The most immediate impact of Poltava was on events in Poland. As soon as news of the battle arrived, Augustus of Saxony issued a proclamation repudiating the Treaty of Altranstadt by which he had been forced to give up the Polish crown, and, with a Saxon army of 14,000, he entered Poland and summoned his Polish subjects to renewed allegiance. The Polish magnates, without Charles' army there to compel their acceptance of Stanislaus, welcomed Augustus back. Stanislaus fled, first to Swedish Pomerania, then to Sweden, and finally to Charles' camp inside the Ottoman Empire.
In late September, Peter, recovering from his illness in Kiev, began a long, circular journey which would last three months and take him from the Ukrainian capital to Warsaw, East Prussia, Riga, St. Petersburg and, finally, to Moscow. Early in October, after passing through Warsaw, he sailed down the Vistula, meeting Augustus on board the Polish King's royal barge near Thorn. Augustus was nervous; the two monarchs had not met since he had broken his vows to Peter by signing the treaty with Charles, withdrawing from the war and leaving Russia to face Sweden alone. But the Tsar was gracious and good-humored, telling Augustus to forget the past; he understood that Augustus had been forced to do what he had done. Nevertheless, at dinner Peter could not resist an ironic thrust at Augustus' faithlessness. "I always wear the cutlass you gave me," Peter said, "but it seems you do not care for the sword I gave you as I see you are not wearing it." Augustus replied that he prized Peter's gift but that somehow in the haste of his departure from Dresden he had left it behind. "Ah," said Peter, "then let me give you another." Whereupon he handed to Augustus the same sword he had given him before, which had been discovered in Charles' baggage at Poltava.
It was sufficient revenge. On October 9, 1709, Peter and Augustus signed a new treaty of alliance in which the Tsar once again promised to help Augustus gain and hold the throne of Poland, while Augustus again committed himself to fight against Sweden and all the Tsar's enemies. The two agreed that their objective was not to destroy Sweden but simply to force Charles back into Swedish territory and render him powerless to attack their neighbors. Peter's part of the bargain was carried out almost before the treaty was signed. By the end of October, Menshikov's troops had secured the greater part of Poland without a fight. Krassow, the Swedish general, had decided that his small force could not engage the Russian army and had retreated to the Baltic coast, taking refuge in the fortified towns of Stettin and Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania. Stanislaus accompanied him as a refugee, and thereafter for many years the fiction that Stanislaus was King of Poland was maintained "only in his presence.
From Thom, Peter sailed farther down the Vistula to Marienwerder to meet King Frederick I of Prussia, who was alarmed by the emergence of Russia's new power in Northern Europe but was eager to acquire any Swedish territories in Germany which might now be attainable. Peter understood that the King's intention was to collect spoils without doing any fighting, and he behaved cooly. Nevertheless, the meeting was successfuclass="underline" A treaty was signed establishing a defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia, and Menshikov, who was present, was awarded the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle.
In his meeting with Frederick, Peter also arranged a marriage. This was the second foreign marriage Peter was then negotiating for a member of the Russian royal house, and both represented a drastic change in Russian policy. Traditionally, Russian princes married only Russian women, avoiding the contamination of bringing non-Orthodox believers into the royal line. From the time of the Great Embassy, Peter had wanted to change this, but no foreign monarch had seen much profit in marrying a relative into the Muscovite dynasty which was considered a negligible force in European affairs. Since 1707, Peter had been dickering with the minor German House of Wolfenbuttel, hoping to persuade the Duke to permit his daughter Charlotte to marry the Tsarevich Alexis. Negotiations had dragged, as the Duke was in no hurry to marry a daughter to the son of a tsar on the verge of being toppled from his throne by the King of Sweden. Obstacles to the marriage suddenly disappeared after Poltava, and dynastic links with Moscow now seemed highly attractive. Even before the Duke of Wolfenbuttel could signal his change of mind, a messenger from Vienna arrived with the Emperor's offer of his youngest sister, Archduchess Magdalena, as a potential bride for the Tsarevich. Peter continued to negotiate with the Duke, however, and a marriage contract was drawn up.
The second foreign marriage Peter arranged was between his niece Anne, .daughter of his half-brother, Ivan, and the young
Duke Frederick William of Courland, a nephew of Frederick of Prussia. As part of the arrangement, Peter agreed that the Russian troops occupying the Duchy of Courland, a small principality south of Riga, would be withdrawn and that Courland would be allowed to remain neutral in future wars. Frederick of Prussia was pleased by this, as it placed a buffer between himself and the Russians on his Baltic frontier. For Peter, Anne's marriage was important. She was the first Russian princess to marry a foreigner in more than 200 years. Her acceptance was a sign of Europe's recognition of Russia's new status and signaled that thereafter Peter and subsequent tsars could use marriageable Russian princesses to intervene in the complicated dynastic affairs of the German states.*
Leaving East Prussia, Peter traveled north through Courland to join Sheremetev, whose troops had completed the siege works around Riga but who had delayed opening the bombardment until the Tsar could be present. On November 9, Peter arrived and on the 13th with his own hands fired the first three shells from the mortars into the city. This act assuaged his festering sense of grievance over his treatment by Riga when he passed through thirteen years before at the start of the Great Embassy. Riga resisted fiercely, however, and before departing the Tsar instructed Sheremetev not to leave his men in the trenches through the rigors of the Baltic winter, but simply to blockade the city and put the troops in winter quarters.
From Riga, Peter continued northeast to St. Petersburg, his "paradise" now secure. He did not stay long, taking time only to issue orders for building a new church in honor of St. Samson, the saint on whose day the Battle of Poltava had been fought, to lay the keel of a new warship to be called Poltava and to give instructions for the design and embellishment of public gardens. Then he traveled south to Moscow to celebrate his triumph. He arrived at Kolomenskoe on December 12, but had to wait there for a week until the two Guards regiments which were to participate in the parade could arrive and the final decorations and arrangements could be completed. On December 18, everything was ready and the huge parade was beginning when Peter learned that Catherine had just given birth to a baby girl. Instantly, he postponed the parade and hurried with his friends to see the child, who was named Elizabeth.
* Anne's marriage was celebrated a year later in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, her nineteen-year-old bridegroom drank himself into illness during the celebrations and died on the journey home. Anne remained Duchess of Courland until 1730 when she was summoned to St. Petersburg to become Empress Anne of Russia.