Battle at the Pühhajoggi pass

Battle at the Pühhajoggi pass

Part of: Charles XII's Narva campaign

date	November 27, 1700 (greg.)
place	Pühhajoggi , today's Estonia
output	Swedish victory

Parties to the conflict
Sweden	Russia
Commander
Charles XII. Georg Maydell	Boris Sheremetev
Troop strength
approx. 5000 infantry 3000 cavalry	approx. 6000 infantry

The battle at the Pühhajoggi Pass at the end of November 1700 was a minor skirmish at the beginning of the Great Northern War . Shortly before the battle of Narva , an advance party of the Swedish relief army defeated a Russian reconnaissance team for the besieged Narva .

In advance

Narwa campaign of Charles XII.

In 1699, the Tsarists of Russia and Saxony-Poland signed a secret alliance pact directed against Sweden in the Treaty of Preobrazhenskoye . This started the Great Northern War. Saxony opened hostilities and aimed at conquering Swedish Livonia . To do this, it sent a Saxon-Polish army to the Baltic States in 1700. In the early summer of 1700, the Saxon troops defeated the Swedish occupation in a battle near Jungfernhof . They then withdrew to the fortress of Riga . The Saxon army began the siege of Riga in the autumn of 1700 . Since the Saxon troops lacked heavy artillery, the Saxon Elector Augustus the Strong asked the Russian Tsar for help. On August 19, 1700, he formally declared war on Sweden.

The Russian troops marched from Novgorod with three divisions towards Narva. The trenches were opened as early as October 2, 1700 and the town began to be bombarded. Despite the lack of supplies, the siege continued. The Russian besiegers focused only on the city and did not notice that the Swedish king was already on the march. The relief army under Charles XII. had previously landed in the Livonian port city of Pernau . Actually, the Swedish army was supposed to liberate Riga from the Saxons first, but since they had already broken off the siege of the city, the Swedes marched directly towards Narva.

The battle at the Pühhajoggi Pass

In Wesenberg (Rakvere) the relief army united with the smaller Livonian army of General Otto Vellingk . The king moved on with a total of 5,000 infantry and 3,000 riders. The Russian general Boris Petrovich Sheremetev was sent with 6000 men to the Pühhajoggi and Sillameggi passes to observe the Swedish approach and, if necessary, to stop it.

On November 27, 1700, Major General Georg Johann Maydell reached the Pühhajoggi Pass with his 400 riders as the avant-garde of the Swedish army. Maydell's troops met a far superior Russian unit here. Maydell sent messengers to the Army Command, which sent additional reinforcements to the pass. With targeted artillery fire and a subsequent cavalry storm on the Russian positions on the pass, the Russians could be repulsed. Sheremetev withdrew with his army to Narva and the advancing Swedish main army was able to pass the pass without further fighting.

The consequences

Alexander von Kotzebue : Battle of Narva

Due to the swift action of the Swedish avant-garde, it was not possible for the Russians to defend the pass and enabled the attack on the siege army. The main Swedish army advanced into the city of Lagena, where on the eve of the Battle of Narva final preparations were made to attack the Russian camp.

With the victory in the Battle of Narva, the supremacy of the Swedes in the eastern Baltic was successfully secured.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} by Halem p. 180
2. ↑ ^{a b c} by Maydell p. 244
3. ↑ by Halem, p. 178

literature

• Gerhard Anton von Halem: Life of Peter the Great , Volume 1 Leipzig and Münster (1803)
• Baron Karl Anton von Maydell: The baronial family of Maydell , Helsingfors (1868)