1578. It was the first serious defeat for Ivan’s offensive conquest of Livonia and marked the turning point of the Second Northern War.
Ivan had left 22,000 Russian troops to garrison the castles of his newly won territory, but it wasn’t enough. Lithuanian forces captured Dünaburg with a combination of force and subterfuge. Swedish and Polish armies combined in an attack on Wenden and captured both city and fortress.
Ivan was not about to see his hard won gains taken without a fight. In September 1578 he sent an 18,000 man army back into Livonia to reestablish control. The Muscovites captured Oberpahlen from the Swedes, then marched onto Wenden and laid siege. A relief effort was improvised by the allies. An army of 5,500 Polish, German and Swedish troops was rushed to the city. The small army was able to defeat the Russian cavalry in the field and drive them off, leaving the besieging infantry unprotected in their trenches. The would-be attackers were slaughtered. Many Russian boyars were taken prisoner. Twenty guns and thousands of horses were taken, so many that the entire Swedish infantry rode back to Reval on horseback. The Russian hold on Livonia had been broken.
This open field battle at Wenden was unusual for the Second Northern War. There were few pitched battles between armies in the Livonian wars. As an invading army approached, there might be some skirmishing at the border, but the defenders would quickly pull back into their fortresses leaving the countryside to the invaders who would promptly pillage, rape and burn the surrounding area as they lay siege to the fortifications. Huge siege guns were moved into position and the bombardment would begin. High trajectory mortars lobbing explosives or incendiary shells over the walls caused much death and destruction inside the fortifications, particularly if the defensive position was a walled city.
The Russians had gigantic guns called kartouven that fired a fifty-two-pound iron ball eight inches in diameter. The gun weighed eight thousand pounds and required at least twenty horses or oxen to move it. Cannon firing five- to twenty-five-pound balls were common. In artillery, however, the Swedes had the advantage.
Johan purchased foreign cannon, mostly iron, but his own domestically produced pieces were superior. As in its naval artillery, Sweden’s royal foundries manufactured brass guns using native copper. These coppers could be built lighter and stronger than iron cannon. Bigger powder charges could be used, increasing the effectiveness against defensive walls and the coppers cooled faster than iron pieces allowing an increased rate of fire. The most powerful cannons used in the war were the Swedish double and half kartouven that hurled a twenty-four-pound ball at a high velocity. These weapons were about to be put to good use as Sweden took the offense.
The two temporary allies were not able to combine forces again for such an effective attack as the one on Wenden, but each began an aggressive offense spreading Ivan’s defensive forces thin and in this sense they did act for their mutual benefit. Bathory’s goal, besides recovering Livonia and eastern Lithuania, was Pskov and Novgorod. Johan had always kept his eye on Narva.
In 1579 Bathory took Polock and the next year Velike Luki and Kholm. By 1581 he was at the gates of Pskov laying siege to the city.
Henrik Klassan Horn, a Finnish commander, meanwhile attacked Narva, deep in Russian territory, but was repulsed. Johan now placed Pontus de la Gardie as overall commander of Estonian-Finnish armies. He was the mercenary who entered Swedish service at the fall of Varberg. De la Gardie turned out to be an excellent general. The Swedes took Kexholm on the Finnish frontier in 1580 giving Sweden a port on Lake Ladoga. Johan claimed the whole province and a strip of land from there to the Arctic Sea. The same year de la Gardie took Padis in the Wiek giving Reval some breathing room. He then split the army and the next year pushed east with one division capturing Tosburg and Wesenburg. This established a good sized Swedish enclave in Estonia by summer. Meanwhile, Horn, with the western division, continued the conquest of the Wiek recovering Lode, Hapsal and Leal that same summer.
By the end of that fall, de la Gardie had reached Narva, with a solid supply line to back him, not just sea communication. The Swedish doubles and half kartouven cannon pulverized the one hundred and sixty foot thick walls in two days. Narva was taken and de la Gardie put to the sword every man, woman and child, over 7,000 people in the city.
Before year’s end de la Gardie had taken Ivangorod, Jama and Kopo΄re expanding Swedish territory to include almost all of Ingia at the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland and threatening Novgorod. Horn, to the west, took Weissenstein, completing the conquest of Estonia. Johan now controlled all the area around the Gulf of Finland.
Bathory, meanwhile, was bogged down in a five month siege of Pskov, which he was unable to win. But the pressure from both Sweden and Poland brought Ivan to the negotiating table.
In 1582 Ivan settled with Bathory at Iam Zapolskii giving up all claims of Livonia to Poland, but he saved Pskov which would have given Bathory a straight shot at Novgorod. Bathory also received Dorpat in Livonia in trade for Velike Luki deep in Novgorod territory. This ten year truce agreement released both parties for action against Sweden.
First, Bathory threatened Johan in an effort to get the remainder of Livonia, Estonia, and particularly Narva turned over to him. But Johan was as belligerent as ever, telling Bathory to come ahead and give it a try. Pressured by the Sejm and Queen Ann, and with an empty treasury, he finally acquiesced and a Swedish-Polish war was averted.
Matters between Johan and Ivan were also settled in a truce concluded in 1583 to last for three years and which was extended another three years until 1589. During the negotiations Johan demanded territory in addition to the areas actually conquered from Russia, namely Novgorod, Pskov, Gdov, Ladoga, Porchov and Nöteborg. In short he was asking for control of all of Ingria and western Novgorod, a preposterous pretension. None of this was granted, of course, but it did set a precedent for future Swedish ambitions, aspirations that would be acted upon by future Swedish kings.
What Johan coveted was complete control of Russia’s trade with the west. The conquest of Narva had proved something of a hollow victory. As a second rate port it had been important because it provided direct access to Russian interior trade centers. Now in Swedish hands it lost its value. Of course, de la Gardie’s liquidation of the population probably didn’t help the city’s commercial value.
English, Dutch and other merchants shifted trade to ports with better harbors. Two of the ports were Viborg and Reval, which was agreeable to Johan, but much of the Russian trade went through Dorpat to Riga and Pernau, both in Polish hands. Also, merchants were avoiding the Baltic altogether by passing around the North Cape to the White Sea where a new port, Archangel, had replaced the old St. Nicolas. Besides providing direct access to Russia, the route avoided the Danish Sound and its costly toll. For his part, Frederick claimed the same toll right on ships passing between Iceland and Norway, both in Danish hands. Even though he had the Faeroe and Shetland islands to operate from, there was just too much sea to enforce an effective toll collection. However, in 1583, Queen Elizabeth, needing Danish concessions, signed the treaty of Haderslev, by which England was granted the right to pass through the waterway in return for 100 rose nobles per year. France agreed to the same terms legitimizing the toll and the route formally. Johan’s only recourse was to try to close the route at the opposite end.
Since the Middle Ages Swedish traders and trappers had worked the Scandinavian Arctic, collecting furs and trading with the Lapps that inhabited the region. These birkarlar operated much like American mountain men of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spending long winters running trap lines and augmenting their catch with pelts purchased from native people. By the fifteenth century, Swedish colonists began to move into the more accessible arctic coastlands and were followed by the king’s bailiffs who collected taxes not only on the settlers and birkarlar, but the Lapps as well. Gustav Vasa had sent soldiers to protect his subject colonists from Russian raids and to see that his bailiffs were unmolested. As the value of skins increased during the 1500s, Lapp families found themselves at the mercy of three countries, Sweden, Denmark-Norway and Russia. All three collected taxes in this region though none of them could maintain control. Gradually Sweden tried to gain jurisdiction over the area. In 1570, at the Stettin Peace Conference, Sweden had tried to lay claim to sovereignty over the region. With the capture of Kexholm, Johan demanded the land from Lake Ladoga to the Arctic Ocean. In 1582 he advanced his claim to all taxes from Lapps in the strip of land. Finally, in 1591, and again in 1592, Johan sent expeditions into the Kola Peninsula in an attempt to annex this area, gain control of the White Sea, and close the port of Archangel. Both attempts failed and western European ships continued to round the North Cape to Russia.
Ivan IV died in March 1584 and was succeeded by his son Feodor, but Boris Godunov was maneuvering to gather the reins of power in his own hands and so he arranged for the three year extension of the truce with Sweden to 1590. Stephen Bathory died in 1586 and the crown went to Johan’s son and heir to the Swedish throne, Sigismund III.
With the Swedish-Russian truce expiring in 1590, Johan and Sigismund tried the maneuver at Reval that proved a disappointment. Sensing Swedish weakness, Russia renewed hostilities and invaded Ingria. Surprised Swedish forces under Karl Henricksson Horn—Pontus de la Gardie had drowned in an accident in 1585—mounted a stout defense, but Horn was able to save Narva only by surrendering Ivangorad and Kopo΄re. This was the action that prompted his recall to Stockholm and imprisonment for a time. But he was pardoned by Johan just before the king died. Godunov, still consolidating his power, signed a twelve year peace with Poland and a two year truce with Sweden during which a formal peace treaty was to be negotiated. The treaty of Teusina was signed May 18, 1595, bringing the Second Northern War to an end after thirty-seven years of devastating warfare in the area once ruled with an iron fist by German warrior-monks.
Warrior Kings of Sweden Page 17
