'This victory' exulted Peter the Great 'has laid the final stone in the foundations of St
Petersburg!' The Battle of Poltava 1709 marks the birth of the Tsar's vast Russian Empire. In
1700 seeking to open Russian trade routes to the West the Tsar combined with Denmark Saxony
and Poland to attack Swedish hegemony in the North. Against the odds King Charles XII of
Sweden subdued the hostile coalition for nearly a decade but in 1708 took his fatal decision
to march for Moscow. His defeat at Poltava in the Ukraine proved the turning-point of the
Great Northern War heralding the collapse of the Swedish Empire and the rise of Russia the
effects of which would be felt for almost three hundred years. Swedish historian Peter
Englund's vivid account of the three violent days of battle is an internationally acclaimed
classic of military history admired by scholars and the lay reader alike.
