At Smolensk, narrowly escaping death in a hand-to-hand fight with the Kalmucks, Karl inflicted another defeat on the Muscovites, and proceeded another stage on the way to the capital, from which city he was now distant only a hundred leagues.
At this moment Peter sent to Karl suggesting the opening of peace negotiations.
But Karl replied as he had replied to Augustus: “Peace in Moscow.”
And even Count Piper wrote to the Duke of Marlborough, whom he was keeping informed of the progress of the campaign, that the dethronement of the Czar was inevitable.
But Peter, still unshaken after the defeats of eight years, again gathered together his scattered and disheartened armies.
“The King of Sweden thinks to be a second Alexander,” he remarked, when Karl’s haughty answer was brought to him, “but I have no mind to be Darius.”
The second winter of the Russian campaign was now setting in; it promised to be of unusual severity even for these bitter regions.
Even the Spartan endurance of the Swedes began to blench at the thought of the almost unendurable hardships of the long Russian winter, with neither sufficient food, firing, or clothing.
But there was no murmuring, for the King supported all privations equally with the poorest foot soldier.
The scouts brought in news that Peter had torn up the roads, flooded them from the marsh lands, cut down huge trees and flung them across the way, and burnt the villages on the route to Moscow.