Siege of Sveaborg
Siege of Sveaborg | |
---|---|
Part of the Swedish Finland | |
Result | Russian victory |
Pieter van Suchtelen
59 cannons[2]
58 guns lost[1]
The siege of Sveaborg was a
Preparations
A week before the war began, Sveaborg's commander Admiral
The siege
Russian forces under
Defenders at Sveaborg often fired at the Russian cossack patrols on the ice around the fortress, but without any practical results. Instead of attacking the numerically inferior besieger, the Swedes were content to stay behind their fortifications and prepare for the Russian assault by sawing a ditch to the open the ice around the fortress. The first Russian barrages were fired on 19 March and continued until 21 March, after which first attempts to negotiate were made. Cronstedt agreed not to fire at the town of Helsingfors in exchange for the Russians keeping their artillery batteries away from that direction. This suited the Russians since it allowed them to lodge their troops in Helsingfors without danger of being shot at by the Swedish artillery.[5]
On 23 March Cronstedt parleyed with Russian representatives on the island Lonnan, where Russians demanded the surrender of the fortress. After the Swedish refusal to comply, the Russians started another barrage against the fortress on 25 March which lasted until 1 April. The Russian surrender demand was repeated on 2 April. The Russians resorted to cunning psychological warfare to convince the officers in the fortress to surrender. Former Swedish subject Johan Samuel Hagelström received special commendation from the Tsar for his actions in getting Sveaborg to surrender. Certain officers' wives who lived in Helsingfors and were allowed and encouraged by the Russians to visit the husbands in Sveaborg also played their parts. Perhaps the most important person in the Russian efforts to use cunning to force a surrender was the trusted advisor of Cronstedt, Colonel Fredrik Adolf Jägerhorn.[6]
In the negotiations that continued on 2 April, Cronstedt suggested a truce at least until 13 May 1808. The Russians responded positively but demanded that the truce last only until 3 May and that meanwhile they would occupy several of the fortified small islands around the main fortress of Sveaborg. Discussing the matter with his officers, Cronstedt noted that according to his reckoning, the fortress had only enough ammunition left for two weeks and that men were getting sick. When asked about the fleet, Cronstedt refused to torch it, stating that it would be a disaster if the fortress survived and there were no fleet left.[7]
On 6 April Cronstedt agreed with
Aftermath
The capture of Sveaborg was a major flip for the Russian campaign in Finland, as it removed the threat of a counterattack from the south and west. To Sweden it was a devastating blow as it made the resupply of the battered Finnish army much more difficult. Among other things, Russia captured the bulk of the Swedish
The Russians won a series of further victories over the Swedes during the summer, and by the autumn they had managed to overrun the entirety of Finland. In spring 1809 they then conquered the Åland Islands too and threatened Stockholm itself, and Sweden was consequently forced to make peace under the Treaty of Fredrikshamn, by which both Finland and Åland were ceded to the Russian Empire. As Sveaborg had long been regarded as the strongest fortress in Finland, and as Swedish resistance collapsed relatively quickly after its fall, the siege there soon came to be seen as having been the decisive engagement of the war.
Moreover, the fact that Sveaborg had capitulated after a siege of just two months, despite its formidable reputation, led to suspicions of cowardice or even outright
Controversies surrounding the Capitulation
As a result of the official condemnation of Cronstedt as a traitor, and the
Indeed, historians have identified a number of reasons to justify, or at least explain, Cronstedt's decision to surrender the fortress when he did, pointing out that Sveaborg was not actually the impregnable "Gibraltar of the North" that it was widely believed to be at the time, and deducing a number of factors that might have led Cronstedt to overestimate the Russians' strength or have otherwise affected his thinking. The questions as to whether Sveaborg could potentially have continued resisting for longer, and whether Cronstedt was "right" to surrender, are open ones and are still debated in Finnish and Swedish historiography to this day.
The following are some of the observations that have been made in these discussions:
- The main reason given by Cronstedt himself for his decision to surrender was that the fortress was about to run out of gunpowder. However, the validity of this explanation has been disputed by subsequent historians, who have argued that he could have eked out his supplies for several weeks longer if he reduced the number of guns in use (as opposed to keeping all of them in action as he had up to that point), and have also blamed him for needlessly squandering his powder reserves early in the siege by allowing the guns to be fired at night even though their chances of hitting their targets in the darkness were small.[10]
- The sea was still frozen, and ships of the British Royal Navy, Sweden's ally, therefore could not approach the fortress to support it.[citation needed]
- The messengers sent to Stockholm to request reinforcements were delayed by the Russians and arrived too late. [citation needed]
- Even if the messengers had arrived in time, it is questionable if the authorities could have scraped together enough troops to send reinforcements anyway, as almost all the Swedish forces not already engaged in Finland were needed elsewhere to face Dano-Swedish War of 1808-1809 and Franco-Swedish Warrespectively.
- Sveaborg is a symmetrical defense, Sveaborg had many weaknesses.[citation needed]
- Although the Russian army was at first much smaller (2000 men, 60 cannons) than the forces at Sveaborg (6000 men, 734 cannons), more reinforcements arrived all the time. By the time of the negotiations, the Russian army was larger than the defending force.[citation needed]
- The fortress had earlier received very poor funding. Since its completion in 1791, Sveaborg received no extra financial support from the government (the reason for that is still a mystery, but naturally related to the weak Swedish economic situation). The military equipment was in an unsatisfactory condition. Most of the supplies were of bad quality and the fortress lacked most supplies.[citation needed]
- The cannons too, were old and partially obsolete. This meant that their range was shorter than that of the Russian artillery (which is a problem if cannons are stationed on a fortress). The fortress was unable to return fire on the Russian troops that were bombarding the fortress heavily. Furthermore, the fortress was lacking cannons; having not even half the number of cannons that were supposed to be on the fortress (almost 1600 cannons).[citation needed]
- Sveaborg had never been fully completed. Only the fortifications on the islands had been constructed but none of the land-side defenses included in the original plans by Augustin Ehrensvärd were constructed.
- Unwillingness by the Swedes to burn or shell the town of Helsingfors to the ground gained Russians a strong base of operations against the fortifications; doing so would have been according to some historians the best solution for preventing Russians from successfully besieging the fortress.
- The war came as a surprise, and the 2000 civilians at Sveaborg were not evacuated in time. They were mostly families of the officers. It is possible that the commander, Cronstedt, wanted to save the lives of the women and children at Sveaborg. In those days fortress invasions were very bloody stories and no one was usually spared. Moreover, many of the officers' families were living in Helsinki and the Russian army was using their correspondence cunningly to convince the officers at Sveaborg that the Russian army was substantially larger than it was and that the whole kingdom of Sweden had been invaded. Many of the officers were pressuring Cronstedt to surrender.
- Cronstedt was part of the defeatist attitude.[11]
- Similarly, Cronstedt is known to have personally disliked King different monarch.[12]
In Literature
The
Hide away his family, do not mention his tribe,
Do not turn away from his crime.
Let no one blush on account of his shame,
It sticks to him alone.
He, who has betrayed his land, has
No family, no tribe, no son, no father.
Name him only as the false arm
Sent to Finland's aid.
Name him "Shame" and "Scorn" and "Disgust",
And "Guilt" and "Punishment" and "Death".
It is merely what he deserves to be called,
It is to spare the listener.
Take all that is dark in the grave,
And all that is torment in life,
And form a name from it,
And give it to him.
However, even this would arouse less sorrow,
Than that which he brought upon Sveaborg.[13]
A short story "Under Siege" (published in Omni, October, 1985) by George R. R. Martin takes place during the siege of Sveaborg, as well as in a dire future. It is a reworking of an original story "The Fortress" written by Martin as a history paper for college. Both "The Fortress" and "Under Siege", in which time travellers from a dystopian future affect the outcome, can be found in Martin's collection of short stories Dreamsongs, published by Bantam.[non-primary source needed]
References
- ^ a b Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Описание Финляндской войны на сухом пути и на море в 1808 и 1809 годах, St. Petersburg, 1841, pp. 106—108
- ^ a b Mattila (1983), p. 238-239.
- ^ Carl Nordling, "Capturing ‘The Gibraltar of the North‘: How Swedish Sveaborg was taken by the Russians in 1808." Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17#4 (2004): 715-725.
- ^ Mattila (1983), p. 238.
- ^ Mattila (1983), p. 239.
- ^ Mattila (1983), p. 240-241.
- ^ Mattila (1983), p. 241-242.
- ^ Mattila (1983), p. 242-243.
- ^ Lundh, Herbert. "Carl Olof Cronstedt". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon.
- ^ Lundh, Herbert. "Carl Olof Cronstedt". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon.
- ^ Lundh, Herbert. "Carl Olof Cronstedt". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon.
- ^ Lundh, Herbert. "Carl Olof Cronstedt". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon.
- ^ Förtig hans ätt, nämn ej hans stam // Välv ej på den hans brott // Må ingen rodna för hans skam // Den drabbe honom blott. // Den, som förrått sitt land, han har // Ej ätt, ej stam, ej son, ej far. // Nämn honom blott den falska arm, // Man ställt till Finlands stöd, // Nämn honom blygd och hån och harm // Och skuld och straff och död. // Det är blott så, han kallas bör // Det är att skona den som hör. // Tag allt vad mörker finns i grav // Och allt vad kval i liv // Och bilda dig ett namn därav // Och det åt honom giv; // Det skall dock väcka mindre sorg // Än det, han bar på Sveaborg.
Runeberg, Johan Ludvig (1848). Sveaborg.
Bibliography
- Nordling, Carl. "Capturing ‘The Gibraltar of the North‘: How Swedish Sveaborg was taken by the Russians in 1808." Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17#4 (2004): 715-725.
- Mattila, Tapani (1983). Meri maamme turvana [Sea safeguarding our country] (in Finnish). Jyväskylä: K. J. Gummerus Osakeyhtiö. ISBN 951-99487-0-8.