Their men-at-arms especially, who are called either hussars or pancernes, are always attended by several valets, who lead their horses, which have ornamented bridles with plates of silver and silver nails, embroidered saddles, saddle-bows and gilt stirrups, sometimes made of massive silver, with saddle-cloth trailing in the fashion of the Turks, whose magnificence the Poles imitate as nearly as possible. But though the cavalry is so gorgeous the foot are wretched, ill-clad, ill-armed, without uniform clothes or anything regular; at least that is how they were up to 1710. These foot-soldiers, who are like wandering Tartars, bear hunger, cold, fatigue, and all the hardship of war with incredible endurance. The characteristics of the ancient Sarmatæ, their ancestors, can still be seen in the Poles; the same lack of discipline, the same fury in assault, the same readiness to run away and to return to the field, the same mad fury of slaughter when they are victorious. The King of Poland at first consoled himself with the idea that these two armies would fight for him, that the Polish Pospolite would arm at his orders, and that all these forces, united with his Saxon subjects and his Russian allies, would make up a multitude before whom the small Swedish force would not dare to appear. But he saw himself suddenly deprived of this means of succour through the very pains which he had taken to have them all at once. Accustomed in his hereditary dominions to absolute power, he was perhaps too confident that he could govern Poland like Saxony. The beginning of his reign raised malcontents, his very first acts irritated the party which was opposed to his election, and alienated almost all the rest. The Poles resented the fact that their towns were filled with Saxon garrisons and their frontiers with troops. The nation, far more anxious to maintain their own liberties than to attack their neighbours, did not consider the king’s attack on Sweden and his invasion of Livonia as advantageous to the State. It is difficult to deceive a free nation concerning its interests. The Poles saw that if this war, undertaken against their wishes, was unsuccessful, their country, unprotected on every side, would fall a prey to the King of Sweden, and that if it succeeded they would be subdued by their own king, who as soon as he was master of Livonia as well as Saxony would be able to hem in Poland between these two countries.