Topic: Factoids
In 1975 Roland Persson published a dissertation called Rustningar i Sverige under det stora nordiska kriget. When studying how the effort to raise more troops at the outbreak of the war he discovered that some of the county governors in Finland acted quite independently from the government in Stockholm, in fact in some cases actually going directly against previous orders because they evaluated the situation differently. Persson states that this shows that local authorities in reality was given much more leeway than they theoretically had.
Another example of the same thing is the decision in February 1700 by Governor General de la Gardie in Reval to order the mobilization of the Finnish regiments without waiting for orders from Stockholm. In a letter to Erik Dahlbergh in Riga, dated 9 March, Governor Vellingk mentions this decision by de la Gardie. Vellingk says that he personally will not dare to follow the example in absence of a direct request from Dahlbergh. The impression he had received from Dahlbergh's letters was that Riga was under no immediate threat. Hopefully the King's orders would soon arrive. Vellingk believed these would not only contain instructions to drive the Saxons back to Courland, but also permit an advance into the duchy. Surely the Polish Republic would welcome the removal of the Saxon forces?
In his letter to Dahlbergh Vellingk enclosed a copy of a letter he had written to de la Gardie. Vellingk noted de la Gardie's actions and suggested that the Finnish regiiments should be quartered in the vicinity of Narva until orders from the King arrived. Small cavalry detachments could meanwhile operate against the Saxon raiding parties in Livonia.
On 13 April Vellingk again wrote to Dahlbergh. 12000 infantry and cavalry had passed through Narva and two more regiments were expected shortly. The entire force would number 18000 and that would be far more than Charles XI ever had in Scania during the war 1675-79, Vellingk wrote. This should be more than sufficient to handle the Saxon forces for quite some time and Vellingk had already reached agreements with Lt. Colonel Albedyhl, Lt. Colonel Schlippenbach and Captain Liewen for the recruiting of three new regiments. Vellingk would personally raise two more and de la Gardie was in the process of recruting one. So, Vellingk wrote, what could King Augustus do? He couldn't raise any more regiments in Saxony and had because of this been forced to get Danish regiments in. The Polish Republic had refused all cooperation and Brandenburg would not help him either. The only problem was that no firm orders had yet arrived from Stockholm as to how the campaign was to be conducted.
Source: Uppsala University Library, Riga-Tartusamlingen, vol. 1. (nowadays rearranged as "Livonica" with different numbering)
