Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes.

In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms (note 1). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge".

Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel (note 2).

In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. Only twenty-one Mennonite families were granted refuge within the city walls; others fled to relatives in safer areas. Second, their farmland was flooded when the Swedes punctured the embankments of Vistula River in February 1657 (see map; also note 3).

A century earlier Mennonites had been specifically invited to Polish-Prussia to drain low-lying lagoons over large blocks of land (note 4). Where lands had been won from swamp and sea after years of labour, the rivers regularly pushed back strongly and spilled their banks (note 5). And war could do the same.

Mennonites brought the skills to construct unique windmills that continuously pumped out water from the lowest points (see them pictured on the maps), and they designed and built complex systems of canals and sub-canals to discharge the water. The land had to be dried, cleared and strategically sloped to control water run-off and to protect from flooding. Because of the enormous labour required, with little capital for construction, and the danger of swamp fever, up to eighty percent of the first settlers died prematurely. In some places it took a century—three generations—to create a stable or fruitful agricultural region (note 6).

Mennonite newcomers from Holland normally became members of a Mennonite drainage company and village leasing association with common obligations to maintain the dams. Long-term leases valid for thirty to forty years encouraged the development of the land (note 7).

The Mennonite Privilegium issued by the Polish Crown in 1642 guaranteed broad privileges which recognized the Mennonite economic contribution to the kingdom—especially with respect to flooding and the creation of dams to guard against flooding.

In all cases when flooding occurred, aid from co-religionists from The Netherlands was unfailing.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: 1657 map of the Danzig Werder, https://www.vintage-maps.com/en/antique-maps/europe/poland/bodenehr-poland-west-prussia-vistula-gdansk-1722::908; AND 1730 map of the same area: https://www.vintage-maps.com/en/antique-maps/europe/poland/homann-poland-danzig-gdansk-1730::12676. For brief background on the First Northern War, see Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/First-Northern-War.

Note 2: Cf. Karl Stumpp, “Karte der Siedlungen in Danzig-Westpreußen, aus denen Mennoniten in den Jahren 1789–1807 nach Rußland ausgewandert sind,” in idem, The emigration from Germany to Russia in the years 1763 to 1862 (Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1973), https://archive.org/details/emigrationfromge00stum/page/1039/mode/1up.

Note 3: Hermann G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1569–1919 (Danzig, 1919), 55f., https://archive.org/details/diedanzigermenno00mannuoft. Also see Peter J. Klassen, Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 79.

Note 4: For this early period, cf. Klassen, Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia. For the history of Vistula River flooding, cf. Jerzy Cyerski, Marek Grzes et al., “History of floods on the River Vistula,” Hydrological Sciences Journal 51, no. 5 (2006), 799-817, https://doi.org/10.1623/hysj.51.5.799.

Note 5: Reinhold Curicken, Der Stadt Dantzig: Historische Beschreibung (Amsterdam/ Dantzigk: Janssons, 1687), 138, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10805961_00011.html.

Note 6: What was grown? Cf. Fynes Moryson, Itinerary of Fynes Moryson, vol. 4 (Glasgow: MacLehose, 1908), 69f., https://archive.org/details/itinerarycontain04moryuoft/page/68 (lightly edited).

Note 7: See Heinrich Donner and Johann Donner, Orlofferfelde Chronik, p. 3, transcribed by Werner Janzen, 2010. From Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, Prussian-Polish sources (online), https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/cong_303/ok63/orlofferfeldechronik.html. Cf. Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Zur Besiedlung des Weichseldeltas durch die Mennoniten. Die Siedlungen der Mennoniten im Territorium der Stadt Elbing und in der Ökonomie Marienburg bis zur Übernahme der Gebiete durch Preußen 1772 (Marburg/Lahn: Herder-Institut, 1961), http://ostdok.de/id/BV007004581/ft/bsb00096853?page=9&c=solrSearchOstdok.

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