self
where he was in his camp, or else to attempt a retreat. He, however,
knew that there was nothing to be done but to obey his orders. So he
received the instructions which the king gave him, said that he would
carry them into execution, and then retired. The king then at length
fell into a troubled sleep, and slept until the break of day.

By this time the whole camp was in motion. The Russians, too, who in
their intrenchments had received the alarm, had aroused themselves and
were preparing for battle. The Czar himself was not the commander. He
had prided himself, as the reader will recollect, in entering the army
at the lowest point, and in advancing regularly, step by step, through
all the grades, as any other officer would have done. He had now
attained the rank of major general; and though, as Czar, he gave orders
through his ministers to the commander-in-chief of the armies directing
them in general what to do, still personally, in camp and in the field
of battle, he received orders from his military superior there; and he
took a pride and pleasure in the subordination to his superior's
authority which the rules of the service required of him.

He, however, as it seems, did not always entirely lay aside his
imperial character while in camp, for in this instance, while the men
were formed in array, and before the battle commenced, he rode to and
fro along their lines, encouraging the men, and promising, as their
sovereign, to bestow rewards upon them in proportion to the valor which
they should severally display in the coming combat.

The King of Sweden, too, was raised from his couch, placed upon a
litter, and in this manner carried along the lines of his own army just
before the battle was to begin. He told the men that they were about
to attack an enemy more numerous than themselves, but that they must
remember that at Narva eight thousand Swedes had overcome a hundred
thousand Russians in their own intrenchments, and what they had done
once, he said, they could do again.

The battle was commenced very early in the morning. It was complicated
at the beginning with many marches, countermarches, and manoeuvres, in
which the several divisions of both the Russian and Swedish armies, and
the garrison of Pultowa, all took part. In some places and at some
times the victory was on one side, and at others on the other. King
Charles was carried in his litter into the thickest of the battle,
where, after