In the seventeenth century, Stockholm became an important commercial port. Dutch and English merchantmen thronged the harbor and tied up at the broad shipping quay to load Swedish iron and copper. As the city's docks, shipyards, marketplaces and banking institutions grew, the town expanded to other islands. With increased wealth, the church spires and roofs of public buildings were sheathed in copper which glowed a brilliant orange when touched by the rays of the setting sun. The luxurious tastes of Versailles reached into the city's palaces and the mansions of the nobility. Ships which had sailed from Sweden carrying iron returned from Amsterdam and London bringing English walnut furniture, French gilt chairs, Dutch Delft china, Italian and German glass, gold wallpaper, carpets, linens and ornate table silver.
This wealth was built on empire as well as on iron and copper. The seventeenth century was Sweden's hour of greatness. From the accession of seventeen-year-old Gustavus Adolphus in 1611 to the death of Charles XII in 1718, Sweden stood at the pinnacle of its imperial history. The Swedish empire covered the entire northern coast of the Baltic and key territories along the southern shore. It embraced all of Finland and Karelia, Estonia, Ingria and Livonia, thus lapping completely around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland. It held western Pomerania and the seaports of Stettin, Stralsund and Wismar on the North German coast. It commanded the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, which were west of the Danish peninsula and gave access to the North Sea. And it held most of the islands of the Baltic.
Trade was even more important than territory. Here, Sweden's supremacy was secured by the planting of her blue-and-yellow flag at the mouth of all but one of the rivers that flowed into the Baltic: the Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland; the Dvina, which met the sea in the marshy ground near Riga; and the Oder, which reached the Baltic at Stettin. Only the mouth of the Vistula, flowing north through Poland and emptying into the Baltic at Danzig, was not Swedish.
That these vast territories should be possessed by a crown whose own people numbered scarcely a million and a half was the achievement of Sweden's great commanders and sturdy soldiers. The first and greatest of these was Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, savior of the Protestant cause in Germany, whose campaigns led him as far as the Danube and who was killed at thirty-eight while leading a cavalry charge.* The Thirty Years' War, which continued after his death, ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which richly rewarded Sweden's efforts. Here it gained the German provinces which gave control of the mouths of the Oder, the Weser and the Elbe. These German possessions also resulted in the anomaly that Sweden, Protestant Mistress of the North, was also a part of the Holy Roman Empire and occupied seats in the imperial Diet. More significant than this hollow power, however, was the access to Central Europe which they gave Sweden. With these territories serving as beachheads on the
*Gustavus Adolphus was succeeded by his only child, a six-year-old daughter who was to become the legendary Queen Christina. Assuming full royal power at eighteen, Christina ruled Sweden for ten years from 1644 to 1654. Her passion was learning. She rose at five a.m. to begin reading. Foreign scholars, musicians and philosophers, including Descartes, were enticed to her court by tales of her genius and her largess. Then, suddenly, at twenty-eight, she abdicated, pleading that she was ill and that the burdens of ruling were too heavy for a woman. The real reason, however, was her secret conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, which was illegal in Protestant Sweden. The throne went to Christina's cousin, who became King Charles X and the grandfather of Charles XII. Christina herself left immediately for Rome, where she lived for the remaining thirty-four years of her life, a friend of four popes, !a magnificent patroness of the arts and the lover of Cardinal Azzolini.
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
