At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Swedes and Russians undertook two expeditions very different in character.
Charles XII., wishing to aid the Duke of Holstein, made a descent upon Denmark at the head of twenty thousand men, transported by two hundred vessels and protected by a strong squadron. He was really assisted by the English and Dutch navies, but the expedition was not for that reason the less remarkable in the details of the disembarkation. The same prince effected a descent into Livonia to aid Narva, but he landed his troops at a Swedish port.
Peter the Great, having some cause of complaint against the Persians, and wishing to take advantage of their dissensions, embarked (in 1722) upon the Volga: he entered the Caspian Sea with two hundred and seventy vessels, carrying twenty thousand foot-soldiers, and descended to Agrakhan, at the mouths of the Koisou, where he expected to meet his cavalry. This force, numbering nine thousand dragoons and five thousand Cossacks, joined him after a land-march by way of the Caucasus. The czar then seized Derbent, besieged Bakou, and finally made a treaty with one of the parties whose dissensions at that time filled with discord the empire of the Soofees: he procured the cession of Astrabad, the key of the Caspian Sea and, in some measure, of the whole Persian empire.
The time of Louis XV. furnished examples of none but secondary expeditions, unless we except that of Richelieu against Minorca, which was very glorious as an escalade, but less extraordinary as a descent.