Having made all arrangements with the general for the battle, he withdrew into his tent overcome by grief, and seized with convulsions, to which he was subject, and which worry brought on with redoubled violence. He forbade any one to enter his tent during the night on any pretext whatever, not wanting to receive remonstrances against a desperate but necessary resolve, and much less that any should witness the wretched state he was in. In the meantime they burned the greater part of the baggage as he had ordered; all the army followed this example with much regret, and some buried their most cherished treasures. The generals had already given orders for the march, and were trying to give the army the confidence which they did not feel themselves; the men, exhausted by fatigue, and starving, marched without spirit or hope. The women, of whom there were too many in the army, uttered cries which further unnerved the men; every one expected that death or slavery would be their portion next morning. This is no exaggeration, it is the exact account of officers who served in the army. There was at that time in the Russian camp a woman as extraordinary as the Czar himself. She was then known only by the name of Catherine. Her mother was an unfortunate country woman called Erb-Magden, of the village of Ringen in Estonia, a province held in villeinage, which was at that time under the rule of Sweden. She had never known her father, but was baptized by the name of Martha. The priest of the parish brought her up out of pure charity till she was fourteen, then she went into service at Mariemburg, in the house of a Lutheran minister whose name was Gluk. In 1702, at the age of eighteen, she married a Swedish dragoon. The day after her marriage part of the Swedish troops were beaten by the Russians, and the dragoon was in the action. But he never returned to his wife, and she could never learn whether he had been taken prisoner, nor later could she get any news of him. Some days after she was taken prisoner herself, and was servant to General Czeremetoff, who gave her to Menzikoff, a man who had known fortune’s extremes, for he had become a general and a prince from being a pastry-cook’s boy, and then was deprived of everything and banished to Siberia, where he died in misery and despair. The Czar was at supper with this prince when he first saw her and fell in love with her. He married her secretly in 1707, not fascinated by womanly charms, but because he found that she had the strength of mind to second his designs, and even to continue them after him. He had long since put away his first wife Ottokefa, daughter of a boyard, on a charge of opposition to certain political reforms he had made.