[4] The siege came four years after the first battle of Narva, where the Russians were defeated by a much smaller Swedish force defending the city.

[1]: 697 Marshal Boris Sheremetev's force of 20,000 captured Tartu on 24 June and then Russian forces led by Georg Benedikt von Ogilvy besieged Narva, with the garrison under the Commandant Major-General Henning Rudolf Horn af Ranzien and consisting of only 3,800 infantry and 1,300 cavalry.

[1]: 697 After a long siege followed by a three-fronted attack, the Russians captured Narva on 20 August 1704, massacring hundreds of its Swedish garrison and inhabitants before Peter I stopped them.

[3] In August, Peter I signed the Treaty of Narva in the town, aligning the Sandomierz Confederation faction of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with Russia against Sweden in the war.

On 11 September, the surviving citizens of Narva swore allegiance to Peter I in the courtyard of the town hall, and the city was incorporated into the Russian Tsardom.