In 1717, Peter I commissioned French masters to make tapestries and engravings depicting the victorious battles of the Russian troops during the Great Northern War to commemorate these events. The plots for these works were personally chosen by Peter the Great. One of them was the battle near the village of Lesnaya on September 28, 1708.
On this day, a battle took place between the corps volant of the Russian troops, commanded by Peter himself, and the Swedish troops led by General Adam Ludwig von Lewenhaupt, an associate of Charles XII, who had already won battles at the beginning of the war. Peter commanded an army of 5,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry units, and several batteries against 16,000 men protected by a large wagon fort. The Swedes were advancing to the Starodub area, where the main army was based. The Russian troops managed to push back the Swedish detachment, connect with the cavalry of Christian Felix Bauer (Peter’s Swedish associate) and attack the convoy. As a result, the Swedes lost nine times more people than the Russians (9,000 and 1,000 people respectively), in addition, the soldiers of Charles XII were deprived of provisions and reinforcements. Peter the Great called this battle “the mother of the Battle of Poltava”.
The painted original cartoons necessary for weaving tapestries were painted by the famous Parisian battle artist Pierre-Denis Martin Jr. and Nicolas de Larmessin engraved the “Battle of the Lesnaya”.
The high horizon line opens up a deep perspective. The line of fire is stretched diagonally from bottom to top and from left to right. Two columns of Peter’s troops stretch from a village in the distance. To the right, closer to the viewer, is another column of Russian soldiers. Due to the narrowness of the field, the column is not in a straight line but in a semicircle, as remarked by the tsar-commander.
A copy of the engraving belongs to the Russian copper engraver Alexey Rostovtsev (circa 1690–1746). The son of a palace deacon, Alexey Rostovtsev was a student of Vasily Kipriyanov, a calligrapher, engraver, cartographer, and an associate of Peter I who established the first Russian privately-owned printing house. From 1711, Rostovtsev worked in the St. Petersburg printing house under Peter Picart, whose manner he largely adopted. The best works of the master include the types of ships for the publication “Drawings of Ships” and “Battle of Lesnaya” from the original by Larmessin.
