Qualla: Battle of Ratan

Battle of Ratan: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) and NordNordWest, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the morning of 20 August 1809, roughly a hundred Swedish cannons opened fire on the small village of Ratan, tearing apart its wooden buildings and the forest around them. The guns belonged not only to field batteries on shore but to warships anchored just offshore, their broadsides raking the Russian positions from the Baltic side. It was the final act of a war Sweden was losing, and the men pulling lanyards that morning could not have known that the shells they were firing would help determine where Scandinavia's borders would be drawn for the next two centuries.

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Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) and NordNordWest | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Ratan: A Kingdom Losing Its Eastern Half

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carl Gustaf Gillberg, Public domain. The Finnish War of 1808-1809 was a catastrophe for Sweden. Russia, allied with Napoleon, invaded Finland in February 1808 and methodically stripped Sweden of a territory it had held for six hundred years. By summer 1809, Russian troops had crossed the Gulf of Bothnia and occupied...

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Image: Carl Gustaf Gillberg | Public domain

Battle of Ratan: The Fleet Sails North

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carl Gustaf Gillberg, Public domain. Lieutenant-General Gustav Wachtmeister, a veteran of the Prussian army and the Pomeranian War, was chosen to lead the amphibious operation. His flotilla was formidable: two ships of the line, the Adolf Fredrik and the Forsiktigheten, one frigate, 44 gunboats and bomb vessels, six...

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Image: Carl Gustaf Gillberg | Public domain

Battle of Ratan: Blood at Sävar

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carl Gustaf Gillberg, Public domain. The Russian commander, Lieutenant-General Nikolay Kamensky, learned of the Swedish landing while marching south. He reversed course with remarkable speed and struck Wachtmeister's advancing force at Sävar, 20 kilometers north of Umeå, on the morning of 19 August. The Russians sei...

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Image: Carl Gustaf Gillberg | Public domain

Battle of Ratan: One Hundred Cannons at the Water's Edge

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carl Gustaf Gillberg, Public domain. Wachtmeister's battered force dug in at Ratan overnight, and on 20 August, Kamensky attacked again. This time, however, the engagement was different. The Russians were not trying to destroy the Swedes so much as buy time for their supply wagons to escape northward. And this time,...

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Image: Carl Gustaf Gillberg | Public domain

Battle of Ratan: The Border That Saved a Fortune

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikael Lindmark, CC BY-SA 2.5. The battles of Sävar and Ratan did not reverse the outcome of the war. Sweden still lost Finland, and the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in September 1809 formalized the separation of a territory that had been Swedish since the Middle Ages. But historians have argued that the fighting in...

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Image: Mikael Lindmark | CC BY-SA 2.5