History of Charles XII, King of Sweden · Voltaire
“I consent to grant peace on the following conditions, in which it must not be expected that I will make the least alteration:--
“1. That King Augustus renounce for ever the crown of Poland, that he acknowledge Stanislas as lawful king; and that he promise never to recover the throne, even after the death of Stanislas.
“2. That he renounce all other treaties, and especially those he has made with Russia.
“3. That he send back with honour into my camp the Princess Sobieski, and any other prisoners he may have taken.
“4. That he deliver into my hands all the deserters who have taken service with him, particularly Jean Patkul; and that proceedings be stopped against all such as have passed from his service to mine.”
He gave this paper to Count Piper, bidding him negotiate the rest with King Augustus’s plenipotentiaries. They were overwhelmed by the severity of the terms, and tried with the small skill which is possible to the powerless, to lessen the rigour of the King of Sweden. They had several conferences with Count Piper, the only answer he would give to all their suggestions was, “Such is the will of the King my master, and he never changes his mind.”
While this peace was being negotiated secretly in Saxony, chance seemed to give King Augustus the opportunity of gaining more honourable terms, and of treating with his conqueror on a more equal footing.
Prince Menzikoff, commander-in-chief of the Russian army, went to join him in Poland with 30.000 men, at a time when he not only did not expect their assistance but even feared it. He was accompanied by Polish and Saxon troops, 6,000 in all. Surrounded by Prince Menzikoffs army, and with only this small body-guard, he was in terror lest they should discover his negotiation; he pictured himself simultaneously dethroned by his enemy, and in danger of being taken prisoner by his ally. In this critical state of affairs the army found itself in the near neighbourhood of one of the Swedish generals, called Meyerfield, who was at the head of 6,000 troops at Calish, near the Palatinate of Posnania. Prince Menzikoff pressed the King to give battle. The King, in this most difficult position, delayed under various pretexts, for though the enemy had only one third of his numbers, there were 4,000 Swedes in the army of Meyerfield, and that was enough to make the result doubtful. On the other hand, to fall upon the Swedes during the negotiations and to lose the day, would mean irretrievable ruin. He therefore resolved to send a reliable messenger to the enemy’s general to let him know the secret of the peace and to warn him to retreat. But this advice had a very different effect from what had been expected. General Meyerfield believed that it was a snare to intimidate him, and on that supposition alone he dared to risk a battle.
That day the Russians for the first time conquered the Swedes in a pitched battle. This victory, which King Augustus had gained in spite of himself, was complete; in the midst of his ill-fortune he entered in triumph into Warsaw, formerly his capital, but now a dismantled and ruined town, ready to receive any conqueror whatever, and to acknowledge the strongest as king. He was tempted to seize this moment of prosperity, and to attack the King of Sweden in Saxony with the Russian army. But when he remembered that Charles was at the head of a Swedish army, which had till then been invincible; that the Russians would forsake him directly they had information that the treaty had been begun; that Saxony, his hereditary dominions, already drained of men and money, would be ravaged by the Russians as well as by the Swedes; that the Empire, occupied with the French war, could not help him; and that he would be left without dominions, friends, or money, he considered it better to accept the King of Sweden’s terms.
These terms were made even more severe when Charles heard that King Augustus had attacked his troops during the negotiations. His rage and the pleasure of still further humbling an enemy who had just conquered his troops, made him more inflexible about all the articles of the treaty. Thus the victory of King Augustus was wholly to his own disadvantage, a circumstance in which his experience was unique.
He had just had the Te Deum sung in Warsaw, when Finsten, one of his plenipotentiaries, arrived from Saxony, with the treaty of peace which deprived him of his crown. Augustus signed it after some hesitation, and then started for Saxony, in the vain hope that his presence might soften the King of Sweden, and that his enemy might recall the former bonds between their houses, and their common blood.
The two Princes first met at Gutersdorf, in Count Piper’s quarters. The meeting was unceremonious; Charles was in jack-boots, with a piece of black taffeta tied carelessly round his neck instead of a cravat; his coat was as usual made of coarse blue cloth with brass buttons. He was wearing the long sword which he had used in the battle of Narva, and often leaned upon it.
The conversation turned entirely upon those great boots. Charles told Augustus that he had not had them off for six years, except at bed-time. These details were the only subject discussed by two kings, whereof one had taken the crown from the other.
Augustus adopted during the whole interview that air of delight and satisfaction which princes and great men accustomed to business know how to assume in the midst of the cruelest mortifications. The two kings dined together several times afterwards. Charles always pretended to give the place of honour to Augustus, but far from relaxing his terms, he made them even more severe. It was bad enough for a sovereign to be forced to hand over a general and a public minister, it was a great humiliation to be forced to send to his successor, Stanislas, the crown jewels and archives, but it was the finishing touch to this humiliation to be forced to congratulate on his accession him who had taken his place on the throne. Charles insisted on a letter from Augustus to Stanislas: the King showed no haste to comply with this demand; but Charles had made up his mind, and it had to be written.
Here is a faithful copy of the original, which King Stanislas still keeps, and which I have lately seen.
“SIR AND BROTHER,
“We do not consider it was necessary to enter upon a detailed correspondence with your Majesty; but to please the King of Sweden, and that it may not be said that we have been unwilling to satisfy him, we hereby congratulate you on your accession, and hope that your subjects will prove more faithful to you than ours have been to us. Every one will do us the justice to believe that we have only been paid with ingratitude for all our benefits, and that the majority of our subjects have only aimed at our ruin. We hope that you will not be exposed to like misfortunes, and commit you to God’s keeping.
“Your brother and neighbour, “AUGUSTUS, King.
“Dresden: April 8, 1707.”
Augustus was further obliged to command all the magistrates to no longer style him King of Poland, and to efface the title he renounced from the liturgy. He was less concerned about liberating the Sobieskis; on coming out of prison these princes refused to see him. But the sacrifice of Patkul was a great hardship to him; on the one hand, the Czar was clamouring for him to be sent back as his ambassador; on the other, the King of Sweden threatened terrible penalties if he were not handed over. Patkul was then imprisoned in the castle of Konigstein in Saxony. Augustus thought he could satisfy Charles and his own honour at the same time. He sent his guards to deliver up the wretched prisoner to the Swedish troops; but sent, in advance, a secret message to the Governor of Konigstein to let him escape. Patkul’s bad luck frustrated the care they took to save him. The governor, knowing him to be very rich, wished him to buy his liberty. The prisoner, still relying on the law of nations, and informed of the intentions of King Augustus, refused to pay for what he thought he could obtain for nothing. During the interval, the guards appointed to deliver him to the Swedes arrived, and handed him over at once to the four Swedish officers, who took him straight to head-quarters at Altranstadt, where he stayed three months, tied to a stake by a heavy iron chain. Then he was taken to Casimir.
Charles XII, forgetting that he was the Czar’s ambassador, and only remembering that he had been his own subject, commanded the court-martial to pass sentence upon him with the greatest rigour. He was condemned to be broken on the wheel and quartered. A chaplain came to tell him he must die, without informing him of the form of his execution. Then the man who had braved death in so many battles, finding himself alone with a priest, and his courage no longer supported by the incitements of glory or passion, wept bitterly.
He was engaged to a Saxon lady, named Madame D’Einstedel, who had birth, merit, and beauty, and whom he had hoped to marry at the time that he was given up to execution. He asked the chaplain to visit her and comfort her, and assure her that he died full of the tenderest affection for her. When he was led to the place of execution, and saw the wheels and stakes in readiness for his death, he fell into convulsions of fear, and threw himself into the arms of the minister, who embraced him, and covering him with his cloak wept over him. A Swedish officer then read aloud a paper as follows--
“This is to declare that the express order of his Majesty, our merciful lord, is, that this man, who is a traitor to his country, be broken and quartered for the reparation of his crimes, and as an example to others. Let every man beware of treason, and faithfully serve his King.”
At the words “most merciful lord,” Patkul cried out, “What mercy!” and at “traitor to his country,” “Alas, I have served it too well.” He received sixteen blows, and endured the longest and most dreadful tortures imaginable. So perished the unfortunate Jean Patkul, ambassador and general to the King of Russia.
Those who regarded him only as a revolted subject who had rebelled against his King, thought that he deserved his death, but those who regarded him as a Livonian, born in a province with privileges to defend, and who remembered that he was driven from Livonia just for supporting these rights, called him the martyr to the liberties of his country. All agreed that the title of ambassador to the Czar should have rendered his person sacred. The King of Sweden alone, trained in despotic principles, believed that he had only done an act of justice, while all Europe condemned his cruelty.
His quartered members were exposed on gibbets till 1713, when Augustus, having regained his throne, ordered these testimonials of the straits he was reduced to at Altranstadt to be collected. They were brought to him in a box at Warsaw, in the presence of the French ambassador. The King of Poland showed the box to him, simply remarking, “These are the members of Patkul,” without one word of blame or regret for his memory, so that none present dare refer to so sad and terrible a subject.
About this time Paikel, a Livonian officer of Saxon troops, taken prisoner in the field, was condemned at Stockholm by a decree of the Senate; but his sentence was only to lose his head. This difference of punishment in the same cases made it only too plain that Charles, in putting Patkul to so cruel a death, had thought rather of vengeance than of punishment.
However that may be, Paikel, after his condemnation, proposed to the Senate to disclose to the King in exchange for a pardon the secret of the manufacture of gold; he made the experiment in prison, in the presence of Colonel Hamilton and the magistrates of the town; and whether he had really discovered some useful art, or whether he had learned the art of cunning deception, as seems most probable, certain it is that they carried the gold which was found at the bottom of the crucible to the mint at Stockholm, and made such a circumstantial report to the Senate that the Queen, Charles’s grandmother, ordered that the execution should be suspended till the King had been informed of this curious fact, and should send his orders from Stockholm. The King answered that he had refused to pardon a criminal for the entreaties of his friends, and that he would never do for the sake of profit what he could not do for friendship. There was something heroic in this inflexibility on the part of a prince who, it must be remembered, thought the secret possible. When King Augustus heard of the incident he remarked that he was not surprised that the King of Sweden was so indifferent about the philosopher’s stone, as he had found it in Saxony.
When the Czar heard of the strange peace that Augustus, in spite of their treaties, had concluded at Altranstadt, and that Patkul, his ambassador and plenipotentiary, had been handed over to the King of Sweden, in defiance of international law, he advertised his complaints in all the Courts of Europe. He wrote to the Emperor of Germany, to the Queen of England, and to the States-General of the United Provinces. He said that the unfortunate necessity to which Augustus had yielded were merely cowardice and treachery. He called upon all these Powers to mediate that his ambassador might be sent back, and to resist the affront which, through him, was offered to all crowned heads; he appealed to their honour not to stoop so low as to guarantee the Peace of Altranstadt, which Charles was urging upon them by threats. The only effect of these letters was to make the power of the King of Sweden more obvious. The Emperor, England and Holland, were then carrying on a destructive war against France; they thought it inexpedient to exasperate Charles by refusing him the vain form of guaranteeing a treaty. As for the wretched Patkul, not one Power mediated for him, which proves both the danger of a subject’s reliance on a prince, and also the great prestige of Charles.
A proposal was made in the Czar’s Council to retaliate on the Swedish officers who were prisoners at Moscow. The Czar would not consent to a barbarity which would have had such fatal results; there were more Russians prisoners in Sweden than Swedes in Russia.
He sought for a more useful vengeance. The great army of his enemy lay idle in Saxony. Levenhaupt, general to the King of Sweden, who was left in Poland at the head of about 20,000 men, could not guard the passes in a country which was both unfortified and full of factions. Stanislas was at the camp of Charles. The Russian Emperor seized the chance, and entered Poland with more than 60,000 men; he split them into several corps, and marched with a flying camp as far as Leopold, which was not garrisoned by the Swedes. All Polish towns are at the mercy of whoever may present himself at their gates at the head of an army. He had an assembly called together at Leopold, like the one which had dethroned Augustus at Warsaw.
Poland then had two primates, as well as two kings, the one nominated by Augustus, the other by Stanislas. The primate nominated by Augustus summoned the assembly at Leopold, and got together there all those men whom the Prince had abandoned by the Peace of Altranstadt, and also those who had been bribed to the Czar’s side. It was proposed to elect a new king. So that Poland was very near having three kings at one time, and no one could say which was the right one.
During the conferences of Leopold, the Czar, whose interests were closely connected with those of the Emperor of Germany, through their mutual fear of the King of Sweden, secretly obtained from him a number of German officers. These gradually considerably strengthened his force, by the discipline and experience they brought with them.
He attached them to his service by great rewards; and for the greater encouragement of his own troops he gave his portrait set in diamonds to all the generals who had fought in the battle of Calish; the subaltern officers had gold medals, and every private soldier had a silver medal.
These monuments of the victory at Calish were all struck in the new town of Petersburg, where arts and sciences flourished in proportion as he taught his troops of emulation and glory. The confusion, multiplicity of factions, and frequent ravages in Poland hindered the Diet of Leopold from coming to any conclusion. The Czar transferred it to Lubin. But the change of place made no alteration in the disorder and uncertainty which every one felt. The assembly contented themselves with owning neither Augustus, who had abdicated, nor Stanislas, who had been elected contrary to their wishes.
But they lacked both the unanimity and the resolution to name another king. During these futile deliberations the party of the Princess Sapieha, Oginski’s party, those who secretly supported King Augustus, and the new subjects of Stanislas, were all at war with one another, ravaging each other’s estates, and completing the ruin of their country.
The Swedish troops, commanded by Levenhaupt, of which one part was in Livonia, another in Lithuania, and a third in Poland, were seeking the Russian troops, and burning the property of Stanislas’ enemies. The Russians ruined friends as well as enemies, and nothing was to be seen but towns in ashes, and vagrant troops of Poles, deprived of all their possessions, who hated their two kings Charles and the Czar, equally.
King Stanislas set out from Altranstadt on the 15th of July, 1707, with General Renschild, sixteen Swedish regiments and much money. His object was to appease the troubles in Poland, and to make his authority owned by peaceable means. He was acknowledged wherever he went; the discipline of his troops, which threw into stronger contrast the cruelty of the Russians, gained all hearts; his extreme affability brought round to him, in proportion as it was realized, almost all factions, and his money gained him the majority of the royal forces. The Czar, fearing that he would lack supplies in a country ravaged by his own troops, withdrew into Lithuania, where he had told the various parts of the army to meet, and established magazines. This retreat left King Stanislas in peaceable possession of all Poland.
The only one who then troubled him in his dominions was Count Siniawski, Grand General by nomination of Augustus. He was extremely able and very ambitious, and, heading a third party, he recognized neither Augustus nor Stanislas. He had used all his influence to get himself elected, but was now content to lead a party, as he could not be king.
The crown troops, who continued under his command, had hardly any other pay but licence to ravage their own country with impunity. All who suffered from their ravages or were afraid of them, immediately submitted to Stanislas, whose power was daily increased.
The King of Sweden was then receiving in his camp at Altranstadt ambassadors from almost all the princes of Christendom. Some begged him to retire from the Imperial dominions, others to turn his arms against the Emperor. It was reported on all sides that he meant to join France in crushing the House of Austria.
Amongst these ambassadors was the famous John, Duke of Marlborough, who was sent by Anne, Queen of Great Britain. This man, who took every town that he besieged, and gained every battle that he fought, was a prominent courtier at St. James, the leader of a Parliamentary party, and the most able foreign minister of his time. He did France as much damage by his diplomatic talent as by his arms; and M. Fagel, Secretary of the States-General, has been heard to say that, on more than one occasion, the States having resolved to oppose what the Duke intended to lay before them, the Duke, when he appeared, though he spoke very poor French, brought them all round to his way of thinking.
Together with Prince Eugene, his fellow-victor, and the Grand Pensioner of Holland, Heinsius, he bore the whole weight of the enterprises of the allies against France. He knew that Charles was angry with the Emperor and the Empire, that he was being secretly approached by the French, and that if the conqueror joined Louis XIV the allies would be overwhelmed.
It is true that Charles had given his word to take no part whatever in the war between Louis XIV and the allies; but the Duke did not believe that any prince would be so great a slave to his word as not to sacrifice it to his greatness and interest. He therefore started for the Hague in order to sound the King of Sweden.
As soon as he arrived at Leipzig, he went secretly, not to Count Piper, first minister, but to Baron Gortz, who was beginning to share the King’s confidence with Piper. When he was presented to the King with the English minister Robinson, he spoke French, saying that he would be happy to have the opportunity of acquiring under his direction what he had yet to learn of the art of war. The King made no polite remark in answer to this compliment, and seemed to forget that he was being addressed by Marlborough. The conversation was tedious and trivial, Charles using Swedish, and Robinson acting as interpreter. Marlborough, who was never in a hurry to propose things, and who had learned by long experience the art of reading men, and discovering the connection between their inmost thoughts and their actions, gestures and speech, studied the King carefully. When he spoke on war in general he thought he remarked in his Majesty a natural dislike of France, and he saw, too, that he was talking with pleasure of the conquests of the allies. He noticed that his eyes kindled when he mentioned the Czar, in spite of the restraint shown in the conversation; and he noticed a map of Russia before him on the table. This quite convinced him that the real intention of the King of Sweden, and his only ambition, was to dethrone the Czar, just as he had dethroned the King of Poland. He understood that his object in remaining in Saxony was to impose on the Emperor of Germany certain severe conditions. But he knew that the Emperor would accept them, and that thus matters would be satisfactorily settled. He left Charles to follow his own bent, and, satisfied with having fathomed his intentions, he did not make any proposal to him.
As few negotiations are concluded without money, and as ministers have been known to sell the hatred or friendship of their masters, all Europe believed that the Duke of Marlborough had succeeded with the King of Sweden by means of the gift of a large sum of money to Count Piper, and the Count’s reputation has suffered for it to this very day. For my part I have traced this report to its source, and I have it on authority that Piper received a small present from the Emperor, with the consent of the King his master, and nothing from the Duke of Marlborough. It is certain that Charles was bent on dethroning the Czar of Russia, that he took counsel of no one, and that he had no need of advice from Count Piper to wreak his long-meditated vengeance on Peter Alexiowitz. Lastly, the minister’s reputation is absolutely vindicated by the fact that Charles paid honour to his memory long after, when, hearing of his death in Russia, he had his body taken to Stockholm, and buried with great pomp and magnificence at his own expense.
The King, who had as yet experienced no ill-fortune, nor even any hindrance to success, thought that one year would dethrone the Czar, and that then he could retrace his steps as the arbiter of Europe; but his aim was first to humiliate the Emperor of Germany.
Baron Stralheim, Swedish ambassador at Vienna, had quarrelled at table with Count Zobor, the Emperor’s chamberlain; the latter, having refused to drink to the health of Charles, and having accused him of treating his master too badly, Stralheim had given him the lie with a box on the ears, and had dared, after this insult, to demand reparation at the Imperial Court.
Fear of the displeasure of the King of Sweden had forced the Emperor to banish the subject whom it was his duty to avenge. Charles was not satisfied, but insisted that the Count of Zobor should be handed over to him. The Court of Vienna had to swallow its pride and hand over the Count to the King, who sent him back, after having kept him prisoner some time at Stettin. Contrary to international law he further demanded that 1,500 wretched Russians, who had escaped his arms and fled to the Empire, should be given up to him. The Court of Vienna would have had to consent to this strange demand, and they would have been handed over to the enemy, had not the Russian ambassador at Vienna arranged for their escape by different routes.
The third and last of his demands was the most exorbitant. He declared himself protector of the Emperor’s Protestant subjects in Silesia, a province of the House of Austria, and not of the Empire; he wanted the Emperor to grant them the liberties and privileges which had been gained by the Treaty of Westphalia, but nullified, or at least eluded, by the Treaty of Ryswick. The Emperor, whose great aim was to get rid of so dangerous a neighbour, still assented, and granted him all that he wanted. The Lutherans obtained more than 100 churches, which the Catholics were obliged to cede by this treaty, but many of these concessions, secured for them by the King of Sweden’s fortune, were taken from them as soon as he could no longer impose laws.
The Emperor, who was forced to make these concessions, and who submitted to Charles’s wishes in everything, was Joseph, the eldest son of Leopold, and brother of Charles VI, who succeeded him. The Pope’s nuncio, who then resided in the court of Joseph, reproached him severely for ceding, as a Catholic, the interests of his own religion to the heretics. “It is very lucky for you,” answered the Emperor, smiling, “that the King of Sweden did not propose that I should turn Protestant, for had he done so I do not know what I might have done.”
Count Wratislau, his ambassador to Charles XII, brought the treaty in favour of the Silesians, and signed by his master, to Leipzig. Charles then said he was satisfied, and the firm friend of the Emperor. But he was disgusted that Rome had opposed him to the utmost of her ability. He felt the greatest contempt for the weakness of the Court, which being at present the irreconcilable enemy of half Europe, always distrusts the other half, and only maintains its credit by its skilful diplomacy. He seemed determined on vengeance. He told Count Wratislau that the Swedes had once subjugated Rome, and that they had not degenerated as she had done.
He let the Pope know that he would one day demand the effects which Queen Christina had left at Rome. It is impossible to say how far this young conqueror would have carried his resentment and his arms, had fortune seconded his designs. Nothing then seemed an impossibility to him; he even sent several officers secretly to Asia, and as far as Egypt, to take plans of the towns and inform him of the strength of those countries. Certainly, if any one were capable of overturning the empire of the Persians and Turks, and then going on into Italy, it was Charles XII. He was as young as Alexander, as great a soldier, and as daring; but he was more indefatigable, stronger, and more temperate; then the Swedes, too, were perhaps better men than the Macedonians. But such plans, which are called divine when they succeed, are regarded as chimeras when they fail.
At last, all difficulties having been overcome, and all his plans carried out, after having humiliated the Emperor, dictated to the Empire, protected the Lutherans in the midst of Roman Catholics, dethroned one king and crowned another, and made himself the terror of all princes, he prepared to start. The luxuries of Saxony, where he remained idle a whole year, had made no alteration in his mode of life. He rode out thrice a day, got up at four o’clock in the morning, dressed unaided, never drank wine, only spent a quarter of an hour at table, exercised his men every day, and indulged in no other pleasure than that of making Europe tremble.
The Swedes did not yet know what was to be their destination, but it was rumoured in the army that Charles might go to Moscow. Some days before he started he commanded the Grand Marshal of the Household to write out for him the route from Leipzig, then he paused, and, that the Grand Marshal should have no idea of his project, he added, with a smile, “and to all the capitals of Europe.” The marshal brought him a list of them all, at the head of which he had purposely placed “Route from Leipzig to Stockholm.” The majority of the Swedes longed to return thither, but it was far from the King’s intention to take them back home. “Monsieur le Maréchal,” he said, “I see whither you would lead me; but we shall not return to Stockholm so soon.”
The army was already on the march, and passed near Dresden. Charles was at their head, riding, as was his habit, two or three hundred paces in advance of his guards. Suddenly they lost sight of him; some officers advanced at full gallop to see what had become of him, but they could not find him. In a minute the whole army took the alarm. They halted; the generals assembled; they were in a state of great consternation when they learned from a Saxon peasant what had become of him.
As he was passing so near Dresden, he had taken it into his head to pay a visit to King Augustus; he rode into the town, followed by three or four generals. Count Fleming, seeing them pass, had only time to run and let his master know. He suggested to Augustus a suitable reception on this occasion, but Charles came into the room in his boots, before Augustus had time to recover from his surprise. He was then ill, and in a nightshirt, but he hastily dressed. Charles breakfasted with him as a traveller taking leave of a friend, then he expressed a wish to see the fortifications. During the short time that they were going round them, a Livonian, exiled from Sweden, who was serving in the Saxon army, thought that he could not have a better chance of pardon. He felt sure that his Majesty would not refuse so small a favour to a prince from whom he had taken a crown, and in whose power he had placed himself. Augustus readily undertook the office--he was a short distance from Charles, talking to General Hord. “I believe,” he said, smiling, “that your master would not refuse me.” “You don’t know him,” answered the General; “he would rather refuse you here than anywhere else.” This did not prevent Augustus from asking a pardon for the Livonian in the most pressing way. Charles refused, in such a way that it was impossible to ask again. After having spent some hours on this strange visit, he embraced Augustus and departed.
On rejoining his army, he found all his generals panic-stricken. He inquired the reason; they told him that they had determined to besiege Dresden, in case he had been detained prisoner there. “Pshaw!” said the King; “they dare not.” The next day they got news that Augustus was holding a Council extraordinary at Dresden. “You see,” remarked Renschild, “they are deliberating as to what they ought to have done yesterday.” Some days later, Renschild, in an interview with the King, spoke with astonishment of the journey to Dresden. “I had confidence in my good fortune,” said Charles; “but at one moment it looked critical. Fleming was not at all anxious that I should leave Dresden so soon.”
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End of part 8 of 13
Continue readingBook IV: Charles leaves Saxony; Pursues the Czar; Advances into Ukrania; His losses and wounds, and the battle of Pultowa; The consequences of the battle; Charles forced to escape into Turkey; His reception in Bessarabia
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