Great Northern War
Denmark, Saxony-Poland and Russia attacked Sweden in 1700, expecting an easy partition of an empire ruled by an eighteen-year-old. Sweden had dominated the Baltic since Gustavus Adolphus, holding Finland, Estonia, Livonia, Ingria and territory in northern Germany, and its neighbours all wanted pieces back. Charles XII knocked Denmark out within weeks by landing outside Copenhagen, then took a small force to Narva in November 1700 and destroyed a Russian army several times its size in a snowstorm, attacking into the wind that blinded the defenders. He then spent six years in Poland deposing Augustus the Strong and installing his own king, which gave Peter the Great the time he needed. Peter used it completely. He rebuilt the army on European lines, cast cannon from church bells, founded St Petersburg in 1703 on ground he had taken, and adopted a policy of avoiding battle and destroying everything in the path of an advancing enemy. Charles invaded Russia in 1708, turned south into Ukraine in the hope of Cossack support that largely failed to materialise, and lost his supply column in a separate action at Lesnaya. At Poltava in June 1709, wounded and carried on a litter, he attacked entrenched Russian positions with an army half its size and was destroyed. He spent five years as a guest and then a prisoner of the Ottomans, rode across Europe in fifteen days to return, and was shot in a trench in Norway in 1718. Sweden ceased to be a great power, and Russia became one.
- Year: 1700 CE
- Category: Military
