Charles made some alliances in Poland; but the Russians, on their side, made a progress in Ingria and Livonia. Marshal Sheremeto marched to meet the Swedish army, under the command of Slipenbak, gave that general battle near the little river Embac, and defeated him, taking sixteen colours, and twenty pieces of cannon. Norberg places this action on the first of December, 1701; but the journal of Peter the Great, fixes it on the nineteenth of July, 1702. 6th Aug.] After this advantage, the Russian general marched onwards, laid the whole country under contributions, and takes the little town of Marienburg, on the confines of Ingria and Livonia. There are several towns of this name in the north of Europe; but this, though it no longer exists, is more celebrated in history than all the others, by the adventure of the empress Catherine. This little town, having surrendered at discretion, the Swedes, who defended it, either through mistake or design, set fire to the magazine. The Russians, incensed at this, destroyed the town, and carried away all the inhabitants. Among the prisoners was a young woman, a native of Livonia, who had been brought up in the house of a Lutheran minister of that place, named Gluck, and who afterwards became the sovereign of those who had taken her captive, and who governed Russia by the name of the empress Catherine. There had been many instances before this, of private women being raised to the throne; nothing was more common in Russia, and in all Asiatic kingdoms, than for crowned heads to marry their own subjects; but that a poor stranger, who had been taken prisoner in the storming of a town, should become the absolute sovereign of that very empire, whither she was led captive, is an instance which fortune never produced before nor since in the annals of the world. The Russian arms proved equally successful in Ingria: for their half gallies on the lake Ladoga compelled the Swedish fleet to retire to Wibourg,[64] a town at the other extremity of this great lake, from whence they could see the siege of the fortress of Notebourg, which was then carrying on by general Sheremeto. This was an undertaking of much greater importance than was imagined at that time, as it might open a communication with the Baltic Sea, the constant aim of Peter the Great.