[POTN] 2.9 - ＤＥＬＵＧＥ

In the morning of 5th July, 1655, Gustav finally issued the long-anticipated attacking order for all Swedish forces in Pomerania, Livonia, and also the regiments stationed in the Duchy of Prussia following the meeting at Neuruppin. The largest Swedish armies entered the Commonwealth from Pomerania, one led by Prince Karl, and the other by Gustav himself. The Polish forces in Greater Poland were unprepared, ill-supplied, and lacked any sorts of proper military training. Many Polish nobles decided to surrender immediately upon seeing the Swedish offensive. he army led by Prince Karl met over ten thousand Polish defenders in Ujście in late July. Despite expecting a difficult battle, the Polish army surrendered on 25th July, after just a day of battle with minimal losses from both sides, much to Karl's surprise.

Opaliński, the Voivode of Poznań and the leader of the nobles in Greater Poland, had long been dissatisfied with the King's policies in the province. By the end of July, he led all the nobles of Greater Poland to surrender to Gustav. Gustav entered the city of Poznań on 31st July, his army suffering practically no losses in the month of war. His aide, Field Marshal Arvid Wittenberg, was put in charge of the military occupation of the city. Wittenberg, paranoid of a Polish counter-offensive, discussed the issue with Gustav. The two agreed to strip Poznań of its strategic importance, in order to deny the Poles any advantage should they manage to recapture the city sometime in the future.

On 4th August, on Gustav's direct order, all food storages inside and near the city suffered from a heavy looting by the Swedish forces. The remaining food, unable to be taken, was all set to fire, so the people of Poznań could not feed the Polish troops in the case of their return. The people's protests of the looting were quickly suppressed on Wittenberg's order, with the German mercenaries firing into the crowds, after Wittenberg promised them three days of free looting after the crackdown.

From 7th August, the mercenaries began a merciless looting of the city, taking everything remotely valuable, abducting the people as slaves, and killed many innocent civilians in the process. Wittenberg and Gustav extended the three-day looting period to ten days upon the original date of expiration, and many Swedish troops also began to partake in the atrocities.

The local nobility suffered a particularly heavy loss, as they maintained their luxurious lifestyles before the Swedish looting started. Many mercenaries, upset with their wealth, dragged these Polish nobles onto the streets and killed them in public. Before Gustav left the city on 14th August with most of the army, he ordered for the local noblemen to be executed, so that the news about the brutality of the occupation would not spread to the other region too quickly.

Wittenberg, however, was wary of a Polish insurgency sprouting in Poznań following the atrocities. Without consulting Gustav, he ordered for the city to be burnt on 17th August, with the remaining Swedish units lighting fire from different parts of the city.

The wooden structures of the city blasted into flames in hours, the heat engulfing the entire settlement. Wittenberg then left the city to join Gustav with most of the units under his command, leaving only less battle-hardened "occupation units" to continue occupying Greater Poland.

The armies under Gustav, Karl, and Wittenberg joined forces near the town of Konin on 22th August. There, Karl proposed to continue marching eastward to the Commonwealth capital of Warsaw, a proposal agreed by Wittenberg and Gustav.

To prevent any uprising in the Swedish-occupied territories, Karl began utilising scorched-earth policies on the way, looting everything useful before setting the rest on fire, destroying the region's potential of supporting a guerilla war against Sweden. On 2th September, the Polish forces suffered a decisive defeat in Sobota. Swedish forces soon entered central Masovia, looting everything on their way.

The Polish King, Jan II Kazimierz Waza, was afraid of a capture and a potential execution. After being notified of the defeat in Sobota, he chose to flee Warsaw with his advisors to Kraków, abandoning the capital city entirely. Swedish forces entered Warsaw on 8th September, practically unopposed, and the city fell to foreign hands the first time in its history. Prince Karl proposed to pursue Jan II immediately, but Gustav opted for a break for the exhausted army, and also to provide some time for the Swedish looting.

Gustav also wrote letters back to Stockholm, demanding the Riksdag to send siege machines for the Swedish forces, promising that loots would be sent back to Stockholm in return. Meanwhile, in the East, the situation was equally desperate for the Commonwealth. The massacre in Vilnius in early August, committed by the Russian occupiers, greatly shocked the fleeing Lithuanian nobility.

A Swedish army, under the command of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, entered the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia in early July, under Gustav's command.

As the Duchy was a Commonwealth fief, Gustav deemed the Duchy a threat to the Swedish campaign, and believed that the German-speaking Duchy would be an easier target than the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Indeed, after a short period of resistance ordered by Duke Jakob Kettler, the Duchy surrendered in early August. Jakob Kettler could only mobilise a few thousands of untrained peasants, and they were no match for the professionally trained Swedish Army. On 11th August, a ceasefire was agreed. Jakob Kettler was made to revoke his fealty to the Polish crown, and instead, before his people in Mitau, swore loyalty to King Gustav, in the attendance of De la Gardie as Gustav's representative.

From there, the Swedes advanced into Lithuanian territory. However, the Lithuanian nobility, shocked by Russian brutality, was very dissatisfied with the lack of Polish support in the past year of Russian invasion. Janusz Radziwiłł, with the support of the Lithuanian nobles, formally pleaded to Sweden for peace immediately after the invasion. De la Gardie agreed for a temporary ceasefire, and began notifying Gustav of the development, asking for further directions.

The Lithuanians offered to put themselves under Swedish protection, without breaking the Union of Lublin entirely. The offer was delivered to Gustav personally, and only reached him after the occupation of Warsaw in early September. Gustav, nonetheless, largely ignored the proposal, and refused to declare peace with Lithuania while continuing war with Poland, as he saw the Commonwealth as one undivided entity. Gustav also refused to meet the Lithuanian nobles offering to pledge loyalty to him. The Swedish army, restarting the advances, began ravaging the Lithuanian countryside, much to the dismay of Janusz Radziwiłł. Radziwiłł began pleading to Gustav in public, citing their shared Protestant faith, and declared Lithuania and Sweden "Protestant brothers" who should protect and aid each other.

By the Treaty of Neuruppin, Brandenburg-Prussia also declared war on the Commonwealth on 9th July, 1655. With minimal resistance, the armies advancing from Prussia occupied Ermland and the lands around Marienburg, the territories promised to Prussia in the Treaty, in July and August, eventually reaching the Vistula in early September.

A certain amount of Brandenburger soldiers also joined the Swedish army in Greater Poland, often functioning as mercenaries. Still, Berlin's participation ensured that many mercenaries, with ties to the Electorate, would join the Swedish invasion of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, after coordination with the Swedish forces, the Prussian military crossed the Vistula in early October, and advanced towards the Polish port city of Danzig in Royal Prussia.

Swedish forces, led by Prince Karl and Wittenberg, marched north with the new siege machines sent by the Riksdag on Gustav's order. By mid-October, Danzig was besieged, with thousands Prussian and Swedish forces aiming to starve the city into submission.

Under the particularly cold winter, the port was unable to sustain the siege, and capitulated in early December after almost seven weeks of siege. Brandenburger nobles, leading the siege, marched into the city, followed by Prussian and Swedish forces. The occupation of Danzig threatened the Dutch interests in the Baltic Sea. The Dutch Republic, now firmly under the control of Johan de Witt, repeatedly threatened both Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia with war, if the Dutch interest in the region was not protected.

In September 1655, the Dutch Republic had already sent forces to occupy the two settlements in New Sweden, Fort Gustav and Fort Kristina. While the territory had been ceded to Charles Stuart in Nyköping by Gustav in 1652, the Dutch refused to recognise Charles as a legal representative of the English state, and thus deemed the Treaty invalid. The Dutch occupied the territories after a ten-day siege that led to the surrender of the Swedish and English settlers in both forts. Charles Stuart only received the news in early 1656, and was reportedly upset by it, deeming his authority as the King of England challenged blatantly.

Gustav, meanwhile, was wary of the increased Dutch naval presence in the Baltic. He attempted to negotiate with the Dutch, but the negotiations were largely in deadlock. However, both Gustav and Friedrich Wilhelm, aware of their limitations in naval warfare, wished to avoid a direct confrontation on the Baltic with the Dutch fleets. The Dutch were also unwilling to make landings on the coast and suffer potentially heavy losses. The situation in Baltic remained tense into 1656, but no direct confrontations occurred.

Gustav continued seeking for peace, but the Dutch were also unwilling to concede any major rights of trading in the Baltic. As the situation in Poland largely stabilised, with the Swedish invasion of Lesser Poland proposed by Prince Karl delayed, Queen Henrietta travelled from Stockholm to Warsaw to join her husband in late October, along with a fleet carrying supplies for the Swedish soldiers.

By this time, Jan II had largely consolidated his power in Lesser Poland, and a Swedish invasion was no longer deemed possible in the winter snow. Gustav, by December, decided to scrap the plan entirely, and focused on preventing any Polish insurgency in the occupies territories. Scorched-earth policies were continuously implemented in the occupied territories, causing many cases of famines across Greater Poland and Masovia. Atrocities, committed by both Swedish forces and mercenaries, continued haunting the Polish population in both urban and rural areas. Swedish rear forces, put in charge of the occupations behind the frontlines, were nowhere more lenient than the fighting forces, and destroyed many defenseless Polish settlements.

Meanwhile, a temporary ceasefire was negotiated between some Lithuanian nobles and the invading Russian forces. Tsar Alexei wished to be proclaimed the Grand Duke of Lithuania, but the western quarter of the Grand Duchy was under Swedish occupation. Sweden, however, deliberately ignored the repeated calls for protection by the Radziwiłł family in late 1655, hoping not to go to war with Russia over Lithuania.