“They tell me,” said Fabricius, “that your Majesty killed no fewer than twenty janissaries.” “No, no,” said the King, “you know a story always grows in the telling.” In the midst of the conversation the Pasha brought to the King his favourite Grothusen and Colonel Ribbins, whom he had generously ransomed at his own expense. Fabricius undertook to ransom all the other prisoners.
Jeffreys, the English ambassador, helped him with money, and La Mottraye, the French noble who had come to Bender from curiosity to see him, and who has written some account of these matters, gave all he had. These strangers, assisted by the Czar’s advice and money, redeemed all the officers and their clothes from the Tartars and Turks.
Next morning they took the King in a chariot decked with scarlet to Adrianople, and his treasurer Grothusen was with him; the Chancellor Mullern and some officers followed in another carriage. Many others were on horseback, and could not restrain tears at the sight of the King’s chariot. The Pasha commanded the escort. Fabricius remarked that it was a shame that the King had no sword. “God forbid,” said the Pasha; “he would soon be at our throats if he had a sword.” But some hours after he had one given to him.
While they were carrying, disarmed and a captive, the King who had shortly before dictated to so many countries, and been arbiter of the North and the terror of all Europe, there occurred in the same neighbourhood another instance of the frailty of human greatness. King Stanislas, seized in the Turkish dominions, was being taken prisoner to Bender at the same time as Charles was being taken to Adrianople. Stanislas, without support from the hand that had made him king, having no money, and so no friends in Poland, retired to Pomerania, and as he was not able to keep his own kingdom had done his best to defend his benefactor’s.
He even went to Sweden to hasten the recruits needed in Livonia and Poland; he did all that could be expected of him as friend to the King of Sweden. At this time the first King of Prussia, a very wise prince, justly uneasy at the near neighbourhood of the Russians, planned to league with Augustus and the Polish republic to dismiss the Russians to their own country, and to get Charles himself to share in the project. There would be three great results from such a course: the peace of the North, the restoration of Charles to his estates, and a barrier erected against the Russians, who were becoming formidable to Europe. The preliminary of this treaty, on which the tranquillity of the republic depended, was the abdication of Stanislas; Stanislas not only agreed, but he undertook to carry through a peace which deprived him of the throne: necessity, the public good, the glory of sacrifice, and the interests of Charles, to whom he owed so much, decided him.
He wrote to Bender, explaining to the King the position of affairs, the evils and their remedies. He besought him not to oppose an abdication which was necessary under the circumstances, and which was to take place from honourable motives; he begged him not to sacrifice the interests of Sweden to those of an unhappy friend, who would rather sacrifice himself for the public good.
Charles XII received the letters at Varnitsa, and said, in a rage, to the courier, before many people, “Well, if he will not be a king I shall find some one else.” Stanislas insisted on the sacrifice that Charles refused to accept; he wished to go himself to persuade Charles, and he risked more in the losing of a throne than he had done to gain it. He stole away at nine one night from the Swedish army, which he was commanding in Pomerania, and started with Baron Sparre, who was afterwards the Swedish ambassador to England and France, and another colonel. He took the name of a Frenchman called Haran, then major in the King of Sweden’s army and since killed at Dantzig. He passed round the whole of the hostile army, stopped several times, but released under a passport in the name of Haran; at last he arrived after many risks at the Turkish frontier.
When he reached Moldavia he sent Baron Sparre back to his army, believing himself safe in a country where the King of Sweden had been so honoured; he was far from suspecting what had happened since.
They inquired who he was, and he said a major in Charles’s service. They stopped him at the bare mention of his name; he was brought before the hospodar of Moldavia, who, already informed from the newspapers that Stanislas had stolen away, had some inkling of the truth. They had described the King’s appearance to him, and it was very easy to recognize his pleasant face with its extraordinary look of sweetness. The hospodar questioned him pointedly, and at last asked what had been his work in the Swedish army. Stanislas and the hospodar were speaking in Latin. “Major,” said Stanislas. “Imo maximus est,” replied the Moldavian, and at once offering him an arm-chair he treated him like a king, but like a captive king, and they kept a strict watch outside the Greek convent where he was forced to stay till they got the Sultan’s orders. The order came to take him to Bender, whence they had just removed Charles.
The news was brought to the Pasha as he was travelling with the King of Sweden, and he told Fabricius who, coming up in a chariot, told Charles that he was not the only king prisoner in Turkey, and that Stanislas was prisoner a few miles away. “Hasten to him, my dear Fabricius,” said the King, “and tell him never to make peace with King Augustus, for we shall certainly have a change of affairs soon.”