The Duke of Croy was in command; an able soldier, trained in the traditions of European warfare, he yet was incapable of controlling an army consisting largely of a horde of peasants, dressed in skins, armed with scythes, pruning knives, and officered by a haughty and ignorant nobility, who knew neither how to enforce obedience nor how to submit to discipline.
There was not one good gunner in the whole army and no one who had seen a siege before; the only passable troops were the Strelitz, decimated by Peter’s late vengeance on their reactionary spirit and only accustomed to Eastern and Asiatic methods of warfare.
Day after day Peter, dressed in the old green uniform, with a worn fur cap and mantle, smoking a Dutch clay pipe, watched, with a dogged patience, the erections of fortifications that Horn’s artillery always accurately demolished; his brooding gaze traveled over his soldiers, courageous, robust, and willing, but completely ignorant and uncontrollable, and he thought of what he had yet to do for Russia.
Easier to build his city on the marshes of the Neva than to frame out of these an army that would defeat Karl of Sweden! He became melancholy and fierce; neither Mentchikoff nor Patkul nor Croy could divert his gloomy musings; the only creature who had any power to soothe him was Marpha, the Livonian peasant, whom he had brought with him and who bloomed like a winter rose amid the rough life of the camp; she enjoyed her surroundings, could give or take a rude jest with the least of the soldiery, wait on the Czar like a foot-boy, yet be a wild Aspasia to this strange Pericles.
The King of Sweden, with about 8000 men, of which the half were cavalry, landed at Pernau in the gulf of Riga; with all the horse and about half of the foot he advanced at once on Revel, without waiting for the rest of his troops.
Peter meanwhile had left the army before Narva in charge of the Duke of Croy, and had himself hastened to Pskov to bring up a new body of 30,000 troops; his design being to enclose Karl between two armies; he had already thrown across the road from Revel to Narva 55,000 men, including his best troops, the Strelitz, 5000 of which formed an advance guard, who soon found themselves facing the first regiments of the King of Sweden’s army.
The Strelitz were so well posted among the rocks that a far fewer number than they possessed could have easily hindered the approach of a much larger army than that possessed by Karl, but the Russians, not knowing what they had to face and believing the Swedes innumerable as well as excellent, fled with little resistance. This panic communicated itself to their compatriots behind them, and in two days the Swedes had swept before them 25,000 men, taken all the Russian outposts, and appeared before the Czar’s entrenchments before Narva.
It was a black morning of dreadful cold, the last day of November, when Karl found himself before the army of Peter.
A gray sky hung heavily over the desolate landscape and seemed to press heavily on the bare trees; the Swedes were fatigued with the march from Pernau and the encounters with the Russians on the road; Karl called a halt.
A young Scotchman in his army, who had several times proved himself useful in delicate work of espionage, had managed to get ahead of the army and penetrate the Russian lines; the news he brought was considered interesting enough to cause him to be taken before the King.