The battle of Pultava, if it destroyed the power of Sweden, did not put an end to the war. Charles XII., from his refuge at Bender on Turkish soil, tried to stir up his hosts to take his part and declare war against Russia. Peter himself, flushed with triumph and ever steady to the policy of enlarging the sea boundary of his country, was by no means averse to the idea of driving back the Turkish empire from the Dniester to the Danube. The intense religious spirit of the Russians, always a potent factor in the policy of Russia in the East, impelled the Czar to put himself forward as the liberator of the oppressed Christians of Moldavia and Wallachia. But he was too wary to take the first step. After much hesitation the Sultan made up his mind. Urged on by his fear of seeing a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, he declared war against Peter in 1710, and the next year saw the Czar at the head of a large army on the Pruth. Fortune however now declared against him. By sheer bad management Peter contrived to get his army completely hemmed in between the river, the marshes, and the Turkish army, and was completely at the mercy of his enemies. Luckily for him the grand vizier was willing to treat for peace, and Peter was enabled to save himself and his army from an ignominious surrender, by giving back to the Turks the port of Azof, and destroying all Russian fortresses on Turkish territory. Charles XII. was sent back to his own dominions, which he found threatened from all sides by the Russians, the Danes and the Poles. For seven years he struggled in vain against superior forces abroad, and the disaffection of the nobles at home. [Sidenote: =Pacification of the North, 1720.=] By 1716 he had lost every acre of German soil. In 1718 a bullet shot by one of his own men terminated his career as he was besieging the fortress of Friedrickshall in Norway. The death of Charles XII. put an end to many intrigues, and made the restoration of a general peace more easy. Sweden had learned the lesson which her king had refused to learn. By a succession of treaties, which culminated in the peace of Nystädt between Sweden and Russia in 1720, Hanover became the possessor of Bremen and Verden; Augustus of Saxony was recognised as the rightful king of Poland, Prussia obtained part of Swedish Pomerania, with the islands of Usedom and Rugen, and the towns of Stettin and Dantzig; Frederick of Denmark was permitted to annex the duchy of Schleswig, but had to restore the rest of his conquests and possessions to Sweden, while Russia, the largest gainer of all, obtained Ingria, Esthonia, Livonia, and part of Carelia, and promised to surrender Finland.