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Fine images depicting the Battle of Pułtusk, approximately 40 miles north of Warsaw, on April 21, 1703 during the Great Northern War.
A very rare view--we are not able to locate any information as to its maker or place of publication.
At the Battle, the Swedish army under the command of Charles XII defeated the Saxon army under Adam Heinrich von Steinau.
The Great Northern War (1700-21) was a conflict in which a coalition led by the the Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I of Russia, Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway and Augustus II the Strong of Saxony-Poland. Frederick IV and Augustus II were defeated by Sweden, under Charles XII, and forced out of the alliance in 1700 and 1706 respectively, but rejoined it in 1709 after the defeat of Charles XII at the battle of Poltava. George I of Great Britain and of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) joined the coalition in 1714 for Hanover and in 1717 for Britain, and Frederick William I of Brandenburg-Prussia joined it in 1715.
The war ended with Sweden's defeat, leaving Russia as the new dominant power in the Baltic region. The Western powers, Great Britain and France, became caught up in the separate War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1715), which broke out over the Bourbon Philip of Anjou's succession to the Spanish throne and a possible joining of France to Spain. The formal conclusion of the Great Northern War came with the Swedish-Hanoverian and Swedish-Prussian Treaties of Stockholm (1719), the Dano-Swedish Treaty of Frederiksborg (1720), and the Russo-Swedish Treaty of Nystad (1721). By these treaties Sweden ceded her exemption from the Sound Dues, and lost the Baltic provinces and the southern part of Swedish Pomerania. The peace treaties also ended her alliance with Holstein-Gottorp. Hanover gained Bremen-Verden, Brandenburg-Prussia incorporated the Oder estuary (Stettin Lagoons), Russia secured the Baltic Provinces, and Denmark strengthened her position in Schleswig-Holstein. In Sweden, the absolute monarchy had come to an end with the death of Charles XII, and Sweden's Age of Liberty began.
