Quote Originally Posted by it-ogo View Post
AFAIK Karl XII was a great general, who won many battles. But as a ruler he was unable to make use of his victories and his first defeat turned into a complete disaster.
It's unbelievable that he continued to wage war against a much bigger country with an advanced army, almost unlimited space and many more people.. Of course that would never work out, at least in a longer perspective! Because of him, we are not a big and important country, but an unimportant country in the outskirts of Europe, and some territories that ought to be Swedish are now Finnish. I really don't know a lot about this period in history, but it seems pointless to blame Russia for more or less simply defending itself. I am definitely not interested in going to Poltava - would be totally depressing.