With Charles XII of Sweden's main army destroyed, the anti-Swedish alliance of the Tsardom of Russia, Denmark-Norway and Saxe-Poland-Lithuania re-constituted in the Treaty of Thorn and the Treaty of Copenhagen, the Swedish king exiled to Bender and Sweden's provinces of Finland and Livonia invaded, the Swedish defense relied on 11,800 soldiers garrisoned in northern Germany, and an army of 10,000 men in Greater Poland commanded by Ernst Detlof von Krassow.

[nb 2] Thus, when the Swedish forces withdrew to their fortified strongholds of Stralsund, Stettin (Szczecin) and Wismar, 6,000 Saxons, 6,000 Poles, and 12,000 Russians were able to follow up from the southeast.

[9] A Swedish relief force under Magnus Stenbock's command[10] with a strength of 6,000[11] to 10,000 men landed on Rügen on 25 September 1711,[10] whereupon the Danish-Saxon-Russian siege army withdrew to the Recknitz and Peene rivers.

Accordingly, Frederik IV had agreed in a convention of 1711 that Stralsund along with northern Swedish Pomerania should be annexed by August the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland-Lithuania.

[nb 3][10] The Stralsund area had been tied to Denmark in the Late Middle Ages, was of strategic importance as a bridgehead into the Holy Roman Empire, and a potent exporter of wool and grain.

August the Strong's protests and Danish tendencies to minimize their military efforts in the coalition after the treaty, resulting from Frederik IV's understanding that he now would gain Stralsund anyway, led to quarrels in the siege force.

Before re-joining with the siege army near Stralsund, Russian forces under Alexander Menshikov's command[nb 1] and a Saxon engineer corps were deployed from Tönning to Stettin, the second major Swedish fortress in Pomerania, and captured it on 29 September 1713.

However, Russian tsar Peter the Great had to withdraw his forces from the Holy Roman Empire by the terms of the Treaty of Adrianople, concluded on 25 June 1713 as a consequence of the Pruth Campaign.

[15] Charles XII of Sweden, exiled to Bender in the Ottoman Empire between the Surrender at Perevolochna and his return in 1714, had envisioned that Stralsund would constitute the base of a renewed Swedish attack on Peter the Great.

In July, the allied forces closed in on Stralsund from the landside, and in November a combined Danish-Saxon-Prussian army landed at Groß Stresow and took the island of Rügen north of the town.

[22] The siege of Stralsund marked the beginning of a friendship between Frederick William I of Prussia and Huguenot refugee Jacques Egide Duhan de Jandun, whom he first met when he was in the service of field marshal Alexander von Dohna in 1715.