Danes and Saxons, joined by the forces of other German principalities, were already attacking Holstein, whose duke was Charles’s cousin; the Saxons, too, were pouring into Livonia.  On May 8, 1700, Charles sailed from Stockholm with 8,000 men to the succour of Holstein, which he effected with complete and immediate success by swooping on Copenhagen.  On August 6, Denmark concluded a treaty, withdrawing her claims in Holstein and paying the duke an indemnity.  Three months later, the Tsar, who was besieging Narva, in Ingria, with 80,000 Muscovites, learnt that Charles had landed, and was advancing with 20,000 Swedes.  Another 30,000 were being hurried up by the Tsar when Charles, with only 8,000 men, came in contact with 25,000 Russians at Revel.  In two days he had swept them before him, and with his 8,000 men fell upon the Russian force of ten times that number in its entrenchments at Narva.  Prodigies of valour were performed, the Muscovites were totally routed.  Peter, with 40,000 reinforcements, had no inclination to renew battle, but he very promptly made up his mind that his armies must be taught how to fight.  They should learn from the victorious Swedes how to conquer the Swedes.

With the spring, Charles fell upon the Saxon forces in Livonia, before a fresh league between Augustus and Peter had had time to develop advantageously.  After one decisive victory, the Duchy of Courland made submission, and he marched into Lithuania.  In Poland, neither the war nor the rule of Augustus was popular, and in the divided state of the country Charles advanced triumphantly.  A Polish diet was summoned, and Charles awaited events; he was at war, he said, not with Poland, but with Augustus.  He had, in fact, resolved to dethrone the King of Poland by the instrumentality of the Poles themselves—­a process made the easier by the normal antagonism between the diet and the king, an elective, not a hereditary ruler.

Augustus endeavoured, quite fruitlessly, to negotiate with Charles on his own account, while the diet was much more zealous to curtail his powers than to resist the Swedish monarch, and was determined that, at any price, the Saxon troops should leave Poland.  Intrigues were going on on all sides.  Presently Charles set his forces in motion.  When Augustus learned that there was to be no peace till Poland had a new king, he resolved to fight.  Charles’s star did not desert him.  He won a complete victory.  Pressing in pursuit of Augustus, he captured Cracow, but his advance was delayed for some weeks by a broken leg; and in the interval there was a considerable rally to the support of Augustus.  But the moment Charles could again move, he routed the enemy at Pultusk.  The terror of his invincibility was universal.  Success followed upon success.  The anti-Saxon party in the diet succeeded in declaring the throne vacant.  Charles might certainly have claimed the crown for himself, but chose instead to maintain the title of the Sobieski princes.  The kidnapping of James Sobieski, however, caused Charles to insist on the election of Stanislaus Lekzinsky.