then led them forward through the marsh. The going was difficult, and the Russians, to Charles' surprise, did not break and run, but stayed to fight, firing at the Swedes from thirty to forty paces, retiring more or less in order, reloading and running forward to fire again at the oncoming Swedish line. They were not willing, however, to stand and grapple with the Swedish infantry in a clash of cold steel, and although their firing took its toll, it had little effect on the steady advance of the Swedish veterans.
As the Swedes, maintaining ranks, recognized the Russian pattern, they began to fall with it themselves. The Swedish lines halted to load, and those whose weapons would fire fired back at the Russians. This exchange was unique in the battles of Charles XII. Wrote Jefferyes, 'The battle grew so hot that in a whole hours' time nothing was heard by the continual firing of musketry on both sides.'
By seven a.m., Repnin began to understand that he was taking the full force of the Swedish attack. On his plea, 1,200 men of Goltz's Russian dragoons advanced from the south, trying to assist the hard-pressed Russian infantry by riding down the Swedish infantry on its right flank. Charles was saved by Rehnskjold, who, waiting across the stream with the still uncommitted Swedish cavalry, saw the movement of the Russian horse. With four squadrons—600 men—of the Guards cavalry, he galloped across the river and engaged the Russian cavalry before it could fall on the Swedish infantry. The impact between the opposing horsemen was bloody as the Swedes repeatedly repulsed a force twice their number. Gradually, as additional squadrons of Swedish cavalry crossed the river and rode into the fray, the Russians were forced to check their attack and retire into the woods.
Meanwhile, the failure of the Russian cavalry to break through and attack the Swedish infantry left the Russian infantry alone to cope with Charles' assault. The Swedish advance continued implacably as fresh Swedish infantry crossed the river and, as Charles had known it wouldf this furious, concentrated pressure on a single section of the Russian line finally forced it to break. Rapnin's forces fell back, rallied, wavered, and finally broke. The Russian left wing abandoned its camp and its artillery, dispersed into company-sized units and retreated through the woods.
It was now eight a.m. Charles' sudden, determined attack had defeated Repnin's division, but Sheremetev's division to the north, on the opposite side of the marsh, remained uninvolved. At first, hearing the firing and seeing the Swede's crossing to attack Repnin, Sheremetev had attempted to send troops to assist his colleague, but, as Charles had anticipated, the morass made this difficult, and when Charles turned to meet Sheremetev, he found it was not necessary. The Russian Field Marshal, mindful of Peter's admonition not to risk everything, was already in retreat toward Mogilev and the Dnieper.
The Battle of Golovchin was the first serious engagement between Russian and Swedish troops since Charles had begun his long march from Saxony almost a year before. By the classical definition of victory, the Swedes had won. They had attacked and gained a strong position. The Swedish cavalry had fought brilliantly and repulsed a much larger Russian force. The King had been in the thick of the fight, performing with great personal bravery, and had remained untouched. The Russians had once again retreated. The road to the Dnieper lay open. All the legends were intact.
Yet, there were factors which were not displeasing to Peter, who arrived late and heard about the battle in Gorky from Menshikov. Although worried that his army had been forced to abandon another river line, he took solace in the fact that only one third of the Russian forces present had actually been engaged, and that these regiments had taken the whole weight of the famous Swedish attack led by the King of Sweden himself. Through four hours of heavy fighting, they had not collapsed, but had retreated in good order, fighting every step, and when they finally abandoned the field, it was not as a disorderly mob but in units which could be reassembled to fight again. The Russian casualties were 977 dead and 675 wounded, the Swedes had 267 dead and over 1,000 wounded. But there was an important difference. Peter's losses could be replaced; when one of Charles' soldiers fell, the King's army was permanently decreased by one.
Peter ordered investigations into which regiments had stood and which had broken; he was angry at certain officers, and there were punishments. Repnin was court-martialed and temporarily relieved of his command. Four days after the battle, a conference was held at Shklov and it was decided not to attempt to defend Mogilev on the Dnieper but to fall back farther to Gorky along the road to Smolensk. But not before the Cossacks and Kalmucks had done their terrible work. The region had been doomed by the Tsar's order, and Charles' victorious army would advance through utterly barren lands.
Although Charles, too, was pleased and the news went back to Stockholm and spread through Europe that Sweden had won another victory, the King was aware of a change in the Russian adversaries. The Battle of Golovchin opened his eyes to the fact that the Russian army was no longer the same disorderly mob which had fled at Narva. Here, in a battle in which the numbers of men actually engaged were almost equal, the Russians had fought well. Jefferyes admitted, 'The Muscovites have learned their lesson much better and have made great improvements in military affairs and if their soldiers had shown but half the courage their officers did (which for the most part are foreigners) they had probably been too hard for us in the late action.'
Along the road to Mogilev, the Swedish army advanced between smoldering houses and barns. On July 9, the army reached the town on the River Dnieper, then the frontier of Russia itself. Without a shot being fired, the King sent troops across, although the main body remained on the western bank. Everyone assumed that the halt would be only temporary, a brief rest while supplies were gathered for the final stage of the march. The campaign was now practically over. All the great river barriers had been crossed. Smolensk was 100 miles to the northeast, and 200 miles beyond Smolensk lay Moscow.
At Mogilev, Charles sent detachments across the Dnieper, laid bridges across the river and then—to the surprise of both the Swedish army and the watching Russian patrols—failed to cross. For an entire month—from July 9 to August 5—the 35,000 men of the Swedish army waited on the western bank of the Dnieper for Lewenhaupt's force from Riga to join them. Count Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt, General of Infantry, whose pedantic scholarship had prompted Charles to dub him 'the little Latin colonel,' was a meticulous, melancholy man, overly sensitive to the opinions of those around him, finding rivals and plots on every side, but was nevertheless a brave and skillful officer with rare devotion to orders. No matter how small the formation of infantry he commanded, no matter how large or well entrenched the opposing enemy force, if Lewenhaupt had explicit orders, he would dress ranks and advance with absolute serenity into murderous enemy fire. His tragedy—and Charles' mistake—was that he was given a command which called for a wide latitude of personal initiative and improvisation.
Lewenhaupt was military governor of Courland and what remained of the Swedish Baltic provinces. In and around the fortress city of Riga, he commanded 12,500 troops. In March, when he visited Charles at Radoshkovichi, the King had given him simple, uncomplicated orders: He was to use his troops at Riga to collect supplies, gather a huge wagon train, load it with enough food and ammunition to last his own men for three months and the entire army for six weeks, and then escort this wagon train through the Lithuanian countryside to join the main army. His wagons would replenish the army for the final phase of the march on Moscow, while his soldiers would substantially augment the King' combat strength. Although the route chosen from Riga to Mogilev was 400 miles, it was calculated that if he left early in June, he would complete the journey in two months.
These assumptions were wrong. Lewenhaupt returned to Riga early in May and set about collecting supplies, but the sheer task of assembling 2,000 wagons and 8,000 horses to pull them, as well as the supplies themselves, delayed him. On June 3, as Charles' army was preparing to break camp at Radoshkovichi, Lewenhaupt received orders to leave Riga for the Berezina River, but he reported that he could not possibly start before the end of the month. And, indeed, not until the last days of June were the long supply column and its escort of 7,500 infantry and 5,000 cavalry on the road. Lewenhaupt himself remained in Riga another month and did not join his command until July 29, when, according to the original plan, it should have been approaching its junction with the main army. In fact, his men had crawled only 150 miles and still were to the north of Vilna, while Charles' main army had moved on to Mogilev, over 250 miles away.
For Peter, the news that Lewenhaupt's army was leaving Livonia and Courland and moving south, away from the Baltic, was cause for enormous relief. It indicated with reasonable certainty that the Swedish King's ultimate objective was not St. Petersburg, that there would be no combined attack on the Neva by Lewenhaupt from the south and Lybecker from Finland. And with Lewenhaupt out of the picture, Apraxin had enough men to deal with whatever Lybecker might attempt. Accordingly, General Bauer's Russian force of 16,000 men—whose mission had been to watch Lewenhaupt—was now ordered to move south.
Charles' plans now hinged on Lewenhaupt. Critics have blamed Lewenhaupt harshly for his excessive delays, but he could not control the weather. Moving his heavy supply wagons with their great wheels churning in the mud proved almost impossible in the rain, although fascines of brush, branches and wooden boards were laid down.
