Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/171

Rh course of the war, had quitted Poland and returned to it above twenty different times. That country, which is open on all sides, and has no places of strength to cut off the retreat of an army, gave the Muscovites an opportunity of sometimes revisiting the very spot where they had formerly been beaten, and even of penetrating as far into the heart of the kingdom as the conqueror himself. While Charles remained in Saxony, the czar had advanced as far as Leopold, situated at the southern extremity of Poland. Charles was then at Grodno in Lithuania, a hundred leagues to the northward of Leopold.

He left Stanislaus in Poland to defend his new kingdom, with the assistance of ten thousand Swedes and that of his own subjects, against all his enemies, both foreign and domestic. He then put himself at the head of his cavalry, and marched amidst frost and snow to Grodno, in the month of January, 1708.

He had already passed the Niemen, about two leagues from the town; and the czar as yet knew nothing of his march. Upon the first news of the approach of the Swedish army, the czar quits the town by the north gate, and Charles enters it by the south. Charles had only six hundred of his guards with him; the rest not being able to keep pace with his rapid march. The czar fled with above two thousand men, from an apprehension that a whole army was entering Grodno. That very day he was informed by a Polish deserter that he had abandoned the place to no more than six hundred men, and that the main body of the army was