In the autumn of 1707, Charles XII. made the first move in the great game which was to decide for ever the supremacy of Sweden or of her great rival of the north of Europe. Charles left his camp near Altstadt with forty-five thousand men, marching through Poland; twenty thousand were sent under Lewenhaupt to Riga, and fifteen thousand to Finland; in all, the Swedish king put in the field eighty thousand of the finest troops in the world.
Passing the winter at Grodno, Charles appeared early in the following summer at Borisof. Here he found a Russian army ready to contest his passage over the river Beresina; but he drove the Tsar's troops before him, and defeated them again at Moghilef, and a third time at Smolensk, which point he reached about September 1708.
He was now but ten days' march from Moscow, and there is no doubt that, had he pushed straight on at this time, he might have, as he had promised, dictated terms of peace from the Kremlin. There is no doubt, also, that the Tsar himself began at this period to entertain grave fears for the final outcome of the struggle, and made proposals of peace which would practically have annulled his successes of the past few years. Had Charles either accepted these terms or marched direct to Moscow, the history of Russia from that day to this would have been written very differently; but, fortunately for the Tsar and for Russia, he did neither the one nor the other, and the reason for this was the conviction of a certain individual of whom we have lately heard that the run of luck which had attended the arms of Russia had received a check.
Mazeppa, watching events from his castle at Batourin, observed with disquietude the rapid and victorious advance of the dashing young soldier whom all Europe at that time hailed as a second Alexander of Macedon. He saw his lord the Tsar, in the person of his advanced guards, driven from pillar to post, and flying before the soldiers of Charles like sheep before the sheep-dog; and the politic soul of Mazeppa quaked within him. Still he waited on, unwilling to take decisive action until there remained no doubt whatever as to the final issue of the struggle. When, however, the Swedish hosts arrived at Smolensk, Mazeppa deemed that the moment had come when it behoved him to declare for the stronger, and he despatched letters secretly to Charles at his camp in that city, offering to place at the disposal of the Swedish monarch his entire strength of fifty thousand lances.
On receiving this communication, Charles immediately altered his plans. He quitted the highroad to Moscow, and turned aside into the Ukraine in order to effect a junction with the Cossacks of Mazeppa.
This movement proved a fatal mistake. The Tsar had not been idle during the last few months, and though his troops had met with no success in their efforts to stop the onward march of Charles's hosts, Peter, with his best officers and an army of about one hundred thousand men, had still to be reckoned with before his Majesty of Sweden could carry out his threat of dictating peace from the palace in Moscow.
No sooner had Charles turned aside into the Ukraine, thereby exposing his flank to the Russian attack, than the Tsar saw his advantage, and hastened towards the Borysthenes, or Dnieper, with all the speed he could, at the head of a strong force of fifty thousand picked troops. His object was to cut off the main Swedish body from communication with the army of Lewenhaupt, which was hastening to join Charles in the Ukraine, at a distance of twelve days' march behind him. With this force was the whole of Charles's supply of provisions, upon which the Swedish host relied for its maintenance during the approaching winter. Peter, with whom was of course his faithful bear-hunter, in command of the Semenofski regiment, fell upon Lewenhaupt near the banks of the river Borysthenes. For three days a stubborn fight dragged on, and the brave Swedes strove to break through the opposing ranks of the equally valiant Russians; and when, at length, they cut their way through, and the general joined his master at the river Desna, he found himself at the head of but four thousand men—the rest of his army of twenty thousand fine troops being either dead on the battle-field or prisoners in the hands of the enemy, who had captured also all the guns and ammunition, and, worst of all, the invaluable convoy of supplies upon which the troops of Charles had relied.
This was a great day for the Tsar, and he celebrated his victory by a grand Te Deum in the cathedral at Moscow, leaving Charles and his famishing troops to winter as best they could in the Ukraine, in company with their perfidious ally Mazeppa, who, instead of fifty thousand lances, had provided but six thousand in all, the rest either preferring to remain loyal to Russia, or else joining Charles, but afterwards deserting. The Swedish army spent a wretched winter in the Ukraine, and Charles lost half his men by hunger and cold.
Before departing for Moscow, the Tsar demolished Mazeppa's castle at Batourin; and from that day to this, or until recent years, the name of Mazeppa has been solemnly cursed once a year in all the churches of Russia.