History of Russia
The war ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden sued for peace with Russia. Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of the Gulf of Finland, thus securing his coveted access to the sea. There, in 1703, he had already founded the city that was to become Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, as a "window opened upon Europe" to replace Moscow, long Russia's cultural center. Russian intervention in the Commonwealth marked, with the Silent Sejm, the beginning of a 200-year domination of that region by the Russian Empire. In celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the title of emperor, and the Russian Tsardom officially became the Russian Empire in 1721.
Russo-Circassian War
The Russo-Circassian War (1763–1864) involved a series of battles and wars in Circassia, the northwestern part of the Caucasus, in the course of the Russian Empire's conquest of the Caucasus. Fighting lasted approximately 101 years, starting in the reign of Empress Catherine the Great and finishing in 1864. Although the Russian conquest of the Caucasus started at least as early as the Russo-Persian Wars, the term Caucasian War commonly refers only to the period 1817–1864. Those who use the term Russian–Circassian War take its starting date as 1763, when the Russians began establishing forts, including at Mozdok, to be used as springboards for conquest.