Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  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  Once the Peace of Travendal was signed, the Swedish army was rapidly withdrawn from Zealand.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 resolved 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.

  On October 6, what was left of the battered Swedish fleet entered the port of Pernau at the top of the Bay of Riga. The mayor and the city council greeted the King on the quay, and an honor guard of soldiers fired its muskets in the air as he walked through the cobbled streets to his temporary lodgings. As soon as the storm damage could be repaired, the fleet was dispatched to Sweden to bring another 4,000 men, more horses and the remainder of the artillery. In Pernau, Charles heard that Augustus of Poland had lifted the siege of Riga, halted military operations and withdrawn into winter quarters. Back in mid-July, the Polish King had personally joined the siege with 17,000 Saxon soldiers, but the news of the Peace of Travendal with its sudden toppling of his once-bellicose Danish ally had surprised and disheartened him. Now, learning of the impending Swedish descent on Livonia, Augustus had prudently withdrawn to await developments. Charles received this intelligence with bitter disappointment. He had hoped to fight Augustus; he was determined to fight somebody. And, in this context, there remained a possibility. Only 150 miles away, Peter of Russia was in the field with a Russian army, besieging the fortress of Narva. Charles made his decision quickly: If the Saxons would not fight, he would fight the Russians. He would march against the Tsar to the relief of Narva.

  Charles began by concentrating all his available troops. With the men he had brought and the additional soldiers sailing from Sweden, plus some of the Riga garrison now freed by Augustus' retirement, he estimated that he could amass 7,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry by November. For five weeks, he intensively drilled the army at Wesenberg, and during this period Swedish cavalry patrols skirmished regularly with Sheremetev's horsemen along the road to Narva.

  Not everyone in the Swedish camp was enthusiastic about the idea of a winter campaign against the Russians. To many of Charles' officers, the enterprise seemed extremely hazardous. The Russian army, they argued, outnumbered them four to one—some rumors said eight to one; the Russians would be defending a fortified line which the Swedes, despite their inferior numbers, would have to attack; it was a seven-day march to Narva through a burned, despoiled countryside, on dangerous, boggy roads winding through three formidable passes which the Russians would certainly defend; illness had begun to spread among the Swedish soldiers and the ranks were thinning; winter was coming and no winter quarters had been prepared.

  To these arguments Charles retorted simply that they had come to fight and an enemy awaited them. If the Swedish army withdrew and Narva was taken, the Russians would flood through Ingria, Estonia and Livonia and then all the eastern Baltic provinces would be lost. The King's optimism and energy won over some of the officers and helped improve the morale of the troops. All understood that responsibility for the campaign, its success or failure, would belong entirely to the eighteen-year-old King. "If the King succeeds," declared Rehnskjold before the march began, "there never was anyone who had to triumph over such obstacles."

  At dawn on November 13, without waiting for the arrival of 1,000 cavalrymen expected from Reval, the expedition set out. The columns following the blue-and-yellow flag included every man fit to march, 10,537 in all. The conditions were, as predicted, appalling. The roads were mired by autumn rains and the men had to march and sleep in thick, syrupy mud. The ravaged country was studded with burned-out farmhouses, set alight by Russian horsemen. There was no fodder for the horses and no food for the men except what they carried in their knapsacks. Throughout the march, a steady, cold November rain drenched the men to the skin. At night, when the temperature dropped, the rain turned to flurries of snow and sleet and the ground began to freeze. The King slept with his men under the open sky, receiving the rain and snow on his face.

  Despite the bad weather, the Swedish army was pleasantly surprised to find its march almost unopposed. Two of the three passes along the road were entered and occupied without any opposition at all. On the fourth day, the leading troopers of the advance Swedish cavalry screen rode into the Pyhajoggi Pass, eighteen miles west of Narva, where the road ran alongside a stream through a deep valley surrounded by steep hills. Five thousand Russian horsemen commanded by Sheremetev waited on the far side of the stream, but the bridge across had not been cut.

  Charles, riding with the advance guard, was informed o
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  Sheremetev's presence. He ordered that eight pieces of horse artillery be brought forward. Then, at the head of a detachment of dragoons and a part of a battalion of Guards—no more than 400 men in all—the King charged down the valley. The Swedish horse artillery, screened from Russian eyes by the line of galloping dragoons and brought up unexpectedly to the very front line, was suddenly unmasked and opened fire at close range on the clusters of Russian horsemen on the opposite bank. The Russians, startled and frightened by the sudden flash and roar of cannon and having no guns of their own with which to reply, wheeled their horses and galloped away, leaving the pass undefended. Subsequently, it was learned that the Russian retreat was a planned withdrawal and not a flight, as Sheremetev had orders from Peter not to involve his troops in a fight with the main Swedish army. But by the weary Swedes, the charge of a small part of the army followed by what seemed a Russian rout was seen as a victory and provided much-needed encouragement. A pass which properly defended, could have cost the Swedish army heavily to force had been taken for nothing. The road to Narva lay open.

  That night, still soaked with rain and covered with mud, the Swedes pitched camp on the eastern side of the Pyhajoggi Pass. The depth of the mire forced many soldiers to spend the night standing up. The following afternoon, the 19th, hungry and half frozen, the army reached the gutted manor house and village of Lagena, about seven miles from Narva. Not knowing whether the fortress was holding out, Charles ordered the firing of a prearranged signal of four cannon shots. Soon, four dull and distant sounds replied from the beleaguered fortress. Narva was still in Swedish hands.

  Sheremetev had been sent westward with his cavalry only to observe and not to oppose any Swedish movements. Once the Swedish army began its eastward march, he followed instructions and retreated, devastating the country, as far as the Pyhajoggi Pass. Here, the Russian commander, believing that, if fortified, the pass could easily be defended and the Swedish advance on Narva blocked, had wanted to stop and fight. But Peter, who did not fully appreciate the geography of the area, had rejected Sheremetev's proposal. In Peter's view, the pass was too far from the main camp and he did not want to divide the army. Instead, the decision had been made to fortify the land side of the Russian camp at Narva against an attack by Charles' approaching force, while at the same time vigorously prosecuting the siege. Within the next decade, Marlborough was to take town after town in exactly this manner, first encircling the town with his army, and then fortifying the outer rim of his circular camp to hold off rescuing armies while he strangled the town or fortress within his constricting ring.

  On November 17, Sheremetev led his horsemen back into camp, announcing that the Swedes had occupied the Pyhajoggi Pass and were following close behind. Peter called his officers into council. Additional rounds of ammunition were served out and vigilance was doubled, but that night and the next passed peacefully. In fact, the Russians did not expect any sudden attack by the Swedes once Charles' army arrived. Rather, they anticipated a gradual build-up of forces, a period of reconnaissance, skirmishing and maneuver, with a battle sometime in the future.

  At three a.m. on the night of November 17-18, the Tsar summoned the Due du Croy, a nobleman from the Spanish Netherlands who was with the army as an observer on behalf of -Augustus of Poland, and asked him to take command. Peter and Fedor Golovin, the nominal Russian commander-in-chief, were leaving immediately for Novgorod to speed up the reinforcements and to discuss with King Augustus the future conduct of the war. Peter wanted Augustus' explanation of his withdrawal from Riga, a move which had aroused Peter's disappointment and suspicion, and it was for this reason that he took Golovin with him; Golovin, in addition to being commander of the army, was also minister of foreign affairs.

  Some say that Peter's departure from the army the night before the Battle of Narva was an act of cowardice. The picture of a trembling Tsar fleeing in terror before the approach of Charles and leaving the unhappy Du Croy to bear the responsibility for what was to happen has been added to the story of Peter's earlier nocturnal flight to Troitsky to create an image of a man afraid of danger who panicked in moments of stress. The accusation is unfair, both generally and in this particular. Peter risked his life too many times, both on battlefields and on the decks of warships, for the charge of physical cowardice to have merit. The explanation is quite simple: Peter, the one man in Russia on whom all responsibility rested, was going where he felt he could do the most good. Accustomed to the measured pace of Russian military operations, the Tsar assumed that the Swedes would act with similar caution. No one dreamed that an army just arrived after a long, exhausting march would launch an immediate attack on an enemy four times its strength and protected by a ditch six feet wide and an earth wall nine feet high, studded with 140 cannon. Nor was anyone in the Russian camp fully aware of the impetuous character of Charles XII.

  The unlucky figure in this decision was Du Croy. Charles Eugene, Due du Croy, Baron, Margrave and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, had served for fifteen years in the Imperial army in wars against the Turks, but had been forced to resign after he retreated before the approach of the Grand Vizier and an enormous Ottoman army. Seeking employment, he had presented himself to Peter in Amsterdam in 1698, but the Tsar did not engage him and he subsequently found work with Augustus. It was Augustus who had sent Du Croy to Peter to persuade the Tsar to send 20,000 men to help in the siege of Riga rather than embarking on his own campaign in Ingria. The Tsar followed his own plan, but took Du Croy along as an observer and advisor.

  Now, suddenly, Du Croy was asked to take command. Perhaps, had Peter made his decision two weeks earlier, it might have been correct, but now it was too late. Du Croy argued that, lacking the Russian language and unfamiliar with the Russian officers, he would have difficulty issuing orders and ensuring that his commands were obeyed. And he was not happy with the disposition of the Russian troops—the line of circumvallation around the city was too long and the Russian forces were scattered too thinly along its length; a strong Swedish attack on one section of the line might easily succeed before troops from other sections could be brought to help.

  Nevertheless, under strong persuasion from the Tsar, Du Croy consented. Peter gave him absolute power over the whole army. His written instructions were to postpone a battle until more ammunition could arrive, but to maintain the siege and prevent Charles' army from breaking into the town. Baron Langen, in writing to Augustus, noted wryly the change of command: "I hope when the Due du Croy shall have the absolute command, that our affairs will take quite another turn, for he has no more wine or brandy; and being therefore deprived of his element, he will doubtless double his assaults to get nearer the cellar of the commandment." No one in the Russian camp had an inkling of what was about to happen.

  At dawn on the morning of the 20th, the Swedish columns had been mustered at Lagena and were moving through the cold rain in the direction of Narva. By ten a.m., the vanguard of the army became visible to the watching Russians. The Due du Croy, impressive in a red uniform and riding a gray horse, was in the middle of his morning inspection when early musket fire made him realize that the Swedes were approaching. He rode up in time to see the enemy emerging in rain-drenched columns from a wood on top of the Hermannsberg ridge. Du Croy felt no great anxiety: an assault on a fortified line of earthworks such as his was a slow and intricate procedure and he knew from experience that it would develop gradually. Nevertheless, studying the Swedish ranks through his telescope, he was surprised by their small size and he worried that this might be only the vanguard of a larger force. Even so, he would have sent part of his own army, perhaps 15,000 men, out to attack the Swedes, attempting to disrupt their formations and drive them back, had he not found his Russian officers strongly disinclined to leave the protection of their lines. Accordingly, he ordered his regiments to plant their standards along the earthworks, stand to arms and wait.

  Charles and Rehnskjold meanwhile were standing on top of the Hermannsberg, sw
eeping their own telescopes up and down the Russian lines. The battlefield lay spread below them, bounded on both sides by the banks of the Narva River flowing in a wide curve around the town, with the Ivangorod fortress across the stream. Along the foreground lay the Russian siege line. A bridge that crossed the river behind the northern end of the Russian line was the only apparent Russian route of supply—or, should it come to that, of retreat. The defensive fortifications appeared impressive: a ditch, backed by an earth rampart studded with sharpened stakes, the chevaux de frise. Along the earthworks, separate bastions had been constructed, each lined with cannon. The Russian army inside the camp was obviously much larger than the Swedish force. Nevertheless, it was also clear from the activity that could be observed inside the Russian camp that no Russian attack was coming.

  The situation Charles and Rehnskjold found themselves in was awkward; many commanders might have considered it desperate. Small and exhausted armies did not normally attempt to storm fortified lines manned by a force four times as large, but the very nakedness of the Swedish army dictated an attack. To remain inert in the face of an enemy this size was impossible, to retreat equally impossible; the only solution seemed to be assault. Besides, Charles and Rehnskjold had noticed the same weakness which Du Croy had pointed out to Peter: The Russian army was spread along the four-mile length of the line. A concentrated assault on one section of the line might pierce it before sufficient reinforcements could be brought up from other sectors, and Charles trusted his disciplined Swedish regiments, once inside the Russian camp, to exploit the chaos he hoped would ensue. He therefore ordered Rehnskjold to attack, and the General quickly worked out a plan.

  The Swedish infantry, heavily concentrated, was to deliver the