Invaders Encounter Winter in Russia

And so the summer passed away. A winter campaign became inevitable, and the abyss which Peter’s unerring eye had scanned began to gape.

Continuing The Battle of Poltava,
our selection from Peter the Great by Kazimierz Waliszewski published in 1898. The selection is presented in eight easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Battle of Poltava.

Time: 1709
Place: Poltava. Central Ukraine

It was a mighty plan, indeed, but at the very outset it was sharply checked. Mazeppa insisted on certain conditions, and these conditions Charles thought too heavy. The hetman agreed that Poland should take the Ukraine and White Russia, and that the Swedes should have the fortresses of Mglin, Starodoub, and Novgorod-Sievierski, but he himself insisted on being apportioned Polotsk, Vitebsk, and the whole of Courland, to be held in fief. Thus the negotiations were delayed. Meanwhile Charles, perceiving that he was not strong enough to make a forward movement, made up his mind to send for Loewenhaupt, who was in Livonia, and who was to bring him sixteen thousand men and various stores. But the Swedish hero had not reckoned fairly with distance and with time. Many precious days, the best of the season, fled by before his orders could be obeyed. And, for the first time, he showed signs of uncertainty and irresolution which were all too quickly communicated to those under his command. Loewenhaupt grew slower than usual. Luebecker slackened his activity, and Mazeppa began to play his double game again: prudently preparing his Cossacks to revolt, in the name of the ancient customs, national privileges, and church laws, which Peter’s reforms had infringed; fortifying his own residence at Batourin, and accumulating immense stores there, but still continuing to pay court to the Czar, wearing the German dress, flattering the sovereign’s despotic taste by suggesting plans which would have annihilated the last vestiges of local independence, and accepting gifts sent him by Menshikoff.

And so the summer passed away. A winter campaign became inevitable, and the abyss which Peter’s unerring eye had scanned began to gape.

It was not till June that Charles XII left Radoshkovitse, and marched eastward to Borisov, where he crossed the Berezina. Menshikoff and Sheremetief made an attempt to stop him, on July 3d, as he was crossing a small river called the Bibitch, near Holovtchin. A night maneuver, and a wild bayonet charge, led by the King himself, carried him once more to victory. The town of Mohilef opened its gates to the Swedes, but there Charles was forced to stay, and lose more time yet waiting for Loewenhaupt. He marched again, early in August, in a southerly direction, and his soldiers soon found themselves in the grip of one of Peter’s allies. They were driven to support themselves by gathering ears of corn, which they ground between two stones. Sickness began to thin their ranks. Their three doctors, so the fierce troopers said, were “brandy, garlic, and death”! Loewenhaupt had reached Shklof, and was separated from the invading army by two streams, the Soja and the Dnieper, between which Peter had taken up his position. The Swedish general, after having successfully passed the Dnieper, was met at Liesna, on October 9th, by a force three times as large as his own, and Peter was able, on the following day, to report a complete victory to his friends: “8500 men dead on the field, without mentioning those the Kalmucks have hunted into the forest, and 700 prisoners!” According to this reckoning, Loewenhaupt, who could not have brought more than 11,000 troops into action, should have been left without a man; as a matter of fact, he reached Charles with 6700, after a flank march which all military experts consider a marvel. But, not being able to find a bridge across the Soja, he was forced to abandon his artillery and all his baggage, and he led his starving troops into a famine-stricken camp.

There was bad news, too, from Ingria, where Luebecker had also been defeated, losing all his baggage and three thousand first-class troops. Charles grew so disconcerted that he is reported to have confessed to Gyllenkrook, his quartermaster-general, that he was all at sea, and no longer had any definite plan. On October 22d he reached Mokoshin on the Desna, on the borders of the Ukraine, where he had expected to meet Mazeppa. But the old leader broke his appointment. He still desired to temporize and was loath to take any decisive resolution. He was driven to take one at last, by the Cossacks about him, who were alarmed at the idea of the Russians following the Swedes into the Ukraine. It would be far better, so they thought, to join the latter against the former. One of these Cossacks, Voinarovski, who had been sent by the hetman to Menshikoff, had returned with most terrifying news. He had overheard the German officers on the favorite’s staff, speaking of Mazeppa and his followers, say: “God pity those poor wretches; to-morrow they will all be in chains!” Mazeppa, when he heard this report, “raged like a whirlwind,” hurried to Batourin to give the alarm, and then crossed the Desna and joined the Swedish army.

It was too late. The popular sentiment, on which both he and Charles had reckoned to promote an insurrectionary movement, confused by the tergiversations and the ambiguous actions of the hetman, had quite gone astray and lost all consistency. All Mazeppa could reckon upon was a body of two thousand faithful troops; not enough even to defend Batourin, which Menshikoff snatched from him a few days later — thus depriving the Swedish army of its last chance of revictualling. When the fortresses of Starodoub and Novgorod-Sievierski closed their gates against him, the whole of the Ukraine slipped from the grasp of the turncoat chief and his new allies. His effigy was first hung and then dragged through the streets of Glouhof in Peter’s presence; another hetman, Skoropadski, was appointed in his place, and then came winter — a cruel winter, during which the very birds died of cold.

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