- Ingrian War
The Ingrian War between Sweden and Russia, which lasted between 1610 and 1617 and can be seen as part of the
Time of Troubles , is mainly remembered for the attempt to put a Swedish duke on the Russian throne. It ended with a large Swedish territorial gain in theTreaty of Stolbovo which laid an important foundation to Sweden's Age of Greatness.Prelude
During Russia's
Time of Troubles ,Charles IX of Sweden sent an expeditionary corps underJacob De la Gardie to capture the Russian fortress ofOld Ladoga . On hearing about their arrival toIngria , theNovgorod ians asked the king to install one of his sons — Carl Filip or Gustavus Adolphus — as their monarch and on this understanding submitted the city to De la Gardie.Vasily IV of Russia , besieged inMoscow by theTushino gang and driven to despair by the ongoing Polish intervention, then entered an alliance with Charles IX, who was also waging war against Poland. The tsar promised to cedeKorela Fortress to Sweden in recompense for military support againstFalse Dmitry II and the Poles. Thereupon De la Gardie joined his forces with the Russian commanderMikhail Skopin-Shuisky and marched from Novgorod towardsMoscow in order to relieve the tsar.Sweden's involvement into the Russian affairs gave
Sigismund III Vasa a pretext to declare war on Russia. The Poles engaged the combined Russo-Swedish forces at Klushino and destroyed most of the Russian force; the Swedish mercenaries taking part in theDe la Gardie Campaign (July 1610) surrendered. The battle had serious consequences for Russia, as the tsar was deposed byboyar s and the Poles occupiedthe Kremlin .Fighting
In the meantime, Gustavus Adolphus succeeded to the Swedish throne. The young king decided to press his brother's claim to the Russian throne even after the Poles had been expelled from Moscow by a patriotic uprising of 1612 and
Mikhail Romanov had been elected a new tsar.While the Swedish statesmen envisaged the creation of a Trans-Baltic dominion extending northwards to
Archangelsk and eastwards toVologda , De la Gardie and other Swedish soldiers, still holding Novgorod and Ingria, saw the war as a reaction for their forces not receiving payment for their succour during theDe la Gardie Campaign .In 1613 they advanced towards
Tikhvin and laid a siege to the city, but were repulsed. The Russian counter-offensive failed to regain Novgorod, however. The Russian tsar refused to commit his troops to battle and the war lumbered on until 1614, when the Swedes capturedGdov .The following year they laid siege to
Pskov but Russian generals Morozov and Buturlin held their own until27 February ,1617 , when theTreaty of Stolbovo stripped Russia of its access to theBaltic Sea and awarded to Sweden the province of Ingria with the townships ofIvangorod , Jama,Koporye and Noteborg. Novgorod and Gdov were to be restituted to Russia.As a result of the war, Russia was denied access to the sea for about a century, despite its persistent efforts to reverse the situation.
References
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