WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
But Charles at that time was solely bent on dethroning the sovereign of Russia, as he had already dethroned the sovereign of Poland, and all Europe fully believed that he would entirely crush the Czar, and dictate conditions of peace in the Kremlin. Charles himself looked on success as a matter of certainty, and the romantic extravagance of his views was continually increasing. "One year, he thought, would suffice for the conquest of Russia. The court of Rome was next to feel his vengeance, as the pope had dared to oppose the concession of religious liberty to the Silesian Protestants. No enterprise at that time appeared impossible to him. He had even dispatched several officers privately into Asia and Egypt, to take plans of the towns and examine into the strength and resources of those countries." Napoleon thus epitomizes the earlier operations of Charles' invasion of Russia: "That prince set out from his camp at Aldstadt, near Leipsic, in September, 1707, at the head of 45,000 men, and traversed Poland; 20,000 men, under Count Lewenhaupt, disembarked at Riga; and 15,000 were in Finland. He was therefore in a condition to have brought together 80,000 of the best troops in the world. He left 10,000 men at Warsaw to guard King Stanis1aus, and in January 1708, arrived at Grodno, where he wintered. In June he crossed the forest of Minsk and presented himself before Borisov. forced the Russian army, which occupied the left bank of the Beresina; defeated 20,000 Russians who were strongly entrenched behind marshes; passed the Borysthenes at Mohilov, and vanquished a corps of 16,000 Muscovites near Smolensk on the 22d of September. He was now advanced to the confines of Lithuania, and was about to enter Russia Proper; the Czar, alarmed at his approach, made him proposals of peace. Up to this time all his movements were conformable to rule, and his communications were well secured. He was master of Poland and Riga, and only ten days' march distant from Moscow; and it is probable that he would have reached that capital, had he not quitted the high road thither, and directed his steps towards the Ukraine, in order to form a junction with Mazeppa, who brought him only 6,000 men. By this movement, his line of operations, beginning at Sweden, exposed his flank to Russia for a distance of four hundred leagues, and he was unable to protect it, or to receive either re-enforcements or assistance." Napoleon severely censures this neglect of one of the great rules of war. He points out that Charles had not organized his war, like Hannibal, on the principle of relinquishing all communications with home, keeping all his forces concentrated, and creating a base of operations in the conquered country. Such had been the bold system of the Carthaginian general; but Charles acted on no such principle, inasmuch as he caused Lewenhaupt, one of his generals who commanded a considerable detachment, and escorted a most important convoy, to follow him at a distance of twelve days' march. By this dislocation of his forces he exposed Lewenhaupt to be overwhelmed separately by the full force of the enemy, and deprived the troops under his own command of the aid which that general's men and stores might have afforded at the very crisis of the campaign. The Czar had collected an army of about 100,000 effective then; and though the Swedes, in the beginning of the invasion, were successful in every encounter, the Russian troops were gradually acquiring discipline; and Peter and his officers were learning generalship from their victors, as the Thebans of old learned it from the Spartans. When Lewenhaupt, in the October of 1708, was striving to join Charles in the Ukraine, the Czar suddenly attacked him near the Borysthenes with an overwhelming force of 50,000 Russians. Lewenhaupt fought bravely for three days, and succeeded in cutting his way through the enemy with about 4,000 of his men to where Charles awaited him near the River Desna; but upwards of 8,000 Swedes fell in these battles; Lewenhaupt's cannon and ammunition were abandoned; and the whole of his important convoy of provisions, on which Charles and his half-starved troops were relying, fell into the enemy's hands. Charles was compelled to remain in the Ukraine during the winter; but in the spring of 1709 he moved forward towards Moscow, and invested the fortified town of Pultowa, on the River Vorskla, a place where the Czar had stored up large supplies of provisions and military stores, and which commanded the passes leading towards Moscow.
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