Annika Svahn (fl. 1714) was a Finnish prisoner of war during the Great Northern War. The daughter of a vicar, she became the perhaps most well known victim of the abuse suffered by the civilian population in Finland during the Russian occupation Greater Wrath.
Annika Svahn was the daughter of the vicar in Joutseno, Benjamin Swahn. After the death of her father in 1701, when she was very young, her mother was allowed to remain in the vicarage as the house keeper of her father's successor, and she worked there as a maid. In midsummer 1710, Svahn was abducted naked from her sauna by a group of Russian soldiers and brought as a slave to Saint Petersburg. In Saint Petersburg, she, as well as a couple of other Finnish females, were given some military training. In 1713, she was re-baptized in the Russian orthodox faith as Uliana. She was given a dragoon uniform and, alongside other Finnish women with a similar history, she was ordered to Finland to assist the Russian army in its conquest of Swedish Finland. She was wounded by a bullet in her thigh outside Borgå in 1714. The same year, she was given the task to act as a messenger for the Russians. She planned to desert, but was captured by the Swedish army on her way. She made her confession for the Swedish army authorities, who documented it. It is not known what happened to her after this.
According to modern interpretations, Svahn distorted the truth in her testimony. She undoubtedly followed the dragoon regiment to Finland and may have participated in battles, but most likely not as a soldier. A large number of women accompanied the armies of that time, serving as soldiers' wives, laundresses, cooks and prostitutes. She also mentions two dragoon women who gave birth to a child in winter quarters in Mikkeli. The idea of a pregnant dragoon seems impossible. From this, it has been inferred that the names of the military branches could have been embellished expressions for the real roles of forcibly taken women. These names may have been concocted out of fear of judgment within their own community. [1]
Catherine IAlekseevna Mikhailova was the second wife and empress consort of Peter the Great, and empress regnant of Russia from 1725 until her death in 1727.
The Great Northern War (1700–1721) was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central 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–Lithuania. 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 the Electorate of Hanover joined the coalition in 1714 for Hanover and in 1717 for Britain, and Frederick William I of Brandenburg-Prussia joined it in 1715.
Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was a Finnish military leader and statesman. He served as the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War (1918), as Regent of Finland (1918–1919), as commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defence Forces during the period of World War II (1939–1945), and as the sixth president of Finland (1944–1946). He became Finland's only field marshal in 1933 and was appointed honorary Marshal of Finland in 1942.
Edith Irene Södergran was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet. One of the first modernists within Swedish-language literature, her influences came from French Symbolism, German expressionism, and Russian futurism. At the age of 24 she released her first collection of poetry entitled Dikter ("Poems"). Södergran died at the age of 31, having contracted tuberculosis as a teenager. She did not live to experience the worldwide appreciation of her poetry, which has influenced many lyrical poets. Södergran is considered to have been one of the greatest modern Swedish-language poets, and her work continues to influence Swedish-language poetry and musical lyrics, for example, in the works of Mare Kandre, Gunnar Harding, Eva Runefelt, Heidi Sundblad-Halme, and Eva Dahlgren.
Count Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov-Rymniksky, Prince of Italy, was a Russian general and military theorist in service of the Russian Empire and the Habsburg monarchy. He was Count of Rymnik (1789), Graf of the Holy Roman Empire (1789), Feldmarschall of the Holy Roman Empire (1799), Prince of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1799), Grand marshal of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1799), Prince or Knyaz of the Russian Empire (1799), Field marshal (1794) and the last Generalissimo (1799) of the Russian Empire. Suvorov is considered one of the greatest military commanders in Russian history and one of the great generals of the early modern period. He was awarded numerous medals, titles, and honors by Russia, as well as by other countries. Suvorov secured Russia's expanded borders and renewed military prestige and left a legacy of theories on warfare. He was the author of several military manuals, the most famous being The Science of Victory, and was noted for several of his sayings. He never lost a single battle he commanded, and his military record is extensive; Suvorov won in a total of 63 battles without suffering a major defeat. He raised Russian military glory to a height to which it had never reached. Several military academies, monuments, villages, museums, and orders in Russia are dedicated to him.
Pavlo Petrovych Skoropadskyi was a Ukrainian aristocrat, military and state leader, decorated Imperial Russian Army and Ukrainian Army general of Cossack heritage. Skoropadskyi became Hetman of all Ukraine following a coup on 29 April 1918.
Many people have engaged in cross-dressing during wartime under various circumstances and for various motives. This has been especially true of women, whether while serving as a soldier in otherwise all-male armies, while protecting themselves or disguising their identity in dangerous circumstances, or for other purposes.
The military history of the Russian Empire encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Russian Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army, Imperial Russian Navy, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Yakov Petrovich Kulnev was, along with Pyotr Bagration and Aleksey Yermolov, one of the most popular Russian military leaders at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Suvorov's admirer and participant of 55 battles, he lost his life during Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
Women have contributed to military activities including as combatants. The following list describes women known to have participated in military actions in the 18th century. For women in warfare in the United States at this time, please see Timeline of women in war in the United States, Pre-1945.
The Battle of Napue or the Battle of Storkyro / Isokyrö was fought on 19 February 1714 (O.S.) / 2 March 1714 (N.S.) at the villages of Napue and Laurola in the Isokyrö parish of the Swedish Empire between the Swedish Empire and the Tsardom of Russia. It was the final land battle of the Finnish campaign in the Great Northern War. The Swedish detachment, consisting almost entirely of Finnish troops, were defeated by the numerically superior Russian force. As a result, all of Finland fell under Russian military occupation for the rest of the War; a seven-year period of hardship known in Finland as the Great Wrath. The Kyrö Distillery Company named its Napue rye gin after the battle in 2014.
Margareta Elisabeth Roos or Anna Stina Roos (1696–1772) was a Swedish woman and a crossdresser who served as a soldier in the Swedish army of Charles XII of Sweden during the Great Northern War.
Charlotta Antonia "Charlotte Antoinette" Seuerling, was a blind Swedish concert singer, harpsichordist, composer and poet, known as "The Blind Song-Maiden". She was active in Sweden, Finland and Russia. Her last name is also spelled as Seijerling and Seyerling. Her first name was Charlotta Antoinetta, but in the French fashion of the time, she was often called Charlotte Antoinette. She was the author of the popular song "Sång i en melankolisk stund".
Brita Christina Hagberg, née Nilsdotter, alias Petter Hagberg, was a woman who served as a soldier in the Swedish army during the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790). She is one of two confirmed women to have been decorated for bravery in battle in Sweden before women were allowed into the military in the 20th century.
Lovisa von Burghausen was a Swedish memoirist who became famous for her story about her time in captivity as a slave in Russia after being taken prisoner by the Russians during the Great Northern War. She was sold as a slave several times before she eventually recovered her freedom, and her story became perhaps the most famous of the many stories of Carolinian fates of this period.
Annika is a feminine given name with multiple origins in different cultures. It is a Swedish diminutive for Anna, derived in the 15th century from Anneke, a Dutch and Northern Germanic diminutive of Anna. Swedish-born retired professional golfer Annika Sörenstam is a well-known bearer of the name.
Yefrosinya Fedorova was a Finnish-born Russian serf. She became the mistress of Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia and fled with him on 26 September 1716. She was the property of Alexei's tutor, dyak Nikifor Vyazemsky, but had originally been a captive from Finland, then a Swedish province, and was thereby a Swedish citizen.
The siege of Viborg took place in the spring of 1710 during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), as a second attempt by the Russians to capture the fortress port of Viborg, near the modern border between Russia and Finland, after a failed attempt in 1706. After the outbreak of the war, Swedish forces had fortified themselves in the port of Viborg. In order to assure safety for the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg, Peter the Great ordered the Swedish fort to be secured. A first unsuccessful attempt was made in 1706. Later plans were put on hold because of other ongoing conflicts but, after the Russian success at the Battle of Poltava in June 1709, the men and resources were available to capture the town.
Fruntimmersskolan i Viborg, also called Töchterschule, was a Girls School in Viborg in Russian Finland, active from 1788 until 1937. It was the first school for females in Finland, and the first public secondary girls' school in the Nordic countries.
Anna Jöransdotter, was a finlandssvenskar soldier. She served in the army of Charles XII of Sweden for two years during the Great Northern War, and married a woman. Her case is the perhaps most researched Swedish case of the phenomena of females impersonating males to serve in the military during the modern age. Her actions were the cause of a suggestion to introduce a law regarding homosexuality in Sweden.