There were plenty of dark moments. By 1706 Charles had managed to force Augustus to abdicate the Polish throne and in the next two years the Swedish king gradually moved east through Poland to expel Augustus’s remaining supporters and the Russian army. Charles was fresh from a long series of victories and hailed in Europe as one of the world’s great commanders, so it is not surprising that he had far-reaching plans to rely on boyar and popular dissent to overthrow Peter and establish a weak and compliant government in Moscow. His assumption was that Peter’s army could not effectively oppose him. As the Swedes moved toward the Russian border, however, their situation rapidly deteriorated. The Russians had stripped most of the land of food and fodder and Charles’s army was low on supplies. To make things worse, each encounter with the Russian army revealed that Peter’s officers were learning their profession, and Swedish successes came harder each time. Then Charles reached the Russian border and stopped to rest, hoping that his manifestos had caused discontent to boil over among the Russian boyars and people, but nothing happened. Russia was quiet, and winter was coming on. Charles decided to turn south into the Ukrainian Hetmanate, but first he hoped to join up with a Swedish relief army coming from Riga that had fresh supplies. At Lesnaia Peter struck. Moving his dragoons rapidly through the forest he fell on the relief army, driving it from the field and seizing its supplies. Charles now had more men but no fresh supplies.
For the moment his hope was in the Ukrainians. He had long been in secret correspondence with the Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa, who promised to rebel against the Russian tsar and bring over the whole Ukrainian Cossack host. When Charles arrived in the Ukraine, however, only some of the Cossack generals and a few thousand men joined him. The rank and file Cossacks would not follow and remained loyal to the tsar. Thus the Swedes settled down for the winter, finding adequate food but no military supplies. When spring came, the Swedish king moved northeast toward Moscow, but stopped to besiege the fortified town of Poltava so as not to leave enemy troops in his rear.
Peter decided to make his move. He marched his army toward the town but instead of attacking, he constructed a fortified camp on the outskirts and waited. Charles would have to attack him soon, for clouds of Cossacks made foraging impossible. On the morning of June 27, 1709, the invincible Swedish army marched through the morning mist toward the Russian camp and turned right, ready to attack. Peter brought his artillery out to meet them, and about ten o’clock the Swedes moved forward in frontal attack, a maneuver that had so often brought them victory. This time it failed. Peter’s guns cut them to pieces, and the Swedish line stuck fast in close combat with the Russians, and then broke. By noon Charles’s army was a mass of refugees heading west for the Dniepr River, and Russia had become a great power.
The victory at Poltava was the turning point of Peter’s reign, for it ensured that eventually he would emerge the victor and keep St. Petersburg. It also radically changed his and Russia’s position in Europe. Charles had already given the final blow to Polish power and prestige, and now Peter had done the same to Sweden. He was free to concentrate on securing his conquests, and in 1710 he wrapped up the Baltic provinces and took the Finnish town of Viborg, thereby ensuring his new city, soon to be his new capital, of a protective belt of territory as well as several new ports for his empire.
The war with Sweden dragged on until 1721, for Charles was much too courageous and too stubborn to give up, even when he had lost all of Sweden’s possessions in Germany, the Baltic provinces, and Finland. To defeat him Peter had to maintain his army and use it and create a navy in the Baltic Sea, based in St. Petersburg. The navy in particular was extremely expensive, though vital to pressure Sweden to make peace. When peace came at last, Peter returned Finland to Sweden, minus Viborg, but kept the Baltic provinces. St. Petersburg was secure.
The strain of the war very soon required Peter to think more carefully about the structure of his state. Golovin’s untimely death in 1706 made change urgent. In 1708 he formally replaced both the traditional central offices as well as the improvised chancelleries of his favorites with the governors of eight huge provinces that took over most of the business of taxation, recruitment, and the courts. The new arrangement was not just a change in formal structure, for Peter appointed men from old aristocratic families (such as the Golitsyns and Streshnev) as well as his in-laws (the Apraksins), and, of course, “Aleksashka” Menshikov to run St. Petersburg and the huge province around it. The resulting decentralization left a gap in the center, so in 1711 he established the Senate as a coordinating body, particularly to work when he was away. Prince Iakov Dolgorukii, fresh from a daring escape from Swedish captivity, was its president, and aristocrats and their clients were prominent among its members. Peter had created a new balance in the government, combining great aristocrats with his favorite Menshikov. The balance was further enhanced by the appearance of a new favorite and Menshikov’s rival, Prince Vasilii Dolgorukii (Prince Iakov’s cousin). The prince held no major office, but was always present at court and employed in a series of delicate and confidential matters.
Peter now had the beginnings of a court again in St. Petersburg. He also ordered the government offices to the new city, and required the aristocracy and many merchants to move there and build houses. This was not a popular idea, for the new capital was expensive, damp, subject to flooding, and far from the Russian heartland. The merchants could not trade easily as long as the war continued, and the aristocracy was particularly unhappy with the need to leave their warm and comfortable Moscow mansions for the banks of the Neva. Peter himself built no great palace in his new city, no Russian Versailles. His Winter and Summer “Palaces” in St. Petersburg were essentially six-room houses suitable for a modest country gentleman. Peter’s new court was small and unostentatious, in keeping with his residences. Moreover the physical center of the new city was not the tsar’s palace but the Admiralty, the administrative center of the navy and its principal site for shipbuilding. The main avenue of the new city, Nevsky Prospect, began at the Admiralty, not the palace, and the radial avenues laid out after Peter’s death began at the same place. In Peter’s final plan, the government would have its seat on Vasil’ev Island on the north side of the river, across the water from the Winter Palace and the Admiralty. The island would also serve as the main center for commerce. The main harbor was still at Kronstadt, as the waters were too shallow near the city. The country villas of the tsar and elite stretching along the Gulf of Finland to the southwest were an integral part of the new city. These were modest houses with extensive gardens, modeled on the Dutch villas along the Vecht River near Utrecht. Among the villas stood the ancestor of the now magnificent Peterhof, then a modest country house for the tsar notable only for the fountains and gardens. Menshikov’s palace at Oranienbaum farther along the coast was much larger and grander. Peter’s plan was in fact too modest, and the government gradually moved south to be near the tsar in the Winter Palace. The architecture of the city after his death quickly grew very much grander. The city that would become a great imperial capital with Roman arches and classical architecture and ornament started its existence as a modest port and royal residence in north European style.