Part 1: Russian Invasion

Having thus secured a base of operations, the Russians proceeded to harass the garrison by day and by night. The heavy batteries bombarded the fortress, taking aim at the mills and the masts of ships that rose above the ramparts, and especially firing at the great snow-covered roofs of the shipbuilding-slips and workshops of the arsenal. Day after day fires broke out in the place.

Even at night the garrison was allowed no rest. Troops would march out upon the ice from the Russian lines, with drums beating and torches flaring, only to disappear as the first gun was fired from fort or rampart. The Russian field-artillery added to the alarms of the garrison. Colonel Argoun, who commanded it, was always playing a gigantic game of hide-and-seek among the rocks around Sweaborg. His guns would slip along from rock to rock, appear suddenly where they were least expected within point- blank range of the ramparts, send a shower of grape over them, and retire just as the garrison beat to arms to repel a supposed attempt to storm the works. For, with all this activity in the Russian lines, Cronstedt was persuaded that Suchtelen was meditating an assault. The result was that the garrison turned out to its alarm posts several times every day and night, besides having to work continually at putting out the fires in the dockyard and arsenal. Exposed to bitter cold, working hard by day, deprived of proper rest at night, no wonder the men began to break down. Cronstedt had no idea of the weakness of the force opposed to him, or of the strength of his own position.

To his mind, Sweaborg was an island fortress depending on the sea for its security; and now, thanks to the ice, the sea was traversed even by field-artillery, and a column of assault could march right up to the ramparts. Yet all the while, if he had abandoned his attitude of passive and irresolute defence, he was himself in a position to seriously menace the besiegers with disaster.

Soon he began to be anxious about the supply of food. On the approach of the invaders a large number of the people of Helsingfors had fled to Sweaborg. Cronstedt would have liked to get rid of these "useless mouths," and he sent some of them out to try to reach their old homes. The Russian outposts drove them back at the point of the bayonet. But General Suchtelen sent in a courteous message to the admiral under a flag of truce. He could not allow him to increase his supplies by sending out hundreds of the civilian inhabitants of Sweaborg, but he would be happy to give a safe conduct and an escort to the admiral's own family, in order to spare them the sufferings of the siege. Cronstedt nobly replied that he and his must share the lot of the garrison. He would accept no special privileges for his wife and children.

Psychological Warfare

The Russian general further showed his courtesy by sending into the Governor gazettes, newspapers, and letters for the families of officers and men. But all the papers and letters had been carefully examined beforehand, and only those were allowed to pass out of Helsingfors which contained depressing news for the Swedes about the progress of the Russian arms and the sufferings of the rest of the country. All good news was carefully kept back. Flags of truce were thus always coming and going, and the Russian staff arranged, on one pretext or another, to have as many conferences as possible with the admiral and his officers.

They soon found out that he had no confidence in his position, no expectation of the siege being raised, and that he was particularly suspicious of the promised English naval succour in the spring. He thought that if the British came it would be to get possession of the Swedish fleet. Hopes were artfully held out to him that it might be possible to save the flotilla at Sweaborg by negotiating a separate capitulation for the fortress, and on April 3rd Suchtelen and Cronstedt met on the Isle of Loman and signed a convention for an armistice.

Armistice Convention

It was a curious document. It provided that the cessation of hostilities should last till May 3rd, and then went on to provide that, "If at noon on the 3rd of May the fortress has not been succoured by at least five ships of the line, it shall be given up to H.I. the Emperor of Russia. Be it understood, that it is necessary such succour shall at that hour have actually entered the harbour of Sweaborg, and that if it should only be in sight of the fortress it shall be considered as not having arrived."

On the ratification of the armistice, the Swedes were to give up to the Russians, as a guarantee, the island of Langorn, with its batteries. The one advantage which was held out to the old admiral as the price of this convention was the preservation of the flotilla. But even this was only conditional, for the article referring to it ran thus:" The flotilla shall be restored in its actual condition to Sweden, after the peace, provided always that England shall restore to Denmark the fleet taken from that Power last year."

Next day the Russians were given possession of Langorn, the batteries of which commanded the entrance to the great harbour, and they immediately took precautions to prevent any rescuing squadron from getting in when the ice broke up. Additional guns were mounted. Furnaces were prepared and kept ready day and night for firing red-hot shot, and the gunners slept in shelters beside their guns. But the ice held on, and no relief appeared; so on May 3rd Admiral Cronstedt surrendered, and the Russians took possession of the fortress, with 2000 guns, over 300,000 projectiles, and a great store of arms and ammunition, 2 frigates, 19 transports, and 100 galleys, sloops, gunboats, and small craft, besides a considerable supply of rigging and naval stores. Two hundred and eight officers and 7,368 men laid down their arms.

"The Russians," wrote Suchtelen, "had hardly enough men to occupy the place and see to the dispersion of the enemy's garrison." There were rumours that Cronstedt had been bribed to surrender the fortress, but both Russian and Swedish writers deny that there was any ground for such a charge against him. Without supposing anything of the kind, his conduct is explained by the fact that, though a brave sailor, he was quite out of place as the commandant of a mixed garrison of soldiers and militia in an ice-bound fortress; and, above all, the simpleminded old man was no match for a soldier diplornatist like Suchtelen. Cronstedt was weak and vacillating at a time when victory was within reach of a determined man, and so the great prize of Sweaborg fell into the hands of adversaries who were full of resource, enterprise and determination, the very qualities in which he was deficient.

On May 8th the Russian flag was hoisted on the forts, with a salute of 101 guns, and a Te Deum was solemnly celebrated in the great square of the citadel. The Black Eagle has flown there ever since. In the Crimean War Sweaborg defied the attacks of our Baltic fleet.

Its surrender to Suchtelen came at a most unfortunate time, for not only was the ice breaking up, so that very soon a joint Swedish and British fleet would have been in the Gulf of Finland, but the Swedish armies in the field, under Klingsporr, had been winning decided victories over the Russian army of invasion. The first serious fighting took place in the second week of April.

<>BThe Campaign Continues

On the 13th the Swedes were in and about Pyhajoki, at the mouth of the river of the same name. Klingsporr's headquarters were in the town, and Colonel Gripenberg, with about 200 men, covered it by holding the strong position of Ypperi, on the coast a little to the south. On the 13th, Gripenberg was attacked in front by the Russian vanguard, while another column, led by General Koulneff in person, moving on the ice of the Gulf of Bothnia, turned his right flank. In this way Gripenberg was driven out of three positions in succession.

His fourth stand was made close to Pyhajoki, and here Klingsporr came to the rescue of his rear-guard. His artillery checked the Russian advance on the coast road, while his chief -o f- the-staf f, Colonel Count L6wenhjelm, with a brigade of infantry and some squadrons of dragoons, charged Koulneff's Russians on the ice. In one of these charges, which he led sword in hand, Lowenhjelm had his horse killed, and was himself wounded and taken prisoner. This caused some confusion among his followers, but the result of Klingsporr's attack was that he disengaged his rear- guard, stopped the Russian pursuit at the mouth of the Pyhajoki, and was able to continue his retreat unmolested.

The Russians occupied Brahestad on April 18th, and drove the Swedish rear-guard out of Olijoki. But a few miles to the northwards, near the church of Sikajoki, Klingsporr made a more determined stand than he had yet ventured upon. At the mouth of the. Sikajoki river, the Russians tried to repeat the manoeuvre which they had so often found successful, by moving out on the ice to turn the position of the Swedes on the land.

But this time Klingsporr was ready for them, and they were beaten back with heavy loss by the Swedish artillery and cavalry. The frontal attack made no more progress. The Russians came on again and again, but the Swedes doggedly held their ground. The fight went on for eight hours, the whole length of the shor t northern day. Towards sunset General Adlerkreutz, who was now acting as Klingsporr's chief-of-th-staff, noticed that the Russian fire was slackening, and abandoning the defensive attitude for the attack, charged them all along the line, and drove them from the field. The fight had cost a loss of about 1,000 killed and wounded, among the former the Swedish general Fleming.

One of the chivalrous incidents of the struggle is worth noting. In those days of smooth-bore flintlocks, men fought at a range of from 100 to 200 yards, and so it was that Koulneff, who commanded the Russian attack, noticed a Swedish officer who was recklessly exposing himself to danger, and, admiring his courage, he told the Cossack sharpshooters not to fire at the brave fellow. The officer bore a name now famous in Scandinavian literature - he was a Captain Bjornsterne. But the Swedes were equally generous, for, in the same fight, Adlerkreutz was so struck by Koulneff's intrepid bearing, that he gave orders that care should be taken not to shoot down the Russian general.

Klingsporr withdrew next day northwards to Lumijoki where he waited for reinforcements, which soon gave him the advantage of numbers over the Russians, who now made no further attempts to disturb him. In the last week of April he felt strong enough to assume the offensive. He had good information, for the peasants were all friendly to the Swedes, and he learned in this way that two Russian columns under Generals Boulatoff and Toutchkoff, were marching to unite their forces near Revolax in his front.

He resolved to delay one of them while he overwhelmed the other with a sudden attack, and on April 27th he set in motion two columns. The smaller, under Adlerkreutz, was to keep Toutchkoff engaged, while the larger, under General Cronstedt (a relative of the admiral), was to interpose between his force and Boulatoff, and try to break up Boulatoff's corps. The attacks were to have been simultaneous, but Cronstedt's march was delayed by deep snow drifts, and Adlerkreutz was in a very serious position, engaged with Toutchkoff's force (which repelled all his attacks), and at the same time exposed to the danger of Boulatoff's corps coming up.

But in the afternoon, when Boulatoff, marching towards the sound of his colleague's guns, was approaching Revolax, he suddenly found himself attacked by a Swedish column, which, to his utter surprise, debouched not from a road, but from the hollow of a frozen stream, the ice of which it had used as a roadway. At the same time a sharp fire from the edges of all the firwoods on both his flanks told him that Cronstedt, before showing his hand, had lined all available cover with his sharpshooters. He saw he was caught in a trap. Forming his brigade into a solid column, he tried to bear down the Swedish main attack, but as this first effort failed, he cut his colours from the staff, and giving them to one of his officers, told him to try to get through to Toutchkoff, and tell him that the brigade would fight to the last.

Wounded several times, Boulatoff did not give the word to cease fire till he was actually dying. In this condition he fell into the hands of the Swedes, who took 800 prisoners and four guns. Some hundreds more of the Russians got away in the gathering darkness, and the wreck of the brigade rallied to the standard of Toutchkoff, who, on hearing of his colleague's fate, retreated to Pyhajoki, leaving a rear-guard at Brahestad. His force was a little over 5,000 men, with nineteen guns. Klingsporr now had 12,000 but there was a good deal of sickness in his army.

He followed the Russians with his main body, sending a flying column under Colonel Sandels to recover possession of the lake-land of central Finland. The Russians had declared that they came to deliver the Finns from Swedish tyranny, but now the peasants were rising in insurrection on the flank and rear of the invaders and cutting off their convoys. It was thus difficult for them to get supplies, or to maintain their communications.

The Russians abandoned Brahestad and retreated to Gamle Carlaby before the advancing Swedes Klingsporr crossing the Pyhajoki in triumph, while the insurrection spread eastwards, supported by Colonel Sandels' column, and the Russians had to rapidly take precautions for the defence of their own frontier.

Then with the first days of May there was a pause in the operations. For the thaw had begun, and every river was a torrent of rushing water and whirling masses of ice; the streams of melting snow made watercourses of the roads; and marsh and lake were no longer passable for the flying columns.

To Count Klingsporr it must have seemed that victory was now-assured or Sweden. He had recovered the north of the kingdom. Even with the forces at his command he could drive the Russians back to the south, where, as he supposed, Sweaborg was defying their attacks. The thaw would bring to his aid not merely the Swedish fleet, but the English squadron, which had reached Gothenburg, escorting transports that conveyed 14,000 British troops under Sir John Moore. It looked as if the summer would see the disastrous retreat of the invaders from Finland.

But all these hopes were dashed to the ground when news came, first that Sweaborg was in the hands of Russia, and then that King Gustavus was quarrelling with his English allies. He was dreaming of vast schemes of conquest -- of repeating the exploits of his great namesake, the Gustavus of the Thirty Years' War, by throwing himself into Denmark at the head of his Swedes and Sir John Moore's troops, and intervening in Germany with decisive effect.

When Sir John would not listen to these wild schemes, the king refused to co-operate with him in any other direction, and after useless debates, the British troops re-embarked, and Sir John Moore sailed away to find victory, death, and fame in the Spanish peninsula. Even the king's Swedish forces, after a long delay, were frittered away in ill-directed enterprises against the Russian fortIfied positions in the south of Finland. In the shallows among the islands Gustavus carried on with varying success, a kind of amphibious warfare, where his own galleys and troops acted against the Russian batteries and the galleys and gunboats taken by the invaders from his own arsenals. Had he used his resources to reinforce Klingsporr, that brave and capable soldier would have accomplished more.

Even as it was, Klingsporr inflicted further defeats on the invaders, recovered all the west of Finland from them, and, cooperating with Sandels, freed the centre, where at one time all the Russians held was the fortified town of Kuopio, strong in its position in the midst of a labyrinth of lakes and creeks.

Meanwhile the joint Swedish and British fleet had defeated the Russian fleet off Hango Head, and blockaded it in Baltsch Port till the autumn. It lay there under the protection of some shore batteries, until one day violent storm forced the blockading squadron to stand out to sea, when the Russians ran out also and got safely into Cronstadt. No attempt was made by the allied fleet to recover Sweaborg, or even to menace it. With the key of Finland thus in their hands, the Russians held the south of the country through the summer.

Then came an armistice; divided counsels among the Swedes, quarrels and dissensions among the leaders, which were the prelude of the revolution in the following year; and 1809 saw the fall of Gustavus, and the treaty signed which gave Finland to Russia.

The Winter Campaign in Finland 1808 Part 1

Part 1: Russian Invasion
Part 1: Defense of Sweaborg