your kindness. I therefore pray God for strength to be able to serve such honor in the future.
Peter.
Across Russia, there were celebrations; in Moscow, the citizens wept for joy. Poltava meant delivery from the foreign invader and, it was hoped, an end to the crushing taxes imposed by the war and to the prolonged absence of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. A formal celebration in the capital was postponed until the arrival of the Tsar with part of the army, but meanwhile the nineteen-year-old Tsarevich Alexis, acting in his father's place, gave a huge banquet for all foreign ambassadors at Preobrazhenskoe. Peter's sister, Princess Natalya, gave a great banquet for the important ladies of the capital. Tables loaded with free beer, bread and meat were placed in the street so that all could celebrate. For an entire week, church bells rang incessantly from morning to night and volleys of cannon thundered from the Kremlin walls.
By July 13, the army at Poltava had ended its celebrations. The bodies of the Russian and Swedish dead had been collected and buried in separate mass graves on the battlefield. The army was rested and it must now be moved: The region around the city had been stripped bare of provisions. (Eight days after the battle, 12,000 Kalmuck horsemen had arrived to reinforce the Russian army. They were too late to fight but they, like the rest of the army, still had to be fed.) Besides, with the Swedish army annihilated and the warior King in flight, this was the moment to reap the harvest of victory. Two great regions, which had stubbornly thwarted the Tsar's ambitions, the Baltic and Poland, now lay all but naked before him. At a council of war in the Poltava camp that lasted from July 14 to 16, the army was divided in two. Sheremetev with all of the infantry and part of the cavalry was to march north to the Baltic and seize the great fortress port of Riga. Menshikov with most of the cavalry would move westward into Poland to operate with Goltz against the Swedes under Krassow and those Poles who supported King Stanislaus.
Peter himself went from Poltava to Kiev. In the Ukrainian capital, he attended a service of thanksgiving in Santa Sophia Cathedral, an architectural masterpiece of layered domes, interlocking arches and glowing interior mosiacs. The prefect of the cathedral, Feofan Prokopovich, preached a great, rolling panegyric to Peter and to Russia which so pleased the Tsar that he marked the priest for higher service; later, Prokopovich was to become the primary instrument of Peter's reform of the Russian church.
Peter had not meant to remain in Kiev, but on August 6 he wrote to Menshikov that he had a fever:
For my sins, sickness has stricken me. It's really an accursed illness, for although not now accompanied by shivering and temperatures but with nausea and pain, it lays me low unexpectedly, and so I do not think I will be able to leave here because of weakness earlier than the 10th or on the holy day of the Assumption.
Peter wanted all the world to know of his triumph. From the camp at Poltava, the Tsar sent letters to his envoys in foreign capitals, giving them details of the battle to pass along. At the Tsar's command, Menshikov wrote a special letter, sent by the swiftest couriers, to the Duke of Marlborough. The West, accustomed to hearing of an unbroken string of Swedish triumphs, now received a deluge of letters and messages from the East, all describing the 'complete victory' of the Tsar and the 'total defeat' of Charles XII. From Flanders, where he had received the first news of the battle even before the arrival of Menshikov's letter, Marlborough wrote to Godolphin in London:
We have no confirmation as yet of the battle between the Swedes and Muscovites, but should it be true of the first being so entirely beaten as is reported, what a melancholy reflection it is that after constant success for ten years, he [Charles XII] should in two hours' mismanagement and ill success, ruin himself and his country.
On August 26, Menshikov's letter arrived, and Marlborough wrote to Sarah, his Duchess:
This afternoon I have received a letter from Prince Menshikov, favorite and general of the Tsar, of the entire victory over the Swedes. If this unfortunate King had been so well advised as to have made peace the beginning of the summer, he might, in great measure, have influenced the peace between France and the Allies, and have made his kingdom happy; whereas now he is entirely in the power of his neighbors.
As news of the victory spread across the continent, opinion in Europe, previously hostile to and even contemptuous of Peter and Russia, began to change. The philosopher Leibniz, who after Narva had announced his hope of seeing Charles rule over Muscovy as far as the Amur, now proclaimed that the destruction of the Swedish army was one of the glorious turning points of history:
As for me, who am for the good of the human race, I am very glad that so great an empire is putting itself in the ways of reason and order, and I consider the Tsar in that respect as a person whom God has destined to great works. He has succeeded in having good troops. 1 do not doubt that ... he will succeed in also having good foreign relations, and I shall be charmed if I can help him make science flourish in his country. I maintain even that he can do in that respect finer things than all other princes have done.
Leibniz suddenly became a bubbling fountain of ideas and suggestions for this potential new patron. Offering his services, he stressed his readiness to draw up plans for an academy of science, for museums and colleges and even for designing medals to commemorate Poltava.
In hurrying to adjust to the Tsar's new influence, Leibniz was doing what all Europe was about to do. The diplomatic turnaround came quickly. Proposals for new arrangements and new treaties came flocking to Peter. The King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover both signaled their desire for Russian ties. The Russian ambassador in Copenhagen, Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, was informed that Louis XIV would be glad to make an alliance with the Tsar: France proposed to guarantee Russian conquests on the Baltic in order to injure British and Dutch trade. With Charles humbled, Sweden's enemies hastened back into the field. King Frederick IV of Denmark proposed to Dolgoruky a new Danish-Russian alliance against Sweden. This was very pleasant and ironic for Dolgoruky, who had already spent many months trying in vain to negotiate exactly such an alliance. Peter agreed, and that month Danish troops crossed the sound and invaded southern Sweden while the satisfied Dolgoruky observed the landing from a ship in the invasion fleet.
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 successful: A treaty was signed establishing a defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia, and Menshikov, who was present, was
