Evacuation of Kolkanpää
1708 Evacuation during the Great Northern War
The Evacuation of Kolkanpää took place between October 18 and 27, 1708, close to Kolkanpää, in the Swedish Empire during the Great Northern War. The Swedes under the command of Georg Lybecker were evacuating their Finnish-based army consisting of up to 11,279 men back to Finland after their failed campaign in Swedish Ingria in an attempt to recover land previously lost to Russia. Fyodor Apraksin, the Russian commander in the area, decided to interrupt the evacuation with between 3,000 and 3,500 men. He decided to wait until only a portion, between 600 and 800 Saxon ex-prisoners recruited into Swedish service, remained on the beaches not yet evacuated before commencing attack with all his troops. After several assaults the Saxons were soon overwhelmed and almost all of them were cut down or captured by the end of the battle. About 50 Russians were killed and 220 wounded. The Swedes were also forced to slaughter about 4,000 of their horses which could not be evacuated so they would not fall into Russian hands.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24199461. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1708.
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This entry incorporates text from “Evacuation of Kolkanpää” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.