"Did Sweden ever stand a chance in GNW" Topic

Just a quick glance at the wiki page of the GNW, it seems the odds was well stacked against the Evil baby eating sweds(forced by norwegian law to add that last part)

Sweden's greatest asset, throughout history, is that no one with the long term means to do so, win or lose, ever wanted to occupy Sweden. They've always had the 'shot to nothing' advantage.

If Charles XII had been calm enough to offer peace terms after the initial beatings he handed out, Sweden might have come out of the war without any territorial losses. But he wanted "justice".

The key Swedsh weaknesses were they could not lose even one battle given their population limits on recruitment, and they had to defeat the Russians in detail. Once massed, there were just too many Russians, add in redoubts and a lot of artillery for the Russians at Poltava, plus Charles being wounded, and the outcome is preordained.

The Swedish Army also had a highly religious certainty in their invinceability. Once broken, they could never again muster the same fervor in subsequent battles.

Considering the mess that were 18th century politics, yes it did as alliances collapsed and were reformed fairly often.vtsaogames has it correct. Charles XII might had been a great captain but he was terrible politician I think people overestimate the Russian numbers. Sweden had higher political capacity then Russia at that era, which meant that the large Russian latent power does not count as much. A smarter policy in germany and poland might had given him the alliances needed to defeat the challenge. This does not mean that long term the Swedish empire was salvageable. As Russian political capacity continued to increase more and more Russian resources would be mobilisable and at some point Russia would be too powerful, barring a collapse of the Muscovite Tsardom.

Why was Charles campaigning in the Ukraine?
Answer that question. The Poltava campaign kind if defines "overreach".
What vtsaogames said.

Hmmm I venture to say with my little knowledge (and it is little) that part of the reason may had been because he needed to supply the army and he was promised supplies by the rebel cossacks. He thought he would have a good base there and that a major attempt to detach the Ukraine from Russia would at least form Peter the Great to sue for peace. He also vastly overestimated the potential rebellions (maybe living the Deluge in his brain). There may had been some territory compensation thoughts also. Give Russian Ukrainian territory to the Poles in return for gains in Germany , or for a stable alliance vs. Russia.

Charles the soldier king: as a soldier, he was a great soldier. As a king, he was a great soldier. There was his problem.

Much like Napoleon, had Charles focused on building up the Poles, supporting the organization of a formal Polish state and it's related armed forces he could have played the long game with the Russians. By creating a Polish buffer state he could have used it as a base of operations against the Russians whenever they got out of line. Both Charles and Napoleon failed to exploit the very thing the Russian autocrats feared the most, a resurgent Poland on their western border.

Prussian cooperation was available for ceding some parts of the Swedish Empire in Germany. The Prussians would have not marched into Russia but could have campaigned in Poland and Germany. They were allied with the Swedes during the Deluge so there was historical precedent for it.

vstaogames,

Being 'calm' when you're surrounded by enemies is never an option, besides, he was right to want 'justice' and adequate compensation – neither Denmark/Norway, Poland/Saxony, nor Russia issued a formal declaration of war before invading Swedish territory, therefore, his rage was righteous, if misguided.

Did Sweden stand a chance? Of course they did, at least until Charles got involved in the quagmire of Polish politics. With all due respect, oldnorthstate, there was no way to build up a 'formal' Polish state because the nobles wouldn't allow it. They wanted a weak central state to maintain their 'freedoms' [to tax the peasants to starvation levels, raise their own armies, play footsie with the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians and basically try to out-douche the other nobles]. Furthermore, you saw what happened when the last Polish king tried to create a 'modern' Polish state, rebellion, invasion and dismemberment of the Polish Republic. Poland's main problem is that on top of being surrounded by enemies on the outside, it's always had traitors on the inside as well.

Sweden's chances were slim but once the Russians started concentrating on Sweden's fortresses and armies in Ingermanland, Estland, and Livonia, it was only a matter of time before the Swedish forces turned their eye towards Russia. Once that happened, even if Charles would've won at Poltava, there was no way Sweden could've won.

Great analysis of Poland's nobility.

Both Charles and Napoleon failed to exploit the very thing the Russian autocrats feared the most, a resurgent Poland on their western border.

You know, I wonder if the same would have held true for Hitler? An interesting thought.

Poland is always a tricky thing if you are its neighbor. In the 16th and early 17th century they were the thing you wanted to contain, especially if you were a Swedish Wasa. In the 17th and 18th century they were too disunited domestically to be useful as anything as pool for territory to use in the compensation regime of diplomacy. Ergo why it got eaten up to a point.

In the 20th century chances are you had your own territorial disputes with Poland as a result of that past, and the Polish government of the inter-war years was just terrible at managing those. They were able to alienate any of their potential allies (remember they took part in the Czechoslovakia affair)

This is not to say Poles were bad. I am not even going to call the Polish aristocracy traitors. Until the later 18th century the aristocracy was the Polish Nation. You cannot be a traitor against yourself.

And they considered their old system to be the proper Polish system.They were ultra conservatives in essentially a uber libertarian (for them as a class) system of unit veto. Unit Veto systems tend to foster conservatism in politics and that is why they refused to countenance a change. There problem is that they did not understand that the states around them were increasingly not facing these issues. Especially Russia (which was a mess politically for so long). Did not help that the Polish King was also one of the more ambitious German princes. The Saxon dynasty exacerbated many of the inherent problems. But hey, the Poles (As in the Aristocracy which was the Nation back then) did not like a Polish king either.

So in many ways the fact that Poland was doomed, doomed Sweden and in many ways Austria in the long term vis a vis Russia. Something that Leopold II and Gustav III understood, but by then it was too late.

Being 'calm' when you're surrounded by enemies is never an option

I should think that's when it is most required, hard as it is.

Prussian cooperation was available for ceding some parts of the Swedish Empire in Germany. The Prussians would have not marched into Russia but could have campaigned in Poland and Germany. They were allied with the Swedes during the Deluge so there was historical precedent for it.

The alliance during the Deluge was short-lived and the Brandenburgers spent more time fighting the Swedes than allied with them. This was followed by extensive warfare during the Scanian War not to mention a long history of being enemies during a good part of the 30YW. Brandenburg-Prussia was not a traditional ally/friend of Sweden and there was no incentive to cede territory for very uncertain help. (Not to mention that the Brandenburgers didn't want part of Swedens German provinces, they pretty much wanted all of them as they saw themselves as the legal heirs of the old Pommeranian dukedom)

In theory, Prussia never stood a chance in the SYW ,yet survived and then some. The actual strategic situations were so fluid due to the politics of the time that you cannot say. All it takes is for some king or czar to die or for a new mistress to gain favor and the tables are completely turned.

True daler240D, especially in the 18th century. Paul I broke the second coalition on anger (though the Brits were indeed pushing it a bit in Russian eyes with their policies in the med and baltic.)

It is tempting to think of what ifs, such as what if Sweden had aligned with France in around 1707? Would the GNW and WSS combine to become a world war? How would allegiances and rivalries play out between the continental powers in the event of a Franco-Swedish alliance? Austria is a case in point, being opposed to France (and therefore Sweden), yet looking nervously over its shoulder at Russia.

The Franco-Swedish alliance was never going to happen, the revocation of the edict of Nantes and the memory of how Sweden had been used and misused by France in the 1670's was too much for Charles (a very devout protestant) to ever consider a French alliance. He was also heavily influenced by his father's policy of non-alignment in order to avoid foreign wars and continued to be sceptical about offers of alliance even when in the middle of the GNW.

Alliance with France would just have wrecked Swedish trade and tied down Swedish troops in warfare with Austria and the Empire in the middle of Germany while giving the Russians a free hand in the east. As it was Charles did compromised and used diplomacy to calm the Austrians who had begun to react to the Swedish campaign against Saxony in 1706-1707.

The key Swedsh weaknesses were they could not lose even one battle given their population limits on recruitment, and they had to defeat the Russians in detail. Once massed, there were just too many Russians, add in redoubts and a lot of artillery for the Russians at Poltava, plus Charles being wounded, and the outcome is preordained.

The Swedish Army also had a highly religious certainty in their invinceability. Once broken, they could never again muster the same fervor in subsequent battles.

Sweden was not quite as loss sensitive as some sources portray it. It took 20 years of war and roughly 200.000 casulties before Sweden was defeated. Battles were lost before Poltava as well as afterwards without it making it impossible for the Swedes to carry on the struggle.

Poltava and the surrender that followed was a disaster but what made it impossible to recover from was not the losses themselves but that it was followed by the worst outbreak of plauge in Sweden since the Black Death (1710-1713). 40% of the population of Stockholm died in just 6 months time and the Kingdom as a whole lost more people in 3 years than were killed in 20 years of war.

The plauge plauge hit the army which had defeated the Danish invasion hard and devastated the Swedish navy. It also had a severe impact on the Swedish garrisons struggling to hold the Baltic fortresses, Reval (present day Tallin) surrendered without a fight to a small Russian force because the plauge had killed 75% of the population and garrison. Riga was likewise devastated by the plauge which led to a early surrender by it's once 12.000 strong garrison.

And Poltava was not the only loss that the Swedes needed to recover from, Lybeckers campaign in Finland and Ingria in 1708 had been badly mismanaged and had been force to withdraw with heavy losses due to attrition and disease, a waste of trained and experienced troops who would have been sorely needed to help contain the Russians after Poltava.

The impact of the plauge on the Swedish navy was to have serious but often overlooked consequences. It contributed to the failure of the fleet in 1711 when the Danes were able to wreck the transport fleet supporting Stenbock's army in Germany. The troops were able to land without problems or loss but the supplies that had been gathered with so much effort in Sweden were lost and the follow up waves of troops and supplies were never sent or delayed until it was too late. This left Stenbock without his full strenght and with few options when he started the 1711-1713 campaign in Germany.

Even after Poltava and the Russian successes in the Baltic provinces Russian commanders remained very very cautious when facing the Swedes. Despite a significant superiority in numbers as well as the support of Danish and Saxon troops the Russian commander facing Stenbock in Pommerania was very quick to withdraw his troops out of the range of the Swedish army and left the Danes and Saxons to face the Swedes alone in the campaign which led to the Swedish victory at Gadebusch 1712.

I do not understand those who feel historical outcomes are predestined. Looking at the lineup in 1700 a Swedish victory does not seem the most likely result. However Charles XII putting together a string of successes from 1700 to 1706 does not seem likely either.

From my discussions with several Swedes who study this history in depth, it was not a forgone conclusion that Sweden would have lost the war or even all of their overseas provinces. Even when the second invasion of Scania was planned, Charles was able to raise a very large force and had caused considerable naval transport ships to be assembled. Unfortunately, nothing specific is left to tell us exactly what the plans were for the forces, particularly the transports. Some speculation is that after the Norwegian campaign and some battle hardening of his new troops a descent to recapture Pomerania or even a strike against the Baltic provinces was contemplated. Charles was fairly secretive of his plans so absent the unearthing of new documents, my understanding is that all we have is speculation. Of course, Charles death changed all the plans.

As Dan mentioned, the plague also altered the plans of many of the combatants. Prof. Karl-Erik Frandsen book "The Last Plague in the Baltic Region, 1709-1713" describes this little known but important aspect of the war.

It is also worth noting that there are a number of what-ifs at Poltava itself that suggest that even given the parlous state of the army, the impossible LoC, the poor condition of Swedish powder, the misuse of Mazepa (the Ukrainian Cossacks were still independent of Peter at that point) and his resources, a couple of different dice rolls (pushing the attack on the corner of the main camp when it started, making better use of the corps from the redoubts that went walk about, not wandering away aimlessly to the North, or even simply getting the cavalry aligned before the infantry advanced) could have seen the Russians fold for all their superior numbers. A significant crack in the façade on any one of those points could have awakened all the Russian nightmares about Swedish invincibility.
One has to wonder what on earth the Swedish commanders were thinking about that morning.
C.

This question will be discussed in the "Great Northern War Compendium." vol. 2 at 281.

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