[1708-1709 A.D.]
Mazeppa with his army passed over the Desna; his followers, however, believed they were being led against Charles, and deserted their hetman as soon as his views were known, because they had more to fear from Peter than to hope from Charles. The hetman joined the Swedes with only seven thousand men, but Charles prosecuted his march and despised every warning. He passed the Desna; the country on the farther side became more and more desolate, and appearances more melancholy, for the winter was one of the most severe; hundreds of brave Swedes were frozen to death because Charles insisted upon pursuing his march even in December and January. The civil war in Poland in the mean time raged more violently than ever, and Peter sent divisions of his Russians to harass and persecute the partisans of Stanislaus. The three men who stood in most immediate relation to the Swedish king, Piper, Rehnskold, and Levenhaupt, belonged, indeed, among the greatest men of their century; but they were sometimes disunited in their opinions, and sometimes incensed and harassed by the obstinacy of the king.
Mazeppa fell a sacrifice to his connection with Charles, his residence (Baturin) was destroyed by Menshikov, and his faithful Cossacks, upon Peter’s demand, were obliged to choose another hetman (November, 1708). Neither Piper nor Mazeppa could move the obstinate king to relinquish his march towards the ill-fortified city of Pultowa. Mazeppa represented to him in vain that, by an attack upon Pultowa he would excite the Cossacks of the Falls (Zaparogians) against him; and Piper entreated him, to no purpose, to draw nearer to the Poles, who were favourable to his cause, and to march towards the Dnieper; he continued, however, to sacrifice his men by his march, till, in February (1709), a thaw set in.
He was successful in gaining the favour of the Zaparogians through their hetman, Horodenski; but fortune had altogether forsaken the Swedes since January. In that month they were in possession of Moprik; in February, the battles at Goronodek and Rashevka were decided in favour of the Russians; in March, Sheremetrev took Gaditch, which was occupied by the Swedes, and thereby gave a position to the Russian army which could not but prove destructive to the Swedes, who were obliged to besiege Pultowa without the necessary means, because their intractable king insisted upon the siege. In April and May, the Swedes exerted themselves in vain in throwing up trenches before the miserable fortifications of Pultowa, whilst the Russians were enclosing them in a net. One part of the Russians had already passed the Vorskla in May, and Peter had no sooner arrived, in the middle of June, than the whole army passed the river, in order to offer a decisive engagement to the invaders.
Rehnskold acted as commander-in-chief at the battle of Pultowa; for Charles had received a dangerous wound in his foot ten days before, and was unable to mount his horse. The Swedes on this day performed miracles of bravery, but everything was against them, for the Russians fought this time at least for their country, and had at length gained experience in the field. The defeat of the Swedes is easily explained, when it is known that they were in want of all the munitions of war, even powder and lead, that they were obliged to storm the enemy’s fortifications in opposition to an overwhelming numerical force, and that Levenhaupt and Rehnskold were so much disunited in opinion that the former, in his report of the engagement at Pultowa, makes the bitterest complaints against the commander-in-chief, which have since that time been usually adopted by all historians. Of the whole Swedish army, only fourteen or fifteen thousand under Levenhaupt and Kreuz succeeded in erecting an ill-fortified camp on the Dnieper, where they were shut up by the Russians and the river.
This small force might possibly have succeeded in fighting its way into Poland, and Charles had at first adopted this determination; he was, however, with great trouble, induced to pass the Dnieper, and accompanied by a small guard, to take refuge in Turkey. His plan was to reach the Bug over the pasture lands which then belonged to the Tatars on the Black Sea, and, aided by the Turks and the Tatars, to make his way first to Otchakov and then to Bender, whence he hoped to persuade the Turks to take part in the Polish affairs. As soon as the king had escaped (July 10th, 1709), Levenhaupt, mourning over the sacrifice which the wilfulness of Charles had brought upon his Swedes, concluded a capitulation, in virtue of which all the baggage and artillery were surrendered to the Russians, together with the remnant of the Swedish army, which, calculating those who had been taken prisoners in the battle, amounted in all to about eighteen thousand men.
Charles’ flight to Bender, and his long residence of five years in Turkey, were the most favourable events which could have occurred for the accomplishment of Peter’s great plans. He was now master in Poland. In the Swedish, German, and French adventurers who had been in Charles’ army, he received the very best instructors of his people. Among those who entered into his service, there were experienced officers, artillerymen, architects, and engineers.
The Swedes, who for thirteen long years were neither set at liberty nor accorded by their impoverished country the usual support of prisoners of war, were distributed over the whole of Russia, and sent far into Siberia. They founded schools and institutions, in order to get a livelihood, and used their knowledge and experience against their will for the promotion of Peter’s designs. This was the more important, as there was not a man among those many thousand prisoners who was not in a condition to teach the Russians to whom he came something of immediate utility, drawn from his experience in his native land. Many never returned to their homes, because they had raised up institutions and commenced undertakings which were as advantageous to themselves as to the Russian Empire.[e]
PETER THE GREAT AT THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA