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Charles XII in Germany

To quote from a popular Russian song, "you did not expect us, but we came anyway".

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By the late 1706 things are looking fine for the Great Alliance, except for Spain: Marlborough kicked Marshal Villeroi from the Spanish Netherlands (why Louis XIV kept using this nincompoop regardless his numerous defeats is anybody's guess) while Prince Eugene defeated French at Turin and practically guaranteed Austrian position in the Northern Italy (Savoy already sided with the Great Alliance). In Hungary Rákóczi forces, lacking money (introduction of copper currency did not help too much) and foreign support, had been forced to retreat. There was a minor offset, Villars managed to push the Allied forces to the right bank of the Rhine but it could be ignored for a while.

But when everybody on Alliance side was ready to relax for a while when suddenly a huge fly appeared in the ointment: 40,000 Swedes led by Charles XII established their winter quarters in Saxony. The Allied attempts to bring him on their side failed. He refused to make any agreements with the emperor and a personal visit by the Duke of Marlborough did not went well either: Charles wanted glory and his army wanted glory and looting.

The immediate problem for the Grand Alliance and especially for the Emperor was that their great generals had been occupied far away: Marlborough was in Flanders while Eugene was tied with an attempt to execute Marlborough plan of taking Toulon. The only high-ranking commander anywhere close was Imperial Field Marshal Christian Ernst of Brandenburg-Bayreuth presently defending Lines of Stollhofen (on the Rhine) with an army 30,000 strong. Taking into an account that the only opponent anywhere close was Villars (just recently elevated to the Duke) who stayed on the other side of the Rhine with the pathetic 4,000, Christian Ernst was ordered to march with 26,000 to Bohemia where all available imperial forces had to be assembled.

Following his usual modus operandi, Charles started campaign with marching into Silesia thus giving Austrians time to assemble at least some meaningful force. His unopposed march to Breslau was somewhat of a triumphal procession (slightly marred by the looting of the friendly Protestants but, well, the war is not a picnic). From there he made a sharp turn to the West to march on Prague. At Kolin he caught Christian Ernst who was still waiting for the reinforcements and soundly defeated him after which continued his march on Prague. Of course, when he arrived to its walls it finally downed upon him that his army is not well-suited for conducting a siege of the well-fortified major city. To start with, it lacked a heavy artillery and then, it did not have a single half decent engineer. When Charles addressed at least marginally educated one as "our little Vauban", the reply was "God help us with Vauban like me!". Of course, the great general like Charles could not be stopped by such trifles and the next 2 months Swedish army spent bombarding the city and looting the nearby area. The honor being, thus, preserved Charles raised the siege and proceed toward Vienna choosing to ignore an obvious fact that siege of this city is going to be even more problematic.
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At the same time Villars penetrated the Lines of Stollhofen and, after being reinforced, moved deeper into Baden/Bavaria but everybody was too exited by what is going on in Bohemia to pay serious notice.

Panic at the imperial court was strong enough for Eugene to get order to abandon siege of Toulon (which was not going well, anyway), take command of the imperial army on Moselle and to start marching toward the new theater of war. Marlborough was asked to send at least some reinforcements from the Netherlands and he chose to lead them personally not expecting the major French attack at least in a near future. Total Allied forces amounted to approximately 80,000.

Charles, who already reached Moravia, became aware of the situation and of a growing possibility to be cut off from the Swedish Pomerania. Not that he would care too much but his pet king of Poland started having problems: the Sandomierz Confederation was getting active attacking small Swedish garrisons and the troops loyal to Leszczyński. Then there was an issue of Hohenzollern: while the "King in Prussia" was formally at peace with Sweden his troops had been actively engaged on the side of the Great Alliance (and proved to be of a very high quality even if the trifles like that did not unduly concern Charles).

In what was described by the later military historians (depending on their priority) as either a stroke of genius or as an ultimate idiocy, Charles decided to met the opponents in a major battle and marched to met them.

The enemies met at Lutzen, which brought some troubling associations.

Swedish cavalry attacked on a full gallop and managed to smash Allied left flank but an overall numeric advantage, much stronger artillery and stubborn resistance by the Prussian troops led by Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau allowed them to restore the situation. Series of the Swedish bayonet charges also had been parried albeit with the heavy casualties.

After almost the whole day of a fighting the British cavalry strengthened by the Austrian cuirassiers counterattacked and the Swedish ranks were broken. The victors were too exhausted for the immediate chase and Charles was allowed to retreat. The losses on both sides were quite high: the victors lost up to 24,000 by dead and wounded while the Swedes up to 15,000. As was reported to Louis XIV, "one more such victory and Your Majesty enemies will find themselves without an army".

The Allies had been cautiously advancing through Saxony with the Swedes fighting occasional rearguard actions but the huge numbers of the wounded would not allow them to move faster. Finally most of those had been left to the mercy of the victors which allowed Charles to reach the Polish border and to continue his retreat with the remaining 12 - 15,000 troops. This was a beginning of the fall and "the God created 5th element for Poland, the dirt". Swedes had to cross the whole Commonwealth and their numbers kept shrinking. By the time he reached Warsaw, Charles had slightly more than 10,000 exhausted troops with only 10 artillery pieces and he still had a very long way to go. When in the early 1708 he finally reached Livonia, he had less than 8,000 and a completely lost reputation. Nobody even can tell who and why shot him when he was riding through his camp at night...

Back to WoSS:
The victorious allies returned to the front but the news about a terrible carnage at Lutzen heavily impacted the public opinion in Britain. The Tories came to power paving the way to the Duke's dismissal.
The Ministry had set up a Parliamentary "Commission for the taking, examining and stating the public accounts of the Kingdom", to report on alleged irregularities during the war. Marlborough was dismissed and replaced by the Duke of Ormonde, which caused a great joy in France. The peace talks followed and a separate peace was concluded.

Left alone, Eugene was outmaneuvered by Villars at Denain. The Emperor was forced to start negotiations.....


And in a meantime Peter .....

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