Kalle Kroon kindly permitted me to place in my blog his very interesting material about
Baltic troops in Swedish army during the Great Northern war 1700-1721. Source: Kroon K. „As a good and
faithful servant.“ Estonians and Latvians in the Carolinean Swedish army at the
end of the 17th century and the Great
Northern War with the reforms of King Charles XI as background. // Revue D’Histoire
Nordique. Volume 18. 2014. PP. 75-98.
„As a good and faithful servant.“ Estonians
and Latvians in the Carolinean Swedish army at the end of the 17th century
and the Great Northern War with the
reforms of King Charles XI as background.
Abstract: As a part of integration process, during the rule of Charles XI
and Charles XII the Swedish peasants' right for free access to serve in the
army as well as the commitment to do so had transferred to Swedish oversea
provinces Estonia and Livonia, and during the Great Northern War conscription
created the national line infantry which had similar maintenance traits to
Swedish infantry allotment system. As those
troops were regulated line troops, maintained through constant flow of
goodqualified recruits, the historical term “land-militia“ is not properly
suitable in this context.Also, at least two units, battalions of Saaremaa and
von Hüene in Tallinn, consisted of Estonian peasants, were established as
permanent troops in war as peace times. This kind of national mobilization was
a new aspect in local provincial societies.
Keywords: Charles XI, Charles XII, reduction, serfdom, appertainment, Estonia,
Livonia, Great Northern War, land-militia, conscription,allotment,estonians,
latvians.
The Swedish Empire of the 17th century has been described in
historical science as a distinctive historical phenomenon of its time,
influenced by some very specific international factors and supported by
military forces. Its backbone included mercenary troops created through
voluntary recruiting but also, for the first time in Europe, national regular
troops, which were first formed through coerced conscription and later,
starting with the national reforms of the 1680s, via a contract concerning
soldier maintenance between the state and the peasants. The free peasantry was
an immediate partner to the state powers and that made it possible for the
state to use them in the military, enabling Sweden to double its armed forces
despite its sparse population. At the same time, the Swedish Empire was not a
unified country either nationally or administratively. As shown by a Swedish
historian Th. Eng, it was a conglomerate country with a nation comprising
various people of different conditions and different systems of justice.[i]In reality, though, the core of the empire had started the process
of developing into a unitary state due to the force of circumstances at the
beginning of the absolutist reign of Charles XI, with an aim to integrate the
semi-independent “foreign provinces” (that is, the areas of Estonia and Livonia
situated in the areas of the present countries of Estonia and Latvia legally,
socially, administratively and militarily to Sweden proper. These were also reforms which forced the
nobility to stand back, had early bourgeois features, and which have been
called revolutionary in Swedish historical science. As it had been impossible
for the Swedish central power to form national military forces due to the
social characteristics and feudal barriers in Estonia and Livonia, the reforms
of king Charles XI opened up such opportunity. The status of the Estonian
and Latvian peasants and their service
in the Swedish army in the late 17th and early 18th
century in Estonia and Livonia under Swedish rule will be discussed in the
present article.
