Joint crashes

Abstract

On 9 July 1709 (Gregorian calendar) the Swedish army led by king Charles XII was severely defeated by the Russians at Poltava. Europe was stunned by this defeat for until then the Swedish army was considered invincible. Subsequently scholars “explained” the defeat in various ways, for instance (Swanström et al. 1944, Andersson 1973, Scott 1977, Massie 1980) by the fact that having been wounded in the left foot ten days before, Charles could not lead his army in his usual way. Although plausible, such an explanation appears nevertheless surprising when one realizes that the Russian army was far superior in numbers and equipment; as a matter of fact, the Russian army numbered 45,000 and had 72 guns while the Swedish army numbered 26,000 and had only 4 guns (Bodart 1908, p.159). While that obvious reason is in fact given by some historians (e.g. Langer 1968, p.508), the fact that most scholars preferred to mention a circumstantial cause is characteristic of the tendency to discard basic and organic factors. R. Massie (1980), for instance, puts the following words in the mouth of one of the Swedish generals: “Would to God our gracious king had not been wounded for then it had never gone as it did”, and he observes that the confusion in the Swedish army stemmed from “the absence of the one commanding figure who rose above jealousies”.