Second Northern War

Second Northern War, also called Great Northern War,  (1700–21), military conflict in which Russia, Denmark-Norway, and Saxony-Poland challenged the supremacy of Sweden in the Baltic area. The war resulted in the decline of Swedish influence and the emergence of Russia as a major power in that region.

Sweden’s expansion in the Baltic Sea coastlands during the 16th and 17th centuries had antagonized the neighbouring states: Russia’s access to the Baltic was blocked by Swedish-held Karelia, Ingria, Estonia, and Livonia; Denmark-Norway resented its loss to Sweden of provinces in the Scandinavian peninsula, especially Scania (Skåne), and was also aggrieved by Sweden’s alliance with the ducal house of Holstein-Gottorp, which contained Denmark from the south and prevented the Danish crown’s reabsorption of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; the German princes disliked Sweden’s power in the Holy Roman Empire, and Brandenburg in particular coveted Swedish Pomerania; and many magnates of the Polish republic still thought of Swedish Livonia as Polish by right. The death of the Swedish king Charles XI in 1697, when his heir, Charles XII, was but a boy of 14, became the signal for Denmark-Norway to organize an anti-Swedish coalition.

Upon the formation of the coalition (1698–99), Augustus II the Strong, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, attacked Livonia (February 1700), while Frederick IV, king of Denmark and Norway, marched into Schleswig and Holstein (March 1700) and Peter I the Great, tsar of Russia, laid siege to Narva (October 1700). Charles XII of Sweden responded first by concentrating his forces against Denmark. Landing a few miles from Copenhagen, he compelled Frederick to withdraw from the anti-Swedish alliance and to sign the Treaty of Traventhal (August 1700), which restored the status quo. Charles next confronted the Russians, victoriously attacking them at Narva (Nov. 30, 1700). He then turned against the Poles and the Saxons, occupying Courland and forcing Augustus to retreat into Poland. Determined to depose Augustus, Charles spent six years fighting him; only after the Swedes invaded Saxony, however, did Augustus agree to relinquish his Polish crown and to break his Russian alliance (Treaty of Altranstädt; September 1706).

Meanwhile, the Russians under Peter the Great had used this period to reorganize their army and to establish themselves on the eastern Baltic coast (Peter had founded the city of St. Petersburg and the naval port of Kronshtadt in 1703. When Charles resumed his attack on Russia (late 1707), Peter defeated Charles’s auxiliary corps at Lesnaya (October 1708) and then decisively defeated the main Swedish army at the Battle of Poltava (July 8, 1709; see Poltava, Battle of). Charles fled to Turkey and induced the Turks to declare war on Russia (1710). After their victory at the Pruth River (1711), however, the Turks, satisfied with a negotiated peace that gave them control of Azov, withdrew from the war. Meanwhile, the anti-Swedish coalition, which had revived after the Battle of Poltava, began (autumn 1709) to seize Swedish possessions along the Baltic coast. In May 1713 it defeated (at Tönning in Holstein) the Swedish army that had been raised in 1712 to defend those territories. In 1714 the Russians defeated the Swedish naval fleet at Hangö (Hanko) and, having captured the Åland Islands, threatened Stockholm. Charles returned to Swedish territory in November 1714.

By this time most of Sweden’s possessions along the Baltic coast were either occupied or threatened by the anti-Swedish coalition. Frederick William I of Prussia and George I of England, in his capacity as elector of Hanover, joined the coalition after they had demanded territory from Sweden in return for their continued neutrality and been substantively refused by Charles. In December 1715 Charles returned to southern Sweden proper and set about reorganizing his country effectively for a new stage of the war. He opened peace negotiations in 1717–18 while simultaneously expanding his army to 60,000 men in anticipation of a new offensive. In September 1718 Charles invaded southeastern Norway, but he was killed at the siege of Frederikshald in November 1718.

Charles had left no children, and the throne devolved upon his only surviving sister, Ulrika Eleonora, and her husband, Frederick of Hesse-Kassel (Frederick I of Sweden). Frederick negotiated a series of peace settlements in 1719–21. By the Treaties of Stockholm (1719–20), Sweden, Saxony, and Poland returned to the status quo ante bellum, and Denmark gave back its conquests to Sweden in return for a substantial sum of money. Sweden ceded Bremen to Hanover and gave up Stettin (Szczecin) and part of Swedish Pomerania to Prussia. By the Treaty of Nystad (Sept. 10, 1721), which concluded the war between Sweden and Russia, Sweden ceded Ingria, Estonia, Livonia, and a strip of Finnish Karelia to Russia.