Along the road to Mogilev, the Swedish army advanced between smoldering houses and barns. On July 9, the army reached the town on the River Dnieper, then the frontier of Russia itself. Without a shot being fired, the King sent troops across, although the main body remained on the western bank. Everyone assumed that the halt would be only temporary, a brief rest while supplies were gathered for the final stage of the march. The campaign was now practically over. All the great river barriers had been crossed. Smolensk was 100 miles to the northeast, and 200 miles beyond Smolensk lay Moscow.
At Mogilev, Charles sent detachments across the Dnieper, laid bridges across the river and then—to the surprise of both the Swedish army and the watching Russian patrols—failed to cross. For an entire month—from July 9 to August 5—the 35,000 men of the Swedish army waited on the western bank of the Dnieper for Lewenhaupt's force from Riga to join them. Count Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt, General of Infantry, whose pedantic scholarship had prompted Charles to dub him "the little Latin colonel," was a meticulous, melancholy man, overly sensitive to the opinions of those around him, finding rivals and plots on every side, but was nevertheless a brave and skillful officer with rare devotion to orders. No matter how small the formation of infantry he commanded, no matter how large or well entrenched the opposing enemy force, if Lewenhaupt had explicit orders, he would dress ranks and advance with absolute serenity into murderous enemy fire. His tragedy—and Charles' mistake—was that he was given a command which called for a wide latitude of personal initiative and improvisation.
Lewenhaupt was military governor of Courland and what remained of the Swedish Baltic provinces. In and around the fortress city of Riga, he commanded 12,500 troops. In March, when he visited Charles at Radoshkovichi, the King had given him simple, uncomplicated orders: He was to use his troops at Riga to collect supplies, gather a huge wagon train, load it with enough food and ammunition to last his own men for three months and the entire army for six weeks, and then escort this wagon train through the Lithuanian countryside to join the main army. His wagons would replenish the army for the final phase of the march on Moscow, while his soldiers would substantially augment the King' combat strength. Although the route chosen from Riga to
Mogilev was 400 miles, it was calculated that if he left early in June, he would complete the journey in two months.
These assumptions were wrong. Lewenhaupt returned to Riga early in May and set about collecting supplies, but the sheer task of assembling 2,000 wagons and 8,000 horses to pull them, as well as the supplies themselves, delayed him. On June 3, as Charles' army was preparing to break camp at Radoshkovichi, Lewenhaupt received orders to leave Riga for the Berezina River, but he reported that he could not possibly start before the end of the month. And, indeed, not until the last days of June were the long supply column and its escort of 7,500 infantry and 5,000 cavalry on the road. Lewenhaupt himself remained in Riga another month and did not join his command until July 29, when, according to the original plan, it should have been approaching its junction with the main army. In fact, his men had crawled only 150 miles and still were to the north of Vilna, while Charles' main army had moved on to Mogilev, over 250 miles away.
For Peter, the news that Lewenhaupt's army was leaving Livonia and Courland and moving south, away from the Baltic, was cause for enormous relief. It indicated with reasonable certainty that the Swedish King's ultimate objective was not St. Petersburg, that there would be no combined attack on the Neva by Lewenhaupt from the south and Lybecker from Finland. And with Lewenhaupt out of the picture, Apraxin had enough men to deal with whatever Lybecker might attempt. Accordingly, General Bauer's Russian force of 16,000 men—whose mission had been to watch Lewenhaupt—was now ordered to move south.
Charles' plans now hinged on Lewenhaupt. Critics have blamed Lewenhaupt harshly for his excessive delays, but he could not control the weather. Moving his heavy supply wagons with their great wheels churning in the mud proved almost impossible in the rain, although fascines of brush, branches and wooden boards were laid down. Lewenhaupt was even carrying a portable bridge, the pride of his engineering corps, held together with flexible strips of leather which became so sodden that thirty-two men and to carry each section, and they could carry it only twenty paces before setting it down to rest. In a month, the army moved only 143 miles, an average of less than five miles a day. July stretched into August and then into September, and still Lewenhaupt slowly rumbled and churned his way forward.
Two precious months, July 8 to September 15, the best campaigning days of midsummer, passed while Charles waited. It was not that the supplies themselves were urgently needed yet, but Charles felt that he could not move too far ahead of Lewenhaupt lest the Russian army slip into the gap between the two Swedish armies and catch the smaller force exposed and unsupported. At first, the King had hoped to rendezvous with Lewenhaupt at Mogilev on the Dnieper before the main army crossed the river, and from reports of the lumbering supply column's progress, Charles, pacing impatiently, believed that it must arrive by August 15. But that date came and went and Lewenhaupt still had not appeared. Meanwhile, the army was stagnant and restless. The Golovchin wounded were well again, but the countryside around Mogilev had been eaten bare as thousands of horses grazed the pastureland.
Charles decided that offensive operations must be resumed: not the bold, deep thrust at Moscow that he had planned, but something closer to the Dnieper which would perhaps provoke a battle with the Russians and still, somehow, cover Lewenhaupt. He began a series of maneuvers, marching short distances each day, changing direction—first south, then north—hoping to confuse the Tsar and catch part of his army off guard.
Between August 5 and 9, the Swedish army at last crossed the Dnieper and began moving southeast toward the southern flank of the position Peter had taken on the Smolensk road. On August 21, Charles' army reached Cherikov on the Sozh River to find Menshikov's cavalry already in position on the opposite bank and the mass of the Russian infantry coming closer. With the two opposing armies now in close proximity, their patrols were in constant contact and there were frequent skirmishes. On August 30, a battle of sorts took place. It was not the battle that Charles had hoped for or even expected. The King had camped his army along a branch of the stream Chornyaya Natopa, which bordered a marsh. Roos, commanding the rear guard, was camped on the edge of a marsh three miles away. The marsh was difficult but not impassable, and the Tsar and his officers had quickly learned the lesson of Golovchin: that a marsh could be crossed. At dawn on August 30, 9,000 Russian infantry and 4,000 dragoons commanded by Prince Michael Golitsyn crossed the marsh in a dense morning mist and attacked Roos' camp. The Swedes were taken by surprise, never having before been subjected to a Russian infantry attack. Two hours of fierce hand-to-hand combat ensued before reinforcements from the main Swedish camp arrived and the Russians withdrew, fading back across the marsh. When Charles heard the firing, he assumed that Peter desired a major battle, and the following day the entire Swedish army was drawn up in battle formation. But
no attack came, and when Rehnsk
jold's cavalry reconnoitered the silent Russian positions, he found
.
With every day that passed, the problem facing Charles grew more acute. The army was poised, ready for the last great thrust that would end the war, yet it couldn't move forward without Lewenhaupt because the Tsar had scorched the earth bare in the regions ahead. And because of the lack of food, it couldn't simply stand where it was. This left two choices, the first being to retreat to the Dnieper and wait for Lewenhaupt there. Charles rejected this idea. To retrace his steps was repugnant to him—it would confirm publicly that the entire summer campaign had been a failure. Although uncertain as to Lewenhaupt's exact position, Charles believed that he was approaching and that, despite the delays, the rendezvous would soon take place. The second alternative was bolder and therefore more to Charles' liking: a march south, away from Smolensk and Moscow, into the Russian province of Severia. This would maintain the momentum of the Swedish offensive and, at the same time, bring the army into a rich area still untouched by Peter's ravaging, where the fields were just being harvested. Replenished in Severia and reinforced by Lewenhaupt, Charles could then march on Moscow.
After prolonged discussions with Rehnskjold and Piper at Tatarsk, Charles decided to take this course. Once decided, it was urgent that the move be made swiftly and secretly to ensure that the Swedes would arrive in Severia before the Russians. The Swedes had the advantage: Charles was nearer and had the more direct route. If he turned his back on the Russians now and marched rapidly south, he would leave them behind and get there first. Thus, at Tatarsk, new orders were issued to the Swedish army. A special mobile vanguard of 2,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry—the best of the Guards and other elite regiments—was issued two weeks' rations so it could move rapidly and not have to waste time foraging. Placed under the command of General Anders Lagercrona, it was ordered to hurry by forced marches and seize the towns and river crossings which would open Severia to the Swedes and block it to the Russians. Lagercrona was informed of the overall plan and knew that the objective of the operation was the seizure of the provincial capital, Starodub. The distance from Tatarsk to Starodub as the crow flies was 125 miles. That same night, three separate couriers were dispatched to Lewenhaupt telling him of the change of plan and ordering him to change the direction of his march toward Starodub. The three couriers were sent at intervals during the night to ensure the arrival of at least one.
On the early morning of September 15, the march to the south began, a march fateful in the life of Charles XII and in the history of Peter and of Russia. The advance on Moscow was turned aside—as it happened, for good. Charles' decision at Tatarsk also marked a turn in Sweden's fortunes. In the previous fall and winter, he had marched halfway across Europe, brilliantly maneuvering his enemy out of a series of formidable river barriers. Yet in the summer of 1708, Charles' strategic planning had gone badly awry: he had allowed himself to be chained to the arrival of Lewenhaupt and the supplies. Lewenhaupt had not arrived, and the summer and the advance on Moscow had both been lost. Nevertheless, in September 1708, when Charles stood at Tatarsk and decided to turn south, he still held the initiative. His army was intact. He turned toward Severia with optimism and hope that, if the Moscow campaign had failed, the setback was only temporary.
In fact he was on the brink of a series of disasters which for him would end in ruin.
The first consequence of Charles' move fell on Lewenhaupt. On September 15, the day Charles broke camp at Tatarsk and marched south, Lewenhaupt was still thirty miles west of the Dnieper. Charles' position at that moment was sixty miles east of the river. Peter immediately saw his opportunity: The ninety-mile gap left the wagon train exposed. The Tsar dispatched his main force southward with Sheremetev to shadow Charles, but he held aside ten battalions of his best infantry, including the Preobrazhensky and the Semyonovsky Guards. Mounting these infantrymen on horseback and supplementing them with ten regiments of dragoons and cavalry, he created a new, highly mobile "flying corps" of 11,625 men of which he took personal command. With Menshikov at his side, Peter rode directly west to intercept Lewenhaupt. Although the Tsar did not know Lewenhaupt's strength, reports reaching Russian headquarters placed it at around 8,000. Actually, it as 12,500. As a precaution, Peter ordered an additional 3,000 dragoons under Bauer to ride west to join his force. Thus, 14,625 Russians were moving to intercept 12,500 Swedes.
Meanwhile, Lewenhaupt's weary column, still lumbering forward after three months on the road, finally reached the Dnieper on September 18. Here, Lewenhaupt received the King's three messengers commanding him to cross the river and turn south toward the new rendezvous point, Starodub. For three days, the tired soldiers trundled their wagons across the river. As the last companies were crossing on the 23rd, Lewenhaupt became aware that a Russian force was moving against him; red-coated Russian cavalry began appearing on the fringes of the forest. Doggedly, he hurried on, making for the town of Propoisk on the River Sozh. Once across that stream, he would have a fair chance of reaching the main army intact.
It became a race. Lewenhaupt was desperately trying to reach Propoisk, but the muddy roads bogged his heavy wagons. On the morning of the 27th, the leading Russian cavalry caught up, and skirmishing with the Swedish rear guard began. Realizing that a major action was imminent, Lewenhaupt faced a choice: He could either leave his rear guard to hold off his pursuers as long as possible, sacrificing them if necessary, while pushing his main force and the baggage wagons forward in an effort to reach the Sozh, or he could halt his flight, stand and, with his whole force, fight. Being Lewenhaupt, he chose the second course. He sent the wagons ahead and brought the main body of his infantry and cavalry back down the road, drew them up in battle formation and awaited a Russian attack. There they stood through the morning and early afternoon of the 27th. Late in the afternoon, when it became clear that no Russian attack was coming, Lewenhaupt dissolved his battle line and fell back several miles along the road, then again drew up in line. His men stood in formation through the night.
The following morning, the 28th, when no attack had yet come, the Swedes again fell back, their columns skirmishing with the Russian horsemen who were all around them. They arrived at the village of Lesnaya, a short day's march from Propoisk. Now, the loss of time—almost the entire day of the 27th—revealed its importance. But for this fruitless day, the main body might have reached and crossed the Sozh to safety.