Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden

by Voltaire

Charles, with his 18,000 Swedes and as many Cossacks, had not abandoned his plan of reaching Russia. Towards the end of May he went to siege Pultawa, on the river Vorskla, on the extreme eastern frontier of Ukrania, about thirteen full leagues from the Borysthenes, where the Czar had a magazine. This country is that of the Zaporavians, the strangest people in the world. They are a collection of former Russians, Poles, Tartars, and all make profession of a kind of Christianity, and of a kind of freebooting brigandage. They elect a chief, whom they depose or assassinate; they allow no women to live among them, but they kidnap all the children for twenty or thirty leagues round, and train them in their ways. During summer they are always in the field, during winter they sleep in vast barns, containing 400 or 500 men. They fear nothing, and live at liberty; they risk death for the smallest booty, with the same boldness with which Charles XII faced it to bestow crowns. The Czar sent them 60,000 florins in the hope that they would side with him; they took the money and then, through the exertions of Mazeppa, declared for Charles: but they proved of very little use, for they think it ridiculous to fight for anything but booty. It was a great point gained that they did no harm: there were about 2,000 of them at most who did regular duty. Ten of their chiefs were one day presented to Charles, but they had great difficulty in finding those who were not intoxicated, for they always began the day in that condition. They were taken into the trenches, and showed their skill in shooting with long rifles, for they could pick off the enemies they singled out at 600 paces away. Charles added to these bandits some 1,000 Valaques; then he laid siege to Pultawa, with an army of about 30,000 men, in a wretched condition and wanting all necessaries. The Czar had made Pultawa a magazine: if the King took it it would open the road to Moscow for him, and he could await, well supplied, the recruits he expected from Sweden, Livonia, Pomerania and Poland. As, then, his sole resource lay in the taking of Pultawa, he carried on the siege with vigour. Mazeppa, who had informants in the town, assured him that he would soon master it, and hope began to reanimate the army. His soldiers regarded the taking of Pultawa as the end of all their miseries.

From the beginning of the siege the King realized that he had given his enemies some useful lessons in the art of war. Prince Menzikoff, in spite of all his precautions, threw reinforcements into the town, and the garrison then amounted to almost 10,000 men. They made sorties, sometimes successfully; but what made the town impregnable was the approach of the Czar, who was advancing with 10,000 combatants. Charles XII went to meet him on the 27th of May, his birthday, and beat one of their corps; but as he was returning from his camp he got a musket-shot, which pierced his boot and shattered his heel-bone. There was not the least sign on his face that he had been shot; he continued calmly to give his orders, and remained mounted nearly six hours after the accident. One of his servants at last noticing that the sole of his boot was covered with blood, ran for the doctor; then the King’s pain was so acute that they had to take him off his horse and carry him to his tent. The surgeons examined the wound and saw that it had already begun to mortify, and thought that the leg must be cut off. The consternation in the army was great. But one of the surgeons, called Newman, better skilled and braver than the rest, was certain that he could save the leg by means of a deep incision.

“Begin at once, then,” said the King; “cut boldly, fear nothing.” He held his leg with his own hands, looking at the incisions made as if they were in the leg of another.

As they were putting on the dressing he gave orders for an assault next morning, but scarcely had he given the order than they brought him word that the whole army of the enemy was upon him. He was therefore obliged to alter his plan. Wounded and incapable of action, he found himself shut in between the river Borysthenes and the river which runs to Pultawa, in a desert district, with no forts or ammunition, and opposed to an army which cut him off from retreat or provisions. In this terrible position he did not, as might have been expected, assemble a council of war, but on the night of 7th July he sent for Marshal Renschild, and ordered him, without deliberation, but without uneasiness, to prepare to attack the Czar next morning. Renschild did not argue, but went to carry out his orders.

At the door of the King’s tent he met Count Piper, with whom, as often happens between the minister and the general, he had long been on bad terms. Piper asked him if there were anything new. “No,” said the General coldly, and passed on to give his orders. As soon as Piper entered the royal tent the King asked if Renschild had told him anything. “Nothing,” answered Piper. “Well, then,” answered the King, “I tell you that to-morrow we shall give battle.” Count Piper was astonished at so desperate a resolve, but he knew that his master could never be made to change his opinion; he only expressed his astonishment by his silence, and left the King to sleep till dawn.

The battle of Pultawa was fought on the 8th of July, 1709, between the two most famous monarchs in the world: Charles XII, distinguished by a course of nine years’ victories, and Peter Alexiowitz by nine years of painstaking training of his troops to an equality with the Swedes; the one famed for having given away the dominions of others, the other for having civilized his own; Charles loving danger and fighting only for the sake of glory, Alexiowitz not running away from difficulties, and making war from interested motives only; the Swedish King liberal from a generous temperament, the Russian never generous but with some object in view; the former sober and temperate in an extraordinary degree, naturally brave and only once showing cruelty, the latter not having thrown off the roughness of his education or his race, as terrible to his subjects as he was wonderful to strangers, and addicted to excess which, as a matter of fact, shortened his days. Charles bore the title “Invincible,” which he might lose at any moment; the nations had already given Peter the title “Great,” which he could not lose by any defeat, as he did not owe it to his victories.

To get a clear idea of this battle and the place where it was fought, one must imagine Pultawa to the north, the King of Sweden’s camp to the south, slightly to the east; his baggage about a mile behind him, and the river Pultawa on the north side of the town, running from east to west. The Czar had passed the river about a league from Pultawa, towards the west, and was beginning to form his camp. At daybreak the Swedes appeared above their trenches with four cannon for their artillery; the rest were left in the camp with about 3,000 men, and 4,000 remained with the baggage. So that the Swedish army marching against the enemy consisted of about 25,000 men, of whom not more than 12,000 were regulars. Generals Renschild, Roos, Levenhaupt, Slipenbak, Hoorn, Sparre, Hamilton, the Prince of Wirtemburg, a relation of the King, and some others, most of whom had been at the battle of Narva, reminded the subalterns of that day, when 8,000 Swedes had destroyed an army of 100,000 Russians in entrenchments. The officers remarked it to the soldiers, and all encouraged one another on the march.

The King conducted the march, carried in a litter at the head of his infantry. By his order a party of horse advanced to attack that of the enemy; the battle began with this engagement. At half-past four in the morning the enemy’s cavalry lay to the west, on the right of the Russian camp: Prince Menzikoff and Count Golowin had placed them at intervals between redoubts fortified with cannon. General Slipenbak, at the head of the Swedes, fell upon them. All who have served with the Swedes know that it is almost impossible to resist their first onset. The Russian squadrons were broken and put to flight. The Czar himself ran to rally them, and his hat was pierced by a musket shot. Menzikoff had three horses killed under him, and the Swedes shouted victory.

Charles was sure that the battle was gained; he had sent General Creuts about midnight with five thousand horse to attack the enemy’s rear while he attacked their front, but, as ill-luck would have it, Creuts lost his way and did not appear.

The Czar, who had thought that all was lost, had time to rally his cavalry, and fell on the King’s horse in his turn; unsupported by Creuts’ detachment it was broken, and Slipenbak taken prisoner. At the same time seventy-two cannon from the camp played on the Swedish horse, and the Russian foot, issuing from their lines, advanced to attack Charles.