Life of Charles the Twelfth. years of age joined the vigour of a young man to the experience of sixty campaigns. Count Fleming, since minister of Poland, a great man both in the field and the cabinet, and M. Patkul, carried on the siege under the king's eye, one with all the activity he was famous for, and the other with the obstinacy of revenge. But in spite of many advantages got by the besiegers, the experience of old count Alberg rendered all their efforts of no effect; and the king of Poland, despairing to take the town, laid hold of an honourable occasion to raise the siege. Riga was full of merchandise belonging to the Dutch, the states-general ordered their ambassador to king Augustus, to represent the affair to him. The king of Poland, without much entreaty, consented to raise the siege, rather than do the least damage to his allies; who were not astonished at this excess of complaisance, since they knew the true cause of it. There was nothing left now for Charles XII. to finish his first campaign, but to march against his rival in glory Peter Alexiowitz. He was the more enraged against him, as there was still at Stockholm three ambassadors, who came to swear to the renewing of an inviolable peace. He who valued himself upon a severe probity, could not comprehend how a legislator like the czar could make sport of what ought to be sacred. This young prince, full of honour, could not think that there was a different morality for kings and for private persons. The emperor of Muscovy had just published a manifesto which would have been much better for him to have suppressed. He alledged for a reason of the war, that there had not been sufficient honours paid him, when he was incognito at Riga; and that provisions had been sold to his ambassadors at too high a price. These were the grievances for which he ravaged Ingria with a hundred thousand men. He appeared before Narva at the head of this great army on the 1st of October, a season more severe in that climate than the month of January at Paris. The czar, who at such seasons would sometimes ride four hundred leagues post to visit a mine or a canal, spared his troops no more than himself. Besides, he knew the Swedes, since the time of Gustavus Adolphus, would make war as well in the midst of winter as in summer; and would accustom his Muscovites also to know no seasons, and make them one day at least equal to the Swedes. Thus, at a time when frost and snow oblige nations in temperate climates to suspend the war, the czar Peter besieged Narva within thirty degrees of the Pole; and Charles XII. advanced to relieve it. The czar was no sooner arrived before the place, than he hastened to put in practice what he had just learnt in his travels. He marked out his camp, had it fortified on all sides, raised redoubts at equal distances, and opened the trench himself; but not much backed at that time by the Muscovite officers. For his own part, he had only the rank of a lieutenant in his own troops. He thought it necessary to give an example of military obedience to his noblemen, who were till that time undisciplinable, and used to lead, without the least experience, a rabble of illarmed slaves. He would teach them that military preferments were to be purchased by services; he began himself at a drummer, and was raised to an officer by degrees. It is not surprising that he who made himself a carpenter at Amsterdam to get fleets, should become a lieutenant at Narva to teach his nation the art of war. The Muscovites are robust, indefatigable, and perhaps as courageous as the Swedes; but there must be time allowed Life of Charles the Twelfth. to train up troops, and discipline makes them invincible. The only good soldiers in the army were thirty thousand Streletses, who were in Muscovy what the Janisaries are in Turkey. The rest were barbarians taken out of the woods, covered with the skins of wild beasts; some were armed with arrows, and others with clubs; few had muskets, none had ever seen a regular siege; nor was there one good gunner in the whole army. One hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, which were enough to have laid the little town of Narva in ashes, had hardly made a breach in it, while the artillery from thence destroyed whole ranks every moment in the trenches. Narva was almost without fortifications; and count Hoorn, who commanded there, had not a thousand regular troops, notwithstanding which, this innumerable army was not able to reduce it in ten weeks. It was now the 15th of November when the czar learnt that the king of Sweden, having crossed the sea with two hundred vessels, marched to the relief of Narva. The Swedes were but twenty thousand, but the czar had the superiority in nothing but numbers. Far, therefore, from despising his enemy, he employed all the art he had to crush him. Not contented with a hundred thousand men, he prepared another army to oppose him and stop his progress. He had sent near forty thousand men, who advanced in hasty marches from Pleskow. He went himself to expedite them, that he might shut the king in between his two armies. This was not all, thirty thousand men detached from the camp before Narva, were posted within a league of this town in the rout of the king of Sweden. Twenty thousand Streletses a little farther on the same rout. Five thousand others made an advanced guard; he was to pass through the body of all these troops, be fore he could arrive at the camp, which was fortified with a rampart and double fossé. The king of Sweden had disembarked at Pernaw in the Gulph of Riga, with about sixteen thousand foot, and a little more than four thousand borse. From Pernaw he had precipitated his march as far as Revel, followed by all his cavalry, and only four thousand foot soldiers. He still marched forward without waiting for the rest of his troops. He found himself very soon with his eight thousand men only, before the first posts of the enemy. He was not long in determining to attack them all one after another, without giving them time to learn with how small a number they were, engaged. The Muscovites sceing the Swedes come up to them, imagined they had the whole army to encounter. The advanced guard of five thousand men fled at their approach. The twenty thousand men who were behind them, terrified at the flight of their countrymen made very little resistance; they carried their disorder and fright to the thirty thousand men, who were within a league of the camp, and a panic fear running through all these troops, they retired to the main body of the army without a battle. These three posts were carried in two days and a half; and what on other occasions would be looked upon as three victories, retarded the king's march but one hour. He appeared at length with his eight thousand men, fatigued with so long a march, before a camp of a hundred thousand Muscovites, defended by a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon in front. Scarce had his troops taken any repose, before he gave orders for the attack. The signal was two fusees, the word in German, With God's help. A general officer having represented to him the great Life of Charles the Twelfth. danger of the undertaking-" What, do you doubt," said he, "that with my eight thousand brave Swedes, I cannot get the better of a hundred thousand Muscovites?" A moment after, fearing there was too much of the rodomontade in these words, he ran himself after this officer, "And are not you of opinion?" said he,-"Have I not two advantages over the enemy; one, that their horse can be of no service to them; and the other, that the place, being close, their great number of men will only incommode them; and I shall really be stronger than they?" The officer took care not to be of another opinion, and so they marched against the Muscovites about noon on the 30th of November 1700. As soon as the Swedish cannon had made a breach in the intrenchments, they advanced with their bayonets at the end of their fusces; having a violent storm of snow behind them, which blew full in the faces of the enemy. The Muscovites were slaughtered for half an hour without quitting the back of the fossés. The king attacked the right of the camp, where the czar's quarters were; and hoped to encounter him, not knowing that the emperor was gone himself to seek the forty thousand men who were shortly expected. On the first discharge of the enemy's muskets the king received a ball in his left shoulder; but it grazed only on the flesh, and his activity hindered him even from feeling he was wounded. His horse was killed under him, almost at the same time. A second had his head taken off by a cannon shot. He vaulted nimbly on a third, saying, "these people oblige me to exercise;" and continued fighting and giving orders with the same presence of mind. After three hours the intrenchments were forced on every side. The king pursued the right of the enemy as far as the river Narva, with his left wing, if one may call by that name about 4000 men, who were pursuing near 50,000. The bridge broke under them, and in a moment the river was covered with dead bo dies. The rest, in despair, returned to their camp, without knowing where they went. They found some barracks, behind which they placed themselves, and defended themselves for a while, not knowing how to escape; but at last their generals, Dolorouky, Gollowin, and Fedorowitz, yielded to the king, and laid their arms at his feet. While they were presented to him, the duke of Croy, general of the army, came to surrender himself with thirty officers. Charles received all these important prisoners in as ready and polite a manner, as if he was doing them the honours of a feast in his own court;-he would keep only the generals; all the subaltern officers and soldiers were disarmed and conducted to the river Narva, where they were furnished with boats that they might cross over and return to their own homes. In the mean time night drew on: the right of the Muscovites continued fighting; the Swedes had not lost 1500 men; 18,000 Muscovites had been killed in their intrenchments, a great number drowned, and many crossed the river, but there still remained enough in the camp to extirpate the last man among the Swedes. But it is not the number of the slain, but the fear of those who survive, by which battles are lost.-The king made use of the little day that was left to seize on the enemy's artillery. He posted himself advantageously between the camp and the town, where he slept some hours on the ground wrapt up in his cloak, waiting till break of day, to fall on the left wing of the enemy, which was not yet quite destroyed. At two o'clock Life of Charles the Twelfth. in the morning, general Vede, who commanded that left wing, knowing how gracious a reception the king gave to the other generals, and how he had sent away all the subaltern officers and soldiers, begged to be allowed the same favour. The conqueror ordered him to be told, "That he need only come to him at the head of his troops, and lay down his arms and colours at his feet. The general presently appeared with his Muscovites, to the number of about thirty thousand. They marched bare-headed, soldiers and officers, through less than 7000 Swedes. The soldiers, in passing before the king, threw their swords and fusees on the ground, and the officers laid their ensigns and colours at his feet. He let all this multitude cross the river without detaining one soldier prisoner. If he had kept them, the number would have been at least five times larger than that of the conqueror's. He then entered victorious into Narva, accompanied by the duke of Croy, and the other Muscovite general officers; he ordered all their swords to be restored them; and knowing that they wanted money, and that the merchants of Narva would not lend them any, he sent 1000 ducats to the duke of Croy, and five hundred to each of the Muscovite officers, who could not cease wondering at this treatment, which surpassed whatever they had any idea of. They immediately drew up a relation of the victory at Narva, to be sent to Stockholm and the allies of Sweden; but the king, with his own hand, struck out whatever was said too much to his own advantage, or too injurious to the czar. His modesty could not, however, hinder them from striking several Medals at Stockholm to perpetuate the memory of these events. Among others, there was one, wherein he was represented, on one side on a pedestal to which were chained, a Muscovite, a Dane, and a Pole; on the other was Hercules, armed with a club, treading on Cerberus, with this inscription, "Tres uno contudit ictu." Among the prisoners taken at the battle of Narva, there was one who was a great instance of the revolutions of fortune; he was the eldest son and heir to the king of Georgia, and called Czarafis, a name which signifies prince, or son of the czar, among the Tartars as well as Muscovites: for the word czar meant king among the ancient Scythians, from whom all these people were desended, and came not from the Cæsars of Rome, so long unknown to these barbarians. His father, Mitelliski Czar, master of the finest part of the countries which lie between the mountains of Ararat and the eastern borders of the Black Sea, had been driven out of his kingdom by his own subjects, in the year 1688, and chose rather to fling himself into the arms of the emperor of Muscovy, than of the Turks. The son of the king, nineteen years of age, would follow Peter the Great in his expedition against the Swedes, and was taken in battle by some Finland soldiers, who had already stript him, and were going to kill him. Count Renchild snatched him from their hands, ordered clothes to be given to him, and presented him to his master. Charles sent him to Stockholm, where, in the course of a few years afterwards, this unfortunate prince died. The king, at his going away, could not help mak ing a natural reflection, aloud before his officers, on the strange destiny of an Asiatic prince, born at the foot of Mount Caucasus, going to live captive among the snows of Sweden. "It is as if I were one day to be a prisoner," said he, " among the Crim Tartars." These words made no impression at that time, but afterwards were too often remembered, when the Life of Charles the Twelfth. event made, a prediction of them. The czar advanced by long marches with the army of 40,000 Russians, reckoning he should encompass his enemy on all sides: but heard, in his march thither, of the battle of Narva, and the dispersion of all his camp. He could not resolve to attack, with his forty thousand men, without experience or discipline, a conqueror who had just destroyed 100,000 intrenched in a camp. He turned back, resolving always to discipline his troops as he civilized his subjects; "I know well," said he, "that the Swedes will beat us a long while, but we shall learn of themselves at length how to conquer them." Moscow, his capital, was in a great fright at the news of this defeat. Such was the pride and ignorance of these people, that they thought they could not be vanquished but by a power more than human, and that the Swedes were real magicians. This opinion was so general, that they ordered public prayers to St. Nicholas, the patron of Muscovy. This prayer is too singular not to be repeated. It was as follows: "O thou who art our perpetual consolator in all our adversities, great St. Nicholas, infinitely powerful, by what sin have we offended thee in our sacrifices, genuflexions, reverences, or thanksgivings, that you have thus forsaken us? We have implored thy aid against these terrible and enraged insulters; these dreadful ungovernable destroyers; when, like lions or bears who have lost their young, they have fallen upon us, terrified, and wounded us by thousands; us, who are thy people. As it is impossible this should happen without witchcraft and inchantment, we beseech thee, O great St. Nicholas! to be our champion and our standard-bearer, to deliver us from this crowd of sorcerers, and drive them from our contines with the recompence that is due to them." While the Muscovites complained to St. Nicholas of their defeat, Charles XII. returned thanks to God, and prepared for new victories. BOOK II. THE king of Poland, expecting that his enemy, having conquered the Danes and the Muscovites, would soon fall upon him, therefore made a stricter league with the czar than ever; and these two princes agreed upon an interview to take their measures in concert. They met at Birzen, a little town in Lithuania, without any of those formalities which serve only to retard business, and which did neither agree with their circumstances nor their humour; they spent fifteen days together in pleasures, even to excess: for the czar, notwithstanding his desire to reform his country, could never correct in himself the dangerous inclination he had to debauchery. Count Piper, the king of Sweden's chief minister, was first informed of the intended interview between the emperor of Muscovy and the king of Poland. He advised his master to oppose to their measures a little of that policy which he had hitherto too much despised. Charles XII. listened to him, and put in practice, for the first time, those arts so much used in other courts. There was in the Swedish army a young Scotch gentleman, one of those who quit their own country betimes, where they are but poor, and are to be met with in all the armies in Europe. He spoke the German very well, and was master of a good address. This gentleman was chosen to be a spy upon the |