AT last Charles left Saxony in September 1707, with an army of 43,000 men, formerly steel-clad, but now shining resplendent in gold and silver, and enriched with the spoils of Poland and Saxony. Every soldier had with him fifty crowns ready money; not only, too, were all the regiments complete, but there were several supernumeraries to each company. Besides this army Count Levenhaupt, one of his best generals, was waiting for him in Poland with 20,000 men; he had, too, another army of 15,000 in Finland, and recruits were on their way from Sweden. With all these forces it was not doubted that he would dethrone the Czar. The Emperor was then in Russia, trying to keep up the spirits of a party which King Augustus seemed to have deserted. His troops, divided into several corps, fled in all directions on the first report of the approach of the King of Sweden. He had advised his generals never to wait for the arrival of the conqueror with a superior force, and he was well obeyed. The King of Sweden, in the midst of his march, received an embassy from the Turks. The ambassador was received in Piper’s quarters; he kept up his master’s dignity by a certain display of magnificence, and the King, who was worse lodged, worse served, and more plainly clad than the humblest officer in his army, would often say that Count Piper’s quarters were his palace. The Turkish ambassador presented Charles with 100 Swedish soldiers, who had been taken by the Calmouks and sold in Turkey, redeemed by the Grand Master, and sent by him to the King as the most agreeable present he could make him. Not that the proud Ottoman meant to pay homage to the glory of Charles, but because the Sultan, the natural enemy of the Emperors of Russia and Germany, wished to strengthen himself against them by the friendship of the King of Sweden and alliance with Poland. The ambassador complimented Stanislas on his accession; so that he had been owned as King, in a short time, by Germany, France, England, Spain and Turkey. But the Pope deferred acknowledging him till time had confirmed him in a kingship of which a sudden fall might deprive him. Scarcely had Charles interviewed the ambassador of the Ottoman Porte than he went in search of the Russians. The Czar’s troops had left and returned to Poland more than twenty times during the war; as the country lay open on all sides, without strongholds to cut the retreat of an enemy, the Russians were often able to return to the very spot where they had suffered defeat, and could even penetrate as far into the country as the conqueror. During Charles’s stay in Saxony, the Czar had advanced to Leopold, on the southern frontier of Poland. He was at that time in the north, at Grodno, in Lithuania, about 100 leagues from Leopold.