In six weeks he finished, after he had begun, the Danish war having completely humbled his enemy, and succored his brother-in-law, the Duke of Holstein.
His conflict with Peter has been presented, when with twenty thousand men he Charles's Heroism. attacked and defeated sixty thousand Russians in their intrenchments, took one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and killed eighteen thousand men. The victory of Narva astonished all Europe, and was the most brilliant which had then been gained in the annals of modern warfare.
Charles was equally successful against Frederic Augustus. He routed his Saxon troops, and then resolved to dethrone him, as King of Poland. And he succeeded so far as to induce the Polish Diet to proclaim the throne vacant. Augustus was obliged to fly, and Stanislaus Leczinski was chosen king in his stead, at the nomination of the Swedish conqueror. The country was subjugated, and Frederic Augustus became a fugitive.
But Charles was not satisfied with expelling him from Poland. He resolved to attack him also in Saxony itself. Saxony was then, next to Austria, the most powerful of the German states. Nevertheless, Saxony could not arrest the victorious career of Charles. The Saxons fled as he approached. He penetrated to the heart of the electorate, and the unfortunate Frederic Augustus was obliged to sue for peace, which was only granted on the most humiliating terms; which were, that the elector should acknowledge Stanislaus as king of Poland; that he should break all his treaties with Russia, and should deliver to the King of Sweden all the men who had deserted from his army. The humbled elector sought a personal interview with Charles, after he had signed the conditions of peace, with the hope of securing better terms. He found Charles in his jack boots, with a piece of black taffeta round his neck for a cravat, and clothed in a coarse blue coat with brass buttons. His conversation turned wholly on his jack boots; and this trifling subject was the only one on which he would deign to converse with one of the most accomplished monarchs of his age.
Charles had now humbled and defeated all his enemies. He should now have returned to Sweden, and have cultivated the arts of peace. But peace and civilization were far from his thoughts. The subjugation of all the northern powers became the dream of his life. He invaded Russia, resolved on driving Peter from his throne.
He was eminently successful in defensive war, and eminently His Misfortunes. unsuccessful in aggressive war. Providence benevolently but singularly comes to the aid of all his children in distress and despair. Men are gloriously strong in defending their rights; but weak, in all their strength, when they assail the rights of others. So signal is this fact, that it blazes upon all the pages of history, and is illustrated in common life as well as in the affairs of nations.
When Charles turned as an assailant of the rights of his enemies, his unfortunate reverses commenced. At the head of forty-three thousand veterans, loaded with the spoils of Poland and Saxony, he commenced his march towards Russia. He had another army in Poland of twenty thousand, and another in Finland of fifteen thousand. With these he expected to dethrone the czar.
His mistakes and infatuation have been noticed, and his final defeat at Pultowa, a village at the eastern extremity of the Ukraine. This battle was more decisive than that of Narva; for in the latter the career of Peter was only arrested, but in the former the strength of Charles was annihilated. And so would have been his hopes, had he been an ordinary man. But he was a madman, and still dreamed of victory, with only eighteen hundred men to follow his fortunes into Turkey, which country he succeeded in reaching.
His conduct in Turkey was infamous and extraordinary. No reasonings can explain it. It was both ridiculous and provoking. At first, he employed himself in fomenting quarrels, and devising schemes to embark the sultan in his cause. Vizier after vizier was flattered and assailed. He rejected every overture for his peaceable return. He lingered five years in endless intrigues and negotiations, in order to realize the great dream of his life—the dethronement of the czar. He lived recklessly on the bounty of the sultan, taking no hints that even imperial hospitality might be abused and exhausted. At last, his inflexible obstinacy and dangerous intrigues so disgusted his generous host, that he was urged to return, with the offer of a suitable escort, and a large sum of money. He accepted and spent the twelve hundred purses, and still refused to return. The displeasure of the Sultan Achmet was now fairly excited. It was resolved upon by the Porte that he should be removed by force, since he would not be persuaded. But Charles resisted the troops of the sultan who were ordered to remove him. With sixty servants he desperately defended himself against an army of janizaries, and killed twenty of them with his own hand; and it was not until completely overwhelmed and prostrated that he hurled his sword into the air. He was now a prisoner of war, and not a guest; but still he was treated with the courtesy and dignity due to a king, and conducted in a chariot covered with gold and scarlet to Adrianople. From thence he was removed to Demotica, where he renewed his intrigues, and zealously kept his bed, under pretence of sickness, for ten months.