Map of campaigns in Livonia, 1558–1560

 

The campaigns of Stefan Batory, the bold line marks the border by 1600.

 

Also known as the ‘‘Livonian War.’’

In 1558, Ivan IV invaded Estonia. His army massacred 10,000 at the sack of Dorpat (1558), went on to sack 20 more towns, and captured Narva. The Livonian Order brought in Landsknechte with guns, but were unable to staunch the assault. The Order fought its last battle at Ermes (August 2, 1560), then disbanded. This collapse of the Brethren in face of Ivan’s strel’sty and servitor cavalry opened Livonia to partition as Poland-Lithuania, Muscovy, Sweden, and Denmark all looked to gain territory. The Muscovite invasion marked the end of the wars of crusade in the Baltic region, but not the end of wars of imperial ambition. These would continue, almost uninterrupted, to 1667.

 

Despite initial success, Ivan was unable to take other key towns: Reval and Riga held out with Swedish and Polish aid. In 1563, the war spread: Denmark and Sweden fought each other at sea and Ivan attacked into Lithuania. In 1564, the Lithuanians won huge victories over Muscovy at Czasniki and the Ula River, driving Ivan farther into a madness that triggered gross excesses and terror against his own boyars.

Oprichnina

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Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichniki

‘‘Government apart.’’ Originally this referred to the quixotic decision by Ivan IV (‘‘The Terrible’’) to divide the administration of Muscovy into the ‘‘Oprichnina,’’ a territory free of troublesome nobles which he governed directly, and the rest of Muscovy, or ‘‘Zemshchina’’ (‘‘The Land’’). However, the term is more commonly used about his reign of terror, torture, and arbitrary arrest and executions. The anarchy lasted seven years (1565– 1572), taking Muscovy temporarily out of the First Northern War (1558–1583) while encouraging Poland and Lithuania to form the Union of Lublin in 1569. Ivan’s ‘‘oprichniki’’—quasi-warrior monks who dressed in all black and carried dog’s heads and broomsticks to sniff out and sweep away evil—purged and slaughtered with abandon. In 1570, four thousand were killed in Novgorod alone and the city was gutted. The chaos was so extreme that the ranks of the Cossacks swelled with new recruits and the Crimean Tatars reached and sacked Moscow in May 1571, destroying large parts of the city. They also sacked Tula, Riazan, and several other cities. The combination of depredations by the oprichniki and the Tatar raid left large parts of the Oprichnina desolate and fallow. In 1572, Ivan liquidated the liquidators. That was a model of political terror and control that appealed to an admiring Joseph Stalin nearly 400 years later.

 

This Oprichnina lasted to 1571, temporarily taking Muscovy out of the war. The end of the Nordic Seven Years’ War in 1570 threatened Ivan with fresh enemies in the west.

 

Nordic Seven Years’ War (1563–1570).

Fought between Sweden and a Danish-Lübeck alliance. Each side initially fielded just under 30,000 men, but much reduced numbers later. Denmark also deployed a large fleet from the outset; Sweden built one during the war. The Danish army was comprised of German and other mercenaries and some poorly trained Danes. Poorer Sweden fielded a more ‘‘national’’ force of native levies, led by the mad Erik XIV, supplemented by mercenary officers. Some historians describe Erik as a military genius, citing his early experimentation with pike-and-musket tactics, deployment of smaller units, and fewer ranks. However, he had few chances to try these ideas in the field: there was a skirmish among a few thousand men at Mared (1564), and just one sizeable battle, at Axtorna in 1565, where the Danes prevailed. Along with the usual sieges, much of the war consisted of small chevauchées that destroyed the Swedish countryside. Denmark captured Älvsborg in 1563 after four days of bombardment by land and sea. The cost of foreign mercenaries and their mutinous mutterings forced the Danes to pare back, allowing Erik’s levies to take Trondheim in 1564 and Varberg the next year. Sweden then returned to defensive warfare. Sweden did better in the war at sea from 1565, winning two naval battles and drawing a third that summer. Still, it regained Älvsborg only by payment of a large indemnity under terms of the Peace of Stettin (1570). Little was changed by this war on the fringe of Europe’s burgeoning struggles over religion and empire, beyond ruining villages, towns, and lives. Meanwhile, the First Northern War (1558–1583) continued.

 

Ivan responded by ending the terror at home and invading Livonia in 1572–1573, leaving much fire and destruction in his wake. Then he turned to defend against the Ottomans and Tatars in the deep south of his huge empire. In 1575, a Muscovite army besieged Reval unsuccessfully then ravaged the surrounding lands. The next summer’s campaign was the largest and most destructive of the entire war. In 1577, Ivan personally returned to attack Reval with 30,000 men, then Dünaburg and Kokenhausen. He was nearly killed by a cannonball at Wenden. Enraged, he threatened terrible punishment against the whole town. Whether by accident or with the suicidal intention of escaping the tsar’s wrath, 300 men, women, and children blew themselves up. But Ivan was defeated at Wenden by September 1578 and offered to make peace. He was rebuffed by Stefan Báthory at the head of an army of the new union of Poland-Lithuania (Union of Lublin). Báthory led three expeditions into Russia in 1579, 1580, and 1581–1582, forcing Ivan to surrender his earlier Livonian conquests. This only ensured that fighting over the carcass of Livonia continued in future northern wars in the 17th century.

Suggested Reading: Robert Frost, The Northern Wars, 1558–1721 (2000).

LINK

 

The Battle of Blenheim by John Wootton, c. 1743, a major painter of battles in 1743, the memory of Blenheim was a painful one, as its brilliant success was not to be repeated in the War of the Austrian Succession. George II’s victory over the French at Dettingen did, nor have the same consequences as Blenheim. LINK

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) was a great European conflict fought over which claimant would assume the vacant throne of Spain.

 

Throughout the 16th century, Spain had been ruled by the Habsburg dynasty, which also controlled Austria and other parts of Europe. Charles II (1661– 1700), the last Habsburg king of Spain, had no legitimate heir. He named Philip, duc d’Anjou (1683–1746), as his successor.

 

The Bourbon dynasty, which ruled France, had been long-standing rivals of the Habsburgs; the closest claimant to the Spanish throne was Louis xiv’s eldest son with Maria-Theresa. However, the princess had been barred from her rights to the Spanish throne as part of her marriage contract. This condition was contingent upon receipt of the bride’s dowry, which was never paid. Since the promotion of Louis XIV’s son to the Spanish throne would unite the thrones of both France and Spain and certainly prompt a reaction from the European powers, Louis XIV advocated that his younger grandson, duc d’Anjou, rule Spain.

 

Leopold I (1640–1705), Holy Roman Emperor, king of Austria, and member of the Habsburg family, attempted to preserve his family’s control of Spain by forwarding himself as the rightful successor to Charles II. Such a situation would unite the thrones of Austria and Spain, a situation unacceptable to the European powers, and Leopold I advocated his son, Archduke Charles (1685–1740), as king of Spain.

 

Expanding French Influence

Louis XIV’s attempts to expand French influence on the European continent prompted England and the Netherlands to side with the Holy Roman Empire against France in order to preserve the balance of power. The son of Leopold I’s daughter, Prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria (1692–99), was the preferred candidate as king of Spain by the European powers, who feared either family’s gaining too much dominance. Prince Joseph Ferdinand was agreed upon as heir in 1698, but he died of smallpox in 1699. England then ratified the Treaty of London (1700) recognizing Archduke Charles as heir to the Spanish throne.

 

Charles II died in 1700. He declared the duc d’Anjou his successor and Louis XIV quickly declared his grandson Philip V king of the Spanish empire. England could not afford war with France and recognized Philip V as king of Spain in 1701. Louis XIV attempted to solidify his newfound influence by severing both England and the Netherlands from Spanish trade. The blow to both countries’ commercial interests forced them into an alliance with Austria against France and Spain. The Treaty of the Hague (1701) of the Netherlands, England, and Austria recognized Philip V as king of Spain but transferred sections of Italy and the Netherlands under Spanish rule to Austria. It also confirmed England’s and the Netherlands’s commercial rights in Spain.

 

The war began in 1702, when Austrian forces invaded Spanish territories in Italy, forcing French intervention. England, the Netherlands, and several German states sided with Austria while Bavaria, Portugal, and Savoy supported France and Spain. Other opportunist states joined sides in the conflict, expanding fighting throughout Europe and North America, where the conflict became known as Queen Anne’s War.

 

The duke of Marlborough captured territories in the Netherlands in 1702–03 while Prince Eugene held French forces in Italy. The French, under the duc de Villars, scored a victory at Friedlingen in 1702. Success in Alsace, located between France and the Holy Roman Empire, presented the opportunity for an invasion of Austria in 1703, but dissention among French commanders ruined this opportunity. Marlborough moved his troops from the Netherlands to Bavaria, linking with Prince Eugene’s forces to defeat the French at the Battle of Blenheim (1704). Meanwhile, Portugal and Savoy switched sides, joining the coalition headed by England, Austria, and the Netherlands. In 1704, England captured the strategic island of Gibraltar.

 

French Invade Italy

In 1706, French forces evacuated Italy following Prince Eugene’s victory at Turin and the Netherlands following Marlborough’s victory at Ramillies. In 1708, following Prince Eugene’s disastrous expedition into Provence the previous year, Marlborough and Eugene won at Oudenarde and captured Lille. French forces retreated, losing an additional battle at Malplaquet (1709). Allied campaigns in Spain (1708–10) garnered little success in weakening Philip V’s position. Louis XIV opened peace negotiations, but his refusal to join against his grandson brought negotiations to a halt.

 

In 1711, the death of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I (1678–1711) resulted in the ascension of Archduke Charles (Charles VI) to the thrones of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. The English opened negotiations to end the war.

 

The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ended hostilities among France, Spain, England, and the Netherlands. Charles VI continued the war, finally ending hostilities by signing the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden (1714), which complemented the general settlement of the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V retained the Spanish throne under the condition that he and his descendants were barred from the throne of France. Austria gained territory in Italy and the Netherlands previously belonging to Spain while England gained Gibraltar, Minorca, and exclusive rights to slave trading in Spanish America for 30 years. France recognized Anne as queen of England and surrendered some of its American territories. France’s dominance over the European continent was checked and the notion of the preservation of the balance of power emerged as the cornerstone of European politics for centuries to come.

 

Further reading: Dickinson, W. Calvin, and Eloise R. Hitchcock, eds. The War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–1713: A Selected Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996; Frey, Linda, and Marsha Frey, eds. The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995; Lynn, John. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman, 1999; Sturgill, Claude. Marshal Villars and the War of the Spanish Succession. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965.

George II at the Battle of Dettingen. Painted by John Wootton. Circa 1743.

The War of the Austrian Succession was primarily between the Austrian Empire and Prussia, although several other European countries were eventually brought into the conflict. There were underlying causes that led to this renewal of European hostilities aside from the question of the Austrian succession. The Treaty of Utrecht, which was signed in 1713 to end the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13), did not settle the underlying problems between ambitious powers seeking to extend their influence in Europe and the world.

 

Before the War of the Austrian Succession began, British and Spanish antagonism was prominent in European society. The British were furious with the Spanish over the limited amount of trade the Asiento Privilege, which was signed in 1713, granted the British with Spanish colonies in the Americas. British captains attempted to get around this agreement by resorting to smuggling, which resulted in the Captain Jenkins Incident. Captain Jenkins claimed he was captured by the Spanish, who cut off one of his ears, which he kept to show to the British parliament. The British government declared war on Spain in October 1739 and commenced hostilities against the Spanish fleet in the Caribbean, but they were defeated.

 

Despite hostilities between Spain and England, the immediate cause of the War of the Austrian Succession was the death of Charles VI of Austria in 1740, which gave his daughter, Maria Theresa, control over Austria. When Maria came to the throne, the Austrian military and bureaucracy were in a weakened state. With regard to trade, Austria was a very weak country because its mercantile system was centered predominately on a rural base, which failed to generate a significant degree of revenue.

 

Austria had fought a bitter war against the Ottoman Empire that drained the treasury, leaving only 90,000 gulden for government spending. This war also angered many Hungarians since they were responsible for quartering the Empire’s soldiers. This financial burden and discontent were domestic issues with which Maria Theresa was forced to deal when she assumed the throne in 1740. These problems created a great deal of instability in Austria, and many countries hoped to divide up Austrian territory for their own benefit.

 

An anti-Austrian coalition was formed, as neighboring countries were interested in seizing Austrian lands. This is evidenced by the fact that Prussia was interested in acquiring Silesia, France was interested in the Austrian Netherlands, Spain wanted to acquire more territory in Italy, and Piedmont-Sardinia wanted Milan. Frederick the Great, the ambitious King of Prussia, struck quickly against the Austrians by sending troops into Silesia in December 1740. Frederick the Great attempted to turn Prussia into a powerful country through the creation of a strong military and a centralized government that could effectively generate revenue through taxation.

 

The Austrian government faced larger problems as the Bohemian nobles were unhappy with Habsburg rule and revolted since they wanted to be placed under the control of the elector of Bavaria. At this point, war enveloped the European continent as British and Austrian governments sided together to counter the ambitious design of the French, Prussian, Bavarian, and Spanish governments. Many of the European countries became concerned about the balance of power since they did not want one country to become too powerful in Europe.

 

Prussian Invasion of Silesia

With the Prussian invasion of Silesia and the revolt in Bohemia, Maria was forced to ask the Hungarian diet for assistance in 1741. The inability of the Austrians to repel the Prussian invasion forced Maria to assemble the Hungarian diet to acquire further assistance in the war effort. The diet attempted to assert Hungarian interests over Austrian interests as it demanded the institution of better economic policies, an alteration in the coronation oath, and greater Hungarian control over the region. Maria agreed to negotiate these terms, with the exception of the demand concerning the coronation oath, in order to acquire further Hungarian assistance in the war, but she refused to honor this agreement in its entirety.

 

As the war continued to deteriorate for the Austrians, Maria was forced to approach the diet again. She promised to give Hungarians greater control over the administration of Hungary, more Hungarian influence in regard to allocation of tax money, the selection of Hungarians to ecclesiastical offices in Hungary, and the promise to give more territory to Hungarian domains.

 

The members of the diet accepted this proposal and promised to provide the Austrian empress with at least 4 million gulden and a minimum of 60,000 troops. Despite the fact that Maria considered Hungarian opinion when creating government policies, she failed to implement most of the demands to which the Hungarians agreed.

 

The Hungarians also fell short on their promises regarding the number of troops they could offer to the service of the Crown, which helps to explain the poor performance of the Austrian war effort. The Peace of Dresden, which was signed in 1745 between the Prussian and Austrian governments, confirmed Prussia’s control over Silesia. Despite the fact that Prussia and Austria negotiated a peace settlement the conflict still continued among the other European powers.

 

The British became involved in the war with the fear that the expansion of French influence on the European continent would affect Hanover. George II, who was king of England and elector of Hanover, led an army that defeated the French forces at Dettingen in June 1743, but the threat of an army led by Charles Edward Stuart, who was attempting to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne of England, forced the British to recall a significant portion of their army back to England in 1745. The invasion failed as Charles could not acquire enough support from the English population, forcing him to give up his march on the English capital. The remains of the Stuart army were smashed by the duke of Cumberland at Culloden Moor in April 1746. Despite this success by the English at home, the recall of a major portion of the English army allowed the French to capture the Austrian Netherlands.

 

The war was also fought outside the European continent as the French and British combated with each other for a stronger position on the Indian subcontinent and in North America. The French were able to launch a successful offensive against the British in India by capturing Madras from the British. The British were able to gain some ground on the French in North America as a coordinated attack by colonists from New England and the Royal Navy captured the French fortress of Louisburg.

 

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which was signed in 1748, forced England to relinquish control of the fortress of Louisburg in Nova Scotia to the French and in exchange, the French returned the Austrian Netherlands to Austria and Madras to the English. Spain and Piedmont-Sardinia each gained territory as the Spanish acquired Parma, and Piedmont-Sardinia acquired some territory in Milan. The War of the Austrian Succession was an important step in turning Prussia into a strong European power for the acquisition of Silesia increased the population of Prussia, provided Prussia with an abundant amount of coal and iron, and gave the Prussians a thriving textile industry. Maria Theresa lost territory, but her husband was acknowledged by the German princes as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Maria spent the rest of her reign attempting to reacquire Silesia from Frederick the Great as she centralized the Austrian administration and undertook reforms in the Austrian army and economic base to accomplish this goal.

 

Further reading: Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe, Volume 1: From the Renaissance to the Age of Napoleon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996; Willcox, William, and Walter Arnstein. The Age of Aristocracy: 1688 to 1830. Boston, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1996; Winks, Robin, and Thomas Kaiser. Europe, 1648–1815: From the Old Regime to the Age of Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

The Swedish Victory at Narva by Gustaf Cederström, painted 1910

Peter could not make war on Sweden until his peace with the Turks was secure, but Denmark and King Augustus had no such obstacles. The latter began operations in February with a surprise move against Riga which failed to take the city, but Denmark fared even worse. Charles XII knocked the Danish king out of the war in a few weeks. Peter kept up the pretense in public that all was in order with Sweden, and no war was coming, even reassuring Kniper personally of his pacific intentions. Kniper could not quite believe that the war would really happen, but he dutifully reported the rumors that war was coming as well as Russian military preparations. Peter could not be sure of the Turkish response, and so in April he decided on an ambassador to Sweden. The eventual choice was Prince Andrei Khilkov, a relative of Prince Romodanovskii and Golovin. Khilkov would have an even more difficult task than he expected, but at the time the rumor was not that he would have the post, but instead Prince Iakov Fyodorovich Dolgorukii, only a few months before in bad odor with Peter over the inadequacies of the campaigns in the south against the Tatars. Kniper went so far as to ask his brother Boris if the rumor was true, and prince Boris denied it: Prince Iakov had too little of the tsar’s confidence for such an important post. Prince Boris was partly wrong, however, for Peter had originally chosen Iakov for the post, changing his mind a week later and appointing Khilkov. Peter preferred to keep Prince Iakov with the army and he remained in the position of general military commissar. In the summer Peter replaced Lefort in his capacity as an army commander with General Adam Weyde and appointed the Georgian Prince Alexander Archilovich of Imeretia to command the Russian artillery.

 

After the official Russian declaration of war on 19 August, Peter lost no time in ordering his army to besiege Narva. The choice showed Peter’s desire for a ready-made port, since Narva was not part of the lands lost to Sweden in 1617. It lay across the old border in the Swedish province of Estonia, and had been the object of Ivan the Terrible’s wars in the sixteenth century. The army command was a mixture of old and new. In June the story was that the supreme commander was to be Sheremetev, and the prince of Imeretia was to command the artillery. In August, however, Peter appointed as Field marshal the boyar and admiral, F. A. Golovin, proven as a capable diplomat and administrator but hardly a military man. Sheremetev received the cavalry, largely the traditional gentry cavalry from Novgorod and some Ukrainian Cossacks. Under Golovin the army was divided into three generalships under three full generals, Avtomon Golovin, Adam Weyde, and Prince Nikita Ivanovich Repnin. All three of them had served before in the Preobrazhenskii guards. The aristocratic Golovin was the same who had commanded at Azov, and before that the two guards regiments. Prince Repnin, who had served as a captain in the same regiment, was still on the road from Novgorod with part of his troops at the time of the battle, so Prince Ivan Iur’evich Trubetskoi replaced him in the line. Prince Trubetskoi was rather different from the former guards officers. A boyar since 1692, he had commanded part of the Azov feet in 1696 and in 1699 was named governor of Novgorod. It was he who signed the messages to the Narva garrison asking them to surrender. As in the case of Iakov Dolgorukii, his relations with the tsar had been troubled, but in spite of that he too received a major command. In the middle of the siege Peter appointed another Field marshal to carry out actual operations. This was Charles Eugene, the duke de Croy (1651-1702), an Imperial general originally from the southern Netherlands who was out of work after the peace of Karlowitz. De Croy was recommended to Peter by King Augustus with a group of other foreign officers, and arrived when the Russian army was already before Narva.

 

For Peter the siege of Narva in 1700 became a famous disaster. Fresh from his lightning victory over Denmark, Charles XII landed in Estonia in October. As this news reached the Russians, Peter left the army with Fyodor Golovin to return to Moscow, putting de Croy in supreme command. On the next day, 19/30 November, Charles attacked in the snow, and to tremendous effect. He smashed the Russian army, capturing de Croy, A. M. Golovin, Trubetskoi, Weyde, Hallart, Dolgorukii, Prince Alexander of Imeretia, and other Russian generals. Only Sheremetev’s cavalry, the guards, and some of the infantry escaped more or less intact. To Prince Repnin fell the job of reorganizing them and taking up position in Novgorod.

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Peter had more immediate concerns. The boyars were not pleased with the defeat at Narva, blaming the Danish ambassador Heins for persuading Peter to break so suddenly with Sweden. Prince Boris Golitsyn was prominent among the discontented, not surprisingly as he had opposed the war from the beginning. Fortunately, Charles had withdrawn to winter quarters, so the tsar had a breathing space to reorganize. Immediately after the defeat the tsar ordered Sheremetev with the cavalry to harry the enemy in Livonia. Peter recruited new troops and assembled more artillery and powder, and sent Tikhon Streshnev, the head of the Razriad and the new Military Chancellery, to the Swedish border to supervise. Repnin was assigned to take the remaining troops under his command and help Augustus in Poland. The tsar also took care of the financial basis of the war. In January he revived the Monastery Chancellery under Ivan Musin-Pushkin, with the charge of taking control of the monastery estates, giving a stipend to the monks and the rest to the war chest. He also ordered the churches to sacrifice some of their bells so as to make cannon from the metal. He established a tax on beards, which Pleyer at least saw as a revenue device, not merely a cultural matter. All of these financial moves had the potential to create discontent, especially among the clergy and the pious. These and other recent measures also demonstrated Peter’s desire to move along in a more European direction, as Heins had noticed. Europe, he thought, ought to take care to go easy with Russia rather than reject it, for only time would tell what would become of the country under Peter’s tutelage.

During the Great Northern War (1700–1721) Sheremetev proved to be a capable but cautious and sluggish military leader. During the war he was the commander-in-chief and most senior officer in the Russian army. Sheremetev was very cautious in his movements but proved more effective than the younger Prince Menshikov, the 2nd in command whose impulsiveness was not always successful.

 

In June 1701, Sheremetev was appointed the supreme commander of the Russian troops facing Livonia, clearly in the full expectation of war in the region with the king of Sweden himself. That was not to be, for in July Charles defeated the Saxons before Riga and moved south into Kurland, toward Poland, the object of his attention for the next five years. Livonia was left alone to face Peter, and his forces did not wait long. While Charles was making his decision and Sheremetev assembling his army, the Swedish navy make an attempt on Archangel, but it was beaten off. The Swedish attempt reminded Peter of those who went to Egypt in search of mummies and were turned into mummies themselves by the sandy winds of the desert. In the next few years the Cossacks, the Kalmyks, and Sheremetev’s army would lay waste the land to Peter’s great satisfaction. The Swedish commander Schlippenbach was able to win small gains against the Russians, but on 30 December 1701 Sheremetev won his first victory at Errestfer. There were more to follow.

 

Peter was grateful to Sheremetev, for his ministers of state continued to be unhappy with the war. He sent Menshikov to present the Field marshal with the new order of St. Andrew and other gifts. Sheremetev himself came back to Moscow to celebrate:

Before the last Easter holidays the knight [sc. of Malta] Sheremetev came here himself and in the past Easter week held a meal and ball, which the tsar with most of the Boyars and great men of the country attended, but since the tsar showed himself there to be disturbed and unsatisfied against his custom and soon left, the gaiety was rather disturbed and Sheremetev takes it much to heart.

Even success in war did not bring harmony to the relationship of Field marshal and tsar, a state of affairs that may have rejected Peter’s general dissatisfaction with the management and command of his army. The tsar’s attempt to reorganize his army along European lines proceeded slowly, and the boyars were no help, for they were careless and lacked the necessary experience. Peter hoped for better things in the future, for he insisted that the young sons of the Russian princes and boyars go abroad to serve in foreign armies, not just to travel and observe. He considered plans to reorganize the administration of the Russian army into a German-type military commissariat, but for the time being left matters in the hands of the Military Chancellery.

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In summer 1702, Sheremetev defeated a Swedish army again at Hummelshof near Dorpat, and in the fall the whole Russian force moved for its first great prize, Nöteborg. The voevoda of Novgorod, Petr Apraksin (the tsar’s brother-in-law), began the campaign by clearing the Neva of Swedish troops. Peter brought with him the two guards regiments, twelve regiments of infantry, and massive artillery, all under the command of Sheremetev. General John Chambers commanded the two guards regiments, Prince Nikita Ivanovich Repnin the rest of the infantry and Iakov Bruce the artillery. The siege began in October, and after a few days of fighting the Russian army entered the fortress on 14 October, its first major conquest of the war. The two guards regiments had borne the brunt of the struggle. The tsar ordered that the fortress bear a new name, not the old Russian name Oreshek but instead Schlüsselburg. Its fortifications were hastily prepared and a small exploratory expedition went down river to Nyenskans. Peter decided to postpone its capture to the following year. He set himself to return to Moscow and order new uniforms for the guards, but not before dealing with his commanders. Menshikov received the rank of general, his first important promotion since he became the supervisor of the tsarevich. Peter also cashiered both General Repnin and General Apraksin for corruption (‘einige Malversationes’) and for Repnin’s refusal to serve under Sheremetev. These were the first of many such cases, and both generals were soon to return to important positions.

 

The New Year 1703 brought the completion of the Russian conquest of Ingria, and with it the further rise of Menshikov and greater jealousy of his position in the state. This year the military operations were not so complicated. Menshikov continued work to improve the fortifications of Schlüsselburg and to build boats. By early spring Peter had a large army in the area, the main force under Sheremetev, Chambers, and Prince Repnin and a covering detachment under Petr Apraksin. Nyenskans fell on 1/12 May, and the other Ingrian towns, Iam and Kopor’e, in the course of the summer. The construction of the new city down the river from Nyenskans began almost immediately with the construction of a fortress. The new town would be St. Petersburg.

 

Gustavus’ councillor Oxenstierna replaced him in the field in Germany but lost badly at First Nördlingen (September 5–6, 1634). He was later taken hostage by his own men, who demanded all pay in arrears. Sweden did not recover from this debacle for several years. Moreover, the Habsburg victory persuaded Olivares that the moment had come to throw the French off the right bank of the Rhine, where Richelieu had been planting garrisons since 1632. Spanish troops attacked the French in Trier in March 1635 (taking the archbishop prisoner), in an effort to establish an alternative route to the Spanish Road, which had been cut by France. The assault on Trier was designed to trigger war between France and the Holy Roman Empire. The stratagem failed: on May 19, 1635, France declared war only on Spain. Longer term, expanded Spanish-French fighting drew Habsburg armies away from northern Germany, permitting Sweden to slowly recover. Led by a prince of the church, Cardinal Richelieu, France finally intervened in the German war only when the gains it had earlier made by stealth in the Rhineland were assaulted and eroded by Spain. It did not enter the war as a Catholic power, as Richelieu had already signed offensive treaties with Protestant Sweden and the Netherlands in expectation of fighting Catholic Austria and Spain. Why? With Catholicism secure in France following Richelieu’s crushing of the last Huguenot military resistance in 1628, France was free to act for raison d’etat (reason of state) against the Habsburg powers rather than out of delusional confessional loyalty. Besides, France and Spain had fought an undeclared but bitter frontier war for years in northern Italy and along the Spanish Road, even after the formal end of the Mantuan war in 1631. The stunning Swedish defeat at Nördlingen confirmed Imperial control of southwest Germany and seemed to re-close a strategic ring of Habsburg lands around the perimeter of France that had been broken by Gustavus. This threat persuaded Richelieu that France must enter the war directly at long last, that fighting the Habsburgs through subsidized proxies was no longer enough. France must now intervene herself in Flanders, Germany, Italy, and at sea. For four years France pursued these grand strategic goals with an inadequate military system, with poor armies badly led by inept generals. It was not until the early 1640s that France settled on sound commanders and fielded well-trained armies capable of winning the war. It was greatly aided by the cracking of Habsburg power occasioned by the revolt of Catalonia and another in Portugal in 1640.

 

Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (8 September 1621 – 11 December 1686)

French intervention—which guaranteed a great widening of the war— occurred just as Ferdinand and the German princes reached an accommodation that might have ended it: the Peace of Prague (May 30, 1635). However, the ‘‘German war’’ was no longer solely a German affair: it was a general war involving all the major powers, which meant it could not be ended by a settlement crafted by Germans alone. In addition, the anti-Habsburg coalition did not agree on what sort of peace it should force on the Habsburg powers, with Sweden concentrating on the German war and desperate for territorial and financial compensation for its ruinous military effort and France more concerned with defeating Spain. This split gave hope to Vienna and Madrid that they could still win by dividing their enemies.

 

And so, for 13 years more the armies battled. They marauded over Germany, Bohemia, the Netherlands, Italy, and France, sacking cities and terrorizing populations as they battened off and burned the land. Catholic fought Catholic and Protestant killed Protestant while each murdered, raped, tortured, and burned out the other, spreading famine, pestilence, refugees, cruelty, and death through the heart of Europe. Huge mercenary armies did not so much fight strategic battles as constantly maneuver, plunder, and forage, all the while collecting wages of death. Entire cities were put to the sword out of revenge or reprisal. The conflict left some areas of Germany and Bohemia denuded of half their population, while other provinces paid huge ransoms to approaching armies—of whichever side—to deflect the war elsewhere, escape with their lives, and keep town, livestock, and farms intact. As the war drew to a drawn-out and exhausted close, the armies engaged shrank in size. This was due to the inability of burned and eaten out farms or serially extorted and depopulated towns to sustain relentless demands for contributions to maintain forces on the huge scale seen earlier under Wallenstein and Gustavus. During these last years, given the strength of fortified defenses and the still unsolved problems of mid-17th century logistics, deep cavalry raiding was about the most either side could undertake. And most raids achieved little because of an abiding inability to supply mid-17th century armies on the move and the inherent superiority of fortified defenses.

 

Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (11 September 1611, Sedan, Ardennes – 27 July 1675)

At Wittstock (October 4, 1636), the Imperial Army lost heavily to the Swedes, so that once more the balance of power swung (as it had in the other direction after Nördlingen) and new hope for victory was raised among the Protestant princes of Europe. In 1638 France and Sweden signed the Treaty of Hamburg (March 15) providing French subsidies to Sweden and foreswearing a separate peace. At Rheinfelden (March 2–3, 1638) a Protestant army under Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar destroyed a Bavarian army and took Johann von Werth captive. The Swedes followed up with a victory over the Saxons at Chemnitz (April 14, 1638) and occupation of Bohemia. From September 1640 to October 1641, the full Imperial Diet met for the first time since 1613, to work out the negotiating positions of the Empire for any future peace talks. Not every German prince waited: in July 1641, Friedrich Wilhelm (1640– 1688), the new ‘‘Great Elector’’ of Brandenburg, agreed to a ceasefire with Sweden; in January 1642, the Welf dukes of Brunswick also dropped out of the war (Treaty of Goslar). These defections freed Swedish general Lennart Torstensson to invade Moravia and Silesia. A determinative battle was Second Breitenfeld (November 2, 1642) where Torstensson destroyed an Imperial army and Ferdinand III’s hope to avoid major concessions to Sweden in the final settlement. The other important battle of this last phase of the war was Rocroi (May 19, 1643), where the seasoned but sullen and shrunken Army of Flanders was defeated by a French army of 22,000 led by the ‘‘Great Conde´’’ (Louis II). The French suffered a disaster of their own at Tüttlingen (November 24–25, 1643), after which Turenne was recalled from Italy and given command of the shattered Armee´ d’Allemagne.

 

Modern historians have stressed that factionalism was one of the great weaknesses of the colony and contributed to its inexorable decline, but it is possible to exaggerate this development. Royal authority certainly diminished in the late Middle Ages, but factionalism was hardly the principal cause. Admittedly the development in its place of strong local lordships centered around the earldoms of Kildare, Ormond, and Desmond led to intense competition for control of the office of chief governor. From 1414, there was a prolonged struggle for political power between the earl of Ormond and the Talbot family. When the Wars of the Roses gripped England from the 1450s, the opposing houses of Lancaster and York became identified in Ireland with the earls of Ormond and Kildare, respectively. This Geraldine-Butler feud continued into the early modern era. However, the intricacies of these various conflicts have only casually been studied, and we should be cautious about attributing to them the “decline” of English lordship in Ireland. The great lineages survived in frontier conditions by employing unorthodox but expedient methods. Their private armies and networks of power admittedly could be used for destructive purposes, both against each other and against the administration. However, although they were technically illegal, it was arguably these methods that ensured their survival and contributed to the endurance rather than decline of English control over much of Ireland.

 

Bastard Feudalism

It should be remembered that Ireland’s incorporation into the feudal system occurred extremely late in the development of feudalism as a whole. Almost from its inception, therefore, the new lordship displayed signs of what historians have labeled “bastard feudalism.” If any term has generated more debate than feudalism among historians of recent decades, it is surely its supposedly illegitimate successor. Bastard feudalism, so-named in the late nineteenth century, refers to a relationship between lord and man based on money pensions and a written contract rather than land. An older school of historians dated this “perversion” of the feudal system to the reign of King Edward III and the start of the Hundred Years War in the fourteenth century. They blamed it for disorder, violence, and, most extravagantly, for the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485). The Irish evidence supports more recent scholarship that has pushed the chronology further back until we must question if there was ever a purely feudal age. It seems likely that in Ireland, from the moment of English involvement, the clear feudal hierarchy was supplemented by less well-defined expediencies. The lord of Leinster, William Marshal (d. 1219), brought his bastard feudal affinity with him to Ireland in the early 1200s. Indeed, a society like Ireland, where warfare was endemic, was ideally suited to such developments. Lords on the frontiers required their own private armies if they were to hold on to their conquests. Edward I exploited this to the full in the late 1290s when he contracted armies from Ireland to serve in his attempted conquest of Scotland. So valued were these levies that the “Red earl” of Ulster was able to negotiate with the king for the highest pay awarded any earl in the campaign.

 

A related factor immediately apparent in Ireland and traditionally associated with the “decline” of feudalism is the growth of liberty jurisdiction, under which lords were given powers akin to those of the king within a specific region that had its own administration and courts. At the time of the initial invasion, Leinster, Meath, and Ulster were all created as liberties, and from the fourteenth century the earls of Kildare, Ormond, and Desmond all personally controlled liberties. These liberties are traditionally seen as encouraging factionalism between “over-mighty” subjects. However, given the weakness of royal government in Ireland, it was quite possibly the creation of paid private armies and the power conferred by liberties that ensured the endurance of English control over much of the country.

 

These are subjects that have been largely neglected since A. J. Otway-Ruthven first examined feudal institutions in Ireland in the 1950s, and the time is ripe to bring current research on late medieval society into an Irish context. The importance of doing so may lie in the fact that so-called bastard feudal connections straddle the two cultures of medieval Ireland. The Gaelic lords may have rejected what we think of as classic feudalism, but the student of bastard feudalism would find the private armies of Gaelic lords, particularly the mercenary galloglass who dominate the military history of the late medieval lordship, surprisingly familiar. From the second half of the fourteenth century onward, the records of the earls of Kildare and Ormond are littered with agreements of retinue between Anglo- Irish and Gaelic lords. Testament to the success of the system is its endurance to the end of the medieval period. The power network of the earls of Kildare – which criss-crossed the cultural frontier – was a challenge to the authority of the Tudor monarchy and provoked a show of unprecedented strength by Henry VIII to bring it down.

An underlying cause was failure of the sustained effort to hold onto English territories in France during the final phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). This was followed by a protracted dynastic dispute between the rival Houses of Lancaster (‘‘Red Rose’’) and York (‘‘White Rose’’), each claiming the throne via descent from Edward III. More immediate grievances included the unpopularity of the Lancastrian, Henry VI (1422–1461), and some nobles at his court; the continuing availability to the barony of small private armies; and complex relations with powerful nobles in Ireland and in exile. Ireland itself was valued for its strategic location and as a ready source of cheap troops.

 

The Wars of the Roses saw sixteen significant battles and dozens of skirmishes and small sieges, none of which were truly decisive. The opening fight came at First St. Albans (May 22, 1455), where Richard of York’s 3,000 men defeated 2,500 Lancastrians under Henry VI. There followed four years of uneasy peace. At Blore Heath (September 22, 1459), in Staffordshire, this ended when Yorkist knights under the Earl of Salisbury bested a force of the king’s men-at-arms. The rebels then hooked up with a larger Yorkist force at Ludford Bridge and moved against Worcester, but fell back when they met a still larger Lancastrian army. At Ludford they spent a cold night waiting on battle, with the Lancastrians drawn up across the river. But too many Yorkist troops deserted during the night and even more fled or switched sides when they saw the enemy in the cold dawn on October 12. The army scattered and the major Yorkist leaders fled abroad, but only to plot a return to power. At Northampton ( July 10, 1460), Yorkists defeated the Royal Army when Lord Grey, who was in command of a Lancastrian wing, switched sides in midbattle. The king was taken prisoner and agreed that the Yorkist claim to the succession should be exercised upon his death. This did not end the fighting: at Wakefield (December 30, 1460) 8,000 Yorkists attacked foolhardily directly into 18,000 waiting Lancastrians only to lose decisively and bloodily. Several leading Yorkists were executed after the battle, signaling that a new seriousness and ruthlessness of purpose and method had entered the conflict, while also clearing the way for a new generation of noble aspirants and rivals to contest for the Plantagenet crown.

 

At Mortimer’s Cross (February 2, 1461), 11,000 Welsh Yorkists led by the future Edward IV routed a force of 8,000 French, Welsh, and Irish mercenaries fighting for the Red Rose. Edward headed to London where he would be crowned two months later. But first he tried to link with a second Yorkist army. At Second St. Albans (February 17, 1461) the rival armies numbered 25,000 each. The Lancastrians attacked before Edward arrived and joined the Yorkist armies. The commander in his absence was the Earl of Warwick (Richard Neville, ‘‘The Kingmaker’’), who fled at the first hint of danger. Warwick even abandoned his hostage, no less a person than the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, whom he left under a tree! Both sides gathered more forces. At Ferrybridge (March 28, 1461), Edward IV’s advance guard was isolated and destroyed, but the main force carried the bridge. The next day, at Towton, the enlarged main armies met in battle. The Yorkist army of 36,000 attacked a Lancastrian force of 40,000 in the midst of a heavy snow storm. Edward used a favorable wind to increase the range of his archers and limit that of the Lancastrians, who were thus enticed to leave their entrenchments and charge the Yorkist lines. The fight lasted many hours, seesawing at the center during one of the bloodiest days ever seen in England. The arrival of reinforcements gave the blood-soaked day to Edward: Henry’s infantry broke and ran while hundreds of stranded knights floundered and drowned in the River Cock, pulled under by the weight of their armor.

 

Towton brought three years of peace to England, though the Lancastrians sought and received aid from Scotland and kept the war going in the north. At Hedgely Moor (April 25, 1464), a small Yorkist army of 5,000 men handed a comparable Lancastrian force another sharp defeat, but the Duke of Somerset evaded capture with some survivors and began to raise new levies. Before they were ready, he was attacked at Hexham (May 15, 1464) and his force annihilated. Somerset was captured and beheaded, the first of many Lancastrian nobles to die on the block on Edward’s writ. Henry VI was put in a cell in the Tower of London. Harlech Castle in Wales held out against Edward until 1468 but the White Rose was victorious, and champions of the Red Rose mostly dead or in bitter exile. It was only fratricidal quarreling among the Yorkists that kept Lancastrian hope alive. Edward IV’s choice of wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and his alliance with Charles the Rash of Burgundy displeased even his closest supporters and members of his family. Warwick also resented that the king increasingly appeared to want to rule as well as reign. In early 1469 an uprising against Edward began in Yorkshire stimulated by Warwick, who hoped to replace the king with his brother, George, Duke of Clarence. A major fight took place at Banbury ( July 26, 1469), also called ‘‘Edgecote Moor,’’ in Northamptonshire when a Yorkist army led by the Earl of Pembroke ran into a rebel army maneuvering to link up with Warwick. After a close fight more rebels arrived and frightened Pembroke’s men into fleeing the field. Pembroke was captured the next day and executed.

 

Edward sent another army to repress a small uprising in Lincolnshire. His men surprised the insurgents at Lose-coat Field (March 12, 1470), so-named because of the number of coats discarded as the rebels took to their heels. Some key Lancastrians were implicated in the rising and forced into exile. Warwick now raised an army in France and crossed to England to force Edward from the throne. Edward fled to Burgundy to raise a mercenary army of his own. In his absence, Henry VI was freed and placed on the throne by Warwick, once again playing the role of the ‘‘Kingmaker.’’ The next year Edward landed at Ravenspur with 1,500 Burgundian and German mercenaries, scattered the local defenders (March 14, 1471), and raced for London with Warwick’s army close on his heels. Edward seized Henry VI and locked him back in the Tower. Then he turned to meet Warwick at Barnet (April 14, 1471), 12 miles north of London, where the armies fought in a fog-obscured and confused battle. At its end, Warwick was dead and Edward IV held the field and therefore the crown. However, that same day a Lancastrian army raised abroad landed at Weymouth and rallied the western counties to war, raising fresh troops in Wales. At Tewkesbury (May 4, 1471), Edward led an army of 5,000 against 7,000 dug-in Lancastrians. He immediately engaged the enemy, opening with a bombardment from his artillery. The Lancastrians charged the center of Edward’s line, mistakenly perceiving a weakness there. The assault was repelled and Edward counterattacked, routing and killing 2,000 of his enemies. This ended the war in Edward’s favor.

 

Upon Edward IV’s death in 1483, his 13-year-old son, Edward V, was left vulnerable on the throne. Civil war broke out again after a 12-year hiatus when the Duke of Gloucester deposed the boy king and imprisoned him along with his younger brother, the Duke of York, in the Tower of London. Gloucester claimed the throne as King Richard III and the ‘‘little princes’’ were soon murdered in the Tower. This provided the pretext for Henry Tudor to land at Milford Haven in Wales on August 7, 1485, with an army of 2,000 men. Within days, 3,000 more rallied to his banner. Gloucester moved to meet him with an army of 10,000. Another 6,000 stood on his flanks led by the brothers Stanley. The armies met at Bosworth on August 22, 1485. Each side opened with artillery and archery showers. At a critical moment one of Gloucester’s lieutenants, the Earl of Northumberland, fled the field. The Stanleys then turned coats on Gloucester and joined their 6,000 men with Henry Tudor’s army. Gloucester (Richard III) died fighting for his crown, which he wore into the battle. A soldier picked it up and handed it to Henry Tudor, who subsequently donned it as Henry VII. The Wars of the Roses were effectively over, even if two years later Yorkist rebels crossed from Ireland with several thousand German mercenaries and Irish kernes to be defeated by Henry at East Stoke ( June 16, 1487). The English gentry henceforth became the solid foundation of the Tudor monarchy. England was at last severed from its long history of continental entanglement (except for Calais), and became more clearly a national kingdom and island realm, increasingly English in its language, culture, and politics. Next would come nationalization of its religion under Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I.

 

Suggested Reading: Hubert Cole, Wars of the Roses (1973); J. Gillingham, Wars of the Roses (1981); Anthony Goodman, Wars of the Roses (1981).