Peter the Great

On 8 July 1709, Peter the Great crushed Charles XII's Swedish army at Poltava. Charles fought from a litter with a bullet wound in his foot. Nine years of Swedish invincibility ended in an afternoon, and Russia stepped into the space it left behind.

On 27 May 1703, Peter the Great ordered a fortress built on a swamp at the mouth of the Neva. The city that rose from it would run the Russian Empire for 215 years and cost tens of thousands of lives just to construct.