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Talk:Great Northern War

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Ohkay. Just tell me. No Finns involved, no terrain that is subsequently considered Finnish terrain???

Was Poland officially (At elast initially) involved? I'read many times that Augustus started the war to make his power in Poland stronger, but since he had no right to do it on behalf on Poland, then technically (at least initially) Poland was not belligerent and many nobles actually believed in it which had catastrophical consequences. I won;t make any changes on artilce sicne i am not sure on this, but can someone answer this ?Szopen 14:25, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Once again, when Poland was involved? The war started without Poland - Poland was officially neutral for quite long time, until Charles insisted on dethronisation of August. Poland didn't wanted war with Charles (Neither Sweden) - the decision to invade Poland seems to me personal decision made by Charles. Comments? I am not sure how to put that into the article. Szopen 15:14, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
See Britannica import Johann Patkul for details. The original allies in the war were Frederic IV of Denmark, August II of Poland, and Peter I of Russia. They concluded a union in 1697, when the 16-year-old Charles ascended the throne in Sweden. The union of three powers was formalized in 1699. The war started in 1700 with August's invasion of Swedish Latvia. I'm not sure if August acted in his capacity of Polish or Saxon ruler, however. --Ghirlandajo 15:24, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
No no no, August II of SAXONY, whch was also king of Poland. Poland, as country, was not signatory of the treaty and officially was neutral. Szopen 09:41, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


So, finally: POland was neutral in the beginning.

The relevant treaties I was able to find:

1698 August takes whole Inflanty nobility (asked by Patkul) into protection, but acting as king of Saxony. 1698 24 March - alliance Saxony-Denmark 1699 12 November- alliance Denmark, Saxony, Russia. Later in addition Brandenburg.

In 1700 Danes and Saxons attacked Sweden, quickly joined by Russia.

POLAND WAS NEUTRAL. In 1701 even Polish senate sent congratulatory letter to Charles offering themselves as mediators and proposign peace between Saxony and Sweden. Charles agreed on the condition August would be dethronised. Poland refused and Charles attacked Poland, and only in that moment Poland stopped to be neutral. Szopen 09:58, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

ONCE AGAIN, but I hope for the final time: the fact that August was king of Poland didn't mean anything. August had no right as king Poland to start wars. He started a war as king of Saxony and only Saxony was allied with Denmark and Russia, not Poland. Poland was officially and formally neutral until CHarles XII break that (he didn't care about such nuances) and invaded Poland. No Polish units attacked Sweden until than.

I don't know how to explain that more clearly. "alliances of the king as the head of state are binding for the state he rules" are not applying here, sicne Augustus was signing the alliance as the head of _Saxony_, not Poland. Poland and Saxony were two different separate countries, tied ONLY by the person of the monarch. He could not sign alliance as king of Poland without the approval of parliament. He could not start a war without approval of parliament. Hence, the Poland was oficially and formally NEUTRAL, though the king certainly wanted to put Polish parliament at the wall and hoped that parliament would have no choice and declare the war on Sweden. 150.254.130.180 13:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Disputed

I think the whole article is a little too Swedish orientated, maybe fair enough since Sweden is involved in everything, but there are a whole lot of other players involved too that is not even mentioned.

This stunning series of victories was generally due to the training of the army, which was far more professional than most continental armies, and could maintain much higher rates of fire due to constant training with their firearms.

Where does this come from? I’m not disputing it, it might even be true. I’m simple asking where does it come from?

  • I've also heard that is a fact but can't find a source. I have found sources that talk about Charles as a military genius and describe the army as invincible up until a small defeat by the French(?).
Well, Swedes were quite often losing the battles in XVII century, unless you are talking only about CHarles XII? Szopen 13:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Gwynne Dyer mentions this in his book War. He notes that the Swedes enjoyed an advantage from their professionalism, until the other powers caught up to the new innovation (by doing it too). 65.92.96.58 8 July 2005 23:54 (UTC)

However, Sweden was unable to support and maintain her army when the war was prolonged and the costs of warfare could not be passed to occupied countries.

Well does this not apply to everybody? Why is this a something special for Sweden?

  • I do remember hearing that on the history channel. I'm still trying to find a source for this but my understanding was Sweden was already in money troubles before the war and needed to rely on her territories to carry the burdern of her wars. Once that no longer happened Sweden was no longer able to finance this war or any other and it declined with the rise of Russia. I don't think the sentence is neccesary to the article. Here is the closest I can find so far, "arles XI, allied Sweden with France (ruled by Louis XIV) in the early 1670s, since Sweden, a small and not overly wealthy country, no longer had the resources to defend its Baltic conquests without subsidies. In 1675 the Swedes, as French allies, lost a battle at Fehrbellin to forces of Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, putting an end to myths of Swedish invincibility." its from the History channel on the History of Sweden.
    • According to the history text books I read in high school(no idea how much faith to put in them :) the Swedes had a saying regarding constant warfare - Krig för sig själva or War feeds itself, and the basic premise for that saying was that the swedes constantly sought war because maintaining a professional army in peace time was a crippling expense. Therefore the Swedes depended upon conquered territories to feed and pay for their armies, and therefore a stagnation in the string of conquests would hurt the professional swedish army more than the semi-professional/levvied armies of Denmark/Norway, Russia and Poland. Abel29a 00:31, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

The premise of being at war to in order to gain the resources for paying the army is to some extent true, but IIRC from an earlier era. Charles XI reordered both the army and finances of Sweden after 1679. The main reason for this being a Swedish policy was because of the state's very limited resources. It's not really relevant for this article, but Charles XI was still a minor until 1675, so it was his governors that allied Sweden to France in the early 1670s. JA 2006-10-13


Denmark was defeated in the summer of 1700 in what was to be the first major battle of the war, and so badly beaten that she could not participate in the war for a number of years.

Hmm, there was no battle between Sweden and Denmark in 1700!! So how can this be the first major battle of the war? Peace was made between Denmark and Sweden’s allied Holstein-Gottorp (not Sweden directly) guarantied and helped by no fewer than England, Netherlands, Lüneburg-Celle and Hanover, before any battle happend. Part of this treaty says they may not support the enemies of Sweden (which lasted for 9 years). That is how Denmark left the Great Nordic war in 1700 not because she was military defeated (which certinally could have happend if there actually was a battle/war). There war minor engagement in Holstein-Gottorp.

  • It should probably read, "Denmark was defeated in the summer of 1700 in the first significant events of the war. After a minor engagement at Holstein-Gottorp and a Swedish invasion of the Danish mainland they agreed to a treaty to not aid the enemies of Sweden."

I changed battle for campaign because no major battle was fought that I've heard about. A small skirmish was reported when a Danish cavalry squadron charged a Swedish infantry battalion when the Swedish army disembarked on Zealand (the main island, not the mainland). JA 2006-10-13


Though Charles returned from the Ottoman Empire and resumed personal control of the war effort, he had little time to accomplish anything before his death in 1718

Huh? There are numerous engagements between 1715 and 1718 with Charles and Swedish troops involved! That he did not win them, it just what it is, - it certainly does not mean he had insufficient time to prep the battles, as this statement implies.

  • An expansion might work better. " Charles managed to return from the Ottomon Empire and resume control of the war effort. However during the invasion of Norway in 1716 he was killed in the trenches at Fredrikssten. This however did allow for a peace effort to begin between Sweden and Russia."

I think the whole article should contain a little less Swedish point of view. Twthmoses 29 June 2005 04:20 (UTC)

  • I don't believe this has much of a Swedish POV just simple errors. Falphin 29 June 2005 13:24 (UTC)
  • The Reason why there aren't any finns involved is because Finland belonged to swedens scince about 1249, When Birger Jarl Crusaded to Finland. The Majority of finns actualy talked swedish.

The swedish army was better organised compared to the other nations army. The swedish king Charles XI organised a system to train his "Karolinians". Every Province in Sweden had to have a certain number of professional soldiers ready if war were declared.

An other reason for the swedish victories maybe is because king Charles always fought in his battles personally, he was a field marshall, always entering the battles in the first line. BuffaloSoldier

Source: Bonniers Lexikon

No warbox?

Is there a reason this article has no Template:warbox? I find them to be yummy.

Take heed of Charles of Sweden, the Lion of the North...

Folk-rocker Al Stewart wrote an excellent song about the War, "The Coldest Winter in Memory", making him perhaps the only man to have written TWO pop songs about disasterous Russian campaigns (the other being "Roads to Moscow"). The song is found on his album "Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time".

Norway and the Great Northern War

It has been proposed that Great Northern War and Norway be merged into Great Northern War.

Much of the Norwegian phase of the war would be minor trivia in the context of the larger "Great Northern War" page.

And yet the Norwegian role is of some interest to a subset of folks (of which I am one).

That said, Norway campaigns and activities could perhaps be handled as subarticles linked from a "Great Northern War" section.

What is the criterion for making such a merge?

Williamborg 03:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

And a pet peeve: folks 'merging' a page while dropping 80% of the content. In the wonders of Wiki, this material is lost! Please don't merge without capturing the unmerged portion on the talk page. Williamborg

I agree that Norwegian campaign should be relegated to a separate article. Let's remove the {merge} tag if noone objects within several days. --Ghirla | talk 08:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Several days have passed. I'll delete and craft in a subarticle format. Williamborg 05:14, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Merging arose again on the Great Northern War and Norway talk page. And the Norwegian campaigns are covered in the Russian article, which is more balanced that the English article (the English has a Swedish-Russian focus). So I've added some of the Great Northern War and Norway article's material here.
  • If anything adding this material points out we need to strengthen the details in the English article further. Much of the treatment is rather superficial. Work to do, I guess...
And I see, to my amusement, that once again the Norwegain material has been reverted. This is a repeat of the cycle we've seen before. The only thing remaining is for the link to be deleted as it was once before. "The wind blows to the south and round ot the north and round and round blows the wind." Williamborg 03:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Importance of Ottoman empire?

The intro. to the article says "...and Sweden with some help from the Ottoman Empire on the other side." Was the role of the Ottoman Empire really so important as to warrant a mention in the article. I know Karl XII was a guest of the Ottomans for some time after Poltava, but not that he received any actual military aid from them. Should we take this out? KarlXII 22:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


The Ottoman Empires should be removed altogether, since they did not take part in the Great Northern War.


When is a merge not a merge

Copied from Williamborg talk page: I reverted your copy-paste edits on the Great Northern War. If you want to merge this article with Great Northern War and Norway dicuss it first. -- Petri Krohn 03:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Intrigued that you elected to revert without either looking at this discussion page or discussing here.
I rather view this revision as strengthening a remarkably Russo-Swedish centric article. One needs only to look at the Russian article to see a much better balance.
Perhaps we should recognize this topic warrants more than a five paragraph article and strengthen it accordingly.
Cheers - Williamborg 03:48, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you are welcome to do that. You should include the most important information from the Great Northern War and Norway, not the complete text. It is always a bad idea to have duplicate copies of the same material. -- Petri Krohn 03:58, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
If you prefer to move the whole material, then we will have to delete the Norway article and turn this into a redirect. This would however first need to go through the proper merge process. I do not support a merge, and I do not think others will. -- Petri Krohn 04:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Appreciate the thoughtful reply.
As one who has not supported the merge in the past, I believe that there is a place for more detailed articles which expand on core articles. I readily agree and would prefer to keep the arguably lesser phases of the war out of the main article.
Thanks - Williamborg 14:36, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Campaignbox

Why can I not edit what thing on the article? Murderman 14:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Because I think the template is useless. It duplicates the information contained in the text and encumbers the page. Cheers, Ghirla 14:14, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, you're pretty much alone in this one. Campaignboxes, just like any other infoboxes serve a very important purpose here in wikipedia and there is a general consensus to use them. To make long thing short, they allow to get the idea of the entire article in just one glimpse, without having to read - often unbelievably long - articles. Believe it or not, but there are people looking only for the most basic information in wikipedia... //Halibutt 03:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I have several reservations about this article. But most of them are IIRC and I'll return once I've brushed up my knowledge.

Halibutt is right, especially with high school and middle school students doing reports, they don't want to scan the article looking for information. They want it at a quick glance. Aaрон Кинни (t) 08:21, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Timeline (moved from mainspace)

Timeline

Background

The War

A myth

I've heard lots of times that swedish soldiers were proffesional, but that's a myth, about 1/10 of the troops had the regular uniform and they weren't better trained than any danish/norwegian or german troops, Russia also had elite troops though those were mostly deployed on the ottoman front, Poland had a better cavalry etc, the thing was that the swedes thought that they were gods chosen and therefore thought that they were invincible. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.250.238.51 (talk) 11:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC).

False information

Since the peak of swedish soldiers were 110 000 there is no chance at all that the casaulties could end up as high as 200 000, according to the most sources, the casualties of swedes were about 30-35 000 men. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tjstje (talk • contribs) 02:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

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