Violence of Charles XII. from Piteşti to Stralsund
The violence of Charles XII. from Piteşti to Stralsund is the name of the 2150-kilometer route that the Swedish King Charles XII. from his exile in the Ottoman Empire back to the Swedish Empire in 15 days in October and November 1714 (the actual violence from Piteşti being counted). On the voyage that took place during the Great Northern War , the king was accompanied by only one officer. The ride covered an average of 143 kilometers per day on horseback. According to the biographer of Charles XII. Otto Haintz , this was probably the greatest equestrian achievement in all of military history .
prehistory
At the Battle of Poltava on June 27th, July / July 8, 1709 greg. the exhausted Swedes suffered a complete defeat against the Russians, whom the Swedish king did not manage himself because of a wound he had received ten days earlier. Karl escaped with 1,500 men over the Bug to Bender on Ottoman territory. The King of Denmark and the Elector of Saxony renewed their alliance. The latter declared the Altranstadt Treaty to be invalid and took possession of Poland again. The Danish King Frederick IV landed in Skåne , while Tsar Peter advanced into Livonia . Karl himself, well received by the Sublime Porte , had moved into a camp with Bender, in which the exiled Polish King Stanislaw Leszczyński also gathered and on November 21, 1710, moved the Porte to declare war on Russia . The Grand Vizier Mehmed Baltaji succeeded in encircling the Tsar on the Prut ; but Peter's wife, Catherine I , bribed the vizier so that he let the Russians escape. On July 23, 1711, the peace was made on the Prut , one of the conditions of which was that Karl should not be persecuted by the Tsar on his return to Sweden. It is true that Karl made two more declarations of war against Peter at the gate; however, a real outbreak of war could be prevented by a quick reconciliation mediated by England and Holland. Soon he was given to understand that he should leave Turkish territory. Karl agreed to do this if he were given 100,000 men. Instead, he received a sum of 600,000 thalers for departure in 1713. But he refused this offer. The Sultan Ahmed III. therefore decided to use force. Now Karl holed himself up in his house, with 300 Swedish soldiers endured the attacks of several thousand Janissaries for a whole day and was caught only with great difficulty (see scuffle by Bender ). He was taken to Demotika near Adrianople .
He did not leave his room there for ten months to avoid the vizier. Only when all attempts to move the gate to new armaments against Russia had failed and he received disturbing news about the domestic political situation in Sweden (Major General Bernhard von Liewen had been specially sent from Sweden , who arrived in Demotika in March 1714) he decided to leave. He only took his Swedish followers with him; he left the other allies who were with him in Turkey to their fate.
The ride from Piteşti to Stralsund
The departure was delayed by creditors who later followed the entourage and the need to raise money for the trip. In the end, the Sultan approved the missing funds. On September 20th the King of Sweden set out. An Ottoman court marshal appeared to pick him up. He brought him a large tent embroidered with gold, a saber with a handle decorated with precious stones, and eight Arab horses with splendid saddles, the stirrups of which were made of silver. Sixty wagons loaded with provisions of all kinds and three hundred horses made up the convoy. The team of around 1300 men in Bender under Axel Sparre also set out on the journey and was supposed to meet Karl XII in Wallachia .
As a gesture of respect, the Turks only allowed him to make small day trips. He got up at three in the morning, even when he was out and about. As soon as he was dressed, he himself woke the entourage and ordered them to leave, even if it was still dark. When the King of Sweden reached the Habsburg borders , he learned that the Emperor had given the order to receive him. The towns and villages that the quartermasters named as the stops on his journey made preparations for his reception.
Charles XII. gathered his remaining troops in Piteşti in what is now Romania in order to march back to Sweden with them. He arrived there on October 8th and was close to the Habsburg territory, whom he turned to because he had run out of funds. He also received 50,000 guilders from the Austrian General Steinville. With the units from Bender he now had around 800 men. He separated from the Zaporozhian Cossacks , who had remained loyal to him until then. The king decided to make the journey home in disguise as quickly as possible.
The actual start of the violence is therefore October 26, the day on which he left Pitesti. He only took his adjutant general Gustav Friedrich von Rosen and Colonel Otto Friedrich Düring with him and left his entourage. 24 selected people were to travel one day apart, the rest of the team chose the shorter route through Prussia. Karl wore a black wig on the ride to make himself unrecognizable, dressed himself in a hat, a skirt and a blue coat and took the name of a German officer (captain (captain) Peter Frisch). He and his traveling companion rode off on post horses on October 26 at 1 a.m. in Piteşti. Behind the Red Tower Pass in Transylvania , he also ordered Rosen to stay behind. He should follow him 4 hours apart, otherwise his resemblance to the king would attract attention.
He avoided the great roads and hostile areas (Electoral Saxony, Prussia) and traveled to Stralsund via Klausenburg , Debrecen , Budapest (Ofen, Pest), Vienna , Passau , Regensburg , Nuremberg , Bamberg , Würzburg , Hanau , Kassel , Braunschweig and Güstrow . He wanted to avoid Saxony via this detour because he feared he would be captured by August's spies.
At first they sometimes still used the stagecoach, later only the mail horses and didn't stop anywhere longer. After a sixteen-day ride, on which they ran the risk of being recognized several times, they arrived at the gates of Stralsund on November 11, 1714 at one o'clock after midnight . The king called out to the sentry that he was a courier sent from the Ottoman Empire by the King of Sweden and that he had to speak to the governor of the fortress, General Karl Gustav Düker , immediately . The sentry replied that it was too late, the governor was in bed, he had to wait until daylight, but Karl did not let himself be stopped and was received. Since he had not taken off his boots for the past eight days, his legs were swollen. The boots had to be cut off and he retired for a day to recover. Rosen arrived only a day after Karl. The 24-person tour group also arrived in Stralsund soon afterwards (they had attracted more attention on the trip and it was often assumed that the king was among them), the other Swedes only from March 1715 in small groups and in a demolished state, as they Lack of funds. With them also came believers of Charles XII. from the Orient, who hoped to get their money.
Pomeranian campaign
Ignoring the situation, Karl's goal in the coming months was to restore the previous balance of power in Pomerania. Under his leadership, the expansion of the fortifications, in which up to 10,000 people were involved, was pushed. He also raised a small, poorly equipped but devoted army.
In January, Charles XII opened the operations and occupied the south and east coast of Rügen to secure the Stralsund fortress . On February 23, 1715, Charles XII. Wolgast , which was occupied by a twenty-man Prussian post. On April 22nd, Swedish troops landed on the island of Usedom and took a small Prussian detachment by surprise. Thereupon Friedrich Wilhelm I had the Swedish ambassador deported and gave instructions for the start of the planned campaign .
On the night of December 22nd, when the Allied artillery had made accessible breaches in the ramparts, the trenches were frozen over by the onset of cold and the major attack was imminent, King Charles XII fled. with three companions from the besieged fortress to avoid capture. They came in a small yacht across the partially frozen Strelasund in the direction of Hiddensee to the last frigate on site and safely reached Trelleborg in Sweden, although Peter Wessel Tordenskiold and his fleet were cruising in the waters and tried to take them prisoner. Charles XII. was back in Sweden for the first time in 15 years. Two days later, on December 24, 1715, Stralsund capitulated to the Allies.
literature
- Not so Fryxell: History of Charles the Twelfth New Edition. Senf, Leipzig 1865. Digitized, archive
- Otto Haintz: Karl XII, De Gruyter, Volume 2, 1951, p. 256f (with a map of the route on p. 255 that follows Ballagi)
- Aladar Ballagi: On the history of the homecoming of Charles XII. and the Swedish Army through Hungary, 2 parts, Karolinska förbundets årsbok 1934, p. 144.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The ride is calculated with two and then one companion from Pitesti, according to Fryxell, Karl XII, 1865, p. 325, that was 286 miles, i.e. around 2150 km. The total travel distance was longer.
- ↑ Otto Haintz, Karl XII, Volume 2, p. 325
- ^ Fryxell, Karl XII, 1865, p. 321
- ^ Fryxell, Karl XII, p. 322
- ↑ Fryxell, p. 322
- ^ Fryxell, Karl XII, pp. 322f
- ^ Fryxell, Karl XII, p. 324
- ↑ Fryxell, Karl XII, p. 325. After Fryxell he followed the path of Karl XII conscientiously, but must have chosen a more direct route in order to reach Karl XII so quickly.
- ^ Otto Haintz, Karl XII, Volume 2, p. 256
- ↑ Hans-Joachim Hacker : Stralsund from 1630 to 1720. In: Herbert Ewe (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Stadt Stralsund (= publications of the Stralsund City Archives. Vol. 10, ISSN 0585-3958 ). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1984, pp. 168–201, here p. 196.
- ^ Curt Jany : History of the Prussian Army from the 15th Century to 1914. Volume 1: From the beginning to 1740. 2nd, supplemented edition. Biblio, Osnabrück 1967, p. 634.
- ↑ Dietmar Lucht: Pomerania. History, culture and science up to the beginning of the Second World War (= historical regional studies. Vol. 3). Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1996. ISBN 3-8046-8817-9 , p. 99.