Thus, Peter successfully snuffed out the flame of Mazeppa's revolt before it could spread. Thereafter, instead of Mazeppa's leading the whole Ukrainian people into the Swedish camp, a split developed between the minority who followed him and the majority who remained loyal to Peter. Charles' promise to take the Cossacks under his protection had little effect. The Ukrainian people stood by the Tsar and their new Hetman, hiding their horses and provisions from the Swedes and turning over captured Swedish stragglers for the reward. Delightedly, Peter wrote Apraxin, "The people of Little Russia stand with God's help more firmly than was possible to expect. The King sends enticing proclamations, but the people remain faithful and bring in the King's letters."
The loss of Baturin's storehouses and magazines—and of Lewenhaupt's wagons—left Swedish reserves of food and gunpowder dangerously low. Deep inside Russia, Charles now had no way to replenish his meager, dwindling stock of powder. Worse was the loss of the hope of a mass Ukrainian revolt. Far from finding refuge in a secure region, the invading army was once again surrounded by bands of ravaging and burning enemy cavalry. And there was also a growing shortage of manpower.
The effect of these events on Mazeppa was catastrophic. Instead of brilliantly casting his lot with the victors, he had chosen destruction. He had seen his capital razed, his title taken, his followers desert. At first he told Charles that Menshikov's brutality would only enrage the Cossacks, but this proved illusory, and overnight the proud Cossack Hetman was reduced to being a defeated old man, little more than a fugitive protected by the Swedish army. Charles now became Mazeppa's sole help—only if the Swedish King won a conclusive victory and overthrew the Tsar could Mazeppa's fortunes be restored. Until the end of his life, Mazeppa remained in Charles' camp. He was no longer a potent ally, but Charles was loyal to him for what he had risked. Charles also enjoyed the wit and vivacity of the wiry little man, who, despite his age, was still full of fire and life and spoke Latin as fluently as the King himself. Through the remainder of the Russian campaign, Mazeppa's sagacity and his intimate knowledge of the country made him a valuable counselor and guide. And he and his several thousand horsemen remained loyal to Charles, inspired in their devotion by the knowledge of what would happen to them if they fell into Russian hands. But there is evidence that Mazeppa never completely gave up his scheming ways. A Cossack officer who had gone over with Mazeppa to the Swedes came back to Peter bearing an oral message supposedly from the old Hetman, offering to deliver Charles into Peter's hands if the Tsar agreed to pardon him and restore him to his rank and office of hetman. Peter sent the messenger back with a favorable reply, but nothing more was ever heard.
35
THE WORST WINTER WITHIN MEMORY
On November 11, Charles XII and the advance regiments of his army arrived at Baturin. The ruins were still smoldering and the air was heavy with the stench of half-burned corpses. Following the advice of the heart-broken Mazeppa, the Swedes continued south in the direction of Romny in a district lying between Kiev and Kharkov which abounded in rich grasslands and grainfields and supported many flocks and herds. Now, as winter was approaching, the sheds were filled with corn, tobacco, sheep and cattle and there was an abundance of bread, beer, honey, hay and oats. Here, at last, both men and animals could eat and drink their fill. Gratefully, the Swedes settled into a broad square of territory bounded by the towns of Romny, Pryluky, Lokhvitsa and Gadyach, dispersing the regiments into companies and platoons and taking up quarters in houses and huts throughout the area. Although they were isolated deep in the Ukraine, so far from Sweden and Europe "as it had been outside the world," here they believed they were safe and could rest.
Meanwhile, parallel to the Swedes but some miles to the east, Peter and Sheremetev with the main Russian army had also been moving south, always covering the Swedes and screening them from Moscow njiore than 400 miles to the northeast. When the Swedes settled down for the winter, Peter established his own winter headquarters in the town of Lebedin and distributed his forces in a northwest-southeast arc, taking positions in the towns of Putivl, Sumy and Lebedin, blocking the Kursk-Orel road to Moscow. To prevent a Swedish thrust east to Kharkov or west to Kiev, he put garrisons in other towns and villages east, south and west of the Swedish encampments. One of these towns was named Poltava.
Skirmishing continued, but increasingly the military pattern of the two armies was being reversed. Charles, who normally favored aggressive winter campaigning, was on the defensive, while Russian patrols constantly harried and provoked the extended perimeters of the Swedish camp. Peter's purpose was not to fight a general battle but simply to maintain pressure, to whittle away at the isolated Swedes, to deplete them, wear them down and demoralize them before spring. Time, Peter knew, was on his side.
The Tsar thus initiated new tactics designed to keep his enemies off balance, to deny them rest and a chance to spend the winter in bed with their boots off. The approaching winter was already colder than usual, and Russian irregular cavalry could cross the frozen rivers and streams with ease at any point. Because of this new mobility, the Swedish regiments found it more difficult to guard the edges of their encampments. The Russians also kept the Swedes off balance with a series of feints and diversions. Peter's tactic was to send a substantial force into the vicinity of the Swedish camp and tempt Charles to muster his troops and move out toward it, whereupon Peter's men would withdraw. This happened on November 24, at Smeloye, where Charles' troops, fully mobilized and prepared for battle, found the Russians vanishing before them. Enraged, the King gave his frustrated men permission to loot the town—systematically, with each regiment allowed a section—and burn it to the ground.
As the Russians persisted, Charles' anger grew, and in hopes of a general battle to deal a blow to the Russians and end these harassments, he fell into a trap which Peter had prepared for him. Three Swedish regiments were quartered along with some of Mazeppa's Cossacks, in Gadyach, about thirty-five miles east of Romny. On December 7, Peter moved a substantial part of his army southeast as if to attack the town. Meanwhile, he sent Hallart with another corps toward Romny itself with instructions to attack and occupy it if the main Swedish army marched out to the relief of Gadyach. His objective was to force the Swedes to abandon their hearthsides and march out into the freezing countryside and then to steal Romny out from under them.
When Charles heard that the Russians were swarming on the outskirts of Gadyach, his combative instincts were aroused. In vain, his generals advised him to remain where he was and let the troops in Gadyach beat off any Russian assault. Despite their advice and the fearful cold, on December 19 Charles ordered the entire army to march. He himself set out first with the Guards, hoping to catch the Russians by surprise as he had at Narva. Peter, learning that Charles' army was on the march, ordered his troops to maintain their positions near Gadyach until the Swedes were close, and then to withdraw. The Russians actually held until the Swedish advance guard was only half a mile away, and then, as planned, they simply melted away, retreating to Lebedin, where the Tsar had his headquarters. Meanwhile, once the Swedes were gone, Hallart's men stormed into Romny, occupying it without difficulty, just as Peter had anticipated.
Now, as Peter had hoped, with the Swedish army strung out on the road between Gadyach and Romny, an enemy worse than Russia swept down on Charles and his soldiers. All over Europe, the winter that year was the worst in memory. In Sweden and Norway, elk and stags froze to death in the forests. The Baltic was choked and often solid with ice, and heavily laden wagons passed from Denmark across the sound to Sweden. The canals of Venice, the estuary of the Tagus in Portugal, even the Rhone were sheeted with ice. The Seine froze at Paris so that horses and wagons could pass across. Even the ocean froze in the bays and inlets along the Atlantic coast. Rabbits froze in their burrows, squirrels and birds fell dead from the trees, farm animals died rigid in the fields. At Versailles, wine froze in the cellars and glazed with ice on the tables. The courtiers put fashion aside, layered themselves in heavy clothes and huddled around the great chimneys where logs blazed day and night, trying to warm the icy rooms. "People are dying of the cold like flies. The windmill sails are frozen in their sockets, no corn can be ground, and thus many people are dying of starvation," wrote Louis XIV's sister-in-law, the Princess Palatine. In the vast, empty, windswept, unprotected spaces of the Ukraine, the cold was even more intense. Through this icy hell, the ragged, freezing Swedish army was marching to the relief of a garrison which was no longer even in danger.