PETER THE GREAT AND MARLBOROUGH

PETER THE GREAT AND MARLBOROUGH

By the same author THE SOVIET CONSTITUTION (editor and translator) BYKOV: THE LAST DAYS OF TSARDOM (editor and translator) PLEHANOV: IN DEFENCE OF MATERIALISM (editor and translator) MAN AND PLAN IN SOVIET ECONOMY HISTORY OF THE USSR PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE THE SOVIET UNION AND SOCIALISM THE MUNICH CONSPIRACY A HOUSE ON CLERKENWELL GREEN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY AND ITS CRITICS WHEN BRITAIN INVADED SOVIET RUSSIA THE SOLDIERS' STRIKES OF 1919

PETER THE GREAT AND MARLBOROUGH Politics and Diplomacy in Converging Wars Andrew Rothstein Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN 978-1-349-18332-6 ISBN 978-1-349-18330-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18330-2 Andrew Rothstein 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986 978-0-333-39878-4 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly & Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1986 ISBN 978-0-312-60363-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rothstein, Andrew, 1898- Peter the Great and Marlborough. Includes index. l. Spanish Succession, War of, 1701-1714- Diplomatic history. 2. Northern War, 1700-1721- Diplomatic history. 3. Great Britain- Foreign relations- 1702-1714. 4. Soviet Union- Foreign relations- 1689-1725. 5. Peter I, Emperor of Russia, 1672-1725. 6. Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, 1650-1722. I. Title. D282.R67 1986 940.2'526 85-22129 ISBN 978-0-312-60363-2

Contents List of Maps Preface A Note on Sources 1 THE ROAD TO MOSCOW Entering unknown country 11 Charles Whitworth m His appointment to Russia 1v Arrival in Moscow 2 ENGLAND AND RUSSIA i English trade with Russia ii Whitworth's England iii Peter's Russia 3 TWO WARS IN EUROPE 1 Anglo-Dutch wars with France 11 The Northern War m Keeping the wars apart 4 WHITWORTH IN MOSCOW i The English merchants' grievances ii The obstacle: Charles XII 5 THE YEAR OF ALTRANST ADT Swedish victories in 1706 11 Uncertainties for Marlborough m Hard les::ons for Peter 1v Marlborough at Charles' camp 6 FAILURE OF A MISSION, 1707-8 i Matveyev in London ii The last stages v V11 viii X 1 1 3 6 8 12 12 14 19 29 29 34 37 46 46 53 61 61 63 68 72 79 79 87

VI Contents 7 MILITARY DECISIONS CLOSER 95 Battles in western Europe 95 H Charles moves east 98 m Peter's problems 103 IV Whitworth's views on the war 105 8 MALPLAQUET AND POLTAVA, 1709 111 1 The condition of the western combatants 111 ll Malplaquet and after 115 m Poltava 119 IV First impact on Europe 123 9 CHANGING EUROPE 131 Indecisive war in the west 131 ll Tory intrigues 133 m Decisive war in the east 137 IV East-West diplomacy in new conditions 142 10 TURNING POINT: WEST 148 i Marlborough's last campaign 148 ii The fall of Marlborough 151 11 TURNING POINT: EAST 165 i Peter's desperation.- and recovery 165 ii The diplomacy of converging wars 174 12 UTRECHT 186 i Clearing the way 186 ii The Treaties of Utrecht 194 13 T0NNINGEN AND ADRIANOPLE, 1713 199 Uncertain northern allies, doubtful southern enemies 199 H Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations, 1712-13 206 14 DANIEL DEFOE AND THE NORTHERN WAR 216 Appendix Index 235 237

List of Maps 1 Marlborough's campaigns 2 Peter the Great's campaigns 235 236 Vll

Preface In Marlborough: His Life and Times, Winston Churchill described the dramatic moment in April 1707 when the victor of Blenheim and Ramillies visited Charles XII of Sweden in camp at Altranstadt. Marlborough told the King of his regret at being unable to serve in some campaign under 'so great a general', that he might have learned 'what I want to know in the art of war'. This flattery had a very practical purpose. Charles had just defeated Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and had forced him on the battlefield to renounce the crown of Poland, which he had held for nine years, with Russian support. It was important for the British and Dutch leaders of the Grand Alliance, then fighting France, to discover whether the quite unpredictable Charles intended to launch his formidable army against the Empire of which Saxony was a constituent State - in which case that weakest member of the Alliance would certainly collapse - or further east into Russia, in order to attack and dethrone Tsar Peter: an ambition generally attributed to him in Europe. The Duke left Altranstadt satisfied that the latter in fact was Charles' purpose. But this encounter, so essential for Marlborough, was only one incident in a new relationship between England and Russia, brought into being during the wars which they had been conducting for several years - the War of the Spanish Succession in the west and the Russo-Swedish War, the Northern War as it was then called, in the east. The very danger of the wars converging, and differing opinions on each side of how this might be prevented, had already led in 1704 to the appointment of Charles Whitworth as the first regular English minister to Russia, and in 1707- shortly before the Altranstadt meeting - to the transfer of Andrei Matveyev, the Russian minister at The Hague, to London: also the first regular appointment of its kind. Their despatches, both before and after these years and untill713, when a turning-point was reached in both European viii

Preface IX conflicts; the voluminous papers of Marlborough and Peter; the memoirs and correspondence of their contemporaries, have been very little drawn upon anywhere to throw light on this first prolonged period in direct Anglo-Russian relations. Yet its outcome was the establishment of British power in the world far beyond the confines of Europe, but restricted on the Continent itself, when the British Government sought to restrain Russia without imperilling its access to Russia's vital naval stores. On the other hand, the Russian Empire entered as a massive power into Europe for the first time, but was extremely apprehensive of provoking England to an open rupture. Thus in both ways the period was the beginning of a new stage in history. The present narrative may serve as, at any rate, an introduction to the subject. ANDREW ROTHSTEIN

A Note on Sources The main source for the act1v1t1es and opinions of Charles Whitworth, the English minister in Russia from 1705 to 1712, is the collection of his papers: transcripts of those used here (1702-12) are in the volumes of Additional MSS at the Manuscript Department of the British Library. The dates covered there are as follows: 1702 no. 37348; 1702-3 no. 37349; 1703 no. 37350; 1703-4 no. 37351; 1704 no. 37352; 1702-8 (supplementary) no. 37353; 170~ no. 37354; 1706--l3 no. 37355; 1708-9 no. 37356; 1709 no. 37357; 1709-11 no. 37358; 1711-12 no. 37359. The Imperial Russian Historical Society published them, with some excisions, in its Sborniki (Collections), vols 39 (1884), 50 (1886) and 61 {1888). In each volume the English text is printed parallel with the Russian translation. To reduce the number of notes, the dates of the dispatches from and to Whitworth, which are in strict chronological order in both collections, are as a rule given in this book without referring to the particular pages in which they occur. Precise references to other British sources, such as Coxe's Life of Marlborough (1820), Murray's Letters and Dispatches of Marlborough (1845), van t'hoff's Correspondence of Marlborough and Heinsius (1951), Snyder's The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence (1975) and other collections, as well as Winston Churchill's Marlborough: His Life and Times (1934) and other secondary works, many containing contemporary documents, are indicated in the notes to each chapter. The main source for the activities of Peter I, his colleagues and his armies, is the volumes of Letters and Papers of the Emperor Peter the Great, published by the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences up to 1917, and thereafter by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Volume I (1688-1701) appeared in 1887. Volume XII (1712) was published in two parts- the first in 1975, the second in 1977: the series is continuing. The method adopted by the editors throughout has been to print Peter's X

A Note on Sources XI own papers for the period covered by the volume (or part) first, and then - likewise for the whole period - to print supplementary documents, dispatches, treaties and other notes. Each section in each volume is thus chronological, which involves some overlapping; but there are excellent indexes of persons, places and subjects in each volume. Therefore, in order again to avoid burdening the text unnecessarily with notes, I have indicated in the notes to each chapter the particular volume of the Letters and Papers (referring to it as L & P) used, for the year it covers, without further details. The only exception, in a few cases, is where the quotation is drawn from some other volume. Correspondence of Louis XIV and his Foreign Minister Torey with the French representative at Peter's Court during part of the period - an important supplementary source - was printed by the Imperial Russian Historical Society, on the same pattern as the English dispatches, in its Sbornik, vol. 34 (1881). All other documentary sources on Russian policy and events - such as the dispatches of Andrei Matveyev, Peter's minister in London from 1706 to 1708 and at The Hague later, the papers of Boris Kurakin, the Russian ambassador at Hanover, The Hague and London ( 1709-12) - or general histories, from Solovyov's still fundamental History of Russia (1851-79) to modern works such as L. A. Nikiforov's Russo-English Relations at the Time of Peter I ( 1950) and the Academy of Sciences' Outlines of the History of the USSR: XVIII Century, I st Quarter ( 1954) are also indicated in the chapter notes. Wherever there is a reference to Peter's title taken from a Russian document, I have used the correct spelling, 'Tsar'; but where the reference comes from an English or other foreign paper, I have left in the spelling which. originated by the Germans, became accepted even in English where it is meaningless - 'Czar'.