Kinburn was a small fortress occupied by the Russians, and situated upon a promontory directly opposite to Otchakov, in and around which the Turkish army was stationed. The object of Suvarov’s mission was to frustrate the efforts of the Turkish fleet to land a division on the promontory of Kinburn; and he executed the task in a masterly manner. At first he remained perfectly quiet in the fortress, after having erected a battery at the extremity of the promontory, in order to cannonade the Turkish ships from the land, at the same moment in which they might be attacked by the Russian fleet. He allowed the Turks to proceed without molestation till they had disembarked from six thousand to seven thousand men; he then sent a few regiments of Cossacks against them, and at the same time charged them at the head of two battalions of infantry with fixed bayonets, and exterminated them all. Immediately afterwards he employed his battery against the Turkish fleet. The prince of Nassau-Siegen, who had the command of the Russian gunboats of Nikolaiev, attacked the Turkish ships at the very entrance of what is called the Liman, and within range of Suvarov’s guns, to whose well-directed fire he was indebted for a great share of the advantages which he gained.
The whole remaining part of the year 1787, as well as the spring and a great part of the summer of 1788, elapsed without anything important having been undertaken; the whole of the Russian land-forces were, however, directed towards the Bug, in order to push forward with the greatest expedition to the Danube. The Turks had already suffered defeats at sea and in the Caucasus. The Russian fleet in the Black Sea, which was almost wholly commanded by foreigners, nearly annihilated the Turkish navy; generals Tallitzin and Tekeli massacred the Tatars of the Kuban, and Tamara reduced Georgia and Lesghistan. In August, Potemkin at length marched against Otchakov, but very wisely left the whole conduct of the military operations to Suvarov, the victor of Kinburn. The Russian operations were delayed in expectation of an Austrian army, which, in connection with a Russian force under Soltikov, was to make an incursion into Moldavia. This delay was protracted till King Gustavus began to exhibit symptoms of making an attack on the provinces contiguous to Sweden, which were now deprived of means of defence. He had to revenge on Russia a long series of wrongs, crowned by the intolerable conduct of Catherine’s ambassador Razumovski, whom she had sent to form conspiracies against him, and to persecute and insult him in his own capital.
THE SWEDISH WAR (1788-1790 A.D.)
[1788 A.D.]
Gustavus III would also willingly have induced Denmark to take part in the movement against Russia; in this, however, he was unsuccessful, although supported by England and Prussia. Razumovski, the Russian ambassador, was ordered to leave Stockholm on the 23rd of June, and went to the army in Finland. The king appeared as if he designed immediately to march against St. Petersburg, which excited no small concern in the minds of the government, because, in confident reliance on the king’s misunderstanding with the Swedish nobles, the whole of their good troops had been despatched to the frontiers of Turkey.
The king of Sweden was acquainted with the feelings of his nobles, consequently with those of the generals and officers of his army; he therefore endeavoured to deprive the malcontents of the apparently legal point of a refusal to serve, by changing the offensive war which he contemplated into a defensive one, and for this purpose had recourse to a very childish subterfuge. There had been a long-existing dispute between the two countries respecting the bridge over the small river Kimmene, the boundary between the two states, whether it should be painted in Swedish or Russian colours; he provoked the Russians to maintain this disputed right by force of arms, and then proclaimed that he had been attacked by them, and was therefore justified in carrying on a defensive war without consulting the estates. We leave it undecided whether he took possession of the bridge by force, and thereby compelled the Russians to resist force by force; or whether, as the best accounts allege, he caused some Swedes to be clothed in Russian uniforms in order to attack his own soldiers, and in this way to justify an offensive war.
The distance from the river Kimmene to St. Petersburg is less than 150 miles. There would have been no difficulty in storming the small fortresses of Viborg and Friedrichsham, which lay upon the route, and an unexpected attack from the sea might probably have led to the surprise and capture of Kronstadt and Kronslot, the former of which is less than twenty miles from the open waters, and the latter is situated on a sand-bank in the sea.[54] The favourable moment, however, for an attack by sea had been already allowed to pass by the king’s brother Charles, duke of Södermanland, who commanded the Swedish fleet, and by land the king was precipitate when he ought to have delayed, and hesitated when everything depended on rapidity.
On the 22nd of June Duke Charles, with fifteen ships of the line and five frigates, had fallen in with three sail of Russian ships, to the north of the island of Gothland, which he ought to have captured, but was restrained by a feeling of reluctance to begin the war (which was then actually commenced), and immediately a superior Russian fleet appeared. Admiral Greig, an Englishman, commanded it; his fleet outnumbered the Swedish by two ships of the line and two frigates, and therefore the issue of the engagement between the two fleets which took place on the 17th of July was the less inglorious for the Swedes. They fell in with the Russians off the island of Hogland, and fought with great skill and courage; they lost, it is true, one of their line-of-battle ships, but took one of the Russian fleet in its stead; at length, however, they were compelled to seek for safety in the harbour of Sveaborg, where they were kept in a state of blockade by the Russians during the whole of the campaign. The secretary of the king’s embassy in St. Petersburg delivered such an extremely absurd ultimatum that no other answer was given than an order from the commandant to take his departure from the capital. Gustavus commanded armaments to be prepared and a commissariat to be provided, but left the whole superintendence to others, who neglected everything, and instead of preparing means to oppose entered into secret correspondence with the Russians. All this immediately appeared when the king at length resolved to storm the fortress of Friedrichsham. He found himself destitute of heavy artillery and other materials of war, which he supposed were all in readiness, and whilst the artillery was being slowly brought up by land, the nobles were devising the most shameful treason.
[1789 A.D.]
It was arranged that Friedrichsham should be at once attacked both by sea and by land; and Siegeroth had actually landed his troops and commenced operations when he suddenly received counter orders, because the troops which were with the king refused obedience. In these circumstances, Gustavus had no other alternative than to return to Stockholm, in order there to recover his royal dignity and power which he had lost at Friedrichsham. He entered Stockholm in September, and thenceforth occupied himself in preparing a coup d’état, which he accomplished on the 17th of February in the following year. Meanwhile, his traitorous nobles had concluded a truce with Russia, which was so far advantageous to Gustavus that it liberated his fleet from its captivity in the bay of Sveaborg. He was now dictator and autocrat; he had at command the means of prosecuting the war with Russia: but the favourable moment was past, and the Russians had already completed all their preparations by land and sea for the defence of their provinces bordering upon Sweden. Gustavus’ project of burning the Russian fleet in the harbour of Copenhagen was discovered beforehand, and brought him nothing but disgrace. When he again joined the army in Finland, his Swedes gave evidence of their attachment and courage; but he himself again contrived to injure the success of the war by his interference in its conduct. In the murderous fights which ensued from the middle of June till the end of July, both the Russians and Swedes lost great numbers of men, without any other gain on either side than military renown. The Swedes in the meantime were unfortunate at sea, and could not have profited by their success had they been victorious by land.