Ragnhild Marie Hatton, “Charles XII, King of Sweden, 1682-1718”, Londen 1968.
Pag. 643, index
Meijerfelt (or Meijerfeldt), Johan August, Count, Swedish officer.
That Charles had charm, especially in the day-to-day encounters with those who served him or who were otherwise thrown into close contact with him, is abundantly testified. He had a sense of humour which comes across to us down the years in many sayings of his, short and to the point, slightly cynical at times as he grew older, which spiced the often hard and humdrum life of the war years of those around him. In the same way, he himself preferred those serving him to be histigh, of lively and reasonably cheerful disposition, able to make light of difficulties with quips and stories and wry jokes. To young observers at headquarters this was sometimes hidden: to them the King himself and his civil and military advisers looked serious, burdened with weighty business and much responsibility; but nearly all those who got close to the King shared a forceful, direct and basically optimistic temperament. Physical courage was part of their make-up, as of his; moral courage also, and a directness of approach in discussion of problems which suited Charles XII who, in his turn, allowed those in the inner circle – men like Rehnskiold, Piper, Cederhielm in the early years, Feif, Meijerfelt, the Prince of Hesse. Gortz and others later on – astonishing freedom of expression and opinion.
The outstanding example is the Stockholm burgher Olof Hansson, one of whose daughters married Count Piper, another Arvid Horn, and a third Meijerfelt.
But 1704 also brought set-backs. Charles and the main army had moved away from Warsaw at the end of June, to join Rehnskiold in the Sandomir region and press southern and eastern areas into acceptance of Stanislaus. Their move naturally weakened Swedish defence of the west : a small garrison under Horn’s command was left to succour Stanislaus in Warsaw, and Meijer- felt had few Swedish troops for the protection of Great Poland since the Poles were assumed to be able to hold the country for Stanislaus. Field- Marshal Steinau with a detachment from the Saxon army slipped through the gap across the Silesian border; but Meijerfelt, on 9 August (N.S.), beat a larger number of Saxons who entered the Posen district under General Schulenburg’s command. ^^ Shortly afterwards, however, while Charles and Rehnskiold were scoring successes in the south-east, among them the con- quest of Lemberg,t the fortified capital of Red-Russian Poland, Augustus with some three thousand Saxons and nine thousand Russian auxiliaries conquered Warsaw, Stanislaus’s Polish army withdrawing without a fight. Horn capitulated once the garrison roof was blazing over his soldiers’ heads: they were willing to fight but not to be burnt alive, their commander explained when he justified his capitulation. This was laid squarely at Charles XII’s own door, since he had left too few men in Warsaw to make a real defence possible. The blame was accepted, and Horn and Reuterholm, who had become Patkul’s prisoner and found him a fascinating conversationaHst, were exchanged in March 1705.
Battle of a sort did ensue, but not of the kind which Charles had hoped for. Tsar Peter grouped his forces along the river Belaya Natopa north of Mala- titze* in marshy country astride the Swedish route. When the Swedes arrived they found, to quote Jeflferyes’s report, ’the ennemy had sett out severall posts on horseback by the side of a morass, and perceiv’d soon after their whole army encamp’d by a wood, having the said morass before them, which cover’d their front and both wings. King Charles collected his army and let it encamp along another river, the Chernaya Natopa, which bordered the marsh. In the night of 31 August a body of Russians thought to consist of nine thousand infantry and four thousand dragoons crossed the marsh, and at 7 o’clock in the morning, helped by a thick mist, attacked two of the Swedish regiments which were isolated beyond the right wing of the camp. These suffered a fair number of casualties before they received help which forced the Russians to retire. This skirmish was assumed by the Swedes to be the opening stages of a regular battle, and the next day Charles xii made his dispositions. In the night of 2 September the army divided into two groups, one under the King and one under Meijerfelt, and crossed the Chernaya Natopa on bridges constructed the previous day. At Walowniki battle formation was set up in the hope that the Russians would accept a fight. The marshy
At Tatarsk, on the very border of Russia, came an agonizing moment of decision. We know it was agonizing because commentators and diarists noted the prolonged talks that took place between the King and his advisers. We know the outcome of the talks – a move away from the direct Smolensk route to Moscow – and we know that Charles consulted Rehnskiold and Piper in particular. Meijerfelt was present,38 as well as the two chief advisers, when Gyllenkrook was given the decision to move south, and it is possible that he also had been consulted.* A hint in a letter he wrote to Charles many years later, in the autumn of 171 8, would seem to support this, for he prefaces the advice he there gives on an issue that to him seems important! with the words that he has ‘once before’ taken the liberty to speak very frankly when vital decisions had to be taken. We have no reports of what was actually debated and discussed – apart from the advantages of a more southern invasion route which can be deduced from what Gyllenkrook was told at his interview with the King – but four facts were inescapable and must have been taken into account. The army was short of food ; Tsar Peter was putting the country between Tatarsk and Smolensk on fire using his Kalmucks and Cossacks to lay it waste; there were murmurings among the soldiers; and Lewenhaupt was not likely to join the main army with his supply train for several weeks.
* I am inclined to believe – though I cannot prove this conclusively – that Meijerfelt may have been consulted on the morale of the non-Swedish troops; but he may also, vide Bennedich, K.F.A., 191 1, p. 105, have been the major-general in attendance on the King at the time.
Among the initiated who knew of the Polish-Swedish contacts with Mazepa, there was naturally no emphasis on bringing Mazepa the enemy to reason, and much talk of cooperation with a prospective ally. When Gyllenkrook was called to Charles’s quarters in Tatarsk to be told of the decision to turn south, he found Meijerfelt there, as well as Rehnskiold and Piper, and as both Meijerfelt and Gyllenkrook have left independent but collaborative records of what was said on that occasion we have here the ‘official’ version for the turning away from the Smolensk-Moscow road to the south. Messages had arrived from Mazepa, Gyllenkrook was told by the King, begging Swedish help and protection since there was no sign of Stanislaus who was supposed, according to Pohsh-Ukrainian verbal agreements, to be close enough to protect Mazepa when Charles moved on Moscow.
In two hours of a short afternoon the Swedes had lost four hundred men and had about six hundred wounded. Among the wounded was General Rehnskiold. Spliters from a grenade had hit him, but the contusion in his chest was more serious ; he never recovered his health completely. The losses in officers who had been killed outright or who died from their wounds were frightful for the regiments that took part: Edvard Gyldenstolpef was killed, his brother Karl died, ‘not from his wounds’, wrote Meijerfelt, ‘but from grief at having lost his brother’. The army mourned these and many others, feeling that the flower of the officer-corps had been taken from them. It was little comfort that the Veprik garrison gave in in the night of 7-8 January
At Pushkarivka Mazepa and Hordienko had put their Cossacks in a posture of defence, and it was here that the remnants of the Swedish regiments collected. Roos had capitulated when Russian troops reached Poltava at 11 o’clock and told him that the battle was lost; but the two regiments left to guard Poltava managed to fight their way to Pushkarivka. By midday most of the beaten army had reached the safety of the baggage and could rest and refresh themselves. Charles was among the last to reach Pushkarivka. Hultman rebandaged his foot and got him something to eat. He asked for Rehnskiold and Piper and wanted to know the fate of Prince Maximilian who as colonel of the Scanian dragoons had fought on the left wing. When it was clear that all three were missing, he sent Meijerfelt to the Tsar in the hope of arranging their exchanges if they were still alive. The Swedes had left some ten thousand on the battlefield, 6,901 deadj and 2,760 prisoners of the Tsar.
The artillery and the precious wagons which carried the cash belonging to respective regiments reached Perevolotjna in the evening of 29 June. Between 29 and 30 June the whole army and most of the baggage arrived. Creutz, with the rearguard, caught up at 4 o’clock. To his conference with Charles he brought news that the Russian pursuit had now started: regular Russian troops, not only Cossack detachments, were on the march, though their number was not known. Furthermore, no suitable places for the crossing of the Vorskla had been discovered though he had been on the look-out for them. The King’s news was not encouraging either: Gyllenkrook had just reported to him that it would not be possible to get the whole army across the Dnieper before Russians in pursuit could be expected to catch up with the Swedes at Perevolotjna. Meijerfelt could be relied on to do his best to post- pone such pursuit;* but that it would be mounted was regarded as certain.
* He did, by the initial impact of his report of Charles’s willingness to negotiate peace obtain half a days postponement.
Pag. 311
News of the Perevolotjna surrender, and of the quick move of masses of Russian troops into Poland which followed it,^ made Charles xii aware that he was reduced for some considerable time to be a pawn in other men’s games. Odd rumours of the capitulation reached the Swedes towards the end of July, but certainty did not have to be accepted till Meijerfelt arrived in Bender’ on 2 August. It was a blow from which Charles xii never recovered, though those who were present tell us his face remained stoically calm when he heard the news.« But the deep impression it made on him can be seen from a comparison of the letters which he wrote which touched upon Poltava and Perevolotjna. In his report on Poltava, he praised the behaviour of his men and explained the ‘setback’* which had brought such heavy losses by the advantageous position and the firmness in attack of the enemy. In its several pages there is no reference to God or to heavenly punishment that might be intended by the ‘setback’, but the expression ‘a fated and unlucky happening’! hits the eye. This is the first time that the word ‘fated’ is mentioned in the letters which have survived from his pen; later still the adjective gave way to the noun when he had, in private letters, to impart news of the death in battle of individuals known to him. Odet – Fate with a capital – meets us again and again in the letters of his later years. But whether this sprang from an aversion
Pag. 322
The heat of August 1709 was used by Charles xii as an excuse to move out of Bender as soon as he heard from Meijerfelt of the surrender at Perevolotjna . He pitched his camp opposite the town, across the Dniester, ‘on that side of the River which is towards Germany’. The choice of site was not fortuitous. It was believed to be influenced by easy access for provisions – the Turks who
Pag. 323
With the move out of Bender, Charles xii parted physical company with Mazepa. The hetman was ill and bedridden and was quartered in a house in the town so that he might be nursed properly. But cooperation and trust remained. Charles xii indignantly refused the Tsar’s offer – conveyed through Meijerfelt – to free Piper in return for Mazepa being delivered to ‘his justice’ f and Mazepa put his Cossacks (who made their own camp at Varnitza, about a quarter of an hour’s march from that of the Swedes) at Charles’s command for the exploratory military ventures in Poland which he knew the King had in mind. Collaboration between the Swedes and the Cossacks continued even after Mazepa’s death on 22 September, under the new hetman Orlyk, though relations were to some extent strained by Charles xii supporting Mazepa’s heir, his nephew Voynarovsky, in his race with the Cossack leaders for the treasures left by his uncle.
Pag. 324
At the time of Mazepa’s funeral on 25 September – undertaken with as much pomp and circumstance as conditions permitted^ – Charles had begun to hobble along on crutches, and to ride with a support for his leg. Long before that time he had sent out an expedition of some hundred Swedes and a large Cossack force under the command of Gyllenkrook to test whether it would be possible to cross from Moldavia into Poland and to make contact with Krassow and Stanislaus : indeed, as Nilsson has shown, an advance-party for himself and his entourage as soon as he was fit enough to travel long distances. The peace-terms which Meijerfelt brought from the Tsar were totally unacceptable and it was necessary to think of means to restore Sweden’s fortunes enough to make Peter change his tune. For, flushed with the victory of Poltava and the capture of experienced soldiers and officers at Perevolotjna, Peter demanded the fulfilment not only of his own objectives but also those of his former allies. Travendal and Altranstadt were to be rescinded : if Charles wanted peace he must hand Scania, Halland and Blekinge to the King of Denmark and must recognize the Elector of Saxony as King of Poland once more though he need not hand over Swedish territory to Augus- tus. The booty Augustus had planned to obtain for his own part in the anti- Swedish coalition was, in the terms which Tsar Peter handed Count Piper – to be sent with Meijerfelt to the King – transferred to Russia’s share ; the whole of Swedish Livonia was to be signed away to the Tsar as well as Estonia, Ingria and Karelia. A further and final demand was that the Kexholm Idn (district) of Finland must also be sacrificed : Peter’s ‘window on the west’ must be safeguarded against being shattered by the Swedes in future.
Pag. 369
A return journey through Hungary and Austria, as well as being possible, was now also desirable, and indeed necessary if Charles were to achieve control of Sweden’s policy in Germany. The diplomacy of Vellingk and von Gortz, the Duke- Administrator of Holstein-Gottorp’s chief minister, had been counteracting Denmark with some success in 1713 but by methods which did not find favour with Charles. Gortz was motivated both by his determination to regain the independence of HolsteJn-Gottorp (lost through Stenbock’s unsuccessful campaign) and by a desire to secure the succession in Sweden – should Charles xii die without heirs of his own body – of Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, the nephew of Charles. The kind of deal Gortz planned, whereby Prussia would receive Wismar and Stettin in sequester for the duration of the war in return for future help to obtain the Holstein- Gottorp objectives, had the advantage from Vellingk’s point of view that the civil administration of these towns would remain Swedish and that help might be obtained to retain the rest of Pomerania. Charles, as well as his com- manders in Wismar and Stettin, refused to cooperate since they were all convinced that Prussian troops, once in, could not easily be dislodged. The sequestration idea had, all the same, taken root. When Meijerfelt could no longer hold out at Stettin against a large Russian army, the town was in November 1713 handed to a Holstein-Gottorp diplomat who permitted a Prussian occupation. Separate arrangements between Prussia and Holstein- Gottorp and Prussia and Russia regularized the sequestration, envisaged its extension to other parts of Pomerania and promised future benefits all round.
Pag. 401
To help with the defence of Sweden’s last possessions in the Empire, Charles called mihtary experts from Sweden to help him. First of all, Meijerfelt, now governor-general of Scania, was sent for and given the charge of fitting out
Pag. 462
Charles xii aimed at augmenting the Swedish operational army to about sixty thousand men^ before a miUtary offensive was embarked upon and to make the naval detachments at Stockholm, Karlskrona and Gothenburg strong enough not only to defend the country but to act as escorts for a fleet of transport-ships large enough to land considerable forces on the continent of Europe. The army would have to be equipped and trained for the Nor- wegian as well as the continental campaigns, though some of Charles’s advisers – notably Frederick of Hesse and Meijerfelt – were against a Nor- wegian campaign and would have preferred to direct the Swedish attack to Germany without a preliminary or complementary diversion to the west. Magazines, particularly for the Norwegian campaign, were considered essen- tial by the King for the success of his overall plan for the offensive and would have to be collected in strongly fortified positions. From experience gained, Charles was anxious also to improve the administration of the army and the navy and to increase the nexibility of operations through novel methods for cooperation between the various specialized branches of the military forces at his disposal.
Pag. 472
distances, but tactics in battle were essentially similar. All commanders, whether they fought in western or eastern Europe, aimed at the ideal battle where the enemy – whatever form of attack was favoured by terrain and circumstances – would be if not annihilated at least decisively defeated. But how could the normal tactics be deployed in a country like Norway with hills and lakes and narrow passes even in the eastern part of the country? A winter campaign was particularly deplored by Meijerfelt, who with the frankness customary in Charles xii’s circle of trusted officers sent his King a memoranda setting out objections to the venture: it would cost too much in men and effort; success would not bring many advantages; was it not better to wait till conjunctures became favourable and jump straight to the Continent ?*2
Pag. 580
23 Jefferyes’s letter of i Sept. (O.S.) 1708, H.H. 35: i ; von Siltmann’s report of 9 Sept. 1708, simimarized by S.Jagerskiold in K.F.A. 1937, pp. 167-8; for the Malatitze attack see Petri, III, 247-8 building on an unpublished account by Meijerfelt; see Carlson, III, 154-6, for the Russians celebrating Malatitze as a victory.