The History of Terra Mariana

The political situation in Livonia became increasingly delicate during the 16th century. The Reformation had caused a divide between the knightly class and the clergy. The power of the bishoprics waned heavily. An important prerequisite for stability in Old Livonia was the autonomy of the different states, but as time went on, they became more and more influenced by outside actors. The Bishop of Riga, Wilhelm, was in fact the brother of the duke of Prussia. In 1546, the different lords and estates of Livonia agreed to not allow any foreign people of ducal blood to be the heirs of neither bishops or the landmeister of the order. However, just ten years later, the aforementioned bishop of Riga declared the duke of Mecklenburg as his heir, and caused a conflict with it. The Livonian Order started a war against the Archbishopric of Riga, but since the latter was supported by the king of Poland, the order was forced to step down. Livonia had fallen under the influence of the Polish king. T...

(As the war was very complex, I will just give a very quick summary.) The Russian forces encountered minimal resistance, and the Bishopric of Dorpat fell into their hands already by the summer. They also conquered Virumaa. The Livonian side agreed to pay the tax to achieve peace, but Muscovy refused. By 1559, Russian forces reached Tallinn and Riga In the same year, the bishop of Ösel-Wiek sold his land to the king of Denmark, who lended the lands to his brother Magnus, the duke of Holstein. The last landmeister of the Livonian order Gotthard Kettler declared fealty to the Polish king in 1561, and the nobility of Northern Estonia and Tallinn voluntarily joined Sweden in the same year. The order was dismantled in 1562 and thus ended the Mediaeval Era in Estonia. The siege of Narva in 1558. The new order did not mean however that the war ended. The land was just under new management, and the new rulers had to step up against the foreign invader. The political map in 1562: Denmark (Yell...

The constant wars were devastating on the land. None of the powers managed to cement their power, instead they had to rely on temporary military control. The once rich Livonia was left in ruins: castles had been destroyed during sieges, churches and manors had been looted, a large portion of the peasantry was killed. Russians deported the citizens of captured cities to Russia en masse. Several plague epidemics coincided with the period of constant fighting. As a result, the population had fallen from 300 000 in 1550 to merely 110 000 in 1600. a -63% drop. Around 70% of fields in the former bishopric of Dorpat were abandoned, in Northern Estonia that percentage was around 50% and in Saaremaa around 30%. A caricature showcasing Russian atrocities in Livonia, published in Nuremberg 1561. (NB, propaganda) The Polish government started a campaign of converting the captured Lutheran territories into Catholicism. Jesuit colleges were established in Tartu and Riga, and missionaries were sent t...

A map showcasing the conquests of Sweden in this region. This era is called the Stormaktstiden or the Great Power Era in Sweden, as the country emerged as the dominant power in Northern Europe. Sweden at this time was not a unitary state. There were big differences between the “core” (modern day Sweden and Finland) and the newly conquered territories (including, but not limited to Estonia). The new provinces were called “oversea provinces”. As Sweden found it much easier to not worry about opposing the local Baltic-German nobility, and thus making them resentful or even rebellious, the old privileges were not revoked. The old order remained, all old laws and so on remained put. Estonian territories did not have a representation in the Swedish parliament, and Swedish laws did not extend here. The Swedish representative in local affairs was the governor, who had to deal with local provincial defence, collecting taxes, and dealing with school and church matters. To impose new taxes or law...

When Sweden conquered the Baltic territories, a large portion of land fell under the control of the crown. As the coffers of the state were empty, the state began a huge campaign of giving land to nobles, state officials and officers as compensation for their work. By the 1650s, less than two percent remained under the control of the state. As a result, huge territories fell under the control of Swedish nobility and families like Oxenstierna, De la Gardie and others. But the Swedish nobility never physically relocated here, they mostly rented out their manors to the local nobility. As mentioned, Sweden started nationalising manors. The first victims were the lands that had been given out as compensation earlier. Nevertheless, this caused a lot of fear amongst the Baltic-Germans, as they feared they would be next. And their fears were founded, in the end, the nationalisation campaign affected every single noble family. As a result, the Swedish era would later be remembered in a very neg...

With the advent of the Early Modern Era, the state strived to achieve greater power across the land. Cities had to start fighting for their traditional privileges, as the state tried to bend the cities to the economic, strategic and administrative needs of the state. The state was of course most interested in the taxes and tolls collected in the cities. The largest amount of autonomy remained in Tallinn, as it had voluntarily submitted to Swedish rule. The town rights remained in place, although the citizens had to appeal to Stockholm instead of Lübeck if they were not satisfied with the results of the courts. Tallinn did not escape from the new taxes either. Under Karl XI, the position of the Mayor of Justice was established to represent the interests of the state in the town council. The Castle of Toompea became the centre of the government of the province. The population reached 15 thousand by the end of the Swedish Era. Panorama of Tallinn by Adam Olearius, 1656 A building on Toomp...

The state religion of Sweden was Lutheranism, it was seen as one of the pillars of the Swedish state. All other religions and sects were banned across the empire. It was believed that the strength of the state was based on the religious unity of said state. Those, who were not protestant, were forced to emigrate. The only exception was made for foreign diplomats and merchants, as such there were Orthodox congregations in both Tallinn and Narva, and as mentioned before, an Anglican congregation in Narva as well. The nobility had privileges and responsibilities in the countryside parishes. The right of patronage, or the right to call a pastor into their position, belonged to the local gentry of the parish, so did the financial affairs of the church. Those things were taken care of by a specific council of nobles, which was elected by local lords. That council and the pastor together formed the church court, which was responsible for holding religious discipline in the parish. The Luther...

With the advent of the Modern Era and the rise of the role of the state, which needed educated bureaucrats, judges and pastors, the state would start to take a more keen interest in education, which had been until then mostly under the purview of the church. The view of the world, knowledge and skills of the Estonian peasantry came from two different sources. From their parents they learned folk tales, legends and beliefs and from the church they learned Christian teachings. Increasingly they would also be influenced by public education. The focal point of Protestant education was the idea that all people were supposed to be able to read holy texts themselves. In addition, the peasants were also taught the fundamentals of Christianity and church songs. At first, educating the peasants was solely the responsibility of the pastors. As the parishes were large and the pastors lacked the sufficient language skills, the results were rather meagre. Steps in Bengt Gottfried Forselius, the son ...

Denmark, Poland-Lithuania and Russia were not fond of the losses the Swedish Empire had inflicted on them in the last century and were looking forward to a rematch. A good moment for that seemed to arrive in 1697, when Karl XI passed away and left the throne to his only 14 year old son Karl XII. Immediately after that, negotiations for an anti-Sweden coalition began. The main instigator of that was Denmark, which wished to regain Southern Sweden. The king of Poland also joined in, wishing to conquer Livonia. And so did Russia, wishing to retake Ingria and Karelia and gain access to the Baltic Sea. Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia   Karl XII, King of Sweden

The war was supposed to begin with the coordinated attack of the Danish and Polish forces in different directions, but the plans failed right away. The Polish surprise attack on Riga in December of 1699 failed and August of Poland had to begin a siege. At the same time Denmark attacked the Swedes in Northern Germany. As, despite his youth, Karl XII was a brilliant strategist, he managed to take his forces to Northern Denmark and force the Danish to sign a peace, kicking them out of the war. Russia, which was at war with the Turks at the time, joined the war in August of 1700 after the conclusion of the aforementioned war. He started to siege the city of Narva. Whilst Russian troops were bombing the city, the Swedish army was heading towards Estonia in a fast pace. Even though the Swedes were outnumbered 3:1, they managed to break through the Russian lines with a surprise attack through the mist and made them retreat across the river of Narva. A painting depicting the Battle of Narva by...

Peter the Great made a peace proposal to Sweden, offering to return Estonia in exchange of retaining control over Ingria, where he had started to build his new capital St. Petersburg. The Swedish king refused. He marched east of Poland to finally destroy Russia. The Czar retreated and left back burnt land. In 1709 the Swedish and Russian forces met at the battle of Poltava in modern day Ukraine. By that time, the Swedish forces had been weakened, they were without food or ammunition and lost the battle completely. The Swedish force was almost entirely wiped out and the King managed to barely escape to the Ottoman Empire. The Battle of Poltava by Lous Varavaque The destruction of the Swedish main army left Estonia completely under Russian control. In 1708, when Peter the Great did not yet believe that he could keep Estonia, he ordered the destruction of Tartu. Everything that was left in the city was blown up and all the citizens were deported to Russia. After the Battle of Poltava how...

The war was the most devastating conflict in the history of Estonia. Whilst in 1695 there were around 400 000 people living in this land, as a result of the subsequent Great Starvation (three years of failing crops), a wave of a plague between 1709-1712 and the destruction of the land by the Russian forces, the population dropped to around 150 000. Only around 12% of the fields of 1695 were cultivated in 1713. Due to the capitulation treaties, the newly acquired Baltic provinces of Russia gained a status of privilege and autonomy, which was dubbed “The Baltic Special Arrangement”. The Baltic-German nobility regained the status they had had before the reforms of Karl XI, the nationalised manors were given back to their owners. During the early period of the Russian Era, the central government stayed out of the local affairs of the Baltics. The only Russian laws that applied here were the ones that were not in conflict with the privileges of the local nobility. The administrative and jud...

The representatives of the central power of the state in the governorates of Estonia and Livonia were the governors, who resided in Tallinn and Riga respectively. They were in charge of military and state tax matters, as well as approving the decisions of the local knighthoods. The Palace of Toompea, the former seat of the governor of Estonia, now the Estonian parliament. In Tallinn. Each knighthood discussed and voted on important local matters in the landtags, which were held every three years. All landowners of the noble class participated there. Between the landtags, the governing was done by a council of advisors, who had been picked for life by the landtag. To restrict access to the landtag, in the middle of the 18th century lists of nobles were drawn up. Those lists included all the current members of the knighthoods, and it was determined that only their descendants would be able to belong to the knighthoods. This ensured that all the newcomers would be kept out of the local af...

It took about 50 years for the countryside to recover from the Great Northern War. The decreased population kept the prices of agricultural products and therefore the income of the manors small. In the second half of the 18th century the price of grain started to grow and by the end of the century almost doubled. The capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, became the new main market for the manors. The increase in the price of grain also increased the price of land and manors became attractive for investors again. This increased the push for turning farm fields into manor fields. Innovations in technology and more efficient management was held back by the traditional serfdom system. From the end of the 1760s onwards, the large-scale construction of fancy manor buildings began, as a result of the Russian economy opening for the vodka production in the Baltic provinces. Vodka production became the main source of income for the manors. By the end of the 18th century the total outpu...