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:
“You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddest and most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,—in winter expecting the sun of spring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)