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The forces of the Russians have been variously estimated at from forty thousand to one hundred thousand. Peter, the day before this disastrous battle, had left the intrenchments at Narva to go to Novgorod, ostensibly to hasten forward the march of some reinforcements. When Peter was informed of the annihilation of his army he replied, with characteristic coolness,
I was bound to England, not to Moscow, and my route lay two ways: either I must go on as the caravan went, till I came to Jarislaw, and then go off west for Narva and the Gulf of Finland, and so on to Dantzic, where I might possibly sell my China cargo to good advantage; or I must leave the caravan at a little town on the Dwina, from whence I had but six days by water to Archangel, and from thence might be sure of shipping either to England, Holland, or Hamburg.
He then turned like lightning against Peter, who was industriously besieging Narva, and with eight thousand Swedes wiped out an army of fifty thousand Russians . Lastly he defeated the king of Poland. Though Charles was a remarkable military leader, he was a foolish ruler. He undertook to wrest Poland from its king, to whom he attributed the formation of the league against him.
But Peter not only made new military preparations, but prosecuted his schemes of internal improvement, and projected, after his unfortunate defeat at Narva, the union, by a canal, of the Baltic and Caspian Seas.
On the 3d of January the League for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly held a meeting at which were present 210 delegates, representing the Socialist parties as well as various democratic organizations and many factories that of Putilov, that of Oboukhov, and still others from the outskirts of Narva, from the districts of Viborg, Spassky, and Petrogradsky, from the Isle Vassily.
It has been calculated that it obtained in this way a share in no less than 122 factories, and hence arose among the peasantry a popular saying: "Where there is a church, there you find a pope, And where there is a factory, there you find a Knoop."* The biggest creation of the firm was a factory built at Narva in 1856, with nearly half a million spindles driven by water-power.
At the Battle of Narva there were two surprises: one when Peter found that he knew almost nothing about the art of warfare, and the other when it was revealed to Charles XII. that he was a military genius and his natural vocation was that of a conqueror.
Europe was now astonished to discover that the Swedish king was an antagonist to be feared. In the field he shared the hardships of the common soldier, and was as brave as a lion. Charles now attacked the Russian army before Narva, in Livonia.
After an engagement of three hours the entrenchments were stormed on all sides, the right wing of the Russians fleeing to the Narva and crowding the bridge with its retreating hosts. So dense was the mass that the bridge gave way beneath them, precipitating them into the stream, in which eighteen thousand of the panic-stricken wretches were drowned.
Charles XII, in the battle of Narva, we cannot well quote, for the Russians were at that time hardly to be regarded as Europeans, also the principal circumstances, even of the battle, are too little known. Buonaparte had at Dresden 120,000 against 220,000, therefore not the double.
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