Sept. 11.] Menzikoff, at the head of some horse and foot, attacked the king's advanced guard, threw them into disorder, and killed a number of his men. He lost a great number of his own, indeed, but that did not discourage him. Charles immediately hastened to the field of battle, and with some difficulty repulsed the Russians, at the hazard of his own life, by engaging a party of dragoons, by whom he was surrounded. All this while Mazeppa did not appear, and provisions began to grow scarce. The Swedish soldiers, seeing their king share in all their dangers, fatigues, and wants, were not dispirited; but though they admired his courage, they could not refrain from murmuring at his conduct. The orders which the king had sent to Levenhaupt to march forward with all haste, to join him with the necessary supplies, were not delivered by twelve days so soon as they should have been. This was a long delay as circumstances then stood. However, Levenhaupt at length began his march; Peter suffered him to pass the Boristhenes, but as soon as his army was got between that river and the lesser ones, which empty themselves into it, he crossed over after him, and attacked him with his united forces, which had followed in different corps at equal distances from one another. This battle was fought between the Boristhenes and the Sossa.[75] Prince Menzikoff was upon his return with the same body of horse, with which he had lately engaged Charles XII. General Baur followed him, and the czar himself headed the flower of his army. The Swedes imagined they had to deal with an army of forty thousand men, and the same was believed for a long time on the faith of their relation; but my late memoirs inform me, that Peter had only twenty thousand men in this day's engagement, a number not much superior to that of the enemy: but his vigour, his patience, his unwearied perseverance, together with that of his troops, animated by his presence, decided the fate, not of that day only, but of three successive days, during which the fight was renewed at different times. They made their first attack upon the rear of the Swedish army, near the village of Lesnau, from whence this battle borrows its name. This first shock was bloody, without proving decisive. Levenhaupt retreated into a wood, and thereby saved his baggage. (Oct. 7.) The next morning, when the Swedes were to be driven from this wood, the fight was still more bloody, and more to the advantage of the Russians. Here it was that the czar, seeing his troops in disorder, cried out to fire upon the runaways, and even upon himself, if they saw him turn back. The Swedes were repulsed, but not thrown into confusion.