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240 Campaign of 1615.
Siege of Pleskow. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES.
Peace of Stolbova. The king’s
opinion of the terms. [1612—
the queen dowager interposed between the two
lovers. She first effected a postponement of thcii-
union for some ye:u"s, the event of which confirmed
her prediction, tliat fidehty to a liopeless passion
was not among the j oung hero’s attributes ^, and
afterwards wedded Ebba Brahe to Jacob de la
Gardie.
This rival of Gustavus Adolphus in youthful
renown and youthful love, maintained himself
victoriously in Novogorod, until he, upon repeated
solicitations, obtained leave to return home ;
and
Ewert Horn took his place in that town, whose in-
habitants, harshly treated by the Swedish soldiers,
now showed themselves more refractory than
before, and said to Horn, that they would rather
die than separate from the Muscovite dominion.
Gustavus Adolphus returned to Sweden, with
design to begin the campaign of the coming year
by the siege of Pleskow, if the Russians did not
sooner accede to a peace advantageous for Sweden.
The negotiations on this subject detained him
during the spring of 1G15 ;
but on the 8th of July
lie was in Narva, and left there Jacob de la Gardie,
who was afterwards employed in the negotiation
for peace conducted under English and Dutch
mediation. Gustavus Adolphus himself sat down
before Pleskow with field-marshal Ewert Horn*,
who fell in the first sally of the Russians from
the fortress,
—a man, after Jacob de la Gardie, the
greatest in this war, wise in affaii’s of state, valiant,
of cultivated mind, and deeply lamented by the
king. The siege of Pleskow proceeded slowly.
Scarcely had the king arrived before the place,
when the bearer of the English mediation, John
Merich (Meyrick ?), threatened to break off" the
negotiation if the siege were continued. As the
discussions regarding the peace, in which the
Russians contended as stubbornly for the smallest
as for the most important points, made no pro-
gress in the mean time, the siege was resumed, but
again interrupted by new remonstrances fi’om the
king’s own plenipotentiaries. Between whiles he
kept the town invested by five strong camps, and
the works of the siege more and more nearly ap-
proached the walls. Two towers had been battered
down, but as an assault finally hazarded by Gus-
t.avus Adolphus was repulsed, and his army was
much weakened by sickness, he raised the siege,
after it had lasted nearly two months; and went
at the end of October from Livonia to Finland,
where he passed the winter, held a diet with the
estates of that country, and attended to the Russian
negotiations. The Swedes had begun by asking
for Novogorod, but lowered their demands to
Ingcmianland and the government of Kexholm, of
which the Russians would not hear. The nego-
tiations, which were broken off in February, lO’lG,
when the Dutch envoy returned home, were re-
el principis omnium instrumcntorum, optime reeinit. Petri
Joli. Ungii Encomium Musicae, habitum Upsaliae in Aud.
Gust. d. Maii 21, 1G38.
’ In IGUi the beautiful Margaret Cabeliau, daughter of a
Dutch merchant settled in Sweden, bore the king a natural
son, Gustave Gustave^on, afterwards count of Wasaborg.
6 Jacob de la Gardie, while commander-in-chief in this
war, is styled Feltherre (generalissimo), Ewert Horn some-
times field-marshal, or lirst lieutenant of the generalissimo,
answering to the licutenant-gent-ral in later times. Hallen-
berg, iii. 401.
’ From Abo, April 26, 1616.
opened in October of the same year by the Englisli
commissioner. Of the last-mentioned demands
Gustavus Adolphus would abate nothing.
" The
fortresses of Ive.xholm, Noteborg, Jama, Koporie,
and Ivangorod," he writes to the queen-mother
and the council’,
" were as the key of Lifland and
Finland, and barred the East Sea against the Russ.
If the Russ should get back Noteborg or Ivan-
gorod, or both, and should in future learn to
know his power, the convenience of the sea, and
the many advantages of rivers, lakes, and coasts,
which he could not yet discover, nor rightly use,
then he might not only attack Finland on all
hands, and better indeed in summer than winter,
which hitherto he had not understood, but even
in view of his great power, might fill the East Sea
with ships, which for Sweden were a continual
danger. He had himself at Neva, on his journey,
observed the conveniency of the site, and found
how necessai’y a secure frontier was against Russia."
It is Russia’s greatest adversary on the Swedish
throne who here speaks, as if he had divined the
plan of Peter the Great. A hundred yeara after-
wai-ds Charles XII. had it before his eyes, and
divined nothing.
Here matters rested. Four months of new
negotiations made no change in their aspect. On
the 27th February, 1617, the treaty of peace was
signed at Stolbova *, by which Kexholm and its
territory, with the four fortresses of Ivangorod,
Jamburg, Koporie, and Noteborg, and all the land
pertaining to them, were assigned to Sweden ".
The Czar was to give to the king of Sweden the
title of Ingermanland and Carelia, to confirm the
renunciation of the Russian claims on Livonia,
and to pay 20,000 rubles. On the other hand,
Novogorod and all the other Swedish conquests
were restored ;
but Augdow with its government
was to remain in the hands of the Swedes, until
the Czar had ratified the peace and adjusted the
boundary. Jacob de la Gardie had the honour of
subscribing the peace which ended the ten years’
war with Russia. It is, remarked Gustavus
Adolphus in his speech to the estates after the
peace ’,
" not tlie least among the benefits which
Divine Providence hath conferred upon Sweden,
that the Russ, with whom we had lived from
of old in an uncertain relation and critical posture
of afiairs, must now let slip for ever the robber’s
nest, whence lie before so often annoj’ed us. Of a
truth he is a dangerous neighbour ;
his landmarks
stretch from the Baltic to the Northern and Cas-
pian, coming nigh to the Black Sea; he hath a pow-
erful nobility and numerous peasantry, populous
tow ns, and can bring great armies into the field ;
now cannot this foe launch but a boat on the East
Sea without our leave. The great lakes of Ladoga
and Peipus, the river of Narva, thirty miles of wide
8 A village between Tichwina and Ladoga which no longer
e.vists.
9
Kexholm, originally founded by the Swedes, at the
mouth of the stream Woxen in the Ladoga ; Ivangorod, for-
merly also called Kussian Narva, over the stream against
Narva ; Koporie, Jamburg, still towns of the same name in
Ingermanland; Noteborg, now Schlusselburg, at the outlet
of the Neva from the Ladoga.
’
At the diet of Stockholm in 1617. Compare his speech
to the diet of (irebro in the commencement of the same
year. The speeches are given, from the king’s own draughts
of them, in Widekindi, Gustaf Adolfs Historia.
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