There were in the Ottoman army two officers belonging to the king of Sweden, namely, count Poniatowsky and the count of Sparre, who had the command of a body of Cossacks in that prince's interest. My papers inform me, that these two generals advised the grand vizier to avoid coming to action with the Russians, and content himself with depriving them of supplies of water and provisions, which would oblige them either to surrender prisoners of war, or to perish with famine. Other memoirs pretend, on the contrary, that these officers would have persuaded Mahomet to fall upon this feeble and half-starved army, in a weak and distressed condition, and put all to the sword. The first of these seems to be the most prudent and circumspect; but the second is more agreeable to the character of generals who had been trained up under Charles XII. The real fact is, that the grand vizier fell upon the rear of the Russian army, at the dawn of day, which was thrown into confusion, and there remained only a line of four hundred men to confront the Turks. This small body formed itself with amazing quickness, under the orders of a German general, named Alard, who, to his immortal honour, made such rapid and excellent dispositions on this occasion, that the Russians withstood, for upwards of three hours, the repeated attack of the whole Ottoman army, without losing a foot of ground. The czar now found himself amply repaid for the immense pains he had taken to inure his troops to strict discipline. At the battle of Narva, sixty thousand men were defeated by only eight thousand, because the former were undisciplined; and here we behold a rear-guard, consisting of only eight thousand Russians, sustaining the efforts of one hundred and fifty thousand Turks, killing seven thousand of them, and obliging the rest to return back. After this sharp engagement, both armies intrenched themselves for that night: but the Russians still continued enclosed, and deprived of all provisions, even water; for notwithstanding they were so near the river Pruth, yet they did not dare approach its banks; for as soon as any parties were sent out to find water, a body of Turks, posted on the opposite shore, drove them back by a furious discharge from their cannon, loaded with chain shot: and the body of the Turkish army, which had attacked that of the czar the day before, continued to play upon them from another quarter, with the whole force of their artillery. The Russian army appeared now to be lost beyond resource, by its position, by the inequality of numbers, and by the want of provisions. The skirmishes on both sides were frequent and bloody: the Russian cavalry being almost all dismounted, could no longer be of any service, unless by fighting on foot: in a word, the situation of affairs was desperate. It was out of their power to retreat, they had nothing left but to gain a complete victory; to perish to the last man, or to be made slaves by the infidels.