Thanks to the means raised in this manner, the Swedish army was provided with an entirely new outfit of clothes and furnished with necessary provisions. Every regiment established a savings bank of its own, in which the soldiers deposited their earnings. The castle of Alt-Ranstædt was the headquarters of Charles XII., situated close by the memorable battlefield of Lutzen. The sojourn of Charles XII. in Saxony was an incident of universal importance to the history of Europe. He had with his soldiers approached the scene of a conflict which was shaking the whole of Western and Southern Europe. The situation was such that it for the moment hung at the point of the victorious sword of Charles XII. The great question was whether he was resolved to take an active part in the universal conflict. Charles was besieged at his headquarters by princes, warriors and statesmen, who came to pay their respects, desirous of winning his favor and of getting an idea of his plans. The Swedish invasion of Saxony was highly beneficial to the interests of France, and Louis XIV. was the first to admit it, anxious to make the stay of Charles as long as possible, because it had caused a standstill in the hostilities against France. The Duke of Marlborough was among the visitors of Charles XII. He brought a letter of courtesy from Queen Anne, who wrote that the letter “came not from her chancery but from her heart, and was written by her own hand.” She longed to meet the famous king personally. The duke’s errand was to find out whether Charles was to join the fighting forces of Western Europe or to attack Russia. He was glad to learn that the latter move was the one which the king had in mind. Although the two great warriors expressed mutual admiration, neither was sympathetically impressed by the other. Charles XII. thought Marlborough looked “too fine” for a soldier, while the latter thought the rude simplicity of the king an affectation by which to obtain notoriety. On account of the great influx of distinguished visitors, the style of living was quite different at the royal headquarters of Alt-Ranstædt to what it was during the Polish and Russian wars. But the king kept up the heavy military drills and long individual expeditions on horseback, which he thought indispensable. One of the first ones of the latter which he undertook was to visit the battlefield of Lutzen. The king remembered distinctly all that he had read about the famous battle, and made clear to his generals the various positions of the two armies. At Schwedenstein, the place where Gustavus Adolphus fell, he lingered for a long while in silence. At last he said: “I always have tried to live as he did. May God grant me the grace of dying in like manner.”