The brutal winter of 1709, the 'Great Frost', struck all of Europe and wore down Charles XII's Swedish army before Poltava.
The events
- Great Frost of 17091709 · Western Europe. The winter of 1708–09 was Europe's coldest in 500 years: Venice's canals and North Sea coasts froze, and famine struck France. Charles XII's army lost thousands of men to frost in Ukraine and arrived weakened at the Battle of Poltava.
- Battle of Poltava1709 · Poltava. Peter I's Russian army crushed the Swedish forces of Charles XII, who fled to the Ottoman Empire. The victory turned the Great Northern War: Sweden lost its great-power status and Russia gained it.
More amazing facts
- 1682 · 1683 Peter I became tsar in 1682; a year later the Ottomans were stopped at the gates of Vienna.
- 1687 · 1703 In the year St Petersburg was founded (1703), Newton became President of the Royal Society.
- 1689 The authoritative text of the first Russia–China treaty, Nerchinsk (1689), was in Latin: Jesuit interpreters handled the talks.
- 1741 · 1768 Steller's sea cow was discovered in 1741 and wiped out in just 27 years: the last was apparently killed in 1768, the year Cook set off on his first voyage.
- 1751 · 1762 Catherine II corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot and offered to publish the Encyclopédie, banned in France, in Riga.
- 1755 In January 1755 Moscow University was founded; that November an earthquake destroyed Lisbon and shook all of Europe.