stop their march. When they came to any piece of water or stream that could be forded, they waded across, holding their weapons high above their heads to keep them dry; and in this way they went onwards till they reached Holovin on the Dnieper, where they gave the Russians battle and routed them. This victory increased Charles's confidence, and without waiting for his general, Levenhaupt, who was to have joined him with reinforcements from Courland, he pushed on, and only stopped in his insane march when the excessive cold forced him to go into winter quarters. The season was more than commonly severe even for that climate, and the Swedes suffered greatly from hunger and cold. Charles shared cheerfully in all their privations, eating the same coarse food as his men, and often having to content himself like them with mouldy bread, while he had no means of keeping the frost out of his tent except by having heated cannon balls rolled along the floor. In the meanwhile the czar, who was not so incautious or inexpert as Charles wished to believe, caused the country to be laid waste through which the Swedes would have to make their retreat, fortified all the passes, and used his influence over the Cossack chiefs so well that they all fell away from Mazeppa, who had to flee from his own revolted soldiers and take refuge in the Swedish camp. To complete the misfortunes of the king, his friend Levenhaupt was met and overpowered by an immense army of Russians while on his way to join him; and although he kept up a desperate defence for two days, and escaped with a remnant of 6,000 men, he lost all his baggage and stores, with more than half his men, and reached the Swedish lines in a battered and worn condition. Hunger and disease reduced the army to 18,000 men, and with this small number Charles laid siege to Pultava, where he hoped to find food and clothing, of which he stood in sore need. The czar and his minister, Menkikoff, were, however, advancing with 55,000 men to the relief of the place, and soon the two armies lay encamped within sight of each other. The Swedes awaited the attack, but finding that the czar would not venture upon making the first move, Charles resolved to try to take the Russian entrenchments by assault. Having been badly wounded in the foot during a previous skirmish, he had

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to be carried in a litter, and, giving the chief command to his general, Rehnsköld, he reduced Levenhaupt to the rank of second in authority. This act created much jealousy and illwill between the generals, and dispirited the soldiers, who, missing their king's authority, lost much of their usual daring and steadiness. Their old spirit and long-used habits of assault made them bear the Russians down before them on their first attack, but in consequence of the contradictory orders of their commanders the men got confused and began to waver, when the overwhelming numbers of the enemy soon crushed them. Rehnsköld was taken captive with a great number of his division, and after a few days Levenhaupt was forced to surrender with the remnant of the army, few of whom survived through their long and severe captivity to revisit their own country. Charles himself only escaped falling into the power of the Russians by a most adventurous and hazardous flight over the Steppes to Bender, in the Turkish dominions, where he was hospitably received by the Seraskir, or commandant. He had at first determined to remain with his inen and share their unhappy fate, but his personal attendants insisted so strongly on his flight that, yielding to their remonstrances, he let himself be placed on a litter, and in this helpless state, only attended by a few hundred men, the Swedish king was borne along over the Russian frontier into Turkey.

Defeat creates new troubles.-The defeat at Pultava, which took place on the 27th of June, 1709, was a signal to all the enemies of Charles to take up arms against his humbled kingdom. A new league was formed between Frederick of Denmark and Augustus of Saxony, who soon found themselves backed by the power of Prussia and Russia; and before the close of 1709 Sweden was attacked by their armies on all her frontiers. The only man who at that moment showed both the wish and the skill to defend his country was General Magnus Stenbock, who had gone to the Ukraine with the king, but in consequence of ill-health had returned to Sweden, where he held the post of Governor of Skaania. By his indefatigable activity and energy he contrived to gather together and drill 15,000 young peasant lads, who, although badly armed and

wearing only tattered sheepskin coats or coarse woollen jackets, proved themselves, under his training, to be more than equal to the well-equipped and experienced regiments which Frederick IV. threw into Skaania. After a few encounters with the Danish army, these peasant lads, who were nicknamed the "Wooden Shoes," learnt the art of war so well that they were able to rout the enemy, only half of whose troops escaped in a pitiable condition to their ships; and since that beating by the "Wooden Shoes" the Danes have never invaded Sweden. On the Russian frontier the fortune of the Swedes was not equally good, for, besides losing Livonia and Esthonia, they had to give up to Russia a large tract of land in the ancient Swedish duchy of Finland.

Charles plots and makes his escape.-While these events were going on in his own dominions, Charles XII. was plotting at Bender to bring on a war between Turkey and Russia, and at length by the help of his crafty agent, Poniatovsky, who had gained great personal influence over the sultan, Achmed III., differences were excited between these powers, and a Turkish army was sent against the czar. Peter in his encounters with the Grand Vizier, Baldatdschi Mehemed, more than once narrowly escaped the fate that had befallen Charles, for like him he had allowed himself to be drawn on by promises of help from traitors, who failed him at the last moment; and on the banks of the river Pruth he was so completely shut in by the enemy's superior numbers that all attempts at breaking through their ranks proved useless. The czar had given himself up to despair, and saw no possible means of escape, when he was saved by the clever device of his brave wife, Katherine, who, trusting to the avarice of the Grand Vizier, sent him as a gift all her jewels and all the gold and silver she could collect in the Russian camp, promising at the same time in a flattering letter to present him with still more costly gifts on her and her husband's return to St. Petersburg. The effect of this timely offering was to make the Vizier willing to conclude a peace, by which, on the surrender of the little fortress of Azov, Peter was allowed to withdraw his army without further opposition. When Charles remonstrated angrily with the Vizier for letting his foe escape at the moment he had him in his power, the

Turk coolly replied, that "all princes were not able to be away from their own states."

The position of the Swedish king now became extremely unpleasant. The sultan wished to be rid of him, and gave him large sums of money to pay his debts and make the necessary preparations to leave, but Charles spent the money in other ways, and asked for more. Then the sultan ordered his arrest; but when the Turkish officers attempted to take him he locked the doors of his house at Varnitz, and, shutting himself in with a few hundred men, he defended himself against a whole army. Many Turks were shot down in the affray, but after his house had been set on fire he was seized while escaping from the flames, and after a desperate struggle, when he fell owing to his spurs having become entangled, he was overpowered and carried by main force to a village near Adrianople, called Demotika. Here he remained for a long time in sullen inactivity, closely guarded by the Turkish Janizaries, who called him, from his obstinacy, "Demürbasch”the Iron Head. For ten months he remained shut up, and generally in bed on pretence that he was dangerously ill, but when he found that he would obtain no further help from Turkey he resolved upon making his escape. Accompanied only by two persons, he succeeded in the incredibly short time of fourteen days in riding from Adrianople through Hungary, Austria, and Germany to the Swedish port of Stralsund in Pomerania, before whose gates he presented himself on the 7th of November, under the name of Captain Peder Frisch. The guard did not at first recognize the king, for he looked haggar and worn in face and shabby and dirty in person, never having changed his clothes, and scarcely having left the saddle night or day since he made his escape, excepting to exchange one wearied horse for another and fresher animal.

Charles at home. While Charles had been shut up in a Turkish prison engaged in frivolous disputes with his guards, his enemies in the North had been dismembering his kingdom; Russia striving to secure the whole of Swedish Pomerania, while George I. of England was master of the townships of Bremen and Verden, which the Danes had sold to him as soon as they had seized those districts by force of arms from Sweden.

A Danish fleet under the brave Tordenskjold was at the same time harassing the Swedish coasts, while an allied army of Russians, Saxons, and Danes was investing Stralsund. Charles on his return refused to confirm the surrender of Bremen and Verden, and, taking the command of the garrison at Stralsund, he defended the place till the walls were blown up and the outworks reduced to ashes; then, going on board a small yacht, he crossed the Baltic, and landed safely in Skaania, although Tordenskjold was scouring the seas to prevent his passage.

The king now took up his abode at Lund, either because he wished to be near the scene of war, or because he did not like to return to his capital till he had retrieved his bad fortune. His presence in his own country forced the nobles to refrain from further attempts to secure peace, and gave new courage to the lower classes, who, in their love and devotion to their idol king, were ready to risk their all and follow him into new wars. But men fit for service were scarce in the land, and there was no money left; and in this dilemma Charles had to take lads of fifteen into the ranks, while his minister, Görtz, who was hated by the nobles for his indifference to their interests, contrived to raise funds by coining copper pieces, and selling to foreigners all the silver taken from the royal mines. During the severe winter of 1716, when the Sound was frozen over, Charles determined to carry an army over the ice into Sjælland and to invade the Danish islands; but at the moment when everything was ready for this hazardous adventure a thaw set in, and thus Denmark escaped the threatened invasion. He then directed his attacks against Norway, and advanced on Christiania; but meeting with more opposition than he had expected, he fell back and laid siege to the fortress of Frederiksten near Frederikshald. No better success awaited him there, for the citizens, under the guidance of the brothers Peder and Hans Kolbjörnsson, set fire to their own town, and thus drove the Swedes out of their quarters, and at length forced them to give up the assault. Strangely enough, it was owing to the warning given of the approach of the Swedes by Anna Kolbjörnsdatter, a member of the same family as the rescuers of Frederikshald, that Charles's plans of surprising Christiania had been defeated in the first instance; for this woman, the