Battle of Poltava
Battle of Poltava: Peter I's army routs the Swedish field army
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗A king who habitually commanded from the front had to be carried into his decisive battle: a bullet had shattered his foot days earlier.
8 July 1709: an attack ordered by a wounded king
Near Poltava in the Cossack Hetmanate on 8 July 1709, Charles XII ordered a pre-emptive attack on Peter I's fortified encampment after learning that Russian reinforcements were reportedly approaching. His foot wound had disabled him, so Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld exercised Swedish tactical command.
The same day carries three correct dates: 27 June in the Julian calendar Russia used, 28 June in Sweden's own temporary calendar, and 8 July Gregorian.
The redoubts, then the rout
Swedish infantry advanced early in the morning, captured two Russian redoubts but failed to hold them, and became divided while trying to pass the defensive works. Carl Gustaf Roos's detached battalions were cut off and surrendered.
After the armies regrouped, Russian artillery and infantry broke the Swedish formation. By about 11 a.m. the Swedish field army had been routed, with Rehnskiöld and the royal minister Carl Piper among those captured.
Three days to the capitulation
The Encyclopedia of Ukraine account puts Peter's force at 42,500 soldiers and 102 cannon against a Swedish army of 31,000 that took only four guns forward with the attack. It counts more than 9,300 Swedish dead and nearly 2,900 captured, against 1,345 Russian dead and 3,290 wounded; the totals differ across Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian accounts.
Surviving Swedish units withdrew south along the Vorskla. Within three days Charles XII, Ivan Mazepa and a mixed Swedish-Cossack contingent had crossed the Dnipro, while about 16,000 men under Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt capitulated at Perevolochna.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources 2 audit passes Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at 1709-07-08.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The same day was 28 June in Sweden’s temporary Swedish calendar, 27 June in the Julian calendar used by Russia, and 8 July in the Gregorian calendar. The ISO date uses the modern Gregorian equivalent.
- Strength and casualty totals differ among Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian accounts. The figures above preserve the numbers and attribution of the cited Encyclopedia of Ukraine rather than presenting them as uncontested.