The Russian war against Ukraine, which was designed to save the Russian Empire, but is much more appropriate for its destruction, is taking place in the same place where this empire was created 300 years ago behind the banner of the Great Northern War (1700-1721). The name of the war refers to the territories whose change of masters was the purpose and result of the war. Indeed, many places included in the chronicle of the Great Northern War are located in these territories. It names many battlefields, which in some cases have earned monuments in nature. In Riga, such a monument can be seen in Lucavsala (pictured).
However, from what happened in the territory of present-day Latvia during the relevant war, the most important event must be the capture of a young woman, Marta Skavronska (1684-1727), in Russian captivity, then in the court and on the throne of the Russian Empire. After that, her daughter Elizabeth and her daughter Anna’s son Peter III also ascended this throne. After him, all subsequent official rulers of the Russian Empire, with the exception of Catherine II, were biological descendants of M. Skavronska, or Catherine I. They were abolished along with the throne of the empire in 1917, but the empire still exists and tries to survive using the results of scientific and technical progress and totalitarian (fascist) state building techniques. Currently, Russia has subordinated all possible innovations to the most ancient and the most important method of empire building – the war of conquest.
There is no place for big battles in the Baltics
As the current object of conquest, Russia has not chosen the current Baltic States, the capture of which was once correctly assessed by Russia and the entire civilized world as the last necessary success, after which the Principality of Moscow can call itself an empire from the collection of captured lands.
In the minds of the ruling circles there, Russia exists as an empire even after the Baltics had to be lost. Of course, these circles consider the recovery of the Baltic necessary and inevitable, but they chose to achieve it in a roundabout way. Knowingly or unknowingly, the route of this road coincides in many places with the course of the Great Northern War. At that time, the Baltics turned out to be too small for the general battles of the Great War: even a sufficiently large battlefield is difficult to find here, but the main thing is that the number of people here only satisfied the appetite of the Great Plague, not the Great War. It would have been an unnecessary luxury for both sides to bring warriors here so that their numbers corresponded to battles whose outcome coincided with the outcome of the entire war. Ukraine’s current state borders or near these borders in Ukraine’s neighboring countries, if we are guided by the modern political map, turned out to be the most suitable for conducting the Great Northern War. This same territory gave place not only to battles, but also to other events with a decisive impact on the outcome of the war. Whoever won Ukraine got the Baltics.
In February 2022, Russian dictator Putin ordered an attack on Ukraine in the belief that this would get him much more than just Ukraine. According to him, in a few days after the capture of Ukraine, the North Atlantic military union NATO will fulfill Russia’s demands for the withdrawal of its forces within the borders of 1998, which would mean the return of the Baltic to Russia.
The latest news from the battlefields of Ukraine lists Russia’s failures, but this news is not enough to draw two conclusions. First of all, it is relevant that Russia has already been defeated. Second, the prognostic that the defeat of Russia exactly where the victory of Russia created the Russian empire will destroy this empire without the possibility of renaming and being reborn, as it has already happened twice since 1917. We have to make do with the fact that today’s news makes already faded historical events shine in fresh colors and vice versa – historical coincidences help to sift the essential from the non-essential in the mass of daily news.
Events corresponding to the name of the Northern War
We are notable for the fact that the Great Northern War began right on the territory of Latvia. Let the town of Olaine by the river Misa be remembered all over the world. On February 11, 1700, Saxon troops, consisting of 12,000 infantry and 600 dragoons, crossed the border river between the Duchy of Courland, which surrendered to Poland, and the Swedish-ruled Vidzeme, without declaring war, right there to capture Riga. However, the attackers did not go further than the present Pārdaugava.
The beginning of the war certainly corresponds to the north, which in Europe is beyond the line from which the average air temperature falls below zero in January. In other words, the north begins where the influence of the Gulf Stream ends, due to which the relevant isotherm runs not in the normal east-west direction, but in a north-south direction, approximately along the bed of the Vistula River in Poland.
In November 1718, King Charles XII of Sweden, born in 1682 and crowned in 1697, was demonstratively shot in the north near Halden fortress in Norway. Whether he was killed in battle, in a court coup, or completely by accident, will probably never be determined.
Latvian residents may have questions about who these Saxons are and why they attacked Riga. The answer is that the Saxons belonged to the Electorate of Saxony (Kurfürstentum Sachsen) from the territory whose current landmark is the German city of Dresden. In 1694, Augustus II Stiprais (1670-1733) became their chieftain, who in 1697 was also elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in the order of combining positions. Immediately after that, what happened should be shown on the map of Ukraine (pictured).
Let’s start with the border town of Rava-Rusk on the Ukrainian side with Poland, where in August 1698 the Russian Tsar Peter I (1672-1725) and Augustus II concluded an agreement in principle to attack Sweden in order to take Vidzeme and Estonia from it in favor of Poland, Ingria and Karelia – to Russia . Within a couple of years, several more countries joined this coalition, and in 1700 it considered itself ready to launch an attack on a wide front, which everywhere failed. The Saxons and the Russians sent to help them struggled through Pardaugava for a year and a half, while the Swedes reached them, defeating the Danes in Denmark and the Russians at Narva on the way. The Swedes also won near Riga, as the last to surround the Russians who took refuge in Lucavsala, they went to the Duchy of Kurzeme and then for another six years they attacked Augustus II in Poland, Lithuania and Saxony. In the meantime, the Russians returned to the Baltics, in 1702 they captured Alūksni with M. Skavronska, in 1704 they gained revenge in Narva, ie Narva itself, etc.
Why did the armies go south
As soon as the Great Northern War entered its normal course, it turned out that the Baltics, as a narrow coastal strip, could not be defended against attackers who could come from the depths of Russia to any point along the entire width of the defense line. Neither the system of fortifications built over centuries, nor the proximity of Sweden, nor the power of the Swedish navy to bring reinforcements and additions of war materials helped. Karl XII correctly understood that the Baltic can be protected not by returning to the Baltic, but by going deep into Russia and winning there. Charles XII had valid reasons why it would be better to invade Russia from the south, where the Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709) promised him support. The further story of the Swedish woes is well known: most of the Cossacks did not support Mazepa, the Russians intercepted and destroyed the reinforcements coming from Sweden near Lesna, wintering in 1708/1709. In 1709, the weather was harsher than expected in the south, and on July 9, 1709, the Swedes suffered a complete defeat near Poltava. Charles XII and Mazepa, with microscopic remnants of their armed forces, took refuge with the Turkish Sultan Ahmed III (1673-1736; on the throne 1703-1730). It gave them a place in their dominions – in the town of Bender, where Mazepa died immediately, but Charles XII, wounded near Poltava, was forced to experience a five-year change of status from a king visiting the sultan to an illegal immigrant who was about to be deported.
The homestead built at that time near the castle has now become a town in Moldova within its internationally recognized borders, but is actually located in the Transnistrian Republic of Moldova as the largest port on the Dniester River.
The Northern War overshadowed the Russo-Turkish War
Speaking in modern terminology, the Great Northern War can be described as evidence that Europe already lost its importance as the center of the world and therefore also of history. It does not matter that the territory of Ukraine was used for the main battle of the Northern War, whose belonging to Europe has so far not been able to be legally formalized by the admission of Ukraine to the European Union. The main thing is that a completely different war is hidden behind the banner of the Northern War on such a scale that it was of little importance how groups of soldiers bumped into each other between Saxony and Karelia and knocked each other out of towns like Riga. The outcome of the Great Northern War was determined by the Russian-Turkish 1710-1713. year’s war, but in reality only one battle, meaning events lasting about a month.
The next Russo-Turkish war was initiated by Peter I’s claims against Turkey for the accommodation of Charles XII. Turkey responded to Russian threats with its own threats, etc. until the war. The vassal of Turkey, Crimean Khan, especially tried to turn the conflict into a war. His presence in direct contact with Russia made him see the strengthening of Russia and the desire to seize Crimea, as it happened in 1783. It is now understood that 1711 was the right and last moment when such an event could, in principle, be prevented.
Turkey knows how to surprise
In the spring of that year, Peter I marched against Turkey with his main forces by a side route through the Christian-inhabited outskirts of the Turkish Empire, so that the appearance of Russian troops there would provoke a rebellion against Turkish rule. In reality, the residents did not agree to anything like that. 40 thousand Russians simply besieged and, pressing to the Prut River, completely blocked 140 thousand Turks in July, not even including helpers from Crimea. Peter I was ready to give up all the gains in the Baltics and give even Pskov to the Swedes, if only the Turks would let him and his army go alive and would not mind that Russia would be left with only that patch of land in Ingria, where Peter I had already begun to build Petersburg, from the Great Northern War .
To everyone’s surprise, it turned out that the Turks did not want to go to war at all because of Sweden; that the Turkish army is unwilling to lose more soldiers than the Russians have already lost in the entrapping battles; that Turkey should settle its relations with Persia at that very moment, and not think what will happen if the extermination of Peter I as a ruler and perhaps also as a physical person will change the rules of the political and military games in Europe. The Turks released Peter and his army in exchange for practically nothing – for some areas of Russia and Turkey, more precisely in the contact zone of Russia and Crimea, where Peter had managed to advance in military campaigns, which were held only to train the military skills of the Russian army and Peter I personally before a real war in Europe. Yes, he really won in Europe, but against the southern neighbor it turned out to be nothing. It has remained so until this white day, when Turkey observes the war in Ukraine and calculates whether it should take Crimea back now or give itself some other pleasure.
2023-09-17 02:15:22
#wins #Ukraine #Baltics
