But the allies soon found that they had reckoned without their host. Charles XII. of Sweden was one of those rare spirits who are born with a perfect genius for fighting. Without any gifts as a strategist, without any studied knowledge of the art of war, he was a born fighter. He loved fighting for fighting’s sake. He was never happier than when on campaign. He enjoyed the very hardships of war, and every soldier in his army knew that whatever might be his own privations, his king was sharing them all. With an unlimited belief in his own fortunes he succeeded in making every one else believe in them too. The enthusiasm of his army was unbounded. They willingly rendered to him an unquestioning obedience, and followed him gladly wherever he pointed the way. A man with such gifts was not going to wait until his unwieldy antagonists had united their forces. Early in May 1700 he sailed straight to Copenhagen and ended the Danish war at a blow. Frederick IV. could not defend his capital, and was obliged to accept the mediation of England and Holland, and to conclude the treaty of Travendal, by which he withdrew from the alliance with Poland and Russia. Leaving Denmark, Charles sailed to the Gulf of Finland where Peter was besieging the important fortress of Narva. Although he had only some 8000 men against Peter’s 60,000 Russians, he did not hesitate to order an attack. The huge undisciplined masses of Peter’s army were quickly thrown into confusion, and fled panic-stricken to their own country, leaving Charles the undisputed master of the Baltic coast. Turning southwards the Swedish king marched through Livonia and Courland into Poland, occupied Warsaw in 1702, defeated the king, Augustus the Strong of Saxony, who had been elected to the Polish crown on the death of John Sobieski in 1697, at the battle of Clissow, and drove him into Saxony. In 1703 he captured Thorn and Dantzig, procured the deposition of Augustus in an assembly held at Warsaw in February 1704, and imposed Stanislas Leczinski upon the Poles as king in his stead. He then resumed his course of military triumph, overran Lithuania, driving out the Russians in 1705, defeated Schulenberg at Frauenstadt in 1706, and finally invaded Saxony in 1707, where he forced Augustus to conclude the peace of Altranstadt in the September of that year, by which Stanislas Leczinski was recognised as king of Poland, and the unfortunate Patkul was surrendered as a victim to the cruelty of Charles, who, in defiance of every principle of humanity, had him broken on the wheel as a traitor. [Sidenote: =Position of Charles XII., 1708.=]