No Swedish group? Finns want to kick your butts..

[tss]

Geier wrote:

check out "Förflutenhetens landskap"

I guess I will. Though the nearest library that has it is so far away that I will probably forget it before I have time to go and get it. And after that it'll probably take quite a lot time to read it, since my Swedish is a bit rusty.

I´can recheck this but "the assassination with a button" is pure and unadulterated myth. This doesn't stop Varbergs museum from sporting the button still.

There's another interesting legend of being shot with a button. General Göran Magnus Sprengtporten got into row with Swedish king Gustav III and went into service of the Russian tsaress (or how do you call a female tsar?) Katherine II. At the time Finland was a part of Sweden but Sprengtporten wished to change that. He was probably the first person who started working for independent Finland. However, his method was not so good as he thought that a good first step would be a status of a protectorate under Russian Empire.

But anyway, when Gustav started his war against Russia in 1788, Sprengtporten acted as an advisor on military matters. He participated only in one battle, the battle of Porrassalmi on June 13 1789, where he was wounded on left shoulder. According to a legend, he was hit by a button shot by one Savo Jäger who had run out of normal ammo. The irony of the situation is that Sprengtporten had commanded the unit before his row with the king and he had developed the new skirmish tactics that made the unit very effective in forest battles.

BTW, the battle of Porrassalmi resulted in a very surprising victory for the Swedish side (though there were only Finnish units in the battle as Swedish kings had a longstanding tradition of not sending Swedish units to fight in Finland. Most of the officers were Swedes, though). The defenders had only 612 men and two small guns. The attackers had two oridinary infantry regiments, one Guards regiment, 600 jägers, 600 regular cavalry, and 600 cossacks, a total of 6900 men (though some sources put the number of Russians to a little over 5000 but that figure apparently leaves out the jägers and cossacks). They also had ~20 cannons. Even though Russians had 10:1 superiority, they were thrown back with heavy casualties. The terrain favored the defender because Russians had to cross a river and the fordable part was less than 100 meters wide so they couldn't use their numbers effectively.

Am halfway through the follow-up to "Ofredsår", "Den oövervinnerlige" (The invincible) and what a piece of work it is.

I think that I wait until it gets translated.

- Tommi

[Geier]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tss:

Geier wrote:

check out "Förflutenhetens landskap"

I guess I will. Though the nearest library that has it is so far away that I will probably forget it before I have time to go and get it. And after that it'll probably take quite a lot time to read it, since my Swedish is a bit rusty.

- Tommi<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

My bad, I didn't check if it was translated before I wrote that. Englund books that has been translated to Finnish are: Poltava, Ofredsår and Brev från Nollpunkten. If you feel like trying to read in Swedish I suggest you go to www.peterenglund.com and check out the "textarkiv" section. A large portion of his texts can be found there. Among them you can find reviews of Antti Tuuris Vinterkriget and Martin Lönnqvists "Så gick det till - en frontmans dagbok 1939-1944." Saves you the trip to the library

I would expect "Den Oövervinnerlige" to be translated as well. Have you checked out Europa Universalis at all btw? I'm looking forward to buying it this weekend.

I guess "empress" would fit the bill for the english language version of "czarine".

Interesting story too, thanks.

Johan

[Mattias]

Mycke snack och lite bandy

Är någon intresserad att bilda ett lag på "Rugged Defence" ladder så hör av er, skulle vara roligt!

M.