Topic: Archives
When the Swedish army took control of Courland in 1701 they came upon considerable amounts of guns and ammunition. On 26 September Governor General Dahlbergh wrote to Major General Carl Gustaf Mörner in Mitau, asking him about the size and quality of the captured items. Mörner was blunt in his reply. Very little was of any use. The hand grenades were so brittle that they broke into pieces if dropped to the floor. The cannonballs and musket balls were of the wrong caliber and not worth wasting any time on.
During the attempts to strengthen the Peipus squadron the following year a new attempt was made. Would it possible to obtain guns from the iron works at Angern? The result was not much better. On 22 March Nils Klintenhielm wrote from Mitau that the boring house had burnt down five years earlier, so no guns could be produced there and none were available at Mitau. The only items available at Angern were horseshoes and nails - of little use to a navy.
Sources:
LVVA, fond 7349, op. 1, vol. 73
Riksarkivet, Gustaf Adolf Strömfelts arkiv, vol. 16
Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek, Dorpat-Rigasamlingen, vol. 1 (these papers later rearranged and renamed "Livonica".)
