BOOK IV Charles leaves Saxony--Pursues the Czar--Advances into Ukrania--His losses and wounds, and the battle of Pultowa--The consequences of the battle--Charles forced to escape into Turkey--His reception in Bessarabia. 147 BOOK V The state of the Ottoman Porte--Charles retires to Bender--His occupations--His intrigues at the Porte--His plans--Augustus restored--The King of Denmark attacks Sweden--All the King’s other territories are invaded--The Czar keeps festival at Moscow--The affair of Pruth--History of the Czarina. 187 BOOK VI Intrigues at the Porte--The Kan of Tartary and the Pasha of Bender try to force Charles to depart--He defends himself with forty servants against their whole army. 229 BOOK VII The Turks remove Charles to Demirtash--King Stanislas is seized at the same time--Bold action of M. de Villelongue--Revolutions in the seraglio--Battles in Pomerania--Altena is burnt by the Swedes--Charles returns to his kingdom--His strange method of travelling--His arrival at Stralsund--The state of Europe at that time--The losses of King Charles--The successes of Peter the Great--His triumphal entry into Petersburg. 267 BOOK VIII Charles marries his sister to the Prince of Hesse--He is besieged in Stralsund and escapes to Sweden--The enterprise of Baron Gortz his premier--Plans of reconciliation with the Czar--An attack on England--Charles besieges Frederickshal in Norway--He is killed--His character--Gortz is beheaded. 301 INDEX 339 PREFATORY NOTE “_To Charles the Twelfth of Sweden I owe much of what has stood me in best stead all my life. It was nearly thirty years ago, when but a boy, that I bought his Life for a penny in the New Cut. I took it home and devoured it. It made a great impression on me. Not his wars, but the Spartan heroism of his character. He inspired me with the idea of triumphing over physical weakness, weariness and pain. To inure his body to bear all manner of hardships indifferently, to bathe in ice, or face the torrid rays of the sun, to discipline his physical powers by gymnastics, to despise the niceties of food and drink, to make his body an instrument as of tempered steel, and at the same time to have that body absolutely at the disposition of the mind, that seemed to me conduct worthy of a hero. And so, boylike, I tried to imitate him, and succeeded at least so far as to be happily indifferent to the circumstances of my personal environment._” JOHN BURNS.