| Siege of Nöteborg | |||||||
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| Part of the Great Northern War | |||||||
The storm of Swedish fortress of Nöteborg by Russian troops. Czar Peter I is shown in the center. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Russian Empire | Swedish Empire | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Czar Peter I |
Wilhelm von Schlippenbach Major Leyon |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 12500 men deployed, 35000 in total 51 heavy artillery guns |
389 men in 26 September, +50 grenadiers arriving as reinforcements in 8 Oct, 142 light artillery guns |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 538 killed 1330 wounded 100 later dead of wounds 23 executed ____________________ Total, 1981 casualties |
200 killed 156 wounded 138 light artillery guns Nöteborg Fortress ____________________ Total, 356 casualties |
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The Siege of Nöteborg was one of the first sieges of the Great Northern War, when Russian forces captured the Swedish fortress of Nöteborg, later renamed Shlisselburg, in October 1702.[1] With the aim of capturing the Swedish fortress of Nöteborg, Peter the Great assembled a force of 35,000 and marched for ten days to his destination. About 12,000 of these men were positioned on the banks of the Neva river, where they camped until 25 September. On that day, after giving command of the main force to Boris Sheremetev, he moved toward Nöteborg.[2] After an initial refusal by the Swedish commander, Wilhelm von Schlippenbach, to give up the fort immediately, the Russians began bombarding it. A final Russian assault on the fort was tactically unsuccessful, resulting in heavy casualties, but forced the fort's defenders to surrender on 11 October 1702.[3] After taking control, Peter immediately began reconstructing the fort for his own purposes, renaming it Shlisselburg.[1][2]
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Nöteborg was defended by a small garrison of four hundred men, with one hundred and forty-two cannons of small caliber. Under the command of the old colonel Wilhelm von Schlippenbach, the brother of the Swedish general commanding in Livonia, Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach.[1] And another fifty grenadiers arriving just days before the assault, as a reinforcement party under the command of Major Leyon, which were to play a big role in the defending aspects of the fortress. When he arrived with his grenadiers there were only "two hundred and twenty-five" remaining soldiers left who were in good shape of defending the fortress, the rest was either sick, dead or wounded from the artillery fire.
The defences in the fortress at that time consisted of a stone wall 28 feet high and 14 feet thick, with seven towers. Near the northeastern part of the fortress was a castle, which itself consisted of a stone wall and three towers. The main defence of the fortress was the Neva river itself, along with Lake Ladoga, which together encircled the entire fort. On the right bank of the Neva, about 3,000 yards (1.5 miles) from the main fort, there was a separate fortification, consisting of a sconce-type outwork. In the outwork, a regiment was garrisoned in order to assist with communication and transportation with the main fort, across the river.[2]
With a force then of about twelve thousand men, Peter the Great and his army advanced to lay siege to the fortress of Nöteborg. Nöteborg had originally been built by the people of Novgorod four centuries earlier, under the name of Orekhovo or Oreshek, on a small island of the river Neva, just where it flows out from Lake Ladoga. The island was in shape like a hazel-nut, whence both the Russian and Swedish names. It served for a long time as a barrier against the incursions of the Swedes and Danes, and protected the commerce of Novgorod as well as of Ladoga.[1]
A few days after arriving at Nöteborg, Peter sent a detachment of 400 men of the Preobrazhensky Regiment to take up positions closer to the fort and prepare for the arrival of a greater force. The troops destroyed two Swedish boats sent out for reconnaissance, but were fired upon from the fort. This did not stop them from performing their field preparations, and they lost only one man. The next day, the rest of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and Semenovsky Regiment arrived.[2]
The remainder of the Russians took up positions on both sides of the River Neva by 26 September, and during the next several days were busy constructing artillery batteries,[4] which were completed by 1 October, bombarding of the fortress started at 2 October. The difficult job of securing the outwork on the Neva's bank was handed over to the Preobrazhensky Regiment, which, at four o'clock in the morning of 1 October, embarked towards the far coast of the river. Under the leadership of the Czar himself, the Russians were successful in capturing the sconce, encountering little resistance. Upon its capture, further construction work began, and eventually the town was besieged from all sides.[2] Using a fleet of small boats, which they brought down from the river Svir through Lake Ladoga, they succeeded in completely blockading the fort. Once the blockade was in place, a letter was sent to the Swedish commandant, Wilhelm von Schlippenbach, requesting he give up the fort. Schlippenbach replied with a request for a four-day wait, during which he was to consult with General Arvid Horn, his superior, who was in Narva.[2] On 11 October, in response to Schlippenbach's refusal to immediately surrender, Russian forces opened fire.[1]
On 3 October, the wife of the commandant had sent a letter to the Russian field-marshal, in the name of the wives of the officers, asking that they be permitted to depart. Peter, wishing to lose no time, had himself replied to the letter that he could not consent to put Swedish ladies to the discomfort of a separation from their husbands, and if they desired to leave the fort, they could do so if they took their husbands with them.[1]
On 4 October, 300 Russian soldiers occupied some small islands which were closer to the enemy fort, with the help of earthworks.[2]
Preparations to perform a final assault on the fort began on 9 October; siege ladders were distributed, and officers were told where they would strike the fort. Finally, on the eleventh, Peter decided to perform the assault. At one o'clock in the morning, a fire broke out in the fort. Local hunters and men from the Preobrazhensky Regiment, among others, waited at the ready in landing boats, two miles away from the fort. At half-past two, mortar shots were fired, which was the signal to commence the attack..
While having ninety-five men in the "Church, ruins part" under the command of Major Leyon, seventy-five men in the "basement, ruins part" in command of Major Charpentier and the rest of the defenders spread out all over the walls, the Russians launched their first assault, crossing the river in their landing boats prepared with siege ladders and tons of men, constantly under fire from both muskets as well as cannons they made an attempt to climb over the "breached-wall entrences" which there were three of. however, it was bravely repusled by the Swedes mostly in help of the grenadiers who caused huge damages to the Russian infantry and forced them to retreat.
In the second and third assault, men from the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky Regiments landed on the fort island and proceeded to erect escalades to scale the walls. The ladders turned out to be too short, but the attack continued. Fissures in the fortress wall formed choke points, and Russian troops took heavy casualties in their attempts to scale the fortress walls. Major Andrei Karpov was severely injured during the attack, and Peter, upon receiving news of this and the other casualties, decided to call off the assault on the fort. However, the orders never arrived to the front lines. There are stories that Mikhail Golitsyn did, in fact, receive the orders, but refused to carry them out, telling the messenger to "tell the Czar that now I am not his, but God's," implying that is was too late to pull out.[3] However, it is unlikely that this ever happened, as this would have been an extraordinary act, considering the discipline and respect for the Czar among the ranks of the military.
Whatever may have occurred, in the end, Golitsyn not only continued the attacks, but also ordered the landing ships to depart, putting his troops in the position to choose either death or victory.[2][5]
Following the unrelenting but relatively fruitless assault on the fort by Russian forces, which lasted for 13 hours, the Swedish commandant accepted to capitulate on honorable conditions, realizing he could not defend the fortress for much longer.[2] His whole garrison, with all their property, were allowed to depart to the next Swedish fort.[1] According to Swedish sources, eighty-three soldiers went out of the Nöteborg fortress in "good condition to fight" with another one hundred and fifty-six wounded, four light artillery guns were also brought with them and the other one hundred and thirty-eight was left behind. The Russians, however, lost more than the whole Swedish garrison, in all six hundred and sixty-one men dead, as well as one thousand three hundred and thirty men wounded. The later Swedish death casualties of the critical wounded, leaving the fort are still unknown.
Estimated six thousand five hundred and fifty-four cannonballs had been fired into the Nöteborg stronghold through out the whole siege and Peter immediately proceeded to repair the damages done to the fort, renamed it Shlisselburg (from German Schlüsselburg - "key-city"), and fastened up in the western bastion the key given him by the commandant, as a symbol that this fort was the key to the whole of the Neva. Ever afterwards, when he was at St. Petersburg, he went to Schlisselburg on 22 October and feasted the capitulation. Menshikof, who had shown great military ability, was appointed governor of the newly named fort, and from this time dates his intimate friendship with Peter and his prominence in public life.[1]