Peter, allied with Denmark and Poland, went to war in an entirely unscrupulous fashion with Sweden after months of insincere protestations of utter friendship for the Swedish people. He had no real reason for this war beyond the fact that he really, really wanted a port that wasn’t ice-covered Archangel.
Unfortunately, the country that he chose to pick on had the finest, best-drilled, most fearless army in Europe at the time, and was led by that brilliant bear-wrestler, Charles XII. The result was that, at Narva, Peter’s army was entirely destroyed by a Swedish force overwhelmingly less numerous. Charles then spent a while thumping on Poland and Denmark before turning back around and driving into the heart of Russia. It took two frightful, nail-biting decades, a fair chunk of Peter’s reign, for the war to finally drag to its conclusion, but in the end Peter was indeed the victor.
As to the whole moose bit, well, that’s Geoff’s story. And a fine story it is.
– Count Dolby von Luckner