CHAPTER XII. THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA, A.D. 1709. Dread Pultowa's day, When fortune left the royal Swede, No more to combat and to bleed. The power and fortune of the war Had passed to the triumphant Czar. BYRON. NAPOLEON prophesied, at St. Helena, that all Europe would soon be either Cossack or Republican. Three years ago, the fulfillment of the last of these alternatives appeared most probable. But the democratic movements of 1848 were sternly repressed in 1849. The absolute authority of a single ruler, and the austere stillness of martial law, are now paramount in the capitals of the Continent, which lately owned no sovereignty save the will of the multitude, and where that which the Democrat calls his sacred right of insurrection was so loudly asserted and so often fiercely enforced. Many causes have contributed to bring about this reaction, but the most effective and the most permanent have been Russian influence and Russian arms. Russia is now the avowed and acknowledged champion of monarchy against democracy; of constituted authority, however acquired, against revolution and change, for whatever purpose desired; of the imperial supremacy of strong states over their weaker neighbors against all claims for political independence and all strivings for separate nationality. She had crushed the heroic Hungarians; and Austria, for whom nominally she crushed them, is now one of her dependents. Whether the rumors of her being about to engage in fresh enterprises be well or ill founded, it is certain that recent events must have fearfully augmented the power of the Muscovite empire, which, even previously, had been the object of well-founded anxiety to all Western Europe. It was truly stated, eleven years ago, that "the acquisitions which Russia has made within the [then] last sixty-four years N are equal in extent and importance to the whole empire she had in Europe before that time; that the acquisitions she has made from Sweden are greater than what remains of that ancient kingdom; that her acquisitions from Poland are as large as the whole Austrian empire; that the territory she has wrested from Turkey in Europe is equal to the dominions of Prussia, exclusive of her Rhenish provinces; and that her acquisitions from Turkey in Asia are equal in extent to all the smaller states of Germany, the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, Belgium, and Holland taken together; that the country she has conquered from Persia is about the size of England; that her acquisitions in Tartary have an area equal to Turkey in Europe, Greece, Italy, and Spain. In sixty-four years she has advanced her frontier eight hundred and fifty miles toward Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Paris; she has approached four hundred and fifty miles nearer to Constantinople; she has possessed herself of the capital of Poland, and has advanced to within a few miles of the capital of Sweden, from which, when Peter the First mounted the throne, her frontier was distant three hundred miles. Since that time she has stretched herself forward about one thousand miles toward India, and the same distance toward the capital of Persia.”* Such, at that period, had been the recent aggrandizement of Russia; and the events of the last few years, by weakening and disuniting all her European neighbors, have immeasurably augmented the relative superiority of the Muscovite empire over all the other Continental powers. With a population exceeding sixty millions, all implicitly obeying the impulse of a single ruling mind; with a territorial area of six millions and a half of square miles; with a standing army eight hundred thousand strong; with powerful fleets on the Baltic and Black Seas; with a skillful host of diplomatic agents planted in every court and among every tribe; with the confidence which unexpected success creates, and the sagacity which long experience fosters, Russia now grasps, with an armed right hand, the tangled thread of European politics, and issues her mandates as the arbitress of the movements of the age. Yet a century and a half have hardly elapsed since she was first recognized as a member of the drama of modern European history-previous to the battle of Pultowa, Russia played no part. Charles V. and Progress of Russia in the East," p. 142. * 64 his great rival, our Elizabeth and her adversary Philip of Spain, the Guises, Sully, Richelieu, Cromwell, De Witt, William of Orange, and the other leading spirits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thought no more about the Muscovite Czar than we now think about the King of Timbuctoo. Even as late as 1735, Lord Bolingbroke, in his admirable "Letters on History," speaks of the history of the Muscovites as having no relation to the knowledge which a practical English statesman ought to acquire. It may be doubted whether a cabinet council often takes place now in our Foreign Office without, Russia being uppermost in every English statesman's thoughts. * But, though Russia remained thus long unheeded among her snows, there was a Northern power, the influence of which was acknowledged in the principal European quarrels, and whose good will was sedulously courted by many of the boldest chiefs and ablest counselors of the leading states. This was Sweden; Sweden, on whose ruins Russia has risen, but whose ascendency over her semi-barbarous neighbor was complete, until the fatal battle that now forms our subject. As early as 1542 France had sought the alliance of Sweden to aid her in her struggle against Charles V. And the name of Gustavus Adolphus is of itself sufficient to remind us that in the great contest for religious liberty, of which Germany was for thirty years the arena, it was Sweden that rescued the falling cause of Protestantism, and it was Sweden that principally dictated the remodeling of the European state-system at the peace of Westphalia. From the proud pre-eminence in which the valor of the "Lion of the North," and of Torstenston, Bannier, Wrangel, and the other generals of Gustavus, guided by the wisdom of Oxenstiern, had placed Sweden, the defeat of Charles XII. at Pultowa hurled her down at once and forever. Her efforts during the wars of the French Revolution to assume a leading part in European politics met with instant discomfiture, and almost provoked derision. But the Sweden whose sceptre was bequeathed to Christina, and whose alliance Cromwell valued so highly, was a different power to the Sweden of the present day. Finland, Ingria, Livonia, Esthonia, Carelia, and other districts east of the * Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii., p. 374. In the same page he observes how Sweden had often turned her arms southward with prodigious effect Baltic, then were Swedish provinces; and the possession of Pomerania, Rugen, and Bremen made her an important member of the Germanic empire. These territories are now all reft from her, and the most valuable of them form the staple of her victorious rival's strength. Could she resume them-could the Sweden of 1648 be reconstructed, we should have a first-class Scandinavian state in the North, well qualified to maintain the balance of power, and check the progress of Russia; whose power, indeed, never could have become formidable to Europe save by Sweden becoming weak. The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa was therefore all-important to the world, on account of what it overthrew as well as for what it established; and it is the more deeply interesting, because it was not merely the crisis of a struggle between two states, but it was a trial of strength between two great races of mankind. We must bear in mind, that while the Swedes, like the English, the Dutch, and others, belong to the Germanic race, the Russians are a Sclavonic people. Nations of Sclavonian origin have long occupied the greater part of Europe eastward of the Vistula, and the populations also of Bohemia, Croatia, Servia, Dalmatia, and other important regions westward of that river are Sclavonic. In the long and varied conflicts between them and the Germanic nations that adjoin them, the Germanic race had, before Pultowa, almost always maintained a superiority. With the single but important exception of Poland, no Sclavonic state had made any considerable figure in history before the time when Peter the Great won his great victory over the Swedish king.* What Russia has done since that time we know and we feel. and best men of our own age and nations, who have watched with deepest care the annals and the destinies of humanity, have believed that the Sclavonic element in the population of Europe has as yet only partially developed its powers; that, while other races of mankind (our own, the Germanic, included) have exhausted their creative energies and completed their allotted achievements, the Sclavonic race has yet a great career to run; and that the narrative of Sclavonic ascendency is the remaining page that will conclude the history of the world.† * The Hussite wars may, perhaps, entitle Bohemia to be distinguished. + See Arnold's "Lectures on Modern History," p. 36-39. Let it not be supposed that in thus regarding the primary triumph of Russia over Sweden as a victory of the Sclavonic over the Germanic race, we are dealing with matters of mere ethnological pedantry, or with themes of mere speculative curiosity. The fact that Russia is a Sclavonic empire is a fact of immense practical influence at the present moment. Half the inhabitants of the Austrian empire are Sclavonians. The population of the larger part of Turkey in Europe is of the same race. Silesia, Posen, and other parts of the Prussian dominions are principally Sclavonic. And during late years, an enthusiastic zeal for blending all Sclavonians into one great united Sclavonic empire has been growing up in these countries, which, however we may deride its principle, is not the less real and active, and of which Russia, as the head and the champion of the Sclavonic race, knows well how to take her advantage.* "The idea of Panslavism had a purely literary origin. It was started by Kollar, a Protestant clergyman of the Sclavonic congregation at Pesth, in Hungary, who wished to establish a national literature by circulating all works, written in the various Sclavonic dialects, through every country where any of them are spoken. He suggested that all the Sclavonic literati should become acquainted with the sister dialects, so that a Bohemian, or other work, might be read on the shores of the Adriatic as well as on the banks of the Volga, or any other place where a Sclavonic language was spoken; by which means an extensive literature might be created, tending to advance knowledge in all Sclavonic countries; and he supported his arguments by observing that the dialects of ancient Greece differed from each other like those of his own language, and yet that they formed only one Hellenic literature. The idea of an intellectual union of all those nations naturally led to that of a political one ; and the Sclavonians, seeing that their numbers amounted to about one third part of the whole population of Europe, and occupied more than half its territory, began to be sensible that they might claim for themselves a position to which they had not hitherto aspired. The opinion gained ground; and the question now is, whether the Sclavonians can form a nation independent of Russia, or whether they ought to rest satisfied in being part of one great race, with the most powerful member of it as their chief. The latter, indeed, is gaining ground among them; and some Poles are disposed to attribute their sufferings to the arbitrary will of the Czar, without extending the blame to the Russians themselves. These begin to think that, if they can not exist as Poles, the best thing to be done is to rest satisfied with a position in the Sclavonic empire, and they hope that, when once they give up the idea of restoring their country, Russia may grant some concessions to their separate nationality. |