d, giving the masters the same
number of raw Muscovites in their place, whom they afterwards were
forced in their own defence to make fit for their own use. Neither is
this all; he had, during the last war, many hundreds of his subjects,
both noblemen and common sailors, on board _ours, the French and the
Dutch fleets_; and he has all along maintained, and still maintains
numbers of them in _ours and the Dutch yards_.

But seeing he looked all along upon all these endeavours towards
improving himself and his subjects as superfluous, whilst a seaport was
wanting, where he might build a fleet of his own, and from whence he
might himself export the products of his country, and import those of
others; and finding the King of Sweden possessed of the most convenient
ones, I mean Narva and Revel, which he knew that Prince never could nor
would amicably part with, he at last resolved to wrest them out of his
hands by force. His _Swedish_ Majesty's tender youth seemed the fittest
time for this enterprise, but even then he would not run the hazard
alone. He drew in other princes to divide the spoil with him. And the
_Kings of Denmark and Poland_ were weak enough to serve as instruments
to forward the great and ambitious views of the Czar. It is true, he met
with a mighty hard rub at his very first setting out; his whole army
being entirely defeated by a handful of Swedes at Narva. But it was his
good luck that his Swedish Majesty, instead of improving so great a
victory against him, turned immediately his arms against the King of
Poland, against whom he was personally piqued, and that so much the
more, inasmuch as he had taken that Prince for one of his best friends,
and was just upon the point of concluding with him the strictest
alliance when he unexpectedly invaded the Swedish Livonia, and besieged
Riga. This was, in all respects, what the Czar could most have wished
for; and foreseeing that the longer the war in Poland lasted, the more
time should he have both to retrieve his first loss, and to gain Narva,
he took care it should be spun out to as great a length as possible; for
which end he never sent the King of Poland succour enough to make him
too strong for the King of Sweden; who, on the other hand, though he
gained one signal victory after the other, yet never could subdue his
enemy as long as he received continual reinforcements from his
hereditary country. And had not his Swedish Majesty, contrary to most
people's exp