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had he succeeded in rallying the mass of the Ukrainiansto his standard, the issue might have been different.As it proved, the campaign ended in annihilation.Charles himself almost alone, wounded and sick, escapedsouth to the Turks. Poltava was decisive in the sensethat thereafter the strategic initiative lay with Russia.Although it took twelve years before Sweden was forcedto sign peace, she was continually on the defensive andher strength exhausted in so unequal a struggle. Theodds against her became still more heavily weighted.Denmark and Saxony-Poland now re-entered the warin alliance with Russia. Prussia and Hanover followedsuit later (1714).Poltava was immediately followed by the Russianconquest (1710) of Livonia and Estonia, Sweden's mainproviders of rye, hemp, and flax, and of Viborg, 'thestrong pillow of St Petersburg.' The rashly executedand disastrous campaign against the Turks in Bessarabia(1711; see p. 273) proved to be of no relief to Sweden.In 1713-14 the whole of Finland and the Aland inlands(within raiding distance of Stockholm) fell to the Russians,and Peter's new galley fleet, which revolutionizednaval warfare in the northern skerry-fences, won its firstresounding success off Hango (see map 5).At the same time the treaties of Utrecht (1713) broughtto an end the war of the Spanish succession and enabledthe Western and German states to pay greater attentionto the Baltic. Henceforward the struggle became evenmore diplomatic than military and as much between themembers of the coalition against Sweden as againstSweden herself. Operations in and rivalry for theSwedish possessions on the North German seaboard involvedPeter more and more deeply in the politics ofnorthern Germany, where for the first time in historyRussian armies made their unwelcome appearance.Russian designs in Mecklenburg and in the Holsteinquestion (for the next fifty years a major issue in thepolitics of St Petersburg) became central knots in theentangled diplomacy, strategy, and economics of the closingperiod of the Great Northern War, when the electorof Hanover had become as well George I of England