Great Wrath

The Russians laid siege to Viborg in 1710, ultimately seizing the city, and by 1712 had already started their first campaign to capture Finland, which ended in failure.

[3] Swedish efforts to hinder the Russian advance by blockading the coastal sea route at Hangö ended in failure in late July at the Battle of Gangut.

[4] As a result of the conflict, large areas of Swedish land were destroyed by the Russians, including the city of Umeå, which was burned to the ground on 18 September 1714 and, after struggling to rebuild, was razed again in 1720, 1721, and 1722.

Finns began waging partisan warfare against the Russians, and as retaliation, the Finnish peasants were forced to pay large contributions to them, as was the custom at the time.

[7] The most severe of these massacres took place on 29 September 1714, when during one night, the Cossacks killed about 800 inhabitants of the island of Hailuoto with axes.

[8] Thousands fled to the relative safety of Sweden with the poorer peasants hiding in the woods to avoid the occupiers and their press gangs.

[9] The atrocities were at their peak between 1714 and 1717 when the Swedish Count Gustaf Otto Douglas, who had defected to the Russian side during the war, was in charge of the occupation.

[9] Many torture methods were used, including hanging captives by the wrists with their hands behind their backs, exposing them to freezing temperatures, or baking them in ovens.

Peter the Great had also twice ordered the destruction of North Ostrobothnia into wasteland, making the conditions impossible for the Swedish army to live in.

[5] Approximately 2,000 men were forcibly enlisted in the Russian army,[14] but many women and children were also abducted as serfs or sex slaves by Russian officers, who in some cases sold them on to the Crimean slave trade; about 4,600 people, the majority of whom were children, were abducted from Ostrobothnia and Eastern Finland.