The Rest Is History - 565. The Great Northern War: Revenge of the Cossacks (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

After establishing the city of St Petersburg, what was Peter the Great’s next step in his titanic struggle against Charles XII of Sweden, for mastery of northern and eastern Europe? What drastic, brutal action did he take against Poland, to slow the Swedish advance into his territories? And, after the defection of one of his oldest and most important allies - the leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks - to the Swedes, could Peter and his army survive to fight on?  Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the next and deadliest stage of the Great Northern War: from action-packed military conquests, and harsh marches into the depths of a northern winter, to great betrayals, and the outbreak of the battle that would decide the fate of two of Europe’s mightiest rulers…  The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude  Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is, therestishistory.com. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.

Download the Instacart app and enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. I saw His Majesty King Charles XII, a great way off, with a suite of some fifty horsemen, riding along a column of wagons. His Majesty came at last to mine, and inquired who I was. The Colonel replied, This is the unfortunate ensign Piper of the guards, whose feet were frostbitten.

His Majesty then rode up close beside the wagon and asked me, How is it with you? I replied, Ill enough, Your Majesty, for I cannot stand upon either foot. He then rode up close beside the wagon and asked me, How is it with you? I replied, Ill enough, your majesty, for I cannot stand upon either foot. His majesty asked, Have you lost part of your feet? I told him that heels and toes were gone, and to this he said, A trifle, a trifle. And resting his own leg upon the pommel of his saddle, he pointed to half the soul, saying, I have seen men who lost this much of their foot, and when they had stuffed their boot, they walked as well as before.

Turning then to the Colonel, His Majesty asked, perhaps he will run again. The Colonel replied, He may thank his God if he can so much as walk. He must not think of running. As His Majesty rode away, he said to the Colonel, He is to be pitied, for he is so young. So that was Ensign Gustav Piper of the Swedish Guards who had lost both his heels and most of his toes to frostbite talking to Mr. Motivator himself, Charles the 12th of Sweden in April 1709. It's a trifle, a trifle. I love that. Half his foot gone.

Dominic, this is classic territory for armies that invade Russia, isn't it? Soldiers losing their feet to frostbite, probably kind of eating straw, all that kind of thing. Yeah, we think that now, but they didn't think that then. So, um, if you remember, we are in the frozen grip of the great Northern war, the great struggle, the Titanic showdown between Peter the great of Russia and Charles the 12th of Sweden for mastery of the North and the East of Europe. And, um, when Charles set off, if you remember, everybody was terribly optimistic

and there was no thought of frostbite or missing toes and heels. Certainly no thought of stuffing a boot with straw to make up for the loss of your foot. They would be celebrating in the Kremlin. That was the plan. That's what they thought. So listeners will remember from the last episode that Peter had seized part of the Baltic coast and he'd founded his new city of St. Petersburg amid the bogs and marshes. But all the momentum seemed to lie with the ultimate Scandinavian.

I mean, surely he'd be played by Alexander Skarsgård, wouldn't he? Of course he would. Yeah. He would be hunting bears with a pitchfork. He'd be sleeping outside. Won't even wear a hat. If you remember from the last episode, he'd gone through Poland. He'd gone through Saxony.

He had deposed fox tossing champion Augustus the strong as king of Poland. And now he's decided to go east. August 1707. He's ordered this thousand mile march on Moscow to depose Peter the Great and redraw the map of Europe. However, as your reading from Gustav Piper suggests, things don't go according to plan. So let's get into exactly what went wrong. As soon as the Swedes crossed the border

from Silesia into Poland, they discovered that the Russians had been expecting him, so the Russians have moved into Poland themselves. Peter has sent in his Cossack and Kalmyk, their kind of Central Asian horsemen, into Western Poland. And there, there had been a preview of what would come in the rest of the campaign. So they had basically tried to turn the whole place into a desert. They'd burn the towns, they'd smash the bridges, they'd poison the wells. And does this come as a surprise to Charles or do you think he'd been expecting this? I think he'd been expecting a bit of it but the sheer scale of it, the

ruthlessness of it is terrifying to the Swedes. Of course the Swedes are a long way from Sweden. I mean their supply lines are very stretched and I think they are probably taken aback a bit by just the absolute single-mindedness of it. But of course most people think that the Swedes are going to win. Even in Moscow most people think the Swedes are going to win. So we have reports, you know, letters and things from foreign diplomats in Moscow, an Austrian envoy. No one spoke of anything except for flight or death. The foreigners, not just in Moscow, but of all the neighboring towns, applied to their ministers for protection

as they feared not only the harshness and rapacity of the Swedes, but also a general rising and massacre in Moscow where people are already embittered by the immeasurable increase of the taxes. So there you have a couple of previews of some of the issues in this series. So the terror of the Swedes,

who are famous for their rap, but also Peter has basically put Russia onto a total war footing. And that of course creates great tensions as we will see in the second half of this episode. So Peter is in Warsaw where when he hears the news that Charles is advancing, he's occupied Warsaw and he says to his generals, look, we're not going to fight them in Poland, Poland, very flat country going to fight them in Poland, Poland very flat country.

The Swedes will probably smash us. We must withdraw east and they head back to what's now Belarus. And while they're doing that, his great friend, Alexander Menshikov, who's commanding his dragoons. So he's the guy who's very avaricious, who's risen from the streets. Risen from the streets, exactly. And the guy who introduced him to Catherine, now his wife. So Menchikoff will try to delay the Swedes at the river crossings on the river Vistula and the

Neman. So the kind of the rivers which have already appeared in the rest of history, because we may remember that when we did Hitler's war on Poland, this is where the Poles hoped to withdraw in 1939. where the polls hoped to withdraw in 1939. Peter is very, very anxious at this point. If you think of Peter the Great as a man of sort of unflappable, formidable stoicism, that is quite wrong. Peter is very jittery. He's twitching. I mean, he's literally twitching.

He's literally twitching. He's facing all sorts of rebellions in the East and the South of Russia. He spends weeks in bed with fever. He seems depressed. What's worse for him, his greyhound has died and he has to send his greyhound, who's called Lizetka, back to Moscow and he orders that she be stuffed for him. I mean, that's something he's very into, isn't it, that he's picked up in Amsterdam, is watching how corpses can be either stuffed or preserved in the equivalent

of formaldehyde. Exactly. And I think he had he not bought a swordfish and some other creature in London. A crocodile I think. Yeah. So he's very into all this. And it probably is no coincidence that it's at this point in November 1707 that he marries that mistress that Menchikoff had introduced him to, Catherine, because he's clearly feeling emotionally very fraught and he's very

dependent on her at this point. So he goes back to Moscow for Christmas. And then on the 8th of January, 1708, he leaves to rejoin the army in the West. And he's on his way when he receives one of multiple bombshell messages that will be occurring during this episode. The Swedes are advancing much more quickly than anybody anticipated. This is the Swedes great trademark. They're incredibly aggressive and decisive and swift.

They have already crossed the river Vistula and they are heading towards the Eastern border of Poland. So a blitzkrieg. It is a bit of a blitzkrieg. So what has actually happened? Menshikov was meant to try and stop them on the Vistula near Warsaw. What had happened is they had completely skirted the Polish capital. They had crossed the Vistula further north and now they are heading through eastern Poland

towards the Missourian lakes and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Now we're in the winter 1707 1708. So why is he invading in winter? Why do they keep doing this? It's a thousand miles. I mean, you don't have much choice over the seasons, but also if you go through Poland in the winter, then by spring summer, you'll be in Moscow. That's his thinking, but it still seems mad.

You can't win with the Russian weather because later on in this episode, not only be very cold, it will also be punishingly hot. I mean, this is just fine. I think Tom, the window that you're looking for doesn't really exist of lovely moderate English style temperate weather. It does just strike me though, that Charles 12th Napoleon, Hitler, that they all launched their invasions kind of late. I think that's harsh on Charles the 12th.

Really? I do. I think he's harsh on Charles the 12th. Really? I do. I think he set off, as we'll see, he often goes into winter quarters and stops and then waits and then moves again when the spring comes. OK, I mean, this is a long process. Anyway, they're going through into Lithuania. It's all very boggy. It's kind of thick forests and stuff.

And the Swedes are absolutely living up to their reputation. So when they go into a village and they say to the peasants, give us all your food. If the peasants don't do it, they will hang the peasants children in front of them. So that is, I mean, again, is very Operation Barbarossa. It's very Operation Barbarossa. Did you know that just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Swedes sent Hitler a statue of Charles XII to mark his birthday? I did not know

that that's an amazing fact why did he not learn the appropriate lesson I don't know lessons of history yeah the lessons of history we always love a lesson of history don't we well actually we always say there aren't any lessons of history I think in this case we can say that they invade Russia in the winter would be yeah definitely a lesson all right so we're in January the end of January 1708 it made me so fast. They've already reached the Eastern frontier of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

And this is the town of Grodno or Hrodna. This is called now on the river Neiman, which is now in Belarus. Charles's scouts go ahead and they say there are Russian troops moving into the town. We must seize the main bridge over the Neiman first. And Charles says, great, I'll do it. Cause remember from last time he is, you could say cocky, hubristic, but also possessed with a sense of, you know, God has chosen him, God has already decided when he'll die.

So there's no point in him trying to avoid it. And he's a great one rather than sort of Nelsonian spirit of leading by example. I put myself in the thick of the action my men will follow. With about 700 Swedish cavalry, he advances on this bridge and he finds the Russian cavalry already there three times more Russians than there are Swedes. Is that going to put him off? No, of course not. He's the King of Sweden.

It's a really Hollywood scene. He leads his horsemen down. The river is frozen. They cross the frozen river. Some of the othermen down the river is frozen. They cross the frozen river. Some of the other Swedes storm onto the bridge. The Russians are stunned. They didn't expect this. Charles is like slashing with his sword firing off shots with his pistol.

The Russians completely panic and start to fall back. There are loads more Russians inside the town, but they panic. Oh my God, the Swedes are coming and they evacuate to. And so presumably this is confirming Charles in his sense that the Russians are hopeless. Of course, the Russians are useless. Here's the thing. One of those Russians who runs away is Peter the Great. Wow.

He was in the town. And so Charles was actually within, I don't know, a few hundred yards possibly or mile or whatever of capturing Peter. Weirdly, like 700 Swedes and thousands and thousands of terrified Russians. I mean, this is just how this war is working, but Peter completely believes in Charles's reputation, the Swedes reputation. So he and his army are in full retreat behind the river. And that's brilliant for Charles. He's managed to cross the Lithuanian border.

So he now puts his troops into winter quarters. It's the end of January and he says, right now we stop. Now we rest. We wait for the end of the winter. So Tommy, he is heeding your, your words about the Russian winter. Are the Russians attacking him? Are they kind of picking off foragers and that kind of thing? Well, they're in winter quarters too.

See, it's so cold. Charles has already covered almost 600 miles. So he's halfway to Moscow and he's really barely been challenged. Now being in winter quarters is not a great laugh. They all get dysentery, but Charles is very, very optimistic. He says to his men, I want you to prepare the maps now for the second leg. And that's the journey all the way to Moscow. And his quartermaster says to him him it is yet far hence to Moscow

and Charles says and I quote when we will begin to march again we shall get there never fear and actually across Europe at this point everybody thinks Charles will get there so Queen Anne's government in London which up to this point has still been recognizing Augustus the strong as the true king of Poland now says, no, no, it's obvious that Augustus and Peter are finished. And so who do they recognize as King Dominic? Our old friend Stanislaw Fleszczynski famous for his very easily pronounceable name. Do you know, I could honestly hear you say that all day.

Love it. Say it again. Stanislaw Fleszczynski. That's a strange fetish that you have Tom, but I applaud it. So Peter is doing exactly as you would expect him to. He tells his men what it calls a belt of total destruction, a hundred miles wide along all routes heading north, south or east from the Swedish camp. Every village must be burned.

Every single scrap of food or fodder removed. I want the land to be a desert for the Swedes. He is assailed by the same doubts as everybody else. Peter comes down with a terrible fever in the early months of 1708. He has to miss the Easter services because he's so ill. And he says to his friends, you know, I'm so exhausted, I'm so tired, I'm so anxious, all of this.

So the summer comes and now on the 9th of June, Charles orders his men to continue the march. Now his main force is about 35,000 men, which you might say is not that big. But if you heard the last episode, listeners will remember that there was a second Swedish force going to come down from Riga. Yeah. Up in the North, right? Exactly. Which has got a massive supply chain from Sweden. So they have thought about this and this is under a guy called count Lueven helped.

And these two armies are going to rendezvous before the advance on Moscow. Now, Peter has many more men, more than a hundred thousand, but they're really spread out across the front. And everybody knows the Swedes have a track record of beating armies much larger than themselves. You know, the odds are you could say more or less even. So Charles sets out to the beginning of June. His men cross the river Berezina and they are now heading towards Smolensk, Western

Russia. And then they turn South. It's pouring with rain. They are trudging through a sea of mud. And of course they don't have much food. They're still waiting to meet up with the second army. And at the end of the month, they meet a Russian army at a place called Holovchin, which is now in Belarus.

Just, you're just hitting out the park. I'm just doing it for the name because there are yet more WC zed why I mean honestly, yeah, so impressive Dominic so they meet at this place Holofchin and Once again the Swedes win It's a sort of all guns blazing frontal assault on the Russian line his men wading across the river Blasting with their muskets, the Russians falling back soon after dawn, yet again a win for Charles in his win column. However there is a difference this time. This is really the first time that the Russians

retreat in really good order, they don't panic, they don't throw their guns away, they don't run, it's all very calm and considered. And the thing is with each of these battles, even though the Russians are kind of retreating each time and they are always losing more men than the Swedes, but they can replace those men. There are no more Swedes once Charles has lost his men. So in this one, the Russians lost 1600 men, the Swedes 1250. But the Russians can easily find another 1600 men.

The Swedes can't find 1250. And that is presumably, it's not just because they are in the depths of Russia, but also because the reserves of manpower back in Sweden are flat. Exactly. The reserves of manpower are pretty much exhausted as we will see, I think, in next week's episode. In Sweden, people are so desperate to avoid now serving the army.

I mean, they're left with really the dregs and they are all taken to the forest or cutting off fingers or shooting themselves in the leg or something in order to avoid going because I mean, no one wants to go and campaign to Russia. So at a place called Mokylev, which was later the headquarters of Nicholas II in the Great War. Charles stops. He has reached the River Dnieper, which is the border, the historic border of Russia proper.

And here he stops on the Western bank and he waits because this is where he's going to rendezvous with Count Leuvenhaupt and the Baltic army with all the ammunition and the food and the supplies for Army with all the ammunition and the food and the supplies for the attack on Moscow and it's here that Charles's plan really starts to go wrong. So Leuvenhout, the guy who was commanding the Baltic Army, is a very very dutiful serious slightly melancholy man. Charles called him, he called him the little Latin Colonel. I thought he was's German yeah but he calls him Latin I think because they like he reads a lot of Latin oh I see not because he's like an Italian no I don't think he's a I

don't use a valuable and doing excessive gesturing or anything like that I think quite the opposite actually I think he's very reserved and love and haps is the kind of man who will follow his orders to the absolute letter you know in the face of the most overwhelming danger, but he's not great at thinking for himself and using his own initiative. Now he had set off from Riga late. It had taken him ages to get these 2,000 wagons of supplies together. He's got about 12,000 men and he's made very, very slow progress through Latvia and Lithuania. Again, the problem is the weather.

It's pouring with rain. The terrain is so wet and muddy that these wagons are always getting stuck, and his men are having to effectively build makeshift roads of timber for the wagons to roll over them as they go through these marshes and whatnot. Charles waits and waits for Lüinhapt in Mogilev. He waits for a month. Then he waits for another month.

It's now in the middle of August and there was still no sign of this Baltic relief column. His men are getting very restless and their horses are run out of fodder, out of food. So now he thinks, okay, I won't wait any longer. I'm just going to press on and this guy can catch up with me later. Okay, I won't wait any longer. I'm just going to press on and this guy can catch up with me later. So he crosses the Dnieper and by the 11th of September, he is just 50 miles outside Smolensk, but they really don't have any food at this point. And the mercenaries he is hired from Germany are very, very unhappy.

You know, we've signed up for this. This, we thought this was going to be a great campaign. And we're just incredibly hungry. Everywhere they look there's a huge pool of black smoke over the fields. The fields are burning so thick it was said that it blotted out the sun and at night in the darkness they can see the red glow of the countryside burning all the way to Slemenz because of course Peter's men have set it alight. So now Charles faces a fateful decision. He could go back to the river, to the Dnieper, to the rendezvous point and wait for Luevenhaupt. Or change direction. Instead of continuing towards Slemensk and then Moscow, he could turn south towards a Russian province called Severia, which is on the border of

modern-day Ukraine. Now why would he do that? The answer, because the fields there haven't been burned. So they could rest in this area, they could get the food they need, and then perhaps they could turn back towards the road to Moscow. And Charles is a gambler. He hates going back. He hates retreating.

So it's pretty obvious which he's going to pick. He's never going to go back to the river, to the rendezvous point. He's going to say to his man, yeah, why not? Why not head south towards Ukraine? We can find food there. And you know, we're kind of going slightly off piste and off track, but they're a long way from Sweden. We have a lot further away from Sweden, but we're only kind of going the wrong

way so that we can go the right way later. That's kind of his thinking. So it is on the 15th of September, he says to his men, we break camp, we head south towards Ukraine. This will, by the way, will be the single most disastrous decision of his life. Because three days later, Löwenhaupt does reach the rendezvous point on the Znieper. And when he gets there, there's no sign of the king, but there are messengers who say to him, the king has changed his plans. He wants you to press on south as quickly as possible. But of course, Lelvenhaupt and his guys are totally exhausted.

They've been trudging through all this mud for months. So they start very miserably to head across the river and to head south and then to his horror his scouts report they can see Russian cavalry on the horizon so the Russians are coming and what's obviously happened is Peter who up to this point has never been a great military tactician you know he hasn't actually been one of the great commanders of history by any means but he has spotted this gap between the two Swedish armies and he said, let's let Charles go to Ukraine. We'll deal with this Baltic relief column.

Let's hoover this up. He's actually adopting Charles's tactics. Yeah, I guess so. Target one of your enemies and leave the other and then. Yes, target the weaker one, deal with that and then exactly. So by the 28th of September, Lovv Lovenhaupt has been cornered by Peter near a village called Les Nyer with his back to the river. The numbers are roughly equal.

The Swedes are exhausted though, after this ridiculous march through all this mud. Peter orders the attack around midday. It lasts all afternoon. It's a horribly kind of attritional, muddy, bloody, miserable encounter. The Swedes, of course, because they're so good, even though they're exhausted, they equip themselves pretty well. And so as night falls and the snow starts falling inevitably, the honours are roughly even. And in fact, the snowstorm is so fierce they can't continue. The Russians fall back a bit and now Lovenhout has a choice to make and he says to his men,

look we can't stay here, we're absolutely shattered. I can't face a second day of this. Our priority must be to head on south and catch up with the king and that means we can't take this supply train with us. The thing they've been escorting all this way. He says we just have to destroy it, we don't want it to fall into enemy hands. These cannons that they have been dragging for hundreds of miles, they lift them out of the wagons and they bury them underground and then they set fire to the wagons. This doesn't seem a display of master strategy.

Well no I suppose it isn't. What else could he do though? The supply train is really slowing him down. I suppose he could stand and fight for a second day. Yeah. But his men are so tired that he thinks, you know, that we're really risking disaster then. Okay, so maybe I'm being harsh on him. You're not Tom, because actually what then happens is a complete and utter catastrophe. And the Swedes behave in a very un-Scandinavian way, I would say. So they've set their own wagons on fire.

And in the darkness, some of the soldiers decide they will loot the wagons of their officers and they get stuck into their brandy. They're all tanked up on brandy, which goes straight to their heads because they're so tired. Discipline completely falls apart. Some of the Swedes say, let's just run for it. And they run off into the forest. Some of them even to say, we're doomed, let's just run for it. And they run off into the forest. Some of them even to say, we're doomed,

let's desert to the Russians. And the army begins to fragment. And in the darkness, Cossack horsemen kind of come out of the woods and set upon little kind of groups of the Swedish book staggering drunkenly around. And by dawn, as dawn breaks, Lovenhout has just about managed to restore order among

his troops. But in the chaos of about 12,000 men, he has lost perhaps 6,000 overnight. He's either wandered into the snow, they've drowned, they've been picked off by the Cossacks. Is this what inspires the Swedes to make alcohol so expensive? Almost certainly. They learnt the lesson. Almost certainly. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, they have learnt the lesson. So he's lost everything.

He's lost all the clothing, the uniforms, the gunpowder, the muskets, the medicines, the cannons on which Charles was counting, a total and utter catastrophe. He manages to get the 6,000 men away and they stagger South towards Charles's camp in Severia, where they arrive 10 days later. And you can imagine Charles's face falling when he sees them. Like where are all the wagons? But can you, I actually imagine his face not falling. Yeah, you're probably right.

He would preserve his, his mask of Sanfroid, but inside there'd be a little, maybe a little twitch of his, his mouth. Or maybe he would give her kind of cold half smile as he realized. Like Svane Fortbeard. Yeah. A cold half smile as he realized that God had set him a tougher challenge than ever, but he would never doubt that it was a challenge he was bound to pass. He would sort of say, well, this will make the reports of my ultimate victory even more glowing. Yeah. And that we've done it without all these supplies. Meanwhile, Peter is delighted. Yeah. Effectively

he's knocked one of these two Swedish armies out. So Peter goes and holds a triumph. He has a triumphant Smolensk. Well, it's the third Rome, isn't it? Why not? Yeah. He forces Swedish prisoners to march to the streets with their flags. He has, it's the first time really, I think that he does this and it really imprints itself in the European imagination. He has battle descriptions and plans of the battle of Lesnaya printed in Russian and in Dutch, make sure they're sent to people all over Europe because he, you know, he wants to win the publicity war, I guess.

Of course. There's more good news for Peter. There was a third Swedish army advancing from the Baltic, which we haven't talked about at all, which was going to try and attack St. Petersburg, but they ran out of food and they were treated before they even got anywhere near St. Petersburg. So Peter is thrilled.

Like suddenly, you know, for the first time in this entire campaign, he really has the upper hand and against all the odds I think he can sense that he's going to win this and then on the 27th of October 1708 he gets a message from his friend Alexander Menshikov and this really is a bombshell because Charles has broken camp and he is marching very swiftly into Ukraine. So South away from Moscow and Sweden away from Moscow, but he's heading into the heart of Ukraine. Why? Because a man called Ivan Mazepa, the Hetman of the Zaporozhian host and

leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks, previously loyal to Peter has changed sides. After 20 years, he has abandoned the Tsar of Russia, he has thrown in his lot with the Swedes and with that the balance of the war has tipped back towards Charles XII. Goodness Dominic, another staggering twist and we will take a break now to cope with the excitement of this moment and when we come And we will take a break now to cope with the excitement of this moment. And when we come back, we will be continuing with the Great Northern War. Hi, this is Cathy Kaye from The Rest Is Politics US. And this is Anthony Scaramucci.

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Hello, welcome back to the rest is history. Charles the 12th is marching southwards and he is marching towards a country that has of course been in the news a great deal recently. And that is Ukraine. And Dominic, if there's one thing that people know about the history of Ukraine, it's unbelievably complicated, isn't it? It is complicated. So, uh, Ukrainian history in the 17th century, one-on-one.

So most of modern Ukraine had been part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth for centuries. And you can divide its population incredibly roughly and simplistically into four groups. There's a Polish landowning elite in Ukraine, Polish speaking. There are millions of what were then called Ruthenian peasants. So these are the people that will become Ukrainians. In the towns in particular, there is a Jewish population. It's a great place for kind of Jewish settlements and Jewish culture.

And there are lots and lots of kind of runaways, fugitives, freebooters, outlaws and adventurers. The people of what you might call the Wild East. And these were originally called Kazakhs or indeed Cossacks. These people have carved out their own kind of slightly semi-nomadic existence on the steppes of Ukraine. Because these are the old stamping grounds of the Scythians, isn't it? Yes, that's right. So it's very suited to horse-born raiders and all that. Exactly, who have their own kind of traditions and they've sort of developed their real mix

of kind of ruffians and ne'er-do-wells and exiles and whatnot. And over time, over the decades and the centuries, they have developed their own traditions, their own distinctive identity as Cossacks. They love a furry hat. They do love a furry hat. They also love a rebellion and a very bloody rebellion at that. So in 1648, Tom, I'm sure you remember when we did the episodes on Ukraine many, many years ago, the story of Bogdan Chmielnicki.

Of course I do. It's never out of my mind. At his rebellion against his Polish overlords, the Cossacks had revolted. They had carried out the most hideous massacres of Jews and pogroms and stuff. And they'd revolted against the Poles and they had appealed to Moscow to Muscovy for help and so this had led to the formation of a kind of Cossack military state in central Ukraine which was called the Zaporozhian host or the Zaporozhian Hetmanate and this was a vassal of the Russian Tsar and this is where Charles is now heading towards the separation head minute and the reason he's doing this is because he's been driven out of severe the province of russia where he was last.

Because the russian army is now advancing very quickly you crane has what he needs it has fertile land that is not been burned and has loads of food. our land that has not been burned and has loads of food. And it has this new ally, this new factor in the Game of Thrones, who is the Hetman of the Cossacks, Ivan Mazepa. Somebody about whom Lord Byron writes. He did a brilliant poem. And we might come on to what exactly Byron is writing about in due course, because Mazepa supposedly has quite an active adolescence doesn't he? He does, yeah we definitely come on to that. So Mazepa, this is very George RR Martin like and then we're throwing in yet another colourful character. Mazepa had been born in a place

called Podolia which is in the sort of south west of Ukraine now towards the Moldovan Romanian border and it was then part when he was born in 1645 at the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He came from an Orthodox Ruthenian, that's to say Ukrainian family, but his parents sent him to Catholic schools and a Jesuit academy and he learned Polish as well as Russian and Latin. So actually all these Latin speakers, I mean him and Charles, they'll chat away in Latin. Yeah. Here's our answer to that internal Restless History Club question.

Who would you like to invite to a dinner party? I'd invite Charles the 12th, Peter the Great, this guy Mazepa and they could all talk in Latin and Augustus the Strong tossing foxes in the background. Peter doesn't speak Latin, does he? He does speak Dutch. That's right. That's right. But I speak neither Dutch nor Latin.

So, well, you could just serve the drinks. Yeah, exactly. Oh, no, you don't want to be serving the drinks at one of Peter the Great's dinner parties, because then he brings out the bellows and you're in real trouble. You could handle the bears. Exactly. So anyway, this guy, Mazepa, the Cossack, his father got him a job as a page at the Polish court and he became a sort of junior diplomatic official.

He did old jobs for the Polish king in Ukraine. But now we come to the story Tom that I imagine you're thinking of, which is that supposedly when he was living on a country estate in northern Ukraine, he got into trouble for seducing a landowner's wife and the landowner and his mate stripped this guy Mazepa naked. They tarred and feathered him. They tied him to a horse and then they set this horse loose. Yeah. Galloping through the woods and through thorny thickets.

When he finally got home, he was so scratched and bloodied and battered that he was almost unrecognizable. And, uh, Byron writes a poem about that and his journey on the back of the horse is emblematic of the romantic spirit. Yeah. Crashing across the steps. And you know what? This never happened at all.

I know, I know, but it's a great poem, nevertheless. OK, well, you're going to be quoting Lord Baron next week's episode, aren't you? Well, that is something people look forward to. Well, they can't wait. So many people desperate to join the rest of this history club, just so they can hear that right now. Anyway, this guy, Mersepe, he ends up working as a diplomat for the Cossacks.

He travels around very widely. He goes to Russia, he goes to the Ottoman Empire and in 1687. So when he's in his early forties, the Russians pick him as the new Cossack Hetman, the new leader of the Cossacks. It's a great job, isn't it? To be a Cossack Hetman. A brilliant job. Now today in Russia, Mosea is one of the great villains

of history. You know, he really does rank among the sort of Benedict Arnold. Right, like a Benedict Arnold figure because he betrays them and joins Charles the 12th. But as with Benedict Arnold, yeah, in fact, he's a bit of a hero. Yeah, well, Benedict Arnold, certainly, he was a patriot and he was true to his loyal king. I mean, when I say a Patriot, he was a patriotic British American. Yep. We very much approve of that. But, um, Mazepa is not a sort of slimy villainous, he's not like little finger from game of Thrones or something.

He's fun. Isn't he? He's bright. He's charming. He's ambitious, but he's very good at politics. Now he's been the Cossack Hetman for 13 years. He's approaching 60 years old and he's been playing this very complicated political and very tricky and dangerous political game because what he reminds

me of are the people who are the kind of Russian client leaders today in that sort of Chechnya or Belarus or whatever. Oh, all those people with the enormous orange beards. Right. Those kinds of guys. He's a person who has to basically ride two horses. He has to keep him in Moscow You know, he can never alienate the government in Moscow

But at the same time he has to show to his people that he's not just Moscow's puppets that actually, you know He's a very proud patriot and he's getting stuff out of Moscow that no one else could get you know, and he's got to sort of please these two constituencies, I suppose and And he's got to sort of please these two constituencies, I suppose. And his independence therefore is very important to him. So although he is dependent on Moscow to some degree, he has to appear autonomous. That really matters to the Cossacks in particular because their frontier spirit, I don't want to degenerate into Cossack cliches, but their proud frontier wild spirits, that's really important to them.

But they began as runaways, right? As adventurers and outlaws and stuff. So, Mazepa has always been, you know, he's always been in with Peter. In the great Sophia versus Peter stuff from the first week of this series, he'd been on Team Sophia for a long time, but the timed it perfectly. And they defected to Peter just before Peter. And so that's the kind of the marker of the political skills that you were talking about and which you need to survive in the predatory world of Russian politics. Exactly. So Peter thinks this guy Mazep is lovely. He's colorful, he's funny, he's very smart.

Whenever he came to Moscow, Peter gave him kind of honors. He gave him the Order St. Andrew, the thing that had been offered to the Duke of Marlborough. He gets Augustus the strong to give him the order of the white Eagle from Poland. So, you know, he festoons him with honors. The problem is that once you get into the war and the total war, the price of being dependent on Moscow is getting higher and higher because of course, Peter's demanding conscripts, his levying taxes on mustaches as well as wills and births and deaths. And I imagine that Mzeppa has a tremendous mustache.

The Cossacks pride themselves I imagine on their mustaches and their beards. Peter is constantly saying send me more laborers for St Petersburg, send me food for the army, all of this kind of thing, which creates great resentment among the Cossacks. And of course, Mzeppa doesn't want to be blamed. Right. Because they're a proud independent people. A proud independent people. What is more, they are a proud independent, orthodox people, and they are as alarmed as anybody, if not more so, at this talk of cutting people's caftans into trimming people's beards,

excessive shaving, Germanic ways. This stuff goes down really badly with the Cossacks. But I mean that doesn't necessarily mean that they will therefore side with a Lutheran invader, right? No, not at all. You know, there's a lot of clean shaven Swedes. I mean, they're all clean shaven I imagine. Exactly. Apart from what's his name? Benny. Benny from ABBA. He had a beard. Yeah.

I mean, this is a really niche and obscure reference, but Sweden's best player at the 1990 World Cup was man called Glenn Stromberg. He had a massive beard. And so did Bjerg Borg, the great tennis player. So actually it's not an absolute rule, is it? We should definitely do. When the rest of history has become really decadent We've run out of history on the Swedish beer History's greatest sweet

Yeah That's yeah, I Can't believe we're doing Chatham High Street and we're not doing that. That's deranged I mean Chatham High Street is an absolutely obvious topic, right? So to go back to what we were saying you're dead right that all of this wouldn't necessarily encourage you to rebel. I think what changes everything is the war and the course of the war, because by about 1706, when it looks like Charles is definitely going to win, Mzeppa has to start thinking, well, what do I do? You know, I've been loyal to Peter and Peter's vassal.

He doesn't want to end and Peter's vassal. He doesn't want to end up like Augustus the strong. He doesn't want to end up being toppled and deposed by Stanislaw Fleshtyn. He definitely doesn't want that. I mean, I guess it's like the situation he faced with Sophia and, and Peter, you know, you've got to time your betrayal expertly, haven't you? Time your betrayal. And his dream, I think, is that if he times his betrayal just right, Charles will make him king in some way or make him prince or basically he'll be able

to establish a hereditary Cossack monarchy and Mazepa and his dynasty. And Charles is not aiming to rule the Ukraine. No. So there's a serious prospect of him being given full independence, I guess. Yes, exactly right. And in the spring of 1708, so just at the point where we are in the story, Peter starts to get reports from another Cossack bigwig that Mazepa is talking to the Swedes in secret.

Now, as it happens, the reason that this guy informs on Mazepa is that Mazepa has seduced his daughter, who's about, you know, 15 and Mazepa is 60 Mazepa has seduced his daughter who's about you know 15 and Mazepa is 60. So Peter discounts the rumours, he says well this guy's clearly just sour grapes because Mazepa's sleeping with this bloke's daughter and then Mazepa is able to have this guy beheaded. That's right, so that's worked out well for him. But not for the girl, I mean this is bad news for the girl right? What happens to the girl?

Well her dad's just had his head cut off and she's a teenager and she's sleeping with a 60 year old man. Nothing good has happened to her. That could be worse. I mean, she could have been murdered. I suppose so. We don't know what it's like. You know what?

Mazepa's company is like they do, we tell them. I mean, that might be a fate worse than death. He could tell her amusing stories of his youth being tied to horses. Can indeed. Now the irony is of course, at this point, the Mazepa does really decide to back Sweden after all. Dominic, how is he going to do this? Because I guess it's a very delicate process, isn't it, to portray someone like Peter the Great? It is, it is. You have to time it perfectly.

Now all that summer 1708 as Charles is kind of faffing around further north, more and more rumors are reaching Peter that Mazepa is wobbling. And Mazepa is holed up in the Cossack stronghold at a place called Baturin. This is the great kind of, to the degree that the Cossacks have a capital, this is it, isn't it? Exactly, exactly. And I sort of imagine it being like this sort of Dothraki in Game of Thrones or something.

Of course you do. Yeah, obviously. And Peter summons Mazepa, come and explain yourself and explain what's going on. And Mazepa sends a series of excuses to say that he's ill and he can't come. And then eventually he goes to the extent of taking to his deathbed and getting a priest to give him the last rites. I mean, that's kind of like trying to get off P.E. taking it to a ridiculous extent. Exactly.

But then end of September 1708, yet more bombshell news. First of all, Charles is now heading straight for Baturin, hotly pursued by Russian armies. So the war is coming to Ukraine and the Cossacks are clearly going to have to pick a side. Yeah, because they've got no choice now. No choice. And secondly, Alexander Menshikov, Peter's great pal, is riding to Baturin himself with a party of Dragoons to see if Mazepa really is dying, bringing a thermometer, taking temperature, and to choose his successor when he does die. Right. He actually hates Menshikov already.

And he thinks, Oh no nightmare. So he summons his 2000 closest and most loyal retainers and they mount their horses and they ride out of Baturin for the Swedish camp to rendezvous with Charles. So when Menshikov finally arrives at the Cossack citadel with a small force of dragoons, he finds that Mazepa is long gone and he immediately reports to Peter, disaster, Mezeppa has deserted us and thrown in his lot with Charles XII. But he's only taken 2,000, he hasn't taken the rest of the Cossacks. He's only taken 2,000 exactly, he's then going to raise the rest of the Cossacks afterwards. So Peter acts very quickly and very decisively, he orders Menshikov and his dragoons to fan out

across the countryside to prevent anybody joining Mzeppa. It does seem that Peter is getting the hang of war by this point. He is. Peter was really making a series of very good decisions now, like very smart decisions. You could argue it's easy to do that when circumstances are in your favour. But the Swedes are still a formidable adversary. I mean he's a guy who learns, doesn't he? Yes, absolutely.

Well, we saw going around shipyards in Amsterdam and London. I mean, he's a man who enjoys learning things. Yes, and he's making good, decisive, very ruthless but effective decisions. So he issues a public proclamation to the people of Ukraine. And he says, Mzeppa is the new Judas. I mean, that's literally how he's described. He is defected in order to put the land of little Russia as before under the dominion of Poland and to turn the churches and monasteries over to the Catholics. Now the interesting thing about this, of course, is there's no mention of the Swedes or Lutheranism, but it's playing on the deep dislike that the kind of ordinary Ruthenian peasants and

the Cossacks have for their former Polish overlords. Yeah, very cunning. So what's happening with Mazepa and Charles? Well the Swedes have been delighted to see Mazepa. They've been very excited to see him and of course Charles is delighted because he thinks well when we get to his citadel. Yeah, to Batcharin, Batcharin must be full of all kinds of supplies and goodies, which is what they need.

Supplies, gunpowder, fur hats. Shelter. Exactly. So by early November they have crossed the rivers into the steppes of central Ukraine and on the 11th of November Charles's scouts glimpse Batchurin on the horizon. So fire, food, welcome. But the closer they get, they see smoke rising overhead. Oh no. Because Baturin is burning. While Charles had been on his way, Alexander Menshikov's dragoons had stormed the Cossack capital.

They had slaughtered 6,000 men, women and children. They had destroyed all the Cossack supplies and they had burned the fortress to the ground. And then they'd held this public ceremony where they had officially stripped Mazepa of his title as the Hetman. They had dragged his portrait through the dust and then hanged it from the gallows beside the piles of butchered bodies. And then they got the Metropolitan of Kyiv, the sort of great churchmen, to read a sentence of excommunication and anathema against Mazepa. And amazingly, this was read out in Ukrainian churches every year until 1869, which is one reason I guess why his name endures in Russia and Ukraine is this kind of great character of history.

Of course, for the Russians, a great villain. Yeah. And now for Ukrainian nationalists, they see him as much more of a hero. I mean, what is clear is that Charles the 12th and Peter the great are two of history's great grudge holders. They are. I mean, they are Titanic in the grudges that they hold. Exactly.

But of course this changes the picture for the war. First of all it sends a very clear signal to all the other cossacks if you join Mzeppa and back Sweden then Peter's wrath will be terrible his retribution swift to quote the Lord of the Rings. It means that Charles isn't going to get the food and supplies that he needs and it kind of makes Mzeppa irrelevant now because he's just hanging around with Charles. But what can he bring Charles? He's no longer the leader of the Cossack. But surely also, I mean, on the geopolitics of the war, it also means that it's mad that Charles XII is in Ukraine when he's a Swede who's aiming to march on Moscow.

I mean, he's now essentially completely the raw end of Europe. He is. He's gone massively out of his way. And with nothing to show for it. I mean, he's in this bigger hole as he ever was. A bigger one, perhaps. Exactly, because now the Russians are chasing him. They're blocking the roads to the north.

And as you say, he has no supplies. And now where are we? We're in Ukraine in November. Winter is coming. So now both sides hunker down for the winter. If you look at a map of Ukraine, the Swedes are in a place called Hadjach, which is roughly midway between Kiev and Kharkiv on today's map. The Russians are kind of blocking them in an arc to the north east stopping them from getting back up to was moskow. What are the both. You know on campaign in winter this is a lot better for peter is on home to rain is gonna lose a man power and he's got time on his side.

What's really crucial now is it's not just as it were the russian ukrainian winter it's a winter like no other. Ukrainian winter, it's a winter like no other. Because we talked about this a long time ago, one of our early episodes about how the weather changed history. This winter of 1708-1709 is the worst winter in Europe for 500 years. The Baltic, the Seine, the Thames, the canals of Venice, even the Atlantic harbours, they all freeze over. There are all these reports from all over Europe of farm animals freezing to death in the fields. In France alone, half a million people froze or starved to death.

And Dominic, even more importantly, doesn't the wine in Versailles freeze? It does. Yeah, right, exactly. The wine in Versailles froze. The British economy shrunk by a quarter and didn't recover its value for years. And in the open steps of Ukraine where there is no respite from the kind of howling snowstorms, it is just awful. And this is what we began with, that reading.

So this is where the bloke loses his foot to frostbite. A Lutheran pastor who was with the Swedish army wrote afterwards, the spittle from people's mouths turned to ice before hitting the ground. Sparrows fell frozen from the roofs to the ground. You could see men without hands, others without hands and feet, some who had lost their fingers, faces, ears and noses, others crawling around on all fours. There were reports of kind of dragoons sitting on their horses, frozen solid with the rains in their hands,

and they have to be sort of sawn off to get them off the horse. Oh, God. So in all, perhaps 3,000 men, 3,000 Swedes froze to death. So how large is the force now? Probably well under 30,000, I would have said. That's a sizeable number then. Now the amazing thing is that Charles is still so reckless. Not a scratch, but a trifle as he said to that guy.

Yeah, not a trifle. So in January, he tries to attack. He just to sort of liven things up a bit. He says, well, why don't we attack this course Cossack village nearby? And he sends 3000 men to attack this village and he loses 400 of those men killed and 800 of them wounded, men he can ill afford to lose. And one of the men who is wounded, and this will be important later, is his right hand man who we haven't mentioned yet and we'll talk about him in the next episode, who is

a guy called Field Marshal Karl Gustav Reinskild and he's hit by shrapnel in the chest and never really recovers. So from this point onwards Charles's right-hand man is is kind of badly wounded. In the middle of February Charles tries to get out of his kind of winter quarters and go move east towards Harkiv but yet more freak weather, thunderstorms, driving rain, floods, he has to go back. And by the time he's ready to move again in April, his men are half starved, they're completely bedraggled. Their boots have rotted, their sodden uniforms are in rags and their gunpowder is so wet that their artillery is basically useless. And also a lot of their artillery, of course, is buried hundreds of miles to the north,

where what's his name had left them? Yeah, where Count Leuvenhout left them, exactly. Charles, of course, is still very jolly. He sent a letter to our old friend Stanislav Leschinsky and said, my men are in very good condition, and we're very close to winning football. And I think he genuinely believes it. He's so convinced that they can't be beaten and that God is on their side.

It's a road bump. Exactly. It's a bump in the road, but you know, we can see the end of light at the end of the tunnel if I'm not mixing my transport based metaphors. One of his chief advisors, in fact, his, his sort of chief minister is a guy called Count Piper. I don't think it related to the ensign Piper that we began with. He said to him, look, this is really the point where we should give up on this mad scheme.

Why don't we go west back to Poland? And Charles said, no, no, no, no, no. What we actually need is to get reinforcements. And he says, we'll send messengers to Sweden. We will get the Polish Royal Army under Leszczynski to join us. And I'm going to send envoys to the Crimean Tatars because they hate the Russians and once we've got all them on board we can march north and take Moscow just as we thought and the mad thing is that Charles is so confident that when

Peter sent a captured Swedish officer to suggest a compromise to say come on now should we have peace should we have a truce? Charles did not even bother to reply because Peter was still saying as part of the compromise, I'd like to keep us in Petersburg. So I said, Oh, well, if you want to keep us in Petersburg, it's no, yeah, nothing to be talked about. There's no way you're going to, you know, I'm going to win this war. It's crazy or heroic depending on your perspective, or maybe both.

One battle can change the course of history and Charles is gambler and gambles sometimes pay off. We did the Battle of Hastings a few weeks ago didn't we and that did change the course of history. And talking of battles where is Charles heading now? So in the end of April Charles says to his men we'll break camp we'll head southeast to a place where we can rendezvous with the Crimeans and with the Poles when they turn up. And the place he has in mind is a small town called Poltava on the bank of the river Vorskla. It's a kind of wooden fortress and it has a Russian garrison, about 5,000 men with cannons.

So it's quite like the kind of forts that you get in the American West in the 19th century. Yeah, a little bit. That's exactly how I imagine it. Cause I imagine this landscape having never been to Ukraine. I imagine it as being sort of quite American West kind of nobler's creek. Exactly. So by May 1709, Charles's army is entrenched west of this town. Now this is very unusual for the Swedes cause they don't normally like sieges, a bit like they're Viking forebears actually, and many of Charles's officers are a bit confused why they're

laying siege to this actually reasonably insignificant fort and the reason they think is that actually the siege is a lure. He's hoping to lure Peter the Great to battle because Charles is confident in a set piece pitch battle he will always win. This siege drags on for six weeks. The weather is now ironically becoming punishingly hot. You can't win. No, you can't. So the Swedes in their rags with their salt and gunpowder are sort of dripping with sweat, being beset by flies. Well, the Swedes don't

like heat. They don't like heat. Except in a sauna. I love a Swedish summer as you know I've been on holidays in Sweden. I know you do yeah. I like a Baltic dip I think it's lovely and sunny. I'm good I Swedish tourist board should get in touch. I think it's really nice and sunny and I think it's not too hot and I like that. Yeah kind of one of those white, but a black sky overhead. It's very romantic. Yeah. That's Iceland, a black beach with a black sky. We had it on Gotland.

Did you? Gotland is absolutely gorgeous. I really recommend Gotland to people. We are approaching one of the great battles in world history and here we are talking about Swedish tourist spots. Come on. Discipline. All right.

So the Swedes are outside Poltava. So think of it this way. The Swedes on the left hand side of the picture as you look at it, then the town, then a river. And then on the right hand side of the picture on the Eastern bank, the Russian army is assembling under Boris Sheremetyev and Alexander Menshikov, who are then joined by Peter the Great. So all the kind of Russian big guns. All the lads. Exactly. Now all this time, Peter's strategy has been to avoid a big battle with the Swedes,

but now he's beginning to rethink. He has about 80,000 men. The Swedes have about 30,000, he thinks. And, you know, many of them with no toes. And they haven't got any gunpowder either. Gunpowder is all, yeah, absolutely dripping with water. Peter's agents have told him that Paltava will probably fall by the end of June. He really needs to strike before that because he doesn't want Charles to get

into the fort and then to use it as a base. So Peter summons his commanders and he says, look, this is the moment. We'll get our army across the river to the Western bank and then we'll unleash our artillery and our weighted numbers against the Swedes. The difficulty is in crossing the river Vorskla. It's a wide, deep and marshy river and he says well we'll cross further north, seven miles north of the town where it's a little bit shallower and we should be able to get across. The Swedes know that the Russians are going to do this, their scouts have reported on it. So by about the 15th and 16th of June they are on full battle alert, their plan is set, Field Marshal Reinskjöld will take care of the Russians, he will let their vanguard across first and then

he will fall on them and destroy them before the rest of the Russian force can join them. It's a good plan. And then the next day, Charles XII's birthday, fate takes a hand. So Charles is turning 27. And so far in these 27 years, he has laughed in the face of danger and death. He's ridden the horses off cliffs. He's wrestled with bears. Yeah, he has gone in full view of Russian gunners and he's had horses shot under him and God has always smiled on him. But the story today on his birthday will be very different. At dawn, he rides out with his elite bodyguard who are called the Drabants to inspect the Swedish defenses on the river.

And Russian musketeers, just as usual, on the other side of the river open fire and Charles completely ignores them and he's just turned away to ride his horse back up the bank when a Russian musket ball smacks into the left heel of his boot travels right through his foot and it comes out through his big toe now unbelievably or unbelievably, or indeed, believably, if you've been following Charles' career till now, he doesn't flinch. A Polish nobleman who's with him sees this, but Charles says, don't you dare say a word.

There goes your foot. Good Lord. So it does. That kind of thing. Exactly. Then he continues the tour of the defenses without saying anything for another three hours. I mean, that is insane, isn't it? I mean, can you imagine? I mean, if I had a blister, I'd be straight back to the camp and demanding medical attention. He's a proper hero in that sense.

I mean, if a hero is a kind of someone who is midway between the mortal and the divine, I mean, that is superhuman. This is such Alexander the Great behaviour. Yeah. Isn't it? It's absolute Alexander the Great behaviour. So he gets back to the camp riding his horse, of course, his foot in the stirrup. He is deathly pale when he gets back there and blood is literally oozing out of his boot. And as he tries to dismount, he puts his foot down. The pain is so overwhelmingly agonizing.

He collapses in a dead faint and they rush around him. They see there's all his blood pouring out of his boot. His foot has become so swollen. They have to cut his boot off and they find inside the bones of his foot had been shattered and his foot is full of splinters of bone. Oh, you see, I feel like fainting just hearing that. The doctors hesitate when they see this. They're like, Oh my God.

And Charles, this is the best bit. He wakes up, he looks at the doctors as this brilliant line slash away, slash away. And then he picks up a pair of scissors and cuts into his foot himself to open it up for them. I know. So anyone who's prone to kind of, you know, moaning, bear that in mind. Exactly. Think of the Swedish king and man up. So the news spreads through the Swedish camp.

The king has been hurt. All this Charles says initially before he passes out, I'll be back in the saddle before you know it. In fact, his foot becomes very badly infected and he comes down with fever. Two days later, the 19th of June, the infection has spread up to his knee and the surgeons want to amputate his leg and the only reason they don't is because they're terrified that when he wakes up he will have them attacked by a bear or something in punishment because the thought of losing his leg would be so dreadful for him. So they don't do it.

By the 21st, two days after that, it is pretty clear to them that he will die within hours. And in fact, at this point, his childhood servant has been summoned to his bedside to read him his favorite boyhood fairy tales. That's nice. Isn't that touching? Now, meanwhile, Field Marshal Reinskild has come back from the river where she was meant to be defending to be with the King and he says to the other officers, look we can't fight this, you know, death or glory battle while the King is lying

dying. Why not? They're so shaken by the loss of their leader, but also we need to be with him and we need to be on hand when he does die. That's madness. Well, what would he want? He wanted to go and fight. I suppose he would, but they're very loyal, aren't they? But if you're loyal, you obey your king's orders. Well, I just feel Charles is, you know, he's, he's being let down left, right. And center by all his, I suppose, I mean, he's appointed them. So it's his fault to that extent.

Oh, right. It's all Charles's fault. Ultimately, is it? That's poor from you to, he's in command. You're absolutely right. Yeah. It's all Charles's fault ultimately, is it? That's poor from you too. Well, he's in command. You're absolutely right. Because while he's lying there on his deathbed, the Russians do cross to the Western Bank. Of course, they're still a long way. They're seven miles north of Poltava, but they're now on the same side of the bank as the Swedes.

And they've lost the chance to inflict, you know, a murderous descent on them. Of course. And the Russians have pulled off the most difficult bit of Peter's plan without really facing an enemy shot. Oh, it makes me weep for the Swedes. Then on the 22nd of June, two dramatic developments. First of all, there's sort of movement in Charles's tent and then to the light of his troops. He is brought out on a stretcher.

He is not dead. The fever has broken against all the odds. He is still very weak, but he is alive and he is kind of saluting to them. And then as he's lying there on the stretcher, the messengers arrive from the Poles and the Crimean Tatars. And guess what? The Crimeans aren't coming. Their Ottoman overlords have said no, don't help the Swedes. And what is worse, the Poles aren't coming either. This bloke Stanislaw Fleszczynski, Charles's puppet has completely let him down. He says, Oh, my kingdom is too insecure.

My rule is a little bit fragile. It'd be reckless for me to send an army to help you now. I mean, he may have a great name, but that's poor behavior. It is poor behavior. So count Piper at this point, the minister, he says to Charles, we must get out of here immediately. This is a disaster. We must head for the river Dnieper, cross it, get into Poland, sign a truce with Peter.

If we have to, we just have to escape with you and the army intact. And Charles says to him, under no circumstances, there'll be no retreat, there's no deal with Peter the Great. Now the thing is, Charles's mental state at this point must be very, I mean that must be very fragile, because he's nearly died, he's only just coming out of a fever, basically the inside of his foot has been shredded. Hasn't eaten a square meal for about 12 months. I wonder if, I mean he's almost died but he hasn't.

Has God preserved him? I think there's a big element of that. I think he's sitting there probably with a kind of sheen of cold sweat on his face. Thinking, I've cheated death once again, fate has spared me for higher things. And I think he also thinks enough of this now. You know, Peter is only seven miles away. Let's finish this. Let's have the pitch battle that I've always wanted. I don't think he ever doubts that he will win it. Because on the Sunday, the 27th of June, five days later, they have

their morning prayers and then he calls his generals to his bedside. He says, the Russians may have the greater numbers, but we have the experience, we have the tactics, and we have God's support. If we take them unawares, if we strike first, we can trap them against the river, we can smash their army, and we could maybe even capture Peter himself. And if we do that, then we win the war, you know, in a morning. And he says tomorrow outside Poltava, we will have the final showdown to decide the fate of Northern Eastern Europe. Tom, the winner takes it all.

The loser has to fall. We'll be standing small. Yeah. Yeah. And so it is that in the early hours of the following morning, the final showdown, the battle of Poltava begins. Well, who will win it? There's only one way to find out.

And that is if you are a member of the Restless History Club to go on and listen to our account of this epic battle right away. If you are not, then you can still do that by heading to the rest is history.com and signing up or you can wait until next week. Yeah, don't wait. But whatever you choose, we will be back next time for the final showdown. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Hi everybody, you're still here.

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