continent, Swedish armies could march anywhere in Europe, and that made Sweden a force to be reckoned with in every European calculation of war and peace.
Sweden, in sum, was a phenomenon—a great power, but one with weaknesses. It was not only satiated with conquest, it was over-extended. It had many advantages: hard-working people, disciplined soldiers, kings who commanded brilliantly on the battlefield. Nevertheless, to maintain its position, it also needed wisdom. The nation's strength had to be husbanded, not flung into wild, new adventures. As long as its monarchs understood this and acted wisely, there was no reason that Sweden should not remain indefinitely the Mistress of the North.
The seeds of the Great Northern War lay in history and economics as well as in Peter's longing for the sea. The struggle between Russia and Sweden for possession of the coastal lands on the Gulf of Finland was centuries old. Sweden had been the enemy of the city-states of Moscow and Novgorod since the thirteenth century. Karelia and Ingria, which spread north and south of the Neva River, were ancient Russian lands; the Russian hero Alexander Nevsky won the name Nevsky ("of the Neva") by defeating the Swedes on the Neva River in 1240. During Russia's Time of Troubles following the death of Ivan the Terrible, Sweden had occupied a vast belt of territory which even included Novgorod itself. In 1616, Sweden gave up Novgorod, but kept the entire coastline anchored in such fortresses as Noteborg on Lake Ladoga, Narva and Riga, continuing Russia's isolation from the sea. Tsar Alexis had made an attempt to regain these lands, but he had been forced to abandon it. His more important wars were with Poland, and Russia could not fight Poland and Sweden simultaneously. Swedish possession of the provinces was reconfirmed by the Russian-Swedish Peace of Kardis in 1664.
Nevertheless, in Peter's mind these were Russian lands, and Russia was suffering substantial economic loss from their being in foreign hands. Through the Swedish-held ports of Riga, Reval and Narva flowed a wide river of Russian trade, and on this trade Swedish handlers and toll collectors levied heavy duties, and the Swedish treasury fattened. Finally, of course, there was the pull of the sea. In Vienna, when he found the Emperor determined on peace, Peter understood that he could not make war alone on the Ottoman Empire, and realized that his access to the Black Sea was blocked. But here was the Baltic, its waves lapping a coast only a few miles from the Russian frontier, which could serve as a direct avenue to Holland, England and the West. Presented with a chance to repossess this territory by making war on a boy king in
the company of Poland and Denmark, he found the temptation irresistible.
Yet, the war might still not have begun had fate not suddenly dispatched to the scene a dedicated man to stir the potent brew. Johann Reinhold von Patkul was a patriot without a country. He was a member of the old Livonian nobility, the hardy Germanic descendants of the Teutonic Knights, who had conquered and held Livonia, Estonia and Courland until the middle of the sixteenth century. After the severe defeats inflicted on the Knights by Ivan the Terrible, the Teutonic order was dissolved and Livonia fell into the hands of Poland. But the Poles were harsh masters, insisting on the Polish language, Polish laws and the Catholic religion, and eventually the Protestant Livonians sought the protection of Protestant Sweden. In 1660, after a long struggle, Livonia became a Swedish province and, as such, shared in the political affairs of the rest of Sweden. These included the famous and widely resisted "reduction" policy of Charles XI. After the early death of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish aristocracy had rapidly increased its relative power in the state, at the same time making itself hated by other classes of the population. On the accession of Charles XI, both the new King and the Swedish Parliament were determined to reduce the influence of the aristocracy by granting the King absolute power. One effective means was to demand the return to the crown of numerous lands parceled out to the nobles for administration. (The noblemen had begun to treat these lands as their own hereditary estates.) This "reduction," begun in 1680, was applied with ruthless severity, not only to Sweden itself, but to all provinces of the Swedish empire, including Livonia. This command struck Livonia all the more painfully because only two years earlier Charles XI had solemnly affirmed the rights of the Livonian barons, expressly promising that they would not be subjected to any "reduction" which might be imposed. The barons protested the confiscation and sent emissaries to Stockholm to plead their case.
Patkul was one of these emissaries. He was a strong, handsome, cultured man who spoke numerous languages, wrote Greek and Latin and was an experienced military officer. He was also hot-tempered, single-minded and ruthless. When he spoke, his courage and fierce dedication to his cause made him a commanding, majestic figure. He pleaded his case with eloquence—Charles XI was so moved that he touched Patkul on the shoulder, saying, "You have spoken like an honest man for your fatherland. I thank you"—but the King reaffirmed reduction as a "national necessity" and declared that Livonia could not be treated differently from the rest of the realm. Patkul returned to Livonia and drafted a fiery petition which he sent to Stockholm. Its contents were deemed treasonable and he was sentenced in absentia to lose his right hand and his head. But he escaped the Swedish officers sent to arrest him and began wandering through Europe, searching for an opportunity to free his native country. For six years, he dreamed of creating an anti-Swedish coalition which might bring independence to Livonia or at least restore the power of the Livonian nobility, and when Charles XI died and a fifteen-year-old boy mounted the throne of Sweden, the opportunity seemed to present itself.
Patkul was impatient, but he was also realistic. He knew that to throw off the Swedish yoke a small province would have to accept the help and probably the sovereignty of another large power, and Poland—a republic dominated by its nobility, who elected the king—seemed a good choice. Under so loose a system, Patkul reasoned, the Livonian nobility would be more likely to maintain its rights. Further, the newly elected Polish King, Augustus of Saxony, was German and therefore could be expected to sympathize with the German nobility of Livonia.
In October 1698, Patkul secretly arrived in Warsaw and set about persuading Augustus to take the initiative in forming an anti-Swedish alliance. Patkul had already visited King Frederick IV of Denmark and found him willing. The Danes had never fully accepted the loss of territory in southern Sweden inflicted on them by Gustavus Adolphus and looked forward to restoring the days when the Oresund, the sound that separates the Baltic from the North Sea, and Denmark from Sweden, could be looked upon as "a stream that runs through the dominions of the King of Denmark." Further, the Danes resented and feared the presence of Swedish troops on their southern border in the territory of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.
Augustus was intrigued by Patkul's proposition, especially by his statement that the Livonian nobles were ready to acknowledge Augustus as their hereditary king. To Augustus, this opened a glittering prospect. His ambition was to make his elective Polish crown a hereditary one. By seizing Livonia with Saxon troops and then presenting the province to the Polish nobility, he hoped to gain its support in making a permanent claim on the Polish throne. Under Patkul's spell, Augustus grew more eager. Assessing the possible reaction of the major European powers to such a war—a concern of Augustus—Patkul estimated that Austria, France, Holland and England would doubtless "make loud noises about their trade, but would probably do nothing." As a further inducement to Augustus, Patkul assured the King that the conquest of Livonia would prove easy, and he even supplied an exact description of the fortifications of Riga, the city which would be Augustus' major objective.