Poltava

The Battle of Poltava: June 27, 1709

By the summer of 1709, Russia and Sweden had been at war over lands along the Baltic coast for nine years. The battle would rage for another twelve.

This endless Northern War completely changed the face of Russia, since it drove Peter the Great to build countless factories, enlist hordes of soldiers (placing a crushing burden on the entire country), revamp taxation (to increase revenues, of course), change the way the country was administered, and create a new educational system.

After the Northern War, neither Russia nor Sweden were ever the same. Russia became an empire with mighty ambitions, while Sweden turned its back on the struggle for international influence and relinquished its standing as the strongest country in northern Europe, which it had been throughout the 17th century. Instead, it gradually transformed itself into a peaceful, prosperous state that minded its own business.

There was a joke told back in Soviet days: a man is brought into the KGB and asked, “Is it true you’re dissatisfied with Brezhnev?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” the man replied. “If I’m dissatisfied with anyone, it’s Peter the Great. If only he’d lost the Battle of Poltava, we’d all be living in Sweden now.”

Russia, as we all know, did not turn into Sweden, and the Battle of Poltava remained the most famous moment of the Northern War. It was extolled during Peter’s reign, but its true glorification was assured, of course, by Alexander Pushkin:

Collide with crashing, swing and hack;

And, flinging corpses head on heap,

Hot balls of iron hurtle, leap

Into the stumbling ranks and thud,

And plough the ground and hiss in blood.

Swede, Russian – stabbing, splitting, slashing,

Commingled uproars, drumbeats, clashing,

Groans, hoofbeats, neighing, cannon’s boom,

And universal death and doom.

[…]

But triumph’s near, hurrahs are shouted:

We’ve broken through; the Swede is routed!

O wondrous hour! O glorious sight!

One onrush more brings headlong flight.

The cavalry pelts off, pursuing,

Swords dull with slaughter, and the chewing

Of death lies black upon the field

Like locusts on a summer’s yield.

Exultant Peter – proud, vivacious,

His eyes aglow with martial fame.

And his triumphal fete is gracious:

Amidst the cheering troop’s acclaim

He bids the lords beneath his scepters,

Both Swede and Russian, to his tent;

And gaily mingling prey and captors

Lifts high his cup in compliment

To the good health of his “preceptors.” 1

Pushkin had ambivalent feelings about Peter the Great, but in Poltava he is the embodiment of courage and nobility. The famous story of the feast arranged by Peter after the battle was seen as emblematic of the tsar’s magnanimity. The feast was not a figment of Pushkin’s imagination – it is a historical fact, and descriptions of it were published as early as the 18th century.

Under Catherine the Great, a merchant from Kursk by the name of Ivan Ivanovich Golikov was sent to Siberia for corruption in the vodka trade – not a rare offence. Shortly thereafter, an amnesty was announced in honor of the unveiling of a monument to Peter, the famous Bronze Horseman. After that, Golikov saw Peter as his benefactor and began to compile materials for a biography. The result of this effort was a multi-volume work that depicted Peter as the greatest, most majestic of all Russian rulers. Naturally, Golikov also described the feast that followed the Battle of Poltava. It is possible that Pushkin used this description as his source.

The monarch ordered Prince Menshikov to bring all the captured generals and commissioned officers into the tent. The monarch, standing bareheaded at his little table, received them with great warmth. After kneeling before his majesty, they presented him with their swords.

At three in the afternoon, the great sovereign, turning to the captives, said with a smile: “Yesterday my brother Charles promised you would dine in my camp today, and, although he did not keep his royal word, we will see that it is so, and for this I ask you to share a meal with me.” And so that this ironic, one might say, greeting would not be so hurtful to them, he ordered that each of them immediately be returned his sword.

And during the repast, as they were drinking to the health of his majesty and all his royal house and victorious arms, cannon fire sounded continuously.

His majesty turned to his courtiers and, after pouring a glass of wine, said: “I drink to the health of my instructors in the art of war.”

“And to whom,” asked Rehnskold, “might your majesty, be so good as to refer with such a fine name?”

“You, Messrs. Swedes,” said the sovereign.

The repast continued until five in the afternoon, after which the indefatigable sovereign sent Prince Golitsyn with both his guards regiments, and also with the Lieutenant General Bour and the ten cavalry battalions under his command, to pursue the Swedes, who had fled to outside Perevolochna.

Years, decades, centuries passed. The Battle of Poltava continued to be perceived as a great victory that ended in jubilant celebration. The very word “Poltava” was sure to evoke Pushkin’s melodious lines.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the Swedish historian Peter Englund wrote a book entitled (in Russian) Poltava: The Story of One Army’s Defeat. Here, the story of Poltava is told from the Swedish perspective. It turns out that Swedish archives hold a multitude of previously unknown documents associated with Charles XII’s campaign in Ukraine and with the Battle of Poltava. The Swedish soldiers were Lutherans, and from childhood they had been taught to read the Bible, so, unlike their Russian counterparts, they were literate and wrote countless letters home, many of which have survived to the present. Englund has studied these letters and painstakingly culled a multitude of fascinating details from them. The Swedish generals also left behind memoirs, which gave us a new description of the tsar’s feast:

When the Swedish commanders had symbolically acknowledged defeat by relinquishing their weapons, the tsar invited them to a feast with the Russian generals. They all went into a second spacious tent that had been sewn of expensive fabrics of Chinese and Persian manufacture. Carpets were placed over the earth, which was crimson with blood. Hands were gallantly kissed; the tsar himself poured the vodka. The meal began and everyone raised toasts to the health of the tsar, to his family, to the glory of his arms and so forth. Cannons fired in salute, and the Swedes and Russians conversed courteously, partook of the fare, and exchanged compliments. An atmosphere of civility and courtesy reigned around the festive table, which groaned with dishes. Against a backdrop of universal gallantry, just one [Russian] Lieutenant General stood out – Ludwig Nikolaus von Hallart, who was upset about the harsh treatment he had been subjected to in Swedish captivity after the Battle of Narva. The situation was growing heated, but it was diplomatically diffused by Menshikov; intervening, he asked that the Swedes pay no attention to Hallart’s tirades: “The Lieutenant General just had a little too much to drink.” The festive meal on the field of battle was then able to continue, even as anguished soldiers continued dying.

The field of battle was dreadful to behold. Approximately 9,000 dead and dying, hordes of wounded (surely more than 4,000 and probably no fewer than 10,000), as well as countless multitudes of doomed horses lay scattered about over a relatively small space – in the field, in the bushes, under trees, in ravines, in short, everywhere. The fortifications were turned into burial mounds, hollows became mass graves. Where the fiercest fighting had taken place, corpses obscured every inch of ground, creating a sort of carpet over the earth. For example, near the third redoubt there may have been as many as 1,000 bodies covering an area equal to approximately 250 square meters. Anyone who surveyed this nightmare probably saw and heard what has been described by the many witnesses of other battles. In the distance, the earth was moving as if it were alive. This was the countless wounded, writhing in convulsions of pain, a lacerated carpet covering the earth. The air was filled with an unsettling, pulsating, mournful groan that would fade only to again intensify, but in any event was never silent. It was the moaning and crying of tens of thousands of maimed and dying. In the center of the field, where the apocalyptic general battle had played out, dead bodies were heaped one on top of another in a disorderly pile.

So this is how Poltava looks from the 20th century – generals cynically feasting, while around them thousands writhe in pain, sacrificed to the cause of two rulers’ imperial ambitions…

But there was a third party to the Battle of Poltava, one that is usually forgotten. Charles XII had come to Ukraine expecting help from the Cossack hetman Mazeppa, who had betrayed Peter and evidently hoped, with help from the Swedes, to revive Cossack freedoms that the Zaporozhian Cossacks had given up a half-century earlier. Mazeppa is one of the main figures featured in Pushkin’s Poltava – an old man who falls madly in love with the young daughter of his enemy, Kochubei, kills her father, brings misfortune on his land, and ultimately loses not only power, but his beloved. For readers of Poltava, Mazeppa is never a terribly engaging figure – just a treacherous old man. But in the era of Ukrainian perestroika one suddenly began to hear that Mazeppa could be viewed not as a traitor to Peter’s interests, but as someone fighting for an independent Ukraine (or at least for Cossack independence).

So it was not only Russian and Swedish soldiers who suffered and died on the fields outside Poltava, but Cossacks as well. This fact has been little remembered over the past 300 years, although not all forgot it. Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov, who grew up in Ukraine, was one of the 19th century’s most prominent Russian historians. Although he spent his life as a historian of Russia, he also studied Ukraine, or “Little Russia” as Russians then called it. He wrote a book about Mazeppa. It also includes a description of the Battle of Poltava.

When the prayer service was concluded, the tsar invited his brothers-in-arms to a feast that was being served inside the tent… Eminent Swedish captives – generals and colonels – were also invited to the feast. They brought [Charles’ chief counselor, Count Carl] Piper in during the feast and sat him down at the table as well. The tsar treated all of his captives affectionately, personally returned Field Marshal Rehnskold his sword and praised him for courage and the faithful execution of his duties. Although the other captives’ swords had been taken away, the tsar immediately graciously returned them. “Gentlemen,” Peter addressed the captives, “My brother Charles invited you to dine in my tent today, but he did not keep his royal word; we will keep it for him and we invite you to dine with us.” Raising his goblet of wine in toast, Peter exclaimed, “I drink to the health of my brother Charles!” Then, to the sound of cannon fire, Peter raised a toast to the health of his teachers.

“Who are these teachers?’ Rehnskold made so bold as to ask.

“You, the Swedes,” the tsar replied.

“Fine thanks your majesty has shown to your teachers,” said Rehnskold.

…By order of the tsar, beginning at four o’clock on the morning of the following day, they began to dig graves to bury the dead. The entire army was assembled at the site. Two graves were prepared, and at 6 o’clock the sovereign arrived… The usual burial rites were performed over them… and the tsar bowed low to the ground three times before the dead and was the first to throw earth into the grave with his own hand. Other commanders followed his example… After the funeral ceremony had been completed for the Russian dead, Peter ordered that the enemy bodies be given a ceremonial burial, assigning captive Protestant ministers to perform this task…

…The Swedish commanders were placed in the custody of Russian grandees… and all others were placed with Russian officers in accordance with the ranks of the Swedish captives, right down to the non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file soldiers. They were all sent to Russia several days later. The worst fate befell the Little Russian followers of Mazeppa, who were captured, or, in most cases, turned themselves in once they saw that the Swedes had lost. Nordberg, who witnessed this first hand, says that they were subject to the most horrible torture, their arms and legs were broken, their mutilated bodies where tied to wheels and publicly displayed, while others were hung or impaled on pikes… We cannot absolutely refute Nordberg’s account, since the savage punishment of rebels and traitors against the tsar was the custom under Peter.

So what is Poltava – the triumph of a great tsar, a battle that changed the geopolitical balance in northern and eastern Europe, the tragic loss of thousands of soldiers, or a failed attempt by Ukraine to liberate itself? Probably it is all that, which is what makes it so interesting, because people of every period see something of their own in it.

not in our front yard: In February 2009, it was announced that Ukraine would erect a monument to King Charles XII, but not within the city of Poltava. Instead, the monument will be set 100 kilometers from the battlefield, where retreating Swedish troops were surrounded and then captured in 1709.

1 Translation by Walter Arndt (Alexander Pushkin: Collected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry, Ardis: 1984).