Events of Prut Campaign according to Reports of English Diplomat Charles Whitworth to Secretary of State S. John

Abstract

A brief overview of contacts between the Muscovite kingdom and England in the 16th-17th centuries is given. The activity of C. Whitworth in Moscow from February 1705 to March 1710 is considered. An assessment of his work in the specified period is given. Particular attention is paid to the solution by the British diplomat of the tasks associated with providing his government with verified information about the events of the Russian-Turkish war. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that at present relations between the Russian Federation and Turkey have entered a new stage of development, which means that the history of their contacts cannot but attract the attention of historians. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that earlier researchers paid little attention to how foreign observers assessed the events of the Prut campaign. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that C. Whitworth managed to obtain reliable information about the battle on the Prut River and the conditions of the subsequent peace treaty after it. It is noted that, despite of rather contradictory information, the British ambassador was able to identify the most and least reliable sources of information and draw up a complete picture of what happened. The most reliable sources of information for the ambassador were letters from foreign colleagues, in particular, the British ambassador to Istanbul, Robert Sutton, as well as the imperial resident in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Johann Michel von Thalmann. The least plausible and confused information is presented in Polish letters and in a message from Count G. I. Golovkin to Prince Dolgorukov.