From: Poltava 1709: The Battle and the Myth, ed. Serhii Plokhy (Cambridge, MA: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University, 2012), 81106.

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Peters Dragoons: How the Russians Won at Poltava

Donald Ostrowski

The conventional portrayal of the military reforms of Peter I (16821725) depicts his inheriting a woefully out-of-date army and bringing it up to European standards of the time. In the process, according to this conventional portrayal, Peter reorganized the military and rationalized the recruitment process, which before had been haphazard and resulted in undermanned regi-ments. Accordingly, an important step was to disband in 1698 the rebellious strel tsy, who are seen as a throwback to the old Muscovite army. Th e battles of Narva (1700) and Poltava (1709) are considered, by those who hold the conventional view, as the progress markers of the reform process. Th e Battle of Narva purportedly came before Peters updating reforms had a chance to take hold; thus, resulting in a humiliating loss against a European army. By 1709, however, the Europeanizing reforms of the military supposedly had time to take e ect, and the Russian army won a signi cant victory that nally placed Russia in the ranks of European great powers.

As deeply embedded in the historiography and durable as this conventional portrayal has been, it is not corroborated by the evidence. Th e Europeanization of the Russian army had been going on more or less continuously since the early 1650s. Peters supposed dissolution of the strel tsy in 169899 involved the execution of 799 members of two strel tsy regiments for leaving their assigned post in Velikie Luki and marching to Moscow to demand back pay and to see their wives and families. Many of the 49 regiments of strel tsy that existed in 1698 already had European command structures, and over the next two decades most were gradually transformed into infantry regiments, but a few remained as garrison troops until the 1730s. Some researchers who are aware of the extent to which the Russian army had been Europeanized by the time Peter came to power have looked for other explanations for the victory of the Russian forces at Poltava. Carol B. Stevens, for one, remarked that given current research, it seems certain that Peters self-consciously Europeanizing reforms neither completely transformed the Russian army, nor were those

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reforms alone responsible for that armys victories over Sweden up to and including Poltava (1709). Instead, she credited those victories to the skillful use of diplomacy to improve the battle conditions for his military forces and the successful combination of new tactics and organization from northern Europe with experience and knowledge from the southeastern part of the Euro-Ottoman zone. Nicholas A. Dorrell characterized as perhaps awed the conventional view of the Russian army at this time[as] this old fashioned and raw army [that] was transformed into an experienced, modern ghting force that won at Poltava during the course of the war. He proposed, instead, that among the Russians there was a growing realisation that Western methods were not always appropriate or indeed successful [because] [a]ll armies that fought the Swedes using Western methods had major problems coping with them and usually lost! While acknowledging that the Russian army had a deep knowledge of the Swedish methods of warfare and how to defeat them, Dorrell proposed that during the period 1701 to 1706 the Russians gradually turned away from the Western methods they were using at the start of the war to a home produced system that was designed to t the nature of the Russian army, the area it would ght in and to cope with the challenge of the Swedish methods of ghting.

Much in Stevens and Dorrells assessments are valid. Th e Russian com-mand was aware of Ottoman military strategy and tactics, and had acquired a profound knowledge of Swedish methods of war in general and the methods of Charles XII (16971718) in particular. Th e Russians also made use of steppe methods of warfare in following a scorched earth policy to hinder the Swedish advance in 17089. But the major di erence between the Russian army that besieged the fortress at Narva in 1700 and the Russian army at Poltava in 1709 was the large number of dragoon regiments that Peter ordered to be recruited and trained. Th ese regiments proved a match for the Swedish dragoon and cavalry regiments on which Charles XII relied. I hypothesize that they allowed the Russians superiority in infantry numbers and artillery to prevail at Pol-tava as they could not at Narva. To be sure, in December 1708, Peter issued an administrative military decree reorganizing the country into eight large gubernias, as well as requiring the recruitment of one male for every twenty households in the countryside, but neither of these had any direct impact on the Russians victory at Poltava. Instead, the fast-moving dragoon regiments and mounted infantry (Peters ying corps) were well suited to the open eastern European terrain and could be used to harry the Swedish advance, enter gaps in the enemy line in battle, and close gaps in the Russian line before the Swedish army could take advantage of them.

In 1991, Russell F. Weigley, who has been described as the dean of American military history, wrote an analytical narrative of European battles from 1631 to 1815. In his book, Weigley stated that battles were sought to secure deci-

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sions in warwith a quickness and dispatch that would keep the costs of war reasonably proportionate to the purposes attained. According to Weigley, battles were not decisive in determining political or military outcomes. Even when a battle was tactically decisive, it was never strategically or politically so. John Childs criticized Weigley for not providing a de nition of what he meant by decisive. But Weigley did provide such a de nition: If in a successful battle the enemy army could be substantially destroyedthen the whole course of a war might be resolved in a single day, and wars thereby might be won at relatively low costs, by avoiding the prolonged expenditure of resources and lives.

Nonetheless, in Weigleys estimation, this era was an age of prolonged, indecisive wars, wars su ciently interminable that again and again the toll in lives, not to mention the costs in material resources, rose grotesquely out of proportion to anything their authors could hope to gain from them. As such, he challenged the premise of von Clausewitz that war is merely the continuation of policy by other means. Weigley wrote that the chronic indecisiveness of war from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth cen-turies, wars chronic inability to attain the ends desiredmade warfare not a worthy instrument of policy but an expression of the bankruptcy of policy. He described the serious limitations on armies at the time. Th ese limitations, in the words of Allan R. Millett, were the lack of a professional o cer corps, logistical scarcity and poor planning, the pitiful condition of European roads and maps, ordnance of dubious e ectiveness, the immobility of infantry and the erratic use of cavalry (especially in the exploitation phase of battle), and muddled political direction and coalition cooperation.

In his book Weigley also proposed four further themes: (1) military [o] -cership came increasingly to be based on standards of education and social responsibility (xiii); (2) the di culties of command, control, and communi-cation in early modern war did much to reduce still further the potential for battle to achieve its strategic purposes, the destruction of the enemy and the rapid winning of wars (xiv); (3) battles fought mainly with infantry during the age of battles were usually tactically indecisive, and a mobile combat arm (namely, an e ective cavalry) was needed if any tactical decisiveness were to be achieved (xivxv, 263); and (4) limitations upon the violence of war through the restraints of international law and custom such that the principle of noncombatant immunity within the war convention had by the early twentieth century largely come to protect the lives and even the private property of noncombatants from the violence of war, by con ning legitimate violence to combatants who could possess some capacity to protect themselves and to retaliate (xv). Among the battles Weigley described is Poltava. But his description of that battle focused on the infantry and on Charless inability to exercise his accustomed personal command. Weigley passed over the tactical

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decisiveness of the Russian mobile combat arm, recognition of which would have corroborated his third theme.

orn

During the course of the seventeenth century, the Muscovites converted to the infantry and cavalry formations, rearms, and tactics of what Stevens de ned as the Euro-Ottoman common zone. Th e organization of armies within that zone was similar, with an emphasis on infantry. Cavalry tended to take a reserve role in battles. It defended baggage trains and supply lines of slow-moving armies. Although rearms became a signi cant part of those armies, they were used to a di erent degree depending on tactical decisions. By switching to gunpowder weapons, armies favored infantry out of necessity because of the di culty in shooting and reloading rearms from horseback.

Tsar Aleksei (r. 164576) had reinstituted the conversion to European strat-egy, tactics, formations, and weaponry, which had begun under his father Tsar Mikhail (r. 161345) and accelerated the reform of the Muscovite army along Euro-Ottoman lines. According to Richard Hellie, by 1663 the percentage of the army in new formation regiments rose to 79 percent. Th e Academy of Sciences history of the USSR placed it at 76 percent in 1680. Th e army of V. V. Golitsyn that campaigned against the Crimean Khanate in 1687 and 1689 con-sisted mostly of new formation infantry and cavalry (reitary) regiments.

Stevens pointed out that percentages of cavalry were higher in Eastern European armies than in Western European armies. Her statement would seem to be supported by the ndings of David Chandler, whose book includes a table listing the [p]ercentages of cavalry in armies by nationalities. He found that for the period of 16481715 between 27 and 30 percent of the armies of Austria, England, France, the German states, the Italian states, and Spain con-sisted of cavalry. Th e armies of Denmark and Prussia consisted of 40 percent cavalry; Sweden and Turkey, 45 percent; and Poland, 60 percent. Some of these percentages might be questioned, but perhaps most questionable is his gure of 25 percent for Russia during this period. Percentages di ered with respect to campaigns, but on the whole the mobile combat arm of the Russian army comprised between 31.25 and 46.3 percent of the army. Between the 1630s and the 1690s, dragoons, however, never comprised more than 10 percent of the Russian cavalry. Th e Russian army at the time of the Battle at Poltava had an estimated thirty-four dragoon regiments in comparison to the three that were in the Russian army inherited by Peter.

Initially, dragoons were mounted infantry using horses to carry them into combat. Later, dragoons were also trained to ght on horseback. Training of dragoons was more intensive than that of infantry or cavalry alone for the obvious reason that a dragoon had to be trained to ght both on foot and on

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horse. Th e dual role also presents a problem of classi cation as to whether in any particular case dragoons are to be counted as foot cavalry or mounted infantry. According to Chandler,

most contemporaries were unwilling to consider them cavalry, but classi ed them as mere mounted infantry well into the eighteenth century. Commonly armed with a carbine, a bayonet and hatchet as well as broad-sword and pistols (although these last were withdrawn from English dragoons as early as 1697), the dragoon never wore armour, but sported the long cloth coat, tricorner hat, heavy boots and the distinguishing broad cross-belts supporting his sword, bayonet and ammunition pouch. Besides their dual role in battle, they were expected to carry out reconnaissance and escort duties, and were, on occasion, relied upon to bridge streams or ll ditches with fascines of brushwood or trusses of hay to expedite the advance of the main armyand sometimes were called upon to build or raze eld forti cations.

In 1699, Peter ordered two regular dragoon regiments recruited. In 1700 and 1701, according to M. D. Rabinovich, 8,600 gentry were levied for 14 dragoon regiments. In 1702, four more dragoon regiments were raised (one of which was disbanded the following year); in 1703, eight dragoon regiments were raised (one of which was disbanded the same year and two more within two years); in 1704, two dragoon regiments and two dragoon squadrons were raised; the next year, sixteen dragoon regiments (two of which were disbanded the same year and two more in the following year); in 1706, fteen more were raised (eight of which were disbanded the same year and one of which was disbanded in 1709); in 1707, eight were raised; in 1708, eight (two of which were disbanded in the same year and two in the following year); and in 1709, two (from other existing dragoon companies). Six other regiments and squadrons were raised during this period, for which we do not have the year of their formation. Th us, between 1700 and 1709, dragoon regiments and squadrons were being raised at the rate of ten a year, but many were disbanded within a year or two, and the regiment members were absorbed by other regiments.

By 1702, a Brief Regulations (Kratkoe polozhenie) was published for the training of dragoon regiments. Russian dragoon regiments were initially named after their commanding o cer, but that became confusing inasmuch as commanders changed from one dragoon regiment to another. Dragoons then tended to be renamed according to the region of recruitment. Exceptions included the Maloletnii Regiment (1703), Domovyi Squadron (1704?), A. D. Menshikovs General or Life Regiment (1705), and the Life Squadron (1707) (see table 1).

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Table : Russian Dragoon Regiments, .

Note: Th e format of this table is inspired by table A found in Konstam, Peter the Greats Army, 10. Th e information, however, is from Rabinovich in his Polki petrovskoi armii, 85100 (the numbers in parentheses on the left correspond to the numbers given by Rabinovich). Cf. N. P. Volynskii, Postepennoe razvi-tie russkoi reguliarnoi konnitsy v epokhu Velikogo Petra s samym podrobnym opisaniem ee uchastiia v Velikoi Severnoi voine (St. Petersburg, 1912). Th e initials under the Battles column refer only to Narva in 1700 (= N), Lesnaia in 1708 (= L), and Poltava in 1709 (= P) as the battles in which a particular regiment (polk) or squadron (skvadron or eskadron) took part.

Formed in 1698 Renamed (year) Battles Disbanded(541) Gen. A. M. Golovin Kievskii (1708) L, P

Formed in 1700(540) Col. David Mein(542) Preobrazhenskii Moskovskii (1706) N, P

Formed in 1701(543) Col. S. I. Kropotov Troitskii (1706) L(544) Prince N. F. Meshcherskii Novgorodskii (1706) P(545) A. G. Ragozin 1706(546) Col. A. A. Malina (Mulina) Sibirskii (1706) L, P(547) Col. N. I. Poluektov Sankt-Peterburgskii

(1706)P 1711

(548) Col. F. A. Novikov Pskovskii (1706) P(549) Col. D. R. Shenshin Kazanskii (1706)(550) Prince I. I. Lvov Astrakhanskii (1706)(551) Col. M. S. Zhdanov Vladimirskii (1706) L, P(552) Maloletnii 1703(553) Col. Morelli de la Carer Nizhegorodskii

(1706)L, P

(554) D. I. Devgerin Viatskii (1706) L, P(555) Col. Anton Dumont Chernigovskii (1706) 1716(556) Maj. I. A. Oznobishin 1703(?)

Formed in 1702(557) Col. P. M. Delov Tverskoi (1706) L(558) Col. M. Iu. Frank Smolenskii (1706) L, P 1714

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Formed in 1702, contd. Renamed (year) Battles Disbanded(559) Col. Detlov 1704(?)(560) Col. V. Ogarev 1703

Formed in 1703(561) Prince A. F. Shakhovskoi Belozerskii (1707) 1712(562) Cpt. M. Eseneev 1703(563) Col. I. S. Gorbov Permskii (1706)(564) FM B. P. Sheremetev Arkhangelogorodskii

(1708)(565) FM A.D. Menshikov Ingermanlandskii

(1705)P

(569) Col. Samuel Stankevich 1705(570) Col. Grigorii Sukhotin 1705(571) Prince Lvov 1705

Formed in 1704(566) Prince N. F. Meshcherskii Belgorodskii (1706) 1714(567) I. Musin-Pushkin 1712(?)(568) Ranenburg Squadron P 1714(572) Roslavlskii Squadron 1721

Formed in 1705(573) Col. I. D. Portessis Nevskii (1706) L, P(574) Niklaus Gring Riazanskii (1705) 1713(?)(575) Mikhail Zybin Gagarin (1706) 1706(576) Col. Fedor Khrushchev Vologodskii (1706) P(577) Col. Ivan Pestov Narvskii (1707)(578) Col. Timofei Putiatin Lutskii (1708)(579) Col. Ivan Novikov 1705(580) Col. Semen Melnitskii 1705(581) Cols. A. Grigorov & P.

Grigorov1715(?)

(582) Boiar P. M. Apraksin 1706(583) Fedor Elchaninov 1706(584) Col. V. B. Sheremetev 1716(585) Boiar T. N. Streshnev Rostovskii (1707) L, P(587) General or Life of A. D.

MenshikovP 1721

(588) Col. Gustav Freidlin Sheremetev (1705) 1710(?)

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Formed in 17056 Renamed (year) Battles Disbanded(586) Dumnyi diak A. I. Ivanov Azovskii (1707) P

Formed in 1706(589) Col. Osip Shezdinov 1706(590) Col. Ferdinand Fastman Iamburgskii (1706) L, P 1713(591) Col. Semen Nelidov 1706(?)(592) Prince G. I. Volkonskii Iaroslavskii (1707) L, P(593) Baron Felix von Deveznik Koporskii (1707) 1709(594) Col. Matvei Dubrasov 1716(595) Maj. M. Malygin 1706(596) F. Oshcherin 1706(597) Franz Beide 1706(598) Capt. Vasilii Shemiakin 1706(599) Maj. Vasilii Gendlin 1706(600) Hering 1706(601) Col. I. B. Levashev 1718(602) Maj. D. B. Levashev(603) Maj. Mikhail Chirikov

Formed in 1707(604) Olonetskii P(605) Life Squadron St. Petersburg (1719) L, P(606) Ivan Boltin Kargopolskii (1708) P(607) Ustiuzhskii Iamburgskii (1712) P(608) Col. S. I. Kropotov Novotroitskii (1712) P(609) Arakcheev Tobolskii (1707) P(610) Eniseiskii(621) Khanenev 1710

Formed in 1708(611) Col. Ivan Golovin(612) E. I. Gulits 1714(613) P. I. Iakovlev 1709(614) Col. Iu. V. von Delden 1716(615) Col. I. M. Denisov 1709(616) Maj. Boris Lovzin 1708(617) Semen Protasov 1708(618) Col. A. S. Kropotov Revelskii (1726)

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Formed in 1709 Battles Disbanded(619) Col. Kh. Kh. von der Ropp P(620) Col. G. S. Kropotov P

Formation Date Unknown; First Mention Occurs in Documents before 1709(622) Kozlovskii Squadron (1706) P(623) Voronezhskii Squadron

(1708)P

(629) Domovyi Squadron (1704) P(632) Gen.-Maj. F. V. Shidlovskii

(1707(?))1718

(636) Ivan Rzhevskii (1702)(637) Mikhail Izmailov (1702)

We thus have a record of at least 88 dragoon regiments and squadrons that were formed between 1698 and 1709. Although evidence exists for the dis-banding of only 24 of them, with 64 remaining, another 30 or so may have been disbanded, concerning which we have no evidence. By 1711, Rabinovichs sources tell us that another 5 regiments were disbanded, but according to L. G. Beskrovnyi, the Shtat of 1711 indicates that 33 dragoon regiments then existed. Th e process seems to have been a chaotic one, with regiments and squadrons being created, disbanded, and merged into other regiments, and commanders replaced frequently. Only one dragoon regiment took part in the Battle of Narva in 1700. At Lesnaia, 13 dragoon regiments took part; and at Poltava, 26 dragoon regiments and 4 dragoon squadrons took part. After 1709 and before 1725, according to the evidence Rabinovich gathered, another 7 regiments were formed but 18 were disbanded. Th e records are far from complete, but they do indicate an almost feverish e ort to raise dragoon regiments and squadrons between 1700 and 1709, less so after 1709.

Initially, recruits had to supply their own horses, but these turned out to be of such inferior quality that the army designated 100,000 rubles for replace-ments. One reason for keeping standard cavalry in reserve and using it mainly for the coup de grace in battle was concern about losing horses. A horse trained for battle was a valuable asset. Steppe horses, while smaller than their Western counterparts and considered unprepossessing by observers, were available in abundance. One might then consider it likely that concern for the safety of the horses would be less for Russian dragoons supplied with steppe horses than it would be for Russian cavalry regiments supplied with European horses. Whereas the gentry were initially the ones requisitioned for service in the

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dragoons because they were able to supply their own horses, soon those from the lower social orders (i.e., those without a horse) were recruited to meet the militarys needs, although the pretence that they were from the gentry continued to be maintained.

Peters decision to recruit large numbers of dragoons seems to have been made in imitation of the Swedish army, in contrast to the prevailing practice of all other European armies of the time. Th e organization of regiments was based on the infantry model: 10 companies of 120 men each. Each regiment had three 3-pound cannon. According to Denison, Peter further ordered that 20 percent of the dragoons were to carry axes; 10 percent, to carry shovels; and 10 percent, to carry sharpened spades. In the Military Statute of 1716 Peter described this light force as a self-standing mobile formation,

detached to lie at the disposal of the general, whether to cut the enemy o , deprive them of a pass, act in their rear, or fall on their territory and make a diversion. Such a formation is called a ying corps [korvolan], and it consists of between six and seven thousand men. A force so constituted can act without encumbrance in every direction, and send back reliable information of the enemys doings. For these purposes we employ not only the cavalry but also the infantry, armed with light guns, according to the circumstances of time and place.

In the Swedish army, the mobile combat arm comprised nearly 50 percent of the forces, with a predominance of dragoons. Th e Swedes under Charles XI (r. 166097) and his son Charles XII, as Robert I. Frost pointed out, preferred cold steel in hand-to-hand combat with swords and bayonets. Both monarchs looked askance at the e ectiveness of rearms in general. Charles XI provided his dragoons/cavalry with swords that were straight and narrow so that they could thrust rather than slash at the enemy. According to Nosworthy:

A slashing motion with a straight sword, as opposed to a slightly curved sabre, has little e ect. A new formation was devised to facilitate the aggressive Swedish cavalry charge. Instead of advancing in straight lines, as was the universal practice in other Western European armies, the Swedish squadrons adopted an arrow-shaped [chevron] formation. Th e cornet, the center-most man in the squadron, was slightly in front of the others. Th e men on each of his two anks rode knee behind knee, so that they would both be about six inches behind him. Each man along the line was arranged in the same manner, so that the entire squadron was placed in echelon to the left and the right of the cornet. Th e Swedish cavalry enjoyed a number of notable victories using these tactics, and were even successful in capturing several entrenchments and batteries.

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Th e Kings Regulation of 1685 tells us that the Swedish horsemen were to advance at a trot until within 100 to 150 meters of the enemy line, then break into a gallop. At a distance of 25 meters, or when they could see the whites of their enemys eyes, they were to re their pistols. Charles XII banned the use of rearms during the cavalry charge and was the rst monarch to do so.

As Frost mentioned, the tactics of Charles XII were aggressive, perhaps overly so at times, but they were not those of a madman and they did achieve signi cant victories against armies that were numerically superior. In a very real sense, the aggressive battle tactics of Charles XII were merely a continu-ation of the military thinking of his father and previous Swedish monarchs going back to Gustavus Adolphus. Charles XI had as his goal the integrated cooperation of all branches of the army, but he also realized that this could be accomplished only through years of drill and training. Each regiment went out at least once a year on maneuvers and encamped for two weeks or more. He realized the value of high morale among the soldiers and solicited from them any complaints they might have about their o cers. Th e Swedish army was completely resupplied in the 1690s and reorganized under Charles XI. By the time of his death in 1697 his reorganization and master plan for mobilization of the army were nearly completed. Th us, the army that Charles XII brought into the Northern War was well trained, well supplied, and relatively untested. Both Charles XII and Peter I inherited armies that were already reorganized and reequippedin other words, modernized.

In order to evaluate the impact of the dragoons at Poltava, we can analyze, for reasons that will become clear below, three battlesNarva (1700), Lesnaia (1708), and Poltava (1709).

Narva (20 November 1700)By 4 October 1700, Russian troops numbering 35,000 were in forti ed positions and besieging the Swedish fortress at Narva. On 17 November, the Russians were running low on shot for the cannons, and the guns fell silent. On 18 November, Peter departed from the siege to energize the providing of rein-forcements and supply as well as to discuss with King Augustus of Poland the future conduct of the war, especially after his raising the siege of Riga. Th e Swedish relief troops under Charles XII, which had assembled 110 kilometers southwest of Narva in Wesenberg, set out on 13 November for Narva, arriving at Lagena (11 kilometers from Poltava) on 19 November. Th e next day, Charles lined his troops up opposite the Russian siege line. At 2:00 p.m., he ordered an advance of the Swedish infantry in a snowstorm with the wind at the back of his soldiers. Th e 5,000-strong Russian cavalry commanded by B. P. Sheremetev abandoned the eld, and the Russian infantry line, facing an enemy coming out of the driving snow, broke. Although the Russians had a numerical advantage of three to one, they were totally routed. Russian cannon, of which there

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were at least 140, could not be used against the advancing Swedes because of whiteout conditions.

Kliuchevskii was of the opinion that the Swedes would have lost at Narva if Sheremetevs cavalry and a regiment of Cossacks, instead of eeing, had wheeled around the Swedish infantrys right ank and attacked from the rear. Such a maneuver might have worked on a clear day, but advancing either on foot or on horseback into an oncoming blizzard would have been unduly risky and unlikely to succeed. Nonetheless, the abandonment of the eld on the part of the Russian cavalry was precipitous and may have had something to do with the fact that Peter had recently replaced Sheremetev as the commander of the siege at Narva with Charles Eugne de Croy.

Fabian Wredes son Caspar, who was with the Swedish troops, wrote to his father that after the battle the soldiers drank so much of the brandy they found in the Russian camp that they could not guard the Russian prisoners and had to free them: If they had attacked us, they would indisputably have got the better of us. Others have speculated that the reason the Swedes freed the Russian prisoners is because they did not want the Russians to realize how few Swedes there were, so that they might have taken over.

Peters own assessment of the loss at Narva makes no mention of the armys not being European enough. Instead, he attributed the loss to the inexperience of his troops:

You have to ask yourself what kind of an army they [the Swedes] overcame. Th ere was just one veteran regiment, the Lefortovskii. Th e two regiments of the Guard had been in two attacks on Azov, but they had never fought a battle in the open eld, let alone one against a regular army. In the rest of the regiments, a few colonels excepted, o cers and soldiers alike were the merest recruits. It is therefore not surprising that such an army [as the Swedish], veteran, trained and experienced, should have attained a victory over such untried pupils.

Frost questioned this assessment, pointing out that the Swedish troops at Narva were no less inexperienced than the Russian troops. In the Military Statute of 1716, Peter de ned the di erence between the pre-Narva and post-Narva Russian armies as one of good order. Again, there was no notion that the Russian forces had to be modernized. On the contrary, at the time of the buildup around Narva, Peter wrote that the Russian forces were particularly well drilled. Th ere is no evidence that the Russian regiments at Narva were undermanned.

Lesnaia (28 September 1708)In September 1708, the Swedish invasion of Russia was well underway. Charles

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XII was waiting with the main Swedish army for reinforcements of 12,500 troops and cartloads of food and supplies being brought from Riga under the command of General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt. Shortly before Lewenhaupt reached the main army, when the two armies were still 120 kilometers apart, Charles decided to move out southward and planned for Lewenhaupt to catch up, like a relay runner passing a baton. In retrospect, it may have been better had Charles moved toward meeting the supplies and reinforcements instead of away from them. As Frost points out, it is unlikely Peter would have risked an attack on Lewenhaupts forces if the main Swedish army was still in the vicinity.As it was, the increasing gap between Lewenhaupts contingent and Charless army left the supply train exposed.

Peter placed Sheremetev in charge of the main Russian army, which shad-owed Charles on a parallel path southward. Taking the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii Guards along with eight other infantry regiments and mounting them on horseback, Peter went to intercept Lewenhaupt along with ten regi-ments of dragoons. In addition, he ordered another 3,000 dragoons under Gen-eral Adolf Rudolf (Rodion) Frederik Bauer to rendezvous with his force.

Lewenhaupt was aware that a large number of Russian troops had arrived. Apparently disheartened by Charless decision to move the main Swedish army further south, Lewenhaupt may have thought the Russian army was mov-ing to surround his contingent. On 27 September, he deployed his troops to give battle, but to no avail. Th is deployment delayed Lewenhaupts arrival at Propoisk on the Sozh River, a days journey from Lesnaia, for an attack that did not come. Th e next day he reached Lesnaia.

When the Russians arrived at Lesnaia, they dismounted and deployed along the edge of the forest. Peter was in command of the right wing, which included the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii Guards and three dragoon regiments. General A. D. Menshikov was in command of the left wing, which included eight dragoon regiments. Th e additional 3,000 dragoons under Bauers com-mand arrived after 4:00 p.m., just in time to counter the arrival of 3,000 Swed-ish dragoons that had returned after securing the ford at the Sozh. Peter stated in his account of the battle: All day it was impossible to see where victory would lie. During the night Lewenhaupt ordered all the supplies and artillery destroyed, and abandoned the camp.

According to Massies estimates:

Th e battle and the chaos of the night had cut Lewenhaupts force in half. Of 2,000 cavalry, 1,393 remained; of 2,500 dragoons, 1,749 still were present; but of 8,000 infantry, only 3,451 remained. Th e total loss was 6,307 men; of these over 3,000 were taken prisoner. Others wandered o into the forest alone or in small bands. Many died or were eventually captured. A thousand actually found their way across Lithuania to Riga.

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All the supplies, clothes, food, ammunition, medicines which Charles so desperately needed were lost. On the Russian side, 1,111 were killed and 2,856 wounded. Each side had approximately 12,000 engaged; the Russians lost about one third, but the Swedes lost half.

Although acknowledging that the battle of Lesnaia was a disaster for the Swedes, Dorrell opined that the Russians had little direct responsibility for it. I am, instead, in agreement with Frosts assessment: Lesnaia underlined the usefulness of dragoons in the eastern theatre of war.

Charles put the best face on it and called it a lucky action (om dhen lyckeliga Actionen) that 6,000 or so troops did get through to join the main Swedish army. Nonetheless, not only did Charles not get the supplies he needed, but the additional troops aggravated the existing shortage of supplies. Th e Swedish army did not fare well after that. Th e troops were undernour-ished and many succumbed to disease and frostbite. Peter Englund estimated a 20-percent loss in the Swedish army owing to the severe winter. Another thousand or so o cers and men were lost at the assault on Veprik in January 1709. Shortages of materil were chronic. At the Battle of Poltava many of the Swedish soldiers were using half the recommended gunpowder charges, so the reports from their rearms, according to Christopher Du y, sounded mu ed like gloves clapping together. Eugene Schuyler wrote that during the siege of Poltava before the battle the Swedes were so short on ammunition, they searched the eld for Russian bullets.

Poltava (28 June 1709)Estimates vary for the number of troops the Russians and Swedes had at Pol-tava. A possible explanation for the di erence in estimates is the di erence in the number of soldiers who were in the vicinity of Poltava and the number of those who actually took part in the battle. Beskrovnyi estimated that on the Russian side 42,500 men were divided into 58 battalions of infantry and 17 regiments of cavalry. Chandler estimated that the Russian army at Poltava had 80,000 troops, of which 17,000 (19 percent) were cavalry. A. A. Vasil ev claimed that the Russian army at Poltava had approximately 60,000 troops, of which 23,706 (39.5 percent) were cavalry. Dorrell placed the Russian numbers at the battle at 61 battalions, about 38,000 to 42,000 men. Of that number, he estimated Menshikovs cavalry at about 12,000 (appr. 30 percent) to 15,000 men (37.5 percent), divided into 87.5 squadrons with 13 artillery pieces. Peter Englund estimated 44,500 troops on the Russian side of which 10,000 (22.5 percent) were cavalry. Th e 26 dragoon regiments the Russians supposedly had at Poltava would suggest higher numbers of dragoon troops. At full comple-ment ( guring 1,200 troops per regiment [10 companies of 120 men each) this would have meant 31,200 men. Probably not all regiments were full, but the

peters dragoons 95

four dragoon squadrons would have counterbalanced that somewhat. Th us, we can provisionally estimate the percentage of dragoons at 42.5 percent (about 30,000 out of a total of approximately 70,000 troops, not counting the 5,000 or so Kalmyks).

For the Swedish side, Englund estimated 20,300 troops, of which 11,000 (54.1 percent) were cavalry. According to Beskrovnyi, Charles XII had a total of 38,000 troops, of which only 24,00025,000 took part in the battle. Of those, 24 battalions were infantry and 22 regiments were cavalry. Vasil ev counted overall 12 infantry regiments, arriving at a total of 9,270 men, of which 8,170 set out through the redoubts on the morning of 28 June. He counted 22 regiments of cavalry, consisting equally of 11 retiary and 11 dragoon regiments, plus a corps of Life-drabants; altogether, 58 percent of the Swedish army. Konstam pegged the Swedish cavalry at 7,800 men. Dorrell agreed with Konstams number of Swedish cavalry who were directly involved in the battle, but counted 13,000 Swedish cavalry overall. Konstam placed the number of Swedish infantry at 8,200, while Dorrells tally was higher: 9,300. If we take Konstams gures as the more accurate, then that would place the total Swedish forces at the start of the battle at 16,000 men with 48.75 percent cavalry (including dragoons). In any case, the Russians numerical superiority, perhaps 4:1, was somewhat more than the 3:1 advantage at Narva.

As at Narva, not all of the Swedish infantrymen carried rearms. A third of them were armed with pikes, as was the Russian infantry, for close ghting. In this respect, as with the emphasis on dragoons, both the Swedish army of Charles XII and the Russian army of Peter I were going against the trend of European armies of the time, which had already equipped or were in the process of equipping every infantryman with a intlock and bayonet.

Peter took command of the Russian army east of Poltava on 9 June, when he arrived on the scene. On 16 June he called a council of war, which made the decision to cross the river and, with the help of God, seek our luck in combat with the enemy. Peter set up a forti ed camp on the right bank of the Vorskla River, as well as ten redoubts, six across the expected line of the Swedish armys march and four perpendicular to it, running into the Swedish line of march, like a breakwater. Each redoubt was 50 meters in length on each side (four triangular and six square redoubts) and 150 meters from its neighbor.

Th e battle itself on 28 June took place in two stages. Th e rst stage, the battle of the redoubts, occurred between 4:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. It involved a march of the Swedish army from a position just west of Poltava to a position just west of the forti cations that the Russians had built about ve kilometers north of the town. Th e line of march brought the Swedes right through the placement of the redoubts, which led to a separation of the Swedish columns and resulted in a signi cant loss of men and time. Th e second stage, the assault, occurred between 9:30 a.m. and noon. It involved the advance of the Swedish

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infantry against the Russian infantry deployed in front of their own forti ca-tions. After threatening to break the Russian line, the Swedes were defeated and the few that were able ed the eld.

Th e Swedish advance that began at 4:00 a.m. was orderly on the anks even though it was within range of the Russian artillery, but confusion developed fairly quickly in the center. One nds di erences within the body of evidence and among historians that have written about the Swedish formation. Th us, what follows is my best guess of how one-third of the Swedish infantry wound up under the command of a major general who was not informed of the plan of deployment. Overall command of the Swedish army was placed in the hands of Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskild. Charles XII was con ned to a litter as the result of a gunshot wound to the foot that had occurred on 17 June. Lewenhaupt was placed in charge of the infantry, which was arranged in four columns. On the left wing, Major General Axel Sparre commanded column 1, consisting of ve battalions. In the center-left, Major General Stackelberg commanded column 2, consisting of ve battalions. Major General Carl Gustav Roos led column 3, consisting of four battalions, in the center-right column. On the right wing, Major General Berndt Otto Lagercrona commanded column 4, consisting of four battalions. Rehnskild accompanied column 1; Charles XII and Lewenhaupt accompanied column 4. Th e Swedish dragoons, fourteen regiments strong in six columns, were under the command of Major General Carl Gustav Creutz. Th e Russians had placed seventeen dragoon regiments under the command of Bauer, Menshikov, and Lt. General Karl Ewald von Rnne, as well as thirteen horse artillery pieces behind the six redoubts that ran across the Swedish line of march.

As the Swedish army advanced, the Swedish column under Rooss command became caught up in the ght against the redoubts that cut perpendicularly into the Swedish line of march. Two battalions from the center-left column merged with Rooss command. At that point, the Russian dragoons emerged from behind the redoubts facing the Swedish army, and the Swedish cavalry made its way through the Swedish infantry, which probably prevented it from undertaking the usual knee-behind-knee galloping charge. Th e battle raged for over an hour, with the Russians capturing fourteen Swedish standards. Th e dust kicked up by the horses and the smoke from the guns cut visibility signi cantly. At the Russian camp, Peter, not knowing how Menshikovs com-mand was faring, sent an order for him to return. Apparently, Menshikov replied by asking for reinforcements and continued ghting the Swedes. After a second order to withdraw came through, he disengaged, pulling back to the forti cations south side. Bauer took a larger part of the dragoons to the north side of the forti cation.

Th e four battalions of Swedish infantry on the right wing (column 4) pro-ceeded to the east of redoubt no. 6, and then in a northwesterly direction,

peters dragoons 97

under the guns of the Russian camp, to rendezvous with the two columns of Swedish infantry on the left wing. Th is maneuver, however, cut o column 4 from column 3 under Rooss command, which began to wander o to the right into the Iakovets Forest south of the Russian camp, crossing the route where column 4 had marched shortly before. Seeing the resulting gap in the Swed-ish right, Peter ordered Menshikov to take ve battalions of infantry and ve regiments of dragoons (about 6,000 troops) to attack what was left of Rooss command. Th e speed of the Russian dragoon attack surprised the Swedish contingent, who initially thought the horsemen were Swedish cavalrymen. Most of Rooss command were killed or captured. Roos escaped with about 400 men to an abandoned trench near a cloister just northeast of Poltava. According to Rooss after-action report, he and his men managed to elude Menshikovs dragoons and surrendered to them later, only at 11:00 a.m., after being told the battle was over. It seems more likely that Roos surrendered before the nal Swedish assault, because Menshikovs dragoons were nowhere in the vicinity of the cloister at 11:00 a.m. Roos may have fallen for a ruse on the part of the Russian o cer, who announced that the battle was already over and the main Swedish army was defeated. Th e total number of those under Rooss command who were lost to the main army before the nal assault on the Russian position was 2,600, or over 30 percent of the Swedish infantry. With that loss, as the biographer Bengtsson put it, the issue of the battlethe issue of the warwas decided.

In the meantime, the two infantry columns on the Swedish left wing had made it past the redoubts. By 6:00 a.m. they had lined up west of the Russian camp, where they were soon joined by column 4. Th ere they waited for Rooss column 3, unaware of the fate that was befalling it. Th is delay was crucial because it gave Peter time to deploy his infantry in front of the Russian camp by 9:00 a.m. Before the nal assault of the Swedish infantry on the Russian position, while vainly awaiting the arrival of Rooss regiments, Rehnskild had to reposition some of the Swedish troops because of Russian artillery, but no signi cant losses were su ered in the process. Once the Swedish advance began, the Russian artillery switched to canister re and started to in ict sig-ni cant damage on the Swedish left. Charles and Rehnskild had elected to leave behind what few eld artillery pieces they had (except for four eld guns), because they believed that artillery would hinder the Swedish advance. berg speculated that the long lines of supply and communication that Charles XIIs campaigns created meant that he rarely had su cient ammunition for the heavy guns. When the nal assault began, the Swedish right pressed on the front rank of the Russian left, pushing it back against the second rank and capturing some Russian guns. But Peter was able to intersperse the Novgorod-skii Regiment, which threatened to cut o the Swedish right from the rest of the Swedish forces. Th e Russian dragoons neutralized the Swedish dragoons,

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with only about fty of the latter joining the ght. It was suggested that if the Swedish forces had had Mazepas Cossacks available and in the right spot, they might have broken through. But the Cossacks had been relegated to guarding the baggage train and retreat route.

Th e collapse of the Swedish infantry, however, was swift. Charles and the remainder of his army ed the scene of battle, and managed to cross the Dnieper River at Perevolochna. Th e Russians did not immediately pursue the eeing Swedes, deciding instead to celebrate on the eld of battle for several hours before undertaking that pursuit. Had they undertaken the pursuit imme-diately, they would have had a good chance of capturing Charles. Th e captured Swedish king might have agreed to end the war sooner and provide the decisive victory, as Weigley wrote. But this may be one more example of the limitations on the armies of the time; namely, the inability to use the mobile combat arm e ectively in the exploitation phase of the battle.

Th e tableau of the Swedish infantry advance on the Russian infantry at Poltava was similar to the one at Narva. In both battles the Russian forces substantially outnumbered the Swedish forces, and the Russian forces had their backs to a forti ed position, whereas the Swedes were attacking after a rapid redeployment. Although at Narva the Swedish forces (in the fortress) were on the other side of the Russian troops, they played no signi cant part in the battle. One major di erence was the weather. At Narva the Swedish infantry advance was executed under cover of a snowstorm. At Poltava, the morning of the battle was hot, but the air was clear. Visibility was generally good, except for the dust and gun smoke during engagements and the dips and rises and general unevenness of the terrain.

At Lesnaia, the Swedes lost 6,300 men and the supplies that the main Swed-ish army under Charles XII needed. On the morning of the Battle of Poltava, by 9:00 a.m. (Massie) or 9:30 a.m. (Konstam) the Swedes lost another 2,600 men (Petri; Konstam)when the six battalions led by Roos were eliminated from the eld. Th us, Peters dragoons and mounted infantry (his ying corps) can be directly credited with reducing the attacking Swedish force by 8,900 men (Konstam) before the nal advance of the Swedish infantry at 10:00 a.m. (Massie) or 9:45 a.m. (Konstam) west of the Russian forti ed camp. Given that this Swedish advance was undertaken probably with fewer than 5,000 infantrymen, who were debilitated by hunger and fatigue, against between 18,000 and 24,000 Russian troops, who were relatively well fed and rested, supported by 73 cannon and 26 dragoon regiments with an additional 4 dragoon squadrons, and given the initial success of the Swedish right wing in rolling back the Russian left wing, one has to wonder whether the outcome of the battle would have been the same if any sizable portion of those missing troops would have been available to the Swedish side.

During the battles of Lesnaia and Poltava the Russian dragoons were e ec-

peters dragoons 99

tive both as cavalry and as infantry. At Lesnaia they served as infantry under Peter in conjunction with horse-conveyed infantry and as cavalry under Bauer against the Swedish cavalry. At Poltava they served as cavalry under Menshikov against the Swedish cavalry between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. Th ey served as infantry under Menshikov in annihilating what remained of Rooss command by 9:00 a.m. (thereby contributing to the delay in the main Swedish infantry advance). Th ey served as cavalry under Bauer and Menshikov against the Swed-ish cavalry during the nal Swedish assault at 10:00 a.m.

Although the battle at Poltava was tactically decisive, the war between Sweden and Russia continued for another twelve years until 1721, and may have ended more as a result of the death of Charles XII (1718) than the Battle at Poltava. Th is circumstance also tends to support Weigleys main hypothesis that battles during the age of battles, even when tactically decisive, were not decisive for determining political or strategic outcomes.

Finally, the evidence seems to corroborate the hypothesis that the decisive factor in the Russians victory at Poltava was not the Europeanization of the Russian army by Peter I, inasmuch as that upgrade had mostly already occurred by the time Peter came to power. Nor was it his administrative and recruit-ment reorganization because none of that reorganization had a demonstrable impact on the battle itself. Nor was it the artillery, because even though the Russians had a decisive advantage in that regard, the Russian artillery was not much more than an initial inconvenience to the Swedes, who had to reposition before the nal advance. Nevertheless, it did contribute to holding the Swedish left at bay during that advance. Instead, the dragoons that had been recruited after the Battle of Narva in 1700 played crucial roles both as cavalry and as infantry, which could be deployed quickly to key positions as events on the battle eld unfolded.

As with the large proportion (33 percent) of pikemen in both the Swedish and Russian armies, the reliance on dragoons by both monarchs ran counter to the trend of armies in the Euro-Ottoman zone, and thus against the grain of modernization. After 1712, the number of dragoon regiments in the Rus-sian army was reduced. Apparently, the dragoons were raised under Peter to counter those of a speci c armythat of Sweden under Charles XIIwhich also utilized large numbers of dragoon regiments. Russia did not become a major player in European international relations until the second half of the eighteenth century. It would take more than a victory over a severely weakened and bedraggled, though still dangerous, Swedish army in the steppe some 350 kilometers southeast of Kyiv to accord Russia the status of a European great power. Th us, the conventional portrayal of the modernizing military reforms of Peter I as the reason for the Russian success at Poltava stands refuted.

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Notes

. Th is portrayal can be found in the following works: V. O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs Russkoi istorii, pt. , in his Sochineniia, vols. (Moscow, ), :; Christopher Du y, Russias Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of Russian Military Power, (London, ), ; Evgenii V. Anisimov, Th e Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through Coercion in Russia, trans. John T. Alexander (Armonk, N.Y., ), ; Lindsey Hughes, Peter the Great: A Biography (New Haven, ), ; James Cracraft, Th e Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, Mass., ), ; idem, Th e Petrine Revolution in Russian Culture (Cambridge, Mass., ), : the land forces in place or on call in about , a motley combina-tion of old and new, and their alternately cumbrous or weak administrative and armaments infrastuctures; : Further evidence of this dual processthat of modernizing the Russian army in practice and that of codifying the stages thereof in writingis found in the various additional or supplementary directives issued by Peter and his leading commanders over the years leading up the publication of the Military Statute, years that witnessed decisive Russian victories over Swedish and allied forces at Lesnaia (September ) and Poltava (June ); Derek Wilson, Peter the Great (London, ), .

. Th ese strel tsy regiments had apparently been redeployed from duty in Azov and Taganrog in to Velikie Luki without being allowed to go by way of Moscow. See Graeme Herd, Rebellion and Reformation in the Muscovite Military, in Mod-ernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe (London, ), .

. M. D. Rabinovich, Strel tsy v pervoi chetverti XVIII v., Istoricheskie zapiski (): .

. Carol B. Stevens, Modernizing the Military: Peter the Great and Military Reform, in Kotilaine and Poe, Modernizing Muscovy, .

. Nicholas A. Dorrell, Th e Dawn of the Tsarist Empire: Poltava and the Russian Campaigns of (Nottingham, ), .

. Ibid.. L. G. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i ot v XVIII veke (Ocherki) (Moscow, ),

. For a discussion of the e ect of the military reforms, see Carol B. Stevens, Evaluating Peters Army: Th e Impact of Internal Organization, in Th e Military and Society in Russia , ed. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (Leiden, ), .

. Douglas Porch, review of Th e Age of Battles: Th e Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo, by Russell F. Weigley, Journal of Modern History, (): .

. Russell F. Weigley, Th e Age of Battles: Th e Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breit-enfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington, ).

. Weigley, Age of Battles, xii.

peters dragoons 101

. John Childs, review of Th e Age of Battles: Th e Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo, by Russell F. Weigley, English Historical Review (): .

. Weigley, Age of Battles, xii.. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Anatol Rapoport (London, ), .. Weigley, Age of Battles, .. Allan R. Millett, review of Th e Age of Battles: Th e Quest for Decisive Warfare from

Breitenfeld to Waterloo, by Russell F. Weigley, Journal of American History (): .

. Weigley, Age of Battles, .. Stevens, Modernizing the Military, .. On the role of cavalry, see the chapter entitled Th e Mounted Arm in Battle and on

Campaign in David Chandler, Th e Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough, nd ed. (Tunbridge Wells, Kent, ), ; see also the chapter entitled Cavalry Tactics: in Brent Nosworthy, Th e Anatomy of Victory: Battle Tactics (New York, ), .

. For a discussion of the problems connected with loading, ring, and reloading muzzle-loading intlock muskets even from the ground, see Anthony Kemp, Weapons and Equipment of the Marlborough Wars (Poole, Dorset, ), .

. Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago, ), .

. Ocherki istorii SSSR: Period feodalizma, ed. A. A. Novosel skii and N. V. Ustiugov (Moscow, ), .

. Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy, .. Carol B. Stevens, Russias Wars of Emergence (London, ),

.. Chandler, Art of Warfare, .. Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy, .. L. G. Beskrovnyi, Strategiia i taktika russkoi armii, in Poltava: K -letiiu Pol-

tavskogo srazheniia, ed. L. G. Beskrovnyi, B. B. Kafengauz, V. A. Diadichenko, and N. I. Pavlenko (Moscow, ), ; Angus Konstam, Poltava : Russia Comes of Age (New York, ), ; and idem, Peter the Greats Army, vol. , Cavalry (London, ), , .

. Th is term is derived from the French word dragon, which may have been the name of a type of rearm that the French army used (possibly because it had the design of a dragon on it).

. Chandler, Art of Warfare, .. M. D. Rabinovich, Polki petrovskoi armii, : Kratkii spravochnik (Moscow,

), ; M. D. Rabinovich, Sud by sluzhilykh liudei starykh sluzhb i odno-dvortsev v period formirovaniia reguliarnoi armii v nachale XVIII st.: avtoreferat dissertatsii (Moscow, ), , as cited in John Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, (Oxford, ), ; and M. D. Rabinovich,

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Formirovanie reguliarnoi russkoi armii nakanune Severnoi voiny, in Voprosy voennoi istorii Rossii: XVIII i pervaia polovina XIX v., ed. V. I. Shunkov et al. (Moscow, ), .

. Rabinovich, Polki petrovskoi armii, ; cf. George T. Denison, A History of Cavalry: From the Earliest Times, nd ed. (London, ), .

. Kratkoe polozhenie s nuzhneishimi obiavlenii pri uchenii (konnogo) dragunskogo stroiu kako pri tom postupati i vo osmotrenii imeti gospodam vyshnim o tserom prochim nachal nym i uriadnikom i uchiti na koniakh stoistvom kak posleduet, in Voennye ustavy Petra Velikogo, ed. N. L. Rubinshtein (Moscow, ), .

. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i ot v XVIII veke, .. Rabinovich, Polki Petrovskoi armii, ; Volynskii, Postepennoe razvitie russkoi

reguliarnoi konnitsy; Konstam, Peter the Greats Army, .. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i ot v XVIII veke, .. In the spring of Johann Reinhard Patkul arrived in Moscow and spent three

weeks consulting with Peter and Field Marshal Fedor Golovin. In a memorandum to Peter, he recommended the advantages of dragoons over straight cavalry, stat-ing that they were much handier in the eld, and cheaper. See N. G. Ustrialov, Istoriia tsarstvovaniia Petra Velikogo, vols. (St. Petersburg, ), vol. , pt. : Prilozhenie, p. . Patkul was probably merely agreeing with a decision that had already been made. Fuller points out that Peters cavalry contained no heavy unitsno cuirassiers or carbineers. See William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia (New York, ), . Ellis attributed the creation of dragoon regiments rather than heavier shock troops to the shortage of adequate mounts. See John Ellis, Cavalry: Th e History of Mounted Warfare (Edinburgh, ), . Th e only evidence he cites, however, is Ivan Pososhkovs statement in a memorandum stating that cavalrymen would show up on poor nags.

. Denison, History of Cavalry, .. Kniga Ustav voinskii: o dolzhnosti generalov, felt marshalov, i vsego Generaliteta,

i protchikh chinov, kotorye pri voiske nadlezhat byt , i o inykh voinskikh delakh, i povedeniiakh, chto kazhdomu chinit dolzhno (St. Petersburg, ), .

. Robert I. Frost, Th e Northern Wars: War, State, and Society in Northeastern Europe, (Harlow, England, ), .

. Nosworthy, Anatomy of Victory, . Cf. Chandler, Art of War, ; Frost, Northern Wars, ; and Gunnar Artus, Karolinsk och europeisk stridstaktik (Gothenburg, ), .

. Alf berg, Th e Swedish Army from Ltzen to Narva, in Swedens Age of Greatness, , ed. Michael Roberts (New York, ), .

. For a general discussion of the claim that Charles XII was too impetuous, see Frost, Northern Wars, .

. See Artus, Karolinsk, .. berg, Swedish Army, .. berg, Swedish Army, , .

peters dragoons 103

. All dates are according to the Old Style. Th e Russian calendar was then eleven days behind the Gregorian. Sweden was using a transitional calendar that was ten days behind the Gregorian calendar.

. According to berg, the Swedish army was trained to march up to thirty-two kilometers a day. It could cover such a distance in part because nightly bivouacs were already prepared for the soldiers at the end of each days march by dragoon detachments. berg, Swedish Army, .

. Kuvaja placed the Swedish forces at ,. See Christer Kuvaja, Karolinska krigare (Helsingfors, ), . Englund estimated the Russian forces in the entrenchments at ,, with another , support militia. See Peter Englund, Th e Battle of Poltava: Th e Birth of the Russian Empire (London, ), . Tarle estimated the total Russian forces at ,, of which , were in forti ed siege positions. See E. V. Tarle, Severnaia voina i shvedskoe nashestvie na Rossiiu (Moscow, ), .

. R. Nisbet Bain, Charles XII and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire (New York, ), ; R. M. Hatton, Charles XII of Sweden (London, ), . Bengtsson placed the number at . See Frans G. Bengtsson, Th e Life of Charles XII: King of Sweden , trans. Naomi Walford (London, ), .

. Kliuchevskii, Kurs, :.. Quoted in Bain, Charles XII, .. Zhurnal, ili Podennaia zapiska, blazhennyia i vechnodostoinyia pamiati Gosudaria

Imperatora Petra Velikogo s goda, dazhe do zakliucheniia Neishtatskogo mira, vols. (St. Petersburg, ), :, translation my own.

. Frost, Northern Wars, .. Kniga Ustav voinskii, : ot dobrago poriadku. . Ustrialov, Istoriia tsarstvovaniia Petra Velikogo, vol. , pt. , p. , no. .. Konstam, Poltava , . Some historians put the number of carts at ,;

others at ,. Dorrell put it at , carts and , horses. Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .

. Frost, Northern Wars, .. Massie estimated the number of Russian troops at Lesnaia at ,, but later

wrote that only , on each side engaged. See Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (New York, ), . Beskrovnyi placed the num-ber of Swedes at Lesnaia at , and the number of Russian troops at ,. See Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, . Russian historians tend to provide high estimates of the number of Swedes and low estimates of the number of Russians in any particular battle. Swedish historians tend to do the reverse.

. Massie, Peter the Great, . Cf. Konstam, Poltava , ; and Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .

. Peter I, Pisma i bumagi Imperatora Petra Velikogo, vols. (St. Petersburg and Moscow, ), vol. , pt. , no. .

. Massie, Peter the Great, .

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. Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .. Frost, Northern Wars, .. Konung Karl XII:s egenhndiga bref, ed. Ernst Carlson (Stockholm, ), ,

no. . According to Dorrell, , cavalry and , infantry (a total of , troops) made it through. See Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .

. See, e.g., Lt. Lyths description of Swedish men and horses dying of hunger during October . Joachim Lyth, Joachim Mathiae Lyths Dagbok (Stockholm, ), ; and the English diplomat James Je eryes, who was a volunteer in the Swed-ish army: tis thought we have lost more in this ramble than if we had given the ennemy a battle. Quoted from Captain James Je eryess Letters to the Secretary of State, Whitehall, from the Swedish Army, , ed. Ragnhild Hatton, Historiska Handlingar , no. (): .

. Englund, Battle of Poltava, .. Hatton placed the number at men killed and wounded. Hatton, Charles

XII, . berg claimed that , o cers and men were killed or wounded. berg, Swedish Army, .

. Du y, Russias Military Way to the West, .. Eugene Schuyler, Peter the Great: Emperor of Russia, vols. (New York, ), :

.. Beskrovnyi, Strategiia i taktika russkoi armii, .. Chandler, Art of Warfare, .. A. A. Vasil ev, O sostave russkoi i shvedskoi armii v Poltavskom srazhenii, Voenno-

istoricheskii zhurnal, no. (): . Vasil ev provided the number , but adds regiments and squadrons ( shkvadron equals men).

. Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .. In the decree of February , each dragoon regiment was set at , men.. Englund, Battle of Poltava, .. Beskrovnyi, Strategiia i taktika russkoi armii, .. Vasil ev, O sostave russkoi i shvedskoi armii, .. Konstam, Poltava , .. Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .. Konstam, Poltava , ; Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, . Subsequently

(ibid., ), Dorrell gave the number of Swedish infantry as , (i.e., Konstams gure).

. berg, Swedish Army, ; cf. Konstam, Poltava , .. Artus, Karolinsk och europeisk stridstaktik, .. Peter I, Pisma i bumagi, vol. , pt. , .. I will follow Dorrells numbering of the redoubts, such that the six redoubts run-

ning across the Swedish line of march are numbered to , with no. being farthest from the Russian camp. Th e four redoubts running perpendicular are numbered to , with no. being closest to the Swedish line.

. According to Hatton and Massie, e.g., after the Swedish command saw the redoubts

peters dragoons 105

that had been constructed that night (although the ones closest to the Swedish line were still un nished), they decided to regroup the infantry into ve columns to facilitate passage past the redoubts. See Hatton, Charles XII, ; Massie, Peter the Great, . In contrast, Bengtsson, Konstam, and Dorrell wrote that the Swedes remained in four infantry columns, but that after the advance began, two battalions from the center-right column (Rooss command) joined the far right column (Lewenhaupts command) while two battalions from the center-left column (Rehnskilds command) joined the center-right column. See Bengtsson, Life of Charles XII, ; Konstam, Poltava , ; and Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .

. [Carl Gustav Roos], Gen. Major Roses Relation, Historiska Handlingar, , no. (): .

. Massie, Peter the Great, . Dorrell claimed there were regiments of regular cavalry. Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .

. Massie, Peter the Great, . Cf. Konstam, Poltava , ; and Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .

. [Roos], Gen. Major Roses Relation, .. Massie, Peter the Great, .. See Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, .. Gustaf Petri, Slaget vid Poltava, Karolinska Frbundets rsbok, , ; Bengts-

son, Life of Charles XII, ; Konstam, Poltava , ; Massie, Peter the Great, . If the total number of infantry that began the march on the redoubts was , (Konstams number) split into battalions (an average of men each), then the , gure seems likely, given that Roos began with four battalions but then was joined by two battalions from Stakenburgs column at the redoubts.

. Bengtsson, Life of Charles XII, .. According to the Swedish lieutenant, Friedrich Christoph von Weihe, Swedish

troops on the left ran forward with death in their eyes and were in large part mown down by the thunderous Russian cannon before they could employ their muskets. See Ljtnanten Fr. Chr. von Weihes Dagbok , ed. Ernst Carlson, Historiska Handlingar , no. (): .

. berg, Swedish Army, . A belated attempt by Rehnskild to call up the Swed-ish artillery just before the nal assault failed.

. Massie put the number of Swedish infantry at ,, but Lewenhaupt, in his report of the battle, estimated the Swedes had only around ,. See Hatton, Charles XII, .

. Massie estimated ,. Massie, Peter the Great, . Lewenhaupt estimated ,. See Hatton, Charles XII, . Hatton (ibid.) estimated ,. Konstams estimate tallies with that of Lewenhaupt. Konstam, Poltava , .

. Konstams number. Lewenhaupt estimated cannon. See Hatton, Charles XII, . Dorrell placed the number of cannon at . Dorrell, Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, . Massie estimated cannon. Massie, Peter the Great, . Th is is

106 ostrowski

about half the number of cannon the Russians had at Narva, but in contrast to Narva, at Poltava the Russians had ample shot and a more or less clear view of the eld of action.