Why Europeans are the Gods of War.

Sunday, 13 July 2014

Many people seem to be interested in how the Europeans were so successful militarily. They reach simplistic erroneous conclusions such as that the Europeans all had guns and everybody else did not.

While there were certainly other factors at play, such as sophisticated use of sea power and siegecraft, and early attempts to develop military theory, there was one factor that contributed more than any other.

It is important to bear in mind that the primary weapon of an army is and always has been organisation.

Weapons and tactics are less important in the grand scheme of things. Even inferior weapons can get the job done, and minor tactics can be adapted quickly, indeed can be invented on the spot, by armies with sufficient cohesion.

The great advantage European armies possessed in the early modern age was discipline. It is worthwhile to briefly describe this phenomenon.

European armies consistently bested those of the Middle-East and India even when in inferior numbers, following the Thirty Years' War.

This was not because European weapons or tactics were intrinsically superior, it was because Europeans moved and acted as a unit. And they were drilled to the point of being able to accept significant casualties without breaking.

As other Europeans quickly adopted these systems during and after the Thirty Years' War, which saw the rise of permanent standing armies in Europe, it was less dramatic in contests between European states. The Prussians under Frederick appeared to have achieved little, but that was because their opponents were other Europeans, primarily Austrians. In reality the Prussian Army could have annihilated any state outside of Europe with ridiculous ease, if they had ever fought.

Following the Thirty Years' War the first effects of the new European system were to be witnessed in battles against the Turks. During the Austro-Turkish War of 1663-1664, the Austrians bested the Turks, including most famously at St. Gotthard. This was a prelude to the complete subordination of the Turkish system during the Great Turkish War of 1683-1699.

So why did the Austrians win? Prior to the Thirty Years' War the Austrians fought roughly the same way the Turks had. Both raised temporary levies or mercenaries who would engage haphazardly in a ferocious melée and then be disbanded at the end of campaigning season because the bureaucracy wasn't able to afford permanent establishments.

This changed with Austrian participation in the Thirty Years' War. During that conflict Albrecht von Wallenstein created a permanent standing Austrian Army which was never to be disbanded again until the empire's dissolution in 1918.

This army was drilled to perfection, or near to it anyway. And the Austrians were to apply its advantages in the east.

The Turks continued to fight using undisciplined irregulars for the most part, with the Janissaries in the vanguard. The Turkish victories prior to 1663 were dependent upon the training and fury of the Janissary in individual combat, and augmented by sheer numbers.

European forces, usually outnumbered, lacked the cohesion to withstand charging Turkish forces. So the Turks frequently broke holes in European lines and filtered through like a rushing torrent to surround and destroy European armies piecemeal.

Starting with Montecuccoli and the Austrian Army, this was no longer sufficient, or at least it could be countered.

Montecuccoli recognised that Austrian cavalry and skirmishers were inferior to their Turkish counterparts, so these were deployed within the infantry. The infantry was formed in deep formation protected by long pikes and chevaux de frise against cavalry.

Whereas the Austrians would often adopt looser formations against Western opponents, to take advantage of their Hungarian light cavalry, and their famous light infantry like Pandours, Grenzers, and Jägers, against the Turks they fought in very tight formations.

This erased the only advantage the Turks had. The Austrians were now disciplined enough to withstand charges by the Turks, and the Turks could no longer infiltrate through gaps in the Austrian lines. They could swarm around the Austrian body, but so long as this held the Turkish mass could be itself struck down in detail.

Unable to coordinate effectively, Austrian generals were consistently able to concentrate against one or other Turkish wing and annihilate it. Once one flank was destroyed the Austrians were able to concentrate on the other to drive that off too.

In such a way were battles like Slankamen and Zenta won. Austrian discipline allowed them to concentrate quickly in one spot, the inability of the Turks to retain effective command over their undisciplined masses meant that Turkish commanders were unable to oppose this overwhelming concentration at the critical point and were helpless to prevent their armies being defeated one segment at a time.

These tactics were copied by the Russians, who improved upon them by forming square, such as at Kagul. Forming square also allowed Napoleon to win at the Embabeh, where the outnumbered French absolutely annihilated their Egyptian opponents.

Prince Eugene had advised that the tight formation be maintained even in pursuit of the enemy. The Turks scored a few successes by feigning retreat which caused the Austrians to foolishing break ranks, allowing the Turks to get between their units. To avoid this, Eugene specified that the Turks were to be pursued by cavalry only, for if these were routed they could always fall back on the infantry. If the infantry were routed the battle was lost.

The Turks as individual soldiers remained fearsome, as they always had been. They had no shortage of bravery or resolution. Indeed they were oftentimes described at fanatic. Their weapons remained good, especially their artillery. Their engineering and fortifications were fantastic, Montecuccoli noted that their fortified camps were much the superior of the Austrian counterparts.

But they failed to work as a collective. The Turks, especially the Janissaries, would not form column or line. They would not hold formation, and they would not obey commands for more complicated manoeuvres. Once battle was joined there was no controlling them.

Turkish sultans were not unaware of this fact, and repeated attempts were made to reform the army along European lines, but the resistance of the Janissaries was too great. These attempts at restructuring weren't helped by occasional success against incompetent opponents.

For example Wilhelm Neipperg allowed his formation to become too loose at Grocka, the far superior numbers of Turks broke through his ranks and threw the Austrians off the field in disarray. Peter the Great very unwisely crossed the Pruth into Moldavia while leaving the Turks free in the Dobrudzha. With their left flank protected by the curve of the Danube, the Turks were able to cross the Danube to the north between Dobrudzha and Bessarabia, and thereby cut Peter's communications with Russia. Trapped on the right (west) bank of the Pruth, unable to recross into Bessarabia or move forward over the Danube or Sareth, Peter was compelled to capitulate his entire army.

While the enormous numbers of Turkish irregulars in these instances proved useful and showed that the Turks could still win using their own methods, the reality was they could only do so in exceptional circumstances and usually only when their opponent made a serious misstep. A general like Traun or Khevenhüller would not have lost at Grocka as Neipperg had. Russian generals like Potemkin and Rumyantsev learned from Peter to always secure their communications and prevent the Turks from crossing the Danube behind them.

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1735-1739, therefore, the Turks scored very few successes. By 1806 the primary defence of the Ottoman Empire, as British Colonel Francis Chesney noted, was its territories' own lack of provisions south of the Danube. The Russians were prevented from marching over the Balkans not because of Turkish resistance but because their logistics were insufficient to feed them this far away from home with such inadequate roads.

This was changed by 1828 with the existence of the Russian Black Sea fleet and its ability to escort provisions to Varna and Burgas by sea.

By that time the sultans had already been frantically reforming the Ottoman military structure that finally culminated with the destruction and disbanding of the Janissaries forever in 1826.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that up to that time the Turks were losing because they were too few or because their weapons were inferior. Turkish soldiers remained competent, Turkish generals learned to use their resources cleverly, such as in 1788 against Joseph II. Austrian and Russian generals were much impressed by their individual qualities. But their inability to create a true professional standing army frustrated their efforts.

This same factor affected the Indians against the British. Indian armies were often very large, often had more cannons than the British, but they nonetheless were consistently defeated by superior British discipline. What's striking here is that the East India Company quickly created its own standing army funded by taxes taken from the administration of an ever growing territory and manned by native Indians. Though officered and commanded by British, the Indian Army was Indian in rank and file, but they were able to crush their co-nationals due to superior organisation.

So the idea that Europeans showed up with guns and killed all the peaceful sword wielding natives is a myth. This was true, to an extent, in the Americas, at least in the early stages. But in the east it was definitely not the case. The sophisticated Muslim states had long been using gunpowder, even longer than the Europeans had been using it. The Janissaries were using primitive muskets as early as the fifteenth century when Europeans were still charging with knights. And the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans also had advanced gunpowder weapons.

So when one looks for why Europeans succeeded, it was not because of just guns. It was because of their institutions. European bureaucracies emerged from the Thirty Years' War as institutions to create and maintain permanent standing armies. This was not the case anywhere else. There were no career soldiers, besides officers. Troops were raised for campaign and then sent home afterwards to save the treasury the expense of feeding them and to harvest crops to increase tax yields.

Sophisticated European fiscal structures allowed them to pay for trained armies in perpetuity, and to continuously drill and train them even in peacetime. And this was Europe's advantage over all other peoples.

Undisciplined Turkish forces were defeated by the Austrians as a result of the total military revolution during the Thirty Years' War, and Peter the Great was perceptive enough to realise the advantage of the German system, which he had the Germans teach to his soldiers. Henceforth the Austrians and Russians were far the superiors of the Turks and consistently defeated them until the Nizam-i Cedid in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Turks were themselves more resilient than many, and where they suffered setbacks, other less advanced opponents succumbed to the Europeans entirely.

These same factors favoured the Romans in their wars against the barbarians, and favoured the Macedonians under Alexander in their wars against the Persians. Indeed the Europeans after the fall of Rome relied upon a system of contractual service in order to save money, as knights were obliged to appear on the field when summoned, and bring some of their peasants too.

While this saved the king money, for the knights paid for their own equipment, it made for poor cohesion. The Turks were initially invincible because the knights had no discipline, and examples abound, like Nicopolis in 1396, where impetuous knights took it upon themselves to charge the Turks without support, and were cut down by overwhelming numbers.

Gradually this was replaced by a system of mercenaries, who were much better, but extremely expensive and very unreliable. Mercenaries frequently switched sides if bribed, and oftentimes refused to fight if their pay was in arrears.

So even as late as the Long War which ended in 1606, the Austrians did not dare face the Turks in the open field.

But very quickly, in the space of less than fifty years, the Turks went from being unstoppable to being incapable of securing hardly any victory at all, which is quite shocking in retrospect.

Thereafter one is struck by the number of victories gained against the Turks despite the much greater numbers of the latter. At Peterwardein the Austrians defeated 150,000 Turks with 60,000 of their own men. On the River Larga the Russian defeated the Turks numbering over 80,000 with less than 40,000 men. This could not possibly have been due to the Russians having guns and cannons, for the Turks had them too.

Instead it was due to their organisation. The fanatic Turkish assault was like a wave crashing against rocks, submerging them, but not damaging them. The Russians stood their ground and smashed sections of the Turkish forces until the latter panicked and ran away.

Pictured is the assault on the Turkish fortress of Ochakov by the Russians under Grigori Potemkin in December of 1788.

- Kaiser

PS - It should also be noted that the Russians used the bayonet more than they used the musket in these later conflicts. Exemplary Russian generals like Suvorov and Rumyantsev even advised closing with the bayonet as the Russians had the advantage in close combat. If the Russians had superiority in firearms, that was a strange way of showing it. 

Poltova and the fall of Sweden

Saturday, 12 July 2014

In September of 1707, Swedish king Karl XII left occupied Saxony, accompanied by an army of 43,000. Besides this army, count Lewenhaupt, one of his best generals, waited for him in Poland with another 20,000 men, with another 15,000 awaiting back in Sweden and Finland. How all these men, along with Swedens position as a superpower, came crashing down at the fields of Poltava, will be revealed here.

At this time, the Russian czar Peter the Great, was in Lithuania trying to revive the party of former Polish king, August the Strong, who was also the elector of Saxony, who had been replaced with Stanisław I Leszczyński under the pressure of Karl XII and his armies.
The czar had ordered his troops to retreat at the first sign of Karl XII following them, and the Russians were not late to oblige his command.
The Russian forces had entered and left Poland over 20 times, and this was not a daunting task.
The nobles in Poland were one of the strongest aristocracies in the world, and the nobles were extremely wary against any attempts of the monarch to solidify his hold, and because of this Poland was a very open country, with no fortifications protecting the borders.
During the time Karl was in Saxony, the Russians had advanced all the way to Lemberg, in southern Poland, and now Peter the Great was in Grodno in Lithuania.

Karl left Poland in Stanislaus' hands, who was given 10,000 Swedish and Polish forces to secure his throne.
In January 1708, Karl marched on Grodno through the ice and snow. He had already crossed the river Nemen, situated close to Grodno, before the czar was informed of Karl closing in.
After capturing Grodno from the fleeing Russians, all Russian troops in Lithuania withdrew to the voivodeship Minski, close to the Russian border.
The Swedish followed them, and both the fleeing Russians and the pursuing Swedish marched day and night, through the winter hardships.

From Grodno all the way to Dniepr, the area is filled with marshes and wilderness, and there were little supplies to be found anywhere.
On the 25 June 1708, Karl and his forces found themselves in front of the river Berezina, right across from Boryslav, in modern Ukraine. In this area, the czar had gathered a large amount of forces, with strong fortifications to protect them.
Karl deployed a few of his regiments by the beach of Berezina, as if he would cross there, right in front of his enemies eyes, and then he took the rest of his forces south where the Swedish built a bridge, and fought back 3,000 Russians attempting to stop them.

The Russians did not sit around and wait for what would come however, and they broke up and fell back towards Dniepr, while destroying the roads and everything else they came across.
On his way to Dniepr, Karl encountered a force of 20,000 Russians who had entrenched themselves at a place called Holofsin, situated behind a swamp.
The only way to get there was to cross a river.
Karl took his Life Guard on foot and got into the waters, passing the swamp and the river, and while he moved forward, he gave orders to his cavalry to move around the swamp and attack the Russian flank. The Russians were suprised to find that apperently, there were no places safe enough to protect them from the Swedish, who attacked them from two sides at the same time.
This battle was commemorated by the Swedish with a medal, that said: "Silvae, paludes, aggeres, hostes victi" (Fortifications, marshes, and enemies overcome).

The Russians were driven back from Poland and into their own land from every direction, and the czar were seriously thinking about peace with Sweden.
Karl, however answered the peace requests by saying that the czar could have his negotiations with Karl in Moscow, a bold statement telling the czar that peace was out of the question until Russia was completely subdued.
Czar Peter answered this with a famous statement: "My brother Karl thinks himself an Alexander (the Great). But I flatter myself with, that in me, he shall find no Darius (III)".
Following the Dniepr north of Mohilev, you find the province of Smolensk, and through Smolensk goes the road between Moscow and Poland, and this is where the Russians and their czar fled, with the Swedish right behind them.
Over and over again, the Swedish engaged their enemies in combat, and even though the Swedish were often the victorious ones in these small skirmishes, they drained them of troops and energy.

2 September 1708, Karl XII attacked an enemy army of 10,000 cavalry and around 6,000 Kalmyks near Smolensk.
The Kalmyks are tartars, and lived between the Kingdom of Astrakhan, which belonged to Russia, and in Samarkand, home to the Uzbeki tartars.
The Russian czar claimed to be the ruler of the Kalmyks, but because of their nomadic life-style, it did prove difficult to rule them, and Peter the Great was content with ruling them like the Ottoman Sultan ruled the Arabs, one day the czar looked the other way when the Kalmyks pillaged and plundered their surroundings, and the next day he punished them.

Karl XII had under his command 6 cavalry regiments and 4,000 infantry and when they first attacked, the Russians withdrew, but as they did so, Karl did not notice the Kalmyks who had been hiding along the roads and now they sprung forward and they managed to surround one of the infantry regiment with the help of the rest of the Russian army.
The Swedish did eventually win the battle, but it cost them.
The way towards Moscow was now open to Karl XII, but instead of continuing towards it, and instead of awaiting the arrival of count Lewenhaupt with 15,000 reinforcements, Karl took his army and turned east into the Ukraine.
In the Ukraine, Karl met with a man named Mazepa, who originally was a Polish noble, but who had been appointed the ruler of Ukraine by the czar.
When the czar proposed to Mazepa that he would implement harsh discipline in Ukraine, and especially with the Cossacks living there, Mazepa said that their way of life made any form of military discipline almost impossible, and the czar then threatened to impale Mazepa for this "treachery".
And so, Mazepa sought to make a deal with Karl XII, to speed up the fall of Peter the Great.

Mazepa promised Karl 30,000 Cossack soldiers along with supplies, and so the Swedish decided to spend the winter in Ukraine, and then march into Russia.
When they finally arrived at the shores of the river Desna, they did not find Mazepa there, but instead a Russian army awaited them. Karl decided to cross the river and attack them, and the Russians consisted of 8,000 men, which proved to be not enough to stop the Swedish.
When they finally met Mazepa, he came to them, not as a powerful ally, but more as a person in exile.
He had only managed to get away with around 6,000 men and some gold and silver.
Count Lewenhaupt, along with his 15,000 reinforcements, were stopped at the village of Ljesna, where he found himself against a Russian army of 40,000 men, commanded by czar Peter the Great himself.
After 5 attacks, the Swedish had been beaten, and only 4,000 men remained, while the Russians had lost 6,000 but they had routed the Swedish, showing everyone that Sweden was not invincible.

Lewenhaupt arrived with his men, but without supplies that were so badly needed, so during the winter in the beginning of 1709, Karl XII decided to take his army and march into Russia, despite this winter being one of the coldest in memory.
During these marsches, they were constantly attacked by small groups of Russians, and in April, the Swedish had only 18,000 men left, and they were in bad shape.
Karl managed to recruit some mercenaries on the way, and when he arrived at Poltava, which was a city converted to a supply magazine by Peter, he commanded 30,000 men, but the czar was fast approaching, with a huge army.

During a reconnaissance mission on 17 June, Karl was shot in the foot, and they medics had to cut extremely deep into the foot, to avoid amputation.
They did not manage to take Poltava by force, so on 28 June, the Russians and Swedes stood ready for the Battle of Poltava.

The Swedish infantry advanced towards the Russian camp.
Its attack was met by the Russian cavalry which forced them to retreat.
As the infantry withdrew, the Swedish cavalry counterattacked, driving back the Russians.
Their advance was halted by heavy fire and they fell back.
Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld again sent the infantry forward and they succeeded in taking two Russian redoubts.

Despite this foothold, the Swedes were not able to hold them.
As they attempted to bypass the Russian defenses, Prince Aleksandr Menshikov's forces nearly encircled them and inflicted massive casualties.
Fleeing back, the Swedes took refuge in the Budyshcha Forest where Karl rallied them. Around 9:00 in the morning, both sides advanced into the open.
Charging forward, the Swedish ranks were pounded by the Russian guns.
Striking the Russian lines, they nearly broke through.
As the Swedes battled, the Russian right swung around to flank them.
Under extreme pressure, the Swedish infantry broke and began fleeing the field.
The cavalry advanced to cover their withdrawal, but was met with heavy fire.
From his stretcher at the rear, Karl ordered the army to begin retreating.

The Battle of Poltava was a disaster for Sweden and a turning point in the Great Northern War.
Swedish casualties numbered 6,900 dead and wounded, as well as 2,800 taken prisoner.
Among those captured was Field Marshal Rehnskiöld.
Russian losses were 1,350 killed and 3,300 wounded.
Retreating from the field, the Swedes moved along the Vorskla towards its confluence with the Dniepr.
Lacking enought boats to cross the river, Karl and Mazepa crossed with a bodyguard of 1,000-3,000 men.
Riding west, Karl found sanctuary with the Ottomans in Bendery, Moldavia.

Pictured is a painting of the Battle of Poltava by Denis Martens the Younger, and a painting showing Karl XII and Ivan Mazepa at the river Dniepr after the battle.

- Tobbe

Russia and Germany, 1815, strategical analysis.

While examining the distances from Constantinople to Vienna earlier, I was suddenly struck with the uncomfortable proximity of the Russians to the two German capitals after 1815. The Russian forward garrisons in western Poland were only about one-hundred and eighty miles from Berlin, while their forward garrisons in southern Poland were only about two-hundred and twenty miles from Vienna, and one-hundred and sixty miles from Budapest.

Granted Austria was in the better position since the Riesengebirge and the Carpathians throw themselves between Poland and the two Habsburg capitals. Poor Prussia had no defences at all. It was a straight shot across flat ground to the capital on the Spree.

Opposed to that, it’s over four-hundred miles from East Prussia to St. Petersburg, and six-hundred miles to Moscow. From Galicia it’s about seven-hundred and fifty miles to St. Petersburg and close to six-hundred miles to Moscow. Attacking St. Petersburg would be pointless, since without a navy that city would never fall to siege, neither Austria or Prussia had a navy of any value, while even if the Austrian Navy could make it to the Baltic the Russian Navy was better still and would sink it.

With Lake Ladoga to the east and Neva Bay to the west the city could be supplied indefinitely, while any attack on Neva Bay would have to overcome the obstacle of the Kronstadt which could easily hit any ship in the narrow channels on either side of it.

With the Russian Navy and the guns of Kronstadt in combination, nothing was entering Neva Bay. I doubt even the Royal Navy could have forced its way in. This why I have concluded that St. Petersburg is in one of the most beautiful strategic positions imaginable.

Why do you think Napoleon attacked Moscow even though Moscow was no longer the capital of Russia? Because attacking St. Petersburg was a pointless waste of time. Why do you think that St. Petersburg survived nearly four years of siege by the Germans in WWII and never fell? Because its geographic location is the best I ever saw, with the exception of Constantinople, of course.

So in many respects Russia seemed like the new Ottoman Empire for the German Powers. Their imminent danger forced them together in resistance, especially Prussia’s danger. Austria had a solid chance of repulsing the Russians from the line of the Riesengebirge and the Carpathians, albeit at the sacrifice of Galicia.

Prussia was completely exposed. By itself Prussia was doomed, so Prussia needed Austria. St. Petersburg wasn’t going to fall without a navy that neither of them possessed, and attacking Moscow would have yielded basically the same results as Napoleon’s invasion. So Russia’s strategic position against either of them alone was invincible.

That said, Russia’s strategic position was altered to its detriment when facing them both in combination. She'd almost certainly lose Poland to a massive pincer attack like she did in WWI. But even so, that would hardly be fatal to Russia. Its loss would be a sharp blow though, and would allow Berlin and Vienna (and Budapest) to breathe again.

For this reason Metternich cleverly tied Prussia to Austria, since Prussia was completely defenceless without Austria in the east. The interesting thing is, Bismarck’s system was a Revised Second Edition of Metternich’s, as now Austria became tied to Germany, since Austria would be vulnerable without the Germans. It’s interesting that Bismarck’s system is practically identical to Metternich’s except that the roles were reversed.

So at first glance it would seem that Russia was putting herself at risk by moving her capital two-hundred miles west and placing it on the sea, but in actuality that’s virtually the best move she could have done. Moscow is just an “ordinary” city on a tributary of the Volga. Defensible enough, but still vulnerable to siege as any other city.

St. Petersburg was practically invulnerable. It could be reinforced and resupplied by sea from either the east or west forever, and cutting these lifelines was extraordinarily difficult. Unless one successfully navigated the channels between Kronstadt and the mainland on either side, or took Kronstadt (which is itself easily reinforced by way of Neva Bay), then the lifeline could never be severed.

But even supposing that Neva Bay could be closed, canals linking the city to Lake Ladoga allow supplies and reinforcements to arrive from the east. Rivers and canals connect Lake Ladoga to Lake Onega, which is connected to Lake Vyg and thence to the White Sea. While waterways also connect Lake Ladoga to Lake Beloye and Lake Rybinsk and thence to the Volga and the endless steppes to the South-East.

Cutting off these links would take a lot of walking along a broad front that would expose one to very dangerous overextension. Peter the Great was a genius for recognising the value of this position.

To demonstrate, the first map depicts the series of waterways connects St. Petersburg by way of the Neva-Ladoga-Svir-Onega-Vyg-White Sea and thence to the rest of the world. A backdoor route for logistical sustenance of the city to the northeast.

While the map shows how canals connect St. Petersburg by way of Neva-Ladoga-Svir-Onega-Beloye-Rybinsk-Volga-Don and thence to Moscow and ultimately the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea by way of the Volga-Don Canal. This offers another route of supply and another means of keeping communications open and offering another backdoor to sustain the city with supplies from the southeast.

This latter system was not constructed until several years after Peter’s death, not until the reign of Paul, but the addition to St. Petersburg’s strategic strength is considerable. The city would have too be severed from all directions in order to force its capitulation.

And the map is the city of St. Petersburg itself. Supplies can easily be brought in from the west, through the Baltic which connects the city with the rest of the world, or even if the Baltic is closed by a power holding the islands of Denmark, at least with Scandinavia and possibly the Baltic States/Poland/Germany. Some place with supplies anyway.

Any attempt to close the western window of St. Petersburg would be frustrated by the island of Kotlin and the fortress of Kronstadt whose guns easily control the narrow channels on either side. Forcing Kronstadt Bay by sea would consequently be extraordinarily difficult, yet failure to do so would allow the city to sustain itself with seaborne shipments of necessary revictualling.

So. in short, the city is virtually impossible to take by siege. Another advantage is that even should St. Petersburg fall, an enemy could make no use of it because Kronstadt would prevent any ships leaving or entering the harbour to supply the new occupants, while the water networks to the southeast and northeast could simply stop sending supplies.

Thus if the city were taken and the Russians forced to lay siege to retake it, the enemy could not use the advantages to sustain their garrison that the Russians enjoyed, so long as the latter retained possession of Kronstadt and the waterways to the east.

It should also be noted that the way to take the city would be to close the Baltic and the Svir. The Svir is protected by the size of Lake Ladoga which forces an opponent to go around either north or south, assuming they didn't possess a fleet on the lake, which they wouldn't. The approaches to the Svir from the north are empty of infrastructure, full of dense forests, devoid of people, and bitterly cold.

So an invasion from Finland would be difficult. It would likely be easier to cut the Baltic-White Sea water network farther north, but the results of that would yet allow supplies from the Caspian-Baltic-Black Sea waterway to reach the city. So one would have to attempt to cut the Svir from the southern approaches.

This is what the Germans attempted in the Second World War, and found it extremely tenuous because the area, besides being freezing cold in winter, is a massive marshland in summer. The region of the notorious Volkhov Swamps.

Mechanised warfare is out of the question as the ground is all morass, with large portions of it completely submerged. This entirely favours the defenders. Thus the Svir is well protected no matter how you approach it. And as long as the Svir remains open, St. Petersburg cannot fall.

The final photograph depicts German troops in the Volkhov Swamps. This is what lay between an enemy and the Svir. Forget about Blitzkrieg. Tanks would just sink. The only think getting through is men, plodding through with boots.