Peter the Great (80 page)

In line with this strategy, the Russian command in Poland was given to Menshikov, the best of Peter's native Russian cavalry commanders. Menshikov's dragoon regiments would try to delay the Swedes at the river crossings: behind the Vistula at Warsaw, on the Narew at Pultusk and on the Neman at Grodno.

Peter reached St. Petersburg on October 23 and immediately threw himself into action. He inspected the fortifications of the city itself—on the sea approaches at Kronstadt and on the Neva-Ladoga flank at Schlusselburg. He was constantly at the Admiralty, and drew up a complete shipbuilding program for the following year. He continued to issue orders for the coming campaign and gave numerous instructions for recruiting, clothing and supplying the troops. At the same time, he found time to send condolences to the father of Prince Ivan Troekurov, killed in battle, and to write a friendly note to Darya Menshikov begging her to take better care of her husband: "Fatten him up so he looks not so thin as when he was at Meretch." He ordered Latin books sent to Apraxin to be translated into Russian and gave orders for training the puppies of his favorite dogs.

And yet, with all his work, Peter was almost overwhelmed during this autumn and early winter by feelings of anxiety and depression. He had reason enough, for, while contemplating the Swedish invasion, he had been greeted on his arrival in St. Petersburg by news of the revolt among the Bashkirs and Don Cossacks, and an account of the massacre of Dolgoruky and his battalion by Bulavin on the River Aidar. This disaster threatened to cut short his stay in Petersburg, as he seemed urgently needed in Moscow or even on the Ukrainian steppe, but as he was preparing to leave, further ne.vs arrived that Bulavin's army had been destroyed.

In addition to these worries, Peter was never completely well during these critical months. He was in bed for weeks with attacks of fever, he was often irritable and his temper frequently flared. At one point he was angry at Apraxin for not punishing governors who sent the army fewer than the required number of recruits: "That you have done nothing to those governors who have not brought men as ordered, that you throw the blame of this on the departments of Moscow which is not to your credit, is due only to one of two causes: either to laziness or that you did not wish to quarrel with them." Apraxin was deeply hurt, and Peter, recognizing his unfairness, replied: "You feel aggrieved at what I wrote to you about the governors. But for God's sake have no grief about it, for really I bear no malice toward you, but since I have been here the slightest thing which thwarts me puts me into a passion."

Possibly because of his feelings of depression and loneliness, Peter realized his need and dependence on the one person who could truly relax him in his moments of greatest anxiety. It was in November 1707, as soon as he returned to St. Petersburg, that he finally married Catherine.

Late in November, Peter left for Moscow to pass the Christmas holidays and to visit his capital, which he had not seen for more than two years. And he was anxious to inspect the fortification which Korchmin was constructing with 20,000 men laboring day and night. The earth was frozen, and in order to thaw the ground to cut out the sods of earth used to build the ramparts, Korchmin's workers had to build great fires directly over the area to be cut. During the month he spent in Moscow, Peter also regulated the making of silver coins, and visited the printing office to see the new type which he had ordered from Holland and which had just arrived. He concerned himself with standardizing the salaries of his ambassadors and with sending more young Russians abroad. He renewed his insistence on the education of the clergy and on ensuring that clothes and hats being made in Moscow follow approved patterns. Preoccupied, he showed his annoyance with what he regarded as petty matters raised by others. When Whitworth unwisely brought up some minor grievances on behalf of English merchants in Russia, Peter replied brusquely that he would see what could be done, but not to expect much, because "God has given the Tsar twenty times more business than other people, but not twenty times more force or capacity to go through with it."

On January 6, 1708, Peter left Moscow to rejoin the army. On the road to Minsk, he learned from Menshikov that Charles was advancing swiftly across Poland, and he hurried to Grodno. The ability of the Swedish army to move rapidly in the depth of winter and strike surprise blows added to Peter's anxiety. Four days later, he wrote to Apraxin to "hasten to Vilna
...
but if you have already come to Vilna, go no further, for the enemy is already upon us.

The Swedish army, marching in six parallel columns, had crossed the border from Silesia into Poland at Rawicz. Here, inside the Polish frontier, King and army had their first taste of what lay ahead. The town of Rawicz was burned to the ground and corpses floated in the wells and streams; Menshikov's Cossack and Kalmuck cavalry had begun to spread a carpet of destruction before the advancing Swedish army as it marched eastward. Across Poland, the air reeked with the acrid smell of fire and smoke over farms and villages put to the torch by Menshikov's horsemen. The Russian cavalry avoided contact, staying just out of reach and withdrawing eastward toward Warsaw, where Menshikov was digging in behind the Vistula.

Screened by their own cavalry and dragoons, the Swedes advanced directly toward Warsaw at a leisurely pace. Then, west of Warsaw, Charles turned north. At Posen, the army halted and Charles established a semi-permanent camp, where he remained for two months awaiting the arrival of reinforcements and an improvement in the weather. Here, Charles detached 5,000 dragoons and 3,000 infantry under Major General Krassow to remain in Poland to bolster the shaky throne of Stanislaus.

The autumn weeks passed and winter approached. With the Swedish army still inert and the Swedish King apparently lapsed into another of his long periods of lassitude, the Russians around

Warsaw began to feel more confident. Surely, with winter at hand, the Swedes would remain in their present encampment until spring. But Charles had no such intention. He had not left the comfortable quarters in Saxony at the end of the summer only to winter in a more desolate place a few miles farther east. In fact, while drilling his new troops, he was only waiting for the end of the autumn rains which had turned the roads into quagmires. Once the frost had come and the roads were hard, the King would move.

But not toward Warsaw. In the early stages of this campaign, Charles deliberately laid aside the impetuous frontal attack which was part of his reputation. He was anxious to avoid a major clash this far from his distant goal and his strategy in Poland was to allow the Russians to establish defensive positions behind a river, then himself march north, cross the stream, outflank the entrenched defenders and force them to withdraw without a battle.

The first time, it was easy. At the end of November, after two months' preparation, the Swedes broke camp at Posen and marched fifty miles northeast to a point where the Vistula curved westward in their direction. Here, the river flowed empty and wide; not a Russian soldier or Cossack horseman was to be seen anywhere on the snowy, windswept landscape. But the Swedes had to contend with nature. The snow was deep, but the river was still flowing. Because of drifting ice, it was impossible to throw a bridge across, and Charles was forced to wait impatiently another month for ice to form. On Christmas Day, the temperature dropped and the surface of the river glazed. On the 28th, the ice was three inches thick. By adding straw and boards sprayed with water and frozen into the ice, the Swedes strengthened the surface sufficiently to bear the weight of wagons and artillery, and between the 28th and the 31st, the entire army crossed the Vistula. "They have executed their d
esign," wrote Captain James Jef
feryes, a young Englishman with the army,* "without any loss

*
Jefferyes was a soldier-diplomat with strong ties in Sweden. He was born in Stockholm during his father's long period of service to Charles XI; his elder brother was killed with the Swedish army at Narva; and Jefferyes himself had served as secretary to the British ambassador to Sweden. When he joined the Swedish army in 1707 as a "volunteer," it was a device arranged by Charles XH's Swedish ministers to get around the King's objections to having foreign diplomats accompany his army. In fact, although Jefferyes' sympathy lay with the Swedes, his real mission was to observe and report objectively to Whitehall the progress of Charles' invasion of Russia. Captured at Poltava, and allowed to return to Britain, Jefferyes reappeared briefly in Russia in 1719 as King George I's ambassador to St. Petersburg. Jefferyes' last twelve years were spent living in Blarney Castle, County Cork", Ireland, which he had inherited from his father.

other than that of
two
or three wagons which went to the bottom of the river."

Thus, on New Year's Day 1708, the Swedish army stood east of the Vistula. The Warsaw line was outflanked, and Menshikov evacuated the city and withdrew to new positions behind the Narew River at Pultusk. Knowing from his scouts that this position was defended, Charles again applied his strategy of moving northeast and sliding around the Russian defenses.

The second time, however, it was not so easy. North of the main road lay some of the most difficult country in Eastern Europe. The Masurian lake district was made up of bogs, marshes and thick forests, thinly populated by a wild peasantry hostile to all strangers. The roads were little more than animal trails and paths for peasant carts. Nevertheless, the King plunged forward. The march was grueling. Every night, Charles ordered huge fires to be built for each company and military music played to keep spirits up, but still the forest took its toll. Horses died, worn out from trying to pull wagons and artillery along rutted trails. In the German dragoon regiments, there were desertions; the money they were being paid was not worth this kind of warfare. Fodder was scarce. To force the peasants to give up their own carefully hoarded fodder, the Swedes threatened them in the simplest, crudest way. A child would be taken, and before its mother's eyes, a rope would be fixed around its neck. Then a
Swedish
officer would ask one last time whether the mother would reveal the family cache of food. If she refused, the child was hanged. Usually, the peasants broke down and talked, although this meant starvation for all of them.

Not surprisingly, some of the inhabitants resisted. Most of the peasants were hunters who lived among bears and wolves and were trained in the use of firearms. From behind trees and thickets, they sniped at the marching columns and ambushed stragglers. Guerilla warfare quickly calls up its own grim rules. When a party of his soldiers was locked in the barn where they were sleeping and the bam burned over their heads, the King hanged ten hostages from the village as a reprisal. After the last regiment had passed through, the entire village was burned to the ground. Another day, when General Kreutz captured a band of fifty marauders, he compelled the prisoners to hang one another, with the last few being strung up by his own Swedish soldiers.

In spite of the difficulty of the march, on January 22, Charles emerged from the woods at Kolno. Russian cavalry riding up from the south found the Swedes already present in s
trength. There was nothing for
them to do but retreat and carry the news to Menshikov.

Having achieved much by his bold stroke, Charles decided on another even more impetuous thrust at the third river line, the Neman. Before him lay the Lithuanian frontier town of Grodno, the center and key to the Neman River line, where a Russian army under Ogilvie had spent the winter two years earlier. Whatever the route of his eventual campaign, north to the Baltic or east to Moscow, both Charles and Peter understood that Charles must pass through Grodno. He needed the road; he could not march forever through forests and swamps. Because of its importance, Russian troops were moving into Grodno, and Charles decided to strike immediately in hope of capturing the town before the Russians had secured it. Leaving the main army to follow, the King rode ahead with only 600 troopers of the Guards Cavalry and Rehnskjold and Kreutz. Along the way he added fifty men of a reconnaissance troop which had been out in front. Arriving at Grodno in the afternoon, he found the bridge across the Neman still intact and guarded by 2,000 cavalrymen commanded by Brigadier Muhlenfels, one of Peter's German officers. Without hesitation, Charles launched an immediate attack to seize the bridge. Some of the Swedes rode across the river ice to come on the Russians from the rear; others charged directly onto the bridge. There was a confused melee of Russians and Swedes firing pistols and swinging swords at one another. In the shouting mob, the King himself killed two Russians, one with a shot from his pistol, the other with a thrust of his sword. The day was short, and in the gathering gloom of the afternoon, the Russians could not tell how many Swedes there were; they soon gave up the bridge and retreated into the town. Charles followed and that night camped by the river beneath the walls of the town, meanwhile sending messengers back to order the rest of the army to hurry forward. He was unaware that inside the walls of Grodno, only a few hundred yards away, was Tsar Peter himself.

Peter had arrived in Grodno to bolster the flustered Menshikov, who was confused and upset by the uncertainty of these flanking movements and sudden, rapid, unorthodox marches, and was about to withdraw his troops lest he be outflanked again. But the Tsar understood the importance of the Neman line and wanted to ensure that the river defense would not be breached as painlessly as those on the Vistula and the Narew. Neither he nor Menshikov had any idea that Charles was so close and would suddenly come galloping across the still undestroyed Neman River bridge.