The Coinage of Peter I Part Three: 1705-1711
IN 1700 THE Great Northern War, which had broken out between Russia and Sweden, at first had gone against Russia. Swedish King Charles XII, thinking that Russian forces would never be a match for his small, but superbly trained legions, turned his fury against Poland after the Russian defeat at Narva in November 1700.
Charles XII brought the weak Polish state to its knees, forcing the King, Augustus II, from the throne in November 1706 and installing his own man, Stanislaus Lesczynski, at the royal palace in Warsaw. In the meantime, Swedish attempts to dislodge the Russians from the Baltic shoreline proved futile; in the summer of 1707 Charles XII at last realized that Peter was no mean adversary and prepared for a full-scale war.
The Swedes invaded Russia in the fall of 1707, hoping for a decisive victory which would restore their prestige and power. Charles XII discovered that Peter had mobilized far too many men for his small army to defeat and counted instead on a rising against Moscow by Cossacks and Ukrainians. To this end, contacts were made with Ivan Mazepa, hetman of the Dnieper Cossacks.
Mazepa allied himself to Charles but Peter I promptly replaced him with someone loyal to Moscow. The Ukrainians and Cossacks did not rise
