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Updated: June 12, 2025
But I had no occasion to push at a winter journey of this kind; 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 either by sea or land 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 Hamburgh.
There are robes and weapons of the other Carls and Gustavs, but the splendour of Swedish history is embodied in these two names, and in that of Gustavus Vasa, who lies entombed in the old cathedral at Upsala. When I had grasped their swords, and the sabre of Czar Peter, captured at Narva, I felt that there were no other relics in Sweden which could make my heart throb a beat the faster.
He knew full well that Charles XII., since the battle of Narva, looked with utter contempt upon the Russian soldiers, and he was himself fully conscious of the vast superiority of the Swedish troops.
If they could not seize the town, they must all die of hunger. The fortifications of the place were weak, but the besieging army was sorely changed from that which had fought under the walls of Narva. It had spent too long a time in fat quarters, in Saxony and Poland, to be fit to endure this terrible campaign.
It has at least shown Europe that it possesses fighting qualities: a changed Nation, since Karl XII. beat them easily, at Narva, 8,000 to 80,000, in the snowy morning, long since! Czernichef once come, and in his place in the Camp of Tintz, business instantly begins, business, and a press of it, in right earnest; upon the hitherto idle Daun.
Riga continued invested by the king of Poland, while Peter the czar of Muscovy made his approaches to Narva, at the head of a prodigious army, purposing, in violation of all faith and justice, to share the spoils of the youthful monarch.
He confessed in a humble voice that he was the son of clock-maker at Narva, that his buckles were valueless, and that he had come to beg an alms of me. I gave him four Louis, and he asked me to keep his secret. I replied that if anyone asked me about him that I should say what was absolutely true, that I knew him nothing about him. "Thank you; I am now going to Marseilles."
Petersburg to arise as if by magic from a desolate, icy swamp in the far north. Charles of Sweden scorned and defied him. At Narva in 1700, Charles with a small force of his famous troops drove Peter with a huge horde of his Russians to shameful flight.
Three months later, the Tsar, who was besieging Narva, in Ingria, with 80,000 Muscovites, learnt that Charles had landed, and was advancing with 20,000 Swedes. Another 30,000 were being hurried up by the Tsar when Charles, with only 8,000 men, came in contact with 25,000 Russians at Revel.
He turned his victorious army upon Poland, dethroned the king, invaded Saxony, and prepared to invade Russia with an army of eighty thousand troops. His cool adversary, who since his defeat at Narva had been prosecuting his reforms and reorganizing his army and building a navy, was more of a wily statesman than a successful general.
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