Winter 1808
By that time, Russian forces had overrun all of Finland. On November 19, the Convention of Olkijoki was signed and the Swedish army was forced to leave the country. The emperor was, however, now eager to bring hostilities to the territory of Sweden proper, which was certain to bring the war to a victorious end.
With these reasons in mind, Kamensky suggested a daring plan, whereby the Russian army was to cross the frozen Gulf of Bothnia in two directions: one unit was to march from Vaasa towards Umeå and another from Turku to the Åland Islands and thence towards the vicinity of Stockholm. A third unit was to advance on Tornio and arrive in Sweden by land.
Although Knorring was urged to execute the plan as quickly as possible, he regarded the idea as unrealistic and procrastinated until March, when the emperor dispatched the War Minister Arakcheyev to Finland in order to pressure Knorring into action before arriving at the army himself.
Read more about this topic: Finnish War
Famous quotes containing the word winter:
“These were such houses as the lumberers of Maine spend the winter in, in the wilderness ... the camps and the hovels for the cattle, hardly distinguishable, except that the latter had no chimney.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)