Newsgroup: it.cultura.storia.militare
Titolo: Battaglia di Poltava

Complice la visione di un programma dedicato a Pietro il Grande, mi sono 
beccato una bella ricostruzione di tale battaglia, a me nota di nome ma mai 
studiata.
Su youtube 
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=24gQKRF9aJ0&feature=related
 č 
divisa in 3 parti (questa č la 1^), sono 14 minuti totali che meritano...
Mi sono quindi interessato alla cosa, scoprendo tra l'altro di avere un 
vecchio osprey che mi sono letto.
Volendo evitare di bissare il silenzio di Becula :-D chiedo anzitempo se c'č 
qualcuno che conosca questa battaglia, cosě da parlarne e poter chiedere 2 o 
3 cosette.
-- 
A. Ball  -  Punico Aviatore
''L'esito corrisponde alle aspettative meno
 in guerra che in qualunque altro caso''
Tito Livio 

 vecchio osprey che mi sono letto.
Se non è uguale al mio Osprei, potrà essere utile altrimenti dovrò
scartabellare altrove:
POLTAVA
28 June 1709
Forces Engaged
Russian: 44,000 men and 100 cannon. Commander: Czar Peter the Great.
Swedish: 17,000 men and 4 cannon. Commander: King Charles XII.
Importance
Sweden's defeat marked their decline and the arrival of Russia as a serious
European power.
Historical Setting
Sweden had expanded from a Scandinavian power to a major force in European
politics because of the statecraft and military genius of Gustavus Adolphus.
He died in 1632 at the battle of Leutzen in the Thirty Years' War and was
succeeded by Charles X. Charles expanded on Gustavus's strong performance by
taking Sweden to its greatest limits and power by 1655. During the First
Northern War, Charles defeated Poland and Denmark, but the war ended with
his death in 1660. Peace lasted for four decades, until the reign of Charles
XII, when Poland began showing its traditional restlessness under foreign
dominance. In 1700, Polish King Augustus II organized the Northern Union,
made up of Poland, Denmark, and Russia. Russia was the most enthusiastic
supporter of the Union, not because it desired Polish liberation but because
Czar Peter I wanted his country to supplant Sweden as the dominant Baltic
power.
Charles XII was but 18 years of age when he rose to the throne of Sweden in
1700, but he did not lack for military talent. He made the first move of
what came to be called the Second, or Great, Northern War by invading
Denmark, which he viewed as the weak link in the enemy chain. With
Copenhagen threatened, the Danes concluded a quick peace, signing the Treaty
of Travedal on 28 August 1700. Although theDanes promised to remain passive
and not aid their erstwhile allies, the fact that they possessed a strong
fleet worried Charles because it was a potential threat to his lines of
communication when he faced Poland and Russia.
Charles quickly turned eastward and landed 8,000 men at Livonia with the
intent of relieving the besieged city of Riga, but instead marched on Narva
when he learned that the attacking Russian force outnumbered the defenders
by a four-to-one margin. The Russians remained unaware of Charles's approach
until he attacked them in a driving snowstorm on 20 November. The Russians
were badly beaten, losing 10,000 dead, wounded, or taken prisoner, while
another 30,000 fled, abandoning all their artillery and supplies. Charles
next marched on Poland, where a 4-year campaign against King Augustus
finally ended in Swedish victory with the signing of the Treaty of
Altranstadt on 24 September 1706. Poland pledged to remain quiet, accepting
Swedish puppet Stanislas Leszczynski in place of King Augustus. Charles
spent the winter reorganizing and resupplying for the campaign against
Russia the following year.
While Charles was defeating Denmark and Poland, Czar Peter had spent his
time reorganizing his own army after the embarrassment at Narva. He also
built up his fleet in the Baltic at the same time that he was building his
capital at St. Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva River. By not marching
to the aid of his allies, Peter had had the time to significantly upgrade
his military strength. He needed it; Charles invaded out of Poland on 1
January 1708 with Moscow as his goal. As is so often the case, the Russians
were able to slow the invading army by gradual withdrawals and a
scorched-earth policy. Accomplishing the desired goal of depriving Charles
and his army of supplies, the Swedish king marched his forces southward to
join with his new ally, Ivan Mazepa, hetman of the Cossacks. That move meant
that the supply line that Charles wanted to maintain became badly strained,
and Peter took advantage of that. He attacked a force under Swedish General
Carl Lewenhaupt at Lesnaia on 9 October 1708. Lewenhaupt commanded a force
of 11,000 marching to reinforce Charles, but after the defeat at Lesnaia
only 6,000 got through, and without artillery or supplies.
The Battle
The winter of 1708-1709 was spent in skirmishes between Peter's army and the
combined Swedish-Cossack force, during which time Charles's force of 40,000
was cut almost in half because of combat and the severe cold. In the spring
of 1709, Charles decided to press on to Moscow, rather than reinforce his
army. Along the line of march lay the town of Poltava on the Vorskla River.
Charles laid siege to Poltava on 2 May. Peter sent his cavalry commander
Menshikov to distract and observe the Swedes, while he both put down a
Cossack rising along the Dnieper River and convinced the Turkish government
to stay aloof from this struggle. The Turks not only stayed out of it,
temporarily at least, but also forbade Crimean Cossacks from aiding the
Swedes. With his rear covered, Peter marched on Poltava, arriving in early
June. He established a camp on the west bank of the Vorskla, a few miles
north of Poltava.
The Russians defending Poltava had held out much longer than Charles had
anticipated, and the Swedish king was running low on both food and
gunpowder. To make bad matters worse, on 17 June Charles was wounded in the
foot, making it impossible for him to lead his troops in battle with his
normal energy. With 40,000 Russians now in the neighborhood, he should have
lifted the siege and withdrawn to Poland, but instead he decided to fight
Peter. When Peter learned of Charles's wound, he too thought that the time
for battle had come. Much closer to Poltava he built a new camp, a fortified
square with the east flank on the Vorskla and the south flank along a marshy
wood with a stream running through it. That wood and stream separated the
Russian camp from poltava. Peter was sure this new camp would provoke
Charles to attack, and he was correct.
Charles's army began its march to battle at 0300 on 28 June 1709. They had
to move west from Poltava and then turn north to enter a gap between the
aforementioned woods and a marsh farther west. Between the woods and marsh,
Peter had built six redoubts to slow any advance and then began building
four more perpendicular to the six. The result was a T formation with the
crossbar between the woods and marsh and the upright pointing at the
oncoming Swedes, who had to divide their forces to either side. Charles left
5,600 men behind to cover Poltava and guard the base camp, leaving him with
but 12,500 men for his attack. Although Charles moved his men in the dark of
night, Peter learned of the operation and quickly established a line of
mixed infantry and cavalry behind the line of six redoubts.
Charles was forced by the redoubts to split his force, half to the east and
half to the west; he was carried on a litter with the left, western force.
His plan was to rush past the fire of the redoubts to engage the Russians
behind, who he was sure would not stand and fight; he remembered their
shoddy performance at Narva and assumed nothing had changed. The problem
with this plan was that he refused to share it with his subordinates for,
like Alexander of Macedon, he was a hands-on, lead-from-the-front commander
who liked to be in the midst of battle to act and react as circumstances
dictated. Because he was on a litter, though, he could not do that, and his
primary subordinate, General Rehnskjöld, was not allowed to act on his own
initiative. Overcentralized command doomed the Swedes.
On the left flank, the attacking Swedes soon swept past the redoubts and
drove back the Russians on the far side. On the right, however, General Roos
proceeded to attack the redoubts to reduce or capture them. That meant that
he not only made slow progress, but he suffered lots of casualties. When,
late in the morning, Charles was ready to press his attack on Peter's camp,
he had but half his army with him because Roos was bogged down and soon
surrounded and captured. The troops in the center of the attack also managed
to break through the line of redoubts and, driving Russian troops before
them, were in a position to wheel right and storm the Russian camp. This
force, under Lewenhaupt, received orders to retreat and join with Charles,
however, thus losing their momentum and giving Peter time to prepare his
army. Who sent the order to Lewenhaupt was hotly debated at the time, for
both Charles and Rehnskjöld denied sending it, but, with the shifting
fortunes of battle and the conflicting reports of success and failure, it
could have been sent almost at any time in the previous few hours.
While Charles redeployed his forces on the plain behind the redoubts, Peter
brought 40,000 men out of his camp, along with 100 cannon. Charles certainly
should not have attacked this greatly superior force, at least until the
artillery he had back at Poltava was brought up, but his disdain for the
Russian troops over-rode good sense. Four thousand infantry and cavalry
advanced across the open plain into the teeth of the Russian guns, and they
were mowed down by the hundreds. Peter rode constantly through his own lines
shouting encouragement and giving orders. Charles was unable to do so, and
thus his uninspired men had no chance of breaking the Russian line. By noon,
Charles was obliged to leave the field.
Results
Charles left behind 3,000 dead and 2,800 prisoners, including General
Rehnskjöld and four other generals. Charles gathered up the troops that he
had left at Poltava and they made their way east and south. At the junction
of the Vorskla and Dnieper Rivers, he found all boats destroyed, but he
built enough rafts to escape with 1,000 men. The remainder were captured on
30 June. Charles fled to seek refuge withthe Turks, Russia's traditional
enemy, who granted him sanctuary.
Peter scored a major triumph at Poltava, but almost threw it all away.
Rather than consolidating his victory, he pressed a campaign against Poland
while demanding that the Turks surrender Charles to him. Instead of Charles,
the Turks sent 200,000 troops to the Russian frontier. In the spring of
1711, Peter declared war on Turkey and soon found himself in command of
38,000 starving men along the River Pruth, with the region devastated by the
Turks, who outnumbered him five to one. On 11 August, the Turks attacked and
were beaten back. Their commander, Grand Vizier Baltaji Mehmet, entered into
negotiations with Peter and soon granted him and his army parole. A few
days'
siege would have brought Peter's army to its knees, but instead he lived to
fight another day.
War continued between Russia and Turkey on one front and Russia and Sweden
on another, while Charles remained in Turkey arguing with his allies. Russia
and Turkey signed the Treaty of Adrianople in 1713, but not until 1721 did
Russia and Sweden sign the Treaty of Nysted; Charles XII had been killed in
battle 3 years earlier. Thus ended the Great Northern War after 21 years,
and Sweden, which entered the war as such an important power, exited it a
broken country.
Russia, on the other hand, replaced Sweden as the major power in the Baltic
region. In the Treaty of Nysted, Russia received Livonia, Estonia, and
Ingermanland on the Baltic as well as the Finnish Karelia territory. Peter,
who had long envied European progress, had access now to what the west could
provide. He imported experts on almost everything to drag Russia into the
modern world, and technical advisors as well as intellectuals stayed in St.
Petersburg to fulfill his dreams. This brought a facade of western
civilization to Russia, which the aristocrats were able to appreciate, but
the mass of Russian peasantry remained poor, ignorant, and exploited.
Peter's
wars and building projects killed tens of thousands; as much as 20 percent
of the Russian population died during his reign. Many of them died in the
military, which Peter was determined to make the equal of any European army
or navy. When he died, the Russian navy possessed fory-eight ships of the
line, and the army had more than 200,000 regulars and 100,000 reserves.
Although Russians began to act like Europeans, their Asian heritage lingered
on. Peter had to remedy that to build the empire he wanted. The only way to
do that was to adopt European government administrative techniques and
philosophies to provide the necessary regular taxation power he needed. The
western administration, however, employed eastern ruthlessness in execution,
and more dead Russians were the result as Peter suppressed any objections to
his actions. Although he did introduce a number of western social reforms,
they rarely applied to the masses, who continued to work and produce the
labor and taxes, just as they had done for centuries. That resource, coupled
with the land and mineral resources that Peter developed, brought Russia
overnight into Europe as a country to be reckoned with. Although its power
waxed and waned over the following centuries, Russia was here to stay on the
world scene. "A new threat to Europe had arisen; again Asia was on the move,
but this time her Mongoloid hordes were girt in the panoply of the West"
(Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 2, p. 186).
Had Peter lost at Poltava, it is certainly questionable if Sweden would have
bent Russia to its will. If the Turks had not let Peter go from the River
Pruth, Turkey may well have emerged as the major eastern power that Russia
became because the struggle between those two countries never ebbed, and
Russian military power certainly acted as a curb to Ottoman desires in
eastern Europe.
References:
Creasy, Edward S. Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. New York: Harper,
1851;
Fuller, J. F. C. A Military History of the Western World, vol. 2. New York:
Funk & Wagnalls, 1955;
Hatton, R. M. Charles XII of Sweden. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968;
Massie, Robert. Peter the Great, His Life and World. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1980;
Robert, Michael. Sweden's Age of Greatness, 1632-1718. New York: St.
Martin's
Press, 1973.
Saluti
Guardrail

 3 cosette.
punico,
io qualcosina ho letto sia sul simpatico volumetto Osprey che sul libro
dedicato a Pietro il Grande (diciamo il mio zar preferito visto che ha
"inventato" la Marina Russa ;) ) scritto da Robert K. Massie ( vedi
http://www.liberonweb.com/asp/libro.asp?ISBN=8817866474
 ) che ha una
intera parte dedicata alla Grande Guerra del Nord (e quindi anche una
buona dose di pagine a Poltava). 
A me il libro non č affatto dispiaciuto. Facci un pensierino o vai in
biblioteca a leggertelo a sbafo nella parte di Poltava :P
-- 
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 scartabellare altrove:
Ehm, in realtà non mi serviva una descrizione, che magari sarà utile per chi
non la conosce ed è curioso, ma speravo di parlarne con qualcuno... :-)
Insomma parlare di Carlo XII, il principe guerriero, e Pietro I, lo zar
preferito di sergio, di come si sono comportati in quel di Poltava, delle
tattiche dell'epoca, che mi sono sconosciute, ecc; quelle cose di cui di
solito si parla in un ng di storia militare. :-D
Cos'è, non erano abbastanza ''stronzi''? :-))


 Cos'è, non erano abbastanza ''stronzi''? :-))
Bisognerebbe interpellare l'esperto. <g>


 tattiche dell'epoca, che mi sono sconosciute,
Io ancora mi chiedo come abbiano fatto gli Svedesi a conquistare in
pochi decenni Germania, Polonia, paesi baltici e Ucraina...un'area
enorme, se ci pensate.
Con che "manpower" hanno ottenuto un simile risultato?
MG

MILES GLORIOSUS ha scritto:

Grazie a gustavo adolfo ed ai soldi francesi ^______^
Baccio