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CHAPTER XVII: Charles

The Swedish army had still greater disappointments to meet with. No supplies were provided; and general Lewenhaupt, who had been ordered to join the king with 15,000 men from Livonia, had been forced into three engagements with the Russians, and his army was reduced to 4,000. Braving these misfortunes, Charles continued the campaign, though in the depth of winter. In the midst of a wild and barren country, with an army almost destitute of food and clothing, and perishing with cold, he madly resolved to proceed. At length he laid siege to Pultowa, a fortified city on the frontiers of Ukraine, which was vigorously defended. His army was now reduced to 30,000 men; and he was suffering from a wound which he had received while viewing the works. The czar, at the head of 70,000 men, advanced to the relief of Pultowa; and Charles, carried in a litter, set out with the main body of his army to give him battle. At first the impetuosity of the Swedes made the Russians give way; but Charles had no cannon, and the czar's artillery made dreadful havoc in the Swedish lines. Notwithstanding the desperate valor of the troups, the irretrievable ruin of the Swedes was soon effected: 8,000 were killed, 6,000 taken prisoners, and 12,000 fugitives were forced to surrender on the banks of the Dnieper, from want of boats to cross the river. The Swedish army was thus wholly destroyed. Charles, and about three hundred men, escaped with much difficulty to Bender, a Turkish town in Bessarabia, where he was hospitably received, and where he remained inactive during several years, buoyed up with the hope that the Ottoman Porte would espouse his cause, and declare against the czar of Russia. In one fatal day Charles had lost the fruits of nine years' victories; and the shattered remnant of that army of veterans, before whom the bravest troops of other countries quailed, were transported by the victorious czar to colonize the wild and inhospitable deserts of Siberia.

But the inflexible king of Sweden had not even yet abandoned all hope of humbling the power of his hated rival. At length, in 1711, war was declared against Russia by the Porte, and vizier Baltagi Mehemet advanced towards the Danube at the head of 200,000 men. By this immense force, the Russian army on the banks of the Pruth was closely surrounded and reduced to a state of starvation. At this critical juncture, the czarina Catherine, who accompanied her husband, sent a private message to the vizier, and procured a cessation of hostilities preparatory to opening negotiations, which were speedily followed by a treaty of peace. Charles, who had calculated on the total destruction of the czar, felt highly incensed at the disappointment of his most ardent hopes, and eventually procured the dismissal of the vizier. His successor, however, still less favorable to the views of the royal warrior, persuaded the sultan Achmet III., to signify his wish that Charles should quit the Ottoman empire. But he resolved to remain, and the Porte had recourse to compulsory measures. His house was invested by Turkish troops, and after a fierce defense on the part of himself and his few attendants, he was taken and conveyed as a prisoner to Adrianople. career.