The above picture and quote below are from Mail.ru.Праздник установлен в честь победы русской армии под командованием Петра Первого над шведами в Полтавском сражении в 1709 году. Является одним из дней воинской славы России и отмечается 10 июля.Translation courtesy of AltaVista's Babel Fish:
Holiday is established in the honor of the victory of Russian army under the command of Peter pervy above the Swedes in the Poltava battle in 1709. It is one of the days of the military glory of Russia and is noted on 10 July./* To be honest I underestimated the abilities of Babel Fish and was hoping for something more humerous... maybe next time. */
According to Russian wikipedia:Swedish forces:The summary of the battle is that Peter the Great kicked Charles XII ass (and by kick ass I mean wounded) and completely destroyed his army. According to the Russian wikipedia: 1345 Russian soldiers dead and 3290 wounded compared to 16,000 Swedish prisoners and at least 11,000 casualties.Troops in the convoy and the strengthenings:
- 8200 soldiers of infantry (18 battalions) of 4 instruments
- 7800 soldiers of the cavalry (109 squadrons)
- 1000 riders - Valashskiy regiment of the irregular cavalry
Russian forces:
- 200 soldiers of the cavalry (25 squadrons)
- an unknown number of cossacks
- 1800 riders in the lower reaches of the river Vorskly.
Poltava garrison:
- 25 000 soldiers of infantry (51 battalion)
- 9000 soldiers of the cavalry (85 squadrons)
- 4000 soldiers of infantry (8 battalions) and 16 instruments on the line of strengthenings
- 1000 infantries and 1000 cavalries under S. Yakovtsy.
- 4000 infantries and 28 instruments
The bottom line is there were at least 8,000 cossacks.
3 comments:
I don't quite get it. Were the cossacks fighting on both sides (just in case)? Or were they only fighting for Swedes?
Hmm, interesting point to which you would know the answer before I would. .. but Wikipedia made it sounds like they were fighting just for the Swedes, then again Russian Wikipedia isn't nearly as expansive as the english version and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the cossacks were fighting for both sides.
what I want to know is: why were they fighting the Swedes in the first place?
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