[Footnote 13:  See Empire of Austria, page 382.]

The boy replied,

“It is my business to sell the cakes, and I have no right to sell the basket without my master’s permission.  Yet, as every thing belongs to our prince, your majesty has only to give the command, and it is my duty to obey.”

This adroit, apt answer so pleased the tzar that he took the lad into his service, giving him at first some humble employment.  But being daily more pleased with his wit and shrewdness, he raised him, step by step, to the highest preferment.  Under the tuition of General Le Fort, he attained great skill in military affairs, and became one of the bravest and most successful of the Russian generals.

Early in the spring of 1705 the Swedish fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships of war, each carrying about sixty guns, besides six frigates, two bomb ketches and two fire ships, approached Cronstadt.  At the same time a large number of transports landed a strong body of troops to assail the forts in the rear.  This was the most formidable attack Charles XII. had yet attempted in his wars.  Though the Swedes almost invariably conquered the Russians in the open field, Menzikoff, from behind his well-constructed redoubts, beat back his assailants, and St. Petersburg was saved.  The summer passed away with many but undecisive battles, until the storms of the long northern winter separated the combatants.  The state of exasperation was now such that the most revolting cruelties were perpetrated on both sides.

The campaign of 1706 opened most disastrously to Russia.  In four successive pitched battles the forces of the tzar had been defeated.  Augustus was humbled to the dust, and was compelled to write a letter to Stanislaus congratulating him upon his accession to the throne.  He also ignominiously consented to deliver up the unfortunate Livonian noble, Patgul, whose only crime was his love for the rights and privileges of his country.  Charles XII. caused this unhappy noble to be broken upon the wheel, thus inflicting a stain upon his own character which can never be effaced.  The haughty Swedish monarch seemed now to be sovereign over all of northern Europe excepting Russia.  Augustus, driven from the throne of Poland, was permitted to hold the electorate of Saxony only in consequence of his abject submission to Charles XII.  Stanislaus, the new Polish sovereign, was merely a vassal of Sweden.  And even the Emperor Joseph of Germany paid implicit obedience to the will of a monarch who had such terrible armies at his command.

Under these circumstances some of the powers endeavored to secure peace between Sweden and Russia.  The French envoy at the court of Sweden introduced the subject.  Charles XII. proudly replied, “I shall treat with the tzar in the city of Moscow.”

Peter, being informed of this boast and threat, remarked, “My brother Charles wants to act the part of Alexander, but he shall not find in me a Darius.”