Meanwhile, both Charles and Stanislaus were making appeals for an alliance directly to the Sultan in Constantinople. Essentially, their argument was the same as Devlet Gerey's: "What better time than now, with a veteran Swedish army already deep inside Russia, to reverse the results of Peter's Azov campaigns, regain the city, destroy the naval base at Tagonrog, burn the fleet based there, push the impudent Tsar back across the steppe and restore the Black Sea once and for all to the state of "a pure and immaculate virgin."
Peter was aware that these temptations would be put before the sultan, and he moved, by diplomatic and military means, to counter them. In 1708, Golovkin had instructed Peter's ambassador in Constantinople, the wily Peter Tolstoy, to do whatever was necessary to keep the Turks quiet during the Swedish invasion. Early in 1709, Tolstoy reported that the Grand Vizier had promised that the Turks would maintain the armistice and would not permit the Tatars to march. Nevertheless, in April of that year, new Tatar emissaries arrived in Constantinople to urge a Swedish alliance. Using all his arts, Tolstoy strove to thwart this mission. He spread dismal information about the state of the Swedish army. He let it be known that the Russian fleet at Tagonrog was being powerfully reinforced. Gold—always a powerful influence at the Ottoman court—was lavishly distributed among Turkish courtiers and statesmen. Tolstoy also dangled false rumors that Peter and Charles were on the verge of concluding a peace. It was almost settled, he declared, and would be announced with the news that Peter's sister Natalya was to marry Charles and become the Queen of Sweden. Tolstoy had few equals in deviousness, and his campaign had its effect. In the middle of May, the Sultan sent orders forbidding the Khan to join the Swedes. Tolstoy was handed a copy of the letter.
Despite Tolstoy's estimate that the Turks would abide by the armistice at least for a while, and despite the weakening of the Swedish army and its isolation on the steppe, Peter knew that Charles was still planning an offensive. The Tsar also knew, however, that without reinforcements Charles was no longer in a position to deal Russia a fatal blow, and Peter's major objective during the winter and spring of 1709 was to prevent reinforcements reaching Charles. As early as December, Peter had detached a large, mobile force from the main army and sent it under Goltz's command to operate west of Kiev along the Polish frontier, its purpose to intercept and block any relieving army under Krassow and Stanislaus. Far more dangerous, however, was the possibility of the Turks and Tatars joining his enemy. Vast numbers of Tatar cavalry and Turkish infantry joined to the veteran battalions of Swedes would create an irresistable force. Preventing this junction was a matter of convincing the Sultan and the Grand Vizier that war with Russia would not be profitable, and the point on which the Sultan and his ministers were most sensitive was the specter of the Russian fleet. Therefore, to use as a deterrent or, if war came, as a weapon, Peter resolved to prepare his fleet and sail it that summer on the Black Sea.
Through the winter, Peter was anxious about his ships. In January, when Charles began his limited offensive to the east, Peter feared that the King meant to march to Voronezh to burn the wharves and shipyards as a service to the Sultan and a demonstration of what an alliance with Sweden could bring. In February, he wrote to Apraxin, ordering him to Voronezh to ready the ships for the trip down the Don to join the fleet at Tagonrog. Then, he himself hurried to Voronezh, along the way dispatching a flurry of letters and instructions. He ordered Apraxin to send a good gardener to Tagonrog with plenty of seeds and plants. Learning that there was to be an eclipse of the sun on March 11, he asked that Western mathematics teachers in Moscow calculate the extent and duration of the eclipse in Voronezh and send him a diagram. He read a Russian translation of a Western manual on fortification and sent it back for rewriting. In Belgorod, he stopped long enough to become the godfather of Menshikov's newborn son.
The Tsar found that many of the older ships in Voronezh were rotted beyond saving, and he ordered them broken up so that some of the rigging and materials could be salvaged. Once again taking a hammer in his hand, he worked on the ships himself. The problems of carpentering and the fatigue of physical effort were a balm after the anxieties which had been weighing on him through the year of invasion just passed. Catherine, his sister Natalya, and his son Alexis were there to cheer him. Menshikov left the army twice to visit. In April, when the ice on the river had melted, Peter sailed down the Don to Azov and Tagonrog, where he saw the fleet being prepared for sea. He was prevented from going on the first maneuvers by a fever which kept him in bed from the end of April to the end of May, and by then Tolstoy had received the Sultan's assurance in Constantinople that the Turkish and Tatar armies would not march. The fleet was held in readiness as a guarantor of this promise, but Peter was eager to return to the army. On May 27, he was finally well enough, and he set off by carriage. Summer was coming on the steppe, and the climax with Charles was approaching.
36
THE GATHERING OF FORCES
Early in April, winter was finally coming to an end in the Ukraine. The snow had gone, the mud was drying out, the grass was beginning to grow and wild crocuses, hyacinths and tulips were blooming in the rolling meadowlands and along the riverbanks. In this atmosphere of spring, Charles was optimistic. He was negotiating with the Crimean Tatars and with the Sultan; at the same time, he was awaiting the fresh regiments of Swedes and of the Polish royal army. So confident did he feel that he rejected out of hand a tentative Russian offer of peace. A Swedish officer captured at Lesnaya had arrived with Peter's proposal that the Tsar "was inclined to make peace, but could not be persuaded to quit Petersburg." Charles made no reply to Peter's offer.
While he waited for his negotiations with the Tatars and the Turks to bear fruit, Charles resolved to move farther south to a position nearer the expected reinforcements from Poland and the south. Poltava was a small but important commercial town 200 miles southeast of Kiev on the Kharkov road. Its site was the crest of two high bluffs overlooking a wide, swampy area of the Vorskla River, a major tributary of the Dnieper. Poltava was not in the European sense an effective fortress; its ten-foot earth ramparts topped by a wooden palisade had been built to resist marauding bands of Tatars and Cossacks rather than a modern European army equipped with artillery and professional siege engineers. Had Charles marched on Poltava the previous autumn, the town would have fallen easily, but at that time the King disliked the idea of establishing winter quarters in so large a place. Since then, the Russians had improved the defenses, studding the walls with ninety-one cannon and reinforcing the garrison to 4,182 soldiers, and 2,600 armed residents of the city, all under the command of an energetic Colonel O.S. Kelin.
Nevertheless, Charles now decided to seize the town. The technical arrangements for the siege were entrusted to Gyllenkrook, the Quatermaster General, who was an authority on mining and other aspects of siege warfare. "You are our little Vauban," the King told Gyllenbrook, urging him to use all the refinements of the French master. Gyllenkrook began, although he warned the King in advance that the army lacked one essential prerequisite of any successful siege: sufficient power to conduct a sustained artillery bombardment. Eventually, he believed, Charles would have to storm the walls with foot soldiers, in which case, he said, "Your Majesty's infantry will be ruined. Everybody will believe that it was I who advised Your Majesty to make this siege. If it should miscarry, I humbly beg you not to put the blame on me." "No," Charles replied cheerfully, "you are not to blame for it. We take the responsibility on ourself."
The first trenches were dug, and on May 1, the bombardment began. Gradually, the trenches advanced toward the walls, and yet to some of the Swedes, especially Gyllenkrook, it seemed that less was being done than was possible. The cannon fired steadily all day, pouring red-hot shot into Poltava, but at eleven p.m. the King suddenly ordered a halt. Gyllenkrook protested, pleading that if he could only bombard the town for six more hours, Poltava would be at the King's mercy. But Charles insisted, and the guns were silenced. Thereafter, the bombardmen
t was limited to five shots per day, which was meaningless except as harassment. Swedish powder was short, but not that short.
Gyllenkrook and others did not understand Charles' strange behavior or, indeed, the purpose of the siege. Why, for the first time on this Russian campaign, had the King who was the master of campaigning in the field undertaken a siege? And why, having undertaken a siege, was he pursuing it in so lackadaisical a fashion? Puzzled and worried, Gyllenkrook asked Rehnskjold. "The King wishes to have a little amusement until the Poles come," was the Field Marshal's reply. "It is a costly pastime which demands a number of human lives," observed Gyllenkrook. "If His Majesty's will is so, we must be content with it," declared Rehnskjold and terminated the interview by riding away.
Many of Charles' officers, as perplexed as Gyllenkrook, believed that the siege was only an elaborate lure to tempt Peter to commit the main Russian army to battle. If this was Charles' purpose, the Russian garrison made it easier for him. The town was effectively defended, repelling assaults, sending out sorties, destroying the mines which Gyllenkrook pushed ever nearer the walls. Charles himself was.astonished at the vigorous defense. "What! I really believe the Russians are mad and will defend themselves in a regular way."
For six weeks, the siege dragged on into the summer heat of the Ukraine. Charles was always in the thick of the action. To encourage his men, he took up quarters in a house so close to the fortress that its walls were riddled with bullets. Gradually, the Swedish trenches came closer to the ramparts, although accurate Russian musket fire picked off the Swedish sapper and engineer officers supervising the work. As the heat became more oppressive, the wounded began to die when their wounds putrefied with gangrene. Food grew scarce as the Swedish foraging parties rode again and again through the district, stripping farms and villages which had already been plucked clean a week before. Soon, nothing was left to eat except horseflesh and black bread. Powder was scarce, and what there was had deteriorated because of the dampness of melting snow and rain. The firing of a cannon sounded no louder than a clapping of hands. Bullets fired from Swedish muskets fell to the ground scarcely twenty yards away. And there were so few musket balls that Swedish scavenging parties were sent outside the trenches around the fortress to collect and pick up spent Russian balls and bring them in for re-use.
Meanwhile, across the river on the east bank of the Vorskla, Russian forces were gathering. Menshikov, the most aggressive of Peter's generals, commanded these troops from his headquarters in the village of Krutoy Bereg, while Sheremetev with the main army was approaching from the northeast. Menshikov's orders were to observe^ the Swedes across the river and to do what he could to assist the garrison inside Poltava. The latter mission was not easy. Between the low east bank where the Russians were and the steep west bank which rose more than 200 feet to the walls of the town, the river wandered through a maze of marshes impassable to a large army and difficult even for small parties. Several times the Russians tried to send reinforcements directly across to Poltava, even attempting to build a road with sacks of sand, but these efforts failed. The communication problem was finally solved by putting messages inside hollow cannonballs and firing them back and forth across the river between Menshikov and Colonel Kelin.
The river war continued. Parties of horsemen, Russians and Swedes, rode along the opposite sides of the river, patrolling and watching for any sign of movement on the other bank, trying to snatch prisoners from whom they could gain some intelligence. At the end of May, Sheremetev arrived in the Krutoy Bereg camp with his masses of Russian infantry, but, despite their numerical superiority, the Russian generals were uncertain what to do. They learned from Colonel Kelin that his supply of gunpowder was dangerously low, that Swedish mining under his walls was about complete, mat he estimated he could not hold out beyond the end of June. Menshikov and Sheremetev did not want the town to fall, but were not prepared to provoke a general engagement. Certainly, nothing so dramatic and decisive as an attempted mass crossing of the Vorskla in the teeth of determined Swedish opposition had any appeal. Nevertheless, knowing that the decisive moment was approaching, Menshikov sent word to Peter, who was on his way from Azov across the steppe, to hurry. The Tsar replied on May 31 that he was coming as fast as he could, but that rather than lose an advantage which might present itself, the army should if necessary fight without him. As Poltava still held out, the Russian generals decided to wait a little longer.
On June 4, Peter arrived and while his habit had been to appoint one of his generals as commander-in-chief and to take only subordinate rank himself, he now assumed supreme command. Peter brought with him 8,000 new recruits to add to the troops now preparing for battle. His arrival infused new spirit into the soldiers who were skirmishing vigorously at all points along the river. On June 15, a surprise Russian attack on Stary Senzhary inside the Swedish-occupied region freed 1,000 Russian prisoners taken the previous winter at Veprik, and Cossack horsemen loyal to the Tsar broke in and plundered a section of the Swedish baggage train.
Now, the great trial of arms was drawing near. The two armies were in close proximity, each commanded by its monarch. Both realized that the climax was at hand. Charles, confined in an ever narrowing space, would eventually have to try to break out. Peter understood and accepted this. The Tsar, who in the past had been unwilling to risk everything on a single battle, was steeling himself to meet the final test. His strategy had borne fruit. The enemy was isolated. Across Charles' line of retreat to Poland lay Field Marshal Goltz with a powerful force which could either prevent the advance of any relieving force or cut off the retreat of Charles himself. And Peter's army on the Vorskla was now twice as strong as Charles'. It was therefore with grim optimism that Peter wrote to Apraxin on June 7, after joining the army, "We have gathered close to our neighbors and, with God's help, we shall certainly this month have our affair with them."
Within a few days of his arrival, Peter summoned all his generals to his tent and together they examined the facts. It was only a matter of time before Poltava fell. In Swedish hands, the city would serve as a rallying point for the potential reinforcements which Charles hoped—and Peter feared—might join the Swedish King and even at this late date open the road to Moscow. These stakes were high enough to force Peter and his generals to a climactic decision: To relieve pressure on the Poltava garrison and prevent the city's fall, the main Russian army would have to be brought into play. A major, and very possibly a decisive battle would have to be fought no later than June 29 in order to save Poltava. By the 29th, Peter expected to have concentrated all his forces; not only Skoropadsky's Cossacks would be present, but 5,000 Kalmucks riding behind their khan Ayuk. But the army could not be used as long as it remained on the east bank of the Vorskla: it would have to cross to the west bank. Once on the same side of the river as the Swedes, Peter could launch a flank attack on the Swedish lines besieging the city. At the very least, even if a major battle was not joined, the presence of the Russian army would force to Swedes to divert much of their strength from their positions before Poltava and thus relieve the pressure on the city. In addition, a position on the Swedish flank would permit the Tsar to bring to bear the considerable Russian field artillery. His guns, now silent and useless across the river, would be able to fire into the Swedish camp.
Peter next had to determine where and when to cross. There was no thought of attempting to force a passage across the wide, marshy river in the teeth of strong opposition, as Charles had frequently done. Instead, Peter decided to mount diversionary feints all along the river front both north and south of Poltava to distract the Swedes, while the main army would cross at Petrovka, seven miles north of the town where there were places shallow enough for horsemen to ride across. Ronne would cross first with ten regiments of cavalry and dragoons, followed by ten regiments of infantry under Hallart. Once this force had cleared a bridgehead and successfully entrenched itself in a camp at Semenovka a mile below the ford, Peter would bring the main army across. Ro
nne and Hallart quickly moved their troops into position and, on the night of June 14, they attempted a crossing, which was repulsed. But the Tsar was not to be denied. From Poltava, Colonel Kelin sent word that he could not hold out much longer and Peter decided to try again immediately.
The Swedes were fully aware of the impending crossing at Petrovka. On the nights of June 15 and 16, the Swedish army remained at battle stations. Rehnskjold was in command of the Swedish forces—ten cavalry regiments and sixteen infantry battalions—which would meet the Russians as they crossed the river. His tactics would be to permit a part of the Russian army to cross and then, while the Swedes still enjoyed a numerical advantage, attack and drive the Russian vanguard back into the river. Charles remained in command of the troops before Poltava and along the river south of the city. His intention was to wait there until the battle began and he had determined that no major Russian force was crossing south of the city; then, he would ride north to join Rehnskjold at Petrovka. It was a logical formula for victory. But before this Swedish plan could be executed, disaster struck.
June 17, 1709, was Charles XII's twenty-seventh birthday. In his nine years of active campaigning, the King had led a charmed life relative to injury in battle. Although he had been hit by a spent bullet at Narva and had broken his leg in Poland, he had never been seriously wounded. Now, at the most critical moment of his military career, his luck suddenly deserted him.
At daybreak that morning, the King rode to the village of Nizhny Mliny south of Poltava to inspect the Swedish and Cossack positions along the Vorskla. He had good reason: The battle portending north of the city when the Russians crossed would draw most of the Swedish army in that direction. Before permitting this maneuver, Charles wanted to make sure that the river defenses to the south were sufficiently strong to repel any crossing in that region. On the opposite bank, as part of Peter's diversionary tactics, a Russian cavalry force was doing its best to keep the Swedes distracted. One Russian attempt to cross had already been repulsed.
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