Peter the Great (103 page)

In preparing the offer, Peter viewed his prospects with gloomy realism. Knowing that Charles was a guest and now an ally of the Sultan, he assumed that any peace would have to include a settlement of his disputes with Sweden as well as Turkey. He assumed that his concessions would have to be drastic. Ultimately, although this was not contained in his first proposal, he was prepared to surrender Azov, dismantle Tagonrog and give up everything he had won from the Turks over twenty years. To the Swedes, he would restore Livonia, Estonia, Karelia—everything he had taken in war except St. Petersburg, his "beloved paradise." If this was not enough, he would trade away the ancient Russian city of Pskov and other territories. In addition, he was prepared to allow Charles to return home to Sweden, to recognize Stanislaus as King of Poland and to promise to cease his own intervention in Polish affairs. To tempt the Grand Vizier and other Turkish officers, he would offer large bribes: 150,000 roubles was the gift he suggested for the Grand Vizier. By afternoon, the proposals were drafted, and Shafirov was sent with a trumpeter under a white flag to present them to the Grand Vizier.

Unknown to the Russians, Shafirov's arrival in the Grand Vizier's camp produced a profound relief in that hesitant warrior. In his multi-chambered silken tent, the elderly Baltadji had been greatly perplexed and ill at ease. His best troops, the Janissaries, were grumbling about renewing the assault. A further attack against even a weakened Russian camp might severely deplete their numbers at a time when Hapsburg Austria was rumored to be mobilizing for another war. Further, the Grand Vizier possessed a piece of news which Peter had not yet learned: Ronne's Russian cavalry had captured Braila, seized many of the Turkish army's supplies and burned some of its powder magazines. At his elbow, Poniatowski and the Tatar Khan were urging him to deliver a final attack and finish at one stroke the battle, the war and the Tsar. Reluctantly, Baltadji was about to agree and give the orders for a grand assault when Shafirov was brought into his tent. The Russian Vice Chancellor handed over the letter from Sheremetev which suggested that war was not in the true interests of either party and had been brought about by the intrigues of others. The two generals, therefore, should stop the bloodshed and investigate possible terms of peace.

The Grand Vizier saw the hand of Allah. He could be a victor and a hero without risking further battle. Overriding the anguished pleas of Poniatowski and the Khan, Baltadji ordered the bombardment halted and sat down happily with the Russian envoy. The negotiations continued through the night. The following morning, Shafirov sent back word that although the Grand Vizier was anxious for peace, the discussions were dragging. Impatiently, Peter instructed his envoy to accept any terms that were offered "except slavery," but to insist on an immediate agreement. The Russian troops were starving, and if peace was not to come, Peter wanted to use their last strength in a desperate break-out attack on the Turkish trenches.

Spurred by this threat of renewed fighting, Baltadji itemized his terms. In relation to the Turks, they were what Peter had expected: the Tsar was to give up all the fruits of his 1696 campaign and the 1700 treaty. Azov and Tagonrog were to be returned, the Black Sea fleet was to be abandoned, the lower-Dnieper forts destroyed. In addition, Russian troops were to evacuate Poland, and the Tsar's right to keep a permanent ambassador at Constantinople would be canceled. As for Sweden, King Charles XII was to be granted free passage home and the Tsar was "to conclude a peace with him if agreement can be reached." In return for these commitments, the Ottoman army would stand aside and permit the encircled Russian army to return peacefully to Russia.

When Peter heard these terms, he was astonished. They were not light—he would lose everything in the south—but they were far milder than he had expected. Nothing had been said about Sweden and the Baltic except that Charles should go home and that Peter should try to make peace. Under the circumstances, it was a deliverance. The Turks added one further demand: Shafirov and Colonel Michael Sheremetev, the son of the Field Marshal, must remain in Turkey as hostages until the Russians carried out their promises to return Azov and the other territories.

Peter was eager to sign before the Grand Vizier changed his mind. Shafirov took young Sheremetev and returned immediately to the Turkish camp, where the treaty was signed on July 12. On the 13th, the Russian army, still keeping its arms, formed columns and began to march out of the ill-fated camp on the Pruth. Before Peter and the army could leave, however, they passed unknowingly through one final, potentially disastrous crisis.

Throughout Baltadji's negotiations with Shafirov, Poniatowski had done his best to delay. Charles XII's agent had seen that Peter was trapped and that the Tsar would have to accept almost any terms dictated by the Grand Vizier. If his own master's needs were not ignored, Sweden might regain all it had lost, perhaps more. Thus, as soon as Shafirov arrived in the Grand Vizier's tent, Poniatowski rushed out and scribbled a letter to Charles, handed it to a courier and sent him galloping to Bender.

Poniatowski wrote the note at noon on July 11. The horseman arrived in Bender on the evening of the 12th. Charles reacted instantly. His horse was saddled, and at ten p.m. he was galloping through the darkness toward the Pruth fifty miles away. At three p.m. on the 13th, after a continuous seventeen-hour ride, Charles appeared suddenly on the perimeter of the Grand Vizier's camp. He rode through the lines to look down on the makeshift Russian fortifications. Before him, the last of the Russian columns were marching out unhindered, escorted by squadrons of Tatar horsemen. The king saw everything: the dominating position of the Turkish cannon, the ease with which, without even the necessity of an assault, a few days' wait would have brought the starving Russians out as prisoners.

No one knows what feelings of regret Charles, studying the panorama before him, may have had about his decision not to accompany the Turkish army. Had he been there to add his forceful voice to that of the Tatar Khan (who had wept in frustration when the Grand Vizier signed the peace treaty), a different decision might have been reached. He rode silently through the watching Turkish soldiers to the tent of the Grand Vizier. With Poniatowski and an interpreter at his side, he entered rudely, still wearing his spurs and dirty boots, and flung himself exhausted on a sofa near the sacred green banner of Mohammed. When the Grand Vizier came in, accompanied by the Khan and a crowd of officers, Charles asked that they withdraw so that he could speak to
Baltadji in private. The two men drank a ceremonial cup of coffee in silence and then Charles, making an extreme effort to control his feelings, asked why the Grand Vizier had let the Russian army go. "I have won enough for the Porte," replied Baltadji calmly. "It is against Mohammed's law to deny peace to an enemy who begs it." Charles asked whether the Sultan would be satisfied with so limited a victory. "I have command of the army and I make peace when I will," answered Baltadji.

At this point, unable to contain his frustration, Charles rose from his seat and made a final appeal. As he had not been a party to the treaty, would the Grand Vizier lend him a fraction of the Turkish army and a few cannon so that he might pursue the Russians, attack and win far more? Baltadji refused, declaring that the Faithful must not be led by a Christian.

The game was over and Charles was beaten. From that moment, he and Baltadji Were mortal enemies and each worked mightily to get rid of the other. The Grand Vizier stopped payment of the Swedish daily allowance, forbade merchants to sell provisions to the Swedes and intercepted the King's mail. Charles retaliated by complaining bitterly to the Sultan about Baltadji's behavior. In particular, he set his agents in Constantinople to spreading the rumors that the real reason the Grand Vizier had let the Tsar and his army escape was that he had been massively bribed.

The story took root in Russia, too. One version was that Catherine—some say without the knowledge of her husband, others say with Peter's private consent—had ordered Shafirov to promise the Grand Vizier a vast sum, including her own jewels, to secure the Tsar's freedom.

In retrospect, the story seems exaggerated. Baltadji was promised 150,000 roubles, which is a large sum, but that this was the reason he made peace on relatively mild terms seems unlikely. He had other reasons: He was not primarily a warrior, his troops were reluctant to fight, he feared a new war with Austria and was glad to end this war with Russia, he disliked the fanatical Russophobia of the Khan Devlet Gerey and wanted him leashed. Further, he had undoubtedly been told that messages had been sent to Charles XII and that at any minute the Swedish King might ride into camp, demanding a battle of annihilation. Indeed, should Charles arrive and Peter be captured, he would be in the complicated position of having two of the greatest sovereigns in Europe, both without their armies and powerless, as his "guests." The diplomatic implications were unthinkable. And, from the Ottoman point of view, Baltadji had achieved all his objectives. The territory Russia had taken from the Sultan was now fully restored. What more should one ask from a treaty of peace?

None of this was solace for Charles. A unique opportunity, a moment when overwhelming power could be applied against an almost helpless foe, had been lost—and not just lost, but deliberately thrown away. Thereafter, although Charles worked hard and helped incite three more brief wars between the Tsar and the Ottoman Empire, the opportunity never returned. Poltava remained decisive in Peter's war against Charles; the Pruth did not upset this. Peter realized this as well as Charles. "They had the bird in their hand there," he said later, "but it will not happen again."

The Grand Vizier had won the Battle of Pruth, although no one, especially the Sultan, was to thank him. Peter and Charles both lost, the former less than he might have, the latter because he gained nothing where he might have gained everything. Peter's allies, the hospodars of Moldavia and Walachia, almost lost: one of his lands, the other his head.

The handing over of Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia, was one of the Grand Vizier's original conditions for peace. The Hospodar had hidden under the baggage of the Tsaritsa Catherine in one of the wagons, and only three of his men knew where he was. Shafirov was therefore able to tell the Grand Vizier truthfully that it was impossible to surrender Cantemir as, since the first day of the battle, no one had seen him. The Grand Vizier waved the matter aside, declaring contemptuously, "Well, let us speak no more about it. Two great empires should not prolong a war for the sake of a coward. He will soon enough meet with his deserts."

Cantemir escaped with the Russians, collected his wife and children in Jassy and, along with twenty-four leading Moldavian boyars, returned to Russia with the Tsar's army. There, Peter showered favors on him, giving him the title of Russian prince and granting him large estates near Kharkov. His son entered diplomatic service and became Russian ambassador to England and France. Cantemir's principality, Moldavia, was not so lucky. Baltadji gave the Tatars permission to ravage the towns and villages by fire and sword.

The fate of Brancovo, Hospodar of Walachia, who had first betrayed the Sultan and then betrayed the Tsar, had an appropriate twist: The Turks never trusted him again. Although he was warned that a tide of disfavor was running against him in Constantinople, and although he began sending large sums of money to Western Europe to prepare for a comfortable exile, Brancovo delayed his own departure. In the spring of 1714, he was arrested and sent to Constantinople. There, on his sixtieth birthday, together with his two sons, he was beheaded.

* * *

The treaty signed on the Pruth ended the war, but did not bring peace. Peter, heartsick at having to hand over Azov and Tagonrog, procrastinated until Charles XII should be sent out of Turkey. Shafirov, now superseding Tolstoy as senior Russian diplomat in Constantinople, urgently pressed the Grand Vizier to expel the Swedish King. Baltadji tried. "I wish the Devil would take him because I now see that he is king only in name, that he has no sense in him and is like a beast," the Grand Vizier told Shafirov. "I will try to get rid of him somehow or other." Baltadji failed because Charles flatly refused to go. Meanwhile, the King's agents in Constantinople were working actively to undermine Baltadji himself. Peter continued to delay, sending orders to Apraxin not to destroy the fortifications at Azov just yet, but to await further instructions. When, under pressure, Shafirov promised the Turks that Azov would be surrendered within two months, Peter again wrote to Apraxin, telling him to level the walls of the fortress, but not to damage the foundations, and to keep exact plans so that, if some new change occurred, the fortress could quickly be rebuilt.

In November, five months after the Pruth singing, Azov and Tagonrog still had not been given up. Charles' agents used this fact, skillfully blended with rumors that the Grand Vizier had let the Tsar escape because carts loaded with Russian gold had rumbled up to his tent on the Pruth, to procure the fall of Baltadji. He was replaced by Yusuf Pasha, the Janissary Aga, who, to Charles' satisfaction, used the non-surrender of Azov and Tagonrog as a pretext for declaring a new war on Russia. Shafirov, Tolstoy and young Sheremetev were sent back to the Seven Towers. Tolstoy, at this point, wrote Peter begging to be allowed to return to Russia. He had been in Turkey under painful conditions for ten years, and the negotiations he had been conducting had now been taken over by Shafirov, his superior. Peter agreed, but the Turks did not, informing the aging diplomat that he must wait until a final treaty had been signed, whereupon he could return with Shafirov.

There was no fighting in this new war, and it ended quietly when, in April 1712, Peter finally surrendered Azov and Tagonrog. In fact, Apraxin was on such good terms with the Turkish pasha who came to occupy the forts that he managed to sell all the guns, powder, supplies and four of the Russian ships which remains, all for a handsome price, even though one Russian captain later assured Whitworth that the vessels sold were so rotten that they would "fall to pieces in the first storm." This peace agreement quickly came to naught when Yusuf Pasha was overthown and succeeded by Suleiman Pasha, who listened to Charles' continuing complaints that the Tsar still had not removed his troops from Poland. On December 10, 1712, The Turks declared war a third time to enforce this article of the treaty. Again, Shafirov, backed by the envoys of Britain and Holland, successfully smoothed matters over before actual fighting began. "This war," Shafirov wrote to Golovkin, "is disliked by the whole Turkish people and is begun by the sole will of the Sultan, who from the very beginning was not content with the Peace on the Pruth and raged greatly against the Grand Vizier because he did not profit as he ought by fortunate circumstances."