“I come from the King of Poland,” she said, with dignity.
“You could not come on a more hopeless errand, then,” he replied. “I discuss no politics with women, Countess.”
“I am more in the King of Poland’s confidence than any of his ministers,” she declared boldly.
“That,” he said curtly, “is well known.”
Aurora controlled herself, but her hands shook on the reins; never had she been treated so boorishly by any man.
“I come on a mission so delicate there was no one else could have been trusted with it,” she answered. “You, sire, are not rendering my task pleasant to me.”
“Therefore I would have avoided you, Madame,” said Karl.
“I have been trusted by King Augustus with this mission——”
A look of scorn flashed over the Swede’s impassive face.
“Does Augustus think I shall find you dangerous? Believe me, I do not.”
Aurora quivered under the calm insult; all her weapons seemed powerless before the freezing indifference of this boy; she felt as at a loss as any inexperienced girl might have done.
“Augustus offers peace,” she said desperately, almost choking over the words. “Augustus begs for peace.”
Karl’s proud eyes gleamed for a second, and his full lips curled.
“Madame,” he replied, “I will discuss peace in Varsovia.”
Before this implacable front Aurora shrank; he meant then to take the capital?
She knew that Augustus could not defend Varsovia, and her quick mind foresaw the last misery of a flight to Saxony; she was quite aware that the Poles would probably tolerate Karl at least as peacefully as they did Augustus, and that the latter’s chances of retaining the crown were indeed desperate.
“Nay,” she said faintly, flinging back her head with a womanish gesture, and holding out one little hand, from which she had stripped the heavy glove, in an attitude of appeal. “Can one so great be so hard to the fallen?”
This was not the kind of compliment that flattered the iron pride of Karl; it always irritated him that anyone should believe him capable of being moved by fulsome flattery, and it was his particular weakness to consider himself impervious to the wiles of man or woman.
“Your horse will take cold, Madame,” he said. “I give you good day.”
He saluted and was turning away; Aurora thought of her last card that was to have been played in such a different manner, with so much more of finesse and address.
“I was empowered to treat on the subject of—General Patkul,” she stammered.
At that name Karl did stop and turn his head; he seemed amazed and almost as if about to be betrayed into passionate speech, but he controlled himself.
“Would Augustus surrender Patkul?” he asked, in a curious tone.
Aurora could not answer; she felt as if she had committed an incredible baseness.
“He would, eh?” added Karl, with a look that was like a blow in the face to the proud woman to whom it was directed.
“So that is your errand?” continued the King, still fixing her with a hard and merciless stare that became increasingly contemptuous.
“I have not stated my errand,” replied Aurora; her eyes flashed to meet his and the blood stained her face. “From the manner in which your Majesty treats a woman, I do not think you would be tender with a rebel—need we therefore be so nice in discussing General Patkul?”
“It is not in my nature to be tender,” said the King, with his ugly smile. “I shall not be merciful either with Patkul nor yet with Augustus of Saxony.”
“Your Majesty makes a boast of cruelty, then? I had hoped one of your nobleness would have been satisfied by having your enemy your supplicant.”
Her bosom heaved beneath the rough mantle and her face was beautiful in her sincere indignation, flushed and vivid with feeling and emotion; but she might have been a hag for all the effect she had on Karl of Sweden.
“Peace in Varsovia, Madame,” he repeated sternly, and turned and galloped away down the frosty road, this time without a salutation.
Aurora gazed after the disappearing figure with eyes dimmed by tears of passionate rage; she was cold and trembling, never had she believed herself capable of any passion as strong as the hatred now inspired in her haughty heart by this young man.
“A hero!” she thought, “a boorish boy! a rude churl!”
Slowly she turned back to her lodging; useless to expose herself to further mortification—it would be only to repeat her failure, only to madden herself for nothing.
She must return to Varsovia and tell Augustus of her humiliation.
The future appeared to her desperate; she did not even care to think of it; this adamant and implacable prince clearly meant to conquer both Poland and Saxony.
Aurora saw her whole world tumbling into the dust of chaos; this man would be the master of her fate; and she could do nothing with him; he had looked at her with—first indifference, then contempt, and always as if she had been old and ugly.
In Augustus she had no hope; she knew that he was at the end of his resources, and he had no personal qualities with which to inspire confidence; she foresaw that his bewildered policies would lead to a total overthrow of his fortunes, and that his submission would partake of the nature of panic and thereby further gild the triumph of Karl.
She felt angry with her lover for the failure that had placed her in such a position of unendurable humiliation and insecurity.
In her bitterness, as she rode slowly along the hard lonely road, the cold skies above her and the unawakened landscape barren and still frozen about her, her dominant thought was a regret, almost passionate regret, that she had not attached her fortunes to those of a more successful man than Augustus of Saxony.
CHAPTER IV
THE unhappy Augustus went swiftly on the path of disaster; when Aurora von Königsmarck failed and returned making the best she could of a poor tale, the King-Elector appealed to the Diet still sitting at Varsovia, by means of one of his partisans, the Palatine of Marienbourg.
He asked that the army of Poland might be placed at his disposition, promising to pay the men two quarters in advance, and requested permission to bring to the defense of the country 12,000 Saxons.
Cardinal Radziekowski, Archbishop of Gnesne, Prime Minister of the Realm, and President of the Diet, the most powerful enemy of Augustus, and the most active partisan of the Sobieski, the family of the last King of Poland, was eager enough to seize this opportunity of insulting a king elected against his wish and who was an object of his keen personal dislike; the answer he returned to the Palatine of Marienbourg was dry and hard.
“His Majesty was advised not to bring any Saxons into Poland as the Diet was on the point of sending an embassy to the King of Sweden.”
In this extremity Augustus resolved to throw himself once more on the mercy of Karl; he privately sent a chamberlain to the Swedish camp to inquire how and where the conqueror would receive an envoy from himself and from Poland.
This secret ambassador suffered an even severer reception than that which had been accorded to the Countess von Königsmarck; as the formality of the passport had been overlooked Karl put the chamberlain in prison without seeing him, declaring that while he might listen to the Republic he would not hear anything from King Augustus.
The only consolation that this unfortunate prince had in his disasters was that of seeing that the Republic was treated almost as harshly as himself.
Karl received the five senators sent by the Diet in his tent near Grodno, with a pomp that was unusual to him—surrounded by his dragoons and generals, seated on a throne, and clad in a rich uniform with damascened cuirass; but the two spokesmen, Tarlo and Galesky, could, after all, only obtain from him the sentence with which he had sent away Aurora von Königsmarck that he would “discuss peace in Varsovia.”
Flooding the country with manifestos, in which he declared that his cause was identical with that of Poland, and that his arms were directed solely against the Saxon, Karl marched on the capital.
His propaganda was insidiously aided by the Cardinal Primate, and by those numerous senators who were either secretly of his interest or actively opposed to Augustus, who remained abandoned by all save the few nobles who were of his party and the envoys of Peter, the Pope, and the Emperor. His orders to the Polish nobility to take arms with their followers and come to his assistance were ignored while the Poles hesitated, watching with more satisfaction than dismay, the daily advance of the conqueror.
Even those senators loyal to Augustus would not consent to his calling in his Saxons, but he had secretly commanded the 12,000 he had asked for to advance to his aid, and had recalled another 8000 that he had promised to the Emperor to use against France.
He knew that to do this was to violate the Polish law that did not allow him more than 10,000 foreign troops, and that he was risking a revolt throughout the country, but his necessity was desperate, and he believed that he had now little to lose in Poland.
While he was waiting for the arrival of these troops he left Varsovia and went from one Palatinate of Poland to the other, endeavoring to secure the nobility on his behalf, and to raise some sort of an army with which to face the conqueror. Meanwhile, Karl arrived before Varsovia, which, not fortified and without a garrison, opened her gates at once.
The victor contented himself with disarming the citizens and exacting the moderate tribute of 100,000 francs.
Among the first to present himself before the Swedish King was Cardinal Radziekowski, who had left Varsovia to withdraw to his residence at Lowitz.
Karl received him, without pomp or ceremony, in his headquarters, which he had established at Praga, near the capital.
The Cardinal Primate looked at this youthful hero with a curiosity equal to that with which Aurora von Königsmarck had first gazed at him, and with the same desperate desire and eager hope to turn him to his own ends.
These ends were directly in opposition to those of the fair Countess; he labored to overthrow the crown she wished at all costs to preserve. Karl was standing with his brother-in-law, Count Piper, and several generals, distinguished from the others by his height and the plainness of his attire; he wore his heavy blue cloth coat with gilt leather buttons, black satin cravat, white breeches, high boots, and leather gloves that came to the elbows; he had his hair short, in contrast to the flowing perukes of the other gentlemen, and his still beardless face was browned above his fair proper complexion. He advanced to meet the Cardinal with an air of friendliness, but there was but little change in his cold countenance and the steady gleam of his blue eyes.
The Cardinal felt chilled, and faltered a little in the high-flown compliments that he had prepared to salute the conqueror.
“You have come to speak of peace?” asked Karl, cutting short his speech.
“Your Majesty,” replied the Cardinal, with some difficulty, rallying his wits in face of this personality so unusual and so unexpected, “Your Majesty promised peace in Varsovia.”
“I promised to discuss peace in Varsovia,” replied the young conqueror, “and I shall keep my word.”
The Cardinal bowed his head; it was difficult to know what to say before such imperious abruptness.
“Your Eminence represents Poland?” added Karl.
“All save that portion that remains with King Augustus,” replied the cautious priest.
“You are of the Sobieski party?” demanded the King.
“Sire, I have striven to be of no party, but the servant of Poland.”
Karl smiled; he was tolerably well acquainted with the intrigues and factions of the Republic, and, though he disdained politics, on this occasion he had allowed Count Piper to meddle in the affairs of Poland, greatly to his own advantage. He glanced at the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.
“We have not come to impose terms on Poland, have we?” he said briefly, then turned again to the Cardinal without waiting for the young Duke’s assent. “My quarrel is not with Poland.”
“We are, indeed,” replied the Cardinal, with some dignity, “unconscious of any offense towards your Majesty.”
“But your King,” said Karl, “waged on me a most unjust and aggressive war. He must make reparation.”
“Sire,” answered the Cardinal, with secret exultation, “he is in no condition to refuse your Majesty’s terms.”
“We have not yet come to the discussion of my terms,” responded the King, with an increase of his freezing hauteur. “If your Eminence is the mouthpiece of your country—I have only this to say—that I will give Poland peace when she has elected another King.”
No words could have been more grateful to Cardinal Radziekowski, who was the adherent of the Sobieski, and the man who had, in default of James Sobieski, rendered too unpopular by the memory of his father’s faults to be a possible candidate for the Polish throne, caused the Prince of Conti to be elected, and would have crowned him but for the power of Saxon arms and Saxon money.
“You may tell, sir, your palatines and nobles this news,” added Karl curtly. “If they require peace they know the means by which they can attain it.”
He moved away in a manner which seemed to terminate the interview that had not lasted more than a few moments; but the Cardinal Primate hardly noticed the abruptness of his dismissal in his satisfaction at the news he could now carry all over Poland, with a fair certainty of dethroning Augustus.
“This priest,” remarked Karl to his brother-in-law, “will save us much trouble. The Poles will themselves cast off the Saxon.”
He looked as he spoke at one of the officers who had remained in the window-place during his interview with the Cardinal.
This was a young man of a frank and pleasing countenance and attired very richly, Stanislaus Leczinski, Palatine of Posen, and one of the first Poles to join Sweden; his behavior was stained by some ingratitude towards Augustus, to whom he owed his fortune, but whose election he had opposed on the ground that no foreigner should rule over Poland.
Karl had already shown a marked interest in this young man, who was in most things more youthful than himself though eight years his senior.
It pleased his peculiar pride to give his friendship to one who could in no wise requite it; and just because Stanislaus had little influence in Poland and could be of no assistance worth considering to Karl, that monarch favored him above the Sobieski and Sapieha whose power might have been of immense service to him; Stanislaus had held the office of treasurer under Augustus, but had little weight in politics beyond that given by eloquence and hardihood.
It was to this young noble who had so early reported himself at the camp of the victor to whom Karl now addressed himself.
“Do you not think,” he asked keenly, “that Augustus will soon be dethroned?”
“I think, sire, that he will, when he is desperate, fight,” replied Stanislaus. “When the Cardinal Primate make public your Majesty’s ultimatum, the Elector will make an effort to redeem his fortunes.”
“I hope so,” said Karl dryly; “he needs a further lesson. Is he not now at Cracovia?”
It was Count Piper who answered.
“The last advices are, sire, that he has gathered the nobility of that province about him, and awaits the arrival of the Saxon troops.”
“We will advance on Cracovia,” said Karl calmly, “and when we have taken that city, we will decide the question of the crown of Poland.”
With these words, spoken too dryly to savour of pomp or bombast, Karl smiled at the young Palatine of Posen, and left the room with a brief salute to the others.
“He will make himself King of Poland,” said Stanislaus Leczinski, as the door closed.
“He will not,” answered Count Piper, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “That would be too ordinary an exploit to please His Majesty’s temper.”
“What can he do more astonishing or more magnificent than to take a crown from his enemy’s brow to place on his own!” exclaimed the young Palatine, turning his frank, pleasant face towards the Swede. “And I for the first,” he added, with genuine admiration in his voice, “would be ready to acclaim him in the greatness that he has so nobly won.”
“You do not know the King,” said Count Piper dryly. “His pride is to be the arbiter of other men’s destinies—he would not consider himself made greater by another crown; his is a lofty pride, and a strict if hard code of honor; he would disdain to turn a defensive and punitive war into one of conquest. You will see that, as in the treaty with Denmark, he will ask nothing for himself—unless it be one thing.”
“And that?” asked Stanislaus.
“John Rheingold Patkul.”
“The Czar’s envoy!”
“To Karl a rebel—and undoubtedly the Livonian was the arch-conspirator in this plot to despoil Sweden.”
Stanislaus did not reply; his secret sympathies were with Patkul, whom he believed to be sincerely working for his own oppressed country, but his interest and his admiration lay with Karl; the strange figure of the young conqueror fascinated his chivalrous and ardent nature, and he had been flattered by the notice of so remarkable a man.
His wish to see Karl King of Poland was sincere; this was the type of king he desired for a country to which he was attached with a strong affection; he had never liked the indolent good-natured Saxon.
“Naturally,” added Count Piper, with a glance at the Swedish officers, “I shall do my utmost to persuade His Majesty to accept the crown of Poland if it is offered to him; it would be a safe, sound step that would bring Sweden some return for the expense of this war—but the King,” he added with meaning, “is not likely to take my advice.”
The Palatine did not think any the worse of Karl for this; he was headstrong and independent himself, and could appreciate that a man in the position of intoxicating glory occupied by the King of Sweden would refuse to be led by the advice of a mere politician.
“Perhaps,” he said, with his native pleasantness, “we may be able to move His Majesty to our wishes.”
Smiling, he picked up his gaily-feathered hat, and went out to find the King who he knew at this hour would be taking one of his lonely rides round Praga.
The action of Augustus was exactly that predicted by Stanislaus Leczinski.
When the Cardinal Primate informed the Diet that it was necessary to bow to the will of the conqueror and dethrone the Elector of Saxony, that Prince resolved on a desperate battle for his kingdom, and advanced to meet Karl who was marching from Varsovia, the new capital, to Cracovia, the ancient capital which had been chosen as the Saxon headquarters.
Karl had 12,000 men, picked Swedish troops; Augustus, his own soldiers having arrived, had 30,000, of whom 20,000 were those that had lately arrived from his own electorate, and the rest the Poles who had remained faithful to him during his reverses.
In numbers he was therefore greatly superior to the King of Sweden, and the Saxons were as well equipped, armed, and trained as the Swedes, but such was the respect inspired by the invincible Karl that Augustus went to meet his fate with a heavy heart.
“Why does the Czar do nothing?” asked Aurora passionately, when her lover took leave of her.
“What of his hordes of Muscovites?” she added.
Augustus smiled sadly.
“Those troops he has sent I should be better without,” he replied. “Peter trains his men—I know not when he will be ready. Think not of aid from him, dear heart.”
The proud-hearted woman clasped her fair arms round his bravery of satin and steel, and raised her sad countenance to the kind handsome face that looked at her so tenderly.
But no words of love or softness left her beautiful lips.
“If you do not defeat the King of Sweden, I think that I shall never forgive you,” she said fiercely.
Augustus, harassed, perplexed, and overwhelmed, took leave of her with less than his usual affection.
Hélène D’Einsiedel gave him a gentler “God-speed,” while she thanked God in her heart that Patkul was in Russia; far away, but safe from the approaching horror of battle, thought the poor girl, as she watched the army leave Cracovia.
In a few days came the news that Augustus had met Karl at Klissow, and that despite a desperate resistance and heroic bravery, had suffered a complete reverse, his stores, flags, artillery, falling into the hands of the Swedes who drove him before them in headlong flight.
Karl entered Cracovia as he had entered Varsovia, overwhelmed all by the sheer terror of his arms, established a Swedish garrison, taxed the town 100,000 rix-dollars, and proceeded to follow Augustus who fled towards Marienbourg.
Livid with anger and despair Aurora von Königsmarck had rushed from room to room of the palace, snatching her jewels, her gold and silver ornaments, her tapestries and clothes, calling together her maids, pages, dogs, and monkeys, and in hasty retreat with coaches and baggage-mules, fled to Lublin, accompanied by Mdle. D’Einsiedel, whose entire being was occupied in prayers for the safety of General Patkul.
When the weary women reached their new place of refuge they were relieved by the news that Augustus had a respite.
Karl, hotly pursuing his enemy, had fallen from his horse and broken his leg, which necessitated his return to Cracovia and would keep him confined several weeks to his bed.
“Now—if you have a man’s courage and a prince’s spirit—is your opportunity,” wrote Aurora, in a fiery letter to the vanquished Prince, who was striving to gather together once more his resources at Marienbourg.
BOOK V
THE ELECTOR AUGUSTUS
CHAPTER I
THE Czar Peter listened in silence to the news from Poland; he had appeared lately to have forgotten the war, and to have become entirely absorbed in the building of his new city and fort on the mud-banks of the Neva.
Anxious to break the spirit of the Malo-Russians who had shown themselves restive under his autocratic rule, he had transported thousands of these men whose forced labor was draining the morass as a preliminary to the foundations of the new city.
That hundreds of them died through the unhealthfulness of the district and the hard conditions of their life was nothing to the Czar.
He had decided that the new capital was to be called St Petersburg, and that the great fortress therein was to be named St. Peter and St. Paul and used for the burial-place of the Czars of Russia, instead of the church of St Michael in Moscow.
When General Patkul joined his master at the little house called Marli, he found, to his great disappointment, that Peter exhibited a moody indifference with regard to the war and the astonishing conquests of Karl XII.
He was now often in his carpenter’s shed dressed like a Dutch skipper, and working with his hands.
“Karl could not do this,” he said one day to Patkul, who was surveying his occupation with some dismay.
“Do what, sire?” asked the Livonian.
Peter touched the planes and lathes on the carpenter’s bench.
“This,” he said. “No, he could not turn a table-leg—nor found a city.”
“He can conquer kingdoms,” said Patkul bitterly enough.
Peter leant back against the rough wall of the shed; his short, soft, dusky curls were hanging over his eyes; his expressive charming face was pale and tired; his large dark eyes full of a veiled fire; his blue blouse was open on a fine cambric shirt (he was always very nice in his linen) and his breeches and woolen stockings were covered with sawdust and chips of wood.
He looked at Patkul kindly.
“Do you think that what that man does will endure?” he asked.
“Conquests have endured, sire, nations have been enslaved for generations through the exploits of a man like this.”
The Czar was not thinking of the freedom of future generations; he meant to build a great nation, not a free one.
“Sweden can never hold the Baltic Provinces,” he replied.
“Who is to prevent him?”
“I shall,” said Peter.
Patkul looked earnestly at the Czar, as if to discover if he spoke in jest or earnest.
“Well,” added Peter, with narrowed eyes and signs of a rising temper. “Do you not think I shall yet utterly crush the Swede? I have had my lesson, Patkul.”
He seized a knife and stabbed moodily at the carpenter’s bench before him.
“Your Majesty has the genius to profit by it,” said Patkul gravely.
“All my battles are not going to be like Narva,” continued the Czar. “I have learnt something of war. The King of Poland is a fool. Why did he not train my Muscovites?”
“He told me, sire, that he had no officers, and complained that the Russians were out of hand and ravaging Lithuania.”
“I hope they may lay it waste from end to end,” said Peter. “At the same time, if any ever return to Russia, I will have them knouted for disobedience.”
He frowned as he thought of Augustus, a character that intensely irritated him; the elegant splendid Elector and the savage Czar had been only able to tolerate each other when both had been intoxicated; only in debauchery had they anything in common.
“He is a fool,” repeated the Czar. “If he had kept to the treaty of Birsen, Karl would have been ruined by now.”
“He lacked both money and means,” said Patkul, who had a certain friendship for Augustus, and a clear understanding of his difficulties.
“I think, sire, you can hardly conceive how he was, and is, hampered by the Polish Diet and families like the Sapieha.”
“He should punish them all. Had I been King of Poland, by now there would not be a rebel left,” answered Peter gloomily. “What is the merit of governing if one cannot overcome opposition?”
Patkul remembered the fate of the Strelitz who had ventured to oppose the Czar’s innovations, and the vengeance he had taken on his own wife and sister; certainly Peter knew how to make himself both feared and obeyed.
“Poland is in reality a Republic,” said the Livonian, “and Augustus is not free, even to punish.”
“Ah, Poland!” exclaimed the Czar impatiently. “What matter the laws and constitution of Poland? She can be dismembered as easily as that,” and he pulled apart a piece of wood he had snatched up in his strong fingers.
“The King of Sweden may take the crown of Poland,” said Patkul, thinking to rouse the Czar.
“And invade Saxony, and frighten the Elector’s fiddlers and dainty ladies!” laughed Peter.
“And invade Russia, sire.”
Peter rose.
“That is his design?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Well, we have a little time in which to drill our armies.”
“Sire, not so long.”
Peter smiled; he still did not seem greatly stirred by the account of the exploits of Karl.
“Is he not at Cracovia with a broken leg, eh, Patkul?”
“He mends fast; he is a creature of iron, and, once he is in the field again, Augustus will be driven before him as he was before.”
“Curse the Saxon,” exclaimed Peter, with sudden violence. “Had I faced Karl with 20,000 trained troops I had sent this Swede reeling backwards in his tracks!”
He spoke with a passion and a simple grandeur that warmed Patkul’s heart with some glimmerings of hope, unlikely as it seemed to him that out of the chaos that was Russia even Peter could raise an army that would overthrow the Swede, before whose arms the finest troops in Europe had broken.
“Klissow was extraordinary, sire,” he said. “The Saxons had never a chance——”
“And the Poles?”
“They broke and fled at the first cannonade.”
Peter made an impatient gesture.
“And Augustus still thinks to raise an army from these materials?”
“He is at Lublin or Marienbourg, sire, endeavoring to rouse the Palatinates.”
“Oh, he had better return to Dresden and amuse himself with his toes,” said Peter contemptuously.
“Karl would not leave him in peace, even in Dresden.”
“He will grovel?” asked Peter.
“I think he will,” replied Patkul. “He sent the Countess von Königsmarck to make terms. I know this, although the matter was kept secret.”
“A fribble and a fool!” cried Peter. “Have I ever had a chance, Patkul, with two such allies? This Saxon weakling—and Denmark, what does Denmark do?”
“He maintains a prudent silence, sire, and respects the treaty he dare not break.”
“A couple of dogs, of spiritless dogs!” said Peter fiercely. “But I, my friend, do not need either of them. The issue lies between Sweden and me.”
He paused, and fixed his dark powerful glance on the slight, energetic figure and resolute face of his general.
“Do you think,” he asked, in a quieter tone, “that this man’s work is to be compared to mine? I construct—he destroys. Is it easier to knock down a house with cannon or to build it up, carefully, brick by brick, with your own proper hands? And which is the more useful to mankind? I make Russia and Karl destroys Sweden.”
“But these conquests will enrich—as did those of the great Gustavus.”
“Nay, he does not fight for trade, for liberty, for the advancement of his people—for forts or markets, but for the empty fame of armies; he drains Sweden of men and money—to the point of exhaustion—for what? That he may make Europe stare at barren conquests.”
Peter, roused, as was his capricious manner, suddenly from a gloomy indifference to a deep enthusiasm—from melancholia, almost despair, to firm self-reliance and confidence—spoke with a power and a force that encouraged as it impressed Patkul, who hailed the man of genius and the great ruler in this young man in the peasant’s blouse who paced amid the litter of a workman’s shed; would to God, he thought, the Czar could always have his faith in himself, this clear outlook, this patience and calm judgment.
“All these lands will belong to Holy Russia,” continued the Czar. “Aye, and Poland too; his glory shall vanish, leaving but a name for children’s tales. I shall leave a power that will fight the world.”
He smiled, mournfully, almost tenderly, at Patkul.
“Are you dismayed at the progress of this Swede?” he asked, “and at my inaction? Do you think I show poorly beside his glory?”
He stepped up to the Livonian and laid a hand on the sleeve of his rich uniform.
“Look you, Patkul,” he said, with a noble air far removed from boasting, “he takes Varsovia and Cracovia—but I built St. Petersburg! He sets his heel on Poland, I give my hand to Russia, and raise her up—a nation among nations.”
Patkul was both moved and comforted.
“Ah, sire, would that you were always in this mood!”
A shadow passed over the Czar’s expressive face.
“Sometimes the devils get hold of me,” he muttered, “and nothing on earth seems real. When this war is over, I shall travel again. I should have seen Venice,” he added, irrelevantly, “had not that rebellion of the Strelitz called me back—think, a city on the sea! I, too, will have my city on the sea. A pity that Gordon died—he was a good man, a keen soldier, a faithful envoy. Poor Gordon, but I gave him a fine funeral.”
“Your Majesty is as well served now,” said Patkul gently.
“I know,” replied Peter warmly and affectionately.
“And those who serve me well shall be well rewarded.”
“Your Majesty’s success would reward me sufficiently,” said the Livonian simply. “Could I see the Swede defeated and my country freed——”
Peter interrupted.
“If you do not go down in these wars you will see Sweden ruined. As for your country—I shall be an easier master than Karl, if only because of my friendship to you,” he added, with a smile.
With this Patkul had to be contented, nay, grateful; perhaps in his innermost heart was a misgiving that Peter might prove as stern a tyrant as ever Karl or his father had been; he admired the Czar, he was fond of him, but he had not been able to deceive himself as to the terrible aspects of Peter’s character; he knew of his excesses, his cruelties, his fierce vengeances; it might have occurred to him that he was but devoting his life to rescue his unfortunate country from one master to place her under another, and that there could not be much liberty under the autocratic rule of Peter, but he trusted, with something of the faith of desperation, in the Czar’s love of progress and enlightenment, and hoped that a man so remarkable would by degrees reform himself as he reformed others.
There was, however, a shadow on his pleasant expressive face as Peter pronounced these words that referred to the future fate of his beloved Livonia.
The searching, though wild and mournful gaze of the Czar noted the shade that clouded the ardor of his general’s look.
“Patkul,” he said, “believe in me.”
The Livonian eagerly seized and eagerly pressed to his lips the work-worn hand of the Czar.
“Did I not believe in you, sire, I could not live,” he said quietly, but with intense feeling.
Peter smiled.
“Come into the house,” he answered.
The two men, the Czar in his workman’s apparel and Patkul in the splendid uniform of a Russian soldier, entered the little house called Marli.
In the room on the ground floor a meal was laid, roughly, yet many of the articles were of carved gold and beaten silver.
By the window where the late lilacs hung their blossoms from their thicket of close-packed leaves against the casement, Patkul saw his country-woman, now no longer Marpha, but baptized into the Orthodox Church by the name of Katherina.
She wore a handsome Russian dress of green velvet and orange-colored silk, both embroidered with gold; a long white gauze veil with a pearl edging hung from her stiff satin head-dress.
She was seated in a clumsy attitude, eating sweetmeats; neither her hands nor her face were clean, and already prosperity, idleness, and good-living were coarsening and spoiling her opulent beauty.
Patkul, looking at her, marveled at Peter; he was used to the refined loveliness of women like Aurora von Königsmarck, and to a court where women such as the Livonian would not have been tolerated as chambermaids.
Prince Mentchikoff entered, very splendid in European clothes, with a great curling peruke and a star on his breast, and looking very much like a courtier of King Louis.
Peter eyed him with satisfaction.
“My Lord Carmarthen had such a coat as that,” he said, fingering the skirts of heavy gray silk. “Do you remember, Danilovitch, what a fine gentleman he was? I should like to see him again—and his boat—that was a fine boat, Danilovitch.”
“When the war is over we will go again to England,” replied Mentchikoff. “They are the most sensible people in the world, and live in the most comfortable fashion.”
“Yet in too confined and precise a way,” returned Peter. “Nothing is to be changed or upset or altered.”
“Having achieved a fortunate constitution, under which it is a happiness to live,” said Patkul, “they are jealous to preserve it, and this temper shows in small things.”
The Tartar servant brought in the dinner; several kinds of drink, kvas, and pungent liquors, boiled cabbage and beetroot, pickled cucumbers and a great dish of parboiled fish, another of stewed meat.
The four took their places.
Katherina smiled pleasantly and placidly at every one; her breath already smelt of brandy, and she began drinking before she ate; her finery was stained with grease, for she was as often as not in the kitchen among the pots, and stale sugar disfigured her veil.
Patkul sat opposite to her, and his glance rested puzzled on this woman who had so entirely fascinated a man like Peter—perhaps the greatest man in Europe.
She accompanied him everywhere he went now; it was believed that he was going to marry her, even to make her his Empress if he could divorce Eudoxia; she was his confidante, and it was said, his adviser, in everything.
Her birth and breed made her sympathize with his schemes for a reform that would humiliate the nobility, and with the abolition of customs and conventions that made her own extraordinary elevation possible; like Mentchikoff, she was in favor of a new Russia where she could find her own fortunes; unlike him, no motives of patriotism, no appreciation what the task Peter was endeavoring to perform, mingled with her satisfaction at her personal good luck.
She was fond of the Czar; she had been as fond of Mentchikoff; she was ready to be as fond of any man whom it was her interest to serve; but as she could look no higher than Peter, her placid affections had concentrated on him; she was in many ways a remarkable woman, shrewd, well-balanced, quick and courageous; but it was difficult to know wherein Peter found the supreme attraction that caused him to be inseparable from her unless it was the immovable good nature and placid, healthy calm that took all his melancholies and caprices with a smile.
Patkul contrasted her in his mind with Hélène D’Einsiedel, so fair and soft and gentle; she seemed in his memory like a creature of another world, and his heart contracted with a sense of bitter loss as he recalled how she had come to him through the dark, snowy streets of Varsovia and placed her cold hands in his and offered him her chill lips in a mute sorrow of farewell.
And he had let her go, because he had shrunk from bringing her to Russia, among such company as the Czar kept.
But was she any happier now, in flight before the conqueror, and in what way, save for outward grossness, was Katherina worse than Aurora von Königsmarck, who pandered to a worse man, and exacted a higher price than did this peasant. While he was asking himself, with some bitterness, these questions, Peter, hitherto absorbed in his food, suddenly spoke:
“I shall keep you here, Patkul, Saxony is not worth your pains.”
The General flushed and started, the words came so pat on his reflections.
“I wish to return, sire,” he said.
“Why?” asked Peter, with a certain annoyance, but Katherina good-humoredly interfered.
“Why, let him go—his lady is there.”
Peter gave him a keen glance.
“You are safer in Russia,” he said. “Never trust a weakling,” he added shrewdly.
“Sire,” replied the Livonian, “as your envoy I am safe anywhere.”
“Never trust a weakling,” repeated the Czar.
But Patkul was resolute to return to Saxony.
CHAPTER II
AUGUSTUS, with more energy than might have been expected from his easy nature, set himself to redeem the disaster of Klissow.
Having taken advantage of the accident of Karl to spread the news of his death, he summoned a convocation of the Polish nobles, and in the reaction occasioned by the belief in the death of the terrible captain, Augustus, by promises, smiles, and largesses, gained the support of many of the Palatinates, who were only hesitating as to which was the winning side.
The Cardinal Primate himself, who had been so eager to point out to the Diet the necessity of dethroning Augustus to placate Karl, came to Lublin and took, with the other magnates, the oath of allegiance to the Elector.
A fresh army of 50,000 was raised before it became known that Karl was alive, and even in the face of this news it was voted that six weeks be given to the Swedes in which to declare their terms for peace or war, and the same time to the rebel Sapieha of Lithuania, in which to lay down their arms.
Meanwhile Peter showed signs of coming to his ally’s assistance when Augustus had despaired of help from that quarter; moved by the energy and eloquence of Patkul, the Czar sent that General to put some spirit into the wandering Muscovite troops in Lithuania and Ingria, and these, reduced to some order and discipline by the efforts of the gallant Livonian, began to make vigorous attacks on the garrisons the King of Sweden had left behind in the conquered Provinces; and even Karl’s veteran troops admitted that the Muscovites were not so entirely to be despised as they had been led to believe by Narva.
Count Piper saw his master’s glory stationary if not dimmed.
He did not urge the King to seize this moment to conclude a favorable peace, having already proved the uselessness of such advice; but he represented to him, as coldly as possible, that the renown won by his arms might suffer by his entry into the confused field of Polish politics, his meddling with intrigues so involved as to be hardly understandable by a foreigner.
“While your Majesty waits to dethrone the King of Poland, Muscovy grows stronger.”
“After Poland, Russia,” replied Karl from the bed where he lay confined with his broken leg. “But I shall dethrone Augustus if I stay here fifty years.”
And despite the advices of his generals he continued to support the Diet of Varsovia, which, acting in opposition to that of Lublin, had been called together by the intrigues of the Cardinal Primate, and endeavored to give expediency an air of decency by searching the laws for justification for actions sufficiently indicated by necessity, and so giving a glow of dignity to the submissions exacted by the conqueror.
Karl, whose sole amusement was hearing the Scandinavian sagas read to him, and who bore his enforced idleness, so bitter to one of his active spirit, without either irritation or lament, had received greatly into his friendship the young Palatine of Posen, whose chivalrous spirit, high courage, and honorable character were pleasing to Karl’s code of manhood. His brother-in-law, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, had been killed at the battle of Klissow (thus in reality rendering null the object of the war, which was to restore this prince to his domains), and the stern young King had no companion of his own age beyond this Polish noble.
Stanislaus, frank, affable, and generous, neither presumed on nor cringed for Karl’s favor, and cherished no ulterior designs; he was content to see his country delivered from Saxon rule and hoped nothing for himself from Karl’s conquests.
The Elector’s gleam of prosperity was short-lived. As soon as Karl could mount his horse he advanced on the remnants of the Saxon army who, in this brief breathing space, had rallied from their defeat at Klissow.
Gyllenstierna had sent from Sweden troops to the number of over 10,000 of whom 6000 were cavalry, and twenty pieces of cannon.
The Saxons, under Steinau, fell back on Russia. Karl pursued them, and, swimming the river Bug at the head of his cavalry, fell on them at Pultask and utterly defeated them, Steinau and his staff being among the fugitives; then they marched on Thorn on the Vistula, where the again defeated Augustus had taken refuge, and proceeded to besiege the town.
The desperate Elector contrived to escape from the beleaguered garrison and retired towards Saxony.
Karl was now master of Poland; General Rehnsköld with one division of the army holding the center of the country, the frontiers of Russia being guarded by other army corps, and Karl, with the flower of his troops, camped a few miles outside Thorn.
Nothing disturbed his glory which seemed now at the apogee; Denmark respected the treaty at Traventhal and accepted in silence the near approach of his hereditary enemy to its frontiers; Swedish ships were in possession of the Baltic seas; and the arms of Karl threatened at once Saxony, the Empire, and Russia.
North Europe awaited in silence the next step of this conqueror who, as soon as his transports with reinforcements had arrived from Sweden, proceeded to close round the imperial town of Thorn.
After a splendid resistance the city capitulated on the third of October; Karl made a display of generosity by his munificence and courtesy towards Röbel, the heroic governor, and one of meanness by taxing the town, already ruined by the war, far more than it could afford to pay; it was becoming more and more apparent that this King cared for little but war, and knew not how to appreciate any but military merit.
Dantzic and Ebling, two free and imperial towns on the Vistula, having been too nice in granting consent to the passage of the Swedish reinforcements, were soon made to feel the terror of the conqueror’s arms, Dantzic being forced to pay a heavy fine and Ebling being entered by the Swedes, soldiers quartered with the burghers, cannon packed in the squares, and the inhabitants reduced to throw themselves on their knees in the streets before his triumphal entry imploring mercy.
Karl mulcted the town in a large sum, seized her arms, and left a garrison there, proceeding, with unmoved grandeur, on his implacable conquests.
The intrigues of the Cardinal Primate, waxing bolder as the fortunes of Augustus waned, succeeded in inducing the Diet to declare the Elector of Saxony incapable of wearing the crown of Poland. The Diet, inspired by the wish of the conqueror, would have crowned the life-long intrigues of the Cardinal with success, by offering the throne to James Sobieski, son of the last King of Poland, but this Prince, together with his brother Constantine, was kidnapped by Saxon troops at Breslau and sent to close confinement in Germany.
The assembly at Varsovia therefore found themselves bound to find another rival to Augustus.
The Elector’s fortunes now indeed seemed desperate; there was little more to be hoped from Saxony, where he had exhausted every resource, and nothing to be hoped from Poland, where his party had dwindled to a faction among factions, and where Karl was more absolute master than Augustus had been at the height of his prosperity.
The Swede had taken up his winter quarters at Heilsburg in Polish Russia, and from there surveyed tranquilly his conquests and his neighbors who regarded him with the respect of fear.
The war, which had now lasted four years, had been for him a series of unchecked victories; his arms had suffered no reverse and his reputation flamed in Europe; there had been no such invincible captain since the great Condé, and men could not remember a king who made a war of conquest with justice and mercy; no outrage, no massacre, no pillaging, or burning, no excesses, large or small, could be imputed to the soldiers of Karl.
He had attained, in a few years, a glory which is seldom the reward of a long and splendid career.
“Are you not now satisfied, sire?” asked Count Piper, with a real curiosity.
Karl smiled; he was in a good humor, for he had made an end of the Polish intrigues and was on the eve of giving a new King to Poland; he gave little confidence to his minister, but continued to employ him as one useful in those matters so distasteful to his own spirit, now entirely absorbed in war.
“You think to get me back to Stockholm, Count?” he asked.
Count Piper smiled in his turn; he knew too well the iron obstinacy with which he had to deal to attempt to persuade Karl to any design.
“Sire,” he counter-questioned, “on whom now do you intend to make war?”
Karl lifted his cold blue eyes.
“There is always the Czar.”
“But he has withdrawn himself, sire. I believe he cares no more about the war, despite the appeals of the Elector. He is absorbed in building his new city.”
“I will topple over the foundations of his city,” replied the stern young King. “Piper, have you ever known me alter my mind? I told you some while since that I had a mind to dethrone the Czar.”
“The occupation of your Majesty’s life is to be war?”
“What other occupation is there for a gentleman?” asked Karl.
Count Piper did not attempt to argue with him nor to express any opinion on this speech; Karl’s career had been so startlingly and dazzlingly successful that it seemed useless to warn him or advise him; the cautious and prudent minister did not even venture now to point out the immense difficulties of an invasion of Russia, and the almost superhuman task it would be to subdue such a country and dethrone such a man as Peter.
Karl could point to achievements so splendid that it seemed an impertinence to hint at possible disaster, or to urge caution on one whose exploits had been heroic to the point of miracles.
“At least, sire, accept some of the fruits of your victories.”
“You mean the crown of Poland?” said Karl thoughtfully.
He rose and went to the door of the tent, and stood looking out into the encampment that was fresh with spring breezes.
The minister gazed at him with the questioning curiosity and amazement that this young man had never failed to rouse in his heart.
Karl was now twenty-two years of age; a temperate, active, and simple life had developed his already splendid constitution into perfect hardihood; physically he was like the ancient Vikings whose exploits formed the subject of the sole literature he cared to read; tall, in fine proportion, with powerful shoulders and slender hips, and with the easy carriage of the soldier and the horseman, a creature of bone and muscle, nerve and sinew perfectly attuned.
His face had slightly changed, broadened and grown harder in the lines, but the expression was the same, the full lips, the curved nostrils, the blank eyes showed the same unmoved courage, the same indifference to things about him that had once made Count Piper liken him to a god—or an animal.
He still wore a dark blue uniform of the plainest cut, a black satin cravat, and was without peruke or lace or ribbons or jewels; never in the slightest particular had he deviated from the austere conduct he had vowed to follow; his living was of the simplest, his couch a straw pallet or his own cloak; his food such as that eaten by the meanest foot soldier; since he left Stockholm he had never tasted wine nor spoken to a woman beyond the few words he had been forced to exchange with Aurora von Königsmarck. He passed his life in the camp, his companions were all soldiers, and little seemed to interest him beyond the things of war; the affairs of Sweden he left entirely in the hands of the regency; he cared nothing for the news from his capital, and never corresponded with his sole surviving relations, the Queen Dowager and his sisters.
Count Piper could not love him; perhaps because he had schooled himself to be above human weakness, no one loved him; certainly he never asked for anyone’s affections and disclosed to no one his thoughts; his immense pride seemed to be satisfied by the fear he inspired even in his friends and respect accorded him even by his enemies.
“The crown of Poland, sire,” said the minister, who could not resist looking upon the present situation from a statesman’s point of view. “Your Majesty is aware how easily you might obtain this for yourself?”
“Yes,” replied Karl dryly.
“It is what policy indicates.”
“I never loved your policy, Count,” said the King.
“Yet it is not to be disdained, even by a conqueror.”
Karl gave his short, ugly laugh.
“I think I can dispense with it. As for this crown, I think it pleases me more to give it away than to wear it.”
Piper had been expecting this; yet he resolved to endeavor to turn Karl’s fantastic pride in another direction, and inspire him with the desire for a glory more useful to Sweden and mankind.
“Your Majesty might be truly the liberator of this distracted country and unite all factions in concord under your protection; the Romist faith whose arrogant clergy have enslaved these people might in this manner receive a shrewd blow, and your Majesty appear as defender of the Evangelical faith.”
Karl did not reply to this proposition with that rude coldness with which he generally received suggestions not entirely in accordance with his own preconceived plans.
The truth was that the prospect held out by Count Piper tempted him.
The great Gustavus had established the Lutheran faith in Sweden and had banished forever from the North the corruption, the tyranny, and the superstition of the Roman priests; to do the same in a country as large and as important as Poland would be a feat that recommended itself to the ambition of Karl.
To take Poland not only from Augustus, but from the Pope, would have been a triumph such as he would have keenly enjoyed, for, while religion had had little influence on his life, he accorded his hereditary faith full respect and always enforced the observances of Lutheranism in his camp.
Count Piper watched him in silence, seeing that he was at least pondering the idea.
“Where will your Majesty find a King for Poland?” urged the minister. “Not even your entreaties will prevail upon Alexander Sobieski to accept the crown while his elder brothers are prisoners—and where is there any other pretender worthy of notice?”
Karl knew that he spoke the truth; with the romantic chivalry characteristic of the Polish nation, the youngest Sobieski had refused to accept the crown that the fortune of war prevented the eldest from enjoying, and there was, indeed, no one else especially indicated.
But to take this throne for himself was not sufficiently glorious for Karl; he wished to do the unusual, the extraordinary, to make the world stare—not by what he accepted, but by what he refused.
Even the design of appearing as champion of the reformed faith lost its attraction for him, because a great prince lately dead had made his chief fame in this part; Karl did not wish to follow in the footsteps of anyone.
“No,” he said sternly, suddenly letting the tent flap fall and turning to look at his minister. “I have more pleasure in giving away crowns than in taking them.”
“You would, sire, sacrifice your interest——”
Karl interrupted.
“My interest!” he repeated as if offended, then with his ugly smile: “You should have been minister to some Italian prince, Piper, you are so fond of intrigues.”
The Count bit his lip and was silent; he would have liked to have mentioned Sweden and her interests, but knew the cold repulse he would meet with.
The King crossed to his camp table and turned over some papers the secretary had left for his inspection, but with an absent look and a careless hand.
Count Piper was about to take his leave when his soldier servant ushered in the young Palatine of Posnania and Alexander Sobieski.
This latter had waited on Karl to urge him to revenge the capture of his two brothers by Augustus; it entirely suited both the temper and the policy of the King of Sweden to promise him satisfaction, but he was not now so cordial towards the young prince whose obstinate refusal to accept his father’s crown had rivaled and perhaps shadowed the generosity and strangeness of his own action.
But he greeted the two young Poles pleasantly, and offered each in turn the strong white hand from which he had drawn the long buffle glove worn with rein and sword pommel.
They were both brilliantly dressed, charming and graceful in manner and looks.
Karl’s eyes, blue and cold as frozen water, cast a strange glance on the elegant figure of Stanislaus Leczinski.
“Count,” he said, “here is the future King of Poland.”
The minister was startled into an imprudence; staring at the amazed face of the young noble, he cried impetuously:
“The Palatine is too young, sire!”
“He is older than I am,” said Karl dryly.
CHAPTER III
KARL, having given a new King to Poland, and satisfied his somber pride by being an “incognito” spectator of the election of the man whose elevation he owed entirely to Sweden, marched on Lemberg, the capital of Galicia, and took this town by assault, enriching his army with the treasures of Augustus that were stored here, and that the inhabitants surrendered to troops that neither burnt nor pillaged; he had hardly established his garrison in the conquered town when he was joined by Stanislaus Leczinski, cast from his throne after a reign of six weeks, and forced to fly for his life before the Elector of Saxony, who had appeared before Varsovia with a new army of 20,000 men, and had triumphantly entered the capital, scattering the Polish guard of Stanislaus and the Swedish garrison under Count Horn. His reverse was received with calm by the King of Sweden; it did not touch him personally, as he had not been present at the disaster, and he was not displeased at the opportunity to twice give the throne of Poland to the man whom he called friend.
“Let Augustus amuse himself,” he told Stanislaus. “How long do you think he will hold Varsovia when I am before the gates?”
The words, spoken quietly and in no spirit of boasting, proved to be the truth.
Karl, with Stanislaus riding at his side, marched back on the capital, and the army of Augustus, consisting of lukewarm Poles, raw Saxon recruits, and vagabond Muscovites, melted before the approach of the terrible captain.
Count Schulenbourg, in command of the Elector’s army, did all that could be done with such an army, and by a series of masterly marches, fell back into Posnania where Karl overtook him near Runitz, and in a sharp action forced him to retreat, without, however, throwing him into disorder.
With the small remnant of his army he managed to escape, passing the Oder in the night, showing a generalship so superb as to force a compliment from the victor.
“We are the vanquished,” said Karl. “M. de Schulenbourg has out-generaled us.”
He could afford to be generous, for Augustus had once more fled into Saxony, and was engaged in fortifying Dresden, a task that showed his fear of his enemy.
Stanislaus was crowned with splendid ceremonies in Varsovia by the Archbishop of Lemberg, the Cardinal Primate dying that very day after having refused to perform the ceremony on the grounds of displeasing the Pope who had threatened to excommunicate all those who elevated a Protestant King in place of a Catholic.
There was now only one person who dare even threaten Sweden, and that was the Czar. The bands of wandering Cossacks that he had sent to help Augustus had been easily subdued by the Swedish generals, and campaign after campaign opened and closed without his taking any part in the war beyond this feeble aid to Augustus.
But he was building St. Petersburg and creating an army and a navy, and when Augustus was forced to abandon Poland, Patkul, the envoy of the Czar in Dresden, was entrusted to persuade the Elector to meet Peter at Grodno, and once more contrive plans against the might of Sweden.
Peter appeared at Grodno with 70,000 trained troops, engineers, artillery, horse, and foot.
Augustus had nothing but a few Saxons under General Schulenbourg, and some bitterness mingled with his marvel at the change in their respective circumstances since last they had met at Birsen.
“Karl will not find it so easy to dethrone you as it was to dethrone me,” he remarked to Peter.
“No,” said the Czar.
He was called from the conference to put down a revolt in Astrakan, but his generals proceeded to put into practise the plans agreed upon by the two kings.
Schulenbourg advanced on Poland, and the Russian army, divided in small groups, marched into the Baltic Provinces.
There Karl met and defeated them, one after the other; he captured the baggage of Augustus with great store of gold and silver, and a large quantity of specie belonging to Prince Mentchikoff.
In two months the Russians were entirely defeated, and Schulenbourg again obliged to retreat; Karl drove the Muscovites before him to the frontiers of Russia, and Rehnsköld utterly defeated Schulenbourg at the battle of Fraustadt.
Karl then turned and marched on Saxony, passing through Silesia, without heeding the consternation of Germany and the protests of the Diet of Ratisbon.
Saxony was at his feet in a few weeks, and from the camp of Altranstadt he dictated his peace terms, forcing the Saxons to provide food and lodging and pay for his soldiers, but most strictly preventing these from the least insult, outrage, or disorder.
He passed his word to permit no excesses of any kind if the inhabitants submitted to his orders, and as his honor was well known to be unblemished a certain tranquillity took possession of the conquered country, which waited, with more resignation than despair, the terms of the invincible Swede.
Augustus, a fugitive in Poland, sent a certain Baron D’Imhof and M. Pfingsten to the camp at Altranstadt to demand terms of peace.
These two envoys arrived at night, but were immediately admitted to the presence of the King.
Each, despite the desperate importance of their mission, felt all emotion absorbed in a curiosity as to this man who had in a few years laid North Europe under his feet, and behaved in a manner so extraordinary for a conqueror.
Karl, who had no personal attendant, valet, or servant, rose from the rough camp bed where he took his few hours’ repose, and came at once to meet the envoys of Augustus.
If he felt any satisfaction in this moment, when the man who had so carelessly and contemptuously affronted him was reduced to send to sue for mercy, it was not betrayed in his passive countenance.
He might indeed be used to triumphs; few men of his years had ever had a career of such uninterrupted success, and perhaps he was already indifferent to the haughty position of conqueror or at least too well used to it; he stood a moment holding up a little lamp and looking at the two Saxon gentlemen who stood, still in their traveling cloaks, bare-headed before him.
For the first second they did not know who stood before them; they were used to the magnificence and display of Augustus that he maintained even in his downfall, and Karl in his plain coat and short hair looked like an infantryman.
“The King,” said Count Piper, with a curious pride in the man whom he disliked.
Karl cut short their rather confused compliments.
“You are from the Elector of Saxony?” he demanded sternly, and set the lantern on the table.