From Mohilou, where the King crossed the Borysthenes, turning north along the river, upon the frontiers of Poland and Russia, is situated the country of Smolensko, through which lies the main road from Poland to Moscow. The Czar fled by this road, and the King followed by forced marches. Part of the Russian rearguard was more than once engaged with the dragoons of the Swedish vanguard. Generally the latter got the advantage, but they weakened themselves by these skirmishes, which were never decisive, and always meant the loss of some of their men.
On the 22nd of September this year, 1708, the King attacked a body of ten thousand horse and six thousand Calmouks near Smolensko.
These Calmouks are Tartars, living between Astrakan, which is part of the Czar’s dominions, and Samarcande, the country of the Usbeck Tartars. The Calmouks’ country stretches from the east to the mountains which separate the Mogul from the western part of Asia. Those who dwell near Astrakan are tributary to the Czar. He pretends to absolute dominion over them, but their wandering life hinders him from subduing them, and forces him to treat them as the Grand-Seignior treats the Arabs, sometimes bearing with their robberies, and at others punishing them.
There are always some of the Calmouks in the Russian army, and the Czar had even succeeded in reducing them to discipline like the rest of his soldiers.
The King fell on this army with only six regiments of horse and four thousand infantry; he broke the Russian ranks at the head of his Ostrogothic regiment and forced the enemy to retreat. The King advanced upon them by rough and hollow ways where the Calmouks lay hid; they then appeared and threw themselves between the regiment where the King was fighting and the rest of the Swedish army. In an instant both Russians and Calmouks had surrounded this regiment and made their way close up to his Majesty. They killed two aides-de-camp who were fighting near him. The King’s horse was killed under him, and as one of the equerries was offering him another, both equerry and horse were struck dead on the spot. Charles fought on foot, surrounded by some of his officers who immediately hastened to rally round him.
Several were taken, wounded or slain, or swept off to a distance from the King by the crowd which attacked them; so that there were only five men left near him. By that extraordinary good luck which till then had never deserted him, and on which he always relied, he had killed more than a dozen of the enemy with his own hand without one wound. At last Colonel Dardoff forced his way, with only one company of his regiment, through the Calmouks, and came up just in time to save the King. The rest of the Swedes put the Tartars to the sword. The army reformed, Charles mounted, and, fatigued as he was, pursued the Russians two leagues.
The conqueror was still on the main road to the capital of Russia. The distance from Smolensko, where this battle was fought, to Moscow, is about 100 French leagues; the army had scarcely any provisions. The King was pressed to wait till General Levenhaupt, who was to bring up reinforcements of 15,000 men, came to join him. Charles, who rarely listened to advice, not only refused to listen to this wise counsel, but, to the great amazement of the whole army, left the Moscow road, and marched south towards Ukrania into the country of the Cossacks, between lesser Tartary, Poland and Russia.
This country is about 100 French leagues from north to south, and about the same from east to west. It is divided into two nearly equal parts by the Borysthenes, which crosses from north-west to south-west; the chief town is Baturin, on the little river Sem. The northernmost part of Ukrania is under cultivation, and rich; the southernmost part, in the forty-eighth degree, is one of the most fertile and at the same time the most deserted districts in the world; bad management quite counteracts its natural advantages.
The inhabitants of those parts, which border on lesser Tartary, neither plant nor sow lest the Tartars of Budziac, Precop and Moldavia, who are all brigands, should carry off their harvests.
Ukrania has always aspired to freedom; but being hedged in by Russia, the dominions of the Grand-Seignior, and Poland, it has been obliged to seek for a protector (who is, of course, a master) in one of those States. First it put itself under the protection of Poland, who treated it too much as a subject-state; then they appealed to the Russians, who did their best to reduce them to serfdom. At first the Ukranians had the privilege of choosing a prince, called general, but soon they were deprived of this privilege, and their general was nominated by the Russian Court.