Sweden was then a power for whose alliance and friendly interest the most powerful monarchs of Europe contended. Louis XIV. of France sought the aid of Charles in the war then waging between France and England; and Marlborough, leader of the English forces in France, went personally to the court of Charles in order to solicit that monarch’s aid or at least his neutrality in the great struggle then in progress. Charles himself was fully confident of victory; and in his romantic plans drawn up for the future, the overthrow of Peter formed only an episode. A year, perhaps, would be required for the full accomplishment of the Russian enterprise; then he, Charles of Sweden, victor of Moscow and arbiter from the Kremlin, would hastily return to western Europe and begin preparations on a gigantic scale for his master-achievement--the dethronement of the Pope of Rome, and the demolition of the Papacy. Desire-dream of many; achievement of none: for this magic Gibraltar elusively endures bearing its age-old scars as brightest ornamentations. Charles XII. did not, indeed, attack Rome; but did Pultowa save the Papacy? No: the missiles of the Madman of the North whether hurled in the real or only in that futile future plan, would have been equally ineffectual; the magic rock would, perhaps bear another scar bright shining today as trophy of its past struggle and victory. The lesson of history would seem to teach mortals to expect the unexpected. At Saratoga, at Valmy, at Pultowa, in the Teutoberger Wald, at Marathon, and at Babylon--the undreamed of, the altogether unanticipated, unprepared for, both by the combatants themselves and the world-spectators--took place. Charles XII., who had set out from Sweden with an army of eighty-five thousand men, Swedes and allies, escaped from the shambles of Pultowa only by swimming across a river red with blood and thus reaching an alien shore weak, wounded, a fugitive, and comparatively alone. Eighty-five thousand men died for the gratification of the personal ambition of the Swedish king; and, by the irony of fate, for the ruination of their native land and the aggrandizement of Peter the First, subsequently and, perhaps, consequently Peter the Great, of Russia. SCLAVONIC VERSUS TEUTONIC. The battle of Pultowa was the first decisive victory of the Sclavonic race over the Germanic. Arnold, in his _Lectures on Modern History_, says that the last chapter of the history of Europe will narrate the achievements leading to Muscovite ascendency and the glories of world-dominant Panslavism. Do nations and races attain only to a certain degree of excellence and then deteriorate? And is that the plan fatefully fixed for the planet Earth? Mycenæ, Troy, Philæ, Babylon, Athens make answer in the affirmative. A poem, _Christ in the Universe_, by Alice Meynell comes to mind. In a few master touches the writer describes God’s way of revealing Himself to us mortals: