Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/176

156, near Smolensk, a body of ten thousand horse, and six thousand Calmucks.

These Calmucks are Tartars, living between the kingdom of Astrakhan, which is subject to the czar, and that of Samarkand, belonging to the Usbeg Tartars, and the country of Timur, known by the name of Tamerlane. The country of the Calmucks extends eastward to the mountains which divide the Mogul from the western parts of Asia. Those who inhabit that part of the country which borders upon Astrakhan are tributary to the czar who pretends to an absolute authority over them; but their vagrant life hinders him from making good his claim, and obliges him to treat them in the same manner in which the Grand Seignior treats the Arabs, sometimes conniving at, and sometimes punishing their robberies. There are always some of these Calmucks in the Russian army; and the czar had even reduced them to a regular discipline, like the rest of his soldiers.

The king attacked these troops with only six regiments of horse, and four thousand foot; broke their ranks at the first onset, at the head of his Ostrogothic regiment, and obliged them to fly. He pursued them through rugged and hollow ways, where the Calmucks lay concealed, who soon began to show themselves and cut off from the rest of the Swedish army the regiment in which the king fought. In an instant the Russians and Calmucks surrounded this regiment, and penetrated even to the king. Two aides-de-camp who fought near him fell at his feet. The king's horse was killed under him; and as one of his equerries was