Battle of Poltava

Background

The Great Northern War began in 1700, when Denmark–Norway, Saxony–Poland and Russia attacked Sweden. Charles XII knocked Denmark out that year and beat a larger Russian army at Narva, then spent six years in Poland and Saxony until Augustus II gave up the Polish crown at Altranstädt. In 1708 Charles turned on Russia with a main army of about 44,000 men and won at Holowczyn in July, but instead of pushing on to Moscow through country the Russians had stripped, he swung south into the Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine.

Two blows followed that autumn. Lewenhaupt's column from Livonia, bringing the army's supply train, was caught at Lesnaya; only about 6,000 starving men, without guns or wagons, reached the king. And Hetman Ivan Mazepa, who had negotiated secretly with Charles because he feared Peter meant to end the Hetmanate's autonomy, came over with only about 3,000 Cossacks. Menshikov reached Mazepa's capital, Baturyn, first, seized its stores and massacred its people. Most of the Hetmanate's Cossacks, under the newly chosen hetman Ivan Skoropadsky, stayed with the tsar, although Kost Hordiienko brought some 8,000 Zaporozhians over to Charles in the spring of 1709.

The winter of 1708–09 was one of the coldest on record, and it cost the Swedes heavily. By spring Charles had about half his army left. From early May he besieged Poltava, a fortified town on the Vorskla, without the guns to breach it, while Peter gathered his field army across the river. In late June Charles was shot in the foot while reconnoitring and handed field command to Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld. When the Russians crossed the Vorskla and dug in a few kilometres north of the town, and word came that Kalmyk reinforcements were days away, the Swedes chose to attack before the odds grew worse.

The armies

The Swedish army was a shadow of the one that had left Saxony in 1707. Its Carolean regiments were veterans, drilled to close quickly and win by shock, but they were hungry and short of powder, and one account holds that the hard winter had spoiled what they had. The whole Swedish force around Poltava numbered some 31,000, including about 6,000 Cossack and Vlach irregulars, but only about 16,500–17,000 went into the battle, roughly half of them infantry and half cavalry, with just four guns; most of the army's 30-odd pieces stayed behind. Rehnskiöld commanded, with Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt leading the infantry, Carl Gustaf Creutz the cavalry and Carl Gustaf Roos one of the four infantry columns. The wounded king was carried on a litter. Mazepa's and Hordiienko's Cossacks guarded the camp and baggage at Pushkarivka and took no part.

Peter's army numbered 75,000–80,000 in all, including about 23,000 Cossacks, Kalmyks and other irregulars. About 42,000 regulars fought, with around 86 guns. Peter led in person, with Boris Sheremetev, Alexander Menshikov in charge of the cavalry, Adolf Fredrik Bauer's dragoons and Jacob Bruce's artillery. Its strength lay in fieldworks and firepower: a fortified camp backed onto the Vorskla, fronted by a line of redoubts. Poltava's own garrison of about 4,200 soldiers, with armed townspeople and Cossacks, held out under Aleksei Kelin.

The battle

Dates. The battle was fought on 8 July 1709 by the Gregorian calendar (New Style) used in most of western Europe; Russia's Julian calendar (Old Style) made it 27 June. Sweden had begun a gradual switch in 1700 by skipping that year's leap day and then stopped, so its own calendar ran one day ahead of the Julian: to the Swedes it was 28 June. Times below follow Englund's reconstruction, as summarised on Wikipedia.

The approach (night to about 4 am). The Swedes marched by night to attack the Russian camp at Yakovtsi, about 5 km north of Poltava, in four infantry and six cavalry columns. Across their path, in the open ground between the Yakovetski and Budyshchenski woods, stood a T-shaped screen of redoubts: six across the line of advance, and four more running towards the Swedes that Peter had ordered only the day before, of which two were unfinished. About 4,000 men held them. The infantry was in place by about 2.30 am, but the cavalry lost its way and arrived late, and the Russians were alerted. Around 4 am, with surprise lost, Rehnskiöld ordered the attack.

The redoubts (4 to 6 am). Roos's column stormed the first two redoubts but stalled at the third. The rest of the infantry, under Lewenhaupt, slipped past on the right, taking some works with cavalry help, and by about 5 am the Swedish horse had broken through the rear of the redoubt line and routed the Russian cavalry. Rehnskiöld then halted the pursuit and drew the army off to regroup west of the Russian camp. The order never reached Roos. By 6 am he had led about 1,500 of his 2,600 men into the Yakovetski wood.

Roos cut off (6 to 9.30 am). Lewenhaupt's battalions waited for Roos for about two hours within reach of the camp. The Russians retook the first two redoubts around 7 am and sent ten regiments after Roos, who fell back towards the Swedish siege lines, found his way blocked, and surrendered in an abandoned work near Poltava at about 9.30. Six battalions, perhaps a third of the Swedish foot, were gone before the main action began.

The main battle (9.45 to about 11 am). Peter had meanwhile marched 42 battalions, some 22,000 men, out of the camp, supported by 55 three-pounders and the guns on its ramparts, with Bauer's dragoons on the right and Menshikov's on the left. Against them Lewenhaupt had about 4,000 infantry in ten battalions with four three-pounders. At about 9.45 Rehnskiöld ordered them forward. Russian artillery opened at long range. The Swedish right drove into the Russian first line, but the left lagged, a gap opened, and Creutz's squadrons could not re-form in time to fill it. Russian battalions closed round the exposed flanks while Menshikov's cavalry got into the Swedish rear. The line broke and panic spread; by about 11 the Swedish army was routed, and the Russian horse cut down most of those it caught. Rehnskiöld, Count Carl Piper, Creutz and several generals were taken.

Escape (noon to evening). Charles, by now on horseback, came out of the woods around noon inside a square of a couple of thousand men and reached the baggage at Pushkarivka after 1 pm. At about 7 pm the army abandoned the siege and marched south along the Vorskla towards the Dnieper.

Aftermath

Swedish losses in the battle were about 9,000–12,000 killed, wounded and captured: Swedish accounts give 6,900 killed and wounded and 2,800 prisoners, Russian ones over 9,000 dead. Russia's official return was 1,345 killed and 3,290 wounded.

The battle did not end the campaign; Perevolochna did. Pursued by Menshikov's cavalry and Kalmyks, the army reached the Dnieper on 11 July without the means to cross. Charles, Mazepa and between 1,000 and 3,000 Swedes and Cossacks got over and fled into Ottoman territory; Lewenhaupt surrendered the rest, 12,500–16,000 men by different counts. Under the capitulation, Cossacks serving the Swedes were handed over to the Russians, and most were executed. Mazepa died at Bender that October. Charles spent five years in Ottoman lands and Denmark and Saxony re-entered the war, which ran on until the Peace of Nystad in 1721; many prisoners stayed in Russia and Siberia until then. Sweden's time as a great power was over, and Russia emerged as the dominant power in eastern Europe.

The three nations remember it differently. Swedish writers call it the greatest military catastrophe in the country's history. Imperial Russia celebrated Peter's triumph in monuments and in Lomonosov's mosaic. For Ukrainian historians it marks the end of the Hetmanate's autonomy, followed by Russian military rule and the first Ukrainian political emigration. Mazepa remains a hero to many Ukrainians and a traitor in Russian tradition, which had him anathematised; the battlefield carries both imperial monuments and, since 1994, a cross for the Cossacks who fell.

Wargaming it

Poltava is a compact battle that rewards a regimental or battalion-level game, roughly a battalion or a couple of squadrons per base, on a table covering the strip from the redoubts to the Russian camp. The terrain is simple but decisive: two woods funnelling the attack, the T of redoubts in the gap, the fortified camp backing onto the Vorskla, and the wood where Roos was lost.

The game is about timing and friction rather than raw numbers. The Swedish player must decide how far to fight for the redoubts or bypass them, keep columns in touch in the dark, and get infantry and cavalry to arrive together. Rules for lost or late orders, and for a commander-in-chief who cannot ride, matter more here than weapon tables. The Russian player has the easier task on paper, but must judge when to leave the camp; Peter had considered avoiding a general battle until the eve of it.

Good scenarios split the day: a dawn redoubt assault with the Swedish cavalry entering late, Roos's isolated fight in the woods, and the main clash after 9.45, when a few thousand Swedish foot advanced on a Russian line several times their size. What ifs worth testing: Charles unwounded and in command; the cavalry on time and surprise kept; Roos's six battalions present for the final attack; the Cossacks committed; or Charles retreating across the Dnieper before the Russians crossed the Vorskla. A campaign game can carry on to Perevolochna.

Maps and pictures