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The rout of the once all-victorious Swedish army has often been attributed to bad luck - not least by Charles’s chief apologist, his chamberlain Gustavus Adlerfelt. But the Russian strategy of attrition had served to wear the Swedish troops down. True, the co-ordination of the Swedish battle would have been better had not Charles been hors de combat having received a stray bullet in the leg two days earlier. On the other hand the Russian command, having analysed their initial failure at Narva and their other encounters with the Swedes, had set the scene to suit themselves. They had built redoubts to block certain approaches to the enemy and divert them from their main objective, the Russian encampment at Poltava. And this time when the Swedes attacked the shock was absorbed. Charles’s troops were slowed, then stopped, and finally turned. That day Charles lost nearly 10,000 men dead or taken prisoner. Of the prisoners, the rank and file were put to work on useful projects, and several of the officers, educated men, were to find useful employment in the Russian service, in Siberia and elsewhere.

Charles had set out with high hopes and twenty regiments. According to Adlerfelt, ‘Sweden never saw so considerable a force, nor could … [it] have been conducted with more prudence good council and wisdom.’ There was never a braver leader, claimed Adlerfelt, nor more loyal and disciplined troops. Defeat when it came was unbelievable, and Adlerfelt tried to deny it: ‘If the Muscovites had gained so complete a victory as they pretended, why did they not immediately follow the remains of the army?’ ⁴ The answer was that there was no point. What remained of that famous army, 17,000 strong, had had its sting drawn, and most of its troops soon capitulated. Only Charles and Mazepa with their staffs and some close retainers fled into Ottoman territory, where they were accorded political asylum.

The victory at Poltava raised Russia’s profile in the consciousness of Western powers, though even before this England had begun trying to lure Russia into an alliance. It also seems to have marked shifts in Russia’s military policy, both to more open forms of warfare and to preferring Russian over foreign generals in appointments to top commands. Furthermore, since Charles, even in exile, refused to make peace, Sweden had to be forced to come to terms. This required a build-up of Russian naval power in the north, involving the expansion of shipyards at Onega and Ladoga to give them a capacity to build both frigates for deep waters and galleys to negotiate the shallow Baltic. The fruit was Russia’s first significant victory at sea, when, off Hango in 1714, a flotilla of Russian galleys defeated a Swedish force, capturing a frigate and over 100 guns.

This feat was enough to give Peter command of the shallow seas off Finland, and made even the Swedish heartland vulnerable to attack. Since Russian forces had by then occupied Livonia and Estonia - taking Riga, Pernau, Reval, Viborg, Kexholm and most other Swedish holdings on the southern and eastern shorelines of the Baltic — Sweden had virtually no negotiating cards left to play. But Charles was as obstinate as he had been headstrong. He rejected further overtures in 1718, when he was offered the return of Finland, Estonia and Livonia if only he would cede Ingria, Narva and Viborg. He was even offered help to conquer Norway. His death later that year allowed negotiations to proceed, but it was only under pressure of further military operations in the Baltic and Russia’s threat to support the pretensions of the Duke of Holstein to the throne of Sweden that peace was eventually concluded at Nystad in I721. ⁵ At last the fireworks could be fired over the Neva and Peter could accept a new title.

Sweden had been the chief focus of Peter’s attentions for the preceding twenty years and more, but it had not been the only one. There was intense diplomatic activity in central Europe, where a policy of dynastic imperialism was promoted. A series of political liaisons marked the progress of this policy. He married his half-cousin Anna to the Duke of Courland, her sister to the Duke of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, and her daughter to the Prince of Brunswick-Bevern. His son Alexis was married to a princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, his daughter by his second wife, Catherine, to the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. In this fashion Peter’s kin and progeny came to be included in that talisman of aristocratic respectability the Almanack de Gotha, family ties were created with several strategically placed territories in central Europe, and precedents were laid for the intermarriage of Romanovs and some of the grandest crowned heads of Europe. ⁶