Baltagi, who was not fond of war, and who, nevertheless, had conducted this very well, thought that his expedition would be sufficiently successful, if he put his master in possession of the towns and harbours which made the subject of the war, stopt the progress of the victorious army under Renne, and obliged that general to quit the banks of the Danube, and return back into Russia, and for ever shut the entrance of the Palus Mæotis, the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, against an enterprising prince; and, lastly, if he avoided taking these certain advantages, on the hazard of a new battle (in which, after all, despair might have got the better of superiority of numbers). The preceding day only he had beheld his janissaries repulsed with loss; and there wanted not examples of many victories having been gained by the weaker over the strong. Such then were Mahomet's reasons for accepting the proposals of peace. His conduct, however, did not merit the approbation of Charles's officers, who served in the Turkish army, nor of the khan of Tartary. It was the interest of the latter, and his followers, to reject all terms of accommodation which would deprive them of the opportunity of ravaging the frontiers of Russia and Poland. Charles XII. desired to be revenged on his rival, the czar: but the general, and the first minister of the Ottoman empire, was neither influenced by the private thirst of revenge, which animated the Christian monarch, nor by the desire of booty, which actuated the Tartar chief. As soon as the suspension of arms was agreed to, and signed, the Russians purchased of the Turks the provisions, of which they stood in need. The articles of the peace were not signed at that time, as is related by La Motraye, and which Norberg has copied from him. The vizier, among other conditions, demanded that the czar should promise not to interfere any more in the Polish affairs. This was a point particularly insisted upon by count Poniatowsky; but it was, in fact, the interest of the Ottoman crown, that the kingdom of Poland should continue in its then defenceless and divided state; accordingly this demand was reduced to that of the Russian troops evacuating the frontiers of Poland. The khan of Tartary, on his side, demanded a tribute of forty thousand sequins. This point, after being long debated, was at length given up.