The Swedish build-up was rapid. Within the following ten days, another 10,000 Swedish troops including cavalry and artillery were ferried across the sound. The outnumbered Danish forces withdrew into the city of Copenhagen, and Charles' army followed, setting siege lines around the city and beginning a bombardment. It was this dismaying situation which the King of Denmark found when he hurried back from the south: his fleet outnumbered and useless, his capital under siege, his main army engaged far to the south. Frederick knew that he was beaten and quickly came to terms. On August 18, 1700, he signed the Peace of Travendal, by which he gave back the Holstein-Gottorp territories he had taken and dropped out of the war against Sweden. Charles was satisfied—he had no designs on Danish territory, and could now turn his attention to Augustus. The English and Dutch were satisfied—the war on the boundaries of Germany and the Hapsburg empire had been snuffed out. The status quo had been restored.
Charles' first campaign of the war, thus, had been swift, successful and almost bloodless. Within two weeks, two bold decisions—to force the lesser channel with the Swedish fleet, and to land troops on the island of Zealand behind King Frederick's back—had restored the rights of his ally, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and driven one enemy from the war. Not all the success in this brief, brilliant campaign can be credited to Swedish arms alone; it was the presence of the Anglo-Dutch fleet that made the descent on Zealand possible.
And so Denmark was out of the war. Charles realized that, given a promising chance, Frederick might reopen hostilities, but not for a while. At least the Swedish thrust into Zealand had gained valuable breathing time. Now, Charles could make ready to hurl himself on a second enemy. At the end of the Danish campaign, he thought that his next adversary would be Augustus of Poland. But events dictated differently. In fact, the second Swedish blow was to fall on Peter of Russia.
NARVA
The Tsar's declared objective in attacking Sweden was to seize the Baltic provinces of Ingria and Karelia. Ingria was a comparatively narrow strip of land extending seventy-five miles along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, from the mouth of the Neva to the town of Narva; Karelia was a much larger expanse of forest-and-lake country between the gulf and Lake Ladoga, extending as far west as Vyborg. Together, the two provinces, which had been taken from Russia during the Time of Troubles, would give Peter an adequate opening to the Baltic.
Narva, a coastal town and fortress in Estonia on the border of Ingria, had not been included in Peter's original war aims; it was part of the territory which Patkul and Augustus had designated to go to Poland. Nevertheless, Peter felt that the surest way of securing Ingria would be to capture this town. And as he studied his maps of the region, it seemed that a thrust at Narva would not be difficult; the Russian frontier lay only twenty miles to the southeast of the town, a short march for an invading army.
Peter's decision was received unhappily by Patkul and Baron Langen, Augustus' representative in Moscow. They were not eager to see Swedes replaced in Estonia by Russians, even if, for (he moment, the Russians were their allies. As Baron Langen reported to Patkul, "I have done everything possible, with the help of the Danish ambassador, to distract him [the Tsar] from this intention. We found him so stubborn that we feared to touch any more on such a delicate subject and must be satisfied with the Tsar's break with Sweden in the hope that in time Narva will be in our hands." Patkul worried that, having taken Narva, Peter would move down the Baltic coast, swallowing the whole of Livonia without Augustus being able to prevent him. But there was nothing to be done; the Tsar was determined.
By mid-September 1700, Prince Trubetskoy, Governor of Novgorod, had received orders to march on Narva and invest the city with an advance guard of 8,000 men. Command of the main army was given to Fedor Golovin, who had served as ambassador, foreign minister and admiral and now was to be a field marshal.
Under Golovin, the army was divided into three divisions, to be commanded respectively by Avtemon Golovin, Adam Weide and Nikita Repnin. In all, the army totaled over 63,000 men, but the troops were widely scattered. As Trubetskoy's men were moving slowly in the direction of Narva, Repnin's division was still assembling on the Volga, a thousand miles away. By October 4, 35,000 Russians were building trenches before the town and Peter himself had arrived to oversee the siege. He was awaiting only the arrival of cannonballs and powder to begin the bombardment.
The town of Narva, built by the Danes in the thirteenth century, had been a flourishing seaport in the time of the Hanseatic League, and even in Peter's day it handled a substantial amount of Russian trade from Pskov and Novgorod. It was like many another Baltic German town, with gabled brick houses and the thin spires of Lutheran churches rising above tree-lined streets. Situated on the west bank of the River Narova on a neck of land made by a wide bend in the river, the town was in effect surrounded on three sides by water, and because it was so close to the Russian frontier, it was strongly defended. A high wall of stone laced with bastions encircled the city. Across a stone bridge was the squat, powerful castle of Ivangorod, built by the Russians in 1492 when the river was the frontier. Then, Ivangorod was intended to overawe the town of Narva, but now town and castle formed a single, integrated defense system. The garrison consisted of 1,300 infantry, 200 cavalry and 400 armed civilians.
Under the direction of Lieutenant General Ludwig von Hallart, a Saxon engineer lent to Peter by Augustus, the Russians established siege lines opposite the land walls on the western side of Narva. There, astride the only road by which a relief force could approach the town, the Russians entrenched themselves between double walls which cut off the town from the west and at the same time protected their own siege lines against attack from the rear. In time, these walls developed into earthworks four miles long, nine feet high, with a trench six feet deep in front.
The siege went more slowly than Peter had hoped. Although Narva was only twenty miles from the Russian frontier, it was well over a hundred miles from the nearest Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov. The meager roads, sodden from the autumn rains, caused the transport wagons to mire and become bogged down. There were too few artillery harnesses, the carts went to pieces and the horses collapsed. Golovin did his best to move the soldiers quickly, seizing local horses and carts, but it was not until the end of October that most of his troops were in position.
The Russian artillery bombardment began on November 4. Meanwhile, Sheremetev was sent westward with 5,000 horsemen to report any sign of a Swedish rescue force. For two weeks, the Russian cannon battered the ramparts and towers of Narva with little success; the gun carriages were so badly made or so damaged in transport that many fell to pieces after three or four shots. Two Russian infantry assaults on Ivangorod were easily repulsed. By November 17, there was not sufficient ammunition to continue the bombardment beyond a few days, and the guns were silenced until new supplies could arrive. At the same time, two distressing reports arrived in Peter's camp: King Augustus had given up the siege of Riga and retired into winter quarters. And King Charles XII had landed with a Swedish army at Pernau on the Baltic coast, 150 miles southwest of Narva.
Once the Peace of Travendal was signed, the Swedish army was rapidly withdrawn from Zealand. Charles' officers were not anxious to leave their troops on the Danish island once the Dutch and English squadrons had departed for home, and these great ships were preparing to sail. True, the Danes had made peace, but who could tell what temptations might occur to them if the small Swedish expeditionary force was left alone and exposed on the wrong side of the sound. In addition, the King was eager to transfer the soldiers quickly in order to use them in a second campaign before winter. By August 24, the last Swedish soldier had been embarked and transported back to southern Sweden. During the last days of August and the first weeks of September, Charles refused to listen to any suggestions of peace, thinking only of deciding on the place where his counterblow against Augustus should fall. It was generally assumed that the army would sail for Livonia to relieve the city of Riga and drive the Saxon armies out of the province. But word began to reach him of Russian troops massing on the frontier of Ingria in such numbers that there could be little doubt of Tsar Peter's warlike intentions. And in fact, before the end of September, Charles received the Tsar's declaration of war and the news that a Russian army had crossed the frontier and appeared before the Swedish fortress of Narva.