That evening the King was taken in a scarlet litter to Adrianople, and King Stanislaus arrived at Bender, having received on the road, by the mouth of M. Fabrice, the message of his inflexible friend.
CHAPTER V
KARL was conducted to Demotica, a little town some leagues from Adrianople; a few of his suite were allowed to be with him and the rest of the Swedes were kept in prison.
Through Poniatowski’s able negotiations the Sultan was apprised of the King of Sweden’s side of the story, and the Grand Vizier Soliman was dismissed, the Khan and Ismail Pasha banished.
But, despite the efforts of the French ambassador and various secret friends whom Karl had in Constantinople, the Porte showed him no favor, and so far from obtaining the succor of which he had dreamed he was treated as a prisoner, and not allowed even to communicate with Ahmed.
Despite this, Karl, who had by no means so completely relinquished hope of Turkish help as his friends had supposed, refused to return to Sweden, preferring captivity to the humiliation of returning to his realm a defeated and stripped fugitive.
The new vizier having sent for him to be present at a conference with the French ambassador with a view to an alliance against Muscovy, the King, deeply wounded in his pride, sent Müllern, and himself feigned sickness, keeping himself for months enclosed in his chamber, so fearful was he that the Turks might in some way force him to compromise his dignity. He lived now in the simplest style, waited upon by his friends Grothusen, Görtz, and Müllern, for he was without servants, such of these as had survived the Bender fight being in prison, and without any luxuries or even comforts, all his possessions having been burnt at Varnitza, and the Porte now having ceased the princely generosity that had rendered easy the first years of exile. The news that he received in his confinement was of disaster upon disaster.
Sweden was attacked on all sides.
General Stenbock worthily filled the place of the King in defending his country, and revenged the burning of Stade by reducing Altona to ashes; but he could not long hold the field with such diminished forces against such a powerful combination of enemies, and all the provinces of the Baltic were lost to Sweden as well as most of her possessions in Germany, and Stenbock was losing ground in Breme and Pomerania.
The Saxons, Danes, and Russians joined forces, advanced on Holstein-Gottorp, the little duchy that had been the first cause of this long quarrel; the Swedish army was destroyed, Stenbock made a prisoner, the whole of Pomerania, with the exception of Stralsund, fell into the hands of Russia, the Danes seized Breme, the Russians Finland, and Karl remained at Demotica.