Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Северная Война - II: Хороший план - Екстра История" video.

How much money did this guy have? castles, wars, buying the crown of Poland, having party fucking drinking like crazy and even creating an anti-temperance organization togheter with Friedrich Vilhelm of Prussia. Seems like this guy had an endless number of expensive hobbies, so where did this guy get all his money from?
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He was a buddy with Friedrich Vilhelm (the dad of Frederick the Great). And they used to party and drink beer togheter and eat cakes made with 600 eggs while many gun batteries were firing, and August also liked to fuck around with young brides and he fathered hundreds of kids or so.
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He was a very kind, unselfish and generous King who even liked to let the guesting team win at his own hometurf.
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If we only just settled in America before everyone else then we might perhaps had a chance..... But Sweden was too cold for a large population back then, and it couldn't use its huge natural resources in Northern Sweden until the 1870s when the first railroads were being built so tonnes of timber, charcoal and iron ore and steel could be transported at a cheap cost. Around year 1800 did Norway actully export 4times more timber than Sweden despite Sweden got 4 times more forrest land than Norway. And this was because it was too costly to transport heavy timber and other heavy goods to make it profitable enough for creating new industries. England had no ice that covered their waterways half the year, and they plenty of people that could pay for a canal construction project - while Sweden was ice cold and had a tiny population that was quite poor. So Swedens great export boom had to wait until the railroads were invented, and until scientists had invented a new process that made it possible to use phosphor rich iron ore, that Sweden had in Kiruna, but couldn't use. And Finland had to wait even longer to become a rich industrial nation, because of the same reasons, since most of its timber laid far away from the coastline and couldn't be sold to other countries without better transportations. So it didn't matter that Finland almost had as much forrest as Sweden. And using waterpower to cut timber was more of a problem in cold Northern countries, and this problem remained until the steamsaw and electricity powered saws got invented, and people could use lightbulbs to work in the dark winter nights. Findland was still the poorest country in Europe during the 1930s. So Sweden was a poor agricultural society during the 1600's and 1700's, and there was not much else than that and exporting iron, copper and trying to control the baltic trade routs. We never was any big player in trading tobacco, slaves, silver, chinaware, tea, cotton, silk, spices, sugar or textiles and other manufacturing products. Sweden was only good at two things back then. Farming and fighting wars & making guns.
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Basicly all countries in Europe was developing countries by standards of today, which means that all of them relied on agriculture rahter than producing finished manufacturing goods. And Sweden was the weakest among the major powers in Europe at this time, and its population the poorest. And the cold climate had much to do with this. And transporting things was only possible in the summer months, since Swedens climate wasn't the same as in France or England. And regards to world trade, so was iron one of the most important exports Sweden had. During the Age of Liberty (1718-1772) it brought in 80% of Swedens export revenues, since Sweden togheter with Russia basicly had a monopoly on the market when the two countries togheter produced 95% of all iron in Europe. Timber was however an unimportant export, since it was too heavy and therefore too costly to transport by land, And the huge timber reserves in Northern Sweden couldn't be used because of the frozen climate didn't allow it to be transported or cut by a watermill saw. And in the days before electricity and lightbulb it was not practical to work during the dark winter hours. But when new technologies - such as the railroad, steamsaws - solved the problems by enabling cheap transports and massproduction of cut timber during winter, then Sweden could start to become a rich industrial country. And in the 1870s did timber generate 80% of Swedens export incomes.
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The Great Northern war was a defensive war, and that was the reason why Sweden went to war with Saxony and Russia. And at the time when Charles XII took power in Sweden, the country was already too exhausted for further military expansion so there was really no plans for any more expansionist projects. And don't take my words for it, because this is what histiorian Bengt Liljegren writes in his biography of Charles XII. The 1600s had been a time of military glory for Sweden with huge territorial gains. But the price had been terrible. For a hundred years there had basicly been no investments done into the agriculture because of the high war taxes that sucked up every surplus resource. And many historians claim that the horrific wave of starvations that hit the empire was caused by this lack of investments into the agriculture, which left the country totally unprepared to deal with crises like this. And third of Finlands population just starved to death in 1696 alone. So I am skeptical to the idea of further expansion for the Swedes. Especially since England and Holland would intervene with their navies against Sweden for the sake of balance of power. And even if Sweden had managed to take Norway, I think Sweden would have a hard time competing with other great powers, such as for example Prussia and Russia - which were both superior to Sweden in size of the population, the size of their economies and the size of their armies.
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He was the last king in Europe to actully lead his own men by charging head-on togheter with them
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The Swedish king should have made peace while Sweden was winning. There was simply no chance Sweden could win this war in the long run. Sweden was a poor country with a small population, while Saxony had lots of money and Russia hand endless manpower reserves... just look at the staggering losses the Russian army took during the 1700s and you will be horrified with all hundreds of thousands of men they were losing year after year when fighting against the Turks, Prussians, Swedes and others. Sweden could never afford such losses, because Sweden was never a real Great Power of Europe in the real sense of the word. Sweden had never played ball with the mightiest countries of Europe after the days of Gustavus Adolphus, because Sweden lacked the population and money to build armies of a hundred thousand men like Russia, France and Austria. Saxony, Poland, Russia And Denmark combined had a population 40 times larger than the huge Swedish empire, so there was simply very little hope that Sweden could end this war by crushing all her enemies.
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The Danish army consumed 25 tonnes of hairpowder per year back in the days. And the Swedes were probably not any worse. http://pennanochsvardet.se/militarhistoria/militara-artiklar/1700-talet/krigsman-eller-modelejon
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Well, they attacked the Swedes with mounted knights in the battle of Warzaw
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Its hard for me as a Swede to tell too. He was a good motivator of his men, and he organized money and logistics superbly for Swedens invasion of Norway. And he had won every battle he had fought until he lost the battle of Poltava in 1709. But it is hard to tell how much had to do with his own skill. His enemies sometimes made a few mistakes. And sometimes he was lucky and his army was tactically superior and very well drilled. So was it because of him, or was it because of his army that he won? Anyhow, he should have tried to end this war as soon as possible instead of playing around in Poland for years. Sweden never had any real chance of winning a war against an alliance consisting of countries with 40 times larger population, and Russias endless resources and Saxony was one of the richest countries in Europe. The Swedish king was just a boy when he took throne, and he was a bit immature and a religious fundamentalist. And wasteful with money according to Voltaire. A wiser king would probably just had tried to make a status quo peace soon after the victory at Narva.
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The enemies of Sweden had a 40 times larger population
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All countries had grenadiers in their armies. They were the heavy infantry, and it consisted of the best men in the army. And the Swedish solidiers of the 1700s are usally called caroleans after king Karl XII. They carried their yellow-blue uniforms and used their own distinct tactics of this time. In movies like "the Patriot" or "Barry Lyndon" you will see solidiers in the 1700s walking in line formation and fire salvo after salvo upon the enemy... But Swedish tactics were very different. Our troops held their fire until the enemy only was about 25 meters away, and then they all fired, and directly after they fired they attacked the enemy with bayonets, pikes and swords. And this was because Sweden couldn't afford losing any manpower in long firing duels with the enemy. The Danish army prefered to fire and exchange shots with their enemy for hours, while the Swedish army was extremely offensive and prefered attacks with cold steel more than any army in Europe. The Swedish army was also an army that prefered to fight the battles inside enemy countries, rather than trying to go on the defensive and fight the enemy inside Swedish territory instead. And the reason was simple - Sweden was a poor country with little manpower so it could not afford a long war, and especially not so if its own towns would be burned to the ground. So it was better to take the fight to the enemy and steal his money and letting his farmland feed the Swedish army, instead of giving Swedish farmers and taxpayers the burden of supplying the Swedish army. And if Sweden could win its wars fastly with superior troop quality, tactics and good commanders... then limited resources would not be so much of a problem. So it was no coincidence that Sweden had the most mobile army in Europe in the early 1700s. And many military speed records was set during the Polish campaign, when the Swedish army quickly ran out of food on the poor polish farmland and therefore had to constantly move on towards another village to get food.
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Poltava 1709 was the end of the glorious days of the Swedish empire. So I guess your turn will have to come too. I also see that there is a time constraint, so I guess that Stanislaw thing got pushed aside. But I think it could have been worth naming the places were the battles were fought. Personally I hope I will see some episodes about Poland in the future, since it was an empire that had the potential to become a true superpower, but it ended up in backwardness and bullied by Russians, Swedes and Germans. And as a Swede and as a relative to Sigismund III Vasa I would think it would be extra interesting.
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