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300 of saving the town, advanced in June to its relief, at the head of an army from fifty to sixty thousand strong.

Both sovereigns now prepared for the general action, which each saw to be inevitable, and which each felt would be decisive of his own and of his country's destiny. The Czar, by some masterly maneuvers, crossed the Vorskla, and posted his army on the same side of that river with the besiegers, but a little higher up. The Vorskla falls into the Borysthenes about fifteen leagues below Pultowa, and the Czar arranged his forces in two lines, stretching from one river toward the other, so that if the Swedes attacked him and were repulsed, they would be driven backward into the acute angle formed by the two streams at their junction. He fortified these lines with several redoubts, lined with heavy artillery; and his troops, both horse and foot, were in the best possible condition, and amply provided with stores and ammunition. Charles's forces were about 24,000 strong. But not more than half of these were Swedes: so much had battle, famine, fatigue, and the deadly frosts of Russia thinned the gallant bands which the Swedish king and Lewenhaupt had led to the Ukraine. The other 12,000 men, under Charles, were Cossacks and Wallachians, who had joined him in the country. On hearing that the Czar was about to attack him, he deemed that his dignity required that he himself should be the assailant; and, leading his army out of their intrenched lines before the town, he advanced with them against the Russian redoubts.

He had been severely wounded in the foot in a skirmish a few days before, and was borne in a litter along the ranks into the thick of the fight. Notwithstanding the fearful disparity of numbers and disadvantage of position, the Swedes never showed their ancient valor more nobly than on that dreadful day. Nor do their Cossack and Wallachian allies seem to have been unworthy of fighting side by side with Charles's veterans. Two of the Russian redoubts were actually entered, and the Swedish infantry began to raise the cry of victory. But, on the other side, neither general nor soldiers flinched in their duty. The Russian cannonade and musketry were kept up; fresh masses of defenders were poured into the fortifications, and at length the exhausted remnants of the Swedish columns recoiled from the blood-stained redoubts. Then the Czar led the infantry and cavalry of his first line outside the works, drew them up steadily and skillfully, and