Great Northern War - A Good Plan - Extra History - Part 2

📜 History of the Great Northern War, Part 2
Augustus the Strong was determined to prove his might by defeated Charles XII on the battlefield. He gathered his Polish-Lithuanian forces, met the Swedes, and proceded to... lose. And lose. And lose. Then he got deposed and started a civil war which of course he also lost.

*Miss an episode in our Great Northern War Series?*

#ExtraHistory #GreatNorthernWar #History

[extrahistory]

The wrath of Charles XII was now aimed directly at Poland-Lithuania. But their leader had a plan! ..A terrible plan.

[MetalHeadViking]

King Charles to the swedish people: "You are going to have so much winning, that you are going to get tiered of winning!"

[haljoa]

"And then he found a new plan, winning." Hands down one of the best lines of extra history.

[shmatts]

When you select easy mode and blitz through the campaign.

[Forcystus]

Fun fact number 1: Augustus II and Charles XII were actually cousins.

Fun fact number 2: Poland-Lithuania never declared war upon Sweden in the Great Nordic War, as Augustus could never get the Polish parliament to agree to do so. Instead, Augustus declared war in his capacity as Lord of Saxony.

Fun fact number 3: Augustus II was also known as "Augustus the Strong". Irony was a thing even back then, it seems. ^^

[cheerfulpessimist]

"How to pull victories out of your ass! The official guide."

Written by Charles XII of Sweden, "Carolus Rex"

[barleysixseventwo]

So many famous and ingenious strategies on this show!
The Bull Formation
The Fabian Tactics
The Hannible Envelopment
...Losing

[apinla]

We polish need to be taught more about Augustus, we could really benefit from his strategic genius

[torneko]

What do you mean losing isn't a good idea. Ive been doing it my whole life

[Achillez]

You gotta give Augustus some credit, few people could suffer so many failures, yet still remain positive and confident of success

[MrBigCookieCrumble]

The swedish army had a lot of seasoned veterans but because of the lack
of manpower and money usually only 2/3 men had muskets, the other 1/3
had pikes. However this was turned into an advantage.
While most battles in this era was a shooting war, you'd line up your
lines of infantery and shoot volleys at each other until one side was
either outflanked or broke from low morale. The swedish army could not
survive these kinds of battles in the long run, because they had such
low manpower and as a result was almost always greatly outnumbered.

What the swedish army did was cut the whole "shooting"-bit out of
battles. They would approach the enemy lines in an ordinary fashion,
they line up and wait within musket range of the enemy until the enemy
had fired, then they would quickly march (or even run) up to the enemy
line while they were reloading and fire two volleys (half the line would
fire at a certain distance, the other half would afterwards move ahead
of them and fire their shots even closer) almost point blank. Afterwards
the entire line formation would immediatly charge into melee. This was
absolutely devestating, especially vs the untrained conscripts that
usually made up a significant portion of the enemy army, which is why
they ususally targeted those first, rout the conscripts and then
outflank the veteran forces. Remember what i said about the pikes? If
you didnt have a sword your rifle and bayonet was your only proper melee
weapon, which is used mostly like a spear, the length of your rifle and
bayonet is important in these situations since if you have longer reach
you can stab your opponent without them being able to reach you, well,
there are no rifles capable of outreaching a pike! You'd either have to
charge forward and try and get past the pike, stand your ground and
probably get stabbed or you'd back up and avoid the pointy end, in
either way this would disrupt your formation making the fight easier for
the swedes.

The cavalry tactics was also changed into, just like the infantery
tactics, into a shock and awe. Instead of skirmishing the enemy cav and
trying to find gaps in enemy formations, circling around and harrasing
the flanks. The swedish cavalry would form very, very tight formations,
the different riders would be knee to knee with each other and charge in
a wedge formation straight into and plowing through enemy formations,
waiting to fire their carbines and pistols until they were point blank
range and then continuing to melee them.

I've heard it being described as the musket era version of blitzkrieg
tactics. But i personally belive that shock and awe is a better term.
This is how sweden's armies were capable of inflicting such enormous
casualties on the enemy during most major battles in this period.

[scrublord]

**wakes up**
**eating breakfast**
**hear report that swedish armies are advancing**
"what should we do?"
"hmmm have we tried letting them use our cannons to kill us?"
"THATS GENIUS"
**the battle was a collosal failure**
it's good to be king of Poland

[gigastrike]

...Is this kid a tactical genius, or is he just getting really lucky?

[Duke_of_Lorraine]

"which surprisingly was more men than they were fielding themselves"

Infinite manpower, baby !

[stardust-reverie]

I love how Charles constantly smiles proudly as if everything he does is effortless and/or he just could not give two fucks about anything.

[TechShowdown]

Sounds like Luigi Cadorna was trying to copy Augustus as much as possible during The Great War lmao

[solari]

"soon the iron was beating up both the hammer and the anvil."
Pretty clear sign of Epic Fail if I've ever seen one.

[AlvoriaGPM]

This episode had me clutching my sides in laughter. Not literally rolling on the floor, but definitely having to steady myself in my chair to prevent that from happening. Awesome work!

Something tells me that the "just keep losing" bit is going to get a segment in the Lies episode given how many people are asking if that was actually the goal or not. Still a hilarious joke, though.

[haradream]

3:32 Aww this drawing looks so cute, Charles XII having a snowball fight with his soldiers <3

[RememberTheDead]

Charles XII our good and old Carolus Rex was a goddamn genius madman. Voltaire, the fabled philosopher, actually lived in his court during this time and wrote a biography of the man (which can be found on Google docs). According to Voltaire, When Charles XII stormed Polish Lithuanian and he heard the noise of musket fire he cackled maniacally and said "Henceforth, this shall be my music!".