Peter the Great

jold's overall purpose, desired only to lead his column of infantry forward and attack the main enemy army. Forgetting or ignoring the Field Marshal's basic order to remain parallel, he swung off even farther to the right after passing the last line of redoubts because the ground there seemed easier to cross. With every step, he and his six battalions were marching farther away from the main body of troops. In fact, Lewenhaupt was enormously pleased to be off by himself away from Rehnskjold, who, he grumbled, had treated him "like a lackey."

Now, the direction of Lewenhaupt's march lay straight toward the main Russian fortified camp. The large camp was by this time very wide awake, and as he marched forward, Russian artillery on the rampart opened fire on his men. But Lewenhaupt, now happily independent, was undeterred by the prospect of leading his six battalions against the entire Russian army, and his ranks went forward in textbook formation. Within musket range of the Russian entrenchment, he discovered that his advance was blocked by an unexpected ravine. Undaunted, he began to move his soldiers around this obstacle, still cheerfully preparing to storm over the Russian rampart at the head of 2,400 men into the midst of 30,000.

Meanwhile, to the left of the redoubts on the far side of the field from Lewenhaupt, the main Swedish force was the only one of three divisions which had followed the original plan, no doubt because it was commanded by Rehnskjold himself. Once the Russian cavalry had departed the field, the two infantry columns of this force hurried past the redoubts as envisaged, taking casualties from the flanking fire but penetrating quickly into the field beyond. It was here that the entire Swedish infantry of eighteen battalions had been scheduled to rendezvous in preparation for the attack on the Russian camp. For the moment, the officers with Rehnskjold were jubilant; everything seemed to be going according to plan. As the six battalions of the left reached the rendezvous point and wheeled into position, officers came up to congratulate the King, who had been carried on his stretcher through the redoubts with the infantry and was now sipping water while his wounded foot was redressed.

Unfortunately, as Rehnskjold looked around for the remainder of his infantry, there was nothing to be seen. Twelve battalions— the forces assigned to Lewenhaupt and Roos—were missing. Within moments, Lewenhaupt's six battalions were located: Far out in front and to the right, they were heard being fired upon as they worked their way around the ravine at the southwest corner of the Russian camp. Rehnskjold urgently dispatched a messenger, ordering Lewenhaupt to abandon his approach to the camp from that direction and immediately rejoin the main force waiting for him at the western edge of the field. When Lewenhaupt received the order, he was furious. Although he had only infantry—his force lacked even a single piece of artillery—he had already overrun two of the Russian redoubts blocking his path, and he was at the point of storming over the southern rampart of the Russian camp with sword and bayonet. This southern rampart was weakly defended, and Lewenhaupt with his 2,400 men was about to achieve the classic Swedish objective in battle: to bear down with momentum on a weak point in the enemy line, break through and then roll up the opposing army, using panic and confusion as allies. Whether by breaking over the wall into Peter's camp his tiny force would actually have been able to panic Peter's army is questionable. These Russians were not the raw recruits of Narva, but disciplined veterans. In addition, Peter was already moving the army to the front of the camp and assembling it for battle, which is why Lewenhaupt found the southwest corner thinly defended. Had his fiery Swedes actually come over the wall and found themselves confronted by ten times as many Russians prepared for battle, they might have had initial success, but, unsupported, they soon would have been engulfed. In any case, to Lewenhaupt's dismay, they were commanded to withdraw, and they withdrew.

It was now six a.m. There was a lull in the fighting as far as most of the Swedish army was concerned. The main body, with Rehnskjold, the King, the cavalry and one third of the infantry, had moved northwest past the front of the Russian camp to the pre-planned position from where it could strike either at the camp or at the Petrovka river crossing. Lewenhaupt's six battalions, retiring from the camp's southern wall, were making their way toward Rehnskjold; when they reached the main body and fell into place, Rehnskjold would have twelve of his eighteen infantry battalions. But where were the other six?

They were in fact still south of the cross line of six redoubts, which were for the most part still in Russian hands, and still struggling under Roos' command to take the third and fourth of the forward redoubts by assault. The effort was gallant and at the same time pathetically irrelevant. The only purpose in attacking the protruding redoubts had been to mask the march-past of the main army; that done, the assault battalions had been supposed to abandon the effort and hurry to rejoin the main body. But no one had told Major General Roos, and this gallant officer was still trying to do what Swedish officers were supposed to do: capture the objective in front of him.

The battle at the redoubts did not last much longer. Three times Roos assaulted the redoubts, and three times he was repulsed. Finally, with forty percent of his men killed or wounded, he decided to withdraw. His intention then was to join the main army, but he had no idea where it had gone. Needing time to reform his shattered force into companies and battalions, he began to retreat into a wood east of the redoubts. Many of his wounded men tried to follow, crawling on their hands and knees.

Meanwhile, Peter was standing on the western rampart of his camp and looking out over the field. He saw that the Swedish army had passed through the redoubts and now was massing to his right on the northwest. At the same time, watching Lewenhaupt's withdrawal, he saw that a clear path was open from his camps to the redoubts which had resisted Roos. At once, the Tsar ordered Menshikov with a powerful force—five battalions of infantry drawn from the main camp and five regiments of his own dragoons, 6,000 men in all—to find Roos in the woods, attack and destroy him. This force would also be available to reinforce Poltava, the road to which now lay open. As Menshikov's first squadrons approached them, Roos' beleaguered men took them for Swedish reinforcements. Almost before they discovered their mistake, the Russians were upon them. Under the fire of the advancinng Russian cavalry and infantry, Roos' shattered ranks crumbled completely. In fierce hand-to-hand fighting, most of his men were killed or captured. Roos himself escaped with 400 men, fleeing south with Menshikov's horsemen close behind. Near Poltava, the Swedes threw themselves into an abandoned trench, but once again the Russians closed in. At last, mauled, pursued, outnumbered, Roos had no choice but to surrender. Just as he was led away, the sound of cannon to the northwest began in earnest. The first shots of the real battle were being fired, but Roos and his

men would not be there. Before the main Battle of Poltava had begun, six battalions, one third of the Swedish infantry, had been annihilated to no purpose. The disaster can be blamed on Roos for persisting too long, or on Rehnskjold for not trusting his officers and briefing them more thoroughly before battle began. But the real fault was that the brain of the Swedish army was missing. The clear, unhurried, commanding mind which all Swedes obeyed without question simply was not functioning at the Battle of Poltava.

As soon as Rehnskjold, waiting with the King and other officers, discovered the absence of Roos' force, he sent a messenger back to find out what had happened. The messenger returned to report that Roos was still attacking the first redoubts and was in difficulty. Rehnskjold hurriedly dispatched two cavalry regiments and two additional infantry battalions to Roos' aid. Meanwhile, the main body of the Swedish army could only wait. The Swedes were standing within cannon range about one mile from the northwest corner of the Russian camp, fully exposed to the enemy. Inevitably, the Russian artillery shifted its fire onto them. The cannonballs began to take a toll of heads, arms, legs; one ball killed two Guardsmen standing near the King. Another ball hit the King's stretcher. For the officers in the vicinity, this was an added concern; in addition to their other worries and responsibilities, they were forced to worry about the King's safety. Under this fire, some of the Swedish infantry was moved south into the wooded terrain of Maly Budyschi to find cover from the Russian guns. It was at this point that Lewenhaupt and the others fervently regretted the decision to leave most of the meager Swedish artillery behind. The Swedes had only four field guns to answer the seventy cannon firing from the Russian camp.

After an hour had passed, Sparre, who had led the two Swedish infantry battalions to Roos' relief, returned with his men to report that it had been impossible to break through the large Russian force which surrounded Roos. Accordingly, he had followed his orders and returned.

Rehnskjold was now in an increasingly perilous situation. He had stormed through the redoubts as planned. In a major cavalry action, his squadrons had triumphed and driven the Russian cavalry from the field. But now the tide had begun to shift. The momentum of his initial charge had been expended, and surprise was lost. For two hours, he had been forced to wait under heavy enemy fire for two wandering divisions of infantry, Lewenhaupt's and Roos', to join the main body. Lewenhaupt's had now arrived, but Roos' men apparently were lost. To fill the gap, Rehnskjold sent messengers back to the main Swedish camp before Poltava, ordering the reserve battalion guarding the baggage to hasten forward, bringing artillery. But these messengers never got through. There were no reinforcements, either for the depleted Swedish infantry or for the four Swedish cannon.

It was nearing nine a.m., and Rehnskjold had to make a decision. He had waited two hours for reinforcements which apparently were not coming. He could not stay where he was; he had to move. Three choices were open to him. He could move north, attack the Russian cavalry again, attempt to break through and seize the Petrovka ford, hold it and starve the Russians out of their camp. The flaw in this plan was that his small force, already vastly outnumbered, would be divided between Petrovka and Poltava without hope of mutual reinforcements; should Peter decide to go over to the offensive, he could move against one of these Swedish forces without the intervention and possibly even the knowledge of the other. Another choice was to carry out the. original plan and attack the entrenched Russian army still waiting untouched behind the earth ramparts of its camp. But this meant that the dwindling Swedish army would have to attack straight across the plain, into the mouths of dozens of Russian cannon which were already cutting through the Swedish ranks. Once over the trench and onto the ramparts, the Swedes would have to deal with 30,000 Russian infantrymen who were waiting inside.

The third alternative was the one that Rehnskjold chose: to retreat. His strength was too small and the odds too great. He meant to go back through the redoubts, relieving Roos and adding his strength as he passed through the redoubts, and as he moved back to the original launching point of the dawn attack, he would summon the battalions guarding the baggage train, those in the trenches before Poltava and those patrolling the river crossings below the city. Then, with the Swedish infantry back to twenty-four battalions instead of the twelve he now commanded, he would decide where next to fight the Tsar.

But just as Rehnskjold's men were starting to execute these orders, abandoning their long line of battle and forming into marching columns, an astonishing thing began to happen. Swedish officers watching the Russian camp noted that the whole Russian army seemed to be in motion. The entrances to the camp were open, the bridges over the defensive trench were down, and over these bridges Russian infantry in great strength was pouring out of the entrenchments and forming up in order of battle in front of the camp. For the first time in this war, the main Russian army was preparing to fight the main Swedish army in the presence of both Peter and Charles.

The Russian movement proceeded swiftly and smoothly, evidence of the training and discipline which now marked Peter's army. When the deployment was completed, a long, thick, shallow crescent containing tens of thousands of men and horses faced westward against the Swedes. On the Russian right, Bauer now commanded the Russian cavalry, eighteen regiments of dragoons, in uniforms of red and green. At the opposite tip of the crescent were six more dragoon regiments commanded by Menshikov, who typically had singled himself out by wearing white. In the center of the line stood the massed battalions of green-coated Russian infantry under Sheremetev and Repnin. General Bruce, commander of the Russian artillery, had divided his guns. Some remained on the earth rampart of the camp to fire over the heads of the Russian army, while other cannon served by red-coated artillerymen were wheeled into the front rank of the Russian line to greet any Swedish attack with devastating close-range fire.

Peter was on horseback with the infantry of the Novgorod regiment on the Russian left. He rode his favorite horse, a dun-colored Arabian that had been sent to him by the Sultan. His saddle that day was green velvet over leather, embroidered with silver thread; his reins and tack were of black leather and gold fittings. The Tsar's uniform was similar to that of many of his officers: a black, three-comered hat, high black boots and the bottle-green coat of the Preobrazhensky Regiment with red sleeves and trim. Only the blue silk ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew distinguished the sovereign. The troops around Peter, three veteran battalions of Novgorodians, were wearing gray coats and black hats. This was a ruse, proposed by the Tsar. Normally, gray coats were worn only by inexperienced troops, but Peter had chosen to dress several of his best battalions in gray that day, hoping to fool the Swedes into attacking that part of the Russian line.

The new position of the Russian army in front of its camp posed a further dilemma for Rehnskjold. The Swedish infantry had already moved out of its line of battle and was in column formation, preparing to march back south in search of Roos. If he began to move in this formation and the Russians attacked, it would be not a battle but a massacre. It was impossible to ignore the possibility, and Rehnskjold quickly decided to halt his withdrawal, turn and fight. Once more, the Swedish infantry wheeled to form a line of battle against the Russians.

Rehnskjold and Lewenhaupt then consulted and went to report to Charles that Peter was bringing out his infantry. "Would it not be best if we attacked the cavalry first and drove that off?" Charles asked. "No," Rehnskjold replied, "we must go against the infantry." The King was lying down and unable to see. "Well," he said, "you must do as you think best."

By ten a.m., the Swedish army had deployed into a battle line against the Russians. The Swedish cavalry was placed behind the infantry, not on the wings as Peter's cavalry was stationed. Lewenhaupt's infantry force now numbered only twelve battalions, scarcely 5,000 men. Opposite them stood two packed lines of Russian infantry, each one longer and stronger than his single line. The first Russian line consisted of twenty-four battalions, 14,000 men; the second line was made up of eighteen battalions, 10,000 men. (Nine infantry battalions remained as a reserve inside the Russian camp.) The superiority in numbers and firepower made the contest seem absurd: 5,000 infantry exhausted by hunger and fatigue, with no artillery, about to attack 24,000 men supported by seventy cannon. Lewenhaupt's only hope was the old tactic of delivering a hard blow on a single part of the Russian line, hoping to break through, spread confusion and thus roll up the far larger force.

At this moment, the old quarrel between the two principal Swedish commanders came to an end. Rehnskjold rode up to Lewenhaupt, who had to lead the attack in the face of almost hopeless odds. Taking him by the hand, the Field Marshal said, "Count Lewenhaupt, you must go and attack the enemy. Bear yourself with honor in His Majesty's service." Lewenhaupt asked whether it was Rehnskjold's command that he begin the attack immediately. "Yes, at once," the commander-in-chief replied. "In God's name, then, and may His grace be with us," said Lewenhaupt. He gave the signal to move forward. With drums beating, the famous Swedish infantry marched into its last battle.

The force was pitifully small: twelve battalions strung out side by side in a thin line with gaps between the battalions to make the advancing line as wide as possible.

Ignoring the odds, the blue-clad Swedish line briskly advanced across the field. At is approached, the Russian artillerymen doubled their rate of fire, sending their whistling cannonballs to chop bloody holes in the Swedish ranks. Still the Swedes came forward, following their blue-and-yellow flags. As they got closer, the Russian infantry began firing volleys of musket balls into the shredded Swedish line; nevertheless, the unflinching Swedes kept coming, without returning a single shot. Led by the Guards, the Swedish battalions on the right finally reached and violently assaulted the first Russian rank. With stabbing swords and thrusting bayonets, the Swedes broke through, driving the Russians before them, capturing the forward Russian cannon which had been firing at them as they advanced across the field. Within a few minutes, the guns were turned and firing into the confused, wavering—and now retreating—Russian first line.

At this stage, having achieved his first objective and pierced a part of the enemy line, Lewenhaupt looked around for the Swedish cavalry which should have come up quickly to exploit his breakthrough. But no Swedish cavalry was to be seen. Instead, through the haze of smoke which covered the battlefield, Lewenhaupt could see that the Swedish battalions on his left wing were in grave difficulty. There, the Russian artillery, concentrated earlier in this sector to provide protective fire for the Russian cavalry massed to the north, had leveled the muzzles of its cannon directly at the advancing Swedes. The fire was so intense and deadly that the Swedish ranks were simply shot to pieces; half the men were scythed down before they even reached the Russian infantry. Between this faltering left wing and the battalions on the right—which were still pressing ahead, preparing to attack the second Russian line of infantry—a gap opened. And the farther the Swedish right wing advanced, plunging forward toward the second Russian line, the wider, the gap became.

Standing with the Novgorod regiment at exactly this point on the field, Peter also saw what was happening. He observed that the Swedish army had divided into two separate armies: the left wing held at bay, suffering terribly from his artillery, and in no position to threaten the Russian right wing; and the Swedish right, still plunging forward, deeper into his lines, about to reach the waiting second line of Russian infantry. Even as he watched, the gap grew wider. Into this gap, Peter dispatched his own infantry in overwhelming numbers.

It happened as Peter hoped and as Lewenhaupt feared. It was

the Swedish line which now was broken; it was the Russian infantry which would advance and roll up the broken enemy line in a sweeping counterblow. Unhindered by the presence of any Swedish cavalry, the Russian infantry began to envelop the Swedish right wing. The momentum of the Swedish attack actually helped Peter's strategy: As the thrust of the Swedish charge carried it forward, plunging deeper into the Russian mass, other Russian battalions moving through the gap in the Swedish line simply flowed around and to the rear. The farther the Swedes pressed forward, the more hopelessly engulfed they became in the sea of Russian soldiers. Eventually, the forward moment of the Swedish charge was broken, its shock absorbed by the sheer mass of Russian soldiers.

Swedish cavalry finally arrived, but not the full weight of Rehnskjold's disciplined squadrons. Only fifty Swedish horsemen appeared, troopers of the Household Cavalry, who rode with flashing swords into the middle of the Russian infantry. All were quickly shot, speared or dragged from their saddles. Engulfed and overwhelmed, the Swedes attempted to retreat, at first with stubborn discipline and then, as panic spread, in wild disorder. With most of his officers dead or dying, Lewenhaupt rode up and down his crumbling Swedish line, trying to make his men stand fast. "I begged, threatened, cursed and hit out, but all was in vain," he remembered later. "It was as if they neither saw nor heard me."

Throughout this part of the battle, the tall figure of Peter was conspicuous among the Russian troops. Although his height made him an obvious target, he ignored the danger and spent his energies directing and encouraging his men. That he was not wounded was remarkable, for he was hit three times during the battle. One musket ball knocked his hat off, another lodged in his saddle, while the third actually struck him in the chest but was deflected by an ancient silver icon which he wore on a chain around his neck.

Within a few minutes, the Swedish attack had dissolved, although separate units continued to fight. The Swedish Guards battled with their usual doggedness. They died where they stood, and the Russian torrent poured over them. Whole companies of Swedes, were surrounded and fell together as the Russians rushed over them, killing with pike, sword and bayonet and leaving them piled in heaps.

Where was the Swedish cavalry? Again, perhaps, it missed the touch of its master, Rehnskjold, now trying to command the entire army. On the Swedish right, the cavalry was late in deploying and Lewenhaupt's infantry began to advance before the cavalry was ready to follow up. Then, as the squadrons began moving foward, their movement was obstructed by difficult terrain. On the left, the Swedish cavalry was distracted by its assignment to screen the battlefield from the mass of Russian cavalry poised to the north. When some of the Swedish cavalry regiments finally came to the aid of the hard-pressed infantry, they found that, rather than giving help, they soon needed it themselves. The regiments charging the Russian lines were cut to ribbons by the same enormous volume of Russian cannon and musket fire which had decimated the infantry.

And so, for another half an hour, it continued—glorious for Peter, disastrous for Charles. Most of the Swedish infantry which had crossed the field into the Russian lines was simply destroyed. Rehnskjold, seeing what was happening, shouted to Piper, "All is lost!" Plunging into the thickest area of the fight, he was soon made prisoner.

Charles himself was in the midst of the disaster. When the collapse came, the King did his best to rally the panicking Swedes, but his thin cry of "Swedes! Swedes!" went unheeded. The Russian fire was so intense that "men, horses and boughs of trees all fell to the ground." Twenty-one of the King's twenty-four litter-bearers were cut down and the stretcher itself was hit and shattered. For a moment, with no bearers, it looked as if the King would be captured. Then, an officer dismounted and Charles was lifted into the saddle. The bandage on his foot came loose and blood dripped from the reopened wound. The horse was shot from under him and another supplied. Thus, the King made his way back to the Swedish lines with his wounded foot bleeding profusely, resting on the horse's neck. Presently, the King fell in with Lewenhaupt. "What are we to do now?" Charles asked. "There is nothing to do but try to collect the remains of our people," replied the General. Under his direction, the remnants of the infantry, covered by the cavalry, which still was relatively intact, retreated south through the redoubts to the temporary safety of the camp at Pushkarivka. As the shattered army withdrew, the reserve regiments and the artillery as well as Mazeppa's and Gordeenko's Cossacks were placed in defensive positions around the camp to ward off any Russian pursuit. By noon, most of the beaten army had reached camp and the exhausted men could rest. Lewenhaupt, parched and hungry, ate a piece of bread and drank two glasses of beer. .

To the north, on the battlefield, the last shots had been fired and the field had fallen silent. Peter, exuberant, had given thanks in a service on the battlefield and then had gone to dinner. The Battle of Poltava was over.

38

SURRENDER BY THE RIVER

The battlefield was a place of carnage. The Swedish army which had begun the battle 19,000 stronghad left 10,000 men on the field, including 6,901 dead and wounded and 2,760 prisoners. Among these losses were 560 officers—300 dead and 260 captured, the latter including Field Marshal Rehnskjold, Prince Max of Wurttemberg, four major generals and five colonels. Count Piper, who was with the King all day, became separated from him in the final melee and wandered about the battlefield with two secretaries until finally he made his way up to the gates of Poltava and surrendered.

Russian losses were relatively light—not surprisingly, as the Russians had fought most of the battle from defensive positions inside the redoubts and their entrenched camp while their cannon worked havoc on the advancing Swedes. Of 42,000 engaged, Peter lost 1,345 killed and 3,290 wounded. In its casualty figures as well as its outcome, it was a reversal of every previous battle between Peter and Charles.

As the Swedes retreated toward Pushkarivka, the Russians did not pursue. The climax of the battle had been hand-to-hand combat, and by the end, Peter's infantry was as disorganized as Charles'. Not completely convinced by its success, it advanced with caution. More important, however, was Peter's overwhelming desire to celebrate. After a thanksgiving service, he went to his tent inside the camp, where he and his generals sat down to dinner. The Russians were tired, hungry and exultant. After many toasts, the captured Swedish generals and colonels were brought in and seated around him. It was a supreme moment in Peter's life. A nine-year burden of anxiety had fallen away, and the despair with which the Tsar had watched the irresistible advance of his great antagonist had vanished. Yet, in his excitement, Peter was not overbearing. He was considerate, even kindly, to his prisoners, especially Rehnskjold. When, during the long afternoon, Count Piper was brought in from Poltava, he, too, was seated next to the Tsar. Peter kept looking around, fully expecting that at any moment the King also would be brought in. "Where is my brother Charles?" he asked repeatedly. When, with great respect, he asked Rehnskjold how he dared invade a huge empire with a handful of men, Rehnskjold replied that the King had commanded it and it was his first duty as a loyal subject to obey his sovereign. "You are an honest fellow," said Peter, "and for your loyalty I return you your sword." Then, as the cannon on the ramparts roared another salute, Peter stood holding a glass and proposing a toast to his teachers in the art of war. "Who are your teachers?" asked Rehnskjold. "You are, gentlemen," said Peter. "Then, well have the pupils returned thanks to their teachers," said the Field Marshal wryly. Peter remained excitedly talking to his prisoners and celebrating through most of the afternoon, and it was five p.m. before anyone thought of pursuing the beaten Swedish army. Then, the Tsar commanded Prince Michael Golitsyn with the Guards and General Bauer with dragoons to follow Charles south. On the following morning, Menshikov led more Russian cavalry to join the pursuit.

That night, when the celebrations were over, Peter took time in his tent to record the day's events. To Catherine, he wrote:

Matushka [Little Mother], good day. I declare to you that the all-merciful God has this day granted us an unprecedented victory over the enemy. In a word, the whole of the enemy's army is knocked on the head, about which you will hear from us.

Peter

P.S. Come here and congratulate us.

Longer letters, fourteen in all, "from the camp at Poltava," were sent to Romodanovsky (now elevated for the occasion from Mock-Tsar to Mock-Emperor), Buturlin, Boris, Peter, and Dmitry Golitsyn, Apraxin, Peter Tolstoy, Alexander Kikin, the head of the

Church Stephen Yavorsky, his sister Princess Natalya, the Tsarevich Alexis and others. The text in all cases was practically the same:

This is to inform you that, by God's blessing and the bravery of my troops, I have just gained a complete and unexpected victory without much effusion of blood. These are the particulars of the action.

This morning the enemy's cavalry and infantry attacked my cavalry, which gave way with considerable loss, after a brave resistance.

The enemy formed themselves in line of battle exactly opposite our camp. I drew immediately our infantry out of the entrenchments to oppose the Swedes, and placed our cavalry on the two wings.

The enemy, on seeing this, made a movement to attack us. Our troops advanced to meet them, and received them in such a manner that the enemy deserted the field of battle after little or no resistance, leaving us in possession of a number of cannon, colors and standards. Field Marshal General Rehnskjold, Generals Schlippenbach, Stackelberg, Hamilton and Roos are among the prisoners, as are also Count Piper, prime minister, secretaries Imerlin and Cederheilm and several thousand officers and soldiers.

I will send you in a little time a more circumstantial account; at present I am too busy to satisfy your curiosity entirely. In a few words, the enemy's army has met with the fate of Phaeton. I can give you no account of the King, not knowing whether he be in the number of the living or gone to sleep with his fathers. I have sent Prince Golitsyn and Bauer with part of the cavalry in pursuit of the runaways. I congratulate you on this good news and beg all the magistrates and officers of my empire to consider it a happy omen.

Peter

It was in a final footnote to this letter to Apraxin that Peter expressed most succinctly his great joy and the ultimate significance of Poltava: "Now, with God's help, the final stone in the foundation of St. Petersburg has been laid."

Thus, in a single morning, the Battle of Poltava terminated the Swedish invasion of Russia and permanently shifted the political axis of Europe. Until that day, statesmen in every country had waited expectantly for the news that Charles had triumphed once again, that his famous army had entered Moscow, that the Tsar had been replaced and perhaps killed in the general turmoil and insurrection that must arise among the leaderless Russian masses. A new tsar would be proclaimed and become a puppet like Stanislaus. Sweden, already Mistress of the North, would become

Empress of the East, arbiter of everything that happened between the Elbe and the Amur. Servile Russia would shrink as Swedes, Poles, Cossacks and perhaps Turks, Tatars and Chinese carved out generous portions. St. Petersburg would vanish from the Russian landscape, the Baltic coast would be sealed off and Peter's awakening people would be halted in their tracks, turned around and marched like prisoners back into the shadowy world of old Muscovy. These dream castles fell with a crash. Between dawn and dinner, the conqueror had become a fugitive.

Poltava was the first thunderous announcement to the world that a new Russia was being born. In the years that followed, European statesmen who theretofore had paid scarcely more attention to the affairs of the Tsar than to those of the Shah of Persia or the Mogul of India learned to reckon carefully the weight and direction of Russia's interests. The new balance of power established that morning by Sheremetev's infantry, Menshikov's cavalry and Bruce's artillery, under the eyes of their six-foot-seven-inch lord, continued and developed through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Swedish army was defeated, but it had not surrendered. In early afternoon, while Peter was sitting at dinner with his Swedish guests, the surviving remnants of the Swedish army dribbled back into the camp at Pushkarivka. Added to the troops in the siege trenches before Poltava and the detachments guarding the baggage train and the crossings on the lower Vorskla, the total came to more than 15,000 Swedes plus 6,000 Cossacks still under arms, awaiting the command of the King and his generals. Some of these were freshly wounded, others were still invalided from battles or frostbite the previous winter. Only a few of those remaining were foot soldiers; most of the survivors were cavalrymen.

Charles was among the last to reach Pushkarivka. While his foot was again rebandaged and he ate a piece of cold meat, he asked for Rehnskjold and Piper and it was then that he learned they were missing. Lewenhaupt was now the senior general of this Swedish army, and it was on the "little Latin colonel" that the wounded King would not have to rely.

There was no question what must be done. The Swedes must get away before the Russians fully realized the extent of their success and began to pursue. Nor was there any question about which way to go. North, east and west lay divisions of Peter's victorious army. Only the road to the south lay open. This was the best and most direct path to the Tatar lands where they might find sanctuary under the protection of Devlet Gerey. Charles was realistic enough to understand that his arrival would be received far differently now that his army was only a shattered fragment, but he hoped that the Khan would offer sanctuary long enough for the beaten troops to rest and gather strength before beginning the long march through the Tatar and Turkish borderlands back to Poland.

Thus, the immediate decision was to march south down the west bank of the Vorskla toward Perevoluchna eighty miles away, the point at which the Vorskla flows into the Dnieper. Along the way, there were several fords known to the Cossacks, and if the army crossed the river to the east bank, it could then join the road which ran from Kharkov to the Crimea. This road was clear, and led through several Cossack towns along the way which could help feed and succor the army.

The order was given to march that same afternoon. The retreat from Pushkarivka was orderly, with the artillery and baggage wagons going ahead. Kreutz, in command of the rearguard, abandoned and set fire to the heavier wagons, taking the wagon horses and giving them to the infantry to make for greater mobility. As the hastily reorganized columns began to move, they were not in headlong flight; this was a disciplined army defeated in battle but still conducting a properly structured retreat. There were still many thousands of veteran soldiers who, if called upon to fight, could wage a formidable battle.

Yet the Swedes, both officers and men, were in a state of fatigue. They had not slept the night before—only eighteen hours earlier, the army had been assembling for the dawn assault on the redoubts. Toward evening, the soldiers were stumbling, blindly following their officers, spurred mainly by the desire to get away. Charles' own condition had deteriorated. Exhausted by lack of sleep, weakened by the reopening of his wound, stricken by the shock of the disaster, the somber uncertainties of the future and the stifling heat, he had lain in a wagon until he fell asleep. When he awoke, the army in motion, his mind was clouded and he had no clear idea as to what was happening. He asked again for Piper and Rehnskjold; when told that they were not there, he lay back and said, "Yes, yes, do what you will."

The following day, June 29, the march south continued through the oppressive heat. Propelled by the fear that the Russians were pursuing, the army marched past first one, then a second and then a third of the Vorskla fords without giving a serious thought to crossing. It was easier to keep going south on land than to stop and ford a river. Behind loomed the specter of the Russians, a specter made real at four a.m. on the 30th when Kreutz caught up with the main body and reported that the Russian pursuit had started; not just Cossacks, but regular Russian troops were following.

For two days, the Swedish columns straggled into the tip of land at the junction of the Vorskla and Dnieper. On the evening of the 29th, the artillery, the remaining wagons and the mass of men began to pour into Perevoluchna at the point where the two rivers joined. Here there were no fords, and as the soldiers looked out over the broad Dnieper, a feeling of panic gripped them. The town itself and the hundreds of boats assembled there by the Zaporozh-sky Cossacks had been burned by Peter's lightning raid in April. Obviously, the army was far too numerous to cross in the remaining boats; only a few would make it before the Russians caught up. Conceivably, the whole force could march back cross north to cross the Vorskla, but the Russians there must be drawing closer. To the south, east and west lay the two rivers. The Swedish army was trapped.

It was a moment of decision: A few could cross the Dnieper. Who should go? Lewenhaupt and Kreutz dropped to their knees and begged the King to grasp this chance to escape. At first, Charles refused, insisting on staying with the army and sharing its fate. Then, as pain and fatigue overwhelmed him, he agreed to go. Subsequently, there were those who said that Charles abandoned his army to save himself, knowing that his flight would mean death or captivity for the men who had followed him so bravely. But Charles' decision was based on legitimate reasoning. He was wounded. The army faced a long march south, probably under close pursuit from a strong, victorious enemy. Most of the men were mounted now and could ride fast, but Charles, lying in a wagon, would be no more than a worry and a hindrance to the officers who exercised command. And Charles was King of Sweden. If he was captured the Tsar might humiliate him by parading him through the streets. More certainly, in Russian hands, he would be a huge liability in any peace negotiations with Russia. To obtain freedom for its monarch, Sweden would have to pay dearly in Swedish territory.

There were other reasons for Charles to escape. If he went with the army to the Crimea, then, even if the march was successful, he would be cut off from his homeland at the opposite end of Europe, totally unable to influence events. Further, he knew that the continent would soon be ringing with news of Peter's triumph. He wanted to reach a place from which he could rebut Peter's boasts and promote Sweden's side of the story. Then, too, if he reached the Ottoman dominions, he might persuade the Turks to make an alliance, provide him with a new army and enable him to continue the war. Finally, there were the Cossack followers of Mazeppa and

Gordeenko to be considered. They were now Charles' responsibility. If Charles or his Swedes were captured, the Cossacks would be treated as traitors and tortured and hung. It would be a stain on Swedish honor to permit these allies to fall into Russian hands.

For all these reasons, it was decided that the King, with as many wounded Swedes as possible, plus an escort of fighting soldiers, would go with the Cossacks straight across the steppe to the Bug River, the boundary of the Ottoman Empire. There they would ask for sanctuary and wait for their wounds to heal and for the rest of the army to join them. The army itself would go north to the Vorskla fords, cross the river and march south along the Dnieper to the Khan's dominions, to rejoin the King at Ochakov on the Black Sea. Reunited, the entire force would return to Poland.

That very night, Charles was ferried across the Dnieper on a stretcher. His coach was brought after him, its weight distributed between two boats lashed together. Through the night, small fishing boats were rowed back and forth, carrying wounded officers and men. With him, the King took the survivors of the Drabant Corps, now only eighty strong, about 700 cavalrymen and some 200 infantrymen, plus members of his household and chancery staffs. Many of Mazeppa's Cossacks who were expert swimmers swam the river holding on to the tails of their horses. The boats also brought over part of the Swedish army treasury and two barrels of gold ducats which Mazeppa had carried with him from Baturin. In all, about 900 Swedes and 2,000 Cossacks crossed the river. At dawn, before departing, Charles looked back and felt uneasy at seeing no sign of movement from the army still camped along the water's edge. Some Swedes saw clouds on the horizon which they thought might be dust from a mass, of approaching horesmen.

Lewenhaupt took command of the army. This was as he wished; the moody General had specifically volunteered to stay behind and share the fate of the troops. He and Kreutz discussed with Charles the route the army would take and the projected rendezvous point at Ochakov. Lewenhaupt promised the King that if the Russians pursued him, he would fight. Here, as subsequent events were to prove, there was a grave misunderstanding. Charles assumed that Lewenhaupt had promised unconditionally, but Lewenhaupt understood that he had bound himself to fight only after he got the army away from Perevoluchna. "If, with the grace of God, we are spared onslaught of a strong enemy fource with infantry for this night and the morrow, I believe there may yet be some hope of saving the troops." In any case, only the two of them were able to interpret the discussion of Charles' orders and Lewenhaupt's promises; no one else was present. As Charles later admitted when accepting partial responsibility for what happened, "I was guilty ... I forgot to give the other generals and colonels who were there the orders of which Lewenhaupt and Kreutz alone had knowledge." Once again, it was the story of Roos and the redoubts at Poltava. Ignorance of the overall plan left the other officers and the army helpless.

Lewenhaupt's first objective was to get away from Perevoluchna. This meant retracing his steps by marching north to one of the fords across the Vorskla. But as the troops were exhausted and many of the officers who had spent the night getting the King and his party across the Dnieper even more so, Lewenhaupt gave the order for the men to rest and be prepared to start at dawn.

During the night, preparations were made to travel fast and light. The money remaining in the regimental chests was distributed among the troops, each man to be responsible for his own share thereafter. Ammunition and provisions were similarly distributed, with each man taking only the amount he could carry on horseback; the rest was to be abandoned. Any remaining baggage and supply wagons which could impede the march were to be left behind. An attempt would be made to take the artillery, but if it became a hindrance, it, too, would be abandoned.

The passage of the night worked further damage on the Swedish army. Discipline frayed. It was obvious to the soldiers that safety lay across the broad Dnieper. The word that in the morning they were to march north again was sullenly received. Lewenhaupt himself was exhausted, a condition made worse by a bad case of diarrhea. Overcome by fatigue, he lay down for a few hours' rest.

At dawn the next morning, July 1, the two Generals arose, the army stirred, the men began saddling their horses and preparing to march. Then, at eight a.m., just as the columns were forming and about to march, figures appeared on the heights above the river. There were more and more every minute; soon the heights were swarming with horsemen. It was Menshikov, with 6,000 dragoons and 2,000 loyal Cossacks. The Prince sent a trumpeter and an aide-de-camp to the Swedish camp to parley. Lewenhaupt ordered Kreutz to ride back to discover what terms Menshikov offered. Menshikov offered normal surrender terms, and Kreutz reported them to Lewenhaupt. The weary commander decided to consult his colonels. The colonels asked what the King's last orders had been. Suppressing details of the proposed march to Tatary and the Ochakov rendezvous, Lewenhaupt said that Charles had asked only that the army "defend itself as long as it could." The colonels went back to the soldiers to ask whether they would fight.

The soldiers, also unwilling to take responsibility, replied, "We will fight if the others do."

Once these parleys and discussions were begun, the temptation to surrender became irresistable. Although the Swedes and Cossacks outnumbered the Russians on the scene by almost three to one, the Swedes were beaten men. Their King had fled, and they were isolated, facing a long march into unknown regions. To some, the prospect of an end to fighting after nine long years seemed welcome. Among the officers, there was the hope of speedy repatriation to Sweden in exchange for captured Russian officers. Defeatism was in the air, perhaps helped psychologically by the fact that the Russians were above them, looking down from the heights above the river. Finally, there was the effect of Poltava. The legend of invincibility had been shattered. The Swedish army had become a collection of lost, weary and frightened men.

At eleven a.m. on the morning of July 1, Lewenhaupt capitulated without a fight. The army he surrendered included 14,299 men, thirty-four cannon and 264 battle flags. Together with the 2,871 Swedes captured on the field at Poltava, Peter now held over 17,000 Swedish prisoners.

The Swedes became prisoners of war, but the 5,000 Cossacks who had remained with Lewenhaupt were not so fortunate. Menshikov offered them no terms. Many simply mounted their horses, rode off and escaped, but some were ridden down and captured. Their mutilated bodies were hung from the gallows to proclaim the fate of traitors.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the Dnieper, Mazeppa took charge of the escape. Before dawn on July I, he had sent Charles ahead in a coach escorted by 700 Swedes led by Cossack guides. Mazeppa, himself confined to a carriage by illness, divided the remainder of the Swedes and Cossacks into separate parties and sent them to the southwest by different trails, hoping to confuse the Russians if they tried to follow. By evening, all who had crossed the river had departed the western bank and moved into the tall grass of the steppe. That same night, Mazeppa caught up with Charles and urged the King and his escort fo move faster.

The steppe through which the escapees were hurrying was a no-man's-land of tall grass between the Dnieper and Bug rivers, deliberately left unpopulated to serve as a buffer between the empires of the Tsar and the Sultan. There were no trees, no houses, no cultivation—nothing but the grass growing higher than .a man on foot. There was little food and water came only from small, muddy streams running through the grass. The heat was so intense that the party was forced to halt for several hours at midday.

By July 7, the Swedes had reached the eastern bank of the Bug and could stare across the river at the place of sanctuary. Here, another obstacle arose. For two days, the Swedes were forced to wait on the wrong side of the river while they negotiated the price of boats and asylum with the Sultan's representative in this territory, the Pasha of Ochakov. This haggling continued until the potentate had been sufficiently bribed and boats were provided. The Swedes began to cross, but there were not enough boats, and at the end of the third day, when the Russians finally caught up, 300 Swedes and 300 Cossacks were still stranded on the wrong side of the river.

As soon as Lewenhaupt's surrender at Perevoluchna was signed, Menshikov dispatched Volkonsky with 6,000 horsemen to cross the Dnieper and pursue and capture the King and Mazeppa. The Cossack feints threw them off, but when they did find the trail, they rode swiftly, racing the fugitives to the Bug. They arrived to find their principal quarry escaped, but 600 men still remaining on the east bank. The Russians attacked, and the 300 Swedes quickly surrendered. The Cossacks knew that no quarter would be given them and they fought to the last man. Helplessly, from across the river, Charles watched the hopeless struggle.

This massacre was the final battle in the Swedish invasion of Russia. In the twenty-three months since Charles had left Saxony, a great army had been destroyed. Now, the King of Sweden stood with 600 survivors inside the Black Sea borders of the Ottoman Empire, on the outer rim of the European world.

39

THE FRUITS OF POLTAVA

For Peter, the triumph of Poltava was so immense that, long after his victory dinner, he remained in a mood of intense excitement and festivity. It scarcely seemed possible that the perils which so long had threatened Russia had suddenly vanished as if the Ukrainian earth had simply opened up and swallowed them. Two days after the battle, the Tsar entered Poltava with his generals. He found the town in a grim condition after its two-month siege, its walls shattered and its 4,000 defenders exhausted and hungry. With the gallant Colonel Kelin, commander of the garrison, at his side, Peter gave thanks and celebrated his Name Day at the Spasskaya Church.

When Menshikov returned in triumph from the Swedish mass surrender at Perevoluchna, Peter began a distribution of rewards and decorations to the victorious army. Menshikov was promoted to the rank of field marshal; Sheremetev, already a field marshal, was given larger estates. All the generals of the Russian army received promotions or new estates, and each was subsequently presented with a portrait of Peter set in diamonds. The Tsar himself, who up to that time had held the rank of colonel in the army and captain in the navy, also allowed himself to be promoted: He now became a lieutenant general in the army and a rear admiral in the navy.

In granting these rewards and promotions, the charade with Romodanovsky was continued. Peter thanked the new Mock-Tsar for his promotion:

Sir:

The gracious letter of Your Majesty and the decree to His Excellency the Field Marshal and Cavalier [Knight of St. Andrew] Sheremetev by which I have been given in your name the rank of Admiral in the fleet and of Lieutenant General on land, have been anounced to me. I have not deserved so much, but it has been given to me solely by your kindness. I therefore pray God for strength to be able to serve such honor in the future.

Peter.

Across Russia, there were celebrations; in Moscow, the citizens wept for joy. Poltava meant delivery from the foreign invader and, it was hoped, an end to the crushing taxes imposed by the war and to the prolonged absence of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. A formal celebration in the capital was postponed until the arrival of the Tsar with part of the army, but meanwhile the nineteen-year-old Tsarevich Alexis, acting in his father's place, gave a huge banquet for all foreign ambassadors at Preobrazhenskoe. Peter's sister, Princess Natalya, gave a great banquet for the important ladies of the capital. Tables loaded with free beer, bread and meat were placed in the street so that all could celebrate. For an entire week, church bells rang incessantly from morning to night and volleys of cannon thundered from the Kremlin walls.

By July 13, the army at Poltava had ended its celebrations. The bodies of the Russian and Swedish dead had been collected and buried in separate mass graves on the battlefield. The army was rested and it must now be moved: The region around the city had been stripped bare of provisions. (Eight days after the battle, 12,000 Kalmuck horsemen had arrived to reinforce the Russian army. They were too late to fight but they, like the rest of the army, still had to be fed.) Besides, with the Swedish army annihilated and the warior King in flight, this was the moment to reap the harvest of victory. Two great regions, which had stubbornly thwarted the Tsar's ambitions, the Baltic and Poland, now lay all but naked before him. At a council of war in the Poltava camp that lasted from July 14 to 16, the army was divided in two. Sheremetev with all of the infantry and part of the cavalry was to march north to the Baltic and seize the great fortress port of Riga. Menshikov with most of the cavalry would move westward into Poland to operate with Goltz against the Swedes under Krassow and those Poles who supported King Stanislaus.

Peter himself went from Poltava to Kiev. In the Ukrainian capital, he attended a service of thanksgiving in Santa Sophia Cathedral, an architectural masterpiece of layered domes, interlocking arches and glowing interior mosiacs. The prefect of the cathedral, Feofan Prokopovich, preached a great, rolling panegyric to Peter and to Russia which so pleased the Tsar that he marked the priest for higher service; later, Prokopovich was to become the primary instrument of Peter's reform of the Russian church.

Peter had not meant to remain in Kiev, but on August 6 he wrote to Menshikov that he had a fever:

For my sins, sickness has stricken me. It's really an accursed illness, for although not now accompanied by shivering and temperatures but with nausea and pain, it lays me low unexpectedly, and so I do not think I will be able to leave here because of weakness earlier than the 10th or on the holy day of the Assumption.

Peter wanted all the world to know of his triumph. From the camp at Poltava, the Tsar sent letters to his envoys in foreign capitals, giving them details of the battle to pass along. At the Tsar's command, Menshikov wrote a special letter, sent by the swiftest couriers, to the Duke of Marlborough. The West, accustomed to hearing of an unbroken string of Swedish triumphs, now received a deluge of letters and messages from the East, all describing the "complete victory" of the Tsar and the "total defeat" of Charles XII. From Flanders, where he had received the first news of the battle even before the arrival of Menshikov's letter, Marlborough wrote to Godolphin in London:

We have no confirmation as yet of the battle between the Swedes and Muscovites, but should it be true of the first being so entirely beaten as is reported, what a melancholy reflection it is that after constant success for ten years, he [Charles XII] should in two hours' mismanagement and ill success, ruin himself and his country.

On August 26, Menshikov's letter arrived, and Marlborough wrote to Sarah, his Duchess:

This afternoon I have received a letter from Prince Menshikov, favorite and general of the Tsar, of the entire victory over the Swedes. If this unfortunate King had been so well advised as to have made peace the beginning of the summer, he might, in great measure, have influenced the peace between France and the Allies, and have made his kingdom happy; whereas now he is entirely in the power of his neighbors.

As news of the victory spread across the continent, opinion in Europe, previously hostile to and even contemptuous of Peter and Russia, began to change. The philosopher Leibniz, who after Narva had announced his hope of seeing Charles rule over Muscovy as far as the Amur, now proclaimed that the destruction of the Swedish army was one of the glorious turning points of history:

As for me, who am for the good of the human race, I am very glad that so great an empire is putting itself in the ways of reason and order, and I consider the Tsar in that respect as a person whom God has destined to great works. He has succeeded in having good troops. 1 do not doubt that ... he will succeed in also having good foreign relations, and I shall be charmed if I can help him make science flourish in his country. I maintain even that he can do in that respect finer things than all other princes have done.

Leibniz suddenly became a bubbling fountain of ideas and suggestions for this potential new patron. Offering his services, he stressed his readiness to draw up plans for an academy of science, for museums and colleges and even for designing medals to commemorate Poltava.

In hurrying to adjust to the Tsar's new influence, Leibniz was doing what all Europe was about to do. The diplomatic turnaround came quickly. Proposals for new arrangements and new treaties came flocking to Peter. The King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover both signaled their desire for Russian ties. The Russian ambassador in Copenhagen, Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, was informed that Louis XIV would be glad to make an alliance with the Tsar: France proposed to guarantee Russian conquests on the Baltic in order to injure British and Dutch trade. With Charles humbled, Sweden's enemies hastened back into the field. King Frederick IV of Denmark proposed to Dolgoruky a new Danish-Russian alliance against Sweden. This was very pleasant and ironic for Dolgoruky, who had already spent many months trying in vain to negotiate exactly such an alliance. Peter agreed, and that month Danish troops crossed the sound and invaded southern Sweden while the satisfied Dolgoruky observed the landing from a ship in the invasion fleet.

The most immediate impact of Poltava was on events in Poland. As soon as news of the battle arrived, Augustus of Saxony issued a proclamation repudiating the Treaty of Altranstadt by which he had been forced to give up the Polish crown, and, with a Saxon army of 14,000, he entered Poland and summoned his Polish subjects to renewed allegiance. The Polish magnates, without Charles' army there to compel their acceptance of Stanislaus, welcomed Augustus back. Stanislaus fled, first to Swedish Pomerania, then to Sweden, and finally to Charles' camp inside the Ottoman Empire.

In late September, Peter, recovering from his illness in Kiev, began a long, circular journey which would last three months and take him from the Ukrainian capital to Warsaw, East Prussia, Riga, St. Petersburg and, finally, to Moscow. Early in October, after passing through Warsaw, he sailed down the Vistula, meeting Augustus on board the Polish King's royal barge near Thorn. Augustus was nervous; the two monarchs had not met since he had broken his vows to Peter by signing the treaty with Charles, withdrawing from the war and leaving Russia to face Sweden alone. But the Tsar was gracious and good-humored, telling Augustus to forget the past; he understood that Augustus had been forced to do what he had done. Nevertheless, at dinner Peter could not resist an ironic thrust at Augustus' faithlessness. "I always wear the cutlass you gave me," Peter said, "but it seems you do not care for the sword I gave you as I see you are not wearing it." Augustus replied that he prized Peter's gift but that somehow in the haste of his departure from Dresden he had left it behind. "Ah," said Peter, "then let me give you another." Whereupon he handed to Augustus the same sword he had given him before, which had been discovered in Charles' baggage at Poltava.

It was sufficient revenge. On October 9, 1709, Peter and Augustus signed a new treaty of alliance in which the Tsar once again promised to help Augustus gain and hold the throne of Poland, while Augustus again committed himself to fight against Sweden and all the Tsar's enemies. The two agreed that their objective was not to destroy Sweden but simply to force Charles back into Swedish territory and render him powerless to attack their neighbors. Peter's part of the bargain was carried out almost before the treaty was signed. By the end of October, Menshikov's troops had secured the greater part of Poland without a fight. Krassow, the Swedish general, had decided that his small force could not engage the Russian army and had retreated to the Baltic coast, taking refuge in the fortified towns of Stettin and Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania. Stanislaus accompanied him as a refugee, and thereafter for many years the fiction that Stanislaus was King of Poland was maintained "only in his presence.

From Thom, Peter sailed farther down the Vistula to Marienwerder to meet King Frederick I of Prussia, who was alarmed by the emergence of Russia's new power in Northern Europe but was eager to acquire any Swedish territories in Germany which might now be attainable. Peter understood that the King's intention was to collect spoils without doing any fighting, and he behaved cooly. Nevertheless, the meeting was successful: A treaty was signed establishing a defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia, and Menshikov, who was present, was awarded the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle.

In his meeting with Frederick, Peter also arranged a marriage. This was the second foreign marriage Peter was then negotiating for a member of the Russian royal house, and both represented a drastic change in Russian policy. Traditionally, Russian princes married only Russian women, avoiding the contamination of bringing non-Orthodox believers into the royal line. From the time of the Great Embassy, Peter had wanted to change this, but no foreign monarch had seen much profit in marrying a relative into the Muscovite dynasty which was considered a negligible force in European affairs. Since 1707, Peter had been dickering with the minor German House of Wolfenbuttel, hoping to persuade the Duke to permit his daughter Charlotte to marry the Tsarevich Alexis. Negotiations had dragged, as the Duke was in no hurry to marry a daughter to the son of a tsar on the verge of being toppled from his throne by the King of Sweden. Obstacles to the marriage suddenly disappeared after Poltava, and dynastic links with Moscow now seemed highly attractive. Even before the Duke of Wolfenbuttel could signal his change of mind, a messenger from Vienna arrived with the Emperor's offer of his youngest sister, Archduchess Magdalena, as a potential bride for the Tsarevich. Peter continued to negotiate with the Duke, however, and a marriage contract was drawn up.

The second foreign marriage Peter arranged was between his niece Anne, .daughter of his half-brother, Ivan, and the young

Duke Frederick William of Courland, a nephew of Frederick of Prussia. As part of the arrangement, Peter agreed that the Russian troops occupying the Duchy of Courland, a small principality south of Riga, would be withdrawn and that Courland would be allowed to remain neutral in future wars. Frederick of Prussia was pleased by this, as it placed a buffer between himself and the Russians on his Baltic frontier. For Peter, Anne's marriage was important. She was the first Russian princess to marry a foreigner in more than 200 years. Her acceptance was a sign of Europe's recognition of Russia's new status and signaled that thereafter Peter and subsequent tsars could use marriageable Russian princesses to intervene in the complicated dynastic affairs of the German states.*

Leaving East Prussia, Peter traveled north through Courland to join Sheremetev, whose troops had completed the siege works around Riga but who had delayed opening the bombardment until the Tsar could be present. On November 9, Peter arrived and on the 13th with his own hands fired the first three shells from the mortars into the city. This act assuaged his festering sense of grievance over his treatment by Riga when he passed through thirteen years before at the start of the Great Embassy. Riga resisted fiercely, however, and before departing the Tsar instructed Sheremetev not to leave his men in the trenches through the rigors of the Baltic winter, but simply to blockade the city and put the troops in winter quarters.

From Riga, Peter continued northeast to St. Petersburg, his "paradise" now secure. He did not stay long, taking time only to issue orders for building a new church in honor of St. Samson, the saint on whose day the Battle of Poltava had been fought, to lay the keel of a new warship to be called Poltava and to give instructions for the design and embellishment of public gardens. Then he traveled south to Moscow to celebrate his triumph. He arrived at Kolomenskoe on December 12, but had to wait there for a week until the two Guards regiments which were to participate in the parade could arrive and the final decorations and arrangements could be completed. On December 18, everything was ready and the huge parade was beginning when Peter learned that Catherine had just given birth to a baby girl. Instantly, he postponed the parade and hurried with his friends to see the child, who was named Elizabeth.

* Anne's marriage was celebrated a year later in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, her nineteen-year-old bridegroom drank himself into illness during the celebrations and died on the journey home. Anne remained Duchess of Courland until 1730 when she was summoned to St. Petersburg to become Empress Anne of Russia.

Two days later, the victory celebration began. Beneath classical Roman arches trotted squadrons of Russian cavalry and horse-drawn artillery, followed by the foot soldiers of the Guards, the Preobrazhensky Regiment in battle-green coats, and the Semyonovsky Regiment in blue. Then came Peter, his sword drawn, riding an English horse given to him by Augustus, and wearing the same colonel's uniform he had worn at Poltava. As he passed, women threw flowers. Behind the Russian leaders were 300 captured Swedish battle flags, reversed and trailing in the dirt, then the defeated generals walking in single file, led by Field Marshal Rehnskjold and Count Piper, and finally long columns of soldiers—more than 17,000—marching as prisoners through the snowy Moscow streets. The following day, Peter attended a Te Deum mass in the Assumption Cathedral. The crowd was enormous, and the Tsar stood in the middle of the church pressed on all sides by people.

The formal announcement of victory and the presentation of awards took place with Romodanovsky on the throne. One by one, the two field marshals, Sheremetev and Menshikov, followed by Peter as a colonel promoted to lieutenant general, approached the throne and reported their victories to the seated Mock-Tsar. Sheremetev described and was given credit for the victory at Poltava and Menshikov for the capture of the Swedes at Perevoluchna. Peter described and was given credit only for his victory at Lesnaya. On hearing their reports, Romodanovsky thanked them formally and confirmed their previously announced promotions and rewards. When Rehnskjold, Piper and the other Swedish generals were brought in, they were astonished to see on the throne, not the tall man who had been their host at dinner after the battle and had led them through the streets of Moscow, but a round-shouldered, older man whom they didn't recognize. A row of tall screens on one side of the hall was removed, revealing tables set with silver plate and candelabra. Hundreds of candles were lighted to dispel the winter gloom, and the crowd swarmed to take seats, regardless of rank. Romodanovsky sat on a dais attended by the two Field Marshals, Chancellor Golovkin and the Tsar. The Swedish generals had a separate table. Each time a toast was proposed, the master of ceremonies, standing behind Peter's armchair, fired a pistol shot out the window as a signal to the artillery and musketeers outside. A few minutes later, as glasses were raised, the walls shook with the thunder of the cannon. The day ended with a brilliant fireworks display which, according to the Danish ambassador, was far superior to one he had witnessed in London which "had cost seventy thousand pounds sterling."

The Swedish prisoners—those taken at Poltava and the much larger number captured at Perevoluchna—had finally reached their destination, Moscow, not as conquerors but as part of a triumphal procession led by the Tsar. The senior generals were treated with courtesy; several were allowed to return to Stockholm carrying terms of peace proposed by Peter and an offer to exchange prisoners of war. Young Prince Max of Wurttemberg was released unconditionally, but died of fever on his way home; Peter gave him a military funeral and sent his body back to his mother in Stuttgart. Those Swedish officers who were willing, Peter enrolled in his own army. Once they had taken the required qath of allegiance, he awarded them the same rank they had held in the Swedish army and gave them command of Russian squadrons, battalions and regiments. None was asked to serve against his own king or compatriots in the Great Northern War. Instead, they were posted to garrisons in the south or east, where they patrolled the frontiers, holding the line against incursions by the Kuban Tatars, the Kazaks and other Asiatic peoples. The rest of the officers were dispersed as internees into all corners of Russia. At first, they were allowed considerable freedom of movement, but some who had been given permission to return on parole to Sweden never came back, and a few who had entered Russian service used their Russian rank to escape. After this abuse of trust, the rest were severly restricted.

As the years passed, these Swedish officers, scattered through all the provinces of the Russian empire, often lived in want, as they had no money. The Swedish common soldiers received small allowances from their government at home, but nothing was sent to the officers. Of the 2,000 officers, only 200 received money from their families; the rest were obliged to learn a trade in order to feed themselves. In time, these former warriors, hitherto knowledgeable only in the art of soldiering, developed an astonishing number of talents. In Siberia alone, a thousand Swedish officers turned themselves into painters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, turners, joiners, tailors, shoemakers, makers of playing cards, snuffboxes and excellent gold and silver, brocade. Others became musicians, innkeepers and one a traveling puppeteer. Some who were unable to learn a trade became woodsmen. Still others set up schools, teaching the children of their fellow prisoners (some had summoned their wives from Sweden to join them; others had married Russian women). These children were better educated than most in Russia, learning mathematics, Latin, Dutch and French as well as Swedish. Soon, Russians in the neighborhood were sending their own children to the foreign schoolmasters. Some of the officers embraced the Russian religion and joined the Orthodox Church, while others held fast to their Protestant religion and built their own churches in the wilderness. Although Siberia generally was a bleak and joyless landscape, the Russian governor, Prince Matthew Gagarin, had a reputation for generosity, and Swedish officers living under his jurisdiction praised his warm and forgiving nature. In time, as the Westernizing of the state administration developed, Peter needed skilled administrators and bureaucrats. A number of former Swedish officers were offered positions and came to St. Petersburg to work in the newly established Colleges (Ministries) of War, the Admiralty, Justice, Finance and Mines.

The common Swedish soldiers, over 15,000 of them, were treated more severely. They, too, were offered a chance to enter Peter's service (an entire regiment of 600 Swedish dragoons served under a German colonel against the Kuban Tatars). But many refused and were sent to do forced labor. Some worked in the mines in the Urals and others were employed in the dockyards or on the fortifications of St. Petersburg. Although records were kept of the whereabouts of interned officers, none were kept of the common soldiers. Many were in towns or on the estates of the Russian nobility, and married and settled down to life in the Russian church and Russian society. When peace finally came in 1721, twelve years after Poltava, and the Swedish prisoners were allowed to go home, only about 5,000 of Charles' proud grenadiers, the remnant of an army of 40,000, could be found to return to the towns and villages of their native Sweden.

In the spring of 1710, Peter plucked the military fruits of Poltava. Russian armies, unopposed by any Swedish army in the field, swept irresistibly through Sweden's Baltic Provinces. While Sheremetev with 30,000 men beseiged Riga to the south, Peter sent General-Admiral Fedor Apraxin, newly made a Count and a Privy Councilor, with 18,000 men to besiege Vyborg in the north. This town at the head of the Karelian Isthmus, seventy-five miles northwest of St. Petersburg, was an important fortress and an assembly point for Swedish offensive threats against St. Petersburg. A Russian attempt on Vyborg from the land side in 1706 had failed, but now there was something new in Peter's favor. His growing Baltic fleet, consisting of frigates and numerous galleys, the latter craft propelled by a combination of sails and oars and ideally suited for maneuvering in the rocky waters of the Finnish coast, was available both to transport men and supplies and to keep Swedish naval squadrons at bay. As soon as the Neva was clear of ice, in April, Russian ships sailed from Kronstadt with Vice Admiral Cruys in command and Peter, in his new rank as rear admiral, as Cruys' deputy. The ships made their way through the ice floes in the Gulf of Finland and arrived off Vyborg to find Apraxin's besieging army cold and hungry. The fleet brought provisions and reinforcements, raising Apraxin's strength to 23,000. Peter, after studying the siege plans and instructing Apraxin to take the town no matter what the cost, returned to St. Petersburg in a small vessel, narrowly escaping capture by a Swedish warship.

During the following month, in St. Petersburg, the Tsar again was ill. At the beginning of June, learning that the siege of Vyborg was nearing an end, he wrote to Apraxin, "I hear that you intend making the assault today. If this has already been ordered, God aid you. But if it is not fixed for today, then put it off till Sunday or Monday when I can get there, for this is the last day that I take medicine and tomorrow I shall be free."

On June 13, 1710, Vyborg with its garrison of 154 officers and 3,726 men fell to Apraxin. Peter arrived just in time to witness the surrender. The subsequent clearing and permanent occupation of Kexholm and all the Karelian Isthmus provided a northern buffer one hundred miles thick for St. Petersburg, meaning that Peter's "holy paradise" would no longer be sujected to surprise attacks by Swedish armies from the north. Relieved and happy, the Tsar wrote from Vyborg to Sheremetev, "And thus through the taking of this town, final safety has been gained for St. Petersburg." To Catherine, he wrote, "Now, by God's help, it is a strong cushion for St. Petersburg."*

All the Swedish citadels on the southern coast of the upper

*Through the years, Russians have continued to try to protect St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, from threats from this direction. For 109 years, while Finland was an Imperial Russian grand duchy, the threat was nonexistent, but in 1918, Finland gained independence and Vyborg and Karelia were attached to the new state. The Soviet government felt keenly the naked exposure of Leningrad, its second largest city, now only twenty miles from the Finnish frontier, and desired, as Peter had, a larger "cushion." In 1940, the Soviet Union attacked Finland primarily to regain this buffer territory. At first, the "Winter War" went badly for the Soviets. The Finns fought gallantly and attracted the admiration of the West. The Soviet army, its officer corps riddled by Stalin's purges, was stopped in its tracks. Eventually, sheer weight of numbers had an effect and the Red Army ground its way through the Finnish Mannerheim Line. The peace which followed established a new frontier in approximately the same place as in Peter's day. This extra buffer helped save Leningrad during the 900-day siege of the city between 1941 and 1943 by the Nazi and Finnish armies.

Baltic surrendered during the summer of 1710. On July 10, the great city of Riga with its garrison of 4,500 fell to Sheremetev after an eight-month siege. The city had been pounded by 8,000 Russian mortar shells and the garrison was decimated by hunger and disease which Peter called "the wrath of God." Although Peter's agreement with Augustus had assigned Livonia and Riga to Poland, Peter now decided that the city and the province had been bought with Russian blood at Poltava at a time when Augustus was no longer King of Poland and a Russian ally. The Tsar therefore determined to keep them. Of these territories, he was to become a tolerant overlord. Although requiring an oath of allegiance from the Baltic nobility and Riga merchants, he promised to respect all of their former privileges, rights, customs, possessions and immunities. The churches were to remain Lutheran, and German was to remain the language of provincial administration. For many years, the essential problem in these provinces was simple survival, the war having reduced the land and towns to a semi-desert, but the nobility and gentry were not displeased to exchange a Swedish master for a Russian one.

Three months after the fall of Riga, Reval—the last of the fruits of Poltava—capitulated. Peter was overjoyed. "The last town has surrendered and Livonia and Estonia are entirely cleared of the enemy," he wrote. "In a word, the enemy does not now possess a single town on the left side of the Baltic, not even an inch of land. It is now incumbent upon us to pray the Lord God for a good peace."

Part Four

ON THE EUROPEAN STAGE

THE SULTAN'S WORLD

It was extraordinarily fortunate for Peter that while he was tsar Russia never had to fight two enemies simultaneously. Poland, Moscow's traditional enemy, had been transformed into an ally by the treaty of 1686. The war with Turkey, reignited by Peter's two campaigns to seize Azov, had been suspended by a thirty-year armistice signed in August 1700, after which Peter could join Poland and Denmark in an attack on Sweden. Through the perilous years before Poltava when Charles XII seemed invincible and a Turkish-Swedish alliance would have sealed Russia's fate, the Sultan kept the peace. Only after Poltava, when the Swedish army had disintegrated into a column of prisoners, did the Ottoman Empire ponderously decide to make war on the Tsar. Even then, because of over-optimism on Peter's part and betrayal by one of his new Balkan Christian allies, this campaign had near-catastrophic results for Russia.

The Ottoman Empire, every hectare conquered by the sword, stretched over three continents. The sweep of the sultan's rule was greater than that of a Roman emperor. It embraced the whole of southeastern Europe. It stretched westward across the entire coast of Africa to the Moroccan border. It touched the shores of the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Black Sea was an Ottoman lake. Great cities as distant and as different as Algiers, Cairo, Bagdad, Jerusalem, Athens and Belgrade were ruled from Constantinople. Twenty-one modern nations have.been created from the former territories of the Ottoman Empire.*

Within this immense sweep of mountains, deserts, rivers and fertile valleys lived some twenty-five million people, a huge number in that day, almost twice the population of any European empire or kingdom except France. The empire was Moslem; it

*Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Aden, Kuwait, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Cyprus, not to mention huge stretches of the Soviet Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus, Armenia and George.

surrounded, in the heart of Arabia, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, whose sacred shrines it was the sultan's personal responsibility as caliph to protect. Among the Moslem peoples, the Ottoman Turks were the dominant minority, but there were also Arabs, Kurds, Crimean Tatars, Circassians, Bosnians and Albanians. The sultan also ruled over millions of Christian subjects: Greeks, Serbs, Hungarians, Bulgars, Walachians and Moldavians.

Almost necessarily, the political bonds that tied such a polyglot of peoples and religions were flexible and loose. From Constantinople, the sultan ruled, but his rule was administered locally by a bevy of pashas, princes, viceroys, beys, khans and emirs, some of them autonomous in all but name. The Christian princes of the rich Balkan provinces of Walachia and Moldavia, lying between the Danube and the Carpathians (present-day Romania), were personally chosen by the sultan, but once in office, their allegiance was manifested solely by payment of annual tribute. Every year, wagons loaded with gold and other tax monies arrived from the north before the gates of Sublime Porte in Constantinople. The Tatar Khan of the Crimea ruled his peninsula as an absolute lord from his capital, Bakhchisarai, owing only the duty to bring himself and 20,000 to 30,000 horsemen when summoned to the sultan's wars. Twelve hundred miles to the west, the Barbary states of Tripoli, Tunis and Algeria obliged their Ottoman master in war by diverting their fast corsair ships, normally engaged in lucrative peacetime piracy against all nations, to attack the fleets of the great Christian naval powers, Venice and Genoa.

In the sixteenth century, under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), the Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith. This was a golden age for Constantinople, when great wealth poured into the city, a dozen beautiful imperial mosques were built and sparkling pleasure palaces sprang up along the shores of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Suleiman himself was a patron of literature, the arts and science; he loved music, poetry and philosophy. But first he was a warrior. Along the great military road that led north to Belgrade, Buda and finally Vienna, the Ottoman armies marched, leaving mosques and minarets scattered across the Balkan hills and valleys. Outraged by these visible signs of Moslem occupation, the Christian kingdoms of the West saw the Turks as oppressors of the Greeks and other Christian peoples of the East. But the Ottoman Empire, more generous in this respect than most Western kingdoms, tolerated religions other than its own. The Sultan formally recognized the Greek Church and acknowledged the jurisdiction of its patriarch and archbishops, and Orthodox monasteries retained their property. The Turks preferred to rule through local political institutions, and in return for tribute, Christian provinces were permitted their own systems of government, rank and class structure.

In a curious way, the Ottoman Turks paid the highest compliment to their Christian subjects: They recruited them to fill the ranks of their own central imperial administration and to form the special regiments of the sultan's guard, the Janissaries. In the subject Balkan provinces, conversion to the Moslem faith was the key to success for bright young Christian boys who were sent—at first by force—to Moslem schools, and given a rigorous education designed to purge every memory of mother, father, brothers and sisters, and to eradicate every trace of the Christian religion. Their only allegiance was to the Koran and the sultan, and they became a corps of fearless and devoted followers, available for any service. The most intelligent might serve as pages in the palace or apprentices in the civil service and might rise to the very top of the imperial administration. Many distinguished men followed this path, and the mighty Ottoman Empire was often administered by men who had been born as Christians.

But most of these young men entered the regiments of guards, the Janissaries. As boys, and later as soldiers, they lived all their lives in barracks, forbidden to marry or have children, so that their total devotion might be given to the sultan. In status, the Janissary was a slave; the barracks was his home, the Koran his religion, the sultan his master and fighting his profession. In the early centuries of the empire, Janissaries were like an order of fanatical military monks, pledged to fight the enemies of Allah and the sultan. They provided the Ottoman armies with a steely corps of superbly trained and dedicated infantry, superior to any military force in Europe until the advent of the new French army of Louis XIV.

A company of Janissaries made a colorful sight. They wore red caps embroidered in gold, white blouses, baggy pantaloons and yellow boots. The Janissaries of the sultan's personal guard were distinguished by their red boots. In time of peace, they carried only a scimitar, but when he went into battle, each Janissary was allowed to arm himself with the weapons he liked best: javelin, sword, arquebus or, later, a musket.

In the fourteenth century, there were 12,000 Janissaries; in 1653, a count produced 51,647. As the centuries passed, older Janissaries were allowed to retire, marry and have families. Moslem as well as Christian families begged to have their sons enrolled in the corps and, in time, the privilege was restricted to the children or relations of former Janissaries. The Janissaries became a free-born, privileged, hereditary caste. In peacetime, they took up trades, like the Streltsy. Ultimately, as with regiments of imperial guards in many countries, they became a greater danger to their own master than to his enemies. Grand viziers and even sultans rose and fell at the whim of the Janissaries until finally, in 1826, they were abolished.

Approached from the sea, the historic city of Constantinople seemed like an immense, flowered pleasure garden. Rising from the blue waters of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara, its domes and minarets set amidst dark-green cypresses and flowering fruit trees, it was one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Today, as Istanbul, it is vividly alive, but is no longer a capital; the republican government of Turkey, to cleanse itself of the city's sins, has removed itself to the austere, modern purity of Ankara in the center of the Anatolian plateau. But in the seventeenth century, Constantinople was the capital of the Moslem world, the military, administrative, commercial and cultural hub of the mighty Ottoman Empire. With a population of 700,000, larger than any city in Europe, blending many races and religions, it was studded with great mosques, colleges, libraries, hospitals and public baths. Its bazaars and wharves were piled with merchandise from every corner of the world. Its parks and gardens were filled with flowers and fruit trees. In the spring, wild roses bloomed and nightingales sang in the hedgerows.

Overlooking the great city from a high point of land where the Golden Horn separates the Bosphorus from the Sea of Marmara was the Topkapi Palace, the seraglio of the sultan. Here, behind high walls, lay dozens of buildings: barracks, kitchens, mosques, gardens with bubbling fountains and long avenues of cypress trees bordered with beds of roses and tulips. A city within a city, existing entirely for the pleasure of a single man, the Seraglio made huge demands on the outside world. Every year, from all provinces of the empire came shiploads and cartloads of rice, sugar, peas, lentils, pepper, coffee, macaroons, dates, saffron, honey, salt, plums in lemon juice, vinegar, watermelons and, in one year alone 780 cartloads of snow. Inside this city 5,000 servants fulfilled the sultan's needs. The sultan's table was presided over by the Chief Attendant of the Napkin, assisted by the Senior of the Tray Servers, the Fruit Server, the Pickle Server and the Sherbet Maker, the Chief of the Coffee Makers and the Water Server (as Moslems, the sultans were teetotalers). There were also the Chief Turban Folder and the Assistants to the Chief Turban Folder, the Keeper of the Sultan's Robes, the Chiefs of the Laundrymen and Bathmen. The Chief of the Barbers had on his staff a Manicurist who pared the sultan's nails every Thursday.

Besides these, there were pipe lighters, door openers, musicians, gardeners, grooms and even a collection of dwarfs and mutes whom the sultan used as messengers, the latter being especially useful for attending the sultan during confidential moments.

Hidden through it was from the eyes of his subjects, the Seraglio was in fact but the outer shell of an inner, even more closely guarded private world, the harem. The Arabic word "harem" means "forbidden," and the sultan's harem was forbidden to all but the sultan himself, his guests, the women who lived there and the eunuchs who guarded them. It could be approached from the Seraglio only by passing down a single passage through four locked doors, two of iron and two of bronze. Each door was guarded day and night by eunuchs who kept the only keys. At the end of this passage lay an intricate maze of luxurious apartments, corridors, staircases, secret doors, courtyards, gardens and pools. Because many rooms were surrounded on all sides by other rooms, light filtered down through stained glass in skylight domes and windows. In the royal apartments, the walls and ceilings were covered with intricate patterns in blue and green Nicean tiles. The floors were spread with glowing Turkish carpets and low sofas on which the inhabitants could sit cross-legged while sipping Turkish coffee and eating fresh fruit. In rooms where the sultan might wish to speak confidentially to an advisor, there were fountains so that the sound of running water would keep the wrong ears from hearing what was said.

The harem was a closed world of veils, gossip, intrigue and—at any moment of the sultan's choosing—sex. But it was also a world rigidly ruled by protocol and rank. Until the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, sultans had married; the Moslem religion permitted them four wives. But Suleiman's wife, a red-haired Russian woman named Roxelana, had interfered so much in matters of state that thereafter Ottoman sultans did not marry. The sultan's mother, therefore, became the ruler of the harem. The Turks believed that "heaven lay under the feet of the mother," that no matter how many wives or concubines a man might take, he had only one mother, who held a unique place in his life. Sometimes, when the sultan was young or weak, his mother issued orders in his name directly to the grand vizier. Beneath the sultan's mother ranked the mother of the heir apparent if there was one, and then the other women who had borne the sultan's male children. Finally, there came the odalisques, or concubines. All of these women, technically, at least, were slaves, and, as Moslem women could not be enslaved, it followed that all the harem women were foreigners: Russians, Circassians, Venetians, Greeks. From the end of the sixteenth century, most came from the Caucasus,

because the blue-eyed women of that region were renowned for beauty. Once she passed through the harem doors, a woman remained for life. There were no exceptions.

On entering the harem, usually at the age of ten or eleven, a girl was rigorously schooled in feminine charm by experienced older women. Fully trained, the hopeful girl awaited the moment of preliminary approval when the sultan tossed a handkerchief at her feet and she became "gozde" ("in the eye"). Not every gozde reached the supreme moment when she was summoned and became "ikbal" ("bedded"), but those who did received their own apartments, servants, jewels, dresses and an allowance. As all the women in the harem were totally dependent on how well the sultan was pleased, all were eager for opportunities to reach his bed and, once in it, desperate to please. So much so that several sultans, surfeited with endless days and nights of passion supplied by platoons of eager, adoring women, went, quite simply, insane.*

Into this private world of women, no male except the sultan was allowed to penetrate. So exclusive was the harem that, according to a Turkish saying, if the sun had not been female, even she would never have been allowed to enter. To ensure this exclusivity was the duty of the harem eunuchs. Originally, the eunuchs had been white, mostly brought, like the harem women, from the Caucasus. But by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the 200 eunuchs who guarded the harem were black. Most were bought as children in the annual slave caravans from the upper Nile and were castrated near Aswan as they came down the river. Ironically, as the Moslem religion forbade castration, the deed was performed by Copts, a Christian sect living in the region. These mutilated children were then presented as gifts to the sultan from his governors and viceroys in lower Egypt.

In theory, the eunuchs were slaves, and servants of the slaves who were the harem women. But the eunuchs often gained great power because of their proximity to the sultan. In the ceaseless round of court intrigue, the alliance of women and eunuchs could heavily influence the flow of favors and public positions. Eventually, the Chief of the Black Eunuchs, known as the Aga of the Women or the Aga of the House of Felicity, often played a great role in affairs of state, becoming tyrant of the whole Seraglio and sometimes ranking third in power in the empire, after the sultan and the grand vizier. The Aga of the Black Eunuchs always

*Some of the Ottoman sultans kept boys as well as women in their harems. But while it is true that certain Turkish sultans had homosexual tastes, as did some Christian kings, most Ottoman sultans preferred women. The harem was overwhelmingly a reservoir of females.

lived grandly, having many privileges and a large staff which included a number of his own slave girls, whose duties, it must be said, are difficult to imagine.

Within the harem, as everywhere in his empire, the sultan was treated as a demi-god. No woman was allowed to meet him unsummoned. At his approach, those in his path had to hide quickly; one sultan, in order to give warning of his approach, wore slippers with silver soles to make a clater on the stone passageways. When he wanted to bathe, the sultan went first to his undressing room, where his clothes were removed by young female slaves; next to a massage room, where his body was oiled and rubbed; then to a bath chamber with a marble tub, fountains of hot and cold running water and gold faucets, where, if he desired, his body was washed, an assignment usually given to rather elderly women; finally, he would be dressed and perfumed, again by younger females. When the sultan wished festivity, he repaired to his audience hall, a large, blue-tiled chamber spread with crimson carpets. There, he sat on his throne while his mother and his sisters and daughters sat on sofas, and the ikbal and godze sat on cushions on the floor in front of him. If there were dancing girls and music, the court musicians might be required to attend, but on these occasions they were carefully blindfolded to protect the harem women from their eyes. Later, a balcony for the musicians was built above the audience hall, with walls so high that only the music could pass over.

It was in this audience hall that the sultan occasionally received a foreign ambassador. At these moments, he sat on his marble throne, wearing a long robe of golden cloth trimmed with sable and a white turban with a black-and-white aigrette and a giant emerald. Always, he sat with his face in profile, so that no infidel might gaze on the full countenance of the Shadow of God on Earth.

Throughout its history, the Ottoman Empire remained a warrior state. All power lay in the hands of the sultan. When the sultan was strong and gifted, the empire prospered. When he was weak, the empire decayed. Not surprisingly, life in the harem, surrounded by adoring women and conniving eunuchs, took much of the fiber out of a race which had begun with warrior conquerors. A second circumstance tended, as the history of the empire unfolded, to degrade the quality of ruling sultans. Ironically, it had begun with an act of mercy. Until the sixteenth century, it had been an Ottoman tradition that, of the sultan's many sons, the one who succeeded to the throne would immediately have all his brothers strangled, to remove any threat to his position. Sultan Murad III, who ruled from 1574 to 1595, sired more than a hundred children and was survived by twenty sons. The eldest, succeeding to the throne as Mehmet III, strangled his nineteen brothers and also, to be certain of liquidating any possible competition, murdered seven of his father's concubines who happened to be pregnant. In 1603, however, the new sultan, Ahmed I, ended this terrible rite by refusing to strangle his brothers. Instead, to keep them innocuous, he walled them up in a special pavilion called "The Cage," where they lived cut off from all communication with the outside world. Henceforth, all Ottoman princes idled away their lives in this place, in the company of eunuchs and of concubines, who, to prevent the birth of children, were required to be beyond the age of childbearing. If, by mistake, a child was born, the infant was not allowed to complicate the royal genealogical tree by remaining alive. Thus, when a sultan died or was disposed without a son, a brother would be summoned from seclusion and proclaimed the new Shadow of God on Earth. Amidst this collecton of ignorant, unaggressive royal males, neither the Janissaries nor the grand viziers could often find a man with the intellectual development or political knowledge to rule an empire.

At all times, but especially when the sultan was weak, the Ottoman Empire was actually administered by the grand vizier. From a vast building erected in 1654 near the Seraglio and known to Europeans as the Sublime Porte, the grand vizier controlled the administration and armed forces of the empire—everything, in fact, except the Seraglio. In theory, the grand vizier was the servant of the sultan. His appointment was symbolized by his acceptance from the sultan's hands of a signet ring; his dismissal was signaled by the recall of this imperial seal. In practice, however, the grand vizier ruled the empire. In peacetime, he was the chief executive and chief magistrate. In war, he commanded the Ottoman army in the field, assisted by the Janissary Aga and the Captain Pasha of the Navy. He presided over his council, the Divan, in a large, domed audience chamber whose walls were adorned with mosaics, arabesques and blue-and-gold hangings. Here, on a bench circling the perimeter, sat the great officers of the Porte, the colors of their fur-trimmed, wide-sleeved robes—green, violet, silver, blue, yellow—denoting their rank. In the center sat the grand vizier, wearing a robe of white satin and a turban bound with gold.

The office of grand vizier carried enormous power—on occasion, grand viziers could arrange the fall of sultans—but it also entailed enormous risks and offered little prospect of a peaceful death. Defeat in war was blamed on the grand vizier and was followed inevitably by dismissal, exile and, not infrequenty, strangulation. Only a master of intrigue could attain the office. Between 1683 and 1702, twelve grand viziers came and went from the Divan and the Sublime Porte.

Nevertheless, earlier in the seventeenth century, it had been the grand viziers who saved the empire while the sultans sat in their harems indulging their tastes and fantasies.* Outside, Ottoman power had declined so greatly that Venetian ships cruised off the Dardanelles while Cossack "seagull" corsairs from the Dnieper raided the western entrance of the Bosphorus. The empire, bubbling with corruption and dissolving into anarchy, was rescued by the skill of what amounted to a dynasty of grand viziers: father, son and brother-in-law.

In 1656, with the empire near collapse, the harem hierarchy reluctantly named as grand vizier a stern, seventy-one-year-old Albanian, Memmed Korpulu, who solved problems ruthlessly: Between 50,000 and 60,000 executions purged the Ottoman administration of graft and corruption. By the time he died, five years later, the decline in the empire's fortunes had been halted. Under his son Ahmed Korpulu and later his brother-in-law, Kara Mustapha, a brief revival of Ottoman power occurred. The fleets and armies of the Christian powers, Austria, Venice and Poland, were driven back. In 1683, responding to a Hungarian appeal for aid against the Emperor Leopold, Kara Mustapha decided to capture Vienna. An army of over 200,000 men under a banner with horsehair plumes, commanded by Kara Mustapha himself, marched up the Danube, conquered all of Hungary and, for the second time in Ottoman history, stood before the walls of Vienna. Through the summer of 1683, Europe watched anxiously. Regiments of soldiers from the German states enlisted under the Hapsburg Emperor's banner to fight the Turks. Even Louis XIV, normally the enemy of the Hapsburgs and secret ally of the Turks, could not afford not to help save the great Christian city. On September 12, 1683, an allied relieving army fell on the Turkish siege lines from the rear and drove the Turks in flight down the Danube. By order of the Sultan, Kara Mustapha was strangled.

*One sultan, Ibrahim the Mad, encased his beard in a network of diamonds and passed his days tossing gold coins to the fish in the Bosphorus. He wanted to see and feel nothing but fur, and levied a special tax for the import of sables from Russia so that he might cover the walls of his apartments with these precious furs. Deciding that the bigger a woman was, the more enjoyable she would be, he had his agents search the empire for the fattest woman they could find. They brought him an enormous Armenian woman, who so fascinated the Sultan that he heaped riches and honors upon her and finally made her Governor General of Damascus.

The years that followed the repulse from Vienna were disastrous for the Turks. Buda and then Belgrade fell, and the Austrian armies even neared Adrianople. The great Venetian admiral Francesco Morosini captured the Peloponnesus, advanced across the isthmus of Corinth and laid siege to Athens. Unfortunately, during his bombardment one of his shells hit the Parthenon, which the Turks were using as a powder magazine. On September 26, 1687, the building, then still largely intact, blew up and was reduced to its present state.

In 1703, Sultan Mustapha II was deposed by the Janissaries in favor of of his thirty-year-old brother Ahmed III, who came to the throne from the seclusion of "The Cage" and ruled for twenty-seven years. An esthete, unstable, morose, greatly influenced by his mother, he liked women, poetry and painting flowers. He had a passion for architecture and built beautiful mosques to please his people and beautiful gardens to please himself. Along the Golden Horn, he erected a series of luxurious pleasure pavilions, some in Chinese design, some in French, where he would sit in the shade of a tree and, in the company of his favorite concubines, listen to poetry. Ahmed loved theatrial entertainment; in winter, elaborate Chinese shadow plays were performed, followed by a distribution of jewels, sweets and robes of honor. In summer, elaborate mock sea battles and firework displays were staged. Tulipmania possessed his court. In the spring evenings, in gardens hung with lanterns or drenched with moonlight, the Sultan and his court, accompanied by musicians, would stroll, stepping carefully over hundreds of turtles that crawled among the tulips and through the grass with lighted candles on their backs.

In this secluded, scented environment, Ahmed III lived out the same years which saw the active, turbulent reign of Peter of Russia. Although Ahmed's reign outlasted Peter's, its end had a distinctly Ottoman flavor. In 1730, with the empire once again in turmoil, Ahmed thought to appease his enemies by ordering the current grand vizier, who happened also to be his brother-in-law, strangled and his body given to the mob. This only temporarily postponed Ahmed's own fate. Soon after, he was deposed and succeeded by his nephew, who had him poisoned.

41

LIBERATOR OF THE BALKAN CHRISTIANS

In the second half of the seventeenth century, a new and quite unexpected danger appeared in the north to threaten the Ottoman Empire. Muscovite Russia waxed in power and portended menace for the throne of the Shadow of God. Traditionally, the Turks had regarded the Muscovites with disdain; it was not they, but their vassals the Crimean Tatars who dealt with the Muscovites. Indeed, such was the order of ascendancy that the Crimean Tatars, the sultan's tributaries, themselves received tribute from the tsar. For the Crimean khans, Muscovy was a harvest ground for slaves and cattle taken in the great annual Tatar raids into the Ukraine and southern Russia.

That the Ottoman Empire had been able to display this indifference toward the Russian tsardom was due to Moscow's involvement with its other enemies. The two most numerous Christian people of Eastern Europe, the Orthodox Russians and the Catholic Poles, had been fighting each other for generations. But in 1667 a change disagreeable to the sultan occurred: Russians and Poles resolved their differences at least temporarily to unite against the Turks. And it was in 1686 that King Jan Sobieski of Poland, anxious to fight the Ottoman Empire, surrendered temporarily (the transfer became permanent) the city of Kiev to the Regent Sophia in return for Russian adherence to a Polish-Austrian-Venetian alliance against Turkey.

Prodded by her allies, Russia finally initiated military action in this war. The offensives launched against the Crimean Tatars in 1677 and 1689, both commanded by Sophia's favorite, Vasily Golitsyn, ended in failure. In Constantinople, the insignificance of Russian military power seemed further confirmed, while in Moscow, Golitsyn's failures precipitated a shift in power. The revelation of Sophia's weakness led to the Regent's downfall and the assumption of power by the Naryshkin party in Peter's name. Thereafter, while the youthful Tsar was drilling soldiers, building boats and visiting Archangel, relations between Russia and Turkey

remained quiet. Technically, they were still at war but in fact there was no fighting.

As Peter came of age, he discovered in the anti-Turkish alliance and the never ended war the opportunity to realize a personal dream: to break through to the south and sail a fleet on the Black Sea. The two summer campaigns of 1695 and 1696 against Azov were the first Russian assaults not on Tatars but on a Turkish fortress manned by Turkish soldiers. Peter's success in his second attempt alarmed the sultan's government: Russian warships seemed more dangerous than Russian soldiers. Now, the Tsar had cleared the mouth of the Don and was massing a fleet at Tagonrog and Azov, but—fortunately, from the Turkish point of view— Ottoman fortresses still commanded the Strait of Kerch and prevented these ships from sailing on the Black Sea.

Officially, of course, it was to reignite the war, to invigorate his allies and perhaps to find new ones that Peter set out on his Great Embassy in 1697. As we have seen, he failed in this purpose, and once his allies signed a treaty of peace at Carlowitz, Russia, a minor combatant, was left to make the best peace it could with the Turks. Denied the fruits for which he hungered, the Tsar never forgave the Austrians for deserting him at Carlowitz. "They take no more notice of me than they do a dog," he complained bitterly. "I shall never forget what they have done to me. I feel it and am come off with empty pockets."

Despite the incompleteness of Peter's gains, Azov was to have far-reaching consequences. The first Russian victory over the Turks, it demonstrated at least a local and temporary superiority over a power which the Muscovites had always before treated with circumspection. It was fortunate for Russia that no great sultan or grand vizier like those of the Ottoman past rose up in Peter's day. The vast power to Russia's south was somnolent, but it remains colossal in size, still possessed of immense resources, and, when provoked, could bring crushing weight to bear on its neighbors.

It was this lethargic but still formidable giant that Peter challenged in 1711 with his march into the Balkans.

By 1710, the thirty-year truce with Turkey, signed on the eve of the Great Northern War, had lasted for ten years; even when Peter had seemed most vulnerable, the truce had been maintained. For this good fortune, the man most responsible was Peter's—and Russia's—first permanent ambassador at Constantinople, Peter Tolstoy. A portrait of Tolstoy depicts a man with shrewd blue eyes, bushy black eyebrows, a high forehead and a gray Western wig.

His clean-shaven face is serene. Everything about the man radiates vigor, tenacity, self-confidence and success.

Tolstoy had needed these qualities plus a great deal of luck to skirt the pitfalls already encountered in a long and remarkable career. Born in 1645 into a landed family of the lesser aristocracy, he had initially favored the Miloslavskys and ardently supported the Regent Sophia in her climactic confrontation with the young Tsar Peter in 1689, but had switched to the winning side just before the end. Peter, not fully trusting this new adherent, sent him to govern the distant northern province of Ustiug. There, as governor, it fell to Tolstoy to entertain the Tsar during the summers of 1693 and 1694 when he was traveling to and from Archangel. Tolstoy made a good impression, which he reinforced by serving capably in the second campaign against Azov. Finally, in 1696, he established himself in Peter's favor when, although fifty-two and the father of a family, he volunteered to travel to Venice to study shipbuilding and navigation. He learned something of these trades and cruised the Mediterranean, but a more important consequence was that he learned to speak Italian and to understand something of Western life and culture, both useful in his subsequent career as diplomat. Shrewd, cool-headed, opportunistic, a man who by Russian standards was cultured and sophisticated, Tolstoy became immensely useful to the Tsar. Recognizing his qualities, Peter entrusted Tolstoy with two of the most difficult assignments of his reign: the long mission to Constantinople and, later, the luring back to Russia of the Tsarevich Alexis. Prizing this talented and useful servant, Peter gave Tolstoy the hereditary rank of count, but he never completely forgot the older man's earlier opposition. Once, when this dark thought flitted across his mind, the Tsar took the older man's head between his two powerful hands and said, "Oh, head, head! You would not be on your shoulders now if you were not so wise."

Tolstoy's character and experience suited him admirably for his assignment as Russia's first resident ambassador at the sultan's court. His instructions, when he arrived near the end of 1701, were those of diplomats since time immemorial: to preserve the truce between Turkey and Russia, to do what he could to stir up trouble between Turkey and Austria, to gather and forward to Moscow information on the foreign relations and internal politics of the Ottoman Empire, to pass along his judgments of the men in power and those likely to come to power, and to learn what he could about Turkish military and naval tactics and the strength of Turkish fortresses on the Black Sea. It was a challenging assignment, made all the more so because the Turks did not really want a Russian ambassador in Constantinople. Other foreign ambassadors were stationed in the Ottoman capital to facilitate commerce, but trade did not flow between Russia and Turkey, and the Turks, accordingly, were suspicious of Tolstoy's presence.

At first, he was placed under something close to house arrest. As he wrote to Peter:

My residence is not pleasant to them because their domestic enemies, the Greeks, are our co-religionists. The Turks are of the opinion that, by living among them, I shall excite the Greeks to rise against the Mohammedans, and therefore the Greeks have been forbidden to have intercourse with me. The Christians have been so frightened that none of them dare even pass by the house in which I live. . . . Nothing terrifies them so much as your fleet. The rumor has circulated that seventy great ships have been built at Archangel and they think that when it is necessary these ships will come around from the Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean Sea and will sail up to Constantinople.

Despite these hardships, Tolstoy had considerable success. He managed to build up an intelligence network based partly on the organization of the Orthodox Church within thde Ottoman Empire (Dositheus, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, was especially helpful) and partly with the assistance of the Dutch, who had much experience in the maze of Turkish court politics.

During Tolstoy's years, this maze was particulary complex. Grand vizier followed grand vizier. Some were more tolerant of Tolstoy than others, but his position was never comfortable. In 1702, the Grand Vizier Daltaban Mustapha came to power, determined to back the Tatar Khan in his desire to renew the war with Russia. By generous bribery, Tolstoy managed to bring the Vizier's scheme to the attention of the Sultan's mother, and Daltaban was deposed and beheaded. The next vizier handled Tolstoy more carefully, but two Janissaries still guarded his door and watched his movements.

In 1703, when Sultan Mustapha II was replaced by his brother Ahmed III, Tolstoy at first was allowed to go where he pleased; then came a new grand vizier and again he was restricted. Despairingly, the ambassador wrote to Moscow: "The new Vizier is very ill-disposed to me, and my wretched situation, my troubles and fears are more than before. Again no one dares to come to me and 1 can go nowhere. It is with great trouble that I can send this letter. This is the sixth Vizier in my time and he is the worst of all." The sixth vizier was soon replaced by the seventh, but Tolstoy's situation remained bleak.

In part, the ill-treatment of Tolstoy was due to the complaints of a Turkish envoy to Moscow about his treatment by the Russians. The Turkish ambassador sent to announce the accession of Ahmed

UJ had been politely received, but had been made to wait a long time before seeing the Tsar. This delay was deliberate: Peter had wanted to gain time and impress on the envoy the power of the Russian Tsar. In addition, Peter fended the envoy away from what he most wanted to see: the Russian fleet base at Azov and its building site at Voronezh. Peter wrote to the governor of Azov, "Do not go near Voronezh. Be as slow on the road as possible, the longer, the better. Do not allow him to see Azov on any account."

All of this rebounded on Tolstoy's head when the envoy sent a letter home describing his treatment in Russia. "What he [his counterpart, the Turkish ambassador in Russia] has written, I do not know," said Tolstoy, "but they ill-treat me in a frightful way, and they shut us all up in our house and allow no one either to go out or to come in. We have been some days almost withouot food because they let no one out to buy bread, and it was with difficulty that I succeeded by great presents in getting permission for one man to go out to buy victuals."

Tolstoy also worried that one of his own staff would convert to Mohammedanism and then betray his intelligence service. Eventually, such a case did occur, and the Ambassador dealt with it summarily:

I am in great fear of my attendants [he wrote to Moscow]. As I have been living here for three years they have gotten acquainted with the Turks and have teamed the Turkish language. Since we are now in great discomfort, I fear that they will become impatient on account of the imprisonment and will waver in their faith because the Mohammedan faith is very attractive to thoughtless people. If any Judas declare himself, he will do great harm because my people have seen with which of the Christians I have been intimate and who serves the Tsar . . . and if any one rums renegade and tells the Turks who has been working for the Tsar, not only will our friends suffer, but there will be harm to all Christians. I follow this with great attention and do not know how God will turn it. I have had one affair like this. A young secretary, Timothy, having got acquainted with the Turks, thought of turning Mohammedan. God helped me to learn about this. I called him quietly and began to talk to him and he declared to me frankly that he wished to become a Mohammedan. Then I shut him up in his bedroom till night, and at night he drank a glass of wine and quickly died. Thus God kept him from such wickedness.

As time went on, Tolstoy had other troubles. His salary failed to arrive, and in order to make ends meet, he was forced to sell some of the sable skins he had been given to use as gifts. He wrote to the Tsar begging for his pay and also for permission to resign and come home. Peter wrote back refusing, telling him his services were essential. Tolstoy struggled along, bribing, intriguing, doing his best. In 1706, he reported that "two of the most prudent pashas have been strangled at the instigation of the Grand Vizier, who does not like capable people. God grant that all the rest may perish the same way."

During Bulavin's Cossack rebellion on the Don and the Swedish invasion of Russia, Peter feared that the Sultan might be tempted to try to retake Azov. His instinct was to appease, and he gave orders to be sure that no Turk or Tatar prisoners were still being held in Russian prisons. Tolstoy disagreed with this approach. He felt that the better policy was to be forceful, even threatening, with the Turks, in order to keep them quiet. Events seemed to bear him out. In 1709, the spring and summer of Poltava, the Turks not only failed to intervene on the side of Sweden, but talk of war with Russia and rumors of the appearance of a Russian fleet at the mouth of the Bosphorus caused panic in the streets of Constantinople.

Thus, for eight difficult years Tolstoy successfully upheld his master's interests and preserved the peace between Russia and Turkey. Then, in 1709, Charles XII, fleeing Poltava, arrived within the Sultan's dominions. Thereafter, four times within three years, the Sultan declared war on Russia.

When Charles XII crossed the Bug River and entered the territory of the Ottoman Empire, he became the Sultan's guest. The King and the Cossack Hetman Mazeppa had sought asylum within the Sultan's dominions; this, according to the religion of Islam, imposed on Ahmed III the duty to receive and protect them. So strongly was this obligation felt that when word reached Constantinople of the delaying tactics of the local pasha which had resulted in the massacre of the stranded Cossacks on the far side of the river, the Sultan contemplated sending the pasha a silken cord.

Once he knew that the King of Sweden was within his empire, the Sultan moved quickly to make amends. Within a few days, the Seraskier of Bender, Yusuf Pasha, arrived with a formal welcome and a wagon train of special provisions. Soon, the famished Swedish survivors were feasting on melons, mutton and excellent Turkish coffee. Yusuf Pasha also brought the Sultan's suggestion, tinged with the weight of command, that his guests move to Bender on the Dniester River, 150 miles farther southwest. At this new site, Charles pitched camp in a row of handsome Turkish tents set in a meadow lined with fruit trees along the bank of the Dniester. In this pleasant country now called Bessarabia, the restless King of Sweden was to spend three years.

At the time he moved there, Charles could have no inkling of this future. The King's intention had been to return to Poland and take command of the armies of Krassow and Stanislaus as soon as his foot was healed. In Poland, he also hoped to rendezvous with the troops under Lewenhaupt which he had left behind at Perevoluchna. In addition, he had sent orders to the governing Council in Stockholm to raise new regiments and send them across the Baltic. Nature and politics conspired against him. The wound healed slowly, and it was another six weeks before the King was able to mount a horse. During this recuperation, he learned that his eldest sister, the widowed Duchess of Holstein, Hedwig Sophia, had died in Stockholm during an epidemic of measles. For days, the bachelor King could not stop weeping. Shutting himself in his tent, he refused to see even his closest comrades; for a while he even refused to believe the report, although the news had been transmitted in an official letter of condolence from the Swedish Council. To his younger sister, Ulrika, he wrote that he hoped that the "too terrible, quite unexpected rumor which totally numbed me" would be contradicted. Later, he wrote to Ulrika that he would have been happy if he had been the first of the three to die, and prayed now that at least he would be the second.

Another sorrow quickly followed. Mazeppa, the aging Hetman who had ruinously cast his lot with Charles before Poltava, had been carried from Charles' camp to a house in the town of Bender, where during the hot summer days his condition worsened. Charles remained faithful: When an offer from Peter arrived, suggesting that the Tsar would free Count Piper if Charles would hand over Mazeppa, the King refused. On September 22, 1709, Mazeppa died, and Charles hobbled on crutches to attend the funeral.

Blow followed upon blow. In quick succession, Charles learned that Lewenhaupt had surrendered at Perevoluchna, that Russian troops under Menshikov were flooding Poland, that Stanislaus and Krassow had retreated, that Augustus had broken the Treaty of Altranstadt and invaded Poland to reclaim his crown, that Denmark had reentered the war against Sweden and that Sweden itself was invaded by a Danish army. Meanwhile, Peter's Russian troops were marching through the Baltic provinces, occupying Riga, Pernau, Reval and Vyborg. Why did Charles not return to Sweden to take command? The journey would not have been easy. Bender was 1,200 miles south of Stockholm. The route through Poland was closed by the soldiers of Peter and Augustus. A recurrence of the plague had caused the Austrians to seal all their frontiers. Louis XIV repeatedly offered a ship to bring Charles home—the Sun King was eager to have the Swedish thunderbolt making mischief again in Eastern Europe behind the backs of his English, Dutch and Austrian opponents—but Charles worried about being seized by pirates. And if he accepted passage from the French—or even from the English or Duth—what would be the price? Almost certainly, it would mean choosing sides in the War of the Spanish Succession.

In fact, once his disappointment at being unable to leave immediately for Poland had passed, Charles actually preferred to stay in Turkey. As he saw it, his presence inside the Ottoman Empire provided him with an impressive new opportunity. If he could arouse the Sultan to make war on the Tsar and join him in one successful southern offensive, Peter might still be beaten and all that Sweden had lost might be regained. Beginning in the autumn of 1709, Charles' agents, Poniatowski and Neugebauer, plunged into the murky politics of Constantinople, toiling to undo Tolstoy's work.

Their task was not easy. The Turks did not want to fight. This general feeling was reinforced by the news of Poltava, which had made an enormous impression in Constantinople: How long now would it be before the Tsar's fleet appeared at the mouth of the Bosphorus? Faced with these dangers, many of the Sultan's advisors would have been happy to do as Peter demanded and expel the Swedish troublemaker from their empire. "The King of Sweden," reads a contemporary Turkish document, "has fallen like a heavy weight on the shoulders of the Sublime Porte." On the other hand, there were parties inside the Ottoman Empire who were eager for war with Russia. The most prominent was the violent Russophobe Khan of the Crimea, Devlet Gerey, who had been stripped of his right to tribute from Russia by the treaty of 1700. He and his horsemen were thirsting for a chance to renew the great raids on the Ukraine which had been so lucrative in booty and prisoners. In addition, Neugebauer was so fortunate as to gain the ear of Sultan Ahmed's mother. This lady's imagination had already been captured by the hero legend of Charles XII; now Neugebauer made her see how her son could help her "lion [Charles] devour the Tsar."

Another element was necessary to Charles' plan. It was not enough simply to induce the Sultan to go to war; the campaign must be successfully fought and the right objectives achieved. Charles understood that in order to have a voice in these matters, he needed to command a fresh Swedish army on the continent. Even as the Ottoman army was mobilizing, Charles was writing urgently to Stockholm "to ensure the safe transport into Pomerania of the aforesaid regiments in good time, that our part in the forthcoming campaign may not fall to the ground."

In Stockholm, the Council was astonished, even aghast, at this request. Already in November 1709, after Poltava, a newly emboldened Denmark had broken the Peace of Travendal and reentered the war against Sweden. Danish troops had invaded southern Sweden. To the Swedish Council, confronting immediate threats to the homeland along with the crushing burden of paying for a war which seemed already lost, the King's command that another expeditionary force be sent to Poland seemed madness. A message was sent to Charles that no troops could be spared.

In the end, ironically, Neugebauer and Poniatowski were successful in Constantinople while Charles XII failed in Stockholm. The Ottoman Empire was persuaded to go to war, but none of the proud Swedish regiments which might have steeled the ranks of the Turkish army and given weight to the voice of the Swedish King were present. Although he was incontestably the greatest commander within the empire, and although the Turkish army in general and the Janissaries in particular idolized the warrior King, Charles was not a formal ally of the Turks and played no active part in the coming military campaign. Because of this, his last and perhaps his greatest opportunity to defeat Peter crumbled into dust.

It was not only the Turks who were concerned about the presence of Charles XII in the Ottoman Empire. Ever since the King's arrival, Peter had pressed through Tolstoy for Charles' surrender of expulsion. As the months passed, the tone of his messages became increasingly peremptory, and this played directly into the hands of the war party in Constantinople and Adrianople. The Tsar's categorical demand that the Sultan reply by October 10, 1710, to his request that Charles be expelled from Turkey was considered insulting to the dignity of the Shadow of God. This, following, the persuasions of the Khan, the Swedes, the French and the Sultan's mother, tipped the balance. On November 21, in a solemn session of the Divan, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia. Tolstoy was the first to suffer. Under Turkish law, ambassadors had no immunity in wartime, and Tolstoy was seized, stripped of half his clothes, set on an aged horse and paraded through the streets to confinement in the Seven Towers.

With the declaration of war came a new Grand Vizier, Mehemet Baltadji, appointed for the express purpose of making war on Russia. He was a curious choice, described by a contemporary as a dull-witted, blundering old pederast who had never been a serious soldier. Yet he decided on an offensive campaign. That winter, as soon as the Khan's horsemen could make ready, a mobile Tatar army would strike north from the Crimea into the

Ukraine to harry the Cossacks and reap the rewards in prisoners and cattle which ten years of peace had denied them. In the spring, the main body of the Ottoman army would march northeast from Adrianople. The artillery and supplies would go by sea to the Danube town of Isaccea to rendezvous with the army. There, the Tatar cavalry would join them to form a combined force of almost 200,000 men.

In January, the Tatars struck, ravaging the area between the middle Dnieper and the upper Don. They met heavy resistance from Peter's new Cossack Hetman, Skoropadsky, and were forced to withdraw without having created the major diversion for which the Grand Vizier had hoped. At the end of February, the horsetails signifying war were raised in the court of the Janissaries and the elite corps of 20,000, shouldering its polished muskets and ornamental bows, marched north. The main army moved slowly, reaching the Danube only at the beginning of June. Here, the cannon were unloaded from ships and placed in gun carriages, the supply trains organized, and the entire army transferred to the east bank of the river.

While the Turks were assembling on the Danube, the Grand Vizier sent Poniatowski, who had been representing Charles at the Sultan's court, to Bender to invite the King to join the campaign, but only as a guest of the Grand Vizier. At first, the King was strongly tempted, but he decided against it. As a sovereign, he could not join an army he did not command, especially an army commanded by one lower in rank than himself. In retrospect, it appears a fatal mistake.

The war of 1711, which led to the campaign on the Pruth, was not of Peter's asking; it was Charles who had instigated this fight between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, once war came, Peter, still flushed with his success at Poltava, accepted the challenge with confidence and took rapid steps to prepare. Ten regiments of Russian dragoons were dispatched from Poland to watch the Ottoman frontier. Sheremetev with twenty-two regiments of infantry was ordered to march from the Baltic to the Ukraine. A new, exceptionally heavy tax was levied to support the coming military operations.

On February 25, 1711, a great ceremony was held in the Kremlin. The Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Guards regiments stood in ranks in Cathedral Square before the Assumption Cathedral, their red banners bearing a cross inscribed with the ancient watchword of the Emperor Constantine: "By this sign you shall conquer." Inside the cathedral, Peter solemnly proclaimed a holy war "against the enemies of Christ." The Tsar meant to lead the Turkish campaign personally, and on March 6 left Moscow with Catherine at his side. But he became ill, and his letters carried a tone of resignation and despair. "We have before us this uncertain road which is known to God alone," he wrote to Menshikov. To Apraxin, who had been given command of all the lower Don, including Azov and Tagonrog, and who had written asking for instructions as to where to place his headquarters, the Tsar replied, "Do as is most convenient to you, for all the country is entrusted to you. It is impossible for me to decide as I am so far off, and, if you will, in despair, being scarcely alive from illness, and affairs change from day to day."

Peter's illness was severe. To Menshikov, he wrote that he had suffered one seizure lasting a day and a half and had never been so sick in his life. After several weeks, he began to feel better and moeved along to Yavorov. There, he was pleased that Catherine was received with dignity and addressed as "Your Majesty" by the local Polish noblemen. Catherine herself was delighted. "We here are often at banquets and soirees," she wrote on May 9 to Menshikov, who had been left behind to defend St. Petersburg. "Three days ago we visited the Hetman Sieniawski and yesterday were at Prince Radziwill's, where we danced a good bit." Then, turning to some imagined slight, she soothed the worried Prince: "I beg your Highness not to be troubled by believing any stupid gossip coming from here, for the Rear Admiral [Peter] keeps you in his love and kindest remembrance as before."

Peter had traveled to Yavorov to sign the marriage treaty which would link his son Alexis to Princess Charlotte of Wolfenbuttel. Schleinitz, the ambassador of the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, wrote to his master describing the Russian royal couple at this moment:

The next day about four o'clock the Tsar sent for me again. I knew that I should find him in the room of the Tsaritsa and that I should give him great pleasure if I congratulated the Tsaritsa on the publication of her marriage. After the declaration made on this subject by the King of Poland and the hereditary prince, I did not consider it out of place and besides I knew that the Polish minister gave the Tsaritsa the title of Majesty. When I went into the room I turned, notwithstanding the presence of the Tsar, and congratulated her in your name and on the announcement of her marriage, and entrusted the Princess [Charlotte] to her friendship and protection.

Catherine was delighted and asked Schleinitz to thank the Duke for his good wishes. She said that she was eager to see and embrace the princess who was to become her stepdaughter-in-law and asked whether the Tsarevich seemed as much in love with Charlotte as people said. While Catherine was talking with the

Ambassador, Peter was examining some mathematical instruments on the other side of the room. When he heard Catherine speak of Alexis, he laid these down on a table and walked over, but did not break into the conversation.

"I had been warned," Schleinitz continued in his letter to the Duke,

that as the Tsar knows me very slightly, it was incumbent on me to address him first. I therefore told him that Her Majesty the Tsaritsa had asked me whether the Tsarevich was very much in love with the Princess. I declared that I was sure that the Tsarevich awaited with impatience the consent of his father in order to be fully happy. The Tsar replied through an interpreter "I do not wish to put off the happiness of my son, but at the same time I do not wish entirely to deprive myself of my own happiness. He is my only son and I desire to have the pleasure at the end of the campaign of being personally present at his marriage. His marriage will be in Brunswick." He explained that he was entirely his own master, for he had to do with an enemy who was strong and rapid in his movements, but he would try and arrange it to take the water at Carlsbad in the autumn and then go to Wolfenbuttel.

Three days later, the marriage contract arrived, signed without alteration by the Duke of Wolfenbuttel. Peter summoned Ambassador Schleinitz and greeted him in German with the statement, "I have some excellent news to give you." He produced the contract, and when Schleinitz congratulated the Tsar and kissed his hand, Peter kissed him three times on the forehead and cheeks and ordered that a bottle of his favorite Hungarian wine be brought. They clinked glasses and Peter talked excitedly for two hours about his son, the army and the coming campaign against the Turks. Afterward, a pleased Schleinitz wrote to the Duke: "I cannot sufficiently express Your Highness with what clearness of judgment and what modesty the Tsar spoke about everything."

Peter's confidence that the campaign against Turkey would be swiftly concluded so that he could take the waters at Carlsbad and then attend his son's wedding was further reflected in an interview he had at this time with Augustus. The Elector of Saxony had once again entered Warsaw and claimed the crown of Poland, while his rival, Stanislaus, had fled with the retreating Swedes to Swedish Pomerania. Augustus intended to pursue these enemies and besiege the Swedish-held Baltic port of Stralsund. To support this effort, Peter pledged 100,000 roubles and placed 12,000 Russian soldiers under Augustus' command.

Against the Turks, Peter's plan, bold to the point of recklessness, was to march to the lower Danube, cross the river just above the place where it flows into the Black Sea and proceed southwest through Bulgaria to a point where he could threaten the Sultan's second capital, Adrianople, and even the fabled city of Constantinople itself. The Russian army he would take with him would not be large—40,000 infantry and 14,000 cavalry—compared to the vast array which the Sultan could put in the field. But Peter expected that one he entered the Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire bordering on Russia, he would be welcomed as a liberator and reinforced by 30,000 Walachians and 10,000 Moldavians. Then, his army would number 94,000.

The offensive plan had been conceived partly as a means of keeping war away from the Ukraine, devastated by the Swedish invasion and the defection of Mazeppa, and now quiet, at least for the moment. If an Ottoman army invaded the Ukrainian steppes, who knew which way the volatile Cossacks would go? By thrusting into the Ottoman Empire, Peter could at least lay these concerns to rest. Better for him to stir up trouble among the Sultan's restless vassals than the other way around.

Peter's expectation of help once his army arrived in the Christian provinces was not unfounded. Throughout his reign, he had received constant appeals from representatives of the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans: the Serbs, Montenegrins, Bulgars, Walachians and Moldavians. His partial defeat of the Sultan in 1698 and his capture of Azov had encouraged their dreams of liberation and exaggerated their promises. Once a Russian army appeared in their midst, they pledged, native troops would join it, supplies would be plentifully available and whole populations would rise. Between 1704 and 1710, four Serbian leaders arrived in Moscow to stir the Russians to action. "We have no other tsar than the Most Orthodox Tsar Peter," they said.

Before Poltava, Peter, wary of any behavior which might cause the Sultan to break the truce of 1700, responded discreetly to these appeals. After Poltava, however, Tolstoy and other Russian agents inside the Ottoman Empire began to prepare the ground for an uprising. Now, in the spring of 1711, the hour had struck. In the Kremlin ceremony before he left Moscow, Peter issued a proclamation, openly presenting himself as the liberator of the Balkan Christians. He called on all of them, Catholic as well as Orthodox, to rise against their Ottoman masters and ensure that "the descendants of the heathen Mohammed were driven out into their old homeland, the sands and steppes of Arabia."

42

FIFTY BLOWS ON THE PRUTH

The key to Peter's campaign lay in the two Christian principalities, Walachia and Moldavia. Lying south of the Carpathians and north of the Danube, these regions today make up a sizable piece of the southeastern Soviet Union and a large part of present-day Romania. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, seeking security, they placed themselves under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte, retaining their internal autonomy but agreeing to pay the sultan an annual tribute in return for protection.

With the passage of time, however, the Porte began assuming the right to appoint and dismiss their native princes. Anxious to make their offices hereditary, the princess secretly began looking elsewhere for protection. During the reign of Tsar Alexis, there were preliminary discussions with Moscow about Russia assuming suzerainty, but the Tsar was still too heavily involved with Poland.

In 1711, Walachia, the stronger and richer of the two principalities, was ruled by a prince (the local title was hospodar) named Constantine Brancovo, wily and flexible, who had come to office by poisoning his predecessor and had used his talents not only to cling to his title for twenty years but to build a powerful army and great personal wealth. From the Sultan's viewpoint, Brancovo was much too rich and powerful for a satellite prince, and the hospodar was marked for replacement once an opportunity arrived. Inevitably, Brancovo sensed this feeling and, convinced after Poltava that Peter's star was ascending, he made a secret treaty with the Tsar. In case of a Russian war with Turkey, Walachia would side with the Tsar, putting 30,000 troops in the field and furnishing supplies for Russian troops who reached Walachia—supplies to be paid for, however, by Peter. In return, Peter promised to guarantee the independence of Walachia and the hereditary rights of Brancovo, and he made Brancovo a Knight of the Order of St. Andrew.

Moldavia was weaker and poorer than Walachia, and its rulers had changed rapidly. The latest, Demetrius Cantemir, in 1711 had

been in office for less than a year, appointed by the Sultan with the understanding that he would help the Porte seize and overthrow his neighbor Brancovo, for which service he would become hospodar of both Walachia and Moldavia. Arriving in his new capital, Jassy, however, Cantemir also sniffed a shift in fortune and began negotiating in utmost secrecy with Peter. In April 1711, he signed a treaty with the Tsar, agreeing to assist a Russian invasion and furnish 10,000 troops. Moldavia, in return, was to be declared an independent state under Russian protection. No tribute would be paid, and the Cantemir family would rule as a hereditary dynasty.

It was with the promise of help from these two ambitious princes, each of whom hated the other, that Peter launched his campaign against the Turks.

Cantemir's decision was popular in Moldavia. "You have done well in inviting the Russians to free us from the Turkish yoke," his nobles told him. "If we had found out that you intended to go meet the Turks, we had resolved to abandon you and surrender to the Tsar Peter." But Cantemir also knew that the Ottoman army was on the march and that, as the Grand Vizier drew closer, it would become obvious that he and his province had deserted to the Tsar. Accordingly, he sent messages to Sheremetev, who commanded the main Russian army, urging the Field Marshal to hurry. If the main body could not move faster, Cantemir pleaded for at least an advance guard of 4,000 men to shield his people from Ottoman vengeance. Sheremetev was also receiving commands to hurry from Peter, who wanted him to reach and cross the Dniester by May 15 to protect the principalities and encourage the Serbs and Bulgars to rise.

To ensure that the Moldavians would look on this arrival of foreign troops as a blessing, Sheremetev had been equipped with printed messages from the Tsar to all Balkan Christians:

You know how the Turks have trampled into the mire our faith, have seized by treachery all the Holy Places, have ravaged and destroyed many churches and monasteries, have practiced much deceit, and what wretchedness they have caused, and how many widows and orphans they have seized upon and dispersed as wolves do the sheep. Now I come to your aid. If your heart wishes, do not run away from my great empire, for it is just. Let not the Turks deceive you, and do not run away from my word. Shake off fear, and fight for the faith, for the church, for which we shall shed our last drop of blood.

Peter also gave his Field Marshal strict orders about the behavior of Russian troops during their march across Moldavia: They were to observe decorum and pay for everything they took from Christians; any pillaging was to be punished by death. Once Cantemir declared for the Russians and the first Russian troops began to appear, the Modavians flung themselves on the Turks in their midst, first in Jassy, then throughout the principality. Many were killed; others lost their cattle, sheep, clothes, silver and jewels.

Originally, Peter's plan had been for Sheremetev to march south straight down the east bank of the Pruth River to its junction with the Danube and there to deny passage to the Turks. However, on May 30, when Sheremetev arrived on the Dniester near Soroka (two weeks behind Peter's schedule), Cantemir begged him to march directly to Jassy, the Moldavian capital. Sheremetev yielded, and on June 5 his army camped near Jassy on the west bank of the Pruth. Sheremetev's excuse for disregarding Peter's order was that the army had suffered greatly crossing the steppe under the hot sun and needed replenishment. The animals had had a minimum of forage, the grass having been burned by Tatar horsemen who hovered on his flanks. Further, Sheremetev realized that he probably was already too late to prevent the Turks crossing the Danube and that by crossing the Pruth he would be in a better position to protect Moldavia from the Grand Vizier.

Peter, reaching Soroka behind Sheremetev, was angry at his Field Marshal and wrote that the old general had let the Turks outmarch him. Nevertheless, once Sheremetev had changed the original plan, the Tsar, following behind, had no choice but to accept the new route; anything else would have divided the army. Peter's own force had suffered greatly on the march, and the men were exhausted when they reached the Pruth on June 24. Leaving them there, the Tsar rode ahead, crossing the river and entering Jassy for a conference with Cantemir. He was received with regal pomp and a huge banquet. The hospodar made a good first impression: "a man very sensible and useful in council" was the Tsar's appraisal. While in Jassy, Peter received two emissaries bearing an offer of peace from the Grand Vizier. The offer was indirect, but it reflected the Vizier's—and behind him, the Sultan's—reluctance to fight a battle and provoke the Russians into sending a fleet out onto the Black Seat. Peter rejected the offer. Surrounded by his army, with assurances of Moldavian and Walachian support, and hearing reports that the Grand Vizier was reluctant to fight, the Tsar felt confident of victory. In this happy mood, Peter took Cantemir to visit the Russian army camped on the Pruth. There, with Catherine and his guests beside him, he celebrated the second anniversary of Poltava, the great victory which had made all this possible.

Even as the Tsar was celebrating, his military situation was deteriorating. The Grand Vizier had completed the crossing of the Danube at Isaccea and, informed of Peter's rejection of peace, was marching north with an army of 200,000 men. Moreover, there was an ominous absence of news from Walachia, which, in the long run, was far more important to Peter's campaign than Moldavia. Everything in Walachia depended on the Hospodar Brancovo. Until he raised his princely banner for the Tsar in public, the nobility and the common people could hardly be expected to follow Peter's call to rise against the Turk. But Brancovo was fearful and therefore cautious. Knowing that a huge Turkish army was in the field, knowing also what would happen if the Turks won and he was on the losing side, he held back from public support of the Russians. His boyars agreed. "It is dangerous to declare for Russia until the Tsar's army crosses the Danube," they advised. When the Turkish army crossed the Danube first, Brancovo made his choice. Just as the Grand Vizier, informed of the Hospodar's treason, was ordering his arrest, Brancovo suddenly switched sides again. Using as a pretext a letter from Peter whose tone he said offended him, Brancovo announced that he no longer considered himself bound by his secret treaty with the Tsar, and he handed over to the Turks the supplies he had amassed for the Russian army with Peter's money. This betrayal had an immediate and devastating effect on the Russian campaign. The provisions had vanished, and the Moldavians could not make up the deficit.

Nevertheless, Peter did not give up the campaign. He was told that large supplies had been collected for the Turks and lay without guard on the lower Pruth near its junction with the Danube. As the main Turkish army had crossed the Danube and was marching north up the east bank of the Pruth to meet him, the Tsar decided to cross to the west bank and move south. If he succeeded, he would outflank the Grand Vizier, capture the Turkish supplies and cut the Ottoman army off from its base. To increase the chance of success, Peter detached Ronne with the whole of the Russian cavalry, 12,000 horsemen, to plunge ahead down the west bank of the Pruth into the Ottoman rear, capturing or burning the magazines and storehouses at Braila on the Danube. On June 27, the cavalry rode off, and three days later the infantry crossed the Pruth and began moving south down the west bank in three divisions. The first was led by General Janus, the second by the Tsar and the third by Repnin.

Janus was first to make conctact with the Turks. As the Russians

marched south on the west bank of the Pruth and the Turks advanced north on the opposite bank, the advance guards of the two armies caught sight of each other across the river on July 8. Both, sides were startled to find themselves in such close proximity. When the Grand Vizier was told, he was frightened and his first thought was to retreat. "For as he had never before seen enemy troops and was by nature a great poltroon, he at once conceived himself as lost." wrote Poniatowski, traveling with the Ottoman army. Together, the Tatar Khan Devlet Gerey, Poniatowski and the Aga of the Janissaries steadied his courage, and the next day the Turkish army continued its march northward. Turkish engineers rapidly threw up bridges so that the army could cross back to the western bank to meet its enemy. Peter, learning that the Turks were crossing to his side of the river, immediately ordered Janus to fall back and rejoin the main army.

Peter was holding a position behind a marsh south of Stanilesti, and Janus' tired men fell back into these entrenchments. They got little rest. The following day, a Sunday, the Turks, who had come up quickly behind, launched repeated attacks. Cantemir's Moldavians, despite their inexperience, stood well, and the Russians as a whole held their ground. But the Tsar's urgent messages to Repnin to bring the third division forward to relieve the other two were fruitless. Repnin's men were pinned down by Tatar cavalry at Stanilesti and could advance no farther.

That evening, after a long day of Turkish assaults mounting in strength, and with the Tsar alarmed by the absence of Repnin's men and the lack of provisions, a Russian council of war was held. It had little choice: Retreat was imperative. The withdrawal began during the night and continued through the following morning in the direction of Repnin's division at Stanilesti. The retreat was a nightmare. The Turks pressed closely behind, launching continual attacks on the Russian rear guard. Tatar squadrons galloped in and out among the Russian wagons, and most of the Russian baggage train with the remaining provisions was lost. The Russian infantry was exhausted and preoccupied by thirst. Companies and battalions formed squares and marched in this formation to the riverbank, where, by sections, some drank while others beat off the Tatar horsemen. Only late on Monday afternoon, July 9, was all the Russian infantry reunited at Stanilesti, where on a promontory they began digging shallow trenches to make a stand against the horsemen who swarmed around them.

Before dark, long lines of Turkish infantry including the Janissaries began to arrive, and, in the presence of the Grand Vizier, the Ottoman elite guards launched a major attack on the sketchily constructed Russian camp. Russian discipline held as Peter's men poured heavy fire into the advancing ranks of Janissaries. Its first attack broken, the Turkish infantry fell back and began, in its turn, to throw up a line of entrenchments completely hemming in the Russian camp. The Turkish artillery arrived and the guns were rolled into place in a great crescent; by nightfall, 300 cannon pointed their muzzles at th Russian camp. Thousands of Tatar horsemen, together with Poles and Cossacks provided by Charles, patrolled the opposite riverbank. There was no escape: The Tsar and his army were surrounded.

The strength of the Turks was overwhelming: 120,000 infantry and 80,000 cavalry. Peter's strength was only 38,000 infantry; his cavalry was far to the south with Ronne. He was pinned down against a river and ringed by 300 cannon which could sweep his camp with shot and shell. Most important, his men were so exhausted by hunger and heat that some of them could no longer fight. It was difficult even to draw water from the river; the men sent for the purpose came under intense fire from the Tatar horsemen massed on the opposite bank. His own earthworks were scanty, and one entire section was covered only by the bodies of dead wagon horses and makeshift chevaux de frise. In the center of the camp, a shallow pit had been dug to protect Catherine and her women. Surrounded by wagons and shielded from the sun by an awning, it was a frail barrier against Turkish cannonballs. Inside, Catherine waited calmly, while around her the other women wept.

Peter's situation was impossible. That night he could look out all around him on the thousands of campfires of the huge Ottoman army sparkling in the low-lying hills on both sides of the river as far as the eye could reach. In the morning, when the Turks undoubtedly would attack, he would be doomed. He, the Russian Tsar, the victor of Poltava, would be overwhelmed and perhaps pulled through the streets of Constantinople in a cage. The fruits of twenty years of arduous, colossal toil were about to evaporate in a day. Could it have come to this? Yet, why not? Had not exactly the same thing happened to his enemy Charles? And for an identical reason: Too proud, too sure of his destiny, he had ventured too far onto enemy ground.

Actually, the situation was much worse then Charles' at Perevoluchna. There, the Swedish army had not been surrounded by superior forces, and the King himself had found a way to escape. But here the Turks held every card: They could take the Russian army, the new Tsaritsa and, most important, the man on whom everything else rested, the Tsar himself. What would he have to give up, what huge sacrifices in territory or treasure would Russia have to pay to win his freedom?

There is a story that at this moment the Tsar asked whether Neculce, the commander of the Moldavian troops, could somehow escort Catherine and himself to the Hungarian frontier. Neculce refused, knowing that even if he were somehow able to pass through the surrounding lines, the whole of Moldavia was now swarming with Tatar horsemen. Some have said that this request showed cowardice on Peter's part. But when the battle was lost and the army on the verge of surrender, the chief of state had to think of saving.the nation. Peter knew that at this time he was Russia. He knew what a blow it would be to Russia if, along with the army he had so carefully built, he himself was taken prisoner. In time, the lost army could be replaced—if he was free to do it. But his own loss would be irreparable.

The next morning, Tuesday, the 10th, it should have ended. The

Turkish artillery opened fire and the Russians prepared for a final stand—but the Janissaries did not attack. As a measure of desperation, Peter ordered a sortie, and thousands of weary Russians rose from their trenches and flung themselves on the first lines of Ottoman, inflicting heavy losses before they were forced to retreat. During the sortie, the Russians took prisoners, and from one of these Peter learned that the Janissarie suffered heavily in the previous day's fighting and were disinclined to make another full-scale attack on the Russian lines. At the very least, this might give the Tsar a little maneuverability in negotiating the terms of this surrender.

During the lull, Peter proposed to Sheremetev and his Vice Chancellor, Shafirov, that he send an envoy to the Grand Vizier to see what terms the Turks might offer. Sheremetev, clearly appraising the military situation, bluntly told his master that the porposal was ridiculous. Why would the Turks be willing to consider anything except surrender? The cat does not negotiate with the mouse. But Catherine was present at this council, and she encouraged her husband to proceed. Sheremetev was ordered to draft a proposal in his own name as commander of the Russian army.

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."

In April 1713, Ahmed III assembled his army, declared war a fourth time and, with Poniatowski at his elbow, drew up new and even more devastating terms of peace to be imposed on Russia: The entire Ukraine was to be ceded to Turkey; all of Peter's conquests, including St. Petersburg, were to be returned to Sweden. Peter met this threat my simply refusing to send a new envoy empowered to discuss the matter. As time passed, the Sultan's ardor for war passed. He began to doubt the wisdom of invading Russia, and he began to see Charles as the source of many of his difficulties. The Pasha of Bender was instructed to increase the pressure on the King of Sweden to depart the Ottoman Empire and go home. Negotiations with Russia continued; grand viziers came and went—Suleiman Pasha was succeeded by Ibrahim Pasha, then by Damad Ali Pasha, he Sultan's favorite son-in-law. Finally, on October 18, 1713, this fourth war in three years ended when the Sultan ratified the Treaty of Adianople. Shafirov, Tolstoy and Michael Sheremetev were kept in prison, however, until the final designation of the Russian-Turkish frontier. In December 1714, the envoys were at least released and allowed to go home. The months of incarceration and suspense had overcome young Michael Sheremetev, who went mad in the Seven Towers and died on the way home; Shafirov and Tolstoy were to continue to play major roles in the reign of Peter the Great.

Looking back on the Pruth disaster, it was not difficult for Peter to understand his mistakes. He had abandoned his normally cautious tactics, the waiting game which had been so successful against Charles XII. Instead, he had adopted Charles' role and plunged impetuously into the Ottoman Empire, trusting for support and provisions from an ally who proved unfaithful. He had been misinformed about the strength of the Turkish army, and he had miscalculated the speed with which the Grand Vizier could move. He had continued his advance even after learning that the Turkish army was across the Danube and marching north. Later, he explained that he had felt compelled to continue "in order not to place in despair the Christians who implored [my] aid." In fact, the Christians most important to his campaign, the Walachians, had betrayed him.

Nevertheless, although it failed, Peter's march to the Pruth heralded the opening of a new avenue in Russian history. A Russian tsar had invaded the Balkans; Russian infantry had marched to within forty miles of the Danube; Russian cavalrymen had watered their horses in the Danube 500 miles southwest of Kiev. A further presage was Peter's summons to the Balkan Christians to rise against the infidel and welcome his Russians as liberators. This dramatic appeal planted a hardy seed and the idea that Russia would act as Orthodox champion of the Balkan Slavs took root and grew.

Defeat on the Pruth and his final treaty with the Sultan ended forever Peter's southern ambitions. With the hauling down of the Russian flag and the destruction of the forts at Azov and Tagonrog, the dream of his youth and the work of sixteen years came to an end. "The Lord God drove me out of his place like Adam out of paradise," said Peter of Azov. During his lifetime, there would be no Black Sea fleet. The mouth of the Don remained closed, and all Russian ships would continue to be forbidden on the sea, which would remain the Sultan's private lake. Not until the time of Catherine the Great would Russia conquer the Crimea, open the Don, force the Strait of Kerch and finally achieve what Peter had begun.

Russia simply was not strong enough to accomplish simultaneously everything that Peter wanted. He was still at war with Sweden, he was building St. Petersburg and he was trying, through sweeping reforms and reorganization, to reshape the Muscovite tsardom into a new, technologically modern European state. In this last, overriding purpose, the Baltic and St. Petersburg were more important than the Black Sea and Azov. If Peter had chosen differently, if he had stopped the building on the Neva, if he had poured that energy and labor and money into colonizing the Ukraine, if he had withdrawn his soldiers and his seamen from Poland and the Baltic and had sent them all against the Turks, then a Russian fleet flying Peter's flag might have sailed the Black Sea in his lifetime. He chose differently. The south was abandoned for the west, the Baltic took priority over the Black

Sea. The ultimate direction of Russia under Peter the Great was to be toward Europe, not toward the Ottoman Empire.

Peter himself was candid about his loss and clear about its implications: He wrote to Apraxin:

Although it is not without grief that we are deprived of those places where so much labor and money have been expended, yet I hope that by this very deprivation we shall greatly strengthen ourselves on the other side [the Baltic], which is incomparably of greater gain to us.

Later, Peter gave an even more succinct appraisal of what had happened to him on the Pruth: "My 'good fortune' consisted in having received only fifty blows when I was condemned to receive a hundred."

43

THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN AND FREDERICK WILLIAM

Leaving the Pruth behind, Peter and Catherine traveled north into Poland. There and in Germany, Peter's objective was to pick up the momentum of Poltava and resume the war against Sweden. The first step was to reassure his allies, Augustus of Poland and Frederick IV of Denmark, that the disaster on the Pruth had not shaken his resolve to force Charles XII to an acceptable peace. More immediately, Peter meant to visit Germany in order to take a cure at Carlsbad and to witness the marriage of his son Alexis to Princess Charlotte of Wolfenbuttel. All of these projects and even Peter's travel route had been made possible by Poltava; before the destruction of the Swedish army, Charles XII had dominated Poland and made it physically impossible for the Tsar to pass through Poland into Germany. Now, the Swedes had vanished and Charles was far away in Turkey. For the rest of his life, Peter traveled through the German states almost as frequently and securely as he traveled through Russia.

Peter needed to rest and recover from the exhaustion, depression and illness which had attended his disastrous summer in the Balkans. Even as he traveled by water down the Vistula to Warsaw, where he spent two days, then farther to Thorn, where he left Catherine, the Tsar was sick. In Posen, he had a violent colic and remained in bed for several days before continuing on to Dresden and Carlsbad where he was to take the waters. This was a dreary process of drinking mineral water that was supposed to clear out the system; often it did so unpleasantly, and Whitworth, who was accompanying Peter, faithfully informed his masters in London that the Tsar was suffering "a violent looseness." Peter found it dull from the beginning and complained to Catherine:

Katerinushka, my friend, how are you? We arrived here well, thank God, and tomorrow begin our cure. The place is so merry you might call it an honorable dungeon, for it lies between such high mountains that one scarcely sees the sun. Worst of all, there is no good beer. However, we hope God will give us health from the waters. I send you herewith a present, a new-fashioned clock, put under glass on account of the dust. ... I could not get more [because] of my hurry, for I was only one day in Dresden.

From Carlsbad, Peter went back to Dresden, remaining a week. He stayed at the Golden Ring Inn, rather than at the royal palace, and at the inn he chose a low-ceilinged room of the porter rather than one of the main guest suites. He went to a tennis court, took a racquet and played. Twice he visited a paper factory and made sheets of paper with his own hands. He called on Johann Melchior Dinglinger, the court jeweler, whose gorgeous construction in jewels, precious metals and enamel were famous throughout Europe. (A year later, visiting Dresden, Peter insisted on spending a week living in Dinglinger's house.) He passed three hours with Andrew Gartner, the court mathematician and mechanician, who was famous for his inventions. Peter was especially interested in a machine which Gartner had designed to carry people or objects from one floor of a house to another: in short, an elevator. In gratitude for his visit, the Tsar gave Gartner an armful of sables, suggesting that he make himself a warm coat for the winter.

On October 13, Peter arrived at Torgau, the castle of the Queen of Poland, where his son was to be married. This site, rather than Dresden, had been chosen so that the ceremony could be private, without the necessity of inviting the King of Prussia, the Elector of Hanover and other German princes, thus avoiding problems of protocol and saving time for the Tsar and money for the bride's father, the Duke of Wolfenbuttel. The wedding took place on Sunday, October 14, 1711, in the great hall of the palace. In order to increase the illuminated brilliance of the occasion, the windows were covered and the walls hung with mirrors to reflect the light of thousands of candles. The Orthodox service was performed in Russian, except that the bride, who had been converted from Lutheranism to become the consort of a future tsar, was ritually questioned in Latin. A marriage supper in the Queen's apartments was followed by a ball, after which, reported a contemporary chronicler, "His Great Tsarish Majesty gave his fatherly blessing in a most touching manner to the newly married pair and himself conducted them to their bedchamber." That same night, before retiring, Peter managed to write to Menshikov:

I will answer your letter later. I have no time now because of the marriage of my son, which was celebrated today, thank God, in a good way, with many notable people present. The marriage took place in the house of the Queen of Poland and the watermelon sent by you was put upon the table, which vegetable is a mighty wonder here.

In Torgau, Peter finally met Gottfried von Leibniz. Ever since Peter's first visit to Germany at the time of the Great Embassy, the famous philosopher and mathematician had waited for a chance to get the Tsar's ear and to urge on him new institutions for learning and research. When he finally met Peter, Leibniz achieved at least a partial success. The Tsar did not turn over to him the future of Russian culture and education, but the following year he did appoint Leibniz a Councilor of Justice, assign him a salary (never paid) and ask him to draw up a list of proposed educational, legal and administrative reforms. As Leibniz described their next meeting, at Carlsbad in 1712, to the Electress Sophia:

I found His Majesty on the point of finishing his cure. He nevertheless desired to wait some days before leaving here, because last year he found himself unwell from having begun to travel immediately after his cure. . . . Your Electoral Highness will find it extraordinary that I am to be in a sense the Solon of Russia, although at a distance. That is to say that the Tsar has told me through Golovkin, his Grand Chancellor, that I am to reform the laws and draw up some regulations for the administration of justice. As I hold that the best laws are shortest, like the Ten Commandments or the Twelve Tables of Ancient Rome, and as this subject is one of my earliest studies, this will scarcely keep me long.

The Duke of Wolfenbuttel, a regular correspondent of Leibniz', jokingly warned the "new Solon" that he might receive little for his efforts other than the Cross of St. Andrew. Leibniz replied, disparaging his new assignment:

I am very glad to have made Your Highness laugh a little at my Russian Solon. But a Russian Solon does not need the wisdom of the Greeks and can get along with less. The Cross of St. Andrew I should like very well if it were set in diamonds, but these are not given in Hanover, but only by the Tsar. Still my promised five hundred ducats were very acceptable.

At the end of December 1711, Peter returned to St. Petersburg after an absence of almost a year. Once there, he threw himself into the administration of domestic affairs which had languished while he was on the Pruth and in Germany. He gave instructions for the expansion of trade with Persia, formed a company of merchants to trade with China and, in April 1712, commanded his newly established Russian Senate to move from Moscow to St. Petersburg. His presence spurred much new construction along the Neva, and, in May, Peter laid the cornerstone for the new Cathedral of Peter and Paul which Trezzini was to erect within the fortress.

That spring was a worrisome time for Peter—he still had not evacuated his garrisons in Azov and Tagonrog and the Turks had declared war a second time—but he was reassured by an unusual vision which he described to Whitworth and which the ambassador faithfully reported to London:

Some nights ago the Tsar dreamed: he saw all sorts of wild beasts fighting together, from among which a fierce tiger made at him with open jaws and put him into such confusion that he could neither defend himself nor retreat. But a voice, he could not tell from whence it came, called out to him several times that he should not fear, and the tiger stopped short of a sudden without any further attempt [to harm him]. Then four people appeared in white and, advancing into the middle of the wild beasts, their rage immediately ceased and all separated in peace. The dream has made such an impression on his [the Tsar's] fancy that he noted it down in his table book with the day of the month. I find it has really increased his confidence.

On February 19, 1712, Peter formalized and publicly proclaimed his marriage to Catherine. The ceremony, which took place at seven a.m. in Prince Menshikov's private chapel, was intended to clarify her position as his wife and official consort to those who said that their private marriage in November 1707 was insufficient for a tsar and tsaritsa. It also was a mark of Peter's gratitude to this calm, devoted woman whose sturdy courage during the Pruth campaign had helped carry him through that disastrous episode. Peter was married in the uniform of a rear admiral, with Vice Admiral Cruys acting as his sponsor, and other naval officers acting as witnesses. Returning to his own palace in sledges between lines of trumpeters and drummers, Peter halted his sledge before he reached his front door so that he could go inside and hang over the dinner table his wedding gift to Catherine. It was a six-branched candelabrum of ivory and ebony which he himself had made in two weeks of work. That evening, wrote Whitworth, "the company was very splendid, the dinner magnificent, the wine good, from Hungary, and what was the greatest pleasure, not forced on the guests in too large quantities. The evening was concluded with a ball and fireworks." Peter was in a jolly mood; at one point in the festivity, he confided to Whitworth and the Danish ambassador that it was "a fruitful wedding, for they already had had five children."

Two years later, Peter further honored Catherine by creating a new decoration, the Order of St. Catherine, her patron saint, which consisted of a cross hanging on a white ribbon inscribed with the motto, "Out of Love and Fidelity to My Country." The new order, Peter declared, commemorated his wife's role in the Pruth campaign, where she had behaved "not as a woman, but as a man."

At the beginning of 1711, even before the ill-fated campaign on the Pruth, Peter's interest was to make peace with Sweden. He had richly achieved his war aims. St. Petersburg had been given its "cushion" to the north by the capture of Vyborg and the province of Karelia. It was secured from the south by the occupation of Ingria and Livonia. Two additional seaports, Riga and Reval, along with St. Petersburg, had opened Russia's Baltic "Window on the West" as wide as could conceivably be needed. There was nothing more that Peter wanted, and he sincerely desired peace.

The governing Council and the people of Sweden also wanted peace. Sweden was defeated, the war was ruinous and the only realistic prospect was that if it continued, it would get worse. In the summer of Poltava, 1709, the harvest in Sweden failed. That autumn, emboldened by the Russian victory, Denmark reentered the war. In 1710 and 1711, the plague swept across Sweden; Stockholm lost one third of its population. Now, at the end of 1711, as the Tsar roamed freely through Germany meeting kings and princes and taking the waters, Sweden was exhausted. It had no allies, while ranged against it was the formidable coalition of Russia, Denmark, Saxony and Poland. Before long, Hanover and Prussia would also enter the anti-Swedish alliance.

If reason dictated peace, why did peace not come? Primarily, because the King of Sweden forbade it. To Charles, Poltava was only a temporary setback. New Swedish armies could be raised to replace the one lost in the Ukraine. His flight and exile in Turkey could be transformed into a brilliant opportunity if he could persuade the Sultan and the vast Ottoman army to join him in a march to Moscow. Certainly, there was no question of concluding a peace which would leave an inch of Swedish territory in Russian hands. Everything, including the Tsar's new capital on the Neva, must be returned. As the Tsar would not surrender it any other way, it must be wrenched back with the sword. Peter, accepting his opponent's stubbornness, was equally determined not to give up St. Petersburg. And so the war continued.

In 1711 and 1712, the new Russian and allied offensives against the crumbling Swedish empire were directed against the Swedish possessions in North Germany. These territories—Pomerania with its seaports of Stralsund, Stettin and Wismar; and Bremen and Verden on the Weser—were Sweden's entry ports into the continent, the springboards used by her armies. Naturally, the disposition of these territories became a matter of keenest interest for all the states on which they bordered—Denmark, Prussia and Hanover—and eventually all three became Peter's allies.

The attack on Swedish Pomerania began in the summer of 1711. Even as Peter, Catherine, Sheremetev and the main body of the Russian army were marching south to the Prath, another Russian army of 12,000 men was moving westward through Poland to attack this Swedish territory north of Berlin. It was to be an allied effort, and in mid-August 12,000 Russian, 6,000 Saxon and 6,000 Polish troops passed through Prussia within a few miles of Berlin. A Danish contingent joined them, and together the multinational army besieged Stralsund and Wismar. Unfortunately, because of disagreements between commanders and a lack of siege artillery, nothing was achieved. Autumn came, the siege was lifted and the troops remained in Pomerania for the winter. In the spring of 1712, they moved on to besiege Stettin. Once again, the confusion of allied purposes and lack of artillery led to failure. The Russian army, now commanded by Menshikov, invested the fortress port, but could not mount an effective siege. King Frederick IV of Denmark had promised to supply the artillery, but was actually using the guns in an attempt to seize the—to him— juicer Swedish plums on the opposite side of the Danish peninsula, Bremen and Verden. The Danes protested to Menshikov that it was the duty of the Poles to supply the artillery.

This was the situation which Peter found when he arrived with Catherine before Stettin in June 1712. The Tsar was exasperated. "I consider myself very unfortunate to have come here," he wrote to Menshikov. "God sees my good intentions and the crooked dealings of others. I cannot sleep at night on account of the way I am treated." Peter also wrote to Frederick of Denmark, complaining of the wastage of another summer. Angry as he was, Peter could do no more than complain. The Danish fleet was an essential ingredient in the allied effort; no other Baltic power had a naval force capable of dealing with the Swedish fleet and cutting off the Swedish army on the continent from its homeland base. Nevertheless, Peter's tone was tart:

1 think Your Majesty knows that I have not only furnished the number of troops agreed upon last year . . . with the King of Poland, but even three times as many, and besides that, for the common interest, I have come here myself, not sparing my health with the constant fatigue and long journey. But on my arrival here I find the army idle, because the artillery promised by you has not come, and when I asked your Vice Admiral Segestet about it, he replied that it could not be given without your particular order. I am greatly at a loss to understand why these changes are made and why favorable time is thus being wasted, from which, besides the loss of money and to the common interests, we shall gain nothing except the ridicule of our enemies. 1 have always been, and am, ready to help my allies in everything that the common interest demands. If you do not comply with this request of mine to [send the artillery], I can prove to you and the whole world that this campaign has not been lost by me, and I shall then not be to blame if, as 1 am inactive here, I am obliged to withdraw my troops, because on account of the expense of things here it is a waste of money, and I cannot endure being dishonored by the enemy.

Peter's letter did no good; the Danish artillery continued to batter at Bremen, not Stettin. In this frustrated mood, Peter left the army at the end of September 1712 to return for the third straight autumn to take the waters at Carlsbad. On the way, passing through Wittenberg, he visited the grave of Martin Luther and the house in which Luther had lived. In the house, the curator showed him an ink spot on the wall which supposedly dated to the moment when Luther had seen the Devil and thrown his inkpot at him. Peter laughed and asked, "Did such a wise man really believe that the Devil could be seen?" Asked to sign the wall himself, Peter chidingly wrote, "The ink spot is quite fresh, so the story obviously is not true."

Traveling to Carlsbad, Peter also passed through Berlin and called on the elderly King Frederick I of Prussia and his son Frederick William, the Prince Royal. "The Tsar arrived here last Tuesday at seven p.m.," wrote a member of the Prussian court.

We were in the tabiage [smoking room] when the Field Marshal came to inform the King, who asked me how the Tsar had been received in Dresden. I said that although the King [Augustus] was absent, all sorts of honors had been offered to him, but he had accepted nothing and had lodged in a private house. His Majesty replied that he would likewise offer him everything. . . .

The Tsar went to the palace and going up the private staircase surprised the King in his bedroom playing chess with the Prince Royal. The two Majesties stayed half an hour together. Then the Tsar looked at the apartments in which the King of Denmark had stayed, admired them, but refused to occupy them. A supper was given by the Prince Royal, there being eight at the table besides the Tsar, who allowed no toasts, ate though he had already supped, but did not drink. . . .

Yesterday the Tsar went to the King in the tabiage, put on a fine red coat embroidered with gold, instead of his pelisse, which he found too hot, and went to supper. He was gallant enough to give his hand to the Queen, after having put on a rather dirty glove. The King and all the royal family supped with him. . . . The Tsar surpassed himself during all this time. He neither belched, nor farted, nor picked his teeth—at least I neither saw nor heard him do so—and he conversed with the Queen and the Princesses without showing any embarrassment. The crowd of spectators was very great. He embraced the King for goodbye, and, after making a general bow to all the company, went off with such long strides that it was impossible for the King to keep up with him.