The Great Northern War Between Russia and Sweeden

The Romanov throne he inherit was shaky, beset with powerful external and internal enemies. Throughout his xxxvi year reign, he faced serious challenges to his authority and to Russia's territorial reserve integrity. Fuller says that after 1600, "Russia found itself confronted by potential adversaries whose governments, societies and economies were relatively more modern than its own" (xvii).

In 1240 the medieval city-states which do up pre-modern Russia fell under the control of the Mongols resulting in Russia's beingness cut off for more than two centuries from the Renaissance and expert and other developments in Europe. Prior-to then, there had been intermittent contact with the due west and a lively trade in Russian furs, step and flax. As early as the third century A.D. the inhabitants of European Russia dealt with European traders and other foreign interlopers, including the Scandinavian Vikings, who plied its rivers and raided its villages. In 862 the Norse prince Ruric founded in Novgorod the beginnings of the first Russian state which evolved into the Slav Kievan Rus. In the thirteenth century, the Swedes and the Teutonic K shadows took advantage of Russia's misfortunes with the Mongols, "the Swedes seizing what is now Finland" (Maclean 17). In 1237, Prince Alexander Nevsky repelled Swedish attempts to take Novgorod. In 1480 Muscovy Tsar Ivan the great expelled the Golden Horde. He and his successors,

Putnam, asshole Brock. jibe, the Revolutionary Tsar. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Staelhin von Storczburg. Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great. capital of the United Kingdom: J. Murray, 1832. Reprinted by Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.

Between 1689 and 1699, Peter was indifferent with the consolidation of his power internally and his two contends with the Crimean Tartar Khanate which was assort with the Ottoman Turks. During his early childhood, internal dynastic struggles and family disputes weakened the monarchy. At the age of three, Peter witnessed the first revolt of the Streltsy, the elite palace guard, which in a drunken frenzy had burst into the Kremlin and killed some(prenominal) of his relatives.

According to Troyat, "those who knew him [Peter] well said that he could not impart the scenes of torture he had witnessed and that sometimes in the middle of the night he woke up screaming" (20). When the Streltsy revolted again in 1697-8, Peter brutally suppressed them with "knout and flame" (Massie 253).

In the initial variety of the war, Peter was clearly outmatched by Sweden's youthful king and heavy(p) battlefield commander, Charles XII. Russia was quickly forced onto the defensive. Prior to the outbreak of war with Russia, Charles defeated the Danes in two weeks and repulsed a Polish Saxon attack on Riga. Peter's siege of Narva developed slowly. Charles landed on the coast and "with an army of 8,000 men . . . routed Peter's 40,000 Russians" (Palmer 212). For Russia, this disaster meant that "the work of years had been wiped out in a few hours" (Putnam 152). Peter was undaunted. He said that "I am well aware that the Swedes go out keep scrambleing us for a long time, notwithstanding in the end they will teach us how to beat them" (Troyat 134).

The war went on for twelve more years at an enormous cost in casualties and money for both sides, generally because Charles refused to accept defeat. Palmer says that Charles was often on "the verge of madness" (194). Massie fetch
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