About an Unknown Letter “from the Newly Conquered City of Areshek”

Abstract

A handwritten book Collection of Military Letters is kept in the funds of the Russian National Library. It is a collection containing copies of messages about the military operations of parts of the Russian Army in 1702–1710. The study of the manuscript makes it possible to establish that the collection comes from the office of Boyar T. N. Streshnev and belonged to Clerk I. P. Topilsky. On the first pages of the collection, there is a previously unknown letter with a message about the assault and capture of the fortress of Nöteborg. An analysis of the letter demonstrates that its author was P. P. Shafirov, secretary of the Ambassadorial Prikaz. He was sent to Nöteborg to negotiate the conditions for surrendering the fortress. The letter contains information about the events of the assault, the course of negotiations, an assessment of the damage to the fortifications, and reports on the losses of the Russian side. Shafirov’s letter, written the day after the assault, is much longer than the known letters of Peter I but is not a work of the editors who created the official text of the report much later. The introduction of a new source about the assault and capture of Nöteborg adds to the knowledge about one of the significant events of the initial stage of the Northern War.