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Yeeeeeeeeah, let's talk about the Great Northern War (1700-1721).
To me warfare in the 18th century always was kind of a blind spot. Sure a bunch of landmarks come to mine: Kabinettskriege, Empress Maria Theresia, War of Spanish Succession, Louie XIV., good uniforms, Prussians nicking Silesia by use of ungentlemanly measures ( :P ), seven years war, american war of independence... and then it's French revolution time already! Kinda.
Concerning warfare: Tricorns, linear warfare, the vanishing of the pike, Grenadiers wear funny hats, good uniforms (a point which should always be stressed), kinda slow cavalry, Prussians get +1 on all rolls (because in the 18th century Prussians are Space Marines), etc.
Now a fine gentleman approached me and asked me to paint his Swedes and Russians for the GNW. A good reason to get a bit more into this topic. During the Thirty Years War Sweden cemented their position as a major European power. Over the course of the second half of the 17th century the Swedes expanded and consolidated their realm along the borders of the Baltic Sea.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3p5hNsxeE7o/maxresdefault.jpg)
Enclaves and often important centres of trade in Poland, the baltic states and northern Germany were in Swedish hands. This allowed for the kingdom (which mostly was agraric in nature) to be and remain a major player in Northern Europe.
After the death of Swedish king Charles XI. his then 15-year old son succeeded him to the throne as Charles XII. The kingdoms of Denmark (along with the kongdom of Norway) as well as the King of Saxony and Poland, August the Strong, took this opportunity to forge an attack alliance against the Swedes. Tsar Peter I. of Russia also joined the Anti-Swedish league and three years later, in 1700, they attacked Sweden from all Sides.
(http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2018_01/5a60bf12cd88f_karlxii.jpg.d6868013ffc59ee36cd327fde1880a01.jpg)
Denmark-Norway marched into Schleswig-Holstein to their southern border, Saxony-Poland besieged the important trade centre of Riga and Russia invaded from the East (Livland). Somehow though the Allies had miscalculated. Charles XII. immediately raised an army, led it to Denmark and forced a peace treaty. Then he went on to Livland and after a 2 months campaign he beat a numerically vastly superior Russian army. The Swedish king left a garrison force in Livland, with the rest of his army he marched into Poland and reliefed Riga. In 1705 a peace treaty was reached with Poland. To top it all off Charles XII. led his army right into the heart of Saxony. King August was forced to nullify any treaties with Russia and, and this is the big thing, to relinquish any rights to the Polish throne. Within 6 years Charles XII. had proven his enemies' conceptions of the king's weakness wrong. The Swedish army, who enjoyed a reputation of being the best and most aggressive soldiers in Europe had a bunch of new combat experience and were of the best of morales.
So what do you do when you got the tip top army of the continent? You march it into Russia!
Denmark-Norway and Saxony-Poland were out of the game for now and Russia was still licking her wounds. After the Russian crushing defeat at the battle of Narva Charles XII. had a very low opinion of the Russian army. Russia at this point still was very much stuck in feudal times. This is why he immediately turned to Poland afterwards rather than marching into Russia. This gave the Tsar 6 crucial years to reorganize his army further. Because this Tsar wasn't any guy, but Peter I. (the Great).
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Right, to get into the meat of the matter - I'll build and paint two small armies: Swedes and Russians. All in 6mm, all Baccus minis. For Swedes, we got much more accurate sources on uniforms and whatnot, so I'll start with those. Basing is done with Polemos Standards, each base represents one regiment.
First I cleaned all the minis, then I glued the swedish units onto cocktail sticks (by unit/regiment) and primed them):
(http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2018_01/5a616e5740586_swwip2.jpg.47e3f2919f6eb87caf46a07d7abf0e47.jpg)
Slightly annoying: that little piece of flash you get between the centre of the base and each horse's belly. Those have to be cut away. Then I started working on some of the more annoying things I should get out of the way early on - the white trims on the tricorns. I also painted one regiment as a test unit. It's the Narke-Varmland infantry regiment. By accident I'd grabbed one with a slightly out of the ordinary red facings, cuffs and turnbacks. On the vast majority of regiments those were yellow:
Kinda like this (with smaller variety between regiments):
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To get back to the historical bits (because I really don't have much to show in terms of minis yet. :P ):
In the last post we stopped at Tsar Peter I. (later: Emperor Peter the Great). This gentleman was important. Right after getting on the throne in 1682 (end of reign: 1725) he started modernizing the army and began a general big program of Westernization in all aspects of the Russian Tsardom. As mentioned above, Russia at that point was still stuck in Feudalism. The young Tsar travelled Western Europe a lot (often incognito), invited a lot of clever peeps from the West to his court as advisors and ordered beards to be either cut off or radically trimmed back so that state officials and pretty much everyone looked more 'civilized' (even on clergy! :O ). This, and other reforms, didn't resonate well with large parts of the population and officials and early in his reign Peter was often busy beating down uprisings or throwing conspirators or just opponents into prisons, holes or exile.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7af8MUm0Uv8/VBmEWGRBiRI/AAAAAAAAAAc/goqbuyRuWT4/s1600/The+Expansion+of+Russia.jpg)
Originally Peter I. looked in the direction of the Ottoman empire with plans for expansion. On their own the Russian army wasn't able to do much there though. Peter went from court to court in Europe, but looking at how everybody was busy preparing for the War of Spanish Succession and other things nobody was willing to send troops off to the Bosporus. So this plan got buried and Tsar Peter I. turned to the North-West and the importance of the Baltic sea for trade.
Peter I. was enamoured with seafaring and had a Russian fleet built (an extremely unorthodox move for the traditionally land-warfare oriented Russia) to protect Russian interests (=trade) in the Baltic Sea. He dreamt of Russian sea harbors, and soon breaking Swedens dominance over Northern Europe become the #1 priority to the Tsar.
Hence Russia joining the Anti-Swedish League (August the Strong of Saxony [and thus Poland], Kingdom of Denmark [and thus Norway], see above). Also above you can see how this didn't really go so well initially (Battle of Narva). The Russian army was beaten horribly by superior and experienced Swedish troops. Like really horribly. 10,000 Swedes (including the Narva garrison force) beat 30,000-35,000 Russians. Swedes suffered under 2,000 dead and wounded while the Russian army suffered roughly 9,000 dead and wounded and 20,000 prisonders of war.
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The Victory of Narva. In the left you can see a sled-mounted light cannon.
The Russian army made a very bad impression, Charles XII. rushed on to Poland, as Russia seemed a wet paper tiger and there were more important things to do. In the mean time the Tsar immediately raised new troops, trained them in the western style and had them carry out limited campaigns over the next years as to gain some land and first and foremost experience and learn how to counter the aggressive Swedish tactics. New regiments were created, especially cavalry. In 1700 there were only two regular cavalry regiments in the Russian army, by 1708 it was 34.
By the way, Charles XII. attack on Russia in 1708 was the first time a European army invaded Russia (later examples being Napoleon in 1812 and the German army in 1941).
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The Russian army of 1708 was a completely different to the one the Swedes had beaten so triumphantly in 1700. Training and general quality still wasn't on par with the Swedes, but the whole army had been reorganized, set up in the style of Western armies and now had experience and a few plans for countering the Swedish war machine.
The Swedish army, tactics and equipment
Swedish soldiers, the famous Caroleans, basically were trained in a style directly derived from the ideas Gustavus Adolphus had nicked from the Dutch for his army in the 1620s and 30s. These plans had been adapted for the new developments in warfare.
Infantry aggressively closed in with the enemy and at roughly 50m distance (later in the GNW this was reduced to 20m or even 15m) unleshed a devastating salvo of the whole battalion in two ranks. To the order of 'Gå–På!' bayonets and pikes were lowered (or swords were drawn) and the enemy was attacked in a reckless charge. This tactic was especially made to face numerically superior enemy troops. Very often these would flee the scene either due to the stoic advance of the Swedes though enemy musket fire, the devastating impact of the close-ranged salvo or the range advantage pikes had over bayonets.
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A Swedish musketeer (1700-1721), by ManuLaCanette
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A word on pikes: Yeah, that was an anachronistic speciality of the Swedes (but also used by the Russians in the GNW). One third of each battalion was equipped with pikes. Since the introduction of the bayonet pikes pretty much had vanished from the European battlefields. Apart from the range advantage thing on the charge I assume that most enemies the Swedes faced in Poland and Russia (with large proportions of Cossacks and other irregular cavalry) Pikes still were handy. Last, but not least: pikes are cheaper than muskets and if you make the charge a crucial part of your tactic with just one big salvo before that pikes make perfect sense. It's not a good idea to get into a prolonged firefight with numerically superior foes.
Musketeers all were armed with ...well, muskets (modern flintlocks) and swords. An important thing to mention is the Swedish system of recruitment/maintaining a standing army. Look it up, it's very interesting.
The quota of cavalry in the Swedish army was very high (almost 50%, as opposed to roughly 25% in other European armies). They also reflected the doctrine first introduced by Gustavus Adolphus in the early 17th century. Just as the infantry the cavalry's approach to warfare was very aggressive. At 150m cavalry began the charge with swords drawn. Firing pistols from the saddle and then charge was generally not done in the Swedish army. For this shock tactic Swedes were trained to ride 'knee behind knee', leading to a wedge-like formation in three ranks, leading to a very tight formation which was hard to break up and led to maximum impact.
What surprised me when reading about this was that officers and cornets were to be at the front of the formation (being the tip, essentially). And how Charles XII. and Peter I. led armies from the front as well. Not sure how the Swedish army was able to maintain their officer corps, but somehow they did.
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Apart from cavalry regiments Sweden had a bunch of Dragoon regiments (which of course were cheaper to set up and maintain, making them the wartime choice of regiments raised). Originally Dragoons had been infantry mounted on cheap horses just so they could get from point a to point b relatively fast, create ambushes, forage, harass, protect lines of support and so on. Fighting was done on foot. Befitting Swedish doctrine though in battle Carolean dragoons also were basically used as shock cavalry. I think they also wore cavalry boots at this point already, which of course makes fighting on foot a bit of a chore. I mean even more than it usually is.
On paper there also were 2 or 3 Horse Grenadier regiments (mostly supplied by French and German allies). In practice those were used just as any other cavalry as well.
In general I didn't read of any cuirasses or helmets being used in the Swedish army of the time, but I do remember cavalrymen in the 18th century weaing metal fittings underneath their tricorns for protection.
The relationship of Charles XII. to the artillery is an interesting one. On the campaign against Russia the Swedes had light and mid-weight cannon with them (plus extra-light regimental cannons). All but the lightest guns had trouble keeping up with the rest of the army though. There's a conception that Charles XII. wasn't fond of the artillery arm on the whole. On the other hand, given the very aggressive doctrines of the Swedish army, the artillery just didn't play that big a role in land battles. Anyway, artillerymen wore light grey jackets instead of blue ones like the cavalry and infantry. turnbacks/cuffs were dark blue.