Military history of Imperial Russia
Encyclopedia
The Military history of the Russian Empire
encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great
, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union
. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army
, Imperial Russian Navy
, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Historians have long marked the importance of Peter the Great's reign in Russian history. Peter came of age in a vast but technologically and socially backwards country. Upon taking control of Russia in 1682, the tsar energetically redressed every aspect of Russian government, society, and military to more closely match its western neighbors. He fought expansive wars against his neighbors, squeezing every resource at his disposal to power his war machine, and send large numbers of young men west, to learn the trades and skills that Russia would need in the future. Peter founded a new Russia by shattering the old, and by his death in 1725 Russia had taken Sweden's place as Europe's dominant eastern power.
The Military history of the Russian Empire
encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great
, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union
. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army
, Imperial Russian Navy
, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Historians have long marked the importance of Peter the Great's reign in Russian history. Peter came of age in a vast but technologically and socially backwards country. Upon taking control of Russia in 1682, the tsar energetically redressed every aspect of Russian government, society, and military to more closely match its western neighbors. He fought expansive wars against his neighbors, squeezing every resource at his disposal to power his war machine, and send large numbers of young men west, to learn the trades and skills that Russia would need in the future. Peter founded a new Russia by shattering the old, and by his death in 1725 Russia had taken Sweden's place as Europe's dominant eastern power.
The Military history of the Russian Empire
encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great
, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union
. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army
, Imperial Russian Navy
, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Historians have long marked the importance of Peter the Great's reign in Russian history. Peter came of age in a vast but technologically and socially backwards country. Upon taking control of Russia in 1682, the tsar energetically redressed every aspect of Russian government, society, and military to more closely match its western neighbors. He fought expansive wars against his neighbors, squeezing every resource at his disposal to power his war machine, and send large numbers of young men west, to learn the trades and skills that Russia would need in the future. Peter founded a new Russia by shattering the old, and by his death in 1725 Russia had taken Sweden's place as Europe's dominant eastern power.Riasanovsky and Stienberg, pp. 211-212Clarkson, pp. 187-188
The epoch of Russian history that Peter created has been variously known as the Imperial Age, because of the new connection between the ruler and land; the St. Petersburg Era, as the capital was moved to the newly built Saint Petersburg
during his reign; and the All-Russian Period, which stresses the greater hegemony founded in the previously xenophobic country. The period from the time of his rule to the October Revolution
(and dissolution of the Russian Empire) in 1917 is also sometimes called the Peterine era, in tribute to his importance. However, the Russian Empire
proper was not founded until Peter took the title of imperator (emperor), at the end of the Great Northern War
.
Peter the Great was born on June 9, 1672, to Tsar Alexis I and his second wife Natalia Naryshkina
. The tsar had more than 14 children between the two marriages, but only three of the males, Feodor and Ivan
by his first marriage and Peter by his second, survived into adulthood. Peter was considerably more healthy then his half-brothers, both of which had serious physical disabilities
. Peter's father died in 1676, and Feodor, the late ruler's oldest son, was proclaimed tsar. When Feodor, in turn, died in 1682, he left no heir to the throne. With no clear path for succession, the two most prominent boyar
families, the Naryshkins
and the Miloslavsky
, backed different heirs in a competition for the throne. The Naryshkins, backing Peter, won an early victory, and Peter was proclaimed tsar in April 1682, with his mother as the acting regent
. However, in May, Peter's able-bodied half-sister Sophia, leading a Miloslavsky-backed rebellion by the streltsy
, overtook the throne and killed many of the leading members of the Naryshkin family, the murders of whom Peter witnessed. In the aftermath, Ivan was proclaimed the senior tsar, and Peter the junior tsar, and Sophia the regent. In reality, Sophia took absolute power as an autocrat, shoving her half-brothers away from power.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 212–215Hughes, pp. 9-17
As a child, Peter, though intelligent, he was neither an intellectual nor particularly refined. Physically able and possessing manic levels of energy, he turned his attention towards working with his hands. In particular, Peter found interest in seamanship and in military manners. He formed mock troops
with his friends, the sons of nobles and servitors, and staged mock battles. As he grew older, these battles became more and more elaborate, including organized units, formations, and even live ammunition. Once they became adults, the boys with whom Peter staged the fights would become his commanders and closest military advisers, eventually forming the core of Russia's first two elite guard units, the Preobrazhensky
and Semenovsky
regiment
s. These two regiments contained the core of the Russian nobility, and became training grounds for young nobles, who served as rank-and-file soldiers to learn military life before becoming officers elsewhere.Stone, pp. 44–46Hughes, pp. 22-23
As Peter grew older, Sophia realized the insecurity of her throne in the face of a fledging male heir. In 1689, she incited her supporters in the streltsy to rebel again and put her firmly in power again. Frightened by rumors of a plot, Peter fled Moscow. In the critical days that followed, the patriarch and many of the boyars and gentry
rallied behind him. Most of the streltsy wavered and took no action, and Sophia was forced, peacefully, off the throne. Thus, in August 1689, he was acknowledged as the effective ruler of Russia. However, at the age of 17, he still had little interest in military manners, and passed on his rule to his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was not until her death in 1694 that Peter finally assumed control of the state.Hughes, pp. 24-26
in 1709, and did not become full admiral until the conclusion of the Great Northern War
more than a decade later. As early as 1694, he established a dockyard in Archangel
and built an entire ship by himself. Russia suffered from an acute lack of expertise, a problem Peter mitigated by going to the foreign quarters in Moscow
; there, in a relaxed environment far removed from the throne, he learned the particulars of such things as shipbuilding, navigation, military formation, and the erection of fortifications. Peter wanted to be everywhere at once, and see everything for himself. Not take his role as tsar very seriously, he and his noble friends often staged elaborate drinking rituals and other forms of horseplay, displays of personal excess that helped unite his circle of friends through talk and drink. However, at the same time, he could be cruel, not flinching from the application of force to put down rebellions and sometimes beating his own friends if he thought it necessary.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 215–217
Once he took over the governmental machinery, Peter found a distinct lack of skilled specialists with which to run his government. Never placing much importance in rank or origin, Peter began recruiting skilled specialists out of every corner of the Russian empire, including serfs, foreigners, clergymen, and foreign specialists along with the usual boyars. Thus his administration consisted of men from across the social gamut. Most prominent among them was a one Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov
, a childhood friend from Peter's days with the mock troops. Menshikov was a former stableboy of the lowest rank, and would later rise up and become Peter's most able administrator. As corrupt as he was energetic, Menshikov could be found in every part of the Russian governmental machinery, was under constant surveillance by the Russian court, and often met Peter's cudgel, all the while somehow maintaining his prominent position.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 217–218Hughes, pp. 34-37
With the head of the Russian governance now firmly in place, Peter began a sweeping modernization of his army. Peter inherited a partially Westernized military, and he sought to consolidate the reforms of his predecessors. Before Peter, Russia had a large, irregular, low-quality army. The army dissolved annually during harvest seasons, and the only regular forces in the Russian army were the streltsy
, a formally elite unit that had, by Peter's time, become a hereditary, ill-trained, ill-equipped force that garrisoned in Moscow and played more of a role in politics then in actual fighting.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 226–227
Peter started by firmly placed the nobility into the officer corps. Drawing on his personal experiences, he made young nobles serve as rank-and-file soldiers before ascending to the officer corps; commoners who distinguished themselves could achieve officer rank as well. Peter believed in life-long servitude to the state, whether it was growing crops or fighting wars. Thus he offered serfs escape from their lifelong servitude on the farm in return for lifelong servitude in the army. Older and disabled veterans were transferred to positions in administration and the reserves, and thus, once they joined, Peter's troops were bound to the army for life.Stone, pp. 46–48
Peter established new schools and training grounds for the officer elite that was to lead the Russian army, and dispatched large numbers of men abroad to learn under foreign masters. Finding promises of release from serfdom insufficient, Peter began drafting
soldiers, starting with a levy
calling for 1 man for every 50 households. This levy was repeated an incredible 53 times, drawing 300,000 new soldiers into his army. He grew increasingly adept at pulling manpower out of every available resource, including the clergy and enemy deserters. The resultant Russian army was thus heavily Russian; the army was vastly more nationalistic
then its European counterparts, which relied heavily on mercenaries.
Peter stressed evolution away from the streltsy
and gentry cavalry
, although he never discarded it entirely. He introduced a European dress code complete with knee-breeches, tricorne
s, and long coats. He introduced the flintlock
into his army, and his troops were the first to use the bayonet
, originally designed for defense, offensively. He also vastly improved and expanded his siege artillery
, and later, introduced light artillery. His two elite guard units also functioned as ad hoc
police units, having summary powers
such as the ability to bring him a transgressive noble or official in chains. What Peter lacked most was specialization; he relied on irregular forces such as Cossack
s and nomad
s for the light cavalry
roles of scouting
, skirmishing, and raid
ing, as his proper cavalry were exclusively dragoon
s, which rode on horseback but dismounted in battle and fought on foot.
In 1695, Peter conducted his first major operation with his fledgling military. Having assumed control in 1694, Peter inherited the Holy League
's war with Turkey
. Under Ottoman power
, Turkey controlled the area of the Crimean Tatars
at the mouth of the Sea of Azov
. The Turks and the Russian had been in on-and-off wars since 1568, vying to control the area around the Black Sea
. Previous attempts to take the Crimea
directly had failed, so Peter opted to lay siege to Turkish-controlled fortress of Azov at the mouth of the river Don
. He envisioned a two-part plan; first, acting as a diversion, a large cavalry force would move towards Turkish forts on the lower Dnieper. Meanwhile, a smaller infantry force moved down the Don river, laying siege to Azov in the summer of 1695. In a characteristic show of bravado Peter the Great arrived as an artilleryman.Stone, pp. 48–50Hughes, pp. 37-39
Russian forces first had to take a pair of watchtowers guarding heavy chains restricting Russian movements on the water, during which a successful sortie was launched by the Turks that captured many of the Russian siege engine
s. The Russians accepted the losses and laid down a steady bombardment onto the fort. However, the fort was constantly receiving supplies by water, and the attrition was hurting Peter's forces more than the Turks. After three months, Peter was forced to withdraw.
Although his first attack on Azov proved to be a farce, Peter was tenacious. He understood that the reason he had lost the first battle was Turkish control of the sea, so Peter commissioned the construction of a large fleet at Voronezh
on the upper Don. He worked vigilantly himself, using the shipbuilding skills he had learned earlier in his life to great effect. Thus, he was able to launch a fleet of 30 sea-going vessels and over 1,000 transports north of Azov in April of 1696. This fleet accompanied a force of 70,000 infantry, twice that which Peter had brought with him during the first siege, and successfully cut off the flow of Turkish supplies. After a month of attrition, a force of 2,000 cossacks stormed the fort and, although rebuffed, captured part of its outer workings. The Turks, accepting defeat, ceded the fort to the Russians on July 18, 1696.
The events at Azov proved to Peter the value of a sea-borne fleet. Although his predecessors had build primitive fleets on an as-needed basis, the second siege of Azov was their first successful application. Thus, with a need for shipbuilding knowledge and a desire to develop a mighty coalition
against the Turks, Peter organized a 250-man expedition for Europe in March 1697. Although Peter traveled incognito as Peter Mikhailov he fooled no one; the six-foot eight tsar was literally heads and shoulders above others, although his disguise spared him having to partake in court formalities. He traveled through Sweden
, Austria
, the Netherlands
, Prussia
, England
, and the Hapsburg Empire, enlisting himself as a workman in many different docks and factories across the continent. For 18 months, Peter ingested everything he could about European craftsmanship, especially navigation, as well as European society in general. His trip was stopped short of a planned passage through Italy
by news of a streltsy rebellion
at home, and Peter rushed back to Russia in 1698, along with 750 foreigners he had recruited for Russian industry. The hoped-for political gains of the embassy turned out to be dubious at best, but the military gains were enormous.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 218–220Hughes, pp. 40-50Hughes, pp. 50-57
Peter returned to Moscow to find that the rebellion had already been dealt with. He proceeded to interrogate the streltsy, torturing many into revealing that they sympathized with his half-sister and former tsarina Sophia. Thousands of strelets were executed and hung in public, and Sophia, who had been exiled to a monastery near Moscow, was now forced to become a nun. Peter had the bodies of hundreds of streltsy hung outside her window to remind her of the consequences of confronting him. He also ended his marriage with Eudoxia Lopukhina
, who sympathized with the streltsy, and forced her to become a nun as well.
. He left his throne to his 15 year-old son, Charles XII. The king's youth and inexperience, coupled with his holdings of several major Baltic ports
, made the Swedish empire a tantalizing target for partition by its neighbors. Following the successful Azov campaign, Peter was still negotiating a peace treaty with the Turks, but even so he was negotiating a coalition with Augustus II of Poland
and with the Frederick IV of Denmark
. Peter began a round of conscription to fill out his ranks in late 1699, and a start date for the war was agreed upon in early 1700. The plan was to have Poland move on southern Livonia
and the Danes attack Swedish allies in Schleswig-Holstein. However, Peter's negotiations with the Turks took him longer than he expected, and so in January 1700 Augustus II declared war on Sweden, followed within a few months by the Danes, with Russia standing on the sidelines. It was not until July of that year that the Treaty of Constantinople
was finally signed, preserving Peter's gains in Turkey, and freeing him to make war with Sweden.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 220–224Stone, pp. 50–54Hughes, pp. 58-65
on the banks of the Narova River, just south of the Gulf of Finland
. Peter organized the siege works, but left soon after to organize reinforcements for Charles's eventual relief effort (and thus, as it would turn out, taking himself out of harm's way). Choosing between Poland and Russia, Charles XII thought Russia to be the more dangerous threat, and led a small army of around 11,000 men into the besieged city in November.
The Russians, enjoying a 3 to 1 numerical advantage, expected Charles XII to wait for reinforcements before attacking; but in another daring move, the Swedish forces, under cover of a blizzard, opted instead for a surprise attack on the Russian line. Caught off-guard, thinly stretched, and vulnerable to penetration by the skilled Swedish army, the ensuing battle quickly turned into a rout, with the panicked Russian troops attempting to swim over the frigid Narova River, many drowning in its frozen waters. The remainder of the Russian troops were mopped up with ease; only three groups, Peter's elite Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii troops and one light infantry brigade, actually put up a reasonable fighting retreat, using supply wagons as improvised defenses. The Battle of Narva
, as it came to be called, was a crushing defeat for Peter's young army, with the vast majority of the Russian forces destroyed and nearly all of its siege equipment captured. The Swedes suffered only 700 casualties, while more than 6,000 Russian troops were killed and another 20,000 captured.Christer Kuvaja, pp. 139–147
siege on Riga
in the summer of 1701, Charles crossed into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
. Although the Polish resisted for 6 years, they were finally forced out of the war following Swedish victory, again at impossible odds, at the Battle of Fraustadt
. Augustus II was forced off the throne and replaced with the less aggressive Stanisław Leszczyński, and Poland ended its alliance with Russia.
The six year respite proved critical for Peter the Great. With characteristic energy, he quickly rebuilt his army. New officers were pulled out of the nobility in Russia and hired from abroad, and the replacement of soldiers lost at Narva was accomplished through heavy-handed conscription
. Peter scraped money to finance his new campaign out of every hole he could find, raising taxes, creating new ones, monopolizing
the salt trade, and debasing
the currency
, anything he could do to raise more cash. Most notoriously, he introduced a tax on beards
, and forced churches to melt their bells to make cannons. As new soldiers needed new weapons, much of the money went into the Russian metalworking
industry, vastly improving the quantity and quality of the industry, and through it the quality of the Russian weaponry. Because of the large distances involved in the northern war, Peter also built up a large contingent of cavalry
.
Peter tempered this new army in attacks on the Swedish holdings of Livonia
and Ingria
on the Baltic shore. Once he was sure that Charles was heading south, he ordered his field marshal
, Boris Sheremetev, to attack the lightly defended colonies, whilst also sending a division south, to delay Charles XII and give Peter time to finish mending his forces. At the end of 1701, Sheremetev met a vastly outnumbered Swedish force
on the field at Erastfer in Livonia, soundly defeating them; he repeated the feat
again at Hummelshof
in July 1702. These two victories, the first significant ones in the Russian campaign, helped boost Russian morale after the catastrophe at Narva. Peter then sent Sheremetev to Ingria, where he mopped up Swedish forces on the Lake Ladoga
isthmus
. October 1702 marked the taking
of the Swedish fort of Nöteborg. In May 1703, Peter captured Nyenschantz fortress. He chose a spot at the mouth of the Neva, surrounded by marshes, to establish his fortress of Saint Petersburg
. Originally an outpost against the Swedes and Peter's "window to the west", the fortress would later grow into one of Russia's largest and most important population centers, and under Peter, Russia's capital.Hughes, pp. 67-68
Sheremetev's success continued into 1704. The major inland city of Dorpat fell in July 1704, its walls breached by Peter's new artillery. This artillery then went on to play a pivotal role in the second Battle of Narva
. This time, with heavier numbers, and Charles XII far away in Poland, Peter was able to take the city, albeit with heavy casualties. The commander in the city violated the ideal of an honorable surrender by refused to give in, and once the Russians breached the city, the remaining Swedish forces were massacred. Overall, the many Swedish losses on the home front put a large dent in the Swedish economy, already strained by the effects of the war. Peter also rapidly assembled a new fleet in the Baltic, resembling his southern one.
Charles XII elected his own candidate to the Polish throne in 1704, and spent the next three years chasing down Augustus II, now fleeing west towards his native Saxony
. Charles XII met Peter's main army, dug in at Grodno, in early 1706. Unwilling to meet an elite force on foreign territory, Peter ordered his forces to retreat, but kept light forces in the area to harass the Swedes whenever possible. Part of the retreating column, led by Menshikov
, met a smaller Swedish detachment at Kalisz
, and in the ensuing battle
defeated it soundly. However, by 1707, Charles had finally chased down and deposed King Augustus, ending his Polish detour and bringing his attention squarely back to Russia.
against what they saw as the destructive influence of the nobility and foreign influence. The rebellion was bloodily suppressed in March 1706. Similarly, 1705 also marked the rebellion of the Turkish Bashkirs
, for parallel reasons; this rebellion was not put down until 1711.
More serious was the Bulavin Rebellion
in 1707. Opposed to the government position regarding fugitives and influenced by anti foreignism, Konrad Bulavin, a leader of the Don Cossacks
, started a rebellion. This was not the first uprising in the enstrangled relations
between Russia and the cossacks, but it followed the same pattern; the rebellion spread across the south widely, and at its climax may have involved as many as 100,000 men, but was ill-organized and badly led. The rebellion was systematically suppressed by Russian troops pulled off the front; dissension spread among Bulavin's men, and he committed suicide in July 1708. The remainder of the rebellion was mopped up by 1709.Hughes, pp. 71-73
Regardless, by the summer of 1708, Charles was positioned in Lithuania
, facing a road directly towards Moscow. However, he faced a desolate tundra, deliberately laid bare
by Russian forces and protected by the significant fortress of Smolensk
. His troops were constantly being harassed by Russian light troops, and reinforcements were still en route. Diplomatically, although Peter offered deals that would return all of the land he captured, save Saint Peterburg and Neva, Charles would not settle for anything less than Swedish victory. Ukraine
, fertile and as of yet untouched by the war, lay to the south; he also knew that Cossack
hetman
Ivan Mazepa
, who largely controlled Ukraine under Peter, was secretly scheming against his tsar. Thus, the Swedes turned south, and entered Ukraine instead.Hughes, pp. 79-82
Historians still argue over whether or not a direct attack could have succeeded, but the Ukrainian diversion turned out to be a disaster for Charles. Charles's long baggage train out of Riga
, along with 12,000 reinforcements, were caught by fast-moving Russian cavalry in the fall of 1708. They harassed the reinforcements and supplies, and in the ensuing Battle of Lesnaya
Peter's dragoons fought the Swedes to a standstill. Facing increasing Russian numbers, the Swedes were forced to burn their supplies, bury their cannons, and make a rush for Charles's main army; out of 12,000 men, only 6,000, and virtually none of the supplies, actually made it to Charles. With more men and no supplies, this only compounded Charles's food problems. The thought-of Cossack reinforcements proved to be illusory as well; although Mazepa defected to the Swedes, he only brought 3,000 troops with him. As retribution, Menshikov sacked and razed Baturyn
, slaughtering upwards of 6,000 men, women, and children and completely destroying Mazepa's capital. No one else dared defect, and Ukraine remained firmly under Peter's control.
. Peter, still wary of engaging the Swedes in a pitched battle, slowly moved his troops through fortified positions to relieve the small fort. Charles foresaw that he could not take Poltava in time to avoid the Russians, but was confident that his 25,000 veteran troops, despite dwindling numbers, lack of supplies, and exhaustion, could defeat the 40,000 Russians in battle and finally end the war with Swedish victory. Peter, meanwhile, could afford to be patient; the Swedes were marooned far from support or reinforcements, and were losing numbers every day. The most direct path between the Russian camp to the north and Poltava was through treacherous forest and marsh, and thus Peter foresaw that any Swedish attack would double around the left, heading west before turning north through open ground towards the Russian army. Peter built six earthen redoubt
s in a line facing this probable Swedish charge, later augmenting them with four more, extending south in a "T".Stone, pp. 54-56Konstam, pp. 62-74
In late June, while preparing for the attack, Charles XII was shot in the foot. Thus, once the charge was made on the morning of 8 July 1709 (N. S.), he was leading the battle off of a litter
. To Peter's satisfaction, the Swedes moved in exactly the way that he had anticipated. Charles was well aware of the redoubts that Peter had dug, and had reasoned that, to avoid being bogged down and losing the element of surprise, he would rush past them as quickly as he could, and accept the resulting losses, even leaving the bulk of his artillery behind to speed his movement. However, Charles was not aware of the additional four pieces of earthwork that Peter had dug on the eve of battle; to surmount this new problem, Charles spent valuable time rearranging his troops from firing lines
, superb for volley fire
, to faster-moving but less fire-ready columns
, a time-consuming move that lost him the element of surprise he had hoped for earlier. With Peter now aware of Charles's movements, the plan quickly went awry; many of the Swedish forces got caught up fighting the redoubts anyway, and the smoke from fire on both sides, and the din from the engagements between the Russian and Swedish cavalry ahead of the main force, prevented him from effectively organizing his army. Charles pulled his forces west to reorganize back into a firing line, in a low wooded area to side of the main Russian camp.
Meanwhile, Peter prepared as well, moving his cavalry north to move on the Swedish left flank and also arranging his troops into a line. Charles took on the burden of attack, once again counting on the steadiness and experience of his troops to break the Russian lines. The Swedish right wing led the ensuing attack; as in earlier battles, the veteran troops outfought the Russians, collapsing them back and seizing supporting cannon as well. However, the weight of massed Russian fire opened a hole in the middle of the Swedish line, and the Russians, now fully able to make full use of such an event, poured through it and broke the Swedish column in half. The Swedish line broke and scattered, and 10,000 Swedes were killed or captured; most of the rest were captured
on the banks of the Dnieper by Menshikov. Only a few hundred, including Charles himself, escaped south to Turkish exile.Konstam, pp. 74-88
The Battle of Poltava was one of the most decisive victory in Russian history. The result of the Battle of Poltava, and of the following surrender, was that the bulk of the Swedish army was simply annihilated, leaving Sweden wide open for attack. At home, the victory gave Peter the political capital, and the war lull, he needed to crush ongoing domestic issues; in fact, if Peter had lost the battle, opposition to the tsar's reforms could have become active support for a new tsar. Poltava demonstrates how far the Russian army had come; after all, just nine years earlier, the Russians had been almost destroyed fighting the Swedes with an even greater numerical advantage. Peter the Great fully appreciated the importance of the battle's outcome, and made sure to thank the captured Swedes for their "lessons". However, the battle did not win the war, which was not yet even half over.
and Moldavia
, mostly Christian areas under Turkish control, to revolt against their Ottoman rulers.
By spring 1711 Peter was ready. He moved his army from Kiev down through Poland, skirting wide of the Black Sea
, before crossing the Dnester into Moldavia, aiming to sever it from Turkish rule. In reality, the campaign turned out to be a disaster; the 40,000 Russian troops, stymied by the enormous distances involved, were instead trapped on the river Prut
by 130,000 Turkish troops. In the only major battle, the Russians successfully held the Ottomans, unaccustomed to concentrated Russian firepower, at bay, but the fight was indeed hopeless, as Peter was trapped and facing a superior Turkish force. The resultant treaty was surprisingly lenient considering that the Russian force was facing annihilation; Peter lost Azov, was forced to abandon his southern fleet, promised not to meddle with Polish affairs, and guaranteed safe passage to Sweden for Charles XII. In return, Peter was able to extricate himself from the situation, and continued to hold a dominant position in the Great Northern War.Stone, pp. 56-57
. He seized Viborg
, Riga
, and Reval in 1710. With Charles XII now deposed, the coalition against Sweden was formed again. Peter divided his army between assisting his allies in the south Baltic, and his own attacks in the east. What is now Estonia
and Livonia
, weakly defended, fell quickly. Peter then moved north and invaded Finland
in 1713. Meanwhile, Charles, traveling incognito, returned to Sweden in 1714. The Swedes, with their empire broken and nothing left to lose, continued to fight. At sea, the prebuilt Russian fleet, which had proved useless when victory was still uncertain, was proving its worth at consolidating Russian victories; victories at Gangut
in 1714, Ösel
in 1719, and Grengam
in 1720 gave Peter control of the sea.
Even while he was dismantling the Swedish Empire, Peter to continued to reform and refine his army. Russia's administration system at the time, the prikaz
y, was an antiquated, jumbled form of governance, with overlapping jurisdictions and lacking separation of powers
. In 1717 he began replacing these instead with collegias
, or "colleges", based on the Swedish model. As a rule Peter employed equal parts native Russians and foreign servitors. Unlike the prikazy they replaced, colleges could not make a decision without a consensus of their members, so-called "governance by board" that helped stifle wayward decisions as well as corruption. Among the first two colleges created were the College of War
, which controlled the army and was led by Menshikov, and the Admiralty Board, which controlled the navy and was led by admiral
Fyodor Apraksin.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 228-231Stone, pp. 57-60
The sudden rise of Russia to power, and its protracted success in the war, triggered waves of concern across Europe. To help quell these waves, Peter traveled to Paris in 1717. Although his trip was inconclusive—France only promised to avoid involvement—once again, it gave Peter an opportunity to study Western Europe. In late 1718, Charles XII himself was shot through the head in a minor battle, possibly by his own soldiers. A broken Sweden sought allies against the Russian juggernaut, but the search proved fruitless, and with Russian troops regularly crossing the Baltic and raiding mainland Sweden, even reaching the suburbs of Copenhagen
, the Swedes finally admitted ultimate defeat.
In the resultant Treaty of Nystad
, Peter was extremely lenient with the Swedes, keeping Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and part of southern Finland (especially Saint Petersburg) in exchange for the return of most of Finland to the Swedes and the payment of 2 million silver riksdaler
. Peter could afford to be lenient, as the war was a decisive shift in the European balance of power
. The Swedish Empire was carved up, and its position as a great power
was taken by Russia. Celebrating these victories, Peter took the title of imperator, and the Russian Empire
was thus founded. The Northern War left Russia as the dominant power in Northern Europe
, and gave it firm control over the Baltic and thus a "window to the west." The war had also bettered Russia's position with respect to its Polish rival, which came to a head much later under Catherine the Great with the First Partition of Poland
. Finally, it put Russia into direct contact with another of the great powers of Europe, Germany. Peter himself emerged a national hero; scripts at the time compared him to Hercules
, Sampson
, and David
.
The marathon Great Northern War was not the last war during Peter's tsardom, which saw one last short war in the south. In 1722, Peter allied with Georgia
and Armenia
, looking to seize land at the expense of the declining Safavid Persia and deny it to the Ottomans. Upon declaring war, Peter ordered the construction of the Caspian Flotilla
and sailed down the Volga to command a joint land-sea campaign that took the city of Derbent
, before being forced to return to Astrakhan for supplies. The Russian forces fought on, facing little resistance, without Peter's involvement, taking Resht late that year and Baku
the next before Persia finally sued for peace.
Domestically, Peter contributed one last major element to Russia before his death in 1725—his Table of Ranks. Introduced in 1722, the Table organized the four major governmental branches, the army, navy, civil service, and court, into 14 major ranks. This standardized government positions and allowed officers to accurately gauge their relative importance; there was no table for common men. The Table was Peter's way of handling the appointment of nobility, as well as organizing Russian military positions; Peter had not appointed any new boyar
s, and the old honor code of mestnichestvo
, which placed more stress on hereditary origins then on actual skill, had been rightfully abolished in 1682. He had resorted to the ad-hoc appointment before, but by the time of the Great Northern War this was quickly proving tedious, necessitating the change. Those that reached a certain level on the table were granted personal nobility
, and for those that reached rank 12 or 8, depending on the service, hereditary nobility
was granted, thus both rewarding merit and satisfying Peter's nobility. The Table, with minor changes, continued to find use until it was finally abolished in 1917.Hughes, pp. 165-169
Peter's death left no clear candidate for succession to the throne. His son, Aleksei, was a shy, bookish man with little interest in the throne, as well as a constant target for revolts aimed at undermining Peter's rule. Alexei had renounced his interest in the throne in 1714, an action that made Peter furious; Aleksei was captured and tortured, and died of his injuries in 1716. None of Peter's other male children survived into adulthood. In addition, in 1722 he had declared that the naming of an heir was the tsar's choice, not a matter of genealogy
.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 239-243Stone, pp. 61-63
Peter had crowned his second wife, Catherine
, empress of Russia in 1724, strengthening her claim to the throne and making her a leading candidate, alongside Peter's grandson Peter Alekseyevich
. Peter, a child at the time, was backed by the old nobility, while Catherine found support in the newer class, especially Menshikov. The Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guard regiments, which had associated with Catherine during her trips alongside her husband during his later military campaigns, decided the issue by demonstrating in Catherine's support. The opposition collapsed, and Catherine I was named the new tsar. The two palace guard regiments would decide many such political issues in the future, resembling the old streltsy in this regard. Catherine left most of the work of ruling to her close adviser Menshikov. Her most important contribution was the formation of the Supreme Privy Council
, a small group of advisers to the tsar (of which Menshikov was a part), and her development of the two royal guard regiments.
Catherine did not rule long, and died in 1727. Although she had two surviving daughters, Menshikov engineered the crowning of Peter's grandson, Peter II
, as the new tsar. Peter II was not yet 12 years old, and Menshikov aggressively maneuvered to strengthen his position; he married Peter to his own daughter, brought him into his own household, and began to methodically weaken his opponents in the Privy Council. In the end, Menshikov overreached; his bold grabs at power alarmed the Russian nobility, and Peter, increasingly disliking Menshikov, allied himself with Prince Ivan Dolgorukov
instead. Menshikov was exiled to Siberia, where he died in 1729. Peter II himself died in 1730, succumbing to smallpox
, again leaving no heir.
The short reigns of both Catherine and Peter II were marked by the slow degradation of the Russian army and navy. Peter's draconian taxes were reduced, military units disbanded, and the navy was left to rot at anchor. The army would again be strengthened for various small actions in the 1730s and 1740s, but the declining trend of the Russian navy was not reversed for centuries.
. The primary reason for their choice was her political weakness as a woman and widow, something that the Council moved aggressively to take advantage of; they declared that they would approve her crowning only if she gave up the power to make and amend taxes, declare war, control the army, grant and revoke estates, and appoint people to high positions in the government. In short, the Privy Council was aiming to gut the power of the tsar and make the Russian Empire a de facto oligarchy
. However, the plan did not come to fruition; the Russian nobility was terrified by the prospects of such a shift in power, as were the palace guard regiments, and with their collective force Anna was able to tear up the restrictions placed on her and dissolve the Council for good.
Anna had few friends in the Russian government due to her time in Courland
, and intense distrust towards the Russian nobility that had tried to slight her once already. Therefore, she staffed her rule mostly with foreigners, especially Baltic Germans, led by her deeply unpopular favorite Ernst Johann von Biron
. She often elected favorites to important positions, regardless of their actual experience, and thus corruption ran rampart as many tried to accumulate personal wealth and influence. Nonetheless, the foreign office, under Andrey Osterman, and the army, under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich
, benefited greatly from foreign influence; it serves to note that both men had previously served under Peter the Great. The palace guards had helped her ascend to the throne, but all the same, Anna created a third Izmaylovsky
regiment to balance out their power.
before traveling to Russia and fighting during Peter's campaigns as an engineer. As a German delegate independent from the Russian nobility, he appealed to Anna, an appeal that Münnich used to ascend to presidency of the War College
in 1732. Münnich worked to develop a smaller, stronger military. He disbanded superfluous units and introduced numerous improvements in financial management, whilst continuing the status quo of letting the navy rot at anchor. He established Cadet Corps
to train young nobles for military service, effectively replacing Peter's requirement that they serve in the ranks first, as well as reducing the military service requirement to 25 years—still a draconian demand, but considerably better than Peter's theoretically lifelong model.
Münnich also worked towards making the Russian army more flexible and efficient. He increased the number of artillery pieces per infantry units, and redistributed grenadiers among them to increase their effectiveness. Münnich also introduced important changes in Russian cavalry. Prior to Münnich, most Russian cavalry had been dragoon
s, moving on cavalry but fighting on foot. Peter also had cossack
s, which filled out the traditional light cavalry
roles of raiding, harassing, monitoring, and scouting out enemy troops. Münnich introduced regiments of hussar
s (light cavalry staffed mostly by Eastern European foreigners) to complement the irregular cossacks with regular troops. More acute was the distinct lack of heavy cavalry
regiments to perform shock attacks; Münnich introduced three elite guard cavalry regiments (peers to the three guard infantry regiments) and several regiments of heavy cuirassier
s (named for the heavy breastplate
or cuirass
they wore) to fill out this role. These new regiments rode the heaviest horses in Russia at the time.
in 1733-1734. Following the death of Peter's old ally Augustus II
of Poland, an election to throne a new king. Russia had expected Augustus III
, Augustus's son, to succeed to his father's throne; however, in the fall of 1723 the election was decided instead in favor of the French-backed Stanisław Leszczyński, the same man that had been Charles XII's puppet king during the Great Northern War. Russia and the Austrian Empire
both agreed that a French-backed king of the Polish throne was unacceptable, and thus intervened to replace Stanisław with the younger Augustus.Stone, pp. 63-64Prothero and Benians, pp. 303-304
Thus, in 1723, a Russian force under the exiled Irish general Peter Lacy
invaded Poland, aiming to depose Stanisław. Lacy carefully organized a second election that proclaimed Augustus III king, and pursued the fleeing Stanisław to Danzig in early 1734 before handing off control to Münnich. France was unable to support its distant ally—the largest French force during the war, deployed off of the Baltic, consisted of just 2,000 men—and consoled itself by attacking Austria instead, sparking major action in the Rhineland and across Italy. Meanwhile, in Poland, Stanisław, unable to break the siege on Danzig, fled to France, leaving Russia to reconfirm Augustus III as king. Poland was confirmed as a Russian buffer state
, and in the following decades Russian troops would intervene there at will. Lacy led troops west towards the ongoing fight between Austria and France, but did not see action before the Treaty of Vienna
was ratified, ending the short war.
the Turks
and their Crimean Tatar
holdings. He was provoked by constant Crimean raids into Russian territory, and by the entanglement of the Ottoman Empire in its war with Persia. Münnich was confident that the increasingly more elite Russian troops could defeat whatever the Ottomans were fielding, and thus planned an ambition campaign aimed at eventually taking control of the Ottoman capital of Istanbul
. In this plan, he faced a number of strategic obstacles. The major fortress of Azov
lay in the east and denied access to the Sea of Azov
, and the Crimean Tatars controlled the whole of the north shore of the Black Sea
. Because of the large distances involved, the Russian army would need a long supply train, and any one campaign would be vulnerable to getting cut off by actions against this baggage trail. Furthermore, the area was defended by several major rivers flowing into the Black Sea, each with Turkish fortresses alongside it.Stone, pp. 64-67Prothero and Benians, pp. 304-308
Russo-Austrian-Turkish War, 1735-1739
File:Russo-Turkish_War_of_1735-1739.svg|500px|center|border|Clickable imagemap of the Black Sea area during the war.
poly 570 159 577 181 517 211 547 231 533 257 519 236 496 281 433 272 419 281 398 273 393 256 378 246 414 203 503 175 Sea of Azov
rect 574 158 630 198 Azov
rect 337 195 393 244 Perekop
poly 240 515 334 461 395 466 499 513 611 519 669 476 663 421 532 327 468 278 444 293 425 287 360 328 335 317 349 299 335 284 301 277 299 272 348 245 343 231 278 227 276 217 294 210 279 193 230 205 186 268 182 305 144 335 139 385 123 386 100 433 122 478 153 499 Black Sea
poly 84 123 65 130 104 199 119 193 Prut River
poly 346 245 383 247 398 258 400 274 421 284 434 271 467 278 445 295 424 288 360 329 338 317 350 300 302 276 301 271 Crimea
poly 160 44 152 57 209 103 218 93 Southern Bug
poly 111 64 97 78 175 143 189 131 Dnester River
poly 322 20 311 34 390 84 399 69 Dnepr River
poly 3 379 9 396 105 362 98 344 Dunabe River
rect 152 503 223 523 Istanbul
rect 10 421 107 437 Philippopolis
poly 1 397 11 398 111 358 128 385 123 386 105 423 11 420 9 438 98 438 121 480 108 488 3 462 Balkan Mountains
rect 246 187 320 225 Ochakov
rect 175 185 236 200 Bender
rect 183 224 259 240 Kulevcha
rect 128 227 180 242 Larga
rect 128 248 182 263 Kagul
rect 132 156 224 179 Moldavia
rect 13 217 112 240 Wallachia
rect 152 267 206 282 Izmail
rect 56 305 136 321 Bucharest
rect 100 334 163 350 Silistria
rect 252 518 495 555 Ottoman Empire
rect 599 47 704 80 Russian Empire
desc bottom-left
The war opened with a failed Russian raid on the Crimea in 1735, but the first major campaign did not come until 1736. Münnich divided the Russian troops into two groups, a main army under his command aiming to attack Perekop
at the mouth of the Crimea
, and a smaller detachment under Lacy moving towards Azov. Münnich easily stormed the Tatar defenses at Perekop in May 1736, but was unable to bring his foe to battle, as most fled for the mountains. He satisfied himself with pillaging the countryside, but his troops were suffering from thirst and disease, so he withdrew in autumn. Lacy's attack was far more successful; almost as soon as he lay siege to the fortress, its powder magazine
exploded, crippling the defenders. Azov surrendered in June.
Encouraged and somewhat alarmed by the sudden Russian gains, Austria joined the war in 1736, aiming to seize control of a part of the Turkish Balkans
for itself. With Azov now firmly under Russian control, the campaign shifted east along the Black Sea. Lacy infiltrated Crimea again in 1737 with 40,000 men (interestingly, passing over the narrow western sandbars instead of through Perekop) and again shattered and pillaged the region, but as with Münnich's attack the previous year, suffered from disease and thirst, and thus was forced to withdraw. Meanwhile, Münnich and 80,000 men crossed the Southern Bug
upstream of the major Turkish fortress at Ochakiv
, before doubling back and laying siege
to it. A lucky shot during the bombardment again burst the fortress's powder magazine, and Ochakiv was surrendered to the Russians soon afterwards.
1738 proved inconclusive for the Russians. Lacy once again invaded Crimea for the third time, and once again produced no lasting results. Münnich marched down the west coast of the Black Sea and crossed the Dnestr with 100,000 men, but again, disease (this time the plague), a shortage of supplies, and harassment by the Turkish screening force quickly forced him to withdraw north. To circumvent this problem, in 1739 Münnich cut even further west of the west bank of the Black Sea, skirting through Poland before arriving at the Prut
. However, the situation proved to be a repeat of Peter the Great's campaign in 1711; once again the Russian's supply line was cut by encircling Turkish cavalry. Confident that he could break through this trap once he needed to, on 28 August 1737 (N.S.) he attacked
the main Turkish encampment at Stavuchany. Münnich landed a diversionary blow to the Turkish right flank, then massed troops on its right and smashed through the Turks, capturing the Turkish encampment, artillery, supplies, and the Khotyn Fortress
on the upper Dnestr.
Still, the battle was a hollow victory. Austria signed peace with the Ottomans that year, and without an ally and unsure of further gains, Russia was decided to sign the Treaty of Niš and end its war. The army had suffered enormously from disease, and for all the men and money that the war cost Russia only gained some sparsely populated steppe north of the Black Sea, and the old prize of Azov, under the condition that it would remain unfortified. Still, the war did demonstrate two things. Firstly, it showed how much the Russian army had advanced, as it easily beat back larger Ottoman forces during the war; Münnich had been overly ambitious, but his assumptions on the superiority of his troops were not misplaced. Secondly, it established and maintained the pattern that would develop in future wars between the Turks and the Russians: early Russian gains on river fortresses were to be nullified by the impact of disease, and deeper attacks cut off from their supply train by fast-moving Turkish and Tatar cavalry.
. The gesture did not save Biron from the many enemies he had made over the course of Anna's rule, and he was exiled to Siberia within three weeks of her death. Regency was taken up by Ivan's mother Anna Leopoldovna
. This arrangement did not either. Noting her cousin's distaste for her and consolidating her control over the guards, Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth, executed a bloodless coup and took the throne. Anna and the infant Ivan were carried away and imprisoned, and Elizabeth arrested all her known and suspected opponents along the way.Stone, pp. 67-68Prothero and Benians, pp. 309-312
Elizabeth's had been brought up in relative quiet, and from early childhood had been praised for her beauty. Her interests were clothes, shopping, dancing, and men, and throughout her reign she had a extremely public and extremely long list of suitors. Nonetheless she did much to reincarnate Peter's reign; upon gaining the throne she immediately restored the Senate and scattered Anna's German administration, sentencing both Münnich and Ostermann to death (a sentence commuted to exile at the scaffold). By scattering the hated Germans and projecting an image of beauty and affection, Elizabeth maintained one of the most popular public images among the Russian populace at the time. She entrusted much of her administration to Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a man she personally disliked, but whose skills she shrewdly understood were needed by the state.
Peter Lacy led the invasion of Finland, defended by only a tiny force, in the fall of 1741. He aimed specifically to destroy as much of the countryside as he could, skillfully using cossacks to the best of their raiding abilities. Seeing that its ally would be crushed, France tried to mediate peace, but to no avail. Lacy coordinated a second march in 1742, keeping along the coast of Finland so as to pin down the 17,000 Swedish troops, an objective he achieved at Helsingfors. The Swedes surrendered, and Lacy occupied both Helsingfors and the Finnish capital of Abo
. By 1743, with Swedish defeat complete and fears of a coalition to defend Sweden growing, Elizabeth finally brought Sweden to the bargaining table. In the resultant Treaty of Åbo
, Elizabeth was surprisingly generous, taking several providences of Eastern Finland but allowing Sweden to retain the bulk of its control.
; under a series of careful and powerful kings, the state had consolidated power in upper Germany, and risen to a prominence far exceeding its actual land area. Fredrick the Great, who ruled Prussia at the time, drilled his military ceaselessly. One of his key innovations was oblique battle order, whereupon he purposely overloaded one flank while weakening the other; if the weakened flank held, the stronger side would be able to break through the enemy and surround them. Such a maneuver required precise timing and great skill, things his highly skilled army very much possessed.Stone, pp. 68-70Marston, pp. 16-17
The sudden growth of Prussia shifted the balance of power
in Europe greatly. Britain
and the Austrian Empire
had cultivated an alliance against France for many years, but this was suddenly broken when Austria shifted its center of interest away from France, and from protecting its vulnerable colonies in the west, to the rising power of Prussia in the north. Russia, meanwhile, had clashed with France time and time again, and was searching for allies against an increasingly diplomatically aggressive France and an increasingly powerful Prussia. Thus Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin attempted to build an alliance with Russia's "natural friends," Britain and Austria, against its "natural enemies," France and Prussia. Austria and Russia signed a cornerstone defensive alliance in 1725, but Britain was cautious about such an alliance. Realizing the opportunity, Fredrick sidestepped his French allies and signed the Treaty of Westminster
with Britain in 1756. France quickly shot back at Prussia by signing an alliance with Austria
, an alliance that Russia, with the caveat of non-aggression against Poland, now joined. This so-called Diplomatic Revolution
set the stage for the coming Seven Years' War, and Europe sunk into an uneasy peace.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 248-250Prothero and Benians, pp. 314-320Martson, p. 15
With the dismissal of Münnich, Elizabeth entrusted control of the Russian military to Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov
. Shuvalov quickly eliminated the German dress that had been introduced under Münnich. Foreseeing the approach of war in the 1750s, Shuvalov worked to improve the Russian army on the Prussian model. He drilled the army in the same tactics used by Fredrick the Great, but his success carried more to his cavalry then to the infantry, as Russia lacked the officer expertise to fully achieve the Prussian model. He also worked to convert dragoons into heavier cuirassiers and mounted grenadiers, capable of shock attacks that the lighter dragoons could not muster. He also worked to improve Russian artillery, even introducing some innovations of his own design, although he tended to get carried away by technical gimmicks.
in the summer of 1756, thereby removing the threat of a direct Austro-Russian attack against his capital of Berlin. The war began in earnest in 1757, and immediately split into two theaters: a power struggle in continental Europe between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and a colonial war in North America between France and Britain (known in American history as the French and Indian War
). Britain concentrated on using its naval superiority and relatively small army in fighting its colonial war, a move that France mirrored. Thus, the bulk of continental fighting was taken up by the Austrian-Russian alliance against Prussia.Cowley and Parker, pp. 422-423Stone, pp. 70-72Marson, pp. 26-28
Despite enormous differences in land area, Prussia's position was not as hopeless as it might have seemed. Russian and Austrian strategic goals differed, with Russia concerned mainly with East Prussia
and Austria, Silesia
. The two countries often attempted to pass the burden of battle to one another. Thus Fredrick's strategy of constantly shifting his army, although tiresome for the troops, successfully keep both of his enemies at bay. British financial contributions and the overall superiority of the Prussian army further alleviated the Austrian-Russian size advantage.
The war intensified in 1757 with an Austrian invasion of Prussia. Fredrick countered this army by organizing his own, 100,000 strong, and invading the Austrian Bohemia in four columns. The Austrians abandoned their invasion plans in favor of defense, organizing their army into a long brittle column along the border. After a fairly easy breakthrough, the Austrians fell into a disorderly retreat, and Fredrick began to advance on the Austrian capital of Prague
, while also diverting forces to harass the French. Fredrick defeated the main Austrian army outside Prauge in a bloody and close fought battle and laid siege to the Austrian capital. However, in June, an equally bloody battle
at Kolín
forced Fredrick to withdraw back north. While his southern operations were going sour, a French army invaded Germany from the west, defeating Prussia's British and Hanoverian allies along the way.Marson, pp. 29-42
While war was intensifying in Europe, the sluggish Russian army was still slowly advancing towards its target, the militarily isolated East Prussia
. East Prussia was lightly garrisoned, and should not have been a significant threat to the 100,000 strong Russian force, led by Stepan Fyodorovich Apraksin. Apraksin was a well-connected diplomat in the tsarina's court with little true military experience. He moved his forces cautiously, at a pace that nearly proved disastrous. On 19/30 August 1757, a Prussian force caught the Russians marching off-guard at the small village of Gross-Jägersdorf. In the ensuing battle
, the Prussian force, outnumbered 2 to 1, encircled both flanks of the Russian column (which stretched for over 2 miles) with cavalry, and Prussian infantry marched through the woods to attack the Russians in the center. The Prussians threatened to do what the Swedes had done at Narva, roll through the frantically redeploying Russians and then crush their individual units.
The situation was salvaged only by a one Pyotr Rumyantsev
, later to become Catherine the Great's foremost general; he rallied the Russian forces in the center, driving the Prussians back and ending the threat of a decisive breakthrough and defeat. With the Russian columns, particularly the artillery, now grinding back at their attackers, the Prussians were forced to retreat from battle. Losses had been roughly even, but the small Prussian force could ill afford its casualties. Apraksin, horrified by the losses, lacked the stomach to make good on his victory, and retreated to winter quarters, making the battle one of the most casual victories in Russian history. He was later relieved of command and put on trial for his heinous lack of initiative, dying in prison the next year.
Overall, 1757 was a grim year for Fredrick. Prussia's lightning attack on Austria, which had meant to knock Austria out of the war while the other nations mobilized, had failed. He now faced confrontation with three great powers with an empty treasury, and a monetary toll that the small Prussian population could ill afford. Austrian forces were quickly recapturing Silesia
n fortresses, and the region capitulated into Austrian hands. Austrian raids even reached Fredrick's capital city, Berlin
.
, one he followed with costlier but equally decisive victory over the Austrians at Leuthen
. His position on his western and southern flanks was now temporarily secure, and British funds, impressed by the Prussian victories, were now pouring in again.Stone, pp. 72-74Prothero and Benians, pp. 322-324
Following Apraksin's removal, command of the Russian field forces was transferred to William Fermor
. Fermor, a clean-cut and intelligent Baltic German and a student of Lacy and Münnich, and he made his soldier's welfare one of his primary concerns. Fermor's troops made quick work of the East Prussian providences that Apraskin had found so vexing. Seeing that he was unable to reclaim East Prussia, Fredrick turned his attention to the Austrians, invading the providence of Moravia
. However, the Austrians refused to engage him in battle, and therefore he could not land any of the spectacular victories that had salvaged his strategic nightmare so far. Realizing that further advances were futile, by late summer Fredrick had turned his attention squarely back towards the Russians.
Frederick met Fermor's troops on the marshes outside the hamlet of Zorndorf, east of the Oder River. Frederick planned to take his enemy by surprise by marching around the Russian rear to the south under the cover of night; however, the next morning the Russian forces simply reversed direction and faced their foe, now to the south, once more. Although the Prussians lost the element of surprise, the Russians were now in a vulnerable position, as their backs now stood against the river and the surrounding swamp. On 25 August 1758, following 2 hours of bombardment, the Prussian left engaged the Russians in what quickly became a murderous exchange of volleys. However, Frederick's left column, intending to support attack on the Russian right, instead drifted towards the center and stalled out in the engagement. Fermor quickly took advantage of this and sent his cavalry charging through the weakened left flank and sent if backwards in disorder, but their advantage was neutralized by a prompt counterattack by the Prussian cavalry. The battle degenerated into disorganized attrition, and the two bloodied forces did not break off until night fell. Thus the Battle of Zorndorf
ended with 30,000 casualties total out of a total of 80,000 men, and both sides withdrew by the next morning.
Fermor withdrew east (in fact fleeing long before his army withdrew from Zorndorf), leaving the Prussians with the chance to move south and meet the Austrian offensive once again. Frederick once again nearly met disaster when his army, encamped at Hochkirch
, was nearly overrun
by the Austrians. Although he escaped with the majority of his forces intact, by the end of the year it was clear that the Prussian's military situation had not improved; rather, Frederick had lost many of his best troops, and the Russians and Austrians had demonstrated a newfound ability to nullify his tactics.
. Fortunately for Kingdom of Prussia, Elizabeth died in 1762, and her successor, Peter III
, allied Russia with Prussia because of his devotion to the Prussian king, Frederick the Great
.
-Gottorp, so Peter III was raised in a German Lutheran environment. Russians therefore considered him a foreigner. Making no secret of his contempt for all things Russian, Peter created deep resentment by forcing Prussian military drills on the Russian military, attacking the Russian Orthodox Church
, and depriving Russia of a military victory by establishing his sudden alliance with Prussia. Making use of the discontent and fearing for her own position, Peter III's wife, Catherine, deposed her husband in a coup, and her lover, Aleksey Orlov, subsequently murdered him, so in June 1762 Catherine became Catherine II
, empress of Russia.
Catherine II's reign featured imperial expansion, which brought the empire huge new territories in the south and west; and internal consolidation. Following the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War with the Ottoman Empire
in 1768, the parties agreed to the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774. By that treaty, Russia acquired an outlet to the Black Sea
, and the Crimean Tatars
became independent of the Ottomans. In 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimea
, helping to spark the next Russo-Turkish War with the Ottoman Empire, which began in 1787. By the Treaty of Jassy
in 1792, Russia expanded southward to the Dniestr river. The terms of the treaty fell far short of the goals of Catherine's reputed "Greek project" - the expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe and the renewal of a Byzantine Empire
under Russian control. The Ottoman Empire no longer posed a serious threat to Russia, however, and had to tolerate an increasing Russian influence over the Balkans
.
of Poland
. As Poland became increasingly weak in the eighteenth century, each of its neighbors—Russia
, Prussia
, and Austria
- tried to place its own candidate on the Polish throne. In 1772 the three agreed on an initial partition of Polish territory, by which Russia received parts of Belarus and Livonia
. After the partition, Poland initiated an extensive reform program, which included a democratic constitution that alarmed reactionary factions in Poland and in Russia. Using the danger of radicalism as an excuse, the same three powers abrogated the constitution and in 1793 again stripped Poland of territory. This time Russia obtained most of Belarus
and Ukraine
west of the Dnieper river
. The 1793 partition led to an anti-Russian and anti-Prussian uprising in Poland, which ended with the third partition in 1795. As a result Poland disappeared from the international political map.
Although the partitioning of Poland greatly added to Russia's territory and prestige, it also created new difficulties. Having lost Poland as a buffer, Russia now had to share borders with both Prussia and Austria. In addition, the empire became more ethnically heterogeneous as it absorbed large numbers of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews. The fate of the Ukrainians and Belarusians, who primarily worked as serf
s, changed little at first under Russian rule. Roman Catholic
Poles resented their loss of independence, however, and proved difficult to integrate.
, Russia experienced a major social upheaval, the Pugachev Uprising. In 1773 a Don Cossack, Emel'yan Pugachev, declared himself as the re-emergent tsar Peter III
. Other Cossacks, various Turkic tribes that felt the impingement of the Russian centralizing state, and industrial workers in the Ural Mountains
, as well as peasants hoping to escape serfdom, all joined in the rebellion. Russia's preoccupation with the war enabled Pugachev to take control of a part of the Volga area, but the regular army crushed the rebellion in 1774.
The history of the Russian army in this era was linked to the name of Alexander Suvorov
a Russian general, reckoned one of a few great generals in history who never lost a battle.
From 1777 to 1783 Suvorov served in the Crimea
and in the Caucasus
, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1780, and general of infantry in 1783, on the conclusion of his work there. From 1787 to 1791 he again fought the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 and won many victories. Suvorov's leadership also played a key role in Russian victory over Poles during the Kościuszko Uprising
.
Catherine II died in 1796, and her son Paul
(r. 1796–1801) succeeded her. His independent conduct of the foreign affairs of Russia plunged the country first into the Second Coalition against France
in 1798, and then into the armed neutrality against Britain
in 1801. The new emperor drilled the Russian army on the Prussian model, which resulted in conflict with Suvorov and his subsequent removal and self-imposed exile. However, he was recalled to the army in 1798–1799 Russian troops led by Suvorov performed brilliantly in Italy
and Switzerland
.
During the early nineteenth century, Russia's population, resources, international diplomacy, and military forces made it one of the most powerful states in the world. Its power enabled it to play an increasingly assertive role in Europe's affairs. This role drew the empire into a series of wars against Napoleon, which had far-reaching consequences for Russia and the rest of Europe. After a period of enlightenment, Russia became an active opponent of liberalizing trends in Central and Western Europe.
an power, Russia could not escape the wars involving revolutionary and Napoleonic France
. Paul became an adamant opponent of France
, and Russia joined Britain
and Austria
in a war against France. Paul's support for the ideals of the Knights Hospitaller
(and his acceptance of the position of Grand Master) alienated many members of his court. Along with his liberal policies towards the lower classes, and his discovery of corruption in the treasury, his zeal for reform sealed his fate. In March 1801, Paul was assassinated by a handful of nobles and disgruntled officers.
The new tsar, Alexander I of Russia
(r. 1801–1825), came to the throne as the result of his father's murder, in which he was rumored to be implicated.
Alexander's primary focus was not on domestic policy but on foreign affairs, and particularly on Napoleon. Fearing Napoleon's expansionist ambitions and the growth of French power, Alexander joined Britain and Austria against Napoleon. Napoleon defeated the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz
in 1805 and trounced the Russians at Friedland
in 1807. Alexander was forced to sue for peace, and by the Treaty of Tilsit, signed in 1807, he became Napoleon's ally. Russia lost little territory under the treaty, and Alexander made use of his alliance with Napoleon for further expansion. By the Finnish War
he wrested the Grand Duchy of Finland
from Sweden
in 1809, and acquired Bessarabia
from Turkey
in 1812.
See main article on Napoleon's invasion of Russia
The Russo-French alliance gradually became strained. Napoleon was concerned about Russia's intentions in the strategically vital Bosporus
and Dardanelles
straits. At the same time, Alexander viewed the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the French-controlled reconstituted Polish state, with suspicion. The requirement of joining France's Continental Blockade against Britain was a serious disruption of Russian commerce, and in 1810 Alexander repudiated the obligation.
In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia to compel Emperor Alexander I
to remain in the Continental System and to remove the imminent threat of Russian invasion of Poland. The Grande Armée, 650,000 men (270,000 Frenchmen and many soldiers of allies or subject powers), crossed the Niemen River on June 23, 1812. Russia proclaimed a Patriotic War, while Napoleon proclaimed a Second Polish
war, but against the expectations of the Poles who supplied almost 100,000 troops for the invasion force he avoided any concessions toward Poland, having in mind further negotiations with Russia. Russia maintained a scorched earth policy of retreat broken only by the battle of Borodino
(September 7), when the Russians stood and fought. This was bloody and the Russians were eventually forced to back down and open the road to Moscow. By September 14, Moscow
was captured although by this point it had been largely abandoned by the Russians and prisoners had been released from Moscow’s prisons to inconvenience the French. Alexander I refused to capitulate and with no sign of clear victory in sight Napoleon was forced to withdraw from Moscow after the city had been burnt to the ground. The conflicting sides placed the blame for the fire on each other. So the disastrous Great Retreat began, with 370,000 casualties largely as a result of starvation and the freezing weather conditions, and 200,000 captured. By November only 27,000 fit soldiers were among those who crossed the Berezina River
. Napoleon now left his army to return to Paris and prepare a defence of Poland from the advancing Russians.
As the French retreated, the Russians pursued them into Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris
. After the allies defeated Napoleon, Alexander became known as the savior of Europe, and he played a prominent role in the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna
in 1815. In the same year Alexander initiated the creation of the Holy Alliance
, a loose agreement pledging the rulers of the nations involved—including most of Europe—to act according to Christian
principles. More pragmatically, in 1814 Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia had formed the Quadruple Alliance
. The allies created an international system to maintain the territorial status quo and prevent the resurgence of an expansionist France. The Quadruple Alliance, confirmed by a number of international conferences, ensured Russia's influence in Europe.
See also
At the same time, Russia continued its expansion. The Congress of Vienna created the Kingdom of Poland
(Russian Poland), to which Alexander granted a constitution. Thus, Alexander I became the constitutional monarch of Poland while remaining the autocratic tsar of Russia. He was also the limited monarch of Finland, which had been annexed in 1809 and awarded autonomous status. In 1813 Russia gained territory in the Baky area of the Caucasus
at the expense of Persia. By the early nineteenth century, the empire also was firmly ensconced in Alaska.
Historians have generally agreed that a revolutionary movement was born during the reign of Alexander I. Young officers who had pursued Napoleon into Western Europe came back to Russia with revolutionary ideas. The intellectual modernization
that had been fostered in the 18th century by a paternalistic, autocratic Russian state now included opposition to autocracy
, demands for representative government, calls for the abolition of serfdom
, and, in some instances, advocacy of a revolutionary overthrow of the government. Officers were particularly incensed that Alexander had granted Poland a constitution while Russia remained without one. Several clandestine organizations were preparing for an uprising when Alexander died unexpectedly in 1825. Following his death, there was confusion about who would succeed him because the next in line, his brother Constantine, had relinquished his right to the throne. A group of officers commanding about 3,000 men refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Alexander's brother Nicholas
, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution. Because these events occurred in December 1825, the rebels were called Decembrists. Nicholas easily overcame the revolt, and the Decembrists who remained alive were arrested. Many were exiled to Siberia
.
To some extent, the Decembrists were in the tradition of a long line of palace revolutionaries who wanted to place their candidate on the throne. But because the Decembrists also wanted to implement a liberal political program, their revolt has been considered the beginning of a revolutionary movement. The Decembrist Revolt
was the first open a breach between the government and liberal elements, a breach that would subsequently widen.
The war between Russia and the Japanese Empire broke out on February 8, 1904 with a Japanese attack upon the Russian Far East Fleet stationed at Port Arthur
. Plagued with logistical problems, outdated military equipment and incompetent Russian officers, Russian forces suffered numerous defeats in the course of the war, which ended in September 1905. Faced with growing internal problems, including the revolution of 1905
, Russia sued for peace as the war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth
.
, also see Eastern Front (World War I)
and Caucasus Campaign
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
, Imperial Russian Navy
Imperial Russian Navy
The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...
, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Imperial Russia
The Military history of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
, Imperial Russian Navy
Imperial Russian Navy
The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...
, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Imperial Russia
The Military history of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
, Imperial Russian Navy
Imperial Russian Navy
The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...
, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Imperial Russia
The epoch of Russian history that Peter created has been variously known as the Imperial Age, because of the new connection between the ruler and land; the St. Petersburg Era, as the capital was moved to the newly built Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
during his reign; and the All-Russian Period, which stresses the greater hegemony founded in the previously xenophobic country. The period from the time of his rule to the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
(and dissolution of the Russian Empire) in 1917 is also sometimes called the Peterine era, in tribute to his importance. However, the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
proper was not founded until Peter took the title of imperator (emperor), at the end of the Great Northern War
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...
.
Early years and ascension to the throne
Natalia Naryshkina
Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina was the Tsaritsa of Russia from 1671 to 1676 as the second spouse of tsar Alexei I of Russia.-Biography:Coming from a petty noble family, daughter of Kirill Poluektovich Naryshkin and wife Anna Leontyevna Leontyeva Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina was the Tsaritsa of...
. The tsar had more than 14 children between the two marriages, but only three of the males, Feodor and Ivan
Ivan V of Russia
Ivan V Alekseyevich Romanov was a joint Tsar of Russia who co-reigned between 1682 and 1696. He was the youngest son of Alexis I of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya. His reign was only formal, since he had serious physical and mental disabilities...
by his first marriage and Peter by his second, survived into adulthood. Peter was considerably more healthy then his half-brothers, both of which had serious physical disabilities
Physical disability
A physical disability is any impairment which limits the physical function of one or more limbs or fine or gross motor ability. Other physical disabilities include impairments which limit other facets of daily living, such as respiratory disorders and epilepsy....
. Peter's father died in 1676, and Feodor, the late ruler's oldest son, was proclaimed tsar. When Feodor, in turn, died in 1682, he left no heir to the throne. With no clear path for succession, the two most prominent boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
families, the Naryshkins
Naryshkin family
The Naryshkin family was a Moscow boyar family. It became allied to the ruling house in 1671 when the great beauty Natalia Naryshkina married Alexis of Russia, later becoming the mother of Peter the Great...
and the Miloslavsky
Ilya Miloslavsky
Ilya Danilovich Miloslavsky was a Russian boyar and diplomat.Ilya Miloslavsky was brought forward by the head of the Posolsky Prikaz Ivan Gramotin, who had been his uncle. Miloslavsky was soon sent to Constantinople with a message from tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, who wanted to establish a cordial...
, backed different heirs in a competition for the throne. The Naryshkins, backing Peter, won an early victory, and Peter was proclaimed tsar in April 1682, with his mother as the acting regent
Regent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
. However, in May, Peter's able-bodied half-sister Sophia, leading a Miloslavsky-backed rebellion by the streltsy
Streltsy
Streltsy were the units of Russian guardsmen in the 16th - early 18th centuries, armed with firearms. They are also collectively known as Marksman Troops .- Origins and organization :...
, overtook the throne and killed many of the leading members of the Naryshkin family, the murders of whom Peter witnessed. In the aftermath, Ivan was proclaimed the senior tsar, and Peter the junior tsar, and Sophia the regent. In reality, Sophia took absolute power as an autocrat, shoving her half-brothers away from power.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 212–215Hughes, pp. 9-17
As a child, Peter, though intelligent, he was neither an intellectual nor particularly refined. Physically able and possessing manic levels of energy, he turned his attention towards working with his hands. In particular, Peter found interest in seamanship and in military manners. He formed mock troops
Toy army of Peter I
The toy army of Peter I was initially called hi kiel evans and was a collection of young Peter's playmates, noblemens' sons and attendants of his father Aleksei's court....
with his friends, the sons of nobles and servitors, and staged mock battles. As he grew older, these battles became more and more elaborate, including organized units, formations, and even live ammunition. Once they became adults, the boys with whom Peter staged the fights would become his commanders and closest military advisers, eventually forming the core of Russia's first two elite guard units, the Preobrazhensky
Preobrazhensky regiment
The Preobrazhensky Regiment was one of the oldest and elite regiments of the Russian army. Along with the Semenovsky regiment also served as a gendarmie unit for the state Secret Chancellery in the 18th century, headed by the Prince Fyodor Romodanovsky.It was formed by Peter the Great in the late...
and Semenovsky
Semenovsky Regiment
Semenovsky Life-Guards Regiment was one of the two oldest guards regiments of the Imperial Russian Army.- History :...
regiment
Regiment
A regiment is a major tactical military unit, composed of variable numbers of batteries, squadrons or battalions, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant colonel...
s. These two regiments contained the core of the Russian nobility, and became training grounds for young nobles, who served as rank-and-file soldiers to learn military life before becoming officers elsewhere.Stone, pp. 44–46Hughes, pp. 22-23
As Peter grew older, Sophia realized the insecurity of her throne in the face of a fledging male heir. In 1689, she incited her supporters in the streltsy to rebel again and put her firmly in power again. Frightened by rumors of a plot, Peter fled Moscow. In the critical days that followed, the patriarch and many of the boyars and gentry
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
rallied behind him. Most of the streltsy wavered and took no action, and Sophia was forced, peacefully, off the throne. Thus, in August 1689, he was acknowledged as the effective ruler of Russia. However, at the age of 17, he still had little interest in military manners, and passed on his rule to his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was not until her death in 1694 that Peter finally assumed control of the state.Hughes, pp. 24-26
Early rule and military reforms
Peter personally studied soldiers and sailors from the bottom up, serving in the rank and file before promoting himself into the officer corps. Thus, Peter did not become a full general until after his victory at PoltavaBattle of Poltava
The Battle of Poltava on 27 June 1709 was the decisive victory of Peter I of Russia over the Swedish forces under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld in one of the battles of the Great Northern War. It is widely believed to have been the beginning of Sweden's decline as a Great Power; the...
in 1709, and did not become full admiral until the conclusion of the Great Northern War
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...
more than a decade later. As early as 1694, he established a dockyard in Archangel
Arkhangelsk
Arkhangelsk , formerly known as Archangel in English, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea in the north of European Russia. The city spreads for over along the banks of the river...
and built an entire ship by himself. Russia suffered from an acute lack of expertise, a problem Peter mitigated by going to the foreign quarters in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
; there, in a relaxed environment far removed from the throne, he learned the particulars of such things as shipbuilding, navigation, military formation, and the erection of fortifications. Peter wanted to be everywhere at once, and see everything for himself. Not take his role as tsar very seriously, he and his noble friends often staged elaborate drinking rituals and other forms of horseplay, displays of personal excess that helped unite his circle of friends through talk and drink. However, at the same time, he could be cruel, not flinching from the application of force to put down rebellions and sometimes beating his own friends if he thought it necessary.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 215–217
Once he took over the governmental machinery, Peter found a distinct lack of skilled specialists with which to run his government. Never placing much importance in rank or origin, Peter began recruiting skilled specialists out of every corner of the Russian empire, including serfs, foreigners, clergymen, and foreign specialists along with the usual boyars. Thus his administration consisted of men from across the social gamut. Most prominent among them was a one Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov
Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov
Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov was a Russian statesman, whose official titles included Generalissimus, Prince of the Russian Empire and Duke of Izhora , Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Cosel. A highly appreciated associate and friend of Tsar Peter the Great, he was the de facto ruler of...
, a childhood friend from Peter's days with the mock troops. Menshikov was a former stableboy of the lowest rank, and would later rise up and become Peter's most able administrator. As corrupt as he was energetic, Menshikov could be found in every part of the Russian governmental machinery, was under constant surveillance by the Russian court, and often met Peter's cudgel, all the while somehow maintaining his prominent position.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 217–218Hughes, pp. 34-37
With the head of the Russian governance now firmly in place, Peter began a sweeping modernization of his army. Peter inherited a partially Westernized military, and he sought to consolidate the reforms of his predecessors. Before Peter, Russia had a large, irregular, low-quality army. The army dissolved annually during harvest seasons, and the only regular forces in the Russian army were the streltsy
Streltsy
Streltsy were the units of Russian guardsmen in the 16th - early 18th centuries, armed with firearms. They are also collectively known as Marksman Troops .- Origins and organization :...
, a formally elite unit that had, by Peter's time, become a hereditary, ill-trained, ill-equipped force that garrisoned in Moscow and played more of a role in politics then in actual fighting.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 226–227
Peter started by firmly placed the nobility into the officer corps. Drawing on his personal experiences, he made young nobles serve as rank-and-file soldiers before ascending to the officer corps; commoners who distinguished themselves could achieve officer rank as well. Peter believed in life-long servitude to the state, whether it was growing crops or fighting wars. Thus he offered serfs escape from their lifelong servitude on the farm in return for lifelong servitude in the army. Older and disabled veterans were transferred to positions in administration and the reserves, and thus, once they joined, Peter's troops were bound to the army for life.Stone, pp. 46–48
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
soldiers, starting with a levy
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
calling for 1 man for every 50 households. This levy was repeated an incredible 53 times, drawing 300,000 new soldiers into his army. He grew increasingly adept at pulling manpower out of every available resource, including the clergy and enemy deserters. The resultant Russian army was thus heavily Russian; the army was vastly more nationalistic
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
then its European counterparts, which relied heavily on mercenaries.
Peter stressed evolution away from the streltsy
Streltsy
Streltsy were the units of Russian guardsmen in the 16th - early 18th centuries, armed with firearms. They are also collectively known as Marksman Troops .- Origins and organization :...
and gentry cavalry
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
, although he never discarded it entirely. He introduced a European dress code complete with knee-breeches, tricorne
Tricorne
The tricorne or tricorn is a style of hat that was popular during the 18th century, falling out of style by 1800. At the peak of its popularity, the tricorne was worn as civilian dress and as part of military and naval uniforms...
s, and long coats. He introduced the flintlock
Flintlock
Flintlock is the general term for any firearm based on the flintlock mechanism. The term may also apply to the mechanism itself. Introduced at the beginning of the 17th century, the flintlock rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the doglock, matchlock and wheellock...
into his army, and his troops were the first to use the bayonet
Bayonet
A bayonet is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit in, on, over or underneath the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar weapon, effectively turning the gun into a spear...
, originally designed for defense, offensively. He also vastly improved and expanded his siege artillery
Siege engine
A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some have been operated close to the fortifications, while others have been used to attack from a distance. From antiquity, siege engines were constructed largely of wood and...
, and later, introduced light artillery. His two elite guard units also functioned as ad hoc
Ad hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
police units, having summary powers
Summary jurisdiction
Summary jurisdiction, in the widest sense of the phrase, in English law includes the power asserted by courts of record to deal brevi manu with contempts of court without the intervention of a jury. Probably the power was originally exercisable only when the fact was notorious, i.e. done in...
such as the ability to bring him a transgressive noble or official in chains. What Peter lacked most was specialization; he relied on irregular forces such as Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s and nomad
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
s for the light cavalry
Light cavalry
Light cavalry refers to lightly armed and lightly armored troops mounted on horses, as opposed to heavy cavalry, where the riders are heavily armored...
roles of scouting
Scouting
Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....
, skirmishing, and raid
Raid (military)
Raid, also known as depredation, is a military tactic or operational warfare mission which has a specific purpose and is not normally intended to capture and hold terrain, but instead finish with the raiding force quickly retreating to a previous defended position prior to the enemy forces being...
ing, as his proper cavalry were exclusively dragoon
Dragoon
The word dragoon originally meant mounted infantry, who were trained in horse riding as well as infantry fighting skills. However, usage altered over time and during the 18th century, dragoons evolved into conventional light cavalry units and personnel...
s, which rode on horseback but dismounted in battle and fought on foot.
Siege of Azov, the Grand Embassy, and the Streltsy rebellion
Holy League (1684)
Holy League of 1684 was initiated in by Pope Innocent XI, and composed of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Venetian Republic. Tsardom of Russia joined the League in 1686. This alliance opposed the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War and lasted until the Treaty...
's war with Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. Under Ottoman power
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, Turkey controlled the area of the Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
at the mouth of the Sea of Azov
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov , known in Classical Antiquity as Lake Maeotis, is a sea on the south of Eastern Europe. It is linked by the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea to the south and is bounded on the north by Ukraine mainland, on the east by Russia, and on the west by the Ukraine's Crimean...
. The Turks and the Russian had been in on-and-off wars since 1568, vying to control the area around the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
. Previous attempts to take the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
directly had failed, so Peter opted to lay siege to Turkish-controlled fortress of Azov at the mouth of the river Don
Don River
- Australia :* Don River , a tributary of the Fitzroy River * Don River in North Queensland* Don River - United Kingdom :* River Don, South Yorkshire, England...
. He envisioned a two-part plan; first, acting as a diversion, a large cavalry force would move towards Turkish forts on the lower Dnieper. Meanwhile, a smaller infantry force moved down the Don river, laying siege to Azov in the summer of 1695. In a characteristic show of bravado Peter the Great arrived as an artilleryman.Stone, pp. 48–50Hughes, pp. 37-39
Russian forces first had to take a pair of watchtowers guarding heavy chains restricting Russian movements on the water, during which a successful sortie was launched by the Turks that captured many of the Russian siege engine
Siege engine
A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some have been operated close to the fortifications, while others have been used to attack from a distance. From antiquity, siege engines were constructed largely of wood and...
s. The Russians accepted the losses and laid down a steady bombardment onto the fort. However, the fort was constantly receiving supplies by water, and the attrition was hurting Peter's forces more than the Turks. After three months, Peter was forced to withdraw.
Although his first attack on Azov proved to be a farce, Peter was tenacious. He understood that the reason he had lost the first battle was Turkish control of the sea, so Peter commissioned the construction of a large fleet at Voronezh
Voronezh
Voronezh is a city in southwestern Russia, the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast. It is located on both sides of the Voronezh River, away from where it flows into the Don. It is an operating center of the Southeastern Railway , as well as the center of the Don Highway...
on the upper Don. He worked vigilantly himself, using the shipbuilding skills he had learned earlier in his life to great effect. Thus, he was able to launch a fleet of 30 sea-going vessels and over 1,000 transports north of Azov in April of 1696. This fleet accompanied a force of 70,000 infantry, twice that which Peter had brought with him during the first siege, and successfully cut off the flow of Turkish supplies. After a month of attrition, a force of 2,000 cossacks stormed the fort and, although rebuffed, captured part of its outer workings. The Turks, accepting defeat, ceded the fort to the Russians on July 18, 1696.
The events at Azov proved to Peter the value of a sea-borne fleet. Although his predecessors had build primitive fleets on an as-needed basis, the second siege of Azov was their first successful application. Thus, with a need for shipbuilding knowledge and a desire to develop a mighty coalition
Coalition
A coalition is a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, during which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest, joining forces together for a common cause. This alliance may be temporary or a matter of convenience. A coalition thus differs from a more formal covenant...
against the Turks, Peter organized a 250-man expedition for Europe in March 1697. Although Peter traveled incognito as Peter Mikhailov he fooled no one; the six-foot eight tsar was literally heads and shoulders above others, although his disguise spared him having to partake in court formalities. He traveled through Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and the Hapsburg Empire, enlisting himself as a workman in many different docks and factories across the continent. For 18 months, Peter ingested everything he could about European craftsmanship, especially navigation, as well as European society in general. His trip was stopped short of a planned passage through Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
by news of a streltsy rebellion
Streltsy Uprising
The Streltsy Uprising of 1698 was an uprising of the Moscow Streltsy regiments. Some Russian historians believe that the Streltsy uprising was a reactionary rebellion against progressive innovations of Peter the Great...
at home, and Peter rushed back to Russia in 1698, along with 750 foreigners he had recruited for Russian industry. The hoped-for political gains of the embassy turned out to be dubious at best, but the military gains were enormous.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 218–220Hughes, pp. 40-50Hughes, pp. 50-57
Eudoxia Lopukhina
Tsarina Evdokiya Feodorovna Lopukhina was the first wife of Peter I of Russia. They married in 1689 but divorced in 1698...
, who sympathized with the streltsy, and forced her to become a nun as well.
Great Northern War
Although Peter's "grand coalition" against the Turks had failed to develop, new political developments quickly brought his military attention to the north. 1697 marked the death of Charles XI, king of SwedenSwedish Empire
The Swedish Empire refers to the Kingdom of Sweden between 1561 and 1721 . During this time, Sweden was one of the great European powers. In Swedish, the period is called Stormaktstiden, literally meaning "the Great Power Era"...
. He left his throne to his 15 year-old son, Charles XII. The king's youth and inexperience, coupled with his holdings of several major Baltic ports
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
, made the Swedish empire a tantalizing target for partition by its neighbors. Following the successful Azov campaign, Peter was still negotiating a peace treaty with the Turks, but even so he was negotiating a coalition with Augustus II of Poland
Augustus II the Strong
Frederick Augustus I or Augustus II the Strong was Elector of Saxony and King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania ....
and with the Frederick IV of Denmark
Frederick IV of Denmark
Frederick IV was the king of Denmark and Norway from 1699 until his death. Frederick was the son of King Christian V of Denmark and Norway and Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel .-Foreign affairs:...
. Peter began a round of conscription to fill out his ranks in late 1699, and a start date for the war was agreed upon in early 1700. The plan was to have Poland move on southern Livonia
Livonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
and the Danes attack Swedish allies in Schleswig-Holstein. However, Peter's negotiations with the Turks took him longer than he expected, and so in January 1700 Augustus II declared war on Sweden, followed within a few months by the Danes, with Russia standing on the sidelines. It was not until July of that year that the Treaty of Constantinople
Treaty of Constantinople (1700)
The Treaty of Constantinople or Istanbul was signed on 13 July 1700 between the Tsardom of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1686-1700. Russian tsar Peter the Great secured possession of the Azov region and freed his forces to participate in the Great Northern War...
was finally signed, preserving Peter's gains in Turkey, and freeing him to make war with Sweden.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 220–224Stone, pp. 50–54Hughes, pp. 58-65
Initial losses and the Battle of Narva
By the time Peter became involved, the coalition was already falling apart. Charles XII proved to be an unprecedented military genius and far superior a commander then his foes had expected. With utmost daring, in July 1700 Charles crossed the straits to Denmark with 15,000 men, carrying the fighting into the heart of their territory; the Danes, utterly defeated, surrendered within a month. Unaware of this, Peter declared war on Sweden in August 1700. Peter led an army of 35,000 men, and quickly laid siege to the city of NarvaNarva
Narva is the third largest city in Estonia. It is located at the eastern extreme point of Estonia, by the Russian border, on the Narva River which drains Lake Peipus.-Early history:...
on the banks of the Narova River, just south of the Gulf of Finland
Gulf of Finland
The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn...
. Peter organized the siege works, but left soon after to organize reinforcements for Charles's eventual relief effort (and thus, as it would turn out, taking himself out of harm's way). Choosing between Poland and Russia, Charles XII thought Russia to be the more dangerous threat, and led a small army of around 11,000 men into the besieged city in November.
Battle of Narva (1700)
The Battle of Narva on 19 November 1700 was an early battle in the Great Northern War. A Swedish relief army under Charles XII of Sweden defeated a Russian siege force three times its size. Before, Charles XII had forced Denmark-Norway to sign the Treaty of Travendal...
, as it came to be called, was a crushing defeat for Peter's young army, with the vast majority of the Russian forces destroyed and nearly all of its siege equipment captured. The Swedes suffered only 700 casualties, while more than 6,000 Russian troops were killed and another 20,000 captured.Christer Kuvaja, pp. 139–147
Rebuilding his army, the Livonian campaign, and Polish defeat
Following the battle, with the Russian army broken, Charles XII reasoned that the Russians were no longer a threat to him and turned south to deal with Poland instead of pursuing Russia. Historians still argue as to whether or not Charles should have pressed his pursuit of the broken Russian enemy; had he chosen to pursue Peter, he might vary well have forced a quick victory and changed the outcome of the war. Regardless, after breaking a SaxonyElectorate of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony , sometimes referred to as Upper Saxony, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire. It was established when Emperor Charles IV raised the Ascanian duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg to the status of an Electorate by the Golden Bull of 1356...
siege on Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
in the summer of 1701, Charles crossed into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
. Although the Polish resisted for 6 years, they were finally forced out of the war following Swedish victory, again at impossible odds, at the Battle of Fraustadt
Battle of Fraustadt
The Battle of Fraustadt was fought on February 2, 1706 / February 3, 1706 / February 13, 1706 between Sweden and Saxony-Poland and their Russian allies near Fraustadt in Poland. During the Battle of Fraustadt on February 3, August II was only 120 kilometers away with a cavalry force about 8000...
. Augustus II was forced off the throne and replaced with the less aggressive Stanisław Leszczyński, and Poland ended its alliance with Russia.
The six year respite proved critical for Peter the Great. With characteristic energy, he quickly rebuilt his army. New officers were pulled out of the nobility in Russia and hired from abroad, and the replacement of soldiers lost at Narva was accomplished through heavy-handed conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
. Peter scraped money to finance his new campaign out of every hole he could find, raising taxes, creating new ones, monopolizing
Government monopoly
In economics, a government monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly in which a government agency or government corporation is the sole provider of a particular good or service and competition is prohibited by law...
the salt trade, and debasing
Debasement
Debasement is the practice of lowering the value of currency. It is particularly used in connection with commodity money such as gold or silver coins...
the currency
Currency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
, anything he could do to raise more cash. Most notoriously, he introduced a tax on beards
Beard tax
A beard tax is one of several taxes introduced throughout history on men who wear beards.-In England:In 1535, King Henry VIII of England, who wore a beard himself, introduced a tax on beards. The tax was a graduated tax, varying with the wearer's social position...
, and forced churches to melt their bells to make cannons. As new soldiers needed new weapons, much of the money went into the Russian metalworking
Metalworking
Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills,...
industry, vastly improving the quantity and quality of the industry, and through it the quality of the Russian weaponry. Because of the large distances involved in the northern war, Peter also built up a large contingent of cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
.
Peter tempered this new army in attacks on the Swedish holdings of Livonia
Livonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
and Ingria
Ingria
Ingria is a historical region in the eastern Baltic, now part of Russia, comprising the southern bank of the river Neva, between the Gulf of Finland, the Narva River, Lake Peipus in the west, and Lake Ladoga and the western bank of the Volkhov river in the east...
on the Baltic shore. Once he was sure that Charles was heading south, he ordered his field marshal
Field Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
, Boris Sheremetev, to attack the lightly defended colonies, whilst also sending a division south, to delay Charles XII and give Peter time to finish mending his forces. At the end of 1701, Sheremetev met a vastly outnumbered Swedish force
Battle of Erastfer
The battle of Erastfer took place on December 29, 1701 / December 30, 1701 / January 9 / 1702 near Erastfer in eastern Swedish Livonia between a Russian force of 12,000 men led by general Boris Sheremetev and a Swedish force of 2,200 under the command of Wolmar...
on the field at Erastfer in Livonia, soundly defeating them; he repeated the feat
Battle of Hummelshof
Battle of Hummelshof took place on July 19, 1702 near the small town Hummelshof in Swedish Livonia . It was the second significant Russian victory in the Great Northern War.- Prelude :...
again at Hummelshof
Hummuli
Hummuli is a small borough in Valga County, in southern Estonia. It's the administrative centre of Hummuli Parish. Hummuli has a population of 379 .In 1702 Battle of Hummelshof, part of the Great Northern War, took place near Hummuli....
in July 1702. These two victories, the first significant ones in the Russian campaign, helped boost Russian morale after the catastrophe at Narva. Peter then sent Sheremetev to Ingria, where he mopped up Swedish forces on the Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, not far from Saint Petersburg. It is the largest lake in Europe, and the 14th largest lake by area in the world.-Geography:...
isthmus
Isthmus
An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas usually with waterforms on either side.Canals are often built through isthmuses where they may be particularly advantageous to create a shortcut for marine transportation...
. October 1702 marked the taking
Siege of Nöteborg (1702)
The Siege of Nöteborg was one of the first sieges of the Great Northern War, when Russian forces captured the Swedish fortress of Nöteborg, later renamed Shlisselburg, in October 1702. With the aim of capturing the Swedish fortress of Nöteborg, Peter the Great assembled a force of 35,000 and...
of the Swedish fort of Nöteborg. In May 1703, Peter captured Nyenschantz fortress. He chose a spot at the mouth of the Neva, surrounded by marshes, to establish his fortress of Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. Originally an outpost against the Swedes and Peter's "window to the west", the fortress would later grow into one of Russia's largest and most important population centers, and under Peter, Russia's capital.Hughes, pp. 67-68
Sheremetev's success continued into 1704. The major inland city of Dorpat fell in July 1704, its walls breached by Peter's new artillery. This artillery then went on to play a pivotal role in the second Battle of Narva
Battle of Narva (1704)
The Battle of Narva was the second Russian siege of Swedish Narva during the Great Northern War, resulting in the capture of the town by Russia on 9 August 1704 and the subsequent massacre of all Swedish inhabitants....
. This time, with heavier numbers, and Charles XII far away in Poland, Peter was able to take the city, albeit with heavy casualties. The commander in the city violated the ideal of an honorable surrender by refused to give in, and once the Russians breached the city, the remaining Swedish forces were massacred. Overall, the many Swedish losses on the home front put a large dent in the Swedish economy, already strained by the effects of the war. Peter also rapidly assembled a new fleet in the Baltic, resembling his southern one.
Charles XII elected his own candidate to the Polish throne in 1704, and spent the next three years chasing down Augustus II, now fleeing west towards his native Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
. Charles XII met Peter's main army, dug in at Grodno, in early 1706. Unwilling to meet an elite force on foreign territory, Peter ordered his forces to retreat, but kept light forces in the area to harass the Swedes whenever possible. Part of the retreating column, led by Menshikov
Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov
Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov was a Russian statesman, whose official titles included Generalissimus, Prince of the Russian Empire and Duke of Izhora , Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Cosel. A highly appreciated associate and friend of Tsar Peter the Great, he was the de facto ruler of...
, met a smaller Swedish detachment at Kalisz
Kalisz
Kalisz is a city in central Poland with 106,857 inhabitants , the capital city of the Kalisz Region. Situated on the Prosna river in the southeastern part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship, the city forms a conurbation with the nearby towns of Ostrów Wielkopolski and Nowe Skalmierzyce...
, and in the ensuing battle
Battle of Kalisz
The Battle of Kalisz took place on October 29, 1706 in Kalisz, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Great Northern War. It was a three hour fight which could have been prevented if Augustus II of Poland had been better informed of certain matters concerning the Swedes and Russians. At the...
defeated it soundly. However, by 1707, Charles had finally chased down and deposed King Augustus, ending his Polish detour and bringing his attention squarely back to Russia.
Domestic revolts and the Ukrainian detour
With only 50,000 soldiers, Charles XII could not dream of conquering all of Russia. Instead, he reasoned that the great wartime pressure that Peter had placed on his country, coupled with the discontent of the boyar nobility, would hand him the victory he desired. Charles had a strong base for this decision, for Peter's heavy-handed taxation had raised discontent against the crown. In the summer of 1705, an unknown monk and a member of the streltsy started a rebellion in AstrakhanAstrakhan
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...
against what they saw as the destructive influence of the nobility and foreign influence. The rebellion was bloodily suppressed in March 1706. Similarly, 1705 also marked the rebellion of the Turkish Bashkirs
Bashkirs
The Bashkirs are a Turkic people indigenous to Bashkortostan extending on both parts of the Ural mountains, on the place where Europe meets Asia. Groups of Bashkirs also live in the republic of Tatarstan, Perm Krai, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Samara and Saratov Oblasts of...
, for parallel reasons; this rebellion was not put down until 1711.
More serious was the Bulavin Rebellion
Bulavin Rebellion
The Bulavin Rebellion ' is the name given to a violent civil uprising in Imperial Russia between the years 1707 and 1708. It takes its name from the Don Cossack Kondraty Bulavin who rose to its forefront as a sort of figurehead...
in 1707. Opposed to the government position regarding fugitives and influenced by anti foreignism, Konrad Bulavin, a leader of the Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don.- Etymology and origins :The Don Cossack Host was a frontier military organization from the end of the 16th until the early 20th century....
, started a rebellion. This was not the first uprising in the enstrangled relations
History of the Cossacks
- Early history :The origins of the first Cossacks are uncertain. The traditional historiography dates the emergence of Cossacks to the 14-15th centuries...
between Russia and the cossacks, but it followed the same pattern; the rebellion spread across the south widely, and at its climax may have involved as many as 100,000 men, but was ill-organized and badly led. The rebellion was systematically suppressed by Russian troops pulled off the front; dissension spread among Bulavin's men, and he committed suicide in July 1708. The remainder of the rebellion was mopped up by 1709.Hughes, pp. 71-73
Regardless, by the summer of 1708, Charles was positioned in Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, facing a road directly towards Moscow. However, he faced a desolate tundra, deliberately laid bare
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
by Russian forces and protected by the significant fortress of Smolensk
Smolensk
Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River. Situated west-southwest of Moscow, this walled city was destroyed several times throughout its long history since it was on the invasion routes of both Napoleon and Hitler. Today, Smolensk...
. His troops were constantly being harassed by Russian light troops, and reinforcements were still en route. Diplomatically, although Peter offered deals that would return all of the land he captured, save Saint Peterburg and Neva, Charles would not settle for anything less than Swedish victory. Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, fertile and as of yet untouched by the war, lay to the south; he also knew that Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
hetman
Hetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....
Ivan Mazepa
Ivan Mazepa
Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa , Cossack Hetman of the Hetmanate in Left-bank Ukraine, from 1687–1708. He was famous as a patron of the arts, and also played an important role in the Battle of Poltava where after learning of Peter I's intent to relieve him as acting Hetman of Ukraine and replace him...
, who largely controlled Ukraine under Peter, was secretly scheming against his tsar. Thus, the Swedes turned south, and entered Ukraine instead.Hughes, pp. 79-82
Historians still argue over whether or not a direct attack could have succeeded, but the Ukrainian diversion turned out to be a disaster for Charles. Charles's long baggage train out of Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, along with 12,000 reinforcements, were caught by fast-moving Russian cavalry in the fall of 1708. They harassed the reinforcements and supplies, and in the ensuing Battle of Lesnaya
Battle of Lesnaya
The Battle of Lesnaya , was one of the major battles of the Great Northern War. It took place on September 28, 1708 / September 29, 1708 / October 9, 1708 between a Russian army of 18,000 men commanded by the Princes Repnin and Menshikov, and a Swedish force of about 13,000 men, under the...
Peter's dragoons fought the Swedes to a standstill. Facing increasing Russian numbers, the Swedes were forced to burn their supplies, bury their cannons, and make a rush for Charles's main army; out of 12,000 men, only 6,000, and virtually none of the supplies, actually made it to Charles. With more men and no supplies, this only compounded Charles's food problems. The thought-of Cossack reinforcements proved to be illusory as well; although Mazepa defected to the Swedes, he only brought 3,000 troops with him. As retribution, Menshikov sacked and razed Baturyn
Baturyn
Baturyn , is a historic town in the Chernihiv Oblast of northern Ukraine. It is located in the Bakhmatskyi Raion of the oblast, on the banks of the Seym River...
, slaughtering upwards of 6,000 men, women, and children and completely destroying Mazepa's capital. No one else dared defect, and Ukraine remained firmly under Peter's control.
Battle of Poltava
Charles was running out of both time and options. Winter 1708-09 was a miserable one for the Swedes encamped in Ukraine, and in the following spring Charles was bogged down in a siege of the small Russian fortress of PoltavaPoltava
Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....
. Peter, still wary of engaging the Swedes in a pitched battle, slowly moved his troops through fortified positions to relieve the small fort. Charles foresaw that he could not take Poltava in time to avoid the Russians, but was confident that his 25,000 veteran troops, despite dwindling numbers, lack of supplies, and exhaustion, could defeat the 40,000 Russians in battle and finally end the war with Swedish victory. Peter, meanwhile, could afford to be patient; the Swedes were marooned far from support or reinforcements, and were losing numbers every day. The most direct path between the Russian camp to the north and Poltava was through treacherous forest and marsh, and thus Peter foresaw that any Swedish attack would double around the left, heading west before turning north through open ground towards the Russian army. Peter built six earthen redoubt
Redoubt
A redoubt is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, though others are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldiers outside the main defensive line and can be a permanent structure or a...
s in a line facing this probable Swedish charge, later augmenting them with four more, extending south in a "T".Stone, pp. 54-56Konstam, pp. 62-74
Litter (vehicle)
The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...
. To Peter's satisfaction, the Swedes moved in exactly the way that he had anticipated. Charles was well aware of the redoubts that Peter had dug, and had reasoned that, to avoid being bogged down and losing the element of surprise, he would rush past them as quickly as he could, and accept the resulting losses, even leaving the bulk of his artillery behind to speed his movement. However, Charles was not aware of the additional four pieces of earthwork that Peter had dug on the eve of battle; to surmount this new problem, Charles spent valuable time rearranging his troops from firing lines
Line (formation)
The line formation is a standard tactical formation which has been used in Early modern warfare.It continues the phalanx formation or shield wall of infantry armed with polearms in use during antiquity and the Middle Ages....
, superb for volley fire
Volley fire (infantry tactic)
Volley fire, as a military tactic, is the practice of having a line of soldiers all fire their gunssimultaneously at the enemy forces on command, usually to make up for inaccuracy, slow rate of fire, and limited range, and to create a maximum effect....
, to faster-moving but less fire-ready columns
Column (formation)
A military column is a formation of soldiers marching together in one or more files in which the file is significantly longer than the width of ranks in the formation...
, a time-consuming move that lost him the element of surprise he had hoped for earlier. With Peter now aware of Charles's movements, the plan quickly went awry; many of the Swedish forces got caught up fighting the redoubts anyway, and the smoke from fire on both sides, and the din from the engagements between the Russian and Swedish cavalry ahead of the main force, prevented him from effectively organizing his army. Charles pulled his forces west to reorganize back into a firing line, in a low wooded area to side of the main Russian camp.
Meanwhile, Peter prepared as well, moving his cavalry north to move on the Swedish left flank and also arranging his troops into a line. Charles took on the burden of attack, once again counting on the steadiness and experience of his troops to break the Russian lines. The Swedish right wing led the ensuing attack; as in earlier battles, the veteran troops outfought the Russians, collapsing them back and seizing supporting cannon as well. However, the weight of massed Russian fire opened a hole in the middle of the Swedish line, and the Russians, now fully able to make full use of such an event, poured through it and broke the Swedish column in half. The Swedish line broke and scattered, and 10,000 Swedes were killed or captured; most of the rest were captured
Surrender at Perevolochna
The surrender at Perevolochna was the capitulation of almost the entire Swedish army on June 30, 1709 / July 1, 1709 / July 11, 1709...
on the banks of the Dnieper by Menshikov. Only a few hundred, including Charles himself, escaped south to Turkish exile.Konstam, pp. 74-88
The Battle of Poltava was one of the most decisive victory in Russian history. The result of the Battle of Poltava, and of the following surrender, was that the bulk of the Swedish army was simply annihilated, leaving Sweden wide open for attack. At home, the victory gave Peter the political capital, and the war lull, he needed to crush ongoing domestic issues; in fact, if Peter had lost the battle, opposition to the tsar's reforms could have become active support for a new tsar. Poltava demonstrates how far the Russian army had come; after all, just nine years earlier, the Russians had been almost destroyed fighting the Swedes with an even greater numerical advantage. Peter the Great fully appreciated the importance of the battle's outcome, and made sure to thank the captured Swedes for their "lessons". However, the battle did not win the war, which was not yet even half over.
Ottoman detour
The Ottomans had been apprehensive of Peter's militaristic gains, but had stayed out of the war. However, edged on by France and by Charles XII, the Ottomans, at the time harboring a exiled Charles XII, declared war on Peter by 1710. Now enjoying a temporary lull in the Great Northern War thanks to Poltava, Peter was quick, indeed eager, to move south. He pulled many of his troops, as well as Sheremetev, his most reliable general, south across the whole length of Russia to fight this new war. This was not the first time that Russia had fought against the Ottomans, and it would not be the last; however, like in earlier wars, Peter underestimated the distances involved and the stress of having to fight two wars simultaneously. Peter was the first to actively encourage WallachiaWallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
and Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, mostly Christian areas under Turkish control, to revolt against their Ottoman rulers.
By spring 1711 Peter was ready. He moved his army from Kiev down through Poland, skirting wide of the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, before crossing the Dnester into Moldavia, aiming to sever it from Turkish rule. In reality, the campaign turned out to be a disaster; the 40,000 Russian troops, stymied by the enormous distances involved, were instead trapped on the river Prut
Prut
The Prut is a long river in Eastern Europe. In part of its course it forms the border between Romania and Moldova.-Overview:...
by 130,000 Turkish troops. In the only major battle, the Russians successfully held the Ottomans, unaccustomed to concentrated Russian firepower, at bay, but the fight was indeed hopeless, as Peter was trapped and facing a superior Turkish force. The resultant treaty was surprisingly lenient considering that the Russian force was facing annihilation; Peter lost Azov, was forced to abandon his southern fleet, promised not to meddle with Polish affairs, and guaranteed safe passage to Sweden for Charles XII. In return, Peter was able to extricate himself from the situation, and continued to hold a dominant position in the Great Northern War.Stone, pp. 56-57
Final Swedish defeat and aftermath
With the issue with the Ottomans now settled, Peter turned his attention back to the north, and to the dismantling of the Swedish Empire on the BalticBaltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
. He seized Viborg
Vyborg
Vyborg is a town in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, situated on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of the Bay of Vyborg, to the northwest of St. Petersburg and south from Russia's border with Finland, where the Saimaa Canal enters the Gulf of Finland...
, Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, and Reval in 1710. With Charles XII now deposed, the coalition against Sweden was formed again. Peter divided his army between assisting his allies in the south Baltic, and his own attacks in the east. What is now Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
and Livonia
Livonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
, weakly defended, fell quickly. Peter then moved north and invaded Finland
Greater Wrath
The Greater Wrath is a term used in Finnish history for the Russian invasion and subsequent military occupation of Eastern Sweden, now Finland, from 1714 until the treaty of Nystad 1721, which ended the Great Northern War, although sometimes the term is used to denote all of the Great Northern...
in 1713. Meanwhile, Charles, traveling incognito, returned to Sweden in 1714. The Swedes, with their empire broken and nothing left to lose, continued to fight. At sea, the prebuilt Russian fleet, which had proved useless when victory was still uncertain, was proving its worth at consolidating Russian victories; victories at Gangut
Battle of Gangut
The Battle of Gangut took place on July 27Jul./ August 7, 1714Greg. during the Great Northern War , in the waters of Riilahti Bay, north of the Hanko Peninsula, near the site of the modern-day city of Hanko, Finland, between the Swedish Navy and Imperial Russian Navy...
in 1714, Ösel
Battle of Osel Island
The Battle of Osel Island took place on May 24, 1719, during the Great Northern War. It was fought near the island of Saaremaa . It led to a victory for the Russian captain Naum Senyavin, whose forces captured three enemy vessels, sustaining as few as eighteen casualties...
in 1719, and Grengam
Battle of Grengam
The Battle of Grengam of 1720 was the last major naval battle in the Great Northern War that took place in the Åland Islands, in the Ledsund strait between the island communities of Föglö and Lemland. The battle marked the end of Russian and Swedish offensive naval operations in Baltic waters...
in 1720 gave Peter control of the sea.
Even while he was dismantling the Swedish Empire, Peter to continued to reform and refine his army. Russia's administration system at the time, the prikaz
Prikaz
Prikaz was an administrative or judicial office in Muscovy and Russia of 15th-18th centuries. The term is usually translated as "ministry", "office" or "department". In modern Russian "prikaz" means administrative or military order...
y, was an antiquated, jumbled form of governance, with overlapping jurisdictions and lacking separation of powers
Separation of powers
The separation of powers, often imprecisely used interchangeably with the trias politica principle, is a model for the governance of a state. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the unmodified Constitution of the Roman Republic...
. In 1717 he began replacing these instead with collegias
Collegium (ministry)
The collegia were government departments in Imperial Russia, established in 1717 by Peter the Great...
, or "colleges", based on the Swedish model. As a rule Peter employed equal parts native Russians and foreign servitors. Unlike the prikazy they replaced, colleges could not make a decision without a consensus of their members, so-called "governance by board" that helped stifle wayward decisions as well as corruption. Among the first two colleges created were the College of War
College of War
The College of War was a Russian executive body , created in the government reform of 1717. It was the only of the six original and three new colleges to survive the decentralising reforms of Catherine II of Russia...
, which controlled the army and was led by Menshikov, and the Admiralty Board, which controlled the navy and was led by admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
Fyodor Apraksin.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 228-231Stone, pp. 57-60
The sudden rise of Russia to power, and its protracted success in the war, triggered waves of concern across Europe. To help quell these waves, Peter traveled to Paris in 1717. Although his trip was inconclusive—France only promised to avoid involvement—once again, it gave Peter an opportunity to study Western Europe. In late 1718, Charles XII himself was shot through the head in a minor battle, possibly by his own soldiers. A broken Sweden sought allies against the Russian juggernaut, but the search proved fruitless, and with Russian troops regularly crossing the Baltic and raiding mainland Sweden, even reaching the suburbs of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, the Swedes finally admitted ultimate defeat.
In the resultant Treaty of Nystad
Treaty of Nystad
The Treaty of Nystad was the last peace treaty of the Great Northern War. It was concluded between the Tsardom of Russia and Swedish Empire on 30 August / 10 September 1721 in the then Swedish town of Nystad , after Sweden had settled with the other parties in Stockholm and Frederiksborg.During...
, Peter was extremely lenient with the Swedes, keeping Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and part of southern Finland (especially Saint Petersburg) in exchange for the return of most of Finland to the Swedes and the payment of 2 million silver riksdaler
Swedish riksdaler
The riksdaler was the name of a Swedish coin first minted in 1604. Between 1777 and 1873, it was the currency of Sweden. The daler, like the dollar, was named after the German Thaler. The similarly named Reichsthaler, rijksdaalder, and rigsdaler were used in Germany and Austria-Hungary, the...
. Peter could afford to be lenient, as the war was a decisive shift in the European balance of power
European balance of power
The Balance of Power in Europe is an international relations concept that applies historically and currently to the nations of Europe...
. The Swedish Empire was carved up, and its position as a great power
Great power
A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength and diplomatic and cultural influence which may cause small powers to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions...
was taken by Russia. Celebrating these victories, Peter took the title of imperator, and the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
was thus founded. The Northern War left Russia as the dominant power in Northern Europe
Northern Europe
Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
, and gave it firm control over the Baltic and thus a "window to the west." The war had also bettered Russia's position with respect to its Polish rival, which came to a head much later under Catherine the Great with the First Partition of Poland
First Partition of Poland
The First Partition of Poland or First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in 1772 as the first of three partitions that ended the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. Growth in the Russian Empire's power, threatening the Kingdom of Prussia and the...
. Finally, it put Russia into direct contact with another of the great powers of Europe, Germany. Peter himself emerged a national hero; scripts at the time compared him to Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
, Sampson
Samson
Samson, Shimshon ; Shamshoun or Sampson is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh ....
, and David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
.
Persian campaign and final military reforms
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
and Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, looking to seize land at the expense of the declining Safavid Persia and deny it to the Ottomans. Upon declaring war, Peter ordered the construction of the Caspian Flotilla
Caspian Flotilla
The Caspian Flotilla is the oldest Russian military flotilla, stationed in the Caspian Sea. It was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1945.-Establishment:...
and sailed down the Volga to command a joint land-sea campaign that took the city of Derbent
Derbent
Derbent |Lak]]: Чурул, Churul; Persian: دربند; Judæo-Tat: דארבּאנד/Дэрбэнд/Dərbənd) is a city in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, close to the Azerbaijani border. It is the southernmost city in Russia, and it is the second most important city of Dagestan...
, before being forced to return to Astrakhan for supplies. The Russian forces fought on, facing little resistance, without Peter's involvement, taking Resht late that year and Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
the next before Persia finally sued for peace.
Domestically, Peter contributed one last major element to Russia before his death in 1725—his Table of Ranks. Introduced in 1722, the Table organized the four major governmental branches, the army, navy, civil service, and court, into 14 major ranks. This standardized government positions and allowed officers to accurately gauge their relative importance; there was no table for common men. The Table was Peter's way of handling the appointment of nobility, as well as organizing Russian military positions; Peter had not appointed any new boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
s, and the old honor code of mestnichestvo
Mestnichestvo
In Russian history, Mestnichestvo was a feudal hierarchical system in Russia from the 15th to 17th centuries. Mestnichestvo revolved around a simple principle: the boyar who estimated that his origins were more ancient and his personal services to the tsar more valuable could claim a higher state...
, which placed more stress on hereditary origins then on actual skill, had been rightfully abolished in 1682. He had resorted to the ad-hoc appointment before, but by the time of the Great Northern War this was quickly proving tedious, necessitating the change. Those that reached a certain level on the table were granted personal nobility
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...
, and for those that reached rank 12 or 8, depending on the service, hereditary nobility
Hereditary Title
Hereditary titles, in a general sense, are titles, positions or styles that are hereditary and thus tend or are bound to remain in particular families....
was granted, thus both rewarding merit and satisfying Peter's nobility. The Table, with minor changes, continued to find use until it was finally abolished in 1917.Hughes, pp. 165-169
Catherine I and Peter II
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 239-243Stone, pp. 61-63
Peter had crowned his second wife, Catherine
Catherine I of Russia
Catherine I , the second wife of Peter the Great, reigned as Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death.-Life as a peasant woman:The life of Catherine I was said by Voltaire to be nearly as extraordinary as that of Peter the Great himself. There are no documents that confirm her origins. Born on...
, empress of Russia in 1724, strengthening her claim to the throne and making her a leading candidate, alongside Peter's grandson Peter Alekseyevich
Peter II of Russia
Pyotr II Alekseyevich was Emperor of Russia from 1727 until his death. He was the only son of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, son of Peter I of Russia by his first wife Eudoxia Lopukhina, and Princess Charlotte, daughter of Duke Louis Rudolph of Brunswick-Lüneburg and sister-in-law of Charles VI,...
. Peter, a child at the time, was backed by the old nobility, while Catherine found support in the newer class, especially Menshikov. The Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guard regiments, which had associated with Catherine during her trips alongside her husband during his later military campaigns, decided the issue by demonstrating in Catherine's support. The opposition collapsed, and Catherine I was named the new tsar. The two palace guard regiments would decide many such political issues in the future, resembling the old streltsy in this regard. Catherine left most of the work of ruling to her close adviser Menshikov. Her most important contribution was the formation of the Supreme Privy Council
Supreme Privy Council
The Supreme Privy Council of Imperial Russia was founded on 8 February 1726 as a body of advisors to Catherine I.Originally, the council included six members — Alexander Menshikov, Fyodor Apraksin, Gavrila Golovkin, Andrey Osterman, Peter Tolstoy, and Dmitry Galitzine. Several months later,...
, a small group of advisers to the tsar (of which Menshikov was a part), and her development of the two royal guard regiments.
Catherine did not rule long, and died in 1727. Although she had two surviving daughters, Menshikov engineered the crowning of Peter's grandson, Peter II
Peter II of Russia
Pyotr II Alekseyevich was Emperor of Russia from 1727 until his death. He was the only son of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, son of Peter I of Russia by his first wife Eudoxia Lopukhina, and Princess Charlotte, daughter of Duke Louis Rudolph of Brunswick-Lüneburg and sister-in-law of Charles VI,...
, as the new tsar. Peter II was not yet 12 years old, and Menshikov aggressively maneuvered to strengthen his position; he married Peter to his own daughter, brought him into his own household, and began to methodically weaken his opponents in the Privy Council. In the end, Menshikov overreached; his bold grabs at power alarmed the Russian nobility, and Peter, increasingly disliking Menshikov, allied himself with Prince Ivan Dolgorukov
Dolgorukov
Dolgoroukov is the name of a princely Russian family Dolgorukovs of Rurikid stock. Descendants of Mikhail of Chernigov, they took their name from one prince of Obolensk, whose sobriquet was Dolgorouky, or "Long-Armed" in Russian, alluding their lineage to the ancient Persian monarchy. Among its...
instead. Menshikov was exiled to Siberia, where he died in 1729. Peter II himself died in 1730, succumbing to smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, again leaving no heir.
The short reigns of both Catherine and Peter II were marked by the slow degradation of the Russian army and navy. Peter's draconian taxes were reduced, military units disbanded, and the navy was left to rot at anchor. The army would again be strengthened for various small actions in the 1730s and 1740s, but the declining trend of the Russian navy was not reversed for centuries.
Anna I
The next leading candidate to the throne, as chosen by the Privy Council, was Anna Ivanovna, who was the daughter of Peter's late brother Ivan VIvan V of Russia
Ivan V Alekseyevich Romanov was a joint Tsar of Russia who co-reigned between 1682 and 1696. He was the youngest son of Alexis I of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya. His reign was only formal, since he had serious physical and mental disabilities...
. The primary reason for their choice was her political weakness as a woman and widow, something that the Council moved aggressively to take advantage of; they declared that they would approve her crowning only if she gave up the power to make and amend taxes, declare war, control the army, grant and revoke estates, and appoint people to high positions in the government. In short, the Privy Council was aiming to gut the power of the tsar and make the Russian Empire a de facto oligarchy
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
. However, the plan did not come to fruition; the Russian nobility was terrified by the prospects of such a shift in power, as were the palace guard regiments, and with their collective force Anna was able to tear up the restrictions placed on her and dissolve the Council for good.
Anna had few friends in the Russian government due to her time in Courland
Courland
Courland is one of the historical and cultural regions of Latvia. The regions of Semigallia and Selonia are sometimes considered as part of Courland.- Geography and climate :...
, and intense distrust towards the Russian nobility that had tried to slight her once already. Therefore, she staffed her rule mostly with foreigners, especially Baltic Germans, led by her deeply unpopular favorite Ernst Johann von Biron
Ernst Johann von Biron
Ernst Johann von Biron was a Duke of Courland and Semigallia and regent of the Russian Empire .-Biography:Born as Ernst Johann Biren in Kalnciems, Courland, he was the grandson of a groom in the service of Jacob Kettler, Duke of Courland, who bestowed upon him a small estate, which Biron's...
. She often elected favorites to important positions, regardless of their actual experience, and thus corruption ran rampart as many tried to accumulate personal wealth and influence. Nonetheless, the foreign office, under Andrey Osterman, and the army, under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich
Burkhard Christoph von Munnich
Count Burkhard Christoph von Münnich was a Danish-born German soldier-engineer who became a field marshal and political figure in the Russian Empire. He was the major Russian Army reformer and founder of several elite military formations during the reign of Anna of Russia. As a statesman, he is...
, benefited greatly from foreign influence; it serves to note that both men had previously served under Peter the Great. The palace guards had helped her ascend to the throne, but all the same, Anna created a third Izmaylovsky
Izmaylovsky Regiment
Izmaylovsky Regiment was one of the oldest regiments of the Russian army, a subdivision of the 1st Guards Infantry Division of the Imperial Russian Guard. It was formed in Moscow on 22 September 1730. The first colonel of the regiment was appointed Adjutant general Count Karl Gustav von Löwenwolde...
regiment to balance out their power.
Münnich's reforms
Münnich, a tireless and power-hungry figure, had accumulated experience fighting in the War of the Spanish SuccessionWar of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...
before traveling to Russia and fighting during Peter's campaigns as an engineer. As a German delegate independent from the Russian nobility, he appealed to Anna, an appeal that Münnich used to ascend to presidency of the War College
College of War
The College of War was a Russian executive body , created in the government reform of 1717. It was the only of the six original and three new colleges to survive the decentralising reforms of Catherine II of Russia...
in 1732. Münnich worked to develop a smaller, stronger military. He disbanded superfluous units and introduced numerous improvements in financial management, whilst continuing the status quo of letting the navy rot at anchor. He established Cadet Corps
Cadet Corps (Russia)
The Cadet Corps is an admissions-based all boys military academy which prepared boys to become commissioned officers. Boys between the ages of 8 and 15 were enrolled. It was founded in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire in 1731 by Tsarina Anne. The term of education was seven years...
to train young nobles for military service, effectively replacing Peter's requirement that they serve in the ranks first, as well as reducing the military service requirement to 25 years—still a draconian demand, but considerably better than Peter's theoretically lifelong model.
Münnich also worked towards making the Russian army more flexible and efficient. He increased the number of artillery pieces per infantry units, and redistributed grenadiers among them to increase their effectiveness. Münnich also introduced important changes in Russian cavalry. Prior to Münnich, most Russian cavalry had been dragoon
Dragoon
The word dragoon originally meant mounted infantry, who were trained in horse riding as well as infantry fighting skills. However, usage altered over time and during the 18th century, dragoons evolved into conventional light cavalry units and personnel...
s, moving on cavalry but fighting on foot. Peter also had cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s, which filled out the traditional light cavalry
Light cavalry
Light cavalry refers to lightly armed and lightly armored troops mounted on horses, as opposed to heavy cavalry, where the riders are heavily armored...
roles of raiding, harassing, monitoring, and scouting out enemy troops. Münnich introduced regiments of hussar
Hussar
Hussar refers to a number of types of light cavalry which originated in Hungary in the 14th century, tracing its roots from Serbian medieval cavalry tradition, brought to Hungary in the course of the Serb migrations, which began in the late 14th century....
s (light cavalry staffed mostly by Eastern European foreigners) to complement the irregular cossacks with regular troops. More acute was the distinct lack of heavy cavalry
Heavy cavalry
Heavy cavalry is a class of cavalry whose primary role was to engage in direct combat with enemy forces . Although their equipment differed greatly depending on the region and historical period, they were generally mounted on large powerful horses, and were often equipped with some form of scale,...
regiments to perform shock attacks; Münnich introduced three elite guard cavalry regiments (peers to the three guard infantry regiments) and several regiments of heavy cuirassier
Cuirassier
Cuirassiers were mounted cavalry soldiers equipped with armour and firearms, first appearing in late 15th-century Europe. They were the successors of the medieval armoured knights...
s (named for the heavy breastplate
Breastplate
A breastplate is a device worn over the torso to protect it from injury, as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status. A breastplate is sometimes worn by mythological beings as a distinctive item of clothing.- Armour :...
or cuirass
Cuirass
A cuirass is a piece of armour, formed of a single or multiple pieces of metal or other rigid material, which covers the front of the torso...
they wore) to fill out this role. These new regiments rode the heaviest horses in Russia at the time.
War of Polish Succession
The first test of the Russian military strength in the post-Peter era, although not a very difficult one, was the War of the Polish SuccessionWar of the Polish Succession
The War of the Polish Succession was a major European war for princes' possessions sparked by a Polish civil war over the succession to Augustus II, King of Poland that other European powers widened in pursuit of their own national interests...
in 1733-1734. Following the death of Peter's old ally Augustus II
Augustus II the Strong
Frederick Augustus I or Augustus II the Strong was Elector of Saxony and King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania ....
of Poland, an election to throne a new king. Russia had expected Augustus III
Augustus III of Poland
Augustus III, known as the Saxon ; ; also Prince-elector Friedrich August II was the Elector of Saxony in 1733-1763, as Frederick Augustus II , King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1734-1763.-Biography:Augustus was the only legitimate son of Augustus II the Strong, Imperial Prince-Elector...
, Augustus's son, to succeed to his father's throne; however, in the fall of 1723 the election was decided instead in favor of the French-backed Stanisław Leszczyński, the same man that had been Charles XII's puppet king during the Great Northern War. Russia and the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
both agreed that a French-backed king of the Polish throne was unacceptable, and thus intervened to replace Stanisław with the younger Augustus.Stone, pp. 63-64Prothero and Benians, pp. 303-304
Thus, in 1723, a Russian force under the exiled Irish general Peter Lacy
Peter Lacy
Count Peter von Lacy, or Pyotr Petrovich Lacy , as he was known in Russia , was one of the most successful Russian imperial commanders before Rumyantsev and Suvorov...
invaded Poland, aiming to depose Stanisław. Lacy carefully organized a second election that proclaimed Augustus III king, and pursued the fleeing Stanisław to Danzig in early 1734 before handing off control to Münnich. France was unable to support its distant ally—the largest French force during the war, deployed off of the Baltic, consisted of just 2,000 men—and consoled itself by attacking Austria instead, sparking major action in the Rhineland and across Italy. Meanwhile, in Poland, Stanisław, unable to break the siege on Danzig, fled to France, leaving Russia to reconfirm Augustus III as king. Poland was confirmed as a Russian buffer state
Buffer state
A buffer state is a country lying between two rival or potentially hostile greater powers, which by its sheer existence is thought to prevent conflict between them. Buffer states, when authentically independent, typically pursue a neutralist foreign policy, which distinguishes them from satellite...
, and in the following decades Russian troops would intervene there at will. Lacy led troops west towards the ongoing fight between Austria and France, but did not see action before the Treaty of Vienna
Treaty of Vienna (1738)
The Treaty of Vienna or Peace of Vienna was signed on November 18, 1738. It ended the War of the Polish Succession. By the terms of the treaty, Stanisław Leszczyński renounced his claim on the Polish throne and recognized Augustus III, Duke of Saxony. As compensation he received instead the...
was ratified, ending the short war.
Russo-Turkish War of 1735-1739
After his troops returned from Poland, Münnich quickly began planning for an expansionist campaign against Russia's old enemyHistory of the Russo-Turkish wars
The Russo-Turkish wars were a series of wars fought between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire during the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries...
the Turks
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
and their Crimean Tatar
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
holdings. He was provoked by constant Crimean raids into Russian territory, and by the entanglement of the Ottoman Empire in its war with Persia. Münnich was confident that the increasingly more elite Russian troops could defeat whatever the Ottomans were fielding, and thus planned an ambition campaign aimed at eventually taking control of the Ottoman capital of Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
. In this plan, he faced a number of strategic obstacles. The major fortress of Azov
Azov
-External links:** *...
lay in the east and denied access to the Sea of Azov
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov , known in Classical Antiquity as Lake Maeotis, is a sea on the south of Eastern Europe. It is linked by the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea to the south and is bounded on the north by Ukraine mainland, on the east by Russia, and on the west by the Ukraine's Crimean...
, and the Crimean Tatars controlled the whole of the north shore of the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
. Because of the large distances involved, the Russian army would need a long supply train, and any one campaign would be vulnerable to getting cut off by actions against this baggage trail. Furthermore, the area was defended by several major rivers flowing into the Black Sea, each with Turkish fortresses alongside it.Stone, pp. 64-67Prothero and Benians, pp. 304-308
File:Russo-Turkish_War_of_1735-1739.svg|500px|center|border|Clickable imagemap of the Black Sea area during the war.
poly 570 159 577 181 517 211 547 231 533 257 519 236 496 281 433 272 419 281 398 273 393 256 378 246 414 203 503 175 Sea of Azov
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov , known in Classical Antiquity as Lake Maeotis, is a sea on the south of Eastern Europe. It is linked by the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea to the south and is bounded on the north by Ukraine mainland, on the east by Russia, and on the west by the Ukraine's Crimean...
rect 574 158 630 198 Azov
Azov
-External links:** *...
rect 337 195 393 244 Perekop
Perekop
Perekop is a village located at the Perekop Isthmus connecting Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainian mainland. It is known for the Fortress Or Qapi that served as the gateway to Crimea...
poly 240 515 334 461 395 466 499 513 611 519 669 476 663 421 532 327 468 278 444 293 425 287 360 328 335 317 349 299 335 284 301 277 299 272 348 245 343 231 278 227 276 217 294 210 279 193 230 205 186 268 182 305 144 335 139 385 123 386 100 433 122 478 153 499 Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
poly 84 123 65 130 104 199 119 193 Prut River
poly 346 245 383 247 398 258 400 274 421 284 434 271 467 278 445 295 424 288 360 329 338 317 350 300 302 276 301 271 Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
poly 160 44 152 57 209 103 218 93 Southern Bug
Southern Bug
The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh), is a river located in Ukraine. The source of the river is in the west of Ukraine, in the Volyn-Podillia Upland, about 145 km from the Polish border, and flows southeasterly into the Bug Estuary through the southern steppes...
poly 111 64 97 78 175 143 189 131 Dnester River
poly 322 20 311 34 390 84 399 69 Dnepr River
poly 3 379 9 396 105 362 98 344 Dunabe River
rect 152 503 223 523 Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
rect 10 421 107 437 Philippopolis
Philippopolis
The term Philippopolis , which translates as "Philip's Town," may refer to the following cities:*Plovdiv, Bulgaria *Shahba, Syria...
poly 1 397 11 398 111 358 128 385 123 386 105 423 11 420 9 438 98 438 121 480 108 488 3 462 Balkan Mountains
Balkan Mountains
The Balkan mountain range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea...
rect 246 187 320 225 Ochakov
rect 175 185 236 200 Bender
rect 183 224 259 240 Kulevcha
rect 128 227 180 242 Larga
Larga
Larga may refer to several villages in Romania:* Larga , a village in Dofteana Commune, Bacău County* Larga, a village in Samarineşti Commune, Gorj County* Larga, a village in Suciu de Sus Commune, Maramureş County...
rect 128 248 182 263 Kagul
Kagul
Also called tagutok , bantula or tagungtung and kuratung .The kagul is a type of Philippine bamboo scraper gong/slit drum of the Maguindanaon and Visayans with a jagged edge on one side, played with two beaters, one scarping the jagged edge and the other one making a beat...
rect 132 156 224 179 Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
rect 13 217 112 240 Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
rect 152 267 206 282 Izmail
Izmail
Izmail is a historic town near the Danube river in the Odessa Oblast of south-western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Izmail Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast....
rect 56 305 136 321 Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
rect 100 334 163 350 Silistria
rect 252 518 495 555 Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
rect 599 47 704 80 Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
desc bottom-left
The war opened with a failed Russian raid on the Crimea in 1735, but the first major campaign did not come until 1736. Münnich divided the Russian troops into two groups, a main army under his command aiming to attack Perekop
Perekop
Perekop is a village located at the Perekop Isthmus connecting Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainian mainland. It is known for the Fortress Or Qapi that served as the gateway to Crimea...
at the mouth of the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, and a smaller detachment under Lacy moving towards Azov. Münnich easily stormed the Tatar defenses at Perekop in May 1736, but was unable to bring his foe to battle, as most fled for the mountains. He satisfied himself with pillaging the countryside, but his troops were suffering from thirst and disease, so he withdrew in autumn. Lacy's attack was far more successful; almost as soon as he lay siege to the fortress, its powder magazine
Magazine (artillery)
Magazine is the name for an item or place within which ammunition is stored. It is taken from the Arabic word "makahazin" meaning "warehouse".-Ammunition storage areas:...
exploded, crippling the defenders. Azov surrendered in June.
Encouraged and somewhat alarmed by the sudden Russian gains, Austria joined the war in 1736, aiming to seize control of a part of the Turkish Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
for itself. With Azov now firmly under Russian control, the campaign shifted east along the Black Sea. Lacy infiltrated Crimea again in 1737 with 40,000 men (interestingly, passing over the narrow western sandbars instead of through Perekop) and again shattered and pillaged the region, but as with Münnich's attack the previous year, suffered from disease and thirst, and thus was forced to withdraw. Meanwhile, Münnich and 80,000 men crossed the Southern Bug
Southern Bug
The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh), is a river located in Ukraine. The source of the river is in the west of Ukraine, in the Volyn-Podillia Upland, about 145 km from the Polish border, and flows southeasterly into the Bug Estuary through the southern steppes...
upstream of the major Turkish fortress at Ochakiv
Ochakiv
Ochakiv is a city in the Mykolaiv Oblast of southern Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Ochakivsky Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on a peninsula in the Black Sea, at the entrance to the Dnieper Rivers's estuary,...
, before doubling back and laying siege
Siege of Ochakov (1737)
The Siege of Ochakov was a siege in which the Russian army, led by Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, captured the Ottoman fortress of Ochakov...
to it. A lucky shot during the bombardment again burst the fortress's powder magazine, and Ochakiv was surrendered to the Russians soon afterwards.
Prut
The Prut is a long river in Eastern Europe. In part of its course it forms the border between Romania and Moldova.-Overview:...
. However, the situation proved to be a repeat of Peter the Great's campaign in 1711; once again the Russian's supply line was cut by encircling Turkish cavalry. Confident that he could break through this trap once he needed to, on 28 August 1737 (N.S.) he attacked
Battle of Stavuchany
The Battle of Stavuchany was a battle between the Russian and Ottoman armies, which took place on August 17 of 1739 during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735-1739....
the main Turkish encampment at Stavuchany. Münnich landed a diversionary blow to the Turkish right flank, then massed troops on its right and smashed through the Turks, capturing the Turkish encampment, artillery, supplies, and the Khotyn Fortress
Khotyn Fortress
The Khotyn Fortress is a fortification complex located on the right bank of the Dniester River in Khotyn, Chernivtsi Oblast of western Ukraine. It is situated on a territory of the historical northern Bessarabia region which was split in 1940 between Ukraine and Moldova...
on the upper Dnestr.
Still, the battle was a hollow victory. Austria signed peace with the Ottomans that year, and without an ally and unsure of further gains, Russia was decided to sign the Treaty of Niš and end its war. The army had suffered enormously from disease, and for all the men and money that the war cost Russia only gained some sparsely populated steppe north of the Black Sea, and the old prize of Azov, under the condition that it would remain unfortified. Still, the war did demonstrate two things. Firstly, it showed how much the Russian army had advanced, as it easily beat back larger Ottoman forces during the war; Münnich had been overly ambitious, but his assumptions on the superiority of his troops were not misplaced. Secondly, it established and maintained the pattern that would develop in future wars between the Turks and the Russians: early Russian gains on river fortresses were to be nullified by the impact of disease, and deeper attacks cut off from their supply train by fast-moving Turkish and Tatar cavalry.
Elizabeth
Anna I died in autumn 1740. Shortly before her death she had appointed her infant grandnephew, Ivan V, as tsar, and nominated her old favorite Biron as the regentRegent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
. The gesture did not save Biron from the many enemies he had made over the course of Anna's rule, and he was exiled to Siberia within three weeks of her death. Regency was taken up by Ivan's mother Anna Leopoldovna
Anna Leopoldovna
Anna Leopoldovna of Russia , also known as Anna Karlovna , regent of Russia for a few months during the minority of her baby son Ivan...
. This arrangement did not either. Noting her cousin's distaste for her and consolidating her control over the guards, Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth, executed a bloodless coup and took the throne. Anna and the infant Ivan were carried away and imprisoned, and Elizabeth arrested all her known and suspected opponents along the way.Stone, pp. 67-68Prothero and Benians, pp. 309-312
Elizabeth's had been brought up in relative quiet, and from early childhood had been praised for her beauty. Her interests were clothes, shopping, dancing, and men, and throughout her reign she had a extremely public and extremely long list of suitors. Nonetheless she did much to reincarnate Peter's reign; upon gaining the throne she immediately restored the Senate and scattered Anna's German administration, sentencing both Münnich and Ostermann to death (a sentence commuted to exile at the scaffold). By scattering the hated Germans and projecting an image of beauty and affection, Elizabeth maintained one of the most popular public images among the Russian populace at the time. She entrusted much of her administration to Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a man she personally disliked, but whose skills she shrewdly understood were needed by the state.
Russo-Swedish War of 1741–1743
The political turmoil of 1741 had given Sweden hopes of retribution for its losses in the Great Northern War. Sweden had additionally been egged on by French diplomats aiming to keep Russia out of the War of Austrian Succession. Sweden had declared war on Russia, moving troops towards Saint Petersburg. It thinly justified the war with support for Elizabeth's taking of the throne, and Elizabeth promised to cede certain Russian territories in return. Once securely on the throne, however, Elizabeth rejected the terms and direct her military against the woefully unprepared Swedes.Peter Lacy led the invasion of Finland, defended by only a tiny force, in the fall of 1741. He aimed specifically to destroy as much of the countryside as he could, skillfully using cossacks to the best of their raiding abilities. Seeing that its ally would be crushed, France tried to mediate peace, but to no avail. Lacy coordinated a second march in 1742, keeping along the coast of Finland so as to pin down the 17,000 Swedish troops, an objective he achieved at Helsingfors. The Swedes surrendered, and Lacy occupied both Helsingfors and the Finnish capital of Abo
Turku
Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...
. By 1743, with Swedish defeat complete and fears of a coalition to defend Sweden growing, Elizabeth finally brought Sweden to the bargaining table. In the resultant Treaty of Åbo
Treaty of Åbo
The Treaty of Åbo or the Treaty of Turku was a peace treaty signed between the Russian Empire and Sweden in Turku on 7. Augustjul./ 18. Augustgreg...
, Elizabeth was surprisingly generous, taking several providences of Eastern Finland but allowing Sweden to retain the bulk of its control.
Prelude
The 1740s and 1750s marked growing tensions across Europe. A key event in this instability was the sudden and meteoric rise of PrussiaPrussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
; under a series of careful and powerful kings, the state had consolidated power in upper Germany, and risen to a prominence far exceeding its actual land area. Fredrick the Great, who ruled Prussia at the time, drilled his military ceaselessly. One of his key innovations was oblique battle order, whereupon he purposely overloaded one flank while weakening the other; if the weakened flank held, the stronger side would be able to break through the enemy and surround them. Such a maneuver required precise timing and great skill, things his highly skilled army very much possessed.Stone, pp. 68-70Marston, pp. 16-17
The sudden growth of Prussia shifted the balance of power
Balance of power in international relations
In international relations, a balance of power exists when there is parity or stability between competing forces. The concept describes a state of affairs in the international system and explains the behavior of states in that system...
in Europe greatly. Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
had cultivated an alliance against France for many years, but this was suddenly broken when Austria shifted its center of interest away from France, and from protecting its vulnerable colonies in the west, to the rising power of Prussia in the north. Russia, meanwhile, had clashed with France time and time again, and was searching for allies against an increasingly diplomatically aggressive France and an increasingly powerful Prussia. Thus Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin attempted to build an alliance with Russia's "natural friends," Britain and Austria, against its "natural enemies," France and Prussia. Austria and Russia signed a cornerstone defensive alliance in 1725, but Britain was cautious about such an alliance. Realizing the opportunity, Fredrick sidestepped his French allies and signed the Treaty of Westminster
Treaty of Westminster (1756)
The Treaty of Westminster was a treaty of neutrality signed on January 16, 1756 between Frederick the Great of Prussia and King George II of the British Empire. British fears of French attacks on Hanover were responsible for the development of the treaty. Based on the terms of the agreement, both...
with Britain in 1756. France quickly shot back at Prussia by signing an alliance with Austria
Treaty of Versailles (1756)
The Treaty of Versailles was a diplomatic agreement between Austria and France signed on 1 May 1756 at the Palace of Versailles in which the two countries offered each other mutual assistance if attacked by other powers, which was broadly interpreted as meaning Britain or Prussia...
, an alliance that Russia, with the caveat of non-aggression against Poland, now joined. This so-called Diplomatic Revolution
Diplomatic Revolution
The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 is a term applied to the reversal of longstanding diplomatic alliances which were upheld until the War of the Austrian Succession and then reversed in the Seven Years' War; the shift has also been known as "the great change of partners"...
set the stage for the coming Seven Years' War, and Europe sunk into an uneasy peace.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 248-250Prothero and Benians, pp. 314-320Martson, p. 15
With the dismissal of Münnich, Elizabeth entrusted control of the Russian military to Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov
Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov
Count Pyotr Ivanovich Shuvalov was a Russian statesman and Field Marshal who, together with his brother Aleksandr Shuvalov, paved the way for the elevation of the Shuvalov family to the highest offices of the Russian Empire...
. Shuvalov quickly eliminated the German dress that had been introduced under Münnich. Foreseeing the approach of war in the 1750s, Shuvalov worked to improve the Russian army on the Prussian model. He drilled the army in the same tactics used by Fredrick the Great, but his success carried more to his cavalry then to the infantry, as Russia lacked the officer expertise to fully achieve the Prussian model. He also worked to convert dragoons into heavier cuirassiers and mounted grenadiers, capable of shock attacks that the lighter dragoons could not muster. He also worked to improve Russian artillery, even introducing some innovations of his own design, although he tended to get carried away by technical gimmicks.
1756-1757 and the battle of Gross-Jägersdorf
The armed peace that Europe fell into did not last. Fredrick anticipated an attack against him, something he preempted by occupying SaxonySaxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
in the summer of 1756, thereby removing the threat of a direct Austro-Russian attack against his capital of Berlin. The war began in earnest in 1757, and immediately split into two theaters: a power struggle in continental Europe between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and a colonial war in North America between France and Britain (known in American history as the French and Indian War
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...
). Britain concentrated on using its naval superiority and relatively small army in fighting its colonial war, a move that France mirrored. Thus, the bulk of continental fighting was taken up by the Austrian-Russian alliance against Prussia.Cowley and Parker, pp. 422-423Stone, pp. 70-72Marson, pp. 26-28
Despite enormous differences in land area, Prussia's position was not as hopeless as it might have seemed. Russian and Austrian strategic goals differed, with Russia concerned mainly with East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
and Austria, Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
. The two countries often attempted to pass the burden of battle to one another. Thus Fredrick's strategy of constantly shifting his army, although tiresome for the troops, successfully keep both of his enemies at bay. British financial contributions and the overall superiority of the Prussian army further alleviated the Austrian-Russian size advantage.
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, while also diverting forces to harass the French. Fredrick defeated the main Austrian army outside Prauge in a bloody and close fought battle and laid siege to the Austrian capital. However, in June, an equally bloody battle
Battle of Kolin
-Results:The battle was Frederick's first defeat in this war. This disaster forced him to abandon his intended march on Vienna, raise his siege of Prague, and fall back on Litoměřice...
at Kolín
Kolín
Kolín is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic some east from Prague, lying on the Elbe river.-History:Kolín was founded by king Přemysl Otakar II in the 13th century, first mentioned in 1261. Later on, 1437, a castle was founded here...
forced Fredrick to withdraw back north. While his southern operations were going sour, a French army invaded Germany from the west, defeating Prussia's British and Hanoverian allies along the way.Marson, pp. 29-42
While war was intensifying in Europe, the sluggish Russian army was still slowly advancing towards its target, the militarily isolated East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
. East Prussia was lightly garrisoned, and should not have been a significant threat to the 100,000 strong Russian force, led by Stepan Fyodorovich Apraksin. Apraksin was a well-connected diplomat in the tsarina's court with little true military experience. He moved his forces cautiously, at a pace that nearly proved disastrous. On 19/30 August 1757, a Prussian force caught the Russians marching off-guard at the small village of Gross-Jägersdorf. In the ensuing battle
Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf
The Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf was a victory for the Russian force under Field Marshal Stepan Fedorovich Apraksin over a smaller Prussian force commanded by Field Marshal Hans von Lehwaldt, during the Seven Years' War.- Background :...
, the Prussian force, outnumbered 2 to 1, encircled both flanks of the Russian column (which stretched for over 2 miles) with cavalry, and Prussian infantry marched through the woods to attack the Russians in the center. The Prussians threatened to do what the Swedes had done at Narva, roll through the frantically redeploying Russians and then crush their individual units.
The situation was salvaged only by a one Pyotr Rumyantsev
Pyotr Rumyantsev
Count Pyotr Alexandrovich Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky was one of the foremost Russian generals of the 18th century. He governed Little Russia in the name of Empress Catherine the Great from the abolition of the Cossack Hetmanate in 1764 until Catherine's death 32 years later...
, later to become Catherine the Great's foremost general; he rallied the Russian forces in the center, driving the Prussians back and ending the threat of a decisive breakthrough and defeat. With the Russian columns, particularly the artillery, now grinding back at their attackers, the Prussians were forced to retreat from battle. Losses had been roughly even, but the small Prussian force could ill afford its casualties. Apraksin, horrified by the losses, lacked the stomach to make good on his victory, and retreated to winter quarters, making the battle one of the most casual victories in Russian history. He was later relieved of command and put on trial for his heinous lack of initiative, dying in prison the next year.
Overall, 1757 was a grim year for Fredrick. Prussia's lightning attack on Austria, which had meant to knock Austria out of the war while the other nations mobilized, had failed. He now faced confrontation with three great powers with an empty treasury, and a monetary toll that the small Prussian population could ill afford. Austrian forces were quickly recapturing Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
n fortresses, and the region capitulated into Austrian hands. Austrian raids even reached Fredrick's capital city, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
1758 and the battle of Zorndorf
1758 brought new campaigns in Europe, and for Prussia, new hope. Fredrick coordinated a spectacular victory over the French at RossbachBattle of Rossbach
The Battle of Rossbach took place during the Seven Years' War near the village of Roßbach, in the Electorate of Saxony. Frederick the Great defeated the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman/Austrian Empire...
, one he followed with costlier but equally decisive victory over the Austrians at Leuthen
Battle of Leuthen
In the Battle of Leuthen or Lissa, fought on 5 December 1757, Frederick the Great's Prussian army used maneuver and terrain to decisively defeat a much larger Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine, thus ensuring Prussian control of Silesia during the Seven Years' War.- Background :While Frederick...
. His position on his western and southern flanks was now temporarily secure, and British funds, impressed by the Prussian victories, were now pouring in again.Stone, pp. 72-74Prothero and Benians, pp. 322-324
Following Apraksin's removal, command of the Russian field forces was transferred to William Fermor
William Fermor
William Fermor was an Imperial Russian Army officer best known for leading his country’s army at the Battle of Zorndorf during the Seven Years’ War. His name is sometimes styled Wilhelm von Fermor or Villim Villimovich Fermor.-Early life:...
. Fermor, a clean-cut and intelligent Baltic German and a student of Lacy and Münnich, and he made his soldier's welfare one of his primary concerns. Fermor's troops made quick work of the East Prussian providences that Apraskin had found so vexing. Seeing that he was unable to reclaim East Prussia, Fredrick turned his attention to the Austrians, invading the providence of Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
. However, the Austrians refused to engage him in battle, and therefore he could not land any of the spectacular victories that had salvaged his strategic nightmare so far. Realizing that further advances were futile, by late summer Fredrick had turned his attention squarely back towards the Russians.
Frederick met Fermor's troops on the marshes outside the hamlet of Zorndorf, east of the Oder River. Frederick planned to take his enemy by surprise by marching around the Russian rear to the south under the cover of night; however, the next morning the Russian forces simply reversed direction and faced their foe, now to the south, once more. Although the Prussians lost the element of surprise, the Russians were now in a vulnerable position, as their backs now stood against the river and the surrounding swamp. On 25 August 1758, following 2 hours of bombardment, the Prussian left engaged the Russians in what quickly became a murderous exchange of volleys. However, Frederick's left column, intending to support attack on the Russian right, instead drifted towards the center and stalled out in the engagement. Fermor quickly took advantage of this and sent his cavalry charging through the weakened left flank and sent if backwards in disorder, but their advantage was neutralized by a prompt counterattack by the Prussian cavalry. The battle degenerated into disorganized attrition, and the two bloodied forces did not break off until night fell. Thus the Battle of Zorndorf
Battle of Zorndorf
The Battle of Zorndorf was a battle fought on August 25, 1758 during the Seven Years' War, fought between the forces of the Russians troops under the command of Count William Fermor – and a Prussian army under King Frederick the Great...
ended with 30,000 casualties total out of a total of 80,000 men, and both sides withdrew by the next morning.
Fermor withdrew east (in fact fleeing long before his army withdrew from Zorndorf), leaving the Prussians with the chance to move south and meet the Austrian offensive once again. Frederick once again nearly met disaster when his army, encamped at Hochkirch
Hochkirch
Hochkirch, in Sorbian Bukecy, is a municipality in the district of Bautzen, in Saxony in Germany. It is located 9 km northwest of Löbau, and 10 km east of Bautzen. It is known for the 1758 Battle of Hochkirch, part of the Seven Years' War....
, was nearly overrun
Battle of Hochkirch
The Battle of Hochkirch was a battle fought on October 14, 1758 during the Seven Years' War between a Prussian army of 30,000-36,000 commanded by Frederick the Great and an Austrian army of 80,000 commanded by Marshal Leopold Josef Graf Daun...
by the Austrians. Although he escaped with the majority of his forces intact, by the end of the year it was clear that the Prussian's military situation had not improved; rather, Frederick had lost many of his best troops, and the Russians and Austrians had demonstrated a newfound ability to nullify his tactics.
Later campaigns
Russia continued its alliance with Austria, but Austria shifted to an alliance with France against Prussia. In 1760 Russian forces captured BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. Fortunately for Kingdom of Prussia, Elizabeth died in 1762, and her successor, Peter III
Peter III of Russia
Peter III was Emperor of Russia for six months in 1762. He was very pro-Prussian, which made him an unpopular leader. He was supposedly assassinated as a result of a conspiracy led by his wife, who succeeded him to the throne as Catherine II.-Early life and character:Peter was born in Kiel, in...
, allied Russia with Prussia because of his devotion to the Prussian king, Frederick the Great
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
.
Aftermath
The Seven Years' War was the first war that Russia, previously embroiled in conflicts with its neighbors, fought against a first-class European army since Peter the Great, and the results were mixed. Russian troops demonstrated immense personal courage and bravado, standing before withering volleys of fire without flinching. The command structure did not fare nearly so well; overall coordination feel to Bestuzhev-Riumin and a court conference, which quickly proved to be inefficient, spending much of time engrossed in micromanaging the army. The Russian officer corps had been fashioned into an elite force during Peter the Great's reign, but his policies had been abolished and command corps had fallen into disrepair. The result was that, although Russia never lost a direct encounter with the Prussians, it never fully capitalized on its success. This problem was compounded by the insufficiency of the Russian supply line, which forced the Russians to withdraw every winter.Peter III
Peter III had a short and unpopular reign. Although he was a grandson of Peter the Great, his father was the duke of HolsteinHolstein
Holstein is the region between the rivers Elbe and Eider. It is part of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany....
-Gottorp, so Peter III was raised in a German Lutheran environment. Russians therefore considered him a foreigner. Making no secret of his contempt for all things Russian, Peter created deep resentment by forcing Prussian military drills on the Russian military, attacking the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
, and depriving Russia of a military victory by establishing his sudden alliance with Prussia. Making use of the discontent and fearing for her own position, Peter III's wife, Catherine, deposed her husband in a coup, and her lover, Aleksey Orlov, subsequently murdered him, so in June 1762 Catherine became Catherine II
Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great , Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia on as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg...
, empress of Russia.
Russian imperial expansion and maturation
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in 1768, the parties agreed to the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774. By that treaty, Russia acquired an outlet to the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, and the Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
became independent of the Ottomans. In 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, helping to spark the next Russo-Turkish War with the Ottoman Empire, which began in 1787. By the Treaty of Jassy
Treaty of Jassy
The Treaty of Jassy, signed at Jassy in Moldavia , was a pact between the Russian and Ottoman Empires ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92 and confirming Russia's increasing dominance in the Black Sea....
in 1792, Russia expanded southward to the Dniestr river. The terms of the treaty fell far short of the goals of Catherine's reputed "Greek project" - the expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe and the renewal of a Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
under Russian control. The Ottoman Empire no longer posed a serious threat to Russia, however, and had to tolerate an increasing Russian influence over the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
.
Partition of Poland
Russia's westward expansion under Catherine resulted from the partitioningPartitions of Poland
The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...
of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. As Poland became increasingly weak in the eighteenth century, each of its neighbors—Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
, and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
- tried to place its own candidate on the Polish throne. In 1772 the three agreed on an initial partition of Polish territory, by which Russia received parts of Belarus and Livonia
Livonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
. After the partition, Poland initiated an extensive reform program, which included a democratic constitution that alarmed reactionary factions in Poland and in Russia. Using the danger of radicalism as an excuse, the same three powers abrogated the constitution and in 1793 again stripped Poland of territory. This time Russia obtained most of Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
west of the Dnieper river
Dnieper River
The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers of Europe that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea.The total length is and has a drainage basin of .The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations...
. The 1793 partition led to an anti-Russian and anti-Prussian uprising in Poland, which ended with the third partition in 1795. As a result Poland disappeared from the international political map.
Although the partitioning of Poland greatly added to Russia's territory and prestige, it also created new difficulties. Having lost Poland as a buffer, Russia now had to share borders with both Prussia and Austria. In addition, the empire became more ethnically heterogeneous as it absorbed large numbers of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews. The fate of the Ukrainians and Belarusians, who primarily worked as serf
SERF
A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...
s, changed little at first under Russian rule. Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
Poles resented their loss of independence, however, and proved difficult to integrate.
Pugachev Revolt and Alexander Suvorov
During the 1768–1774 war with the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, Russia experienced a major social upheaval, the Pugachev Uprising. In 1773 a Don Cossack, Emel'yan Pugachev, declared himself as the re-emergent tsar Peter III
Peter III of Russia
Peter III was Emperor of Russia for six months in 1762. He was very pro-Prussian, which made him an unpopular leader. He was supposedly assassinated as a result of a conspiracy led by his wife, who succeeded him to the throne as Catherine II.-Early life and character:Peter was born in Kiel, in...
. Other Cossacks, various Turkic tribes that felt the impingement of the Russian centralizing state, and industrial workers in the Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
, as well as peasants hoping to escape serfdom, all joined in the rebellion. Russia's preoccupation with the war enabled Pugachev to take control of a part of the Volga area, but the regular army crushed the rebellion in 1774.
The history of the Russian army in this era was linked to the name of Alexander Suvorov
Alexander Suvorov
Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov , Count Suvorov of Rymnik, Prince in Italy, Count of the Holy Roman Empire , was the fourth and last generalissimo of the Russian Empire.One of the few great generals in history who never lost a battle along with the likes of Alexander...
a Russian general, reckoned one of a few great generals in history who never lost a battle.
From 1777 to 1783 Suvorov served in the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
and in the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1780, and general of infantry in 1783, on the conclusion of his work there. From 1787 to 1791 he again fought the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 and won many victories. Suvorov's leadership also played a key role in Russian victory over Poles during the Kościuszko Uprising
Kosciuszko Uprising
The Kościuszko Uprising was an uprising against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia led by Tadeusz Kościuszko in Poland, Belarus and Lithuania in 1794...
.
After Catherine
Paul I of Russia
Paul I was the Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. He also was the 72nd Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta .-Childhood:...
(r. 1796–1801) succeeded her. His independent conduct of the foreign affairs of Russia plunged the country first into the Second Coalition against France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1798, and then into the armed neutrality against Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in 1801. The new emperor drilled the Russian army on the Prussian model, which resulted in conflict with Suvorov and his subsequent removal and self-imposed exile. However, he was recalled to the army in 1798–1799 Russian troops led by Suvorov performed brilliantly in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
.
During the early nineteenth century, Russia's population, resources, international diplomacy, and military forces made it one of the most powerful states in the world. Its power enabled it to play an increasingly assertive role in Europe's affairs. This role drew the empire into a series of wars against Napoleon, which had far-reaching consequences for Russia and the rest of Europe. After a period of enlightenment, Russia became an active opponent of liberalizing trends in Central and Western Europe.
Napoleonic Wars and the Decembrists' Revolt
As a major EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an power, Russia could not escape the wars involving revolutionary and Napoleonic France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Paul became an adamant opponent of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and Russia joined Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
in a war against France. Paul's support for the ideals of the Knights Hospitaller
Knights Hospitaller
The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta , also known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta , Order of Malta or Knights of Malta, is a Roman Catholic lay religious order, traditionally of military, chivalrous, noble nature. It is the world's...
(and his acceptance of the position of Grand Master) alienated many members of his court. Along with his liberal policies towards the lower classes, and his discovery of corruption in the treasury, his zeal for reform sealed his fate. In March 1801, Paul was assassinated by a handful of nobles and disgruntled officers.
The new tsar, Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
(r. 1801–1825), came to the throne as the result of his father's murder, in which he was rumored to be implicated.
Alexander's primary focus was not on domestic policy but on foreign affairs, and particularly on Napoleon. Fearing Napoleon's expansionist ambitions and the growth of French power, Alexander joined Britain and Austria against Napoleon. Napoleon defeated the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz
Battle of Austerlitz
The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of Napoleon's greatest victories, where the French Empire effectively crushed the Third Coalition...
in 1805 and trounced the Russians at Friedland
Pravdinsk
Pravdinsk is a town and the administrative center of Pravdinsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the Lava River, approximately east of Bagrationovsk...
in 1807. Alexander was forced to sue for peace, and by the Treaty of Tilsit, signed in 1807, he became Napoleon's ally. Russia lost little territory under the treaty, and Alexander made use of his alliance with Napoleon for further expansion. By the Finnish War
Finnish War
The Finnish War was fought between Sweden and the Russian Empire from February 1808 to September 1809. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire...
he wrested the Grand Duchy of Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
from Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
in 1809, and acquired Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
from Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
in 1812.
The Russo-French alliance gradually became strained. Napoleon was concerned about Russia's intentions in the strategically vital Bosporus
Bosporus
The Bosphorus or Bosporus , also known as the Istanbul Strait , is a strait that forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with the Dardanelles...
and Dardanelles
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...
straits. At the same time, Alexander viewed the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the French-controlled reconstituted Polish state, with suspicion. The requirement of joining France's Continental Blockade against Britain was a serious disruption of Russian commerce, and in 1810 Alexander repudiated the obligation.
In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia to compel Emperor Alexander I
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
to remain in the Continental System and to remove the imminent threat of Russian invasion of Poland. The Grande Armée, 650,000 men (270,000 Frenchmen and many soldiers of allies or subject powers), crossed the Niemen River on June 23, 1812. Russia proclaimed a Patriotic War, while Napoleon proclaimed a Second Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
war, but against the expectations of the Poles who supplied almost 100,000 troops for the invasion force he avoided any concessions toward Poland, having in mind further negotiations with Russia. Russia maintained a scorched earth policy of retreat broken only by the battle of Borodino
Battle of Borodino
The Battle of Borodino , fought on September 7, 1812, was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the French invasion of Russia and all Napoleonic Wars, involving more than 250,000 troops and resulting in at least 70,000 casualties...
(September 7), when the Russians stood and fought. This was bloody and the Russians were eventually forced to back down and open the road to Moscow. By September 14, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
was captured although by this point it had been largely abandoned by the Russians and prisoners had been released from Moscow’s prisons to inconvenience the French. Alexander I refused to capitulate and with no sign of clear victory in sight Napoleon was forced to withdraw from Moscow after the city had been burnt to the ground. The conflicting sides placed the blame for the fire on each other. So the disastrous Great Retreat began, with 370,000 casualties largely as a result of starvation and the freezing weather conditions, and 200,000 captured. By November only 27,000 fit soldiers were among those who crossed the Berezina River
Berezina River
The Berezina is a river in Belarus and a tributary of the Dnieper River.The Berezina Preserve by the river is in the UNESCO list of Biosphere Preserves.-Historical significance:...
. Napoleon now left his army to return to Paris and prepare a defence of Poland from the advancing Russians.
As the French retreated, the Russians pursued them into Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. After the allies defeated Napoleon, Alexander became known as the savior of Europe, and he played a prominent role in the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
in 1815. In the same year Alexander initiated the creation of the Holy Alliance
Holy Alliance
The Holy Alliance was a coalition of Russia, Austria and Prussia created in 1815 at the behest of Czar Alexander I of Russia, signed by the three powers in Paris on September 26, 1815, in the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon.Ostensibly it was to instill the Christian values of...
, a loose agreement pledging the rulers of the nations involved—including most of Europe—to act according to Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
principles. More pragmatically, in 1814 Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia had formed the Quadruple Alliance
Quadruple Alliance
The term "Quadruple Alliance" refers to several historical military alliances; none of which remain in effect.# The Quadruple Alliance of August 1673 was an alliance between the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, in...
. The allies created an international system to maintain the territorial status quo and prevent the resurgence of an expansionist France. The Quadruple Alliance, confirmed by a number of international conferences, ensured Russia's influence in Europe.
See also
- Mikhail Illarionovich KutuzovMikhail Illarionovich KutuzovMikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov was a Field Marshal of the Russian Empire. He served as one of the finest military officers and diplomats of Russia under the reign of three Romanov Tsars: Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander I...
- Michael Andreas Barclay de TollyMichael Andreas Barclay de TollyPrince Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly , was a Russian Field Marshal and Minister of War during Napoleon's invasion in 1812 and War of the Sixth Coalition.-Early life:...
- Aleksey Petrovich YermolovAleksey Petrovich YermolovAleksey Petrovich Yermolov , or Ermolov , was a Russian Imperial general of the 19th century who commanded Russian troops in the Caucasus War.-Early life:...
Congress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...
(Russian Poland), to which Alexander granted a constitution. Thus, Alexander I became the constitutional monarch of Poland while remaining the autocratic tsar of Russia. He was also the limited monarch of Finland, which had been annexed in 1809 and awarded autonomous status. In 1813 Russia gained territory in the Baky area of the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
at the expense of Persia. By the early nineteenth century, the empire also was firmly ensconced in Alaska.
Historians have generally agreed that a revolutionary movement was born during the reign of Alexander I. Young officers who had pursued Napoleon into Western Europe came back to Russia with revolutionary ideas. The intellectual modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...
that had been fostered in the 18th century by a paternalistic, autocratic Russian state now included opposition to autocracy
Autocracy
An autocracy is a form of government in which one person is the supreme power within the state. It is derived from the Greek : and , and may be translated as "one who rules by himself". It is distinct from oligarchy and democracy...
, demands for representative government, calls for the abolition of serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
, and, in some instances, advocacy of a revolutionary overthrow of the government. Officers were particularly incensed that Alexander had granted Poland a constitution while Russia remained without one. Several clandestine organizations were preparing for an uprising when Alexander died unexpectedly in 1825. Following his death, there was confusion about who would succeed him because the next in line, his brother Constantine, had relinquished his right to the throne. A group of officers commanding about 3,000 men refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Alexander's brother Nicholas
Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...
, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution. Because these events occurred in December 1825, the rebels were called Decembrists. Nicholas easily overcame the revolt, and the Decembrists who remained alive were arrested. Many were exiled to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
.
To some extent, the Decembrists were in the tradition of a long line of palace revolutionaries who wanted to place their candidate on the throne. But because the Decembrists also wanted to implement a liberal political program, their revolt has been considered the beginning of a revolutionary movement. The Decembrist Revolt
Decembrist revolt
The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising took place in Imperial Russia on 14 December , 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession...
was the first open a breach between the government and liberal elements, a breach that would subsequently widen.
Russo-Japanese War
See main article on Russo-Japanese WarRusso-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
The war between Russia and the Japanese Empire broke out on February 8, 1904 with a Japanese attack upon the Russian Far East Fleet stationed at Port Arthur
Lüshunkou
Lüshunkou is a district in the municipality of Dalian, Liaoning province, China. Also called Lüshun City or Lüshun Port, it was formerly known as both Port Arthur and Ryojun....
. Plagued with logistical problems, outdated military equipment and incompetent Russian officers, Russian forces suffered numerous defeats in the course of the war, which ended in September 1905. Faced with growing internal problems, including the revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
, Russia sued for peace as the war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth
Treaty of Portsmouth
The Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905 after negotiations at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine in the USA.-Negotiations:...
.
World War I
See main article on World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, also see Eastern Front (World War I)
Eastern Front (World War I)
The Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other...
and Caucasus Campaign
Caucasus Campaign
The Caucasus Campaign comprised armed conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, later including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Central Caspian Dictatorship and the UK as part of the Middle Eastern theatre or alternatively named as part of the Caucasus Campaign during World War I...
See also
- Imperial Russian ArmyImperial Russian ArmyThe Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
- Russian Army order of battle (1812)Russian Army order of battle (1812)The Imperial Russian Army in 1812 consists of 3 main armies and other military formations. Commander in Chief Emperor of the Army was Alexander I.-1st Army of the West:General of infantry Prince Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly)...
External links
- Russian Army of the Napoleonic Wars; Napoleon, His Army and Enemies.