Peter the Great (88 page)

Charles himself was then twenty-six.

The declining state of the Swedish army and its exposed position on the steppe led Count Piper and Charles' officers to a single urgent conclusion: The King must withdraw from the Ukraine, retreat across the Dnieper in the direction of Poland, seeking reinforcement from the armies of Stanislaus and Krassow in Poland. Thus augmented, he might renew his invasion of Russia, although many wondered whether further pursuit of the elusive and dangerous Tsar would ever bring the decisive, overwhelming triumph to which the King obsessively committed himself.

Charles flatly refused to give up his campaign and to retreat, saying that a withdrawal would look like a flight and only make Peter bolder. Instead, he told his dismayed senior advisors that he intended to remain where he was and press on in his duel with the Tsar. He admitted that, in its diminished state, his Swedish army alone, even with Mazeppa's men, was now too small to reach Moscow unaided. Accordingly, while holding his advanced position, he would seek reinforcements. Already in December, he had ordered Krassow in Poland to join with Stanislaus' Polish royal army, and to march from Poland to Kiev and then eastward to unite with the main army. Further, he hoped to recruit additional allies among the Cossacks of the Ukraine. Mazeppa had assured him that many of these people would willingly join the Swedish King once his army came near enough to offer them protection from the Tsar's retribution. Finally, the grandest dream of all: Charles hoped to persuade the Crimean Tatars and perhaps their overlords, the Ottoman Turks, to break the armistice signed in 1700 and join with him in a mighty coalition. With himself as its commander, and with his Swedish veterans as its steely core, a vast allied army would march irresistably on Moscow from the south. Then, with the King in the Kremlin, Russia would be carved up and each of the invading parties—Swedes, Cossacks, Tatars and Turks—would take that slice which it found most desirable. But none of this was possible, Charles insisted, unless the army remained where it was to provide the nucleus and launching point for this next phase of his great enterprise.

According to Mazeppa, Charles' closest and most immediate source of new allies lay among the Zaporozhsky Cossacks, a wild people who lived on a cluster of thirteen fortified islands below the rapids of the Dnieper River. They formed a fellowship of river brigands, owing allegiance to no one except their Hetman, Konstantin Gordeenko and, among the Cossacks, they were reputed to be the fiercest warriors. When the Tatars and the Turks had impinged upon their grazing grounds and constructed river forts to block their boats, they had fought the Tatars and the Turks. Now it was the Russians who were closing in on them, curtailing their freedom; therefore, now they would fight the Russians. Mazeppa, who had been negotiating with Gordeenko, was aware of their inclination to do so, and the shift of the Swedish army south to the region of Poltava was partly intended to encourage the Zaporozhsky to believe that it was safe to declare against Tsar Peter.

On March 28, Gordeenko and 6,000 of his men joined the Swedes, manifesting their new allegiance by attacking a small force of Russian dragoons wh
ich garrisoned the town of Pere
voluchna, and important crossroads where the Vorskla flows into the broad Dnieper. Once Perevoluchna was taken, the Zaporozhsky Cossacks moved their entire fleet of boats north and moored them in rows along the shore. These boats, capable of carrying 3,000 men in a single trip, were more important to Charles than the additional horsemen, for the Dnieper was wide and swift, there were no bridges and only on such boats could the armies of Krassow and Stanislaus be transported across once they came to join him.

On March 30, Gordeenko arrived at Charles' headquarters to formalize his bargain with the King of Sweden. A treaty, to which Charles, Mazeppa and Gordeenko all were signatories, bound the King not to make peace with Peter until full independence of both the Ukrainian and the Zaporozhsky Cossacks had been obtained. Charles also promised to move his army out of the Ukraine, ending its use as a battlefield, as soon as militarily possible. For their part, the two Cossack leaders agreed to fight beside the King and to persuade other Cossack and Ukrainian people to join against the Tsar. Eventually, their appeals did bring an additional 15,000 unarmed Ukrainian recruits into the Swedish camp, but as neither Charles nor the Cossack Hetmen had any surplus muskets with which to arm these peasants, they effected almost no increase in the King's combat potential. Charles' puritanical nature also suffered from their presence, for the new recruits brought their women with them, and soon the camps of the Swedish battalions were swarming and overrun with "the wanton sluts" of the Zaporozhsky Cossacks.

Far worse for Charles were the results of a sudden, brilliant stroke on Peter's part which, within two weeks of Charles' treaty with the Zaporozhsky Cossacks, obliterated its major advantage. Peter had been well aware of the danger of Gordeenko's defecting, and had never counted on his loyalty. Accordingly, he ordered Colonel Yakovlev to embark a force of 2,000 Russian troops in barges at Kiev and set off down the river toward Perevoluchna and the Zaporozhe Sech. While the Hetman Gordeenko and his followers were still with Charles, negotiating terms, Yakovlev's force arrived and destroyed the Cossacks at Perevoluchna. A few weeks later, the same Russian force stormed ashore on the Zaporozhsky Cossack's island base. The town was taken and razed, many Cossacks were killed and others captured and executed as traitors. This victory had several significant effects. The strength of the once-feared band of Cossacks was diminished. And, as in the case of the destruction of Mazeppa's capital at Baturin, Peter had demonstrated the terrible cost of alliance with his enemy. It not only quieted the rest of the Cossacks, but gave all the border peoples food for thought. Finally, the Russian victory had purely military value for Peter. Having taken Perevoluchna and the Sech, Yakovlev's men put every Cossack boat on the river to the torch. At one stroke, Charles' floating bridge across the Dnieper was destroyed.

* * *

Even the loss of the boats and of the prospect of additional Cossack soldiers would not have mattered had Charles been successful in reaching agreement with a more powerful ally, the fiery Russophobe Khan of the Crimean Tatars, Devlet Gerey. For nine years, the restless Khan had been held in check by Peter's armistice in 1700 with the Khan's overlord, the Sultan. But Devlet's hatred of the Russians had not softened, and as Charles' army had seemed to be marching on Moscow, he had anxiously urged the Porte in Constantinople to seize the opportunity. In the spring of 1709, in response to an invitation from Count Piper, the eager Khan sent two Tatar colonels to the Swedish camp to open negotiations, the agreement, of course, being subject to final approval from Constantinople. Devlet's terms included the demand that Charles pledge not to make peace with Peter until all Tatar, as well as Swedish, objectives had been achieved. Normally, Charles would never have considered such a commitment, but, torn between the weakness of his own army and his obsession to finish Peter, he began to negotiate. Just at that moment arrived the news of the destruction of the Sech. Disturbed, the Khan's representatives withdrew to consult with their master.

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.