nd the Caspian,
and still more vigorously to the Baltic, upon whose shores he had
succeeded in obtaining a foothold.

And now the kingdom of Sweden came, with a rush, into the political
arena. Poland had ceded to Sweden nearly the whole of Livonia. The
Livonians were very much dissatisfied with the administration of the
government under Charles XI., and sent a deputation to Stockholm to
present respectful remonstrances. The indignant king consigned all of
the deputation, consisting of eight gentlemen, to prison, and
condemned the leader, John Patgul, to an ignominious death. Patgul
escaped from prison, and hastening to Poland, urged the new sovereign,
Augustus, to reconquer the province of Livonia, which Poland had lost,
assuring him the Livonians would aid with all their energies 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