BOOK III
JOHN RHEINHOLD PATKUL
“His grief was but his grandeur in disguise
And discontent his immortality.”
CHAPTER I
BY the first day of October, Peter, after ravaging Ingria, found himself before Narva, swiftly bearing the thunders of his vengeance against his Northern rival, who, despite the extreme severity of the climate (it was already midwinter in this bitter latitude), was steadily advancing to meet the last and most powerful of his enemies.
Peter was on fire to prove to the people, who were half unwillingly accepting his gigantic efforts to lift Russia into the position of a great power, that his new methods of warfare were capable of rendering null the treaties of Stolboro and Plivia, and Karl was equally resolute to prove that he was invincible in defense of what he had every right to consider his own territory.
John Rheinhold Patkul, the Livonian noble who had been largely instrumental in forming the threefold secret treaty against Sweden, who had been first in the service of the Elector of Saxony and afterwards Peter’s envoy at Dresden, was now with the Muscovite army, and the report of his presence there further inflamed the cold anger of the King of Sweden, who, crossing the sea with a fine fleet of transport, was marching towards Narva six weeks after Peter had commenced the siege, regardless alike of the increasing rigors of the winter and the disparity of numbers between his own army and that of the Czar.
He had reason for his confidence, for it was in numbers only that Peter had the advantage.
A skilled general with a disciplined army would have been able to reduce the little town of Narva into ashes in a few days, perhaps hours; Peter had sat down before it six weeks in vain, while the Baron de Horn, in command of the beleaguered garrison, was able, with his few pieces of cannon, to again and again level the trenches, redoubts, and fortifications that Peter had constructed round his camp, in accordance with what he had learnt in his travels.
These rude attempts at the science of war were complete failures; 150 cannon could scarcely be fired and could never hit their objective; nearly 65,000 men remained helpless before a garrison of 1000, in a small ill-protected town.
Peter, in no way sparing himself (he still held the rank of lieutenant in his own army), spent his days going from one part of his camp to another, instructing, working, exhorting, threatening, enduring all the hardships of the terrible weather and the inadequate supplies of the badly provisioned army.