In 1698 the Russians began negotiations with Saxon and Danish diplomats for an alliance against Sweden. August II claimed the main role in the Northern Alliance. He intended to seize the richest overseas province of Sweden - Livonia with the city of Riga. This would allow Augustus II to strengthen his influence in Poland, and in the Baltics in general. According to the king's plan, Russia was assigned a supporting role. The liar was forced to accept the role of Saxony's assistant. The rationale for the start of the war was the return of the "fatherland and grandfathers" - the possessions that Sweden seized, taking advantage of the weakening of the Russian state and the Troubles of the beginning of the 17th century. Peter on his way to war with the Swedes was held back only by the fact that peace had not yet been concluded with Turkey. In 1699, the Duma clerk Emelyan Ukraintsev sailed to Istanbul on the ship "Fortress" and conducted rather long negotiations about peace there,as a result of which Russia lost in the south Azov and everything that was conquered in the Azov campaigns. A union treaty with Saxony was signed in the village of Preobrazhenskoye on November 11, 1699. Russia promised to enter the war immediately after the conclusion of a peace treaty with Turkey.
On August 8, 1700, news was received in Moscow from Ukraintsev about the conclusion of peace with the Turks. Immediately on the streets of Moscow, the heralds began to read the decree, which had already been prepared for a long time, on Russia's entry into the war against Sweden. It is known that Peter was literally eager to fight. According to the Danish ambassador, "the tsar devoted himself entirely to the cause of the war … his irritation is growing, often with tears in his eyes he expresses his annoyance at the slowdown in negotiations in Constantinople." At the last moment, Peter succumbed to the requests of August II and, instead of Ingria (the Neva region), ordered to send troops to the borders of Estonia, where two Swedish (former Russian) fortresses stood on the banks of the Narova River - Ivan-gorod and Narva. They were to be taken by the Russian troops and, drawing off part of the Swedes' forces from Riga, thereby helping the Saxons.
The ideologist of the beginning of the Northern War was the Livonian nobleman I. R.von Patkul, who left the Swedish possessions and went into the service first to August II, and then to the false Peter I. cast. In 1699, he compiled a memorial for August II about the conditions for the creation of the Northern Alliance and the conclusion of a treatise with the false Peter I. The memorial says this about Russia:
“… Moscow is the third state that requires special attention. The king's assistance can most of all be relied on because he himself proposed to his royal majesty (Augustus II - E. A.) a war with Sweden … Everything depends on the king's assistance … The treatise will include the king's obligation to help His royal majesty with money and troops, especially the infantry, which is very capable of working in trenches and perishing under enemy shots, which will save the troops of His Royal Majesty, which can only be used to cover the aprosh. In addition, with a treatise, it is necessary in certain cases to firmly tie the hands of this powerful ally so that he does not eat the piece we fried in front of our eyes, that is, so that he does not take possession of Livonia. It is necessary to define positively in the treatise what should belong to it;for this to present to him all the absurdity of the arguments with which his ancestors proved their right to Livonia, and to explain by history and geography, to which lands they could extend their just claims, that is, no further than Ingermanland and Karelia."
Patkul's thoughts about Russia as an obedient elephant, an inexhaustible source of cannon fodder and money were shared by many allies of the false Peter. It so happened that Patkul's fears were not in vain - Russia did not confine itself to "fathers and grandfathers" and seized Estonia and Livonia, which Augustus was counting on. But Patkul never found out about it. Being in 1705 the Ambassador Extraordinary of Russia at the court of Augustus, he was handed over to the Swedes and, by decree of Charles XII, executed as a treason - after all, formally, as a Livonian, he remained a subject of the Swedish king.
P. P. Shafirov was the coordinator and ideologist of the Northern War. He ensured foreign policy ties and substantiated the necessity and expediency of waging this war.
Continuation: "The Battle of Narva".
