IV.--The Expansion of Russia
Now the Sultan Ahmed III. declared war on Peter; not for the sake of his guest, Charles XII., but because of Peter's successes in Azov, his new port of Taganrog, and his ships on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. He outraged international law by throwing the Russian envoy and his suite into prison. Peter at once left his Swedish campaign to advance his armies against Turkey.
Before leaving Moscow he announced his marriage with the Livonian captive, Catherine, whom he had secretly made his wife in 1707. Apraksin was sent to take the supreme command by land and sea. Cantemir, the hospodar of Moldavia, promised support, for his own ends.
The Turkish vizier, Baltagi Mehemet, had already crossed the Danube, and was marching up the Pruth with 100,000 men. Peter's general Sheremetof was in danger of being completely hemmed in when Peter crossed the Dnieper, Catherine stoutly refusing to leave the army. No help came from Cantemir, and supplies were running short. The Tsar was too late to prevent the passage of the Pruth by the Turks, who were now on his lines of communication; and he found himself in a trap, without supplies, and under the Turkish guns. When he attempted to withdraw, the Turkish force attacked, but were brilliantly held at bay by the Russian rear-guard.
Nevertheless, the situation was desperate. It was Catherine who saved it. At her instigation, terms--accompanied by the usual gifts--were proposed to the vizier; and, for whatever reason, the vizier was satisfied to conclude a peace then and there. He was probably unconscious of the extremities to which Peter was reduced. Azov was to be retroceded, Taganrog, and other forts, dismantled; the Tsar was not to interfere in Poland, and Charles was to be allowed a free return to his own dominions. The hopes of Charles were destroyed, and he was reduced to intriguing at the Ottoman court.
Peter carried out some of the conditions of the Pruth treaty. The more important of them he successfully evaded for some time. The treaty, however, was confirmed six months later. But the Pruth affair was a more serious check to the Tsar than even Narva had been, for it forced him to renounce the dominion of the Black Sea. He turned his attention to Pomerania, though the injuries his health had suffered drove him to take the waters at Carlsbad.
His object was to drive the Swedes out of their German territories, and confine them to Scandinavia; and to this end he sought alliance with Hanover, Brandenburg, and Denmark. About this time he married his son Alexis (born to him by his first wife) to the sister of the German Emperor; and proceeded to ratify by formal solemnities his own espousal to Catherine.
Charles might have saved himself by coming out of Turkey, buying the support of Brandenburg by recognising her claim on Stettin, and accepting the sacrifice of his own claim to Poland, which Stanislaus was ready to make for his sake. He would not. Russians, Saxons, and Danes were now acting in concert against the Swedes in Pomerania. A Swedish victory over the Danes and Gadebesck and the burning of Altona were of no real avail. The victorious general not long after was forced to surrender with his whole army. Stettin capitulated on condition of being transferred to Prussia. Stralsund was being besieged by Russians and Saxons; Hanover was in possession of Bremen and Verden; and Peter was conquering Finland, when, at last, Charles suddenly reappeared at Stralsund, in November 1715. But the brilliant naval operation by which Peter captured the Isle of Aland had already secured Finland.
During the last three years a new figure had risen to prominence, the ingenious, ambitious and intriguing Baron Gortz, who was now to become the chief minister and guide of the Swedes. Under his influence, Charles's hostility was now turned in other directions than against Russia, and Peter was favourably inclined towards the opening of a new chapter in his relations with Sweden, since he had made himself master of Ingria, Finland, Livonia, Esthonia, and Carelia. The practical suspension of hostilities enabled Peter to start on a second European tour, while Charles, driven at last from Weimar and Stralsund--all that was left him south of the Baltic--was planning the invasion of Norway.
During this tour the Tsar passed three months in Holland, his old school in the art of naval construction; and while he was there intrigues were on foot which threatened to revolutionise Europe. Gortz had conceived the design of allying Russia and Sweden, restoring Stanislaus in Poland, recovering Bremen and Verden from Hanover, and finally of rejecting the Hanoverian Elector from his newly acquired sovereignty in Great Britain by restoring the Stuarts. Spain, now controlled by Alberoni, was to be the third power concerned in effecting this bouleversement, which involved the overthrow of the regency of Orleans in France.