In my paper, I will examine how the Swedish military campaign against Russia in 1741–43 was organized. I will analyze what resources the military utilized for the campaign and how the state procured military goods and services. The campaign has attracted very little scholarly attention, probably because Swedish historians have viewed it as a disastrous operation which did not fit into the national military narratives of victories and success during the seventeenth century. However, also unsuccessful military endeavors can provide important insights into how procurement systems function and how the relationship between the mercantile community and the state is organized. Since the Swedish state was unable to organize the procurement of transportation capacity and large quantities of food on its own, it required the assistance of merchants in especially Stockholm to make these arrangements. Thus, the merchants utilized their knowledge, connections and credit in the Baltic region to supply the Swedish army and navy with the necessary supplies. Normally, an army used mostly local resources during the early modern period because of the difficulties in transporting large quantities of food over long distances. In Finland, such an arrangement did not work since there were limited supplies of grain and other foodstuffs where the army was operating. Therefore, it became necessary to ship supplies, such as dried peas from Swedish Pomerania and salted beef and pork from Courland and Schleswig to Finland. By investigating this transnational system of supplies, we will gain a better understanding of the Swedish contractor state, and how a middle-ranking power mobilized resources for war in the eighteenth century.