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Updated: May 9, 2025
When Lewenhaupt, in the October of 1708, was striving to join Charles in the Ukraine, the Czar suddenly attacked him near the Borysthenes with an overwhelming force of fifty thousand Russians.
The lately arrived Minister from Sweden, Count Lewenhaupt, was present with his wife, whose dress of the thickest, most lustrous satin of a peach-blossom tint, covered with deep falls of point lace, was very elegant. Mrs. Franklin Kinney wore a rich mauve satin beneath point applique lace. Mme. Berghmann wore black silk, embroidered in wreaths of invisible purple, and trimmed with Brussels lace.
Napoleon thus epitomises the earlier operations of Charles's invasion of Russia: "That prince set out from his camp at Aldstadt, near Leipsic, in September 1707, at the head of 46,000 men, and traversed Poland; 20,000 men, under Count Lewenhaupt, disembarked at Riga; and 15,000 were in Finland. He was therefore in a condition to have brought together 80,000 of the best troops in the world.
On July 8, the decisive battle was fought. The victory lay with the Russians, and Charles was forced to fly for his life. His best officers were prisoners. A column under Lewenhaupt succeeded in joining the king, now prostrated by his wound and by fever. At the Dnieper, Charles was carried over in a boat; the force, overtaken by the Russians, was compelled to capitulate.
Such had been the bold system of the Carthaginian general; but Charles acted on no such principle, inasmuch as he caused Lewenhaupt, one of his generals who commanded a considerable detachment, and escorted a most important convoy, to follow him at a distance of twelve days' march.
Their artillery consisted of four field-pieces; and their powder was so bad that it did not, as Count Poniatowsky and Lewenhaupt both affirm, throw the musket-balls more than thirty yards from the muzzles of the pieces. And yet these brave soldiers balanced fortune even against such overwhelming numbers.
A Swedish victory, under Lewenhaupt, at Gemavers, in Courland, was neutralised by the capture of Mittau. But Poland was now torn from Augustus, and Charles's nominee, Stanislaus, was king. Denmark had been forced into neutrality; exaggerated reports of the defeat at Gemavers had once more stirred up the remnants of the old Strelitz.
By this dislocation of his forces he exposed Lewenhaupt to be overwhelmed separately by the full force of the enemy, and deprived the troops under his own command of the aid which that general's men and stores might have afforded, at the very crisis of the campaign.
When Charles reached the Dnieper, he unexpectedly marched to unite with Mazeppa in the Ukraine, instead of continuing his advance on Moscow. Menzikoff intercepted Lewenhaupt on the march with a great convoy to join Charles, and that general was only able to cut his way through with 5,000 of his force. Mazeppa's own movement was crushed, and he only joined Charles as a fugitive, not an ally.
Lewenhaupt fought bravely for three days, and succeeded in cutting his way through the enemy, with about four thousand of his men, to where Charles awaited him near the river Desna; but upwards of eight thousand Swedes fell in these battles; Lewenhaupt's cannon and ammunition were abandoned; and the whole of his important convoy of provisions, on which Charles and his half-starved troops were relying, fell into the enemy's hands.
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