Åland Congress
The peace congress in Åland were failed peace negotiations between the belligerent powers Sweden and Russia in the Great Northern War from spring 1718 to September 1719.
course
At an informal meeting with Tsar Peter in the Het Loo summer residence in Holland in August 1717, Georg Heinrich von Görtz , who is in Swedish service, was able to dispel the Tsar's major reservations about rapprochement with Sweden. In May of the following year peace negotiations took place in the Åland Islands . This group of islands in the middle of the Baltic Sea was evacuated by the Swedes in 1714 and from then on formed a kind of no-man's-land.
Prussia , represented by Gustav von Mardefeld , was the only other power present at these talks . In addition to Görtz, the negotiators for the Swedes were Carl Gyllenborg , for the Russians the Westphalian Heinrich Ostermann and the Scottish-born General Robert Bruce . In competition with England , the Russian diplomats tried to integrate Sweden into their own alliance system through area compensations at the expense of Poland-Lithuania . Basically, it was about integrating Sweden into the system of influence directed against Poland, which had already been established between Prussia and Russia.
The Swedish plan stipulated that Russia would keep all of its possessions except Finland , but Norway and the Electorate of Hanover should fall to the Swedes. A landing in Scotland was also intended to prepare a return of the Jacobites to the throne there.
After the death of Charles XII. During the siege of Frederikshald , the new Swedish government changed its attitude towards the peace negotiations with Russia. Görtz, who led the Swedish negotiations in Åland, was arrested in Stockholm on the orders of Friedrich von Hessen-Kassel . Johan Lillienstedt became the new Swedish negotiator . Stockholm then turned to London and hoped to obtain better peace conditions with English support.
In the summer of 1719, Russian troops began to devastate the Swedish coast, using military pressure to force Sweden to be ready for peace.
The Swedish government broke off the peace negotiations on September 17, 1719 in order to conclude separate peace treaties with Hanover on November 20, 1719 and with Prussia on February 20, 1720 with the mediation of France at the Stockholm Peace Congress .
consequences
A Swedish alliance with England followed, which attempted to politically contain Russia's invasion of Europe.
Sweden made peace with Russia in the Peace of Nystad on September 10, 1721.
literature
- Not so Fryxell: Life story of Charles the Twelfth, King of Sweden . Transferred from the Swedish original freely by Georg Friedrich von Jenssen-Tusch, Braunschweig 1861.