The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

It was a total breakdown; the army had disappeared, and the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him the country's honor. That had sunk out of sight amid the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this undignified defeat. The Czar was in full flight. All Peter's plans of conquest, his dreams of European expansion and of navigating the northern seas, his hopes of glory, his faith in his civilizing mission, had utterly faded. And he himself had collapsed upon their heaped-up ruins. Onward he fled, feeling the Swedish soldiers on his heels. He wept, he sued for peace, vowing he would treat at once and submit to any sacrifice; he sent imploring appeals to the States-General of Holland, to England and to the Emperor, praying for mediation.

But swiftly he recovered possession of his faculties. Then, raising his head—through the golden haze with which his insufficient education, the infatuation inherent to his semi-oriental origin, and his inexperience, had filled his eyes, through the rent of that mighty catastrophe and that cruel lesson—he saw and touched the truth at last! He realized what he must set himself to do if he was to become that which he fain would be. There must be no more playing at soldiers and sailors; no more of that farce of power and glory, in which, till now, he had been the chief actor; no more aimless adventure, undertaken in utter scorn of time and place. He must toil now in downright earnest; he must go forward, step by step; measure each day's effort, calculate each morrow's task, let each fruit ripen ere he essayed to pluck it; learn patience and dogged perseverance. He did it all. He found means within him and about him to carry out his task. The strong, long-enduring, long-suffering race of which he came endowed him with the necessary qualities, and gave him its own inexhaustible and never-changing devotion and self-sacrifice.

Ten armies may be destroyed, he will bring up ten others to replace them, no matter what the price. His people will follow him and die beside him to the last man, to the last morsel of bread snatched from its starving jaws. A month hence, the fugitive from Narva will belong to a vanished, forgotten, almost improbable past; the future victor of Poltava will have taken his place.

Of the Russian army, as it had originally taken the field, about twenty-three thousand men remained—a certain number of troops—the cavalry under Sheremetief's command, and Repnin's division. The Czar ordered fresh levies. He melted the church-bells into cannon. In vain the clergy raised the cry of sacrilege; he never faltered for a moment. He went hither and thither giving orders and active help; rating some, encouraging others, inspiring everyone with some of his own energy—that energy which his misfortune had spurred and strengthened. Yet, Byzantine as he was by nature, he could not resist the temptation to endeavor to mislead public opinion. Matvieief was given orders to draw up his own special description of the battle of Narva and its consequences, for the benefit of the readers of the Gazette de Hollande and of the memoranda which he himself addressed to the States-General.