The Swedish king Gustav III cherished ideas that were far from reality. About, for example, that, taking advantage of kinship and Masonic brotherhood with the Russian Tsarevich Pavel, to beg him for the Baltics. And then even ride a white horse into Senate Square and throw the Bronze Horseman off the pedestal.
Swedish king Gustav III
War is war, strife. More often than not, as was the case with the two world wars of the last century, irreconcilable contradictions of a political, ideological, economic nature make bloodshed inevitable. But sometimes the peoples are forced to take up arms against each other by the despotic will of a single sovereign psychopath, who suddenly dreamed of playing "war" with living, not tin soldiers. This is how, without the slightest reason, the Russo-Swedish War of 1788-1790 began.
“There is nothing more dangerous than the imagination of a scoundrel, not restrained by a bridle and not threatened by a continuous idea of the possibility of punishment on the body. Once excited, it throws off any yoke of reality and begins to paint the most ambitious enterprises for its owner."
These words of our great satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin may not be fully applicable to the Swedish king Gustav III, but it cannot be said that they are not applicable at all.
He was a strange type, both with obvious to everyone, and with deviations carefully hidden from prying eyes. An avid theater-goer, the author of plays of his own composition, this king loved to repeat the famous Shakespearean phrase that the world, they say, is a theater, and the people in it are actors (unfortunately, among those who heard this from the royal lips, there were no particularly perceptive ones).
He married for procreation, but he was not too inclined to the fair sex, preferring to surround himself with pretty favorites, and in a warm male company he made his pilgrimages to the cultural capitals of Europe. A seemingly harmless creature. Well, he was freemasonry on the sly, with whom he never happened. He was a cousin of the Russian Empress Catherine II, and was treated kindly by her on that basis and was slightly scolded for her pranks.
Naval battle at Vyborg on June 23, 1790. Hood. Ivan Aivazovsky
But this is all, so to speak, stardust. Secretly, Gustav cherished ideas that were far from reality. About, for example, that, taking advantage of kinship and Masonic brotherhood with the Russian Tsarevich Pavel, to beg him sometime in the future almost the entire Baltic region.
They looked at the eccentricities of "their" king in St. Petersburg so much that they did not pay special attention to how famously from an almost formal ruler, which he was at first, he turned into the ruler of the actual, while firmly stepping on the throat of the pro-Russian party.
Gustav's insidious assurances of complete respect and loyalty were so blindly believed by the Russian court that in 1787, when the long-brewing war with Turkey finally began, all the forces of the empire were calmly directed south. In Finland, however, only weak garrisons remained in the fortresses. True, there was also the Baltic Fleet, very significant in number. Although, unlike the Swedish ones, many Russian ships were of old construction. They were no longer suitable even for going to sea. In addition, the fleet was preparing to repeat the Archipelago Expedition - around Europe in the Mediterranean, to strike in the rear of the Turks; the Russian avant-garde was already in Denmark, controlling the Sunda Strait just in case.
A couple of months more - and Petersburg could be taken with bare hands. But the crowned lover of the stage could not wait to play the mise-en-scene of his own composition not written in the great play called "History" - to enter the Senate Square on a white horse, throw the Bronze Horseman off the Thunder Stone and magnificently celebrate the victory gained by cunning in Peterhof. He had already rashly promised all this to his court ladies and, of course, gentlemen. Despite the anachronism, Gustav even commanded to forge for himself knightly armor that had long been obsolete.
Deciding that the moment for a stab in the back had come, at the end of June 1788, the king turned to the royal cousin with absurd demands, including, among other things, the cleansing of Finland by the Russians, the disarming of the Baltic Fleet and the return of Crimea to the Turks (the importance of this peninsula for Russia was already understood in Europe any fool).
Immediately, military operations began with the greatest haste: the 36,000-strong Swedish army under the command of the dreamer king himself crossed the border and laid siege to Neishlot. Large forces moved to Petersburg by sea.
It is easy to imagine the panic that gripped Catherine's yard. The war with Sweden came like a bolt from the blue. We urgently made a recruitment. But which ones ?! The Cossack regiment, for example, was formed from coachmen. Somehow they collected and armed 14 thousand troops and sent to the north under the command of an incapacitated and for this reason extremely cautious general - Valentin Musin-Pushkin Ivanovich, the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod and the President of the Academy of Arts, in whose Moscow library the manuscript of the notorious "Lay of Igor's Host" was allegedly kept and "successfully" burned down in a fire of twelve, which is, in all likelihood, a literary mystification of the 18th century).
Silver medal on the occasion of the end of the war with Sweden
But directly at the Finnish theater, the performance arranged by the king did not make a special impression on the Russians. The example of the besieged Neishlot is characteristic in this sense. Approaching the fortress, Gustav demanded to be admitted there immediately. As the old proverb says, trouble has come - open the gate. The commandant of Neishlot, a veteran of the last Russian-Turkish war, Major Seconds-Major Kuzmin, answered the eccentric stranger as follows: “Serving the fatherland, I had the misfortune of losing my right hand; the serf gates are too heavy for me to open them with one hand; Your Majesty is younger than me, you have two hands, and therefore try to open them yourself. The vain assault that followed this truly noble response gave Gustav nothing but cause to even greater annoyance.
Russian ships at that time were scattered across the Baltic, but even here we were lucky: the hero of Chesma, Samuel Greig, a resolute and courageous admiral, commanded over the Baltic fleet. The meeting in the Gulf of Finland with the Swedes heading for St. Petersburg took place on July 6 (17) near the island of Gogland. With a comparable number of battleships, the Russian teams were not yet fully prepared, so they had to finish their education right in battle. Tactically unresolved, the Battle of Hogland undoubtedly became a major strategic victory for the Russians: the surprise effect did not work, and the Swedes retreated to Sveaborg to lick their wounds, hoping that their enemy would do the same in Kronstadt.
Silver medal on the occasion of the end of the war with Sweden
It was not so. Sending back only a few of the ships most damaged in the battle at Gogland, Greig quickly corrected the damage on the rest and, unexpectedly for the Swedes, appeared at Sveaborg, where he locked the hapless enemies. The blockade of Sveaborg, quite possibly, could decide the outcome of the war, since the Russians, completely controlling sea communications, cut off a convenient supply by sea for the royal army - the Swedes had to use a long roundabout land route to supply their troops.
In the army, as in the homeland, dissatisfaction with the unpopular war grew. In addition, Denmark was now threatened on the other side of Sweden.
However, having declared war, the Danes, under pressure from England and Prussia, refrained from active actions. Meanwhile, the Russian fleet suffered a great loss: having caught a cold, Greig, who was the soul of an offensive strategy, died. Admiral Vasily Chichagov, who replaced him, preferred caution to decisiveness. But even before he took office, the Russian ships ended the blockade of Sveaborg and left for the winter at their bases in Kronstadt and Revel.
In the spring of the following year, 1789, the Russian Copenhagen squadron, which did not show itself in anything special, set off to join up with the main forces of the fleet sent to meet it. The Swedes, wishing to intercept and defeat the Baltic Fleet in parts, went to sea and on July 15 (26) unsuccessfully fought Chichagov off the island of Öland. On our side, there were few losses, but one of the best sailors, Captain Grigory Mulovsky, who was preparing to undertake the first Russian round-the-world voyage, subsequently made by Ivan Kruzenshtern, died.
Fighting continued in Finland, especially serious ones - off the coast, where rowing flotillas met with each other. On August 13 (24), Russian galleys, newly built in large numbers, with still inexperienced crews, penetrated from both sides to the Rochensalm raid, where they took refuge, blocking the only accessible passage with flooded ships, under the command of Admiral and theorist of military art Karl Ehrensverd.
While the detachment of Major General Ivan Balle from the south diverted the main forces of the enemy, from the north special teams of sailors and officers for several hours in a row manually cut a passage for the galleys of Julius Litta, the future chief chamberlain and member of the State Council, and at that time - just a 26-year-old Maltese knight who entered the Russian service, attracted to Russia not only by ambition, but also by romantic feelings for the widow of the Russian envoy in Naples, Countess Ekaterina Skavronskaya.
The victory in both cases (we mean the marriage to Skavronskaya) was complete for Litta. The Russians' own losses amounted to two ships against thirty-nine from the Swedes, including the flagship of the theoretical admiral.
The main command in this matter was carried out by the already known to us the winner of the Turks near Ochakov, the "paladin of Europe" Prince Karl of Nassau-Siegen. He had a falling out with his patron Grigory Potemkin and was quite about to go on another adventurous journey - to Khiva and India, however, to everyone's satisfaction, he allowed himself to be persuaded to delay his departure, thanks to which, as the empress's decree wrote in detail, “… the admiral and four more ships, large ships, one galley and cutter, many headquarters and chief officers and more than a thousand lower ranks went to the winners.
The remainder of the Swedish fleet, after suffering great harm and defeat after the burning of all its transport ships, turned to flee and, being pursued, was driven to the mouth of the Kyumen River”.
The brave admiral received for the victory the highest in Russia the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called and a gold, diamond-studded sword, his officers - orders and ranks (in particular, the lucky Litta was awarded "St. George" III degree, and Balla - "St. Anna" I degree). Sailors of naval crews and paratroopers received silver medals on the St. George ribbon of the same design with the medal "For bravery on the waters of the Ochakovo" (the same master - Timofey Ivanov), only, of course, with a different inscription on the reverse:
"FOR - CHARITY - ON THE WATERS - FINNISH - AUGUST 13 - 1789".
Following the Rochensalm victory was followed by a small victory, but also marked with an award medal. Nassau-Siegen with the soldiers of the Semyonov regiment, under cover of night, captured the Swedish battery on the coast, which was interfering with the landing. To reward the Semyonovites, a small number of copies were minted and therefore extremely rare today, a silver medal "For the capture of the Swedish battery at the Kyumen River" with a three-line inscription on the reverse:
"FOR - GOOD - ST."
It was worn by the guards, like the previous one, on the St. George ribbon.
The campaign of 1790 began for health and ended for peace. First, on May 2 (13), the Swedes attacked Chichagov's squadron in Revel. It was so unfortunate that, having lost two ships and without inflicting any damage on the enemy, they were forced to retreat in disgrace.
After this defeat, the Swedish squadron under the command of the king's brother, Duke Karl of Südermanlad, recovered for ten days, and then headed for St. Petersburg in the faint hope of inflicting another unexpected blow on the Russians.
Against Krasnaya Gorka, the Swedes were met by the Kronstadt squadron of Vice Admiral Alexander von Cruz, inferior to the enemy in the number of battleships (17 versus 22) and much more in artillery power. On May 23-24 (June 3-4) the two-day battle of Krasnogorsk took place, the cannonade of which was heard in St. Petersburg and the surrounding area, frightening the most impressionable natures like Count Alexander Bezborodko, who even deigned to cry with fear.
However, there was no reason for serious concern: the Swedes fired and fired, and then, warned of the approach of Chichagov's Revel squadron, withdrew to Vyborg to join up with the rest of Gustav's forces pinned off the coast.
And again we fell into the trap. And much more serious than that of Sveaborg, because now the time of year favored a complete and final blockade. However, a desperate attempt to break through, caused by the last extreme, ended in success for the Swedes: on June 22, at exactly four o'clock (the 22nd is, of course, according to the old style, according to the new - July 3), the Swedish combined fleet - about two hundred sailing ships and galleys with 14 thousand infantrymen on board - moved along the coast to the Russian line and, having lost six battleships, four frigates, a lot of trifles and about half of the personnel, fled, again taking advantage of Chichagov's indecision.
Fate, which had provided the Russians with an almost one hundred percent chance of winning the war, now turned resentfully away from them. On June 28 (July 9), the next anniversary of Empress Catherine's coming to power, fate presented her with a bitter pill instead of a gift: while trying to repeat last year's success in Rochensalm, but in completely inappropriate weather and without preliminary preparation, the Nassau-Siegen galley flotilla suffered a disaster.
Galleys, rowing frigates and shebeks, reflected by the powerful fire of the enemy, collided with each other and overturned during the retreat. Of the 64 lost rowing ships, 22 were taken by the enemy as trophies. More than seven thousand soldiers and sailors were killed, wounded and captured. Shocked, barely escaping, Nessau-Siegen sent the empress his awards - orders and a golden sword.
Although, no matter how rightly the Swedes were proud of this victory, one should not ignore the fact that it only at the last moment miraculously saved Sweden, which was on the verge of complete defeat. The international situation immediately demanded an early reconciliation, because in the Black Sea region things were going to the imminent defeat of Turkey, after which the victorious Russian Suvorov army was bound to fall with all its unbearable burden on the estates of Gustav, which had been drained of blood by the war.
The best psychological moment for the Swedes to negotiate peace cannot be imagined. Almost immediately - on the 3rd (14th) of August - the indefinite Verela Treaty was concluded, which retained the pre-war status quo.
Nassau-Siegen, by the way, was left with all his previous awards.“One failure,” Catherine graciously wrote to him, “cannot eradicate from my memory that you were seven times the winner of my enemies in the south and north.” However, this could not restore the admiral's reputation tarnished in every sense.
Two years later, he quit his job, traveled a little more, returned to Russia and here, finally settling in his Ukrainian estate, he took up agriculture.
In connection with the end of the war, orders and ranks were handed out to many officers, and soldiers and sailors received an unusual-looking octagonal silver medal (medalist - Karl Leberecht), on the obverse of which, in an oval frame, is the profile of Catherine II in a laurel wreath, under the frame - a laurel and oak branches tied with a ribbon. On the reverse, in a laurel wreath, there is an inscription in three lines:
"FOR THE SERVICE - BU AND CHRIST - BRIGHT", and under the edge: "MIR SЪ SHVETS. - CLOSED 3 AUG. - 1790 ".
The Empress's decree of September 8 said: “… Praising the very brave deeds and tireless labors of the Land Guards, the Russian field and naval forces, so many and varied packs were famous and the probability to Her Imperial Majesty and to the Fatherland who overcame all difficulties, Her Imperial Majesty in memory that their service commands all the troops that were in action against the enemy, to distribute to each person a medal on a red ribbon with black stripes."
The "Red Ribbon with Black Stripes" is nothing more than the ribbon of the Order of St. Vladimir, first issued for wearing a medal on it.
In addition to the award, a commemorative medal was also minted (medalist - Timofey Ivanov) with an arc inscription on the reverse side: "Neighboring and eternal", and below, under the edge: "Peace with Sweden was concluded on August 3, 1790".
So the bloodletting ended in nothing. This was perhaps the most amazing result for the Swedish king's adventure. Now he could again indulge in peaceful theatrical and other pleasures. A year and a half later, during one of them - a masquerade ball at the Royal Swedish Opera - Gustav was fatally shot in the back.
Here, as they say, what you sow is what you reap.
