The severe discipline under which Charles’s troops lived is well known; they did not pillage towns taken by assault without permission; they pillaged in an orderly way, and desisted at the first signal. The Swedes boast to this day of the discipline they kept in Saxony: yet the Saxons complain that the most terrible outrages were committed among them. These contradictory statements would be irreconcilable if we did not remember that men look at the same thing from different points of view. It would have been very strange had not the conquerors sometimes abused their privileges, and had not the conquered regarded the smallest damage as the most terrible injury. One day as the King was riding near Leipzig a Saxon peasant threw himself at his feet to ask justice against a grenadier, who had just gone off with what he had intended for his family dinner. The King had the soldier called. “Is it true,” he asked sternly, “that you have robbed this man?” “Sire,” answered the soldier, “I have not done him so much harm as your Majesty has done his master, for you have stolen a kingdom from him, while I have only taken a turkey from this rustic.” The King gave the peasant ten ducats, and pardoned the soldier for the boldness of the repartee, but he added, “Remember, friend, that I have taken a kingdom from King Augustus, but I have taken nothing for myself.” The great Leipzig fair was held as usual, tradesmen attended it in perfect security; not one Swedish soldier was to be seen in the fair; it might have been said that the only object of the Swedish army in Saxony was to keep the peace: the King ruled throughout the Electorate with as absolute a power and as deep a tranquillity as in Stockholm. King Augustus, a wanderer in Poland, and deprived both of his kingdom and his electorate, at last wrote a letter with his own hand to Charles XII to ask for a peace. He commissioned Baron Imhof, accompanied by M. Finsten of the Privy Council, secretly to deliver this letter; he gave them full powers and _carte blanche_, directing them to try to obtain for him reasonable and Christian conditions. He was obliged to conceal his overtures for peace and to refrain from having recourse to the mediation of any prince, for being then in Poland, at the mercy of the Russians, he had reason to fear that the dangerous ally whom he had abandoned would take vengeance on him for his submission to the conqueror. His two plenipotentiaries came by night to Charles’s camp and had a private audience. The King read the letter, and said, “Gentlemen, you shall have your answer in a moment.” Then he went into his office and wrote as follows-- “I consent to grant peace on the following conditions, in which it must not be expected that I will make the least alteration:-- “1. That King Augustus renounce for ever the crown of Poland, that he acknowledge Stanislas as lawful king; and that he promise never to recover the throne, even after the death of Stanislas.