Battle of Poltava

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Battle of Poltava
Part of the Swedish invasion of Russia during the Great Northern War
The Battle of Poltava by Louis Caravaque
Date 8 July 1709[a] Location Poltava, Cossack Hetmanate, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) 49°37′53″N 34°33′10″E / 49.63139°N 34.55278°E / 49.63139; 34.55278 Result Russian alliance victory
Belligerents
Swedish Empire Cossack Hetmanate	Tsardom of Russia Kalmyk Khanate Cossack Hetmanate
Commanders and leaders
Charles XII Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld (POW) Carl Gustaf Creutz (POW) Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt Hugo Johan Hamilton [sv] (POW) Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach (POW) Carl Gustaf Roos (POW) Ivan Mazepa	Peter I Boris Sheremetev Alexander Menshikov Jacob Bruce Ivan Skoropadsky[1]
Strength
Swedish combined army: 24,000 Swedish regulars   (13,000 cavalry      11,000 infantry)[2][b] 6,000 irregulars   1,000 Polish Vlach cavalry     3,000–7,000 Cossacks[c][3] 34 artillery pieces Total: up to 30,000[4][5][d] Participated in battle: 8,700 infantry[2] 7,800 cavalry[2] 4 cannons Total: 16,500 Besieging Poltava: 1,100 – 3,000[6] infantry 200 cavalry	Russian combined army: 52,100 Russian regulars   (33,500 infantry      18,600 cavalry)[2] 23,000 irregulars[2]   (Cossacks and Kalmyks,    3,000 Kalmyks arrived    at the end of the battle) 102 artillery pieces Total: 75,000[2] Participated in battle: 24,500 infantry 14,600 dragoons[2] 3,000 Kalmyks[3] 86 cannons Total: 42,000 Garrison of Poltava: 4,200 infantry 2,000 Cossacks 28 cannons
Casualties and losses
Swedish accounts: 6,900 killed and wounded, 2,800 captured.[7][8][9] Russian accounts: 9,234 killed, 2,864–2,977 captured.[10][11][12]	Official accounts: 1,345 killed, 3,290 wounded.[8][11] Other accounts: 5,953 killed and wounded.[13]
class=notpageimage| Location within Ukraine Show map of Ukraine Battle of Poltava (European Russia) Show map of European Russia

The Battle of Poltava^[e] (8 July 1709)^[f] was the decisive and largest battle of the Great Northern War. A Russian army under the command of Tsar Peter I defeated a Swedish army, under the command of Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld. The battle put an end to the status of the Swedish Empire as a European great power, as well as its eastbound expansion, and marked the beginning of Russian influence in Northern Europe.

During the course of six years in the initial stages of the war, King Charles XII and the Swedish Empire had defeated almost all participants in the anti-Swedish coalition, which initially consisted of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Denmark-Norway and the Tsardom of Russia. The latter under Tsar Peter I's rule was the only one still fighting. Charles XII therefore chose to invade Russia in the autumn of 1707 and march towards Moscow with a large Swedish army. However, the campaign was complicated by harsh weather conditions and by the Russians applying scorched earth tactics^[14]: 704 and surprise attacks, which forced Charles XII to interrupt his march on Moscow and instead march south to establish winter quarters with the help of Ivan Mazepa, hetman of the Cossack Hetmanate Zaporizhian Host.

After the extremely harsh Great Frost of 1708–1709, the weakened Swedish army resumed operations in the spring of 1709 and began a siege of the fortress of Poltava, an important trading center and military depot on the Vorskla. Meanwhile, a numerically superior Russian army of 75,000–80,000 men^[2] commanded by Peter, advanced to Poltava in order to relieve the siege. The two armies clashed, with the Swedes being defeated and fleeing the battlefield. Charles and Mazepa retreated with 1,500 men south to the river Dnieper, which they crossed, thus managing to escape the Russians and established themselves in the Ottoman Empire.^[14]: 710 The rest of the army was forced to surrender to the Russians at the village of Perevolochna on 11 July 1709.^[15]

The Battle of Poltava, as well as the subsequent capitulation, ended in a decisive victory for Peter I and became the greatest military catastrophe in Swedish history.^[16][17][18] It marked a turning point in the continuation of the war in favour of the anti-Swedish coalition, which as a result of the battle was revived and with renewed vigor attacked the weakened Swedish Empire on several fronts. The battle thus marked the end of Sweden's time as the dominant power in Northern Europe, a position which after the war was taken over by the Russian Empire. The battle is therefore of crucial importance in the history of Sweden as well as Russia and Ukraine.

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