The Russian and Swedish Empires 277

Petersburg offered a striking contrast to the chaos of tangled streets and
shabby wooden buildings of Moscow, then by far the largest city in Russia.
Built on coastal marshlands, Saint Petersburg reflected architectural ideas
borrowed from the West, particularly Amsterdam. State offices, including
army and military headquarters, occupied the centrally located islands.
Symmetrical facades rose along the Neva River’s south bank, near the ship­
yards, admiralty, and fortresses. Unlike Moscow, churches did not dominate
the skyline of Saint Petersburg. Geometrically arranged boulevards, squares,
gardens, and baroque palaces completed the tsar’s capital, which itself
became a reflection of absolute rule.

Russia supplanted Sweden as the Baltic region’s dominant power. In 1709
at the Battle of Poltava, Peter’s army turned back an invading Swedish army
in Ukraine, a battle that marked the end of Sweden’s status as a great power
and its domination of northern Europe, allowing Peter to annex eastern
Ukraine and bringing the Black Sea into sight. Five years later Russian
troops raided Sweden for the first time. After losing its German and Polish
territories, Sweden then entered a period of constitutional struggles, as the
nobility tried to reassert economic and social prerogatives lost to the monar­
chy (see p. 271). This allowed Russia to solidify its expansion. The Treaty of
Nystadt (1721) confirmed Russian primacy in the Baltic region, adding
Estonia and Livonia (the southeastern part of modern Finland) to Peter’s
empire and bringing Russia ever closer to European affairs.
By the time of Peter’s death in 1725, the territory controlled by abso­
lutist Russia had increased sixfold since the time of Ivan the Terrible. The
Russian Empire, thirty times bigger than France, had joined the European
state system.

Louis XIV’s Dynastic Wars

As rulers of Russia, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, Turkey, and France sought to

expand their territories, dynastic interests determined the choice of allies.

Yet strong states were also likely to switch sides to gain the most beneficial

terms from new allies. For example, in order to expand its influence in Cen­

tral Europe, France needed an alliance with either Austria or Prussia. But

inevitably such a coalition pushed the other German power into opposition,

forcing it to look for allies against France. Usually this partner was England

(Great Britain after the union of England and Scotland in 1707), France’s

rival in North America. Following the conclusion of hostilities that reworked

borders, alliances frequently shifted, as rulers anticipated their next oppor­

tunity to conquer new lands.

Louis XIV was determined that territorial gain and prestige should be the

measure of his greatness (see Map 7.4). France was the continent’s richest,

strongest, and most populous state. The king of France sought to expand his

kingdom’s borders to what he considered to be France’s “natural” frontiers,

that is, the Pyrenees Mountains to the south and the Rhine River to the east.