to speak to him, from wealthy landowners to lowly peasants. Battle of Poltava Charles XII was defeated by Peter in the Battle of Poltava (located in modern day Ukraine) in June 1709, and his army was virtually annihilated. He fled to the Ottoman Empire and spent five years in exile there. On the Western Front In November 1709 Denmark invaded Skåne and Count Magnus Stenbock, charged with the defense of Sweden, succeeded in defeating Denmark at the Battle of Helsingborg in 1710. Meanwhile Russia captured Livonia and Estonia in the east. Despite another Swedish victory over the Danes at Gadebusch in December 1712, Stenbock’s army was forced to surrender of the fortress of Tönning in May 1713. In Norway During September 1709 Norwegian forces were ordered to mobilise, and by the end of October 6,000 men were assembled on the Swedish border at Svinesund while 1,500 were congregated near the border at Kongsvinger. In August, 1710 Baron Waldemar Løvendal returned in Norway as Governor and commander of a country much drained in resources by the wars of the past century. The governor threw himself into building the civil and military leadership in the country just a short march from Sweden. When he left Norway in 1712, he had instituted reforms that served to create a civil service in Norway, and proceeded to document state activities to a degree never before seen in Norway, as well as being a strong military leader. Baron Løvendal raised and equipped a Norwegian Army to invade and recapture the former Norwegian province of Bohuslän under the leadership of General-Lieutenant Caspar Herman Hausmann. In parallel he proposed a strong fleet to provide protection and transportation to seaward, and Frederick IV committed to providing such a force under Vice Admiral Sehested in June 1711. In August, the Norwegian army marched into Bohuslän, warmly welcomed by their former countrymen. But by late summer the fleet Vice Admiral Sehested’s fleet had not appeared offshore, having been ordered by Frederick IV to return to Baltic waters. Without naval support, the Norwegian Army was forced to return to Norway. In the autumn of 1711 the plague struck Denmark, and Copenhagen alone lost 70,000 occupants. 1712 was a disappointing year in Norway, as Frederick IV directed Løvendal not to use the Norwegian Army in offensive actions, reserving it for defense and for supplementing Danish troops elsewhere. General Hausmann was named head of