His childhood games came to be played on an ever larger scale, and more realistically. They involved bigger and bigger boats — even the building of seagoing ships — and real soldiers rather than toy ones, with live ammunition and real casualties. So when the twenty-two-year-old Peter eventually went to war in 1694, marching as a bombardier with his own artillery train, he was no stranger to military pursuits.
Peter’s target in the campaigns of 1695 and 1696 was Azov, the formidable Turkish citadel which blocked Russia off from the Black Sea and the western flank of the Caucasus. The attempt of 1695 was not successful, but Peter was as yet a strong, young Sisyphus and he cheerfully resolved to try again next year, encouraged by his now being a member of an anti-Turkish coalition that included the Habsburg Emperor, who promised to help with engineering and explosives expertise, the King of Poland and the Doge of Venice, one of whose subjects, an expert in building and handling galleys, Peter was soon to commission as vice-admiral in his service. Intelligent as well as persistent, Peter already understood that battles and storms were the lesser part of war: that thorough preparation, careful planning and good logistics were the bases of success. And so we find him inspecting the arms-manufacturing base at Tula at the conclusion of the campaign, and early the following year he was at Voronezh, upriver from Azov, building a fleet of galleys and barges which was to neutralize the Turkish fleet. He also planned to build frigates in the yards there to exploit victory when it came.
And this time the operation did succeed. The pasha commanding Azov surrendered it in July. Since Ivan had died two months before this, Peter returned to Moscow as sole tsar and autocrat. Yet Moscow was not to detain him long. In March 1697 he began his famous, and in part notorious, tour of Europe, sometimes presenting himself as the young ruler of the new power of the north, sometimes travelling incognito. He visited states in central Germany, England, Venice and Vienna, but his particular goal was Holland, where he set out to master all the secrets of modern shipbuilding. He was already intent on making Russia not only a great European power but a great sea power, and to do this he had to achieve what Ivan IV and Alexis had both failed to achieve: a breakthrough to the Baltic.
Arriving in Moscow in October 1696 he found that another revolt of musketeers had been suppressed in his absence. He felt obliged to supervise the interrogation of those involved, and, following his principle that no subordinate should be ordered to do anything that the Tsar himself was not prepared to do, whether in carpentry, battle, hammering sheet iron, or execution, he himself took part in the proceedings, which involved torture and killing. High treason was not, after all, a crime for which it was politic to show clemency. The proceedings were not to be concluded until 1705. Meanwhile, once a long-term truce with the Turks was in the offing, Peter turned impatiently to drive Sweden, the strongest power of the north, away from the eastern shoreline of the Baltic.
He did so in coalition with the kings of Denmark and Poland, and with the promised support of a fifth column of Swedish subjects in Livonia, headed by a local baron called Patkul, who, like others of his class, was enraged by recent and extensive transfers of land and peasants from the private domain to the Swedish crown. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were prepared for the campaign, ready to march as soon as news should arrive of the signing of an agreement with the Turks. It came in August 1700, but by that time Peter’s coalition had fallen to pieces. Denmark, which had begun aggressively by invading Swedish Holstein, had been forced to seek peace and withdraw from the war. The Polish king had begun well, sending his Saxon troops in against Riga, but the attack failed. The Russians had therefore to fend for themselves.
Still, their prospects looked reasonably good. Peter had over 60,000 troops ready to descend on Narva, which, if he could take it, would give him the access he needed to the Baltic Sea. Its walls were strong but its garrison was relatively small, and so the siege began — and with it a trial of strength between the two rival monarchs. Peter was twenty-eight years old and fresh from victory against the Turks. His opponent, Charles XII, was ten years his junior and virtually untried. On the other hand Sweden had long been recognized as a power to be reckoned with, while Russia was still regarded as a neophyte. The struggle between them would decide the supremacy of northern Europe.
The first clash of arms came in November, when Charles led a Swedish force to the relief of Narva. Though outnumbered three to one, he immediately took the initiative, launching an attack which wrong-footed the Russians. The day ended with a stinging rout for Peter’s forces, although the Tsar was not present in person, having returned to Moscow for Christmas. The Russian losses were serious: 8,000 men and nearly 150 guns. That encounter and the long struggle which followed reflected the two monarchs’ quite disparate military talents. Charles, by far the superior field commander, was master of the unexpected. Peter, having no talent as a tactician, depended on his generals (in the case of du Croy, whom he left in command at Narva, a rather careless one). In fact, given his reliance on councils of war, it could be said that this Russian autocrat governed military operations by committee. Peter’s strength lay as an organiser and ener-giser. The virtual destruction of his northern army galvanized him into raising another. Fortunately for him, Russia was able to meet all his demands for men and resources. And fortunately, too, he and his generals developed a talent for exploiting the adversary’s difficulties. 2
Charles had wanted to follow up his victory at Narva by advancing immediately against Pskov and from there into the heart of Russia. He was thwarted, however, by the need to secure his lines of communication against the Poles and Saxons. So he decided to occupy Courland and develop it as a base for his army. Eventually (in 1706) he forced Poland to abandon its alliance with Russia, but meanwhile Peter was able to capture Narva and send forces down the river Neva to snatch the unpromising marshes near its mouth. It was there, in 1703, that he began to build a fort which was to become the nodal point of a new city he called St Petersburg. 3
The decision to develop St Petersburg rather than expand Narva was taken in the light of long experience going back to Ivan IV and with an eye to long-term strategic advantage. The new settlement was less exposed than Narva or any other point along the southern Baltic. Moreover, it gave access to Russia’s river system, so that, with the development of relatively few canals, it could become an organic part of a single communications system. It also gave access to Western merchantmen, and Peter lost no time in selling them the idea of the makeshift settlement (as it remained for several years) as a profitable new trading port in the making.
Once set on his radical strategy to solve Russia’s Baltic problem, Peter would not contemplate abandoning it, even though the great maw of this infant St Petersburg swallowed resources on a gargantuan scale. Indeed, he would happily have surrendered Narva and his other gains around the Gulf of Bothnia, and made other concessions, had Charles only been prepared to cede that small piece of uncertain ground. But Sweden was not content for Russia to have any outlet to the Baltic at all, and so the struggle had to be played out to a violent finish. In terms of resources, Russia had the advantage, though greater difficulties in mobilizing its forces, but Sweden had the better military machine. In 1707 matters moved towards a climax.
The Russian staff expected a Swedish offensive, but not in the direction from which it came - across the Masurian Marshes, to establish a new forward base at Mogilev in Belarus. However, a defeat in Estonia led the Swedes to abandon plans for an amphibious operation against St Petersburg. So far the Russians had suffered more damage than the Swedes in action, but neither side had gained a decisive advantage. Then the weather intervened. Heavy rains turned the roads along the Swedish line of supply into a quagmire, and with the Russians burning crops in the dry areas Charles was soon facing a problem of feeding his army If the Swedish general Lewenhaupt had arrived earlier, according to plan, bringing supplies, all would have been well for the Swedish offensive into west Russia. But Lewenhaupt was delayed
too long, and the Russians used the time to fire the villages and crops along what would have been the Swedes’ line of march eastward. In September the thwarted Charles led his army south towards Ukraine. Soon afterwards the news came that Lewenhaupt had been defeated. The die had been cast.
The outcome of the war was turning not on the size and the leadership of armies, but on logistics. The Swedish had the better army, but had to feed it. The Russians understood their enemy’s difficulty, and exploited it to their own advantage. This forced the Swedes to change their strategy. Rather than taking a direct approach against St Petersburg or Moscow, they decided to move south to Ukraine to secure supplies and join forces with Russia’s enemies.
Charles had good reason to hope that the Turks, Tatars, Poles and Ukrainian Cossacks — though subject to the Russian crown — would all join him in the fight against Peter. In the event only Hetman Ivan Mazepa of Ukraine did so, and even he could not bring all his Cossacks over with him. Soon after he had declared for Sweden, a Russian force descended on his base at Baturin, sacking the place and massacring many of its inhabitants. Still, the Swedes had the prospect of wintering in food-rich country with some local support and a less inclement climate. But then the weather intervened again. Winter came early that year, and some Swedish soldiers froze in the saddle that Christmas. The Russians may have sustained many more casualties from exposure to the elements, but they could be replaced. The Swedes could not make good their losses. Spring came, and the Russians destroyed the Zaporozhian Sech, eliminating any chance of a widespread popular movement in support of Mazepa. Then, in June 1709, having for so long avoided a major battle, they offered it. But, true to form, it was Charles who attacked.
The rout of the once all-victorious Swedish army has often been attributed to bad luck - not least by Charles’s chief apologist, his chamberlain Gustavus Adlerfelt. But the Russian strategy of attrition had served to wear the Swedish troops down. True, the co-ordination of the Swedish battle would have been better had not Charles been hors de combat having received a stray bullet in the leg two days earlier. On the other hand the Russian command, having analysed their initial failure at Narva and their other encounters with the Swedes, had set the scene to suit themselves. They had built redoubts to block certain approaches to the enemy and divert them from their main objective, the Russian encampment at Poltava. And this time when the Swedes attacked the shock was absorbed. Charles’s troops were slowed, then stopped, and finally turned. That day Charles lost nearly 10,000 men dead or taken prisoner. Of the prisoners, the rank and file were put to work on useful projects, and several of the officers, educated men, were to find useful employment in the Russian service, in Siberia and elsewhere.
Charles had set out with high hopes and twenty regiments. According to Adlerfelt, ‘Sweden never saw so considerable a force, nor could … [it] have been conducted with more prudence good council and wisdom.’ There was never a braver leader, claimed Adlerfelt, nor more loyal and disciplined troops. Defeat when it came was unbelievable, and Adlerfelt tried to deny it: ‘If the Muscovites had gained so complete a victory as they pretended, why did they not immediately follow the remains of the army?’ 4 The answer was that there was no point. What remained of that famous army, 17,000 strong, had had its sting drawn, and most of its troops soon capitulated. Only Charles and Mazepa with their staffs and some close retainers fled into Ottoman territory, where they were accorded political asylum.
The victory at Poltava raised Russia’s profile in the consciousness of Western powers, though even before this England had begun trying to lure Russia into an alliance. It also seems to have marked shifts in Russia’s military policy, both to more open forms of warfare and to preferring Russian over foreign generals in appointments to top commands. Furthermore, since Charles, even in exile, refused to make peace, Sweden had to be forced to come to terms. This required a build-up of Russian naval power in the north, involving the expansion of shipyards at Onega and Ladoga to give them a capacity to build both frigates for deep waters and galleys to negotiate the shallow Baltic. The fruit was Russia’s first significant victory at sea, when, off Hango in 1714, a flotilla of Russian galleys defeated a Swedish force, capturing a frigate and over 100 guns.
This feat was enough to give Peter command of the shallow seas off Finland, and made even the Swedish heartland vulnerable to attack. Since Russian forces had by then occupied Livonia and Estonia - taking Riga, Pernau, Reval, Viborg, Kexholm and most other Swedish holdings on the southern and eastern shorelines of the Baltic — Sweden had virtually no negotiating cards left to play. But Charles was as obstinate as he had been headstrong. He rejected further overtures in 1718, when he was offered the return of Finland, Estonia and Livonia if only he would cede Ingria, Narva and Viborg. He was even offered help to conquer Norway. His death later that year allowed negotiations to proceed, but it was only under pressure of further military operations in the Baltic and Russia’s threat to support the pretensions of the Duke of Holstein to the throne of Sweden that peace was eventually concluded at Nystad in I721. 5 At last the fireworks could be fired over the Neva and Peter could accept a new title.
Sweden had been the chief focus of Peter’s attentions for the preceding twenty years and more, but it had not been the only one. There was intense diplomatic activity in central Europe, where a policy of dynastic imperialism was promoted. A series of political liaisons marked the progress of this policy. He married his half-cousin Anna to the Duke of Courland, her sister to the Duke of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, and her daughter to the Prince of Brunswick-Bevern. His son Alexis was married to a princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, his daughter by his second wife, Catherine, to the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. In this fashion Peter’s kin and progeny came to be included in that talisman of aristocratic respectability the Almanack de Gotha, family ties were created with several strategically placed territories in central Europe, and precedents were laid for the intermarriage of Romanovs and some of the grandest crowned heads of Europe. 6
The defeat of Sweden, with its breakthrough to the Baltic, was Peter’s most famous achievement. It was associated with his creation of St Petersburg, which he made his capital in 1713, despite the fact that (or perhaps because) the plague, introduced by Swedish troops, had taken a heavy toll of life among the urban population and of the Russian forces in the Baltic area. This step, designed to entrench his hold on the Baltic, served to reorient the Empire towards the West, distancing decision-making from Russia’s other frontiers.
Yet, paradoxically, the successes in the Baltic region had the effect of promping new Russian lunges in other directions. Russian observers had noted that Holland, Britain, even Portugal had been growing immensely rich thanks to their colonies and trade in India and south-east Asia. The Russians had long since secured access to Persian silks and the gemstones of India. The acquisition of Baltic ports was, as expected, a stimulus to trade. Projects to establish colonies in Madagascar and the Molucca Islands were mooted before being sensibly rejected. 7 Finally it was decided that commerce with the West could be made much more profitable if Russia exploited its central position in the Eurasian land mass by establishing itself as the intermediary for trade with the East.
But access to the Mediterranean would be better. The Turks blocked the way. However, with the help of an uprising by the Orthodox population of the Balkans, who were sympathetic to Russia, an expeditionary force might force a way through. A campaign into the Ottoman Balkans with this purpose in view had been mounted in 1711, and it marks the origin of the ‘Eastern Question’ over which British statesmen were to agonize in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Turks were at war with Russia - hoping to regain Azov and to shore up their position in south-eastern Europe - when prominent Romanians, Serbs and other Orthdox peoples subject to the Turks became excited at the prospect of a Russian victory. In a Romanian parallel to Mazepa’s fatal switch of allegiance from Russia to Sweden (and for similar reasons of personal advancement), the hospod
ar of Moldavia, Dmitrie Cantemir, only recently installed by the Turks, declared for Russia.
The Russians responded by trying to rouse the Orthodox population in other parts of the Balkans too, but for formal and diplomatic reasons the call went out from the Patriarch of Moscow rather than from the Tsar himself:
To all faithful Metropolitans, Governors, Sirdars, Haiduk, Captains, Palikaris and all Christians [whether] Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Bosnians, Montenegrins, and to all [others] who love God and are friendly to Christians:
You know how the Turks have trodden our faith into the mud, seized all [our] holy places by treachery, ravaged and destroyed many churches and monasteries … and what misery they have caused and how many widows and orphans they have seized … as wolves seize on sheep. But now I am coming to your aid … Shake off fear, and let us fight for the faith and for the Church to the last drop of our blood. 8
In effect, Peter had revived the Orthodox version of the crusader tradition which had died in the fifteenth century. But though this generated some excitement among the Balkan Christian elite, there was a disastrous failure to co-ordinate operations with the invading force. As a result, Peter was trapped by Turkish and Tatar forces on the river Pruth, and was forced to conclude a humiliating peace. Among the concessions he was called upon to make were to return Azov, Russia’s gateway into the Black Sea, to the Turks and to withdraw his troops from Poland (though on this he dragged his feet).
This latest failure against the Turks turned Peter’s attention further east. On the Central Asian front ambition was also to exceed capability in the short term. The chief impediment was not the opposition of rival powers, because Russia had a monopoly of access from the north, and was minded to keep it, but distance and keeping communications secure from local predators. It took a caravan about forty-five days to journey from Astrakhan to Bukhara, and another two weeks to reach Tashkent. In 1717 Peter ordered a reconnaissance in strength to be mounted along the famous Silk Road to Khiva. A force of 2,000 cavalry, including many Cossacks from the Terek, set out under the command of a Kabardinian prince who had been Russianized, Aleksandr Bekovich-Cherkasskii. But having survived a long and perilous journey across the desert, they were inveigled into a trap by the Khan of Khiva, and the entire force was slaughtered or taken as slaves. 9 And if the Central Asia khans were wily, the steppe nomads were as ravenous as ever, both for booty and for slaves.
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