Some officers who were there told me that they saw them almost all foaming with rage, so great is the Swede’s hatred of the Dane. Steinbock took advantage of this disposition, which is almost as effective in war as military discipline. The Danes were attacked, and the strange sight was seen--of which there are, perhaps, no two other instances--of raw forces equalling in bravery a veteran corps at the first attack. Two regiments of these undisciplined peasants cut the Danish army to pieces, and left only ten survivors. The Danes, entirely routed, retreated under the cannon of Elsingburg. The passage from Sweden to Zeeland is so short that the King of Denmark heard of the defeat of his army in Sweden the same day at Copenhagen, and sent his fleet to bring off the remnant of his army. The Danes hastily left Sweden five days after the battle, but, being unable to bring away their horses, and not wishing to leave them to the enemy, they killed them all and fired their provisions, burning their corn and baggage, and leaving 4,000 wounded in Elsingburg. The majority of these died from the infection from the large number of dead horses, and from lack of food, which even their own countrymen deprived them of, lest they should fall into Swedish hands. At the same time the peasants of Delecarlia, having heard in the depths of their forests that the King was prisoner in Turkey, sent a deputation to the Regency at Stockholm, offering to go, at their own expense, to rescue their master from the enemy’s hands with a force of 20,000 men. This proposal, useless as it was, was heard with pleasure, because it proved the courage and loyalty of the proposers, though it was rejected; and they gave the King an account of it, when they sent him word about Elsingburg. King Charles received this cheering news in his camp near Bender, in July 1710, just after another event which confirmed him in his hopes. The Grand Vizir Couprougli, who was opposed to his plans, was turned out of office after he had been in the ministry two months. Charles XII’s little Court, and his adherents in Poland, boasted that he made and removed vizirs, and was governing Turkey from his retreat at Bender. But he had no hand in the ruin of this favourite. The rigid justice of the Vizir, it was said, was the only cause of his fall; his predecessor had been accustomed to pay the janissaries, not out of the Imperial treasury, but from the money he got by extortion. Couprougli, on the other hand, paid them from the treasury. For this Achmet accused him of putting the subjects’ interest before that of the Emperor. “Your predecessor, Chourlouli,” he said, “managed to find other ways of paying my troops.” The Grand Vizir replied, “If he had the art of enriching your Highness by theft, it is an art of which I am proud to be ignorant.”