Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/199

Rh The coach in which he rode broke down by the way, and they again set him on horseback: and, to complete his misfortune, he wandered all night in a wood where, his courage being no longer able to support his exhausted spirits, the pain of his wound becoming more intolerable through fatigue, and his horse falling under him through excessive weariness, he lay some hours at the foot of a tree, in danger of being surprised every moment by the conquerors who were searching for him on all sides.

At last, on the 9th or 10th of July, at night, he found himself on the banks of the Boristhenes. Löwenhaupt had just arrived with the shattered remains of the army. It was with an equal mixture of joy and sorrow that the Swedes again beheld their king whom they thought to be dead. The enemy was approaching. The Swedes had neither a bridge to pass the river, nor time to make one, nor powder with which to defend themselves, nor provisions to support an army which had eaten nothing for two days. But the remains of this army were Swedes, and the conquered king was Charles XII. Most of the officers imagined that they were to halt there for the Russians, without flinching; and that they would either conquer or die on the banks of the Boristhenes. Charles would undoubtedly have taken this resolution, had he not been exhausted with weakness. His wound had now come to a suppuration, attended with a fever; and it has been remarked that men of the greatest intrepidity, when seized with the fever that is common in a suppuration, lose that impulse to valor, which, like all other virtues, requires the direction of a clear head.