Of course some escaped, but great numbers were taken prisoners. Many of the officers, separated from their men, wandered about in search of the king, being without any rallying point until they could find him. After suffering many cruel hardships and much exposure in the lurking-places where they attempted to conceal themselves, great numbers of them were hunted out by their enemies and made prisoners. In the mean time, those who had the king under their charge urged his majesty to allow them to convey him with all speed out of the country. The nearest way of escape was to go westward to the Turkish frontier, which, as has already been said, was not far distant, though there were three rivers to cross on the way--the Dnieper, the Bog, and the Dniester. The king was very unwilling to listen to this advice. Peter had several times sent a flag of truce to him since he had entered into the Russian dominions, expressing a desire to make peace, and proposing very reasonable terms for Charles to accede to. To all these proposals Charles had returned the same answer as at first, which was, that he should not be ready to treat with the Czar until he arrived at Moscow. Charles now said that, before abandoning the country altogether, he would send a herald to the Russian camp to say that he was now willing to make peace on the terms which Peter had before proposed to him, if Peter was still willing to adhere to them. Charles was led to hope that this proposal might perhaps be successful, from the fact that there was a portion of his army who had not been engaged at Pultowa that was still safe; and he had no doubt that a very considerable number of men would succeed in escaping from Pultowa and joining them. Indeed, the number was not small of those whom the king had now immediately around him, for all that escaped from the battle made every possible exertion to discover and rejoin the king, and so many straggling parties came that he soon had under his command a force of one or two thousand men. This was, of course, but a small remnant of his army. Still, he felt that he was not wholly destitute of means and resources for carrying on the struggle in case Peter should refuse to make peace. So he sent a trumpeter to Peter's camp with the message; but Peter sent word back that his majesty's assent to the terms of peace which he had proposed to him came too late. The state of things had now, he said, entirely changed; and as Charles had ventured to penetrate into the Russian country without properly considering the consequences of his rashness, he must now think for himself how he was to get out of it. For his part, he added, he had got the birds in the net, and he should do all in his power to secure them.