The fortress of Poltava with its earthworks, ditch and palisade was
built in 1609 by Kozaks of the Mirgorod Regiment, headed by
Polish Crown Hetman Stanislav
Jolkevsky. Being located on the top of a hill overlooking the right
bank of the River Vorskla, the fortress was protected primarily by
steep slopes to the east, south
and north. In the middle of the 17th century the fortress became
the seat of the Poltava Kozak Regiment and played a strategic
role in the system of Ukrainian
defensive installations that were erected to protect this region
from the invasion of Baty-Khan. In 1658, soon after the signing
of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the fortress
was partially reconstructed under the supervision of the Muscovite
Voevode Chirkov. On the eve of the Battle of Poltava,
the decisive battle of the Great Northern
War, the fortress was surrounded by ravines, protected by
palisades, and had many bastions. Each of its five gates
was protected by a special tower to secure
the approach roads to the fortress. But if one compares
it with some other European fortresses of that time, its
imperfection becomes clear. On the eve of the battle,
when Tsar Peter was informed that Hetman Mazepa had
joined the camp of the Swedish king, he ordered that the
commandant of the fortress, Colonel Levenets,
who was a supporter of Mazepa, be placed under
house arrest in Kharkov and replaced by Colonel Kelin.
Three infantry battalions loyal to the Tsar were also
deployed in the fortress to reinforce it. One of the numerous
myths maintained among first Russian and then Soviet
historians is that of a “heroic defence of the
fortress in April–May 1709.” In Poltava there is a monument
to commandant Kelin and the “brave defenders of the
Fortress of Poltava,” which was unveiled in
1909 in the presence of Tsar Nikolay II. But, in reality,
there had been no attempt by the Swedes to take the
fortress. Robert Petre, a lieutenant of the Dalecarlia
Regiment, who during the siege was in command of a
platoon deployed in the approach trenches near the
eastern sector of the fortress, left a diary, which has
been published in Sweden.
The most interesting entries in it concern a dialogue between
Charles XII and the commander of the siege artillery, Colonel von Binau,
overheard by the lieutenant. The colonel asked the king for a
mere six hours, which he believed to be enough time for his
two batteries to raze the fortress to the
ground. Although there was enough ammunition, the king turned
him down politely. Although it would have been easy for the
experienced Swedish army to conquer
this primitive defensive installation that had no stone walls and
only a few guns, the king used the siege solely to force Tsar Peter to engage in battle.
The fortress of Poltava was repaired for the last time in the late
1720s. After the signing of the Russian-Turkish peace treaty of
1774, the border of the Russian
Empire was moved further south and the Poltava fortress started
to lose its strategic significance. During that time period, Ukraine
also became known as
“Little Russia.” In the 19th century, when Poltava became a major
administrative center of the Malorossiyskaya (Little Russia) government,
new streets were built that breached the fortress’ earthworks in many
places. In preparation for Tsar Alexander I’s visit to Poltava in
1817 all the remains of the fortress were
razed to the ground. The destruction of the remains aroused his
displeasure, because at that time it was absolutely clear
that the Russian Empire had the
firm intention to use Poltava as a symbol of its power, and that it
planned to celebrate no other historic victories but only
the victory over the Swedes in 1709.
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