Nothing disturbed his glory which seemed now at the apogee; Denmark respected the treaty at Traventhal and accepted in silence the near approach of his hereditary enemy to its frontiers; Swedish ships were in possession of the Baltic seas; and the arms of Karl threatened at once Saxony, the Empire, and Russia.
North Europe awaited in silence the next step of this conqueror who, as soon as his transports with reinforcements had arrived from Sweden, proceeded to close round the imperial town of Thorn.
After a splendid resistance the city capitulated on the third of October; Karl made a display of generosity by his munificence and courtesy towards Röbel, the heroic governor, and one of meanness by taxing the town, already ruined by the war, far more than it could afford to pay; it was becoming more and more apparent that this King cared for little but war, and knew not how to appreciate any but military merit.
Dantzic and Ebling, two free and imperial towns on the Vistula, having been too nice in granting consent to the passage of the Swedish reinforcements, were soon made to feel the terror of the conqueror’s arms, Dantzic being forced to pay a heavy fine and Ebling being entered by the Swedes, soldiers quartered with the burghers, cannon packed in the squares, and the inhabitants reduced to throw themselves on their knees in the streets before his triumphal entry imploring mercy.
Karl mulcted the town in a large sum, seized her arms, and left a garrison there, proceeding, with unmoved grandeur, on his implacable conquests.
The intrigues of the Cardinal Primate, waxing bolder as the fortunes of Augustus waned, succeeded in inducing the Diet to declare the Elector of Saxony incapable of wearing the crown of Poland. The Diet, inspired by the wish of the conqueror, would have crowned the life-long intrigues of the Cardinal with success, by offering the throne to James Sobieski, son of the last King of Poland, but this Prince, together with his brother Constantine, was kidnapped by Saxon troops at Breslau and sent to close confinement in Germany.
The assembly at Varsovia therefore found themselves bound to find another rival to Augustus.
The Elector’s fortunes now indeed seemed desperate; there was little more to be hoped from Saxony, where he had exhausted every resource, and nothing to be hoped from Poland, where his party had dwindled to a faction among factions, and where Karl was more absolute master than Augustus had been at the height of his prosperity.
The Swede had taken up his winter quarters at Heilsburg in Polish Russia, and from there surveyed tranquilly his conquests and his neighbors who regarded him with the respect of fear.
The war, which had now lasted four years, had been for him a series of unchecked victories; his arms had suffered no reverse and his reputation flamed in Europe; there had been no such invincible captain since the great Condé, and men could not remember a king who made a war of conquest with justice and mercy; no outrage, no massacre, no pillaging, or burning, no excesses, large or small, could be imputed to the soldiers of Karl.