Hanover gained Bremen-Verden, Brandenburg-Prussia incorporated the Oder estuary (Stettin Lagoons), Russia secured the Baltic Provinces, and Denmark strengthened its position in Schleswig-Holstein.

Campaigns on the continent had been proposed on the basis that the army would be financially self-supporting through plunder and taxation of newly gained land, a concept shared by most major powers of the period.

The cost of the warfare proved to be much higher than the occupied countries could fund, and Sweden's coffers and resources in manpower were eventually drained in the course of long conflicts.

Russian fortunes began to reverse in the final years of the 17th century, notably with the rise to power of Peter the Great, who looked to address the earlier losses and re-establish a Baltic presence.

He determinedly pursued his goal of dethroning his adversaries, whom he considered unworthy of their thrones due to broken promises, thereby refusing to take several chances to make peace.

During the war, the most important Swedish commanders besides Charles XII were his close friend Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld, also Magnus Stenbock and Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt.

Augustus II the Strong, elector of Saxony and another cousin of Charles XII,[nb 1] gained the Polish crown after the death of King John III Sobieski in 1696.

His ambitions to transform the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into an absolute monarchy were not realized due to the zealous nature of the Polish nobility and the previously initiated laws that decreased the power of the monarch.

Patkul was also extradited and executed by breaking on the wheel in 1707, an incident which, given his diplomatic immunity, infuriated opinion against the Swedish king, who was then expected to win the war against the only hostile power remaining, Tsar Peter's Russia.

[52] The Battle of Narva dealt a severe setback to Peter the Great, but the shift of Charles XII's army to the Polish-Saxon threat soon afterward provided him with an opportunity to regroup and regain territory in the Baltic provinces.

Russian victories at Erastfer and Nöteborg (Shlisselburg) provided access to Ingria in 1703, where Peter captured the Swedish fortress of Nyen, guarding the mouth of the River Neva.

[53] Thanks to General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt, whose outnumbered forces fended the Russians off in the battles of Gemäuerthof and Jakobstadt, Sweden was able to maintain control of most of its Baltic provinces.

In the summer of 1706, Swedish General Georg Johan Maidel crossed the Neva with 4,000 troops and defeated an opposing Russian force, but made no move on Saint Petersburg.

[56] Charles wanted not just to defeat the Commonwealth army but to depose Augustus, whom he regarded as especially treasonous, and have him replaced with someone who would be a Swedish ally, though this proved hard to achieve.

At this point, in 1707, Peter offered to return everything he had so far occupied (essentially Ingria) except Saint Petersburg and the line of the Neva,[18] to avoid a full-scale war, but Charles XII refused.

Though his primary goal was Moscow, the strength of his forces was sapped by the cold weather (the winter of 1708/09 being one of the most severe in modern European history)[58] and Peter's use of scorched earth tactics.

Charles was crushingly defeated by a larger Russian force under Peter in the Battle of Poltava and fled to the Ottoman Empire while the remains of his army surrendered at Perevolochna.

However, Peter managed to negotiate a retreat, making a few territorial concessions and promising to withdraw his forces from the Holy Roman Empire as well as allowing Charles's return to Sweden.

Swedish General Georg Henrik Lybecker chose not to face the Russians with his 7,500 men in the prepared positions close to Viborg and instead withdrew west of Kymijoki river using scorched earth tactics.

[67] Swedish efforts to maintain their defences were greatly hampered by the drain of manpower by the continental army and various garrisons around the Baltic Sea as well as by the plague outbreak that struck Finland and Sweden between 1710 and 1713, which devastated the land killing, amongst others, over half of the population of Helsingfors (Helsinki).

[68] After the failure of 1712, Peter the Great ordered that further campaigns in war-ravaged regions of Finland with poor transportation networks were to be performed along the coastline and the seaways near the coast.

[69] Nominally under the command of Apraksin, but accompanied by Peter the Great, a fleet of coastal ships together with 12,000 men—infantry and artillery—began the campaign by sailing from Kronstadt on 2 May 1713; a further 4,000 cavalry were later sent overland to join with the army.

Lybecker's army of 7000 infantry and 3000 cavalry avoided contact with the Russians and instead kept withdrawing further inland without even contesting the control of Borgå region or the important coastal road between Helsinki (Helsingfors) and Turku (Åbo).

In nearby Greifswald, already lost to Sweden, Russian tsar Peter the Great and British king George I, in his position as Elector of Hanover, had just signed an alliance on 17 (OS)/28 (NS) October.

[77] After Charles XII had returned from the Ottoman Empire and resumed personal control of the war effort, he initiated two Norwegian Campaigns, starting in February 1716, to force Denmark–Norway into a separate peace treaty.

[80] By the time of Charles XII's death, the anti-Swedish allies became increasingly divided on how to fill the power gap left behind by the defeated and retreating Swedish armies.

George I and Frederik IV both coveted hegemony in northern Germany, while Augustus the Strong was concerned about the ambitions of Frederick William I on the southeastern Baltic coast.

Peter the Great, whose forces were spread all around the Baltic Sea, envisioned hegemony in East Central Europe and sought to establish naval bases as far west as Mecklenburg.

[81] When Sweden finally was at peace with Hanover, Great Britain, Brandenburg-Prussia and Denmark–Norway, it hoped that the anti-Russian sentiments of the Vienna parties and France would culminate in an alliance that would restore its Russian-occupied eastern provinces.

Finland was returned to Sweden, while the majority of Russia's conquests (Swedish Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, Kexholm and a portion of Karelia) were ceded to the tsardom.