to throw off the Swedish yoke.  Patgul hastened from Poland to Moscow, and urged Peter to unite with Augustus, in a war against Sweden, assuring him that thus he could easily regain the provinces of Ingria and Carelia, which Sweden had wrested from his ancestors.  Denmark also, under its new sovereign, Frederic IV., was induced to enter into the alliance with Russia and Poland against Sweden.  Just at that time, Charles XI. died, and his son, Charles XII., a young man of eighteen, ascended the throne.  The youth and inexperience of the new monarch encouraged the allies in the hope that they might make an easy conquest.

Charles XII., a man of indomitable, of maniacal energy, and who speedily infused into his soldiers his own spirit, came down upon Denmark like northern wolves into southern flocks and herds.  In less than six weeks the war was terminated and the Danes thoroughly humbled.  Then with his fleet of thirty sail of the line and a vast number of transports, he crossed the Baltic, entered the Gulf of Finland, and marching over ice and snow encountered the Russians at Narva, a small town about eighty miles south-west of the present site of the city of St. Petersburg.  The Russians were drawn up eighty thousand strong, behind intrenchments lined with one hundred and forty-five pieces of artillery; Charles XII. had but nine thousand men.  Taking advantage of one of the fiercest of wintry storms, which blew directly into the faces of the Russians, smothering them with snow and sleet mingled with smoke, and which concealed both the numbers and the movements of the Swedes, Charles XII. hurled his battalions with such impetuosity upon the foe, that in less than an hour the camp was taken by storm.  One of the most awful routs known in the annals of war ensued.  The Swedes toiled to utter exhaustion in cutting down the flying fugitives.  Thirty thousand Russians perished on that bloody field.  Nearly all of the remainder were taken captive, with all their artillery.  Disarmed and with uncovered heads, thirty thousand of these prisoners defiled before the victorious king.[12]

[Footnote 12:  These are the numbers as accurately as they can now be ascertained by the most careful sifting of the contradictory accounts.  The forces of the Russians have been variously estimated at from forty thousand to one hundred thousand.  That the Swedes had but nine thousand is admitted on all hands.]

Peter, the day before this disastrous battle, had left the intrenchments at Narva to go to Novgorod, ostensibly to hasten forward the march of some reinforcements.  When Peter was informed of the annihilation of his army he replied, with characteristic coolness,

“I know very well that the Swedes will have the advantage of us for a considerable time; but they will teach us, at length, to beat them.”

He immediately collected the fragments of his army at Novgorod, and repairing to Moscow issued orders for a certain proportion of the bells of the churches and convents throughout the empire to be cast into cannon and mortars.  In a few months one hundred pieces of cannon for sieges, and forty-two field pieces, with twelve mortars and thirteen howitzers, were sent to the army, which was rapidly being rendezvoused at Novgorod.