Ukraine to harry the Cossacks and reap the rewards in prisoners and cattle which ten years of peace had denied them. In the spring, the main body of the Ottoman army would march northeast from Adrianople. The artillery and supplies would go by sea to the Danube town of Isaccea to rendezvous with the army. There, the Tatar cavalry would join them to form a combined force of almost 200,000 men.
In January, the Tatars struck, ravaging the area between the middle Dnieper and the upper Don. They met heavy resistance from Peter's new Cossack Hetman, Skoropadsky, and were forced to withdraw without having created the major diversion for which the Grand Vizier had hoped. At the end of February, the horsetails signifying war were raised in the court of the Janissaries and the elite corps of 20,000, shouldering its polished muskets and ornamental bows, marched north. The main army moved slowly, reaching the Danube only at the beginning of June. Here, the cannon were unloaded from ships and placed in gun carriages, the supply trains organized, and the entire army transferred to the east bank of the river.
While the Turks were assembling on the Danube, the Grand Vizier sent Poniatowski, who had been representing Charles at the Sultan's court, to Bender to invite the King to join the campaign, but only as a guest of the Grand Vizier. At first, the King was strongly tempted, but he decided against it. As a sovereign, he could not join an army he did not command, especially an army commanded by one lower in rank than himself. In retrospect, it appears a fatal mistake.
The war of 1711, which led to the campaign on the Pruth, was not of Peter's asking; it was Charles who had instigated this fight between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, once war came, Peter, still flushed with his success at Poltava, accepted the challenge with confidence and took rapid steps to prepare. Ten regiments of Russian dragoons were dispatched from Poland to watch the Ottoman frontier. Sheremetev with twenty-two regiments of infantry was ordered to march from the Baltic to the Ukraine. A new, exceptionally heavy tax was levied to support the coming military operations.
On February 25, 1711, a great ceremony was held in the Kremlin. The Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Guards regiments stood in ranks in Cathedral Square before the Assumption Cathedral, their red banners bearing a cross inscribed with the ancient watchword of the Emperor Constantine: "By this sign you shall conquer." Inside the cathedral, Peter solemnly proclaimed a holy war "against the enemies of Christ." The Tsar meant to lead the Turkish campaign personally, and on March 6 left Moscow with Catherine at his side. But he became ill, and his letters carried a tone of resignation and despair. "We have before us this uncertain road which is known to God alone," he wrote to Menshikov. To Apraxin, who had been given command of all the lower Don, including Azov and Tagonrog, and who had written asking for instructions as to where to place his headquarters, the Tsar replied, "Do as is most convenient to you, for all the country is entrusted to you. It is impossible for me to decide as I am so far off, and, if you will, in despair, being scarcely alive from illness, and affairs change from day to day."
Peter's illness was severe. To Menshikov, he wrote that he had suffered one seizure lasting a day and a half and had never been so sick in his life. After several weeks, he began to feel better and moeved along to Yavorov. There, he was pleased that Catherine was received with dignity and addressed as "Your Majesty" by the local Polish noblemen. Catherine herself was delighted. "We here are often at banquets and soirees," she wrote on May 9 to Menshikov, who had been left behind to defend St. Petersburg. "Three days ago we visited the Hetman Sieniawski and yesterday were at Prince Radziwill's, where we danced a good bit." Then, turning to some imagined slight, she soothed the worried Prince: "I beg your Highness not to be troubled by believing any stupid gossip coming from here, for the Rear Admiral [Peter] keeps you in his love and kindest remembrance as before."
Peter had traveled to Yavorov to sign the marriage treaty which would link his son Alexis to Princess Charlotte of Wolfenbuttel. Schleinitz, the ambassador of the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, wrote to his master describing the Russian royal couple at this moment:
The next day about four o'clock the Tsar sent for me again. I knew that I should find him in the room of the Tsaritsa and that I should give him great pleasure if I congratulated the Tsaritsa on the publication of her marriage. After the declaration made on this subject by the King of Poland and the hereditary prince, I did not consider it out of place and besides I knew that the Polish minister gave the Tsaritsa the title of Majesty. When I went into the room I turned, notwithstanding the presence of the Tsar, and congratulated her in your name and on the announcement of her marriage, and entrusted the Princess [Charlotte] to her friendship and protection.
Catherine was delighted and asked Schleinitz to thank the Duke for his good wishes. She said that she was eager to see and embrace the princess who was to become her stepdaughter-in-law and asked whether the Tsarevich seemed as much in love with Charlotte as people said. While Catherine was talking with the
Ambassador, Peter was examining some mathematical instruments on the other side of the room. When he heard Catherine speak of Alexis, he laid these down on a table and walked over, but did not break into the conversation.
"I had been warned," Schleinitz continued in his letter to the Duke,
that as the Tsar knows me very slightly, it was incumbent on me to address him first. I therefore told him that Her Majesty the Tsaritsa had asked me whether the Tsarevich was very much in love with the Princess. I declared that I was sure that the Tsarevich awaited with impatience the consent of his father in order to be fully happy. The Tsar replied through an interpreter "I do not wish to put off the happiness of my son, but at the same time I do not wish entirely to deprive myself of my own happiness. He is my only son and I desire to have the pleasure at the end of the campaign of being personally present at his marriage. His marriage will be in Brunswick." He explained that he was entirely his own master, for he had to do with an enemy who was strong and rapid in his movements, but he would try and arrange it to take the water at Carlsbad in the autumn and then go to Wolfenbuttel.
Three days later, the marriage contract arrived, signed without alteration by the Duke of Wolfenbuttel. Peter summoned Ambassador Schleinitz and greeted him in German with the statement, "I have some excellent news to give you." He produced the contract, and when Schleinitz congratulated the Tsar and kissed his hand, Peter kissed him three times on the forehead and cheeks and ordered that a bottle of his favorite Hungarian wine be brought. They clinked glasses and Peter talked excitedly for two hours about his son, the army and the coming campaign against the Turks. Afterward, a pleased Schleinitz wrote to the Duke: "I cannot sufficiently express Your Highness with what clearness of judgment and what modesty the Tsar spoke about everything."
Peter's confidence that the campaign against Turkey would be swiftly concluded so that he could take the waters at Carlsbad and then attend his son's wedding was further reflected in an interview he had at this time with Augustus. The Elector of Saxony had once again entered Warsaw and claimed the crown of Poland, while his rival, Stanislaus, had fled with the retreating Swedes to Swedish Pomerania. Augustus intended to pursue these enemies and besiege the Swedish-held Baltic port of Stralsund. To support this effort, Peter pledged 100,000 roubles and placed 12,000 Russian soldiers under Augustus' command.
Against the Turks, Peter's plan, bold to the point of recklessness, was to march to the lower Danube, cross the river just above the place where it flows into the Black Sea and proceed southwest through Bulgaria to a point where he could threaten the Sultan's second capital, Adrianople, and even the fabled city of Constantinople itself. The Russian army he would take with him would not be large—40,000 infantry and 14,000 cavalry—compared to the vast array which the Sultan could put in the field. But Peter expected that one he entered the Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire bordering on Russia, he would be welcomed as a liberator and reinforced by 30,000 Walachians and 10,000 Moldavians. Then, his army would number 94,000.
The offensive plan had been conceived partly as a means of keeping war away from the Ukraine, devastated by the Swedish invasion and the defection of Mazeppa, and now quiet, at least for the moment. If an Ottoman army invaded the Ukrainian steppes, who knew which way the volatile Cossacks would go? By thrusting into the Ottoman Empire, Peter could at least lay these concerns to rest. Better for him to stir up trouble among the Sultan's restless vassals than the other way around.
Peter's expectation of help once his army arrived in the Christian provinces was not unfounded. Throughout his reign, he had received constant appeals from representatives of the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans: the Serbs, Montenegrins, Bulgars, Walachians and Moldavians. His partial defeat of the Sultan in 1698 and his capture of Azov had encouraged their dreams of liberation and exaggerated their promises. Once a Russian army appeared in their midst, they pledged, native troops would join it, supplies would be plentifully available and whole populations would rise. Between 1704 and 1710, four Serbian leaders arrived in Moscow to stir the Russians to action. "We have no other tsar than the Most Orthodox Tsar Peter," they said.
Before Poltava, Peter, wary of any behavior which might cause the Sultan to break the truce of 1700, responded discreetly to these appeals. After Poltava, however, Tolstoy and other Russian agents inside the Ottoman Empire began to prepare the ground for an uprising. Now, in the spring of 1711, the hour had struck. In the Kremlin ceremony before he left Moscow, Peter issued a proclamation, openly presenting himself as the liberator of the Balkan Christians. He called on all of them, Catholic as well as Orthodox, to rise against their Ottoman masters and ensure that "the descendants of the heathen Mohammed were driven out into their old homeland, the sands and steppes of Arabia."
42
FIFTY BLOWS ON THE PRUTH
The
key to Peter's campaign lay in the two Christian principalities, Walachia and Moldavia. Lying south of the Carpathians and north of the Danube, these regions today make up a sizable piece of the southeastern Soviet Union and a large part of present-day Romania. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, seeking security, they placed themselves under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte, retaining their internal autonomy but agreeing to pay the sultan an annual tribute in return for protection.
With the passage of time, however, the Porte began assuming the right to appoint and dismiss their native princes. Anxious to make their offices
hereditary, the princess secretl
y began looking elsewhere for protection. During the reign of Tsar Alexis, there were preliminary discussions with Moscow about Russia assuming suzerainty, but the Tsar was still too heavily involved with Poland.
In 1711, Walachia, the stronger and richer of the two principalities, was ruled by a prince (the local title was hospodar) named Constantine Brancovo, wily and flexible, who had come to office by poisoning his predecessor and had used his talents not only to cling to his title for twenty years but to build a powerful army and great personal wealth. From the Sultan's viewpoint, Brancovo was much too rich and powerful for a satellite prince, and the hospodar was marked for replacement once an opportunity arrived. Inevitably, Brancovo sensed this feeling and, convinced after Poltava that Peter's star was ascending, he made a secret treaty with the Tsar. In case of a Russian war with Turkey, Walachia would side with the Tsar, putting 30,000 troops in the field and furnishing supplies for Russian troops who reached Walachia—supplies to be paid for, however, by Peter. In return, Peter promised to guarantee the independence of Walachia and the hereditary rights of Brancovo, and he made Brancovo a Knight of the Order of St. Andrew.
Moldavia was weaker and poorer than Walachia, and its rulers had changed rapidly. The latest, Demetrius Cantemir, in 1711 had
been in office for less than a year, appointed by the Sultan with the understanding that he would help the Porte seize and overthrow his neighbor Brancovo, for which service he would become hospodar of both Walachia and Moldavia. Arriving in his new capital, Jassy, however, Cantemir also sniffed a shift in fortune and began negotiating in utmost secrecy with Peter. In April 1711, he signed a treaty with the Tsar, agreeing to assist a Russian invasion and furnish 10,000 troops. Moldavia, in return, was to be declared an independent state under Russian protection. No tribute would be paid, and the Cantemir family would rule as a hereditary dynasty.
It was with the promise of help from these two ambitious princes, each of whom hated the other, that Peter launched his campaign against the Turks.
Cantemir's decision was popular in Moldavia. "You have done well in inviting the Russians to free us from the Turkish yoke," his nobles told him. "If we had found out that you intended to go meet the Turks, we had resolved to abandon you and surrender to the Tsar Peter." But Cantemir also knew that the Ottoman army was on the march and that, as the Grand Vizier drew closer, it would become obvious that he and his province had deserted to the Tsar. Accordingly, he sent messages to Sheremetev, who commanded the main Russian army, urging the Field Marshal to hurry. If the main body could not move faster, Cantemir pleaded for at least an advance guard of 4,000 men to shield his people from Ottoman vengeance. Sheremetev was also receiving commands to hurry from Peter, who wanted him to reach and cross the Dniester by May 15 to protect the principalities and encourage the Serbs and Bulgars to rise.