CHAPTER I

LADEN with the plunder of Poland and Saxony, the spoils of their brilliant feats of arms, the Swedes, amid the January ice, marched on Grodno, the several parties of Muscovites in the neighborhood flying at the mere rumor of their approach.

Peter, surprised in Grodno, fled with 2000 men, while Karl with 600 entered the city.

When Peter learned that the bulk of the Swedish army was still five leagues distant he returned and tried to retake the town.

He was, however, fiercely beaten back, and the Swedes pursued the Russians through Lithuania and Minsk, towards the frontiers of Russia.

Karl, after clearing Lithuania of the forces of the Czar, intended to march towards the North and on Moscow, by way of Pskof.

The difficulties in his way were terrible; huge stretches of virgin forest, of desolate marsh, of barren deserts, lay between him and his objective. The only food that could be found was the winter stores of the peasants in the small tracks of cultivated land, which were buried underground; many of these had already been ravaged by the Muscovites, and in any case were insufficient for the Swedish army.

Karl, who was to be deterred neither by prudence, reason, nor fear of any kind, had provided bread for his men which they carried with them, and on this they had to support the ghastly hardships of the forced marches.

The heavy rains kept back even the indefatigable Swede. A road had to be made through the forest of Minsk, and it was early summer before Karl found himself once more face to face with Peter at Borissov.

The Czar waited with the main body of his forces to defend the river BÉrÉzina; Karl, however, brought his troops across this river and marched on the Russians, who once more retreated, falling back on the Dneiper.

At Halowczin he defeated 20,000 Muscovites by traversing a marsh believed to be impassable, the King himself leading, with the water at times up to his shoulders.

After this decisive victory he pursued the Russians to Mohilew, on the frontiers of Poland; by the autumn he was chasing the Czar from Smolensk, on the Moscow road.

At Smolensk, narrowly escaping death in a hand-to-hand fight with the Kalmucks, Karl inflicted another defeat on the Muscovites, and proceeded another stage on the way to the capital, from which city he was now distant only a hundred leagues.

At this moment Peter sent to Karl suggesting the opening of peace negotiations.

But Karl replied as he had replied to Augustus: “Peace in Moscow.”

And even Count Piper wrote to the Duke of Marlborough, whom he was keeping informed of the progress of the campaign, that the dethronement of the Czar was inevitable.

But Peter, still unshaken after the defeats of eight years, again gathered together his scattered and disheartened armies.

“The King of Sweden thinks to be a second Alexander,” he remarked, when Karl’s haughty answer was brought to him, “but I have no mind to be Darius.”

The second winter of the Russian campaign was now setting in; it promised to be of unusual severity even for these bitter regions.

Even the Spartan endurance of the Swedes began to blench at the thought of the almost unendurable hardships of the long Russian winter, with neither sufficient food, firing, or clothing.

But there was no murmuring, for the King supported all privations equally with the poorest foot soldier.

The scouts brought in news that Peter had torn up the roads, flooded them from the marsh lands, cut down huge trees and flung them across the way, and burnt the villages on the route to Moscow.

There was barely a fortnight’s provisions in the Swedish army and not the least prospect of obtaining any more in the ravaged, frozen wastes.

Karl called a council of war in his rough tent amid the giant pines.

There was no fire, and, as the tent flap swayed on its cords in the icy wind, a few flakes of snow drifted in and melted on the frozen earthen floor.

Karl sat in a folding camp-chair, a mantle of rough blue cloth over his usual uniform, his hands, covered by the long elbow gloves, employed in turning over a few notes and maps on a plain pine table.

The arduous labors and unceasing fatigues of this last campaign had told even on his superb physique.

He was thinner and pale, under the brown of exposure; his blue eyes seemed slightly tired, but had lost nothing of their calm, courageous stare.

Near him sat Count Piper, looking ill and old, wrapped in a heavy cloak of marten skin, lined with scarlet and gold brocade, the spoil of war of some flying Russian Prince.

Only a few of Karl’s generals, such as RehnskÖld, Gyllenburg, and Wurtemberg, were present; it was his habit to confide his designs to as few as possible. Piper, whose forebodings had been silenced by the splendid success of the Swedish advance into Russia, had now begun to feel uneasy and to rediscover all his objections to the campaign. He thought that Karl should have accepted Peter’s offer to treat for peace; the barbarous country and the arctic climate told severely on his spirits; he was in poor health and homesick. Whatever sentiment he may have had left for his master had vanished when the cruel sentence on General Patkul was carried out, and he was broken on the wheel, suffering a death of frightful torture.

Piper had heard that HÉlÈne D’Einsiedel had not lived to hear this news.

She had died in a Russian camp soon after her arrival there, and the messages Patkul had sent to her by the chaplain who attended him on the scaffold had been sent to one beyond the reach of comfort.

Piper never spoke of these things, but he often thought of them now that misfortune seemed at last to be overtaking his master.

He considered now that Karl was in the most dangerous position he had yet found himself in, and he did not hesitate to say so, unpalatable and unacceptable as he knew his advice must be.

“Your Majesty, in common prudence,” he remarked, shivering a little in his furs, “can do nothing but await the arrival of Lewenhaupt.”

This general, who was coming to Karl’s assistance with 15,000 men and a quantity of provisions, was believed to be within a few days’ march of the present Swedish camp.

He had, indeed, been some time expected, and his retarded arrival had been a matter of vexation to the stern King.

“I most strongly beseech your Majesty to consider this advice,” added General Gyllenburg, with an earnest glance at the King.

Karl turned over the maps and papers without looking up.

His full mouth was set in an obstinate curve; to this arrogant conqueror, now face to face with his first check, any council of moderation was displeasing.

“We cannot, sire,” urged Gyllenburg, “advance on Moscow with barely fifteen days’ food.” For he, in common with the entire army, believed this mad project to be the one Karl had really at heart.

“There is nothing we cannot do,” replied Karl, who had indeed often achieved what had seemed to others the impossible.

But Piper was vexed.

“If your Majesty advances on Moscow, you advance on disaster!” he exclaimed.

The King gave him a cold stare.

“Are you not yet convinced that I never take advice?”

His bitter rebuke caused the minister’s worn cheeks to flush.

It was long since he had given Karl any cause to silence him, so utterly had he refrained from counsels that were useless.

Karl took his face in his right gloved hand, with his elbow on the table, and looked up and round his little council.

“I propose,”, he said, in a manner that left no loophole for argument or suggestion, “to neither march on Moscow nor wait for Lewenhaupt.” What third alternative there could be no one knew.

“I intend,” added the King dryly, “to advance into the Ukraine, to pass the winter there, and continue the route to Moscow in the spring.”

The haughtiness with which he made this announcement covered an inner mortification; he had thought to dethrone the Czar in a year; he had never meant to turn back once on the road to Moscow.

But having reviewed his army and taken stock of his provisions, even his daring could not advance to what was certain destruction. To his listeners the present project seemed as mad as an advance on the Russian capital, but they did not venture on any comment.

With the fewest and barest words Karl proceeded to explain that he had made an alliance with Mazeppa, Prince of the Ukraine, the country of the Cossacks, who was in revolt against the Czar, and hoped to profit by the alliance of the Swede to defeat Peter.

This man, who dreamed to do for the Ukraine what Patkul had dreamed to do for Livonia, was a Polish nobleman of considerable parts; cast out of his own country by the vengeance of a compatriot, he had taken refuge amid the Cossacks, grown to be their ruler, and now in his old age essayed to play some important part in this momentous war.

“Is he to be trusted?” asked General RehnskÖld, who did not dislike the project as it was unfolded to him.

“As for that I do not know,” replied the King coldly, “but his interests lie with me, and not with the Czar, for if Peter discovered his secret plans of revolt he would certainly impale him as he has threatened before. Mazeppa knows what to expect from the mercy and justice of the Czar.”

Piper, thinking of Patkul, was silent, but Gyllenburg, thinking of nothing but the present crisis, ventured to remonstrate with the imperious King.

“Whether or no the Cossacks can be relied upon, were it not well to wait Lewenhaupt and his reinforcements—above all, his provisions?”

But Karl was, as always, obstinate; he had, he said, a rendezvous with Mazeppa on the banks of the Desna, whither that prince had promised to come with 30,000 men, treasure, and provisions.

RehnskÖld was prepared to credit that this was better either than pressing on towards Moscow or waiting for Lewenhaupt.

Piper and Gyllenburg were for remaining at Smolensk in expectation of reinforcements; Karl listened coldly to all arguments, and remained fixed in his original plans.

The next day the army, to its intense surprise, received orders to march into the Ukraine. Messengers were sent to Lewenhaupt to tell him to join the main army on the banks of the Desna and the painful progress commenced.

It was yet autumn, but the cold had set in early, and the troops had to suffer the rigors of extreme cold.

Nature seemed bent on throwing obstacles in the way of the Swedes.

The forests, deserts, and marshes were nearly inpenetrable; LÄgercrona, in charge of the advance guard, went thirty leagues astray, and only after four days of wandering was able to find the route.

Nearly all his artillery and heavy baggage he had been obliged to abandon in the marshes or among the rocks.

When after unheard-of troubles and privation, Karl reached the banks of the Desna that the Prince of the Cossacks had appointed for a meeting-place, the ground was found to be occupied by a party of Muscovites.

The Swedes, though fatigued by twelve days’ travel, gave battle, vanquished the Russians, and continued to advance into this desolate and unknown country.

Now even Karl himself began to be doubtful of the fidelity of Mazeppa, and uncertain as to his route.

Perhaps feelings of doubt and apprehension were beginning to touch him for the first time in his life, when Mazeppa finally joined the Swedish army.

He had, however, the worst of news to tell; Peter had discovered the plot in progress in the Ukraine, had fallen upon and scattered the Cossacks, capturing all the gold and grain and thirty Cossack nobles whom he had broken on the wheel.

Towns and villages had been burned, treasures carried off, and the old Prince had with difficulty escaped with 6000 men and a small quantity of gold and silver, of little use in a country where there was no one to be bribed with gold and no commodity to buy.

Karl would have found a few wagon-loads of grain more to his liking. However, the Cossacks were useful if only from their knowledge of this wild country, though Karl despised them as soldiers and waited impatiently for the arrival of Lewenhaupt. But when this general finally made his way to the Swedish encampment, he had a tale to tell as disastrous as that of Mazeppa, and far more mortifying to the pride of the King of Sweden.

At Liesna he had been met by the Czar, and, after a fierce battle of three days, severely defeated.

He had continued to effect a magnificent retreat, but he had lost 8000 men, seventeen cannon, and forty-four flags, together with the entire convoy he was bringing to Karl, consisting of 8000 wagons of food, and the silver raised in Lithuania by way of tribute.

He had the satisfaction of knowing that Peter had lost 10,000 men, and that he had held him at bay for three days, but this could not balance the fact that he arrived at Karl’s encampment with his army depleted and without either provisions, ammunition, or treasure.

Karl received this reverse with his usual cold gravity; he neither blamed Lewenhaupt nor took anyone into his confidence.

His situation, so lately that of an all-powerful conqueror, was now indeed dangerous, if not desperate.

He was cut off from Poland, and an attempt on the part of Stanislaus to reach him failed utterly.

No news came through from Sweden, and it seemed as if this army, lately all-powerful, was isolated from the rest of the world; they could neither communicate with, nor receive help nor advice from, any part of the globe.

But the worst of their distresses was the weather; this winter of 1709, long to be remembered, even in Western Europe, as one of the most terrible on record, was almost insupportable in these arctic regions.

Karl, who ignored human needs and human weaknesses, forced his men to march and work as if it had been midsummer and they well fed.

Two thousand of them dropped dead of cold in their tracks.

The rest were soon reduced to a state bordering on misery.

There was no replenishing their clothes, half were without coats, half without boots or shoes; they had to clothe themselves in skins as best they might, and suffer and die as best they might, for the mad King tolerated no murmur, and such was his authority and the awe and respect that his very name inspired that his troops endured what perhaps no other general had induced men to endure before. Such food as kept them alive was provided by Mazeppa, who alone prevented them from perishing miserably.

The old Prince of the Cossacks had remained faithful to Karl despite the offers Peter made to him to induce him to return to his allegiance. The Czar, not wishing to appear inferior to his enemy in spirit or daring, advanced into the Ukraine, regardless of the frozen country and tempests of snow.

He did not, however, attack the King of Sweden, but merely harassed him by small raids on his camp, thinking that hardships and cold would have reduced them to extremity before succor could reach them.

News from Stockholm finally came to the isolated army.

Karl learnt that his sister, the Duchess of Holstein-Gottorp, was dead of the small-pox. This gentlewoman was but a faint memory to the King; it was eight years since this terrible and bloody war had been undertaken to replace her husband on his throne.

Karl had almost forgotten Stockholm; almost forgotten the cause of the war; the young Duke was dead, and had but a small place in the stern King’s mind, compared to the vast designs that had grown out of his quarrel.

Not till the first day of February did the snow permit the Swedes to move, and then it was amid terrible weather that Karl advanced on Poltava, a fort full of supplies that Peter held across the Moscow route.

The taking of this place was a necessity to Karl pending the arrival of his reinforcements, as his army was deprived of everything, and the resources of Mazeppa almost at an end.

The Swedish army was now reduced to 18,000 men, but besides these Karl commanded the Cossacks of Mazeppa, and several thousand Kalmucks and Moldavians, free lances attached to his standard by the love of booty and of glory.

With this force Karl advanced on Poltava; he had the mortification of finding that Mentchikoff had outmaneuvered him, and flung 5000 men into the town.

The King pressed the siege and had taken several of the outworks when he learnt of the approach of the Czar with 70,000 men.

CHAPTER II

KARL, returning to his camp after having beaten one of the advanced detachments of the Czar’s army, was noticed by General RehnskÖld to be colorless as a man of stone, and when he came to dismount at the door of his tent, those who accompanied him observed that his boot was dripping blood, and the side of his horse soaked.

The Prince of Wurtemberg ordered his servant to run for a surgeon, and General Lewenhaupt caught the King’s arm.

“Sire, you are wounded!” he exclaimed.

Karl, in his proud obstinacy and his desire to endure everything in silence, would have denied the fact even now, but the pain was so intense that he could not conceal it any longer, nor could he put his foot to the ground.

“A ball struck my heel,” he said sternly.

“How long ago, sire?” asked General RehnskÖld anxiously.

“Soon after I left the camp,” replied Karl.

The officers glanced at each other; they knew that this meant that the King had been over six hours on horseback since his wound, giving orders as usual, and not in any way betraying his pain.

Leaning on General Lewenhaupt’s arm he entered the tent, his officers crowding in after him. It was still only early summer, but the air was dry and arid, and in the tent hot and close and full of a fine dust.

Karl seated himself on the plain folding-chair he always used, pulled off his gloves, and asked for a glass of water.

“This is an ugly mischance,” he said coldly. “I should have liked to have met the Czar on horseback.”

No groan or sigh passed his pallid lips, but his left hand gripped the side of the chair, and beads of agony stood on his broad forehead.

The surgeon entered, a little man with an eager face, one Neumann, well known for his great skill and learning in his profession; he was closely followed by two others, and the King’s personal domestics.

“Gentlemen,” said the King, lifting his blue eyes now dark with pain, “let us see how far I am unlucky.”

He held out his foot to the servant as if he wished him to draw the boot off, but Neumann was instantly on his knees, and had taken the injured limb delicately between his capable hands.

It was necessary to cut the boot from the leg; when this was done it was found that the heel had been completely shattered, and that gangrene had set in; the instant opinion of the surgeons was that there was nothing but amputation to save the King’s life.

Karl sat silent, his foot covered with towels, and resting on a chair; the pain was beginning to make him giddy, and, for the first time in his life, he was realizing what it might be to be unfortunate.

Hitherto he had deemed himself immune from such a chance as this; he had never conceived of his splendid body as in any way failing him, and now perhaps he was a maimed man for life.

The officers looked dubiously at each other; to them this came as a crowning misfortune; only the spirit, presence, and fame of the King had kept the army together amid all its miseries, and now, at the climax of their disasters, when their very existence depended on the taking of the stores and ammunition of Poltava, the King was struck down.

Count Piper came hurrying to his master’s side; the minister felt that his worst prognostications, that for a time had been silenced by the steady successes of Karl, were now about to be realized, and he felt a deep inner anger at the obstinacy that had landed them in this lost country, cut off from help, without resources of any kind, threatened by an enemy who was in his own country, and three times their number.

Karl perhaps read some of these thoughts; he looked at his minister with his usual coldness.

“Piper,” he said, “they want to take my leg off.”

Neumann looked sharply at the King, who he knew must be suffering torture.

This self-control will cost him something later on, thought the surgeon.

He lifted the towels and looked again at the wound from which the purple blood was welling, and staining the piles of linen laid beneath.

“If one cut, and cut deep enough, the leg could be saved, sire,” he said boldly.

Karl looked at him straightly; it was one brave man facing another; the great King and the great surgeon met on the common ground of fortitude and daring.

“Do your work then at once, M. Neumann,” said Karl. “Cut deeply and fear nothing.”

M. Neumann bowed, and directed his assistant to bring him his case of instruments.

Karl asked for another glass of water, and leaning back, drank it slowly.

Several other officers had now entered the tent including Poniatowski, the commander of King Stanislaus’ Swedish guards, who had followed Karl into the Ukraine out of affection for his person.

Karl showed some pleasure at his arrival, and held out his hand.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Nay, sire, the last scouts sent out have not returned.”

“To-morrow we will attack again,” replied Karl. “We must,” he added, with an unusual earnestness in his tone, “take Poltava.”

“If we do not,” thought Count Piper cynically, “we are dead and damned.”

He left the tent and passed to his own more luxurious quarters; he was much too sick a man to be able to watch the operation to which the heroic King was so calmly submitting, and too full of an increasing agitation and consternation to be able to command his feelings.

“Yet why should I care?” he asked himself, “Patkul was shattered like that sixteen times.”

The news of the King’s wound had now spread through the army, and there was a growing uneasiness among these hitherto invincible veterans, now ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-armed.

Returning presently to the King’s tent Count Piper met General RehnskÖld with whom he was on bad terms, but who now stopped to tell him that the incisions had been made in the King’s foot, which was now being dressed.

The minister, pale, restless, and dispirited, passed again into the presence of the King.

Karl, who had held the limb steady with his own hands while the surgeon used the knife, and had displayed not the least emotion, now sat on his bed while Neumann bandaged the leg.

He had just given orders for an assault on the morrow; his voice had not shaken or his hand trembled, but his face was pallid and damp, his lips curved in a slightly distorted smile.

Count Piper advanced, but before he could speak the Prince of Wurtemberg entered the tent with every sign of agitation.

“Sire,” he said briefly, “I have just been informed that the Czar is advancing on us with his entire army.”

Karl, with unshaken calm, looked at RehnskÖld.

“How many will that be, General?”

“We think, sire, about 70,000 men.”

Karl had known this; he had merely spoken to gain time; the intolerable pain was making it difficult for him to think clearly, and he realized that never had he needed to think clearly as he needed now.

Even his haughty spirit was forced to face the fact that he was in a desperate position, and one which most men would have judged as hopeless.

Cut off from all reinforcements or supplies, lacking everything, half his troops starving or sick, many bandits, untrained and unreliable, shut in between two rivers with no shelter or cover in a country so desolate and barren—and now helpless with a hideous wound—it might well seem that he was about to lose the fruits of nine years’ victories, and be deprived, in one sharp moment, of that glory for which he had sacrificed himself and his country.

“Seventy thousand men,” he repeated; he had himself but 32,000, of which only 16,000 were trained troops, but he remembered Narva, where the odds had been greater, and forgot the genius of Peter that in nine years had created a nation.

There was no council of war.

When Count Piper came to see the King that night he found him on his camp-bed, fully clothed, even to the boot on his uninjured foot, with sword and pistols, and a lamp on the table beside him.

The night was hot and breezeless; the sky cloudless, behind Poltava the moon was rising.

Karl lifted his eyes to glance at it as the tent flap was lifted.

“Are you wondering when you will see Stockholm again, Count?” he asked irrelevantly.

“I dream no more of Stockholm,” replied Piper. “I came to see how your Majesty does.”

“Very well,” said Karl.

He moved the lamp so that the rays did not fall fully on his face; he was shivering and burning with fever, and knew it; he did not wish Piper to notice his condition.

“Have you seen RehnskÖld?” he asked.

“Yes, sire.”

“He told you nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Karl put his hand to his head, pushing back his short locks of fair hair that were wet with sweat; his whole body ached with pain, and his wounded foot was a fiery agony.

“Ah, well,” he said, “I will tell you myself. We give battle to-morrow.”

Count Piper lifted his head and looked sharply at his master; so desperate a resolution was what he might have expected from the King, yet it startled him, as a general may be startled by the trumpets sounding the retreat he has himself ordered.

In silence the minister stared at the King, whose noble face was in the shadow beyond the deep glow of the oil lamp.

“At last we are face to face!” cried Karl, with an excitement that he would never have shown but for the fever in his blood. “Peter Alexievitch and I, after nearly ten years! He has always fled from me—ever since Narva.”

Sitting up in his bed, Karl reached out his hand for his sword, then let it drop while he stared at Piper.

“I met a man crying because he could get no news from his wife,” remarked the King, “and another who was sad for fear he should not see Stockholm again; those who follow me must learn to forget family and country—” pausing, he again put his hand to his forehead. “Aurora von KÖnigsmarck once foretold disaster for me,” he added. “Had I been a greater prince if I had spared Patkul?”

Piper thought that the King must be delirious to talk like this; never had he known him to so unbosom himself, or to refer to these personal matters, or to speak in this tone of excitement; it frightened him to see his stern monarch thus reduced to ordinary humanity, and he went up to the bed and caught Karl’s hand, which was burning hot.

The King, however, had again perfect command of himself.

He gazed at Count Piper with the usual serenity in the blue eyes now hot and blood-flushed with pain.

“I am still Karl XII,” he said grimly, “and my men are still Swedes. Go to your prayers, Count, and leave me to my rest.”

With this he lay down, and put his head on the hard pillow.

A faint, half-stifled sigh escaped him, then he lay silent and still, and either was or feigned to be asleep.

Count Piper did not leave the tent, but stood at the open door, looking sometimes at the tall figure of the King stretched on his narrow bed, and sometimes at Poltava, dark against the paling midnight sky up into which the moon was rising.

A sadness was on Count Piper and yet a calm; at that moment his was the clear vision of a man who has a premonition that his work is over, and looks back quietly and steadily on his life.

How differently he had dreamed it all!

What had he not meant to do for Sweden. Karl XI, his beloved master, had left his country greater than she had ever been before, and Count Piper had resolved to continue his work, to carefully add stone to stone till the fair edifice was complete—to do in his way and with his means what Peter was doing for Russia.

Instead there had been this nine years’ war, empty of all but that glory that a day’s mischance might eclipse forever.

Nothing had been done for Sweden—she had been drained of men, of money, left unprotected, her King a mere name.

There was no direct heir; it seemed as if a grandson of Karl XI would never rule in Stockholm, as if the fine line was at an end.

The King began to toss in the heat of the fever, and in his sleep a groan of pain now and then escaped him.

“Ah, you, what have you done for all of us with your heroic deeds?” muttered Count Piper; he came into the tent and looked at the tall figure in the blue coat, with the flushed fair face and loosened neck-cloth, sleeping the heavy slumber of an utter fatigue that was stronger than the torture of his wound.

Count Piper was certain of complete disaster on the morrow; he did not believe that there was the least chance of a success against the Czar.

He saw better perhaps than his master, how Peter had labored towards this moment, how he had learnt bitterly and painfully the art of war from many defeats; he knew that the Russians at Poltava would not be as the Russians at Narva.

He was aware also in what a desperate condition were the forces of Karl, how two winters in this terrible country had tamed their pride and lowered their faith in their own good fortune.

And if this bubble of Karl’s invincibility was pricked, what then?

Nine years’ brilliant success would be, in a moment, valueless; Europe but yesterday at Karl’s feet would soon forget him, and Sweden, depleted of her men, penniless and abandoned by her King, would be a prey to the vengeance of her enemies.

Peter, bitterly offended by Karl’s brief “peace in Moscow,” and with many humiliations to avenge, would be no gentle foe.

In that moment Count Piper almost hated the King.

He was foolishly glad of the twinges of agony that caused Karl to moan in his slumber, and when the King gave a half-unconscious murmur for water the minister made no movement.

It had been his own wish that he should be left alone till the dawn when he was to be roused for the battle.

“I will not interfere with his Spartan habits,” thought the minister grimly.

He went to the door again and looked out on the fair night, opal pale, and the long encampment, colorless light and dark shade under the moon.

Count Piper thought as he had never thought before on the eve of any of the many battles at which he had been present, of the men sleeping now for the last time, of the distant homes they would never see again, of the Swedish blood that would water this arid soil to-morrow, and the Swedish bones that would crumble into the dust of this lost country.

Already the camp was full of movement; the beautiful horses of the Kalmucks and Cossacks could be seen moving among the tents, and here and there the moonlight fell on the steel of cuirass or the bosses of leather trappings, as the Swedish officers rode from one point to another fulfilling General RehnskÖld’s orders.

Count Piper was preparing to go to his own tent for an hour’s rest, if indeed his body could repose when his heart was so heavy, but a sudden exclamation from the King startled him into turning.

Karl was sitting up, his right hand flung out and grasping his sword.

His face showed ghastly in the mingled lamp and moonlight, his wet hair looked dark on his forehead, and his eyes were staring and congested from fever.

“I thought I was being broken on the wheel,” he muttered in a low tone.

He tried to move, and the pulsing anguish the effort brought him made him remember his crushed limb.

“Faugh!” he exclaimed, in a tone of angry disgust. The sword dropped from his hand on to the earthen floor; he started, then peered at the silent figure by the door.

“Is that the dawn, Piper?” he asked, in a quiet, natural voice.

“No, sire, the moon.”

“Send one to bid Neumann come and dress my wound. I would sooner be abroad than abed to-night.”

“I, too, could not rest, sire.”

“There will be time enough to rest when we are in Poltava,” replied the King; there was a note of wildness in his voice foreign to his character; he seemed aware of this himself for he added fiercely: “Curse this fever—I have Peter’s devils on me to-night. Fetch Neumann.”

Count Piper bowed and turned away.

Thus, without a word or handshake parted King and minister on the eve of the Poltava fight.

CHAPTER III

FOR the second time the horses drawing the King’s litter were killed—only three were left of the four-and-twenty guards who accompanied him. Other soldiers hurried up, and began fastening fresh horses to the litter.

“Make haste,” commanded Karl, “make haste.” It was the thick of the battle; the beginning of the second attack which had begun at nine in the morning.

The first battle had been successful for the Swedes with a fierce onslaught of their famous cavalry; they had scattered the Muscovite horsemen, and taken the outposts of the Russian camp; General Creutz, however, who had been sent to reinforce the victors, lost his way, and the Czar, having time to rally, drove back the Swedish cavalry and captured Slippenbach, their general.

Karl was then about to send for his reserves that had been left with the camp and baggage when, with a brilliant movement, Prince Mentchikoff threw himself between the Swedes and Poltava, thus isolating the King’s forces, and at the same time cutting to pieces a detachment that was coming to his assistance.

Meanwhile the Muscovite infantry were advancing on the main body of the Swedish army. When Karl heard of Mentchikoff’s exploit he could not refrain from a bitter exclamation.

“Too well has he learnt from me the art of war!”

Quickly regaining his habitual composure he gave orders for a general battle, arranging, as best he might, his diminished forces.

He had now only four pieces of cannon, and was beginning to lack ammunition; Peter had at least 120 guns.

It was one of the first volleys from these that had killed the King’s horses and guards.

Karl shivered with rage as his glance swept over the battle, and he thought of the artillery that he had been obliged to abandon in the marshes and forests of the Ukraine, either through the weather or because the horses had perished, and he remembered with a pang the men who had dropped from cold and hunger on those terrible marches.

It was burning hot as the sun rose higher into the pale cloudless sky; the air was foul with dust and smoke, and full of curses, shouts, and orders, and the irregular booming of the Russian guns.

Before the horses could be harnessed to the King’s litter, another cannon-ball fell near; again several of the guards were killed and the litter this time reversed, shattered to pieces, and flung on top of the King who was cast on to the trampled ground.

Four of his officers dragged him from the ruins; he was covered with dust and blood, and almost speechless.

The first line of the Swedes was beginning to fall back.

The swooning King perceived this, but he was almost past speech.

The Muscovite cannonade was so continuous and fierce that those about the King thought of retreating also, to get their master to a place of safety in the rear.

A stretcher was hastily constructed of pikes, and the King was raised shoulder high.

He raised himself on his elbow and cried out for his sword which he had dropped; they gave him this, and a pistol which he grasped in his left hand.

His blue eyes, inflamed with rage and pain, shot a desperate glance over the battle-field. On every side the Swedes were giving way; each line falling back on the other, and the cavalry breaking at either wing.

“Swedes! Swedes!” cried the King.

Rallying his strength with a mighty effort he directed his bearers to take him to the head of several regiments, mentioning these by name. But it was too late; already everything was in irredeemable confusion; General Poniatowski forced his way through the mÊlÉe to the King, and ordered the soldiers to take him to the rear.

Karl made a sign with his head that he would not go, but he could not speak.

“Sire,” said Poniatowski, “the day is lost—Wurtemberg, RehnskÖld, Hamilton, and Stackelberg are prisoners.”

It was doubtful if the King heard; he lay like one insensible, though his blue eyes were open wide and staring through the battle-smoke.

They were now being hotly pursued by a charge with bayonets, pikes, and swords; the intrepid Pole, though he held no rank in the Swedish army, rallied some of the Swedish horse round the person of the King.

Some of those supporting him had fallen, and he lay on the ground.

Poniatowski dismounted and shouted to the King’s valet whom he saw pressing close; the little band of horsemen, guards, officers, and troopers, who did not number in all 500, but who were all that were left to Karl of his hitherto invincible army, kept off the fierce attacks of the Muscovites, while Poniatowski and the valet, with the help of a horse soldier, got the King up and on to Poniatowski’s horse, a noble dark Arab.

Karl did not speak a word; he had tried to mount a horse at the beginning of the engagement, but had been unable to do so, and now the agony of his wound, the shock of his fall, the passion of rage and grief he was in, had so weakened him that he fainted twice while they were getting him on to the charger.

At last it was accomplished, and the valet, mounting behind his master, clasped him round his waist.

The anguish caused to his shattered foot by the movement of the horse brought Karl to his senses; but he was incapable of anything; he had dropped both his sword and pistol, and his head sank on to the breast of the young man behind him.

In this manner did the Swedish cavaliers, fighting off the fierce Muscovite attack every inch of the way, escort their unhappy master.

They had not reached their objective, the baggage camp (the other Swedish camps being already in the hands of the Muscovites), when Karl’s horse was killed under him; one of the officers with him, Colonel Gierta, though sorely wounded himself, gave the King his mount, and again with infinite difficulty Karl was helped into the saddle.

The little troop, fighting through ten Muscovite regiments, at length brought the King to the baggage of the Swedish army.

The Russians were hotly pursuing them, and Poniatowski saw that a moment’s delay might be fatal.

Among the baggage was the only carriage in the Swedish army, that of Count Piper.

The King was helped into this and the Pole, who by tacit consent had taken command of this band of fugitives, ordered a retreat with all haste towards the Dnieper.

He and the valet, Frederic, entered the carriage with the King, and supported him, as best they could, against the jolting on the rough roads.

Karl had not spoken a word since Poniatowski had conducted him from the field of battle; he now sat up, drew out his handkerchief, and wiped the sweat and dirt from his face, at the same time glancing at the blood that was soaking from his reopened wound on to the cushions and floor of the carriage.

“Where is Count Piper?” he asked.

His voice and face were calm, but the ghastly hue of his usually fresh and glowing face told of his intense suffering.

“Sire,” replied Poniatowski, “Count Piper is taken, with all the ministers. He came out to look for your Majesty, and wandered into the counterscarp of Poltava where they were taken prisoners by the garrison.”

Karl gave not the least sign of emotion.

“And the Prince of Wurtemberg and General RehnskÖld?” he asked.

“They also are prisoners,” said Poniatowski mournfully.

The King shrugged his shoulders.

“Prisoners of the Russians!” he exclaimed. “Let us rather be prisoners of the Turks!”

He said no more, and the flight towards the Dnieper was continued.

Another misfortune overtook the unhappy King; a wheel of the carriage was wrenched off on the barbarous road, and there was no time to stop and repair it; he was therefore obliged to continue his journey on horseback.

The day was insufferably hot; they could find neither food nor water, nor was there any prospect of obtaining any in this desolate country, arid and uninhabited; several of the men were lost on the way or had dropped with fatigue; only a small number remained with the King.

These, towards evening, lost themselves in a vast trackless wood that was believed to stretch to the banks of the Dnieper.

Here, while they wandered about in the endeavor to find some road, the King’s horse fell under him with fatigue, and no efforts could get Karl any further.

Blood-stained and soiled with dust and powder, without food, drink, or repose, maddened by the pain of his wound which increased with his fatigue, his spirit tortured equally with his body by the agony of defeat at the hands of the man he most hated, even the courage and endurance of Karl could support him no longer, and though he was told that the Muscovites were searching for him in this very wood, he made no effort to move but crept under a great tree and lay there motionless.

Poniatowski put a horse-blanket under his head and sat beside him to watch, together with the few horsemen who now comprised the royal bodyguard.

As soon as the moon was up another body of fugitives, by rare good luck, came up with them.

These were Cossacks, headed by their hetman, General Mazeppa.

From them the Swedes learnt some further particulars of the battle.

The Muscovites had taken everything; baggage, guns, stores, such as there were, and the treasure consisting of 6,000,000 crowns in specie, the remains of the spoils of Poland and Saxony, together with many thousand men taken prisoners and many more slain.

Lewenhaupt, Mazeppa added, was flying towards the Dnieper with the remainder of the army; and he himself, added the old Cossack chief, had managed to bring away some mules laden with provisions, and a number of carts loaded with silver and gold.

Karl did not hear this news, either good or bad; he lay in a swoon of fatigue and pain, the moonbeams striking through the thick summer foliage on to his low fair head and blood-stained uniform.

Mazeppa glanced at him; their mutual disaster was so complete that any lamentation or even comment seemed grotesque.

The Prince said nothing, therefore, but with the fortitude that belonged to his character and his mode of life, directed that the food and water that he had brought with him should be distributed among the Swedes, then lay down on the grass and slept.

The next day the painful march was continued, and a juncture effected with Lewenhaupt on the banks of the Dnieper almost at the same moment as news was received of the approach of the Muscovites.

Lewenhaupt’s men had not eaten for two days; they lacked powder, provision—everything; they had no means of crossing the river.

But their spirit did not fail them; they had been the victors in a hundred fights that even Poltava could not efface from their remembrance, and there was not a man among them who did not believe that, now their King had rejoined them, they would once more conquer, or else completely perish, selling their lives dearly. But the man on whom they relied was no longer the man who had led them to victory; Karl, whose wound was become poisoned and who was in a violent fever, unconscious of his actions, was hurried into a small boat that the army had with it, and taken across the Dnieper with Mazeppa and his treasure, which was afterwards obliged to be cast overboard to lighten the boat.

A few other craft having been found, a certain number of officers managed to cross the river, but the desperate Cossacks who endeavored to swim on horseback or on foot were all overwhelmed and drowned.

While the army was in this pass, Prince Mentchikoff, having found his way by the broken bodies of the Swedes along the route, arrived and called upon Lewenhaupt to surrender.

One colonel of this army that had been so long glorious hurled himself with his troop at the ranks of the enemy, but Lewenhaupt bade him cease his vain defiance.

It was all over now; everything was lost, even the chance of a glorious and splendid death; several officers shot themselves, others leapt into the waters of the Dnieper.

Lewenhaupt surrendered.

The remnant of that triumphant army that had so confidently marched out of Saxony was now in the hands of the Russians; slaves henceforth who might come to envy their compatriots who had perished of misery in the forests of the Ukraine.

The news of the end of his nine years’ war was brought to Karl by the last fugitives who were able to cross the Dnieper.

He seemed incapable of understanding what was taking place, but lay silent in the poor carriage which was all that had been able to be procured for him. Without food, save the scantiest, and almost entirely without water, the little party traveled for five days across a desert country until they arrived at Oczakow, the frontier town of the Ottoman Empire.

The bureaucratic delays of the local officials hindered the progress of the fugitives into Turkey.

All the able negotiations of Poniatowski were unavailing, and pending the permission that was to come from the Pasha at Bender, the Swedes were forced to take what boats they could lay their hands on and cross the river Bug that lay between them and safety. The King and his immediate suite reached the opposite shore, but 500 men, the bulk of his little army, were captured by the pursuing Muscovites, whose cries of triumph echoed in the ears of the flying King.

So, sick, penniless, without hope or resource, his glory shattered in a day, his prestige gone forever, Karl XII entered Turkey, to throw himself on the mercy of the infidel.

CHAPTER IV

PETER ALEXIEVITCH now found himself in the position hitherto occupied by his rival.

The army that had foiled and humbled him ever since Narva was no longer in existence; the terrible Karl was in exile, without allies and with nothing to rely on but the exhausted resources of a distant and dispirited country.

The astute minister, Piper, the dreaded generals, RehnskÖld, Lewenhaupt, Wurtemberg, were all prisoners.

The Czar in one day had won the fruits of nine years of toil. More than half the Swedes were slain or slaves and there was no one to prevent his claiming the disputed Baltic Provinces.

Of the Poles he had no fear; he knew that Stanislaus could not stand without Karl, and that, if he had a mind, he might set up Augustus again.

In brief, he had made himself, in one battle, Arbiter of North Europe.

It was possible that Karl might endeavor to inflame Turkey into a revival of her old quarrel with him; but he had the remembrance of Azov to render him confident of mastering the Turks.

Not that it was in his nature to think and act other than prudently.

He had not begun this war for glory nor fought any battle for display, but always with the idea of some solid advantage, of taking some step towards the attainment of his final objective—the raising of Russia to a great place among the nations of the world.

The building of St. Petersburg and Kronstadt had already shown his intention of making his empire not Eastern but Western, and he had now demonstrated that he had mastered the art of war sufficiently to defeat utterly the greatest captain of the age.

He was not unduly elated at this success which was so much more than he had dared to hope for.

At first he had thought the Poltava battle lost; he had been in the thick of the fight and twice a ball had pierced his hat; perhaps Karl himself was no more surprised than Peter at the final issue of the combat.

The Czar’s manner of celebrating his victory was at once generous and savage.

He treated the Swedish generals with courtesy and consideration, drinking their health as “My masters in the art of war,” but the Cossacks and Kalmucks were broken on the wheel and the Swedish soldiers sent as slaves to Siberia.

He would have liked to have taken Karl, not from pride, but because he wished to know personally so remarkable a man, and he wished to capture the old hetman of the Cossacks that he might impale him alive.

“I wonder Sweden tolerates such a villain near him,” he exclaimed. “It must have been by his advice he came into the Ukraine.”

He spoke to his two generals, Mentchikoff and Alexis Golowin, as he took his ease after dinner in the fortress of Poltava.

“Sweden is insane,” said Mentchikoff calmly. “No man in his senses would have come so far from his base.”

“Nor turned into the Ukraine without guides or provisions,” added Golowin.

Peter made no reply; leaning against the frame of the open window he stared out into the sunny, dusty courtyard.

He was now thirty-six years of age and had lost all the bloom of youth; he was getting stout and his excesses had left their mark on his face, which, though still soft and handsome, was lined and swollen and an unhealthy color.

The thick locks were tinged with gray and his eyebrows and lips twitched with incipient disease.

He was now unbuttoned because of the heat; his green coat was grease-stained, his linen soiled.

In his right hand, coarsened by manual labor, he held a glass full of some sweet liquid round which the flies buzzed.

A star of the purest brilliants hung by a common ribbon from one of his buttonholes, which gleamed as his breast rose and fell with his heavy breathing.

The two generals were magnificent in satin coats, perukes, stars, and laces, but neither had clean hands or linen.

The air was heavy with the odors of the sour, greasy Russian cooking and the smell of brandy.

The room was roughly and coarsely furnished, but a valuable ikon hung in one corner adorned with pigeon blood rubies and still garlanded with the wreaths of wax fruit from the Easter offerings.

Peter’s thoughts were far away.

He was not dwelling on the personal advantages likely to accrue to him from this great victory, nor even on its military aspect; he was thinking that now at last he could secure his Baltic ports and gain for Russia that enormous trade once in the hands of, and so jealously guarded by, the Hansa League. The Russians, long treated as barbarians by the industrious and crafty Germans, had sold their goods to the great Hansa station at Novgorod always at a great loss, despite their persistent efforts to cheat, or bartered them for the English and Flemish cloths which could have been made in Russia.

Peter, who admired as much as he disliked the Germans, intended now that the Russian woods, metals, furs, wax, and honey should be traded direct with Europe.

He meant also to get the trade with Asia, and by this intercommunication with nations to teach arts and crafts to his own people. While he drunk his kvas, regardless of the circling flies, and stared absently into the sunny courtyard, Golowin and Mentchikoff were discussing the present plight of Karl XII.

The fugitive King had gone to Bender in Bessarabia, and was being treated with generous courtesy by the Porte.

He was, however, for all the pomp that surrounded him, nothing but a prisoner, and it was doubtful if, even had he wished, he could have left Turkey.

“He will give no further trouble,” remarked Prince Golowin.

But Mentchikoff was not of this opinion.

“A man of those lion-like qualities,” he said, “is not so easily subdued.”

“He may not be,” replied the other shrewdly, “but without resources he can do nothing.”

Peter turned his head and listened to this conversation.

“How many men has Sweden with him?” he asked, setting down his glass.

“They do not know, Peter Alexievitch,” replied Mentchikoff, “but it cannot be many—only those fugitives who contrived to escape across the frontier.”

“No one of importance?”

“Not beyond Poniatowski, MÜllern, his chancellor, and a few officers—and the old Mazeppa,” said Mentchikoff.

At the mention of the hetman of the Cossacks Peter’s face twitched with fury.

“May the devil overtake that ancient traitor,” he cried, “and roast him to all eternity!”

He did not care to dwell on the thought of the escape of this rebel, who had indeed behaved with ingratitude and falsity to the monarch who had so warmly befriended and protected him.

Without any more words he left the room and went to the apartments of his wife, who accompanied him on all his campaigns.

He intended soon to marry her publicly and proclaim her as Czarina.

Not that Katherina had ever demanded this of him (indeed she had not expected him to marry her at all), but to please his own passion for this woman, who still continued to entirely please his curious fancy.

There were those who believed that if she had had a living child he could have disinherited Prince Alexis in favor of the offspring of Katherina, since the heir was not only the son of a disgraced and imprisoned mother, but showed already strong reactionary tendencies towards the barbaric customs Peter was so painfully eliminating from Russia.

Katherina was now clothed in Western fashion; a tight bodice and full skirt of blue silk, a pearl necklace, and her hair rolled into long curls.

She was now very stout, and her teeth were ruined through eating sweetmeats; her complexion was greasy, and her hands ill kept; she had acquired no air of dignity, but an expression of complete good nature showed still on her handsome features.

A Tartar maidservant with Asiatic features was seated on a scarlet cushion, singing as she worked a piece of orange and gold embroidery on a frame.

Peter spoke to neither but seated himself on the low covered chair beside his wife who knew better than to speak to him when he was silent.

The little maid, with an unchanged countenance, continued singing, in a low, melancholy, and monotonous voice, an old Tartar song:

Peter stared at the singer, as if fascinated by her flat, brown face.

Katherina was not thinking of the song nor of him; it was very hot and she was almost asleep in her comfortable chair.

Katherina glanced rather uneasily at the Czar; she had hoped that now he had achieved this great victory he would be less moody and melancholy.

Even her placid good-humor did not always find Peter easy to manage; sometimes her ease-loving temperament was inclined to regret the days of her comfortable prosperity with Prince Mentchikoff.

“The King of Sweden has not been captured?” she asked gently.

“Nay, he crossed the Bug and is safe in Turkey, flattered by the Sultan.”

“Well, he will trouble you no more,” said Katherina pleasantly.

The little Tartar maid rose and crept away, with a furtive look at the terrible Czar.

“I do not know,” replied Peter. “He is a very able man. But I think I have secured the Baltic Provinces.”

Leaning forward with a sudden eagerness he began discoursing of this Baltic Empire and what the acquisition of it would mean to Russia, what she could do when she commanded the town and gulf of Riga and all the islands, of the new naval base of Kronstadt, and the new arts and sciences already beginning to flourish in St. Petersburg.

As he spoke, his rough voice, suffused face, and swollen eyes became inspired; he forgot the ignorant woman to whom he spoke, and declaimed as if he was before a nation of men.

All that he said Katherina had heard before; she, who was not able to read or write, was not interested as to whether Esthonia, Livonia and Lithuania were in the hands of the Czar or not. As for his new city, she preferred Moscow to the new buildings that had risen on the marshes of the Neva.

It seemed to her a thing sufficiently tremendous to be Czar of Russia, and in her heart she wished that Peter would leave his ambitions and be content with the greatness he already had.

She was slightly disappointed that he was not satisfied with the great success he had just gained; she had hoped that when Karl was defeated Peter would enjoy the greatness and power he possessed in that peace and quiet and comfortable pomp that were her ideals of happiness.

Therefore a certain weariness came over her at hearing him once more expound the schemes she had never understood and now was tired of; even his project of making himself Emperor of All the Russias and her his Empress did not excite her; ease and tranquillity were what this lazy woman wanted, and she would sooner have been left in a secure obscurity than be dragged forward to a dubious and perhaps dangerous greatness.

Peter, talking vehemently and absorbed in these matters so near his heart, rose and began to walk up and down the room without noticing Katherina.

And she, half dozing, did not trouble to reply, but began to nod in her chair.

The Czar, suddenly turning to enforce some point, saw her heavy attitude and half-closed eyes; as he stared at her she yawned.

Peter instantly flamed into terrible wrath.

“Ah!” he cried. “You sleep while I talk, eh?”

She sat up at once, wide-awake and pale.

“I heard every word you said, Peter Alexievitch,” she stammered.

“You lie,” returned the Czar fiercely, “but what does it matter if you heard or no? It was all beyond your pitiful understanding.”

Katherina began to whimper.

“I have always been faithful,” she murmured, twisting her plump hands together.

Peter looked at her with contempt.

Anger would sometimes give him a clear-sighted vision of the creature who had so long infatuated him; he saw her now as a stupid peasant woman, and despised himself for the dominion she had over him.

His anger dropped to gloom.

“It is not your fault, but mine,” he said, “for putting you where you are.”

Katherina, grateful that his wrath had passed, dared not risk inflaming him by another word, but sat meekly pulling at the folds of her blue silk skirt.

Peter shrugged his shoulders and left her abruptly; his mood had been crossed and he had no wish for the company even of Mentchikoff, who was, like Katherina, a creature of his own creating, and accordingly sometimes despised by the Czar, who, despite his Western reforms, remained Eastern in his ideas of autocracy and his own almost divine power and privileges.

He went heavily downstairs, called for his horse and rode, alone, round the counterscarp of Poltava.

Karl would molest him no more—North Europe lay open to his armies; he could pull Stanislaus down as quickly as he had been set up, and put whatever puppet he chose on the throne of Poland.

He had accomplished his army, his navy, his port, his capital—and yet in his half-savage heart was still this brooding melancholy, this lingering dissatisfaction.

His own cruelties, his own excesses, seemed even to himself to mar his triumph.

The wife and the friend he had chosen dragged him down and he knew it, yet he could have no more avoided them than the diseases that hampered his body and clouded his brain.

He reined up his beautiful black Arab on the ramparts and gazed across the plain where he had broken Karl XII.

And even at that moment he felt a half-wistful envy of the man whom he had vanquished—the man who could conquer himself.