Peter's forces were substantially larger. The main Russian army assigned by the Tsar to protect both Pskov and Moscow and commanded by Sheremetev and Menshikov was ranged in a wide arc around the triangular Swedish camp from Polotsk and Vitebsk in the north down to Mogilev and Bykhov in the south. The infantry was pulled well back and stood between the Dvina and the Dnieper. Out in front, large cavalry detachments under Goltz straddled the main Minsk-Smolensk road and patrolled along the Berezina to absorb the first shock of the Swedish advance. Farther south, another force guarded the Berezina River crossing of the southern road from Minsk to Mogilev. Altogether, in this arc Peter had twenty-six regiments of infantry and thirty-three regiments of dragoons, a total of about 57,500 men. In addition, Apraxin, whose assignment was to defend St. Petersburg, commanded 24,500 men. At Dorpat, between the Baltic and the central fronts, a third Russian force of 16,000 men was stationed under General Bauer, whose mission was to cover the Swedish army under Lewenhaupt at Riga. These forces were prepared to respond to a
variety of Swedish moves. If Charles marched toward Pskov and St. Petersburg, Menshikov and Sheremetev would shift the main Russian army north to oppose him; if the King moved directly toward Moscow, the Russian generals would fight him on the Berezina and the Dnieper. Bauer's movements were tied to Lewenhaupt's: if Lewenhaupt marched north toward St. Petersburg, Bauer would go north to reinforce Apraxin; if Lewenhaupt moved south to join the King, Buaer would shift south to bolster Sheremetev. A separate Russian force of 12,000 men under Prince Michael Golitsyn was posted near Kiev to cover the approaches to the Ukraine. At this time, that seemed the least likely direction in which the Swedes would march.
The Russian forces outnumbered the Swedes 110,000 to 70,000 (or, effectively 62,000, as Krassow's force was too far away to be of use). Disparity in numbers meant little except for the fact that in a protracted campaign the Russians could replace losses more easily than the Swedes. At Narva, the odds against Sweden had been four to one. Here they were only five to three.
By June 6, the fresh grass had pushed its way several inches above the earth and Charles decided to move. The three-month camp at Radoshkovichi was broken and the regiments converged on Minsk, the mustering point on the main Warsaw-Smolensk-Moscow highway. From Minsk, the road went east to Borisov on the Berezina River, a crossing which the Russians were prepared to defend.
At a pair of military conferences on April 26 and June 13, Sheremetev and Menshikov had decided to make their first stand against the Swedes on the Berezina. Peter was not present at either of these meetings, but he had strongly endorsed their decision to hold this river line. In May, the Russian army, its divisions commanded by Menshikov, Sheremetev, Hallart, Repnin and Goltz, moved out of its own winter quarters and took positions along a forty-mile front east of the river. Not knowing exactly where the King would strike, the Russian dispositions were kept fluid, but at the most obvious point—the crossing at Borisov— 8,000 Russians under Goltz were well dug in.
Knowing this, Charles again chose to turn the flank of this enemy front, this time from the south. On June 16, after nine days' marching, the army reached the Berezina River at Berezina-Sapezhinskaya. A screening force of Cossacks and Russian dragoons retreated, Swedish engineers constructed two bridges, and the army crossed the Berezina. The success of Charles' maneuver left Minsk fifty miles to the rear and meant that the King
now was leaving forever the Polish-Lithuania area in which he had lived and campaigned the previous eight years.
Menshikov and Sheremetev were much chagrined by the relative ease with which they had been out-maneuvered, and they could guess what the Tsar's reaction to their failure would be. In a military conference at Mogilev on June 23, they agreed that they must still make a serious effort to defend the region west of the Dnieper and protect the towns of Mogilev and Shklov. Orders went out to all divisions of the army to assemble on the west bank of the River Babich, a tributary of the Drut. A battle would be offered; not a risk-everything, life-or-death battle, but a battle that would extract payment from the invaders.
Charles now thought of turning north to catch Goltz and his force guarding the Borisov crossing in the rear, but his scouts reported that the Russian army as a whole was moving south and gathering behind the River Bab
ich near a village called Golov
chin. This time the King decided not to avoid his foe. The army marched toward Golovchin. The weather became worse. Rain fell unceasingly and the earth was a sea of mud. Every few yards, the Russians cut trees to fall across the road and block the advance. Jefferyes wrote to London: "I cannot on this occasion pass by the praises due to the Swedish troops, for whether I consider the great hardship which they have been obliged to undergo by forcing their way through places almost impassable, and by wading through morasses up to their middle, or I consider their patience in suffering hunger and thirst, they being for the most part reduced to bread and water, I must conclude they are as good subjects as any prince in Europe can boast of."
On June 30, the King himself arrived at Golovchin, which lay in front of the swampy and shallow Babich. He found the Russian army drawn up in strong positions across the river in a line extending for six miles along the Babich's rain-swollen marshy banks. It took several days for a substantial part of the Swedish army to come up, while across the river the Russian forces also were being continually reinforced by fresh arrivals of infantry and cavalry. Meantime, Charles examined the terrain and worked out a plan of battle, and his Swedish veterans grew restless. The river was shallow and easily fordable—why didn't they just go and scatter the Russian rabble? Charles understood that it might not be so easy. The Russians were dug into strong positions behind ditches and trenches with chevaux de frise placed in front. Their army was divided into two central divisions: to the north, thirteen regiments of infantry and ten regiments o
f cavalry under Shere
metev and Menshikov; to the south, nine regiments of infantry and three dragoon regiments under Repnin. The two divisions were separated in the center by a marshy, wooded area through which a tributary stream ran down into the Babich. Farther along on either flank were still more Russian troops: to the north of Sheremetev, beyond a deeper and more extensive swamp, was more Russian infantry and cavalry under Hallart; to the south of Repnin was Goltz with ten regiments of dragoons numbering 10,000 men, plus Cossack and Kalmuck cavalry.
In fact, the Russians, after repeated experience of being outflanked, had spread themselves thin to prevent it happening again, and Charles determined to use the over-extension of his opponents' line to his own advantage. While his forces were assembling, he marched detachments of troops up and down the bank, feinting here and there, encouraging the Russians to keep their forces strong on the outer wings. In this way, Hallart's Russian corps was kept far to the north and never entered the subsequent battle at all.
But this time there was not to be a flanking movement. Charles had detected the most vulnerable point in the long Russian line: It lay in the center, between the two divisions commanded by Sheremetev and Repnin, in the area of the tributary and marsh. If Charles attacked at this point, the marsh would prevent or hinder one Russian division from coming to assist the other. The King decided that the blow would fall on Repnin, south of the marsh. In the assault, he personally would lead the infantry against Repnin's Russian infantry. Rehnskjold would lead the cavalry which would grapple with Goltz's horsemen.
By July 3, Charles had assembled 20,000 men, more than half his total force, and at midnight his regiments were alerted and ordered to prepare for battle. That night, the river and the opposite bank were concealed by a thick mist rising from the stream, and behind this natural screen Charles quietly brought up artillery, rolling it efficiently into previously chosen sites. By two a.m., he had placed eight of his heaviest cannon in position to fire at close range directly across the stream. At daybreak, as the sun's first rays were filtering through the mist, the Swedish artillery suddenly thundered at the surprised Russians and Charles plunged into the river at the head of 7,000 Swedes.
The water reached to their chests, sometimes their shoulders, and Russian fire was heavy, but, holding their weapons aloft, the Swedes advanced calmly and steadily as they had been trained to do. As soon as they climbed the opposite bank, the troops halted to regroup. Charles walked along the lines, calmly addressing the ranks, and then led them forward through the marsh. The going was difficult, and the Russians, to Charles' surprise, did not break and run, but stayed to fight, firing at the Swedes from thirty to forty paces, retiring more or less in order, reloading and running forward to fire again at the oncoming Swedish line. They were not willing, however, to stand and grapple with the Swedish infantry in a clash of cold steel, and although their firing took its toll, it had little effect on the steady advance of the Swedish veterans.
As the Swedes, maintaining ranks, recognized the Russian pattern, they began to fall with it themselves. The Swedish lines halted to load, and those whose weapons would fire fired back at the Russians. This exchange was unique in the battles of Charles XII. Wrote Jefferyes, "The battle grew so hot that in a whole hours' time nothing was heard by the continual firing of musketry on both sides."
By seven a.m., Repnin began to understand that he was taking the full force of the Swedish attack. On his plea, 1,200 men of Goltz's Russian dragoons advanced from the south, trying to assist the hard-pressed Russian infantry by riding down the Swedish infantry on its right flank. Charles was saved by Rehnskjold, who, waiting across the stream with the still uncommitted Swedish cavalry, saw the movement of the Russian horse. With four squadrons—600 men—of the Guards cavalry, he galloped across the river and engaged the Russian cavalry before it could fall on the Swedish infantry. The impact between the opposing horsemen was bloody as the Swedes repeatedly repulsed a force twice their number. Gradually, as additional squadrons of Swedish cavalry crossed the river and rode into the fray, the Russians were forced to check their attack and retire into the woods.
Meanwhile, the failure of the Russian cavalry to break through and attack the Swedish infantry left the Russian infantry alone to cope with Charles' assault. The Swedish advance continued implacably as fresh Swedish infantry crossed the river and, as Charles had known it would
f
this furious, concentrated pressure on a single section of the Russian line finally forced it to break. Rapnin's forces fell back, rallied, wavered, and finally broke. The Russian left wing abandoned its camp and its artillery, dispersed into company-sized units and retreated through the woods.
It was now eight a.m. Charles' sudden, determined attack had defeated Repnin's division, but Sheremetev's division to the north, on the opposite side of the marsh, remained uninvolved. At first, hearing the firing and seeing the Swede's crossing to attack Repnin, Sheremetev had attempted to send troops to assist his colleague, but, as Charles had anticipated, the morass made this difficult, and when Charles turned to meet Sheremetev, he found it was not necessary. The Russian Field Marshal, mindful of Peter's admonition not to risk everything, was already in retreat toward Mogilev and the Dnieper.
The Battle of Golovchin was the first serious engagement between Russian and Swedish troops since Charles had begun his long march from Saxony almost a year before. By the classical definition of victory, the Swedes had won. They had attacked and gained a strong position. The Swedish cavalry had fought brilliantly and repulsed a much larger Russian force. The King had been in the thick of the fight, performing with great personal bravery, and had remained untouched. The Russians had once again retreated. The road to the Dnieper lay open. All the legends were intact.
Yet, there were factors which were not displeasing to Peter, who arrived late and heard about the battle in Gorky from Menshikov. Although worried that his army had been forced to abandon another river line, he took solace in the fact that only one third of the Russian forces present had actually been engaged, and that these regiments had taken the whole weight of the famous Swedish attack led by the King of Sweden himself. Through four hours of heavy fighting, they had not collapsed, but had retreated in good order, fighting every step, and when they finally abandoned the field, it was not as a disorderly mob but in units which could be reassembled to fight again. The Russian casualties were 977 dead and 675 wounded, the Swedes had 267 dead and over 1,000 wounded. But there was an important difference. Peter's losses could be replaced; when one of Charles' soldiers fell, the King's army was permanently decreased by one.
Peter or
dered investigations into which
regiments had stood and which had broken; he was angry at certain officers, and there were punishments. Repnin was court-martialed and temporarily relieved of his command. Four days after the battle, a conference was held at Shklov and it was decided not to attempt to defend Mogilev on the Dnieper but to fall back farther to Gorky along the road to Smolensk. But not before the Cossacks and Kalmucks had done their terrible work. The region had been doomed by the Tsar's order, and Charles' victorious army would advance through utterly barren lands.
Although Charles, too, was pleased and the news went back to Stockholm and spread through Europe that Sweden had won another victory, the King was aware of a change in the Russian adversaries. The Battle of Golovchin opened his eyes to the fact that the Russian army was no longer the same disorderly mob which had fled at Narva. Here, in a battle in which the numbers of men actually engaged were almost equal, the Russians had fought well. Jefferyes admitted, "The Muscovites have learned their lesson much better and have made great improvements in military affairs and if their soldiers had shown but half the courage their officers did (which for the most part are foreigners) they had probably been too hard for us in the late action."