Karl, with unshaken calm, looked at Rehnsköld.
“How many will that be, General?”
“We think, sire, about 70,000 men.”
Karl had known this; he had merely spoken to gain time; the intolerable pain was making it difficult for him to think clearly, and he realized that never had he needed to think clearly as he needed now.
Even his haughty spirit was forced to face the fact that he was in a desperate position, and one which most men would have judged as hopeless.
Cut off from all reinforcements or supplies, lacking everything, half his troops starving or sick, many bandits, untrained and unreliable, shut in between two rivers with no shelter or cover in a country so desolate and barren—and now helpless with a hideous wound—it might well seem that he was about to lose the fruits of nine years’ victories, and be deprived, in one sharp moment, of that glory for which he had sacrificed himself and his country.
“Seventy thousand men,” he repeated; he had himself but 32,000, of which only 16,000 were trained troops, but he remembered Narva, where the odds had been greater, and forgot the genius of Peter that in nine years had created a nation.
There was no council of war.
When Count Piper came to see the King that night he found him on his camp-bed, fully clothed, even to the boot on his uninjured foot, with sword and pistols, and a lamp on the table beside him.
The night was hot and breezeless; the sky cloudless, behind Poltava the moon was rising.