Turku 1000
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1713–1721

The Great Wrath

In August 1713 Russian troops marched into Turku, and Peter the Great came to town himself. For eight years Finland was occupied, while its bishop, its professors and some 30,000 refugees waited across the sea in Sweden.

Baroque · Great power era

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Turku in 1713, from flight to occupation, in 28 seconds.Drawn with code for this site. A schematic view, not to scale. The order of events follows the text below, but months are shortened to seconds, and the town plan, the houses, the boats and the flags are invented or simplified.
The big story

The Great Wrath: Turku under occupation

In August 1713 Russian troops marched into Turku, and Peter the Great came to the town himself. For the next eight years all of Finland was occupied. Later generations called these years isoviha, the Great Wrath.

War comes to Finland

  • A long war. The Great Northern War began in 1700, when Denmark, Saxony and Russia attacked Sweden. The young Charles XII (stop 19) won at first, but in 1709 his army was crushed at Poltava, deep in today’s Ukraine. After that Russia went on the attack all around the Baltic Well documented.
  • Burned by its own army. In May 1713 a Russian galley fleet reached Helsinki. Charles XII had ordered that nothing useful be left to the enemy, so the Swedish forces set the town on fire as they withdrew. Peter the Great landed on 11 May and had the rest destroyed Well documented.
  • Flight across the sea. Many people in southern Finland fled to Sweden, by boat from Turku to Stockholm or overland round the Gulf of Bothnia. Bishop Johannes Gezelius and the cathedral chapter fled to Stockholm, and so did the professors of the Academy (topic 2). Some priests stayed with their parishes Well documented.
  • Turku taken. The Swedish army pulled back inland. In August a Russian army marched west along the coast while Peter followed by galley, and Turku was taken at the end of the month. On 30 August Peter was in the town, staying in the house of a merchant called Wittfooth and writing letters to announce the capture to the king of Poland and others Well documented.
  • A medal for Turku. A Russian medal was struck for the capture, with the sea god Neptune on a chariot and the Latin words Ad Abum, “at Turku” Well documented.
  • The last battle. On 19 February 1714 the Finnish army under Carl Gustaf Armfelt met the Russians at Napue in Isokyrö. Over 3,000 Finnish soldiers were lost, 2,645 of them killed. Isokyrö lost 45 percent of its men, Laihia 60 percent and Vähäkyrö 70 percent Well documented.
  • Galleys at Hanko. On 27 July 1714 Russian galleys slipped past the Swedish fleet at Hanko and won a sea battle at Riilahti. On 13 August they took Åland, whose people had already fled to Sweden Well documented.

Eight years of occupation

  • Ruled from Turku. Prince Mikhail Golitsyn governed occupied Finland from his headquarters in Turku. From 1714 to 1717 the occupation was run by Gustaf Otto Douglas, a Swedish count who had gone over to the Russians. These were the worst years Well documented.
  • Townspeople as tax collectors. The occupiers ran Turku through local men. The merchant Henrik Wächter served as a Russian-appointed mayor in 1715. In November 1716 the Russians brought back the councillor Simon Lydeman, who had fled to Ostrobothnia, to be mayor on a warrant from Golitsyn. To raise the Russian tax, goods were taken wherever they could be found: in 1714 goods worth 303 copper daler were carried off from the empty house of the merchant Josef Eskola, who had fled to Sweden. After the war he sued, but the witnesses could not say who had given the order Well documented.
  • Russian traders return. Russian merchants had visited Turku since the 1600s, until the war stopped them in 1700. From 1713 they came back with the help of the occupation government, and some settled in the town for good. The records call them marketenter, sutlers Well documented.
  • Terror in the countryside. Plunder, rape and torture were common, worst of all in Ostrobothnia. People hid in the forests for years. Peter ordered the north of Ostrobothnia to be laid waste, about 100 kilometres inland, to protect his new city of St Petersburg. In the autumn of 1714 Cossacks killed about 800 people on the island of Hailuoto Well documented.
  • Taken away. Between 20,000 and 30,000 people are estimated to have been taken away, many of them children and young women. Some had to build St Petersburg, some worked on estates, and some were sold as far away as Persia. About 2,000 men were forced into the Russian army, and others worked as slaves for the army around Turku Likely.
  • How many died? Older studies counted at least 5,000 killed. Recent research puts the number closer to 20,000. About 30,000 people fled to Sweden, out of roughly 400,000 in Finland, and about a quarter of all farms were reportedly empty when the war ended Debated.
  • The Cathedral robbed. The occupiers looted the Cathedral and opened graves, among them Queen Karin Månsdotter’s (stop 16). People were beaten to make them reveal where church silver was hidden. The roof was broken and the windows were boarded up. Turku’s population fell dramatically Well documented.
  • Saint Henry’s bones. In 1720 the bones of Saint Henry, Finland’s patron saint (stop 2), were taken from the Cathedral and put on a ship for St Petersburg. They have never been found Well documented. One story says the ship sank in a storm in the Gulf of Finland Legend.

Peace at last

  • The Peace of Nystad. The war ended with a peace signed at Nystad (Uusikaupunki), north of Turku, on 30 August 1721. Sweden gave up Estonia, Livonia, Ingria and south-eastern Finland with Viborg. Russia gave back the rest of Finland and paid two million riksdaler Well documented.
  • Coming home. Prisoners and captured civilians were to be set free, but most of those taken to Russia stayed there. In Turku the Cathedral was repaired, and new bells were hoisted into its tower Well documented.
  • Squatters out. On 18 November 1721 Turku’s old town council met for the first time since 1713. Refugees coming home found Russian traders living in their empty houses, and evicting them was one of the council’s first jobs. Even the occupiers’ Russian mayor, Ivan Savinov Ponomaroff, had moved into an abandoned house. When a councillor demanded rent in the spring of 1722, Ponomaroff said he had found the house empty and repaired it at his own cost. Instead of throwing him out, the council sent men to inspect the repairs Well documented.
  • A name given later. People at the time did not say isoviha. The name came into use later in the 1700s. A second, shorter occupation in the 1740s was called pikkuviha, the Lesser Wrath (stop 21) Well documented.
  • Dog-headed monsters. In the early 1900s collectors wrote down over a thousand folk tales about the Great Wrath. In some, Russian soldiers appear as dog-headed monsters Well documented.
How do we know?

Peter the Great’s letters and daily records show where he was and what he wrote. Church records, court records and the petitions of refugees in Sweden tell the Finnish side, and folk tales collected two centuries later show how the years were remembered. The numbers are the hardest part. No one counted the dead or the captives, and estimates have grown as historians have found new sources. For Turku itself, the town’s own records stop in 1713. The papers of the occupation government survive only in Russian archives, and much of what we know about life in the town comes from court cases heard after the peace. One more trap: Sweden and Russia both used the old Julian calendar, 11 days behind ours.

OstrobothniaSwedenEstoniaGulf of BothniaGulf of FinlandLost in 1721TurkuHelsinkiNapueHankoHailuotoSt PetersburgNystadStockholmViborgUmeå
The cost in people (estimates)010 00020 00030 000KilledTaken to RussiaFled to Sweden
  • Killed: at least 5,000; recent research: closer to 20,000
  • Taken to Russia: older estimate 10,000; recent: 20,000–30,000
  • Fled to Sweden: about 30,000
  • Finland had about 400,000 people before the war.
The Russian occupation of Finland, 1713–1721. Click a date to follow the war, and see the human cost below.Old-style dates. The map is simplified, and the coast in the north, the lakes and the 1721 border are approximate.
Why it matters

The Great Wrath was the worst disaster in Finland since the famine of the 1690s (stop 19), and it came less than twenty years later. Its memory shaped how Finns saw Russia for generations. It also showed how exposed Finland was as the eastern half of the Swedish realm, and about twenty years later Russian troops were back in Turku (stop 21).

On the lighter side

The Academy in exile

In 1713 Finland’s only university closed its doors, and its professors joined the refugees crossing to Sweden. For almost ten years the Academy of Turku survived in exile, among people looking for work, help and a way home.

A university on the run

  • Doors closed. When the Russians came in 1713, the Academy stopped working and its professors fled to Sweden. It stayed closed for almost a decade Well documented.
  • Studying in Stockholm. The Academy did not disappear. Between 1715 and 1721, 47 young men enrolled in it in Stockholm, and a few Finnish students went to study at Uppsala. Students struggled to find lodgings and books, and grants were paid in smaller sums Well documented.
  • New professors. New professors were even appointed while the Academy was in exile Well documented.
  • Before the war. In 1700 the Academy had 387 students on its rolls, although many of them were away Well documented.

Life as a refugee

  • About 30,000. Historians estimate that around 30,000 refugees came to Sweden because of the war, most of them from Finland. They crossed by sea from Turku towards Stockholm, or went north round the Gulf of Bothnia to Ångermanland Likely.
  • Help, slowly. In 1712 a royal refugee commission was set up in Stockholm to collect money all over the realm. A historian calls the system cumbersome and inefficient: some refugees travelled to Stockholm for aid only to find the money gone Well documented.
  • Priests looking for parishes. Of 75 refugees who turned to the cathedral chapter of Uppsala, 43 wanted a church post. Only 20 got a post or other help, and 15 of those had a powerful patron. Bishop Gezelius kept writing letters for his priests until he died in 1718 Well documented.
  • Services in Finnish. Finnish-speaking priests were allowed to hold services in Finnish for other refugees while the war lasted Well documented.
  • A merchant in Arboga. Not every refugee was poor. Josef Eskola, a Finnish-speaking merchant from Turku, settled in the small town of Arboga west of Stockholm and kept trading with his own ship, so his family escaped the hardship many refugees faced. He sailed back to occupied Turku before the war ended, and in 1719 he gave the money still owed to him in Arboga, 63 copper daler, to the town’s poor Well documented.
  • A foreign bride. In 1715 a Finnish-speaking woman sued a farmhand who refused to marry her. He was afraid people at home would look down on him because she was a foreigner. It is the only sign of prejudice against refugees that the historian found in these records Well documented.

Coming home

  • 1722. The Academy reopened in Turku in 1722 with only seven professors present at first. Later it again had its full twelve, but it was much weaker than before Well documented.
  • A new generation. Only a handful of the old professors returned, and almost the whole staff changed. The new professors brought new ideas, such as no longer treating the Bible as the final word in the natural sciences. They could teach quite freely, as long as they did not oppose the Lutheran faith or criticise society Well documented.
  • An empty purse. The damage lasted a long time, and for years the Academy could not even pay its professors the salaries they had been promised Well documented.
How do we know?

The historian Sari Nauman has read the minutes of the cathedral chapter of Uppsala from 1710 to 1719, which record every refugee who asked it for help. Histories of the university give the closing, the students in Stockholm and the reopening. The number of refugees is an estimate: many never registered anywhere, so the true number may be higher.

≈ 30,000refugees in Sweden, most of them from Finland
1712–1720a royal commission collects money for refugees
77 %of refugee households in Uppland came from the Turku region and Åland

Click a year to read from the minutes of the cathedral chapter of Uppsala.

0102030All refugee mattersNew refugees asking for help641711441712541713441714191017152613171616517172816171825151719
Refugees and the cathedral chapter of Uppsala, 1711–1719. Click a year to read a story from its minutes.Counts from the chapter’s minutes as studied by Sari Nauman (2019). Many refugees never came to the chapter, so these are only a small part of the whole.
Why it matters

Finland’s first university came through its worst crisis because its people kept it going in exile. Its successor, the University of Helsinki, still counts its history from 1640. And the refugees’ worries 300 years ago, finding work, waiting for help and being seen as strangers, are easy to recognise today.

Sources and further reading

  1. Greater Wrath — the Russian occupation of Finland, its governors, violence, abductions and the numbers debated.
  2. Battle of Napue — 19 February 1714 (old style), the last battle in Finland.
  3. Battle of Gangut — the galley battle off Hanko, 27 July 1714 (old style), and the taking of Åland.
  4. Battle of Helsinki (1713) — the town burned by the retreating Swedish forces in May 1713.
  5. Treaty of Nystad — the peace of 30 August 1721 (old style).
  6. Turku Cathedral in the 18th century (Turku Parishes): flight of the bishop and chapter, looting, the relics of Saint Henry, repairs after the peace.
  7. Peter the Great: a chronicle of his life, 30 August / 10 September 1713, Peter in Turku (HSE University, St Petersburg, in Russian).
  8. Peter the Great: a chronicle of his life, 17/28 August 1713, the march from Helsinki to Turku (HSE University, in Russian).
  9. University of Edinburgh, Dashkov medals: Peter I and the taking of Turku, 1713 (“Ad Abum”).
  10. Pesonen, M. (2021). Yle (in Finnish): atrocities in Ostrobothnia, people taken to Russia, refugees, and how the Great Wrath was remembered.
  11. Niemistö, E. (2014). Isonvihan perintö ulottui sukupolvien päähän. Yle (in Finnish): folk tales and the memory of the occupation.
  12. University of Helsinki (2020): Wars and fires have not subdued the University of Helsinki — the Academy closed in 1713 and its professors fled to Sweden.
  13. Nauman, S. (2019). Flyktingmottagandet i Uppsala domkapitel 1710–19. Årsboken Uppland 2019, 49–65 (in Swedish): Finnish refugees and the cathedral chapter of Uppsala.
  14. Gummerus, H. (1940). Helsingfors universitet 300 år. Svensk Tidskrift (in Swedish): the Academy in exile and its reopening in 1722.
  15. Johannes Gezelius the younger — bishop of Turku 1690–1718.
  16. Toropainen, V. P. Venäläiskauppiaat palasivat isonvihan jälkeen. University of Turku, UTUPub (Word file, in Finnish): Russian merchants in the Turku court records, 1713 to the 1730s.
  17. Toropainen, V. P. Porvarisperhe Eskola-Petrej 1700-luvun Turusta. University of Turku, UTUPub (Word file, in Finnish): a merchant family in the Turku court records, c. 1700–1750, with Alexander Hacks’s poems of 1732 and 1735.

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