What was the Skirmish at Bender?
The Skirmish at Bender, known in Swedish as the Kalabalik, was the Ottoman attempt on 1 February 1713 to remove King Charles XII of Sweden from the camp near Bender in Moldavia, where he had lived as the Sultan's guest since his defeat at Poltava in 1709. Charles and a few dozen men held off the Ottoman troops for hours until the house was set on fire, then were captured. He was taken to a castle near Adrianople and finally went home in 1714.1
Few guests have outstayed their welcome as spectacularly as Charles XII of Sweden. He arrived in the Ottoman Empire as a defeated king asking for a few days of shelter, and his hosts finally had to storm his house to get rid of him. Derek Davison of Foreign Exchanges calls it a relatively silly affair, but one that showed the Ottomans could still flex their muscles in Europe.2
A refugee king
Charles had spent the first years of the Great Northern War beating the coalition of Russia, Denmark-Norway and Saxony, and turned down Peter the Great's offer of peace. Then he invaded Russia, and in June 1709 his army was crushed at Poltava, in today's Ukraine. Charles escaped with about 1,500 men across the border into Ottoman territory and reached Bender on the Dniester on 1 August 1709. The Ottoman commander, Yusuf Pasha, welcomed him with royal honors and cannon salutes in the name of Sultan Ahmed III.3 › Battle of Poltava, 1709
He wrote to the Sultan asking to stay for eight days. Middle East Eye's Yusuf Selman İnanç notes that the eight days turned into five years. The Swedes settled into a camp outside the town, and the Ottoman treasury paid for it: Middle East Eye quotes a biography of Charles that puts his allowance at 125 to 150 pounds a day, and the Ottomans nicknamed him Demirbaş Şarl, Charles the fixture. He also borrowed heavily from local merchants.4
Dragging the Ottomans into war
Charles did not rest. Peter demanded that the Ottomans hand him over, the Sultan refused, and the result was the war of 1710 to 1711. At Stănilești on the Pruth in July 1711 the Ottomans surrounded Peter's army, and the Treaty of the Pruth followed on 21 July. Charles thought the terms far too lenient; the Bender fortress museum records his ironic remark to the Grand Vizier that it was a pity such a great army would never actually fight. He and the Crimean khan Devlet II Giray worked at court against the Grand Vizier, who was dismissed in November 1711.5
The Ottomans, however, did not want another war, and Charles's meddling wore out his welcome. When he was asked to leave, he set conditions: an escort of 70,000 Ottoman soldiers according to Middle East Eye, or 6,000 sipahi cavalry, 30,000 Tatars and a loan according to the Bender fortress museum. According to Davison, Sultan Ahmed deposed Devlet Giray and decided the king's stay had to end. He ordered Charles removed by force.6
The Kalabalik
After an artillery bombardment the day before, Ottoman troops marched into the camp on 1 February. Middle East Eye describes Janissaries, backed by a crowd of local people, coming to arrest the king at his house.7
Charles fought. With about 40 men, Davison writes, he held off the attackers for hours, firing at them from the house and fighting hand to hand. Eventually, in Davison's account, the Ottomans pulled back and used fire arrows. As the camp burned, Charles and his men had to leave their positions, and they were seized. Middle East Eye counts hundreds of casualties on both sides.8
The Turkish word kalabalık means a crowd. The Swedes took it home, and in Swedish kalabalik came to mean an uproar or commotion.9
The long way home
Charles was arrested and, according to the Bender fortress museum, on 12 February 1713, moved to the castle of Demirtaş near Adrianople, today Edirne. Davison writes that he was held until news reached the Ottomans of the Swedish victory at Gadebusch in Germany, won in 1712. Even then it took time to coax him out. He left on 20 September 1714, crossed Wallachia and the Holy Roman Empire in about fifteen days, and reached Swedish Stralsund in Pomerania that November.10
He left debts behind him: by Middle East Eye's account more than a million Swedish crowns, reportedly over three times Sweden's budget, owed to merchants who followed him north. The same account says the Ottomans sent envoys to Stockholm to collect in 1727 and 1732. Charles never paid. In November 1718 he was shot dead in the trenches at Fredriksten, during his invasion of Norway.11
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”; Bendery Fortress, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры”; Byron J. Nordstrom, “Charles XII”; Svenska Akademiens ordbok, “kalabalik”. ↩
- Derek Davison, “Today in European history”. ↩
- Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”; Byron J. Nordstrom, “Charles XII”; Bendery Fortress, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры”. ↩
- Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”. ↩
- Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Bendery Fortress, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры”. ↩
- Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”; Bendery Fortress, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры”; Derek Davison, “Today in European history”. ↩
- Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Svenska Akademiens ordbok, “kalabalik”; Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”. ↩
- Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”; Svenska Akademiens ordbok, “kalabalik”. ↩
- Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”; Svenska Akademiens ordbok, “kalabalik”. ↩
- Bendery Fortress, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры”; Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Byron J. Nordstrom, “Charles XII”. ↩
- Yusuf Selman İnanç, “Meatballs and militancy”; Derek Davison, “Today in European history”; Bendery Fortress, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры”; Byron J. Nordstrom, “Charles XII”. ↩
Sources
- Derek Davison, Foreign Exchanges, “Today in European history: the Skirmish at Bendery (1713)”
- Yusuf Selman İnanç, Middle East Eye, “Meatballs and militancy: How a Swedish king became the bane of the Ottoman Empire”
- Bendery Fortress (Бендерская крепость), museum, “Карл XII и его отступление в Бендеры” (in Russian)
- Byron J. Nordstrom, Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, and Encyclopedia of World Biography (via Encyclopedia.com), “Charles XII”
- Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB), 1935, “kalabalik” (in Swedish)
