4.31 Europe: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 24/28)

By the end of 1704, after taking the Swedish held fort at the junction of Lake Lagoda with the Neva, the Russians had taken both Narva in Estonia and Dorpat in Livonia, giving Russia an entrance to the Baltic. (Ref. 131 ) Meanwhile Karl XII had finally convinced the Polish to dethrone the Saxon, Augustus, and under Swedish guns Stanislaus Leszczynski was crowned King of Poland at Warsaw (not at Cracow, as tradionally). The Swedish army then turned toward Russia (1705) while Augustus, disguised, went by a circuitous route through Hungary to join Czar Peter and the Russian forces. In the first battle at Grodno Karl forced the Russians to retreat in disarray, but he could not follow because of a spring thaw and its mud. The eventual defeat of the Swedish forces at Poltava, however, has been described above in the special section on THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR.

We have also previously reported that Karl Xll obtained a new army of 18,000 men in 1712, landing in Swedish Pomerania with the intent to again attack Russia. A Danish fleet caught a convoy of supply ships, sending 30 of them to the bottom of the Baltic.

The Swedish General Stenbock wheeled and attacked the Danes on the west, winning the battle but losing 6,000 fighting men. He then marched on west toward Hamburg. At Altona he demanded 100,000 thalers for expenses and when the town could raise only 42,000, his men burned the community to the ground.

At what might be called the half-way point of the Great Northern War, after the Swedish defeat at Poltava in Russia, Poland became in effect a possession of Russia and Augustus II was put back on the throne. Peter I also arranged a marriage between Duke Frederick William, of Courland (a nephew of Frederick of Prussia) to his niece Anna (daughter of his half-brother Ivan). She soon became Duchess of Courland, as her young husband died. We shall note later that she was also called back to Russia in 1730 to be Empress Anna Ivanovna. Also, in this interim, Peter's son Alexis married the daughter of the Duke of Wolfenbuettel at the castle of the Queen of Poland in 1711. (Ref. 131 )

In about 1733 Russian and Saxon troops put young Augustus III on the Polish throne. He had Austrian backing, but France, Spain and Sardinia took up arms in the so-called War of the Polish Succession, in favor of the deposed Stanislas Lesczynski. By 1738 Stanislas announced a renunciation of the throne and Poland had reached a point of real political decay. (Ref. 119 ) Rich nobles still wielded much power, however, and Prince Radziwill single-handedly raised his own army, equipped with artillery, in 1750. (Ref. 292 ) The body politic pulled itself together enough by 1764 upon the death of Augustus III, to elect Stanislas II Poniatowski as king, but Catherine II of Russia used religious divisions as a lever to foment more civil strife. In the resulting war of 1768-1774, the Turks decided to help Poland, but Russia still dominated and sliced off a portion of Poland (part of the first Polish partition) and destroyed the Turkish Mediterranean fleet at Chesme. In the midst of this was a Jewish persecution with thousands having to flee, some to England. (Ref. 260 ) To complete that first partition Prussia took an area of Poland between Danzig and Thorn, while Austria helped herself to a large area just south of Cracow. A second partition of Poland took place in 1787-92 and finally in 1795 all of Poland was gobbled up, with Austria taking Cracow, Prussia getting Warsaw and Russia occupying Vilna. On that occasion Catherine II of Russia was invited in by the greater nobles of Poland. Life in that country was bad and superstition great. The starving citizens of Kolberg would not touch a wagon load of potatoes sent to them by Frederick the Great in 1774. (Ref. 211 ) The peasants were subjected to the worst kind of serfdom. In Lower Silesia in 1.798 compulsory labor by peasants was unlimited - that is, they could be forced to work 7 days a week for an unlimited number of hours. Later in the century there was a tremendous "floating" population of runaway serfs, impoverished noblemen, indigent Jews and urban paupers, forming a sort of "anti-society". (Ref. 292 )