Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/30

 "acted up to the duties to which they owe their privilege, I should not have been here."

The King of Sweden left Saxony, and set out on his Russian expedition at the head of 43,000 men. Of these 8,000 remained in Poland; so that he undertook the march to Moscow with only 35,000—a force amounting to about one-fifteenth part of the army with which Napoleon set out on a similar expedition. The Russians followed the same system they afterward employed against the French, retiring and laying waste the country. The difficulties the Swedes had to encounter, in consequence of bad roads and want of provisions, are almost incredible. The soldiers were forced to contend, not only against the enemy, but against the localities also; roads for the advance of the army had to be opened through forests and morasses before the least progress could be made; and it often happened that a league a day was the greatest extent of march gained after immense toil. But nothing checked the ardor of these gallant soldiers. The Russians attempted to defend the passage of rivers and swamps that impeded the march of the foe. Their efforts were vain; no superiority of numbers, no strength of position, could arrest the indomitable valor of Charles and his troops. And the actions performed during this march would be deemed absolutely fabulous, were they not recorded on authority which cannot be doubted.

During the severe winter of 1 709, the army suffered dreadfully from want and cold. When, early in spring, the thaw set in, the whole of those flat countries were overflowed, and long, marches had to be made through complete inundations, by which quantities of stores were lost, and the powder greatly damaged. It was, as we now find, in consequence of the losses thus sustained that Charles accepted Mazeppa's proposal of marching into the Ukraine. Finding his army too much weakened to penetrate further into Russia, and not wishing to fall back upon Livonia, which he thought would look like a retreat and encourage his enemies, he determined to march to the south, and there await the supplies and reinforcements which his generals were to bring up.

The loss of the convoy which General Lewenhaupt was conducting to the army rendered further delay necessary, and obliged the king to undertake the siege of Pultowa, in order to gain a firm footing in the country, and to secure the supplies which the place contained. The Swedish battering-train was weak, the powder not only bad from having been frequently injured by the wet and dried again, but very scarce besides. Still, courage and energy were making progress, when, June 27th, on his very birthday, Charles, in repulsing a sally, was struck by a musket-ball that entered his left foot, above the root of the toes, and went out at the heel. The king continued in the field for an hour afterward, giving his orders as usual; but when he retired to his quarters, the leg was so much swelled that the boot had to be cut off, and the wound had so unfavorable an appearance as greatly to alarm the attendants.

Charles behaved heroically, as usual. He held his leg to the surgeon with his own hands, nor did a single groan escape him during the terrible operation which the cutting away of some of the fractured bones rendered necessary. At one time