Note 9 — Chapter I

On the north-west, from Varanger Fiord to Pskoff (about 1,350 miles), we marched with our powerful neighbour Sweden, who possessed an army of 100,000 men. At this disturbed period she was mistress of the country round the Baltic coasts and of the present province of St. Petersburg, and possessed in the fortresses of Finland and in the Baltic littoral an enveloping base for a gradual movement on our Pskoff and Novgorod provinces. On the west, from Pskoff to Tchigrin (about 1,000 miles), we marched with Poland, the frontier re-entering like a wedge near Smolensk to a distance of 300 miles from Moscow. Poland, the ally of Sweden and Turkey, was Russia’s natural enemy, for she was in occupation of our soil in White and Little Russia. On the south, from Tchigrin to Azov (about 400 miles), the boundary ran practically undefined, shared with the Tartar hordes subject to Turkey, who then possessed an army of some 500,000 men, and a strong fleet on the Black Sea. From Azov to the Caspian (about 400 miles) our neighbours were Tartars and nomadic Caucasian mountaineers, who were continually raiding our borders. Lastly, in Asia our frontier, which was here also only vaguely defined, marched with that of the Kirghiz tribes and races subordinate to China.