Voltaire

“ Gustavus Vasa, a youth descended from the old line of kings, issued from the depths of the forest of Delecarlia, where he had been in hiding, and appeared as the deliverer of Sweden. He was one of those rare products of Nature, a great genius with all the qualities of a commander of men. His noble stature and an air of distinction brought him adherents the moment he appeared. ”

“ The Government of Poland is an almost exact image of the old Celtic and Gothic Government, which has been altered almost everywhere else. It is the only state which has retained the name “republic,” with the royal dignity.
Every nobleman has the right to vote at the election of the king, and to stand for election himself. These fine privileges have corresponding abuses; the throne is almost always put up for sale, and as a Pole is seldom rich enough to buy it, it is often sold to foreigners. The nobility defend their liberty against the king, and tyrannize over the rest of the nation. ”

“ There was nothing to be hoped from Lithuania, where the Swedes were posted; while the Polish army, reduced in number, lacked arms, provisions and the will to fight. The majority of the nobles, intimidated, undecided, or disaffected, stayed on their own lands. It was in vain that the King, authorized by law, ordered every noble to appear on horseback under pain of death, and to follow him; they began to argue that they need not obey him. His chief trust was in the troops of the Electorate, where, as the form of government was absolute, he did not fear disobedience. ”

“ Immediately four generals were sent by Levenhaupt to receive the conqueror’s order. Before that day 16,000 of King Charles’s soldiers would have attacked the whole force of the Russian empire and have perished to a man, rather than have surrendered; but after a battle lost and a flight of two days, and after having lost their Prince who had been forced to flee himself, the strength of every soldier being spent and their courage no longer supported by hope, the love of life overcame courage. The whole army was made prisoners of war. ”

“ The nation is born with a passion for war, and every people unconsciously imitate their King. Nothing was discussed from one end of the country to the other but the great exploits of Charles and his generals, and of the old regiment which fought under them at Narva, Duna, Crassau, Pultask, and Hollosin. Thus the humblest of the Swedes were filled with a spirit of emulation and thirst for glory. Besides this, they loved their King, were sorry for him, and hated the Danes thoroughly. In many other countries the peasants are slaves or are treated as such ”

“ Then the war was abandoned for a series of intrigues, and the Diet divided into almost as many factions as there were dukedoms. One day the interests of King Augustus were paramount, the next they were rejected. Everybody clamoured for liberty and justice, yet they had no conception of either; the time was spent in secret cabals and public debate. The Diet knew nothing about what they might or should do; great assemblies seldom agree on good measures in time of civil uproar, because bold men in such assemblies are generally factious, while more reliable men are usually timid. ”

“ The King began his journey on the 1st of October, 1714. A capigi-pasha, with six chiaoux, went to accompany him from Demirtash, whither he had removed a few days before. The presents they brought him from the Sultan were a large scarlet tent embroidered with gold, a sabre set with jewels, eight beautiful Arab horses, with fine saddles and stirrups set with massive silver. It is not beneath the dignity of history to tell that the Arabian groom, who had charge of the horses, gave the King an account of their genealogy; it is the custom there to think more of the family of a horse than of a man ”

“ But though the cavalry is so gorgeous the foot are wretched, ill-clad, ill-armed, without uniform clothes or anything regular; at least that is how they were up to 1710. These foot-soldiers, who are like wandering Tartars, bear hunger, cold, fatigue, and all the hardship of war with incredible endurance. The characteristics of the ancient Sarmatæ, their ancestors, can still be seen in the Poles; the same lack of discipline, the same fury in assault, the same readiness to run away and to return to the field, the same mad fury of slaughter when they are victorious. ”

“ Most powerful of the Princes that worship Jesus, redressor of wrongs and injuries, and protector of justice in the ports and republics of South and North, shining in Majesty, lover of Honour and Glory, and of our sublime Porte, Charles, King of Sweden, whose enterprises may God crown with success. ”

“ The body of the people are slaves; such is the fate of mankind, that the great majority are, in some way or another, kept under by the minority. There the peasant does not sow his crops for himself but for his lord, to whom he and his land and his very work belong, and who can sell him, or cut his throat as if he were a beast of the field. A lord is answerable to none but himself. Judgment can only be given against him for a criminal action by an assembly of the whole nation. ”

“ The two generals are independent of each other, and though they are nominated by the king, are responsible to the State alone and have supreme authority over their troops. The colonels are absolute masters of their regiments, and it is their affair to get them what sustenance they can, and to pay them; but as they are seldom paid themselves, they ravage the country, and ruin the farmers to satisfy their own rapacity, and that of their soldiers. The Polish lords appear in these armies with more magnificence than in civil life, and their tents are finer than their houses. ”

“ Charles, abandoned by the Grand Vizir, and conquered by the Czar’s money in Turkey, as he had been by his arms in Ukrania, found himself deluded, scorned by the Porte, and a kind of prisoner among the Tartars. His followers began to despair. He alone remained firm and did not show dejection even for a moment. He thought that the Sultan was ignorant of the intrigues of his Grand Vizir; he determined to inform him, and Poniatowski undertook this bold task. ”

“ Was it not your duty [Pg 220] to take the Czar prisoner to Constantinople?”
The Turk, thus nonplussed, answered slyly, “And who would govern his empire in his absence? It is not fitting that all kings should be away from home.”
Charles replied with an indignant smile, and then threw himself down on a cushion, and, looking at the Vizir with resentment mingled with contempt, he stretched out his leg towards him, and, entangling his spur with his robe, tore it; then jumped up, mounted, and rode to Bender full of despair. ”

“ All the foreign ministers protested against the wrong done to the persons of Gortz and Gyllemburg. Nothing could excuse the Dutch from breaking so sacred a law in seizing the King of Sweden’s premier, who had never done anything against them, and so violating the spirit of freedom which has attracted so many strangers and has been the cause of her greatness. The King of England acted within his rights in seizing an enemy, so that the letters found among Gyllemburg’s papers from him to Gortz were printed to justify the King’s proceedings. ”

“ The Turks, laden with booty, terrified at the sudden appearance of the King whom they had reverenced, threw down their arms and jumped out of the window or fled to the cellars. The King, taking advantage of their confusion, and his own men being animated with this piece of success, pursued the Turks from room to room, killed or wounded those who had not made their escape, and in a quarter of an hour cleared the house of the enemy. ”

“ The Czar, who in such weather would often ride 400 leagues to see a mine or a canal, spared his men no more than himself. Besides, he knew that the Swedes, ever since the time of Gustavus Adolphus, fought in the depth of winter as well as in summer, and he wanted to accustom his Russians not to care about the seasons, so that some day they might at least equal the Swedes. So at a time when frost and snow force nations in temperate climates to suspend hostilities Peter was besieging Narva, thirty degrees from the Pole, and Charles was advancing to its relief. ”

“ A slave brought up in the idleness and the silence of the seraglio, made a vizir through favouritism, and a general against his own inclinations, headed a raw army, without experience and without discipline, against Russian troops, with twelve years’ experience in war, and proud of having conquered the Swedes.
The Czar, according to all appearances, must have vanquished Baltagi, but he made the same mistake with regard to the Turks as the King of Sweden was guilty of in his own case; that is, he had too poor an opinion of his enemy. Upon the news of the Turkish preparations he left Moscow ”

“ The Swedes are well built, strong and active, and capable of undergoing the most arduous labours, hunger and want; they are born fighters, high spirited and daring rather than industrious. They have long neglected commerce and are still poor business men, though commerce alone can supply their country’s wants.
Tradition says that it was chiefly from Sweden (a part of which is still called Gothland) that there poured those hordes of Goths who overran Europe and wrested it from the sway of Rome, who for the past 500 years had played the rôle of tyrant, usurper and lawgiver in that country. ”

“ Sweden, on the other hand, had lost all her foreign possessions, and had neither trade, money, nor credit; her veterans were either killed or had died of want. More than a hundred thousand Swedes were slaves in the vast Russian Empire, and as many more had been sold to the Turks and the Tartars. The male population was visibly becoming scarce; but in spite of all this, their hopes revived when they heard that their King had arrived at Stralsund. ”

“ Many among them are poor, in which case they let themselves out to the richer, and do the basest duties for a salary. [Pg 62] They would rather serve their equals than engage in trade, and while taking care of their masters’ horses they call themselves electors of kings and destroyers of tyrants.
Whoever saw a King of Poland in the pomp of his majesty, would think him the most absolute prince in Europe; yet he is certainly the least so. The Poles really make with him the same contract which is supposed to exist between a sovereign and his subjects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The King was unwilling to flee, and would not defend himself. General Poniatowski chanced to be with him at that moment. He was a colonel of King Stanislas’ Swedish guards, and a person of remarkable merit, who was so attached to Charles XII that he had accompanied him as a volunteer to Ukrania. He was a man who in all the chances of life, and in danger, where others would at most have only shown courage, always made his plans at once and met with success; he signed to two soldiers, who took the King under the arms and put him on horseback in spite of the great pain of his wound. ”

“ The new vizir, Baltagi, not being bound in the same way, would not flatter a foreign prince so far. He countermanded the order, and the great army was collected at Adrianople.
The Turkish troops are not so formidable now as they were when they conquered so many kingdoms in Asia, Africa and Europe. Then they triumphed over enemies less strong and worse disciplined than themselves by physical strength, courage and the force of numbers. But now that Christians understand the art of war better, they seldom failed to beat the Turks in a drawn battle, even when their forces are inferior in number. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Russia occupies the whole of Northern Asia and Europe, and from the frontiers of China extends 1,500 leagues to the borders of Poland and Sweden. Yet the existence of this immense country was not even realized by Europe before the time of the Czar Peter. The Russians were less [Pg 22] civilized than the Mexicans at the time of their discovery by Cortez; born the slaves of masters as barbarous as themselves, they were sunk deep in ignorance, and unacquainted with the arts and sciences, and so insensible of their use that they had no industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Czar, sure of the Prince of Moldavia, never expected that the subjects might fail him; but the Moldavians often oppose their interests to those of their masters. They liked the Turkish rule, which is never fatal except to the grandees, and pretends a leniency to its tributaries; they were afraid of the Christians, especially the Russians, who had always used them ill.
Those who had undertaken to furnish the Russians with provisions made with the Grand Vizir the same bargain they had made with the Czar, and brought all their provisions to the Ottoman army. ”

“ The Cardinal-Primate, disappointed of the fruit of so many intrigues, returned to the Assembly, where he left no stone unturned to ruin the election in which he had had no share; but the King of Sweden arrived incognito at Warsaw, so that he had to be silent. All that the Primate could do was to absent himself from the election: he took up the position of a neutral, being unable to oppose the conqueror and unwilling to assist him. ”

“ But the same fatality that had ruined Sweden had also humbled France; yet some resources still remained to Sweden, and Louis carried on the war with vigour, though unsuccessfully. If Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen became the seat of war, it was to be feared that the Empire would suffer, and being weakened on that side would be the less able to withstand Louis. To prevent this, the Princes of Germany, Queen Anne of England, and the States of Holland, concluded at the Hague, in 1709, one of the most extraordinary treaties ever signed. ”

“ Such a man was Peter the Czar, and his great plans were only sketched in outline when he united with the kings of Poland and Denmark against a child whom they all despised.
The founder of Russia resolved to be a conqueror; he believed the task an easy one, and felt that a war so well launched would help him in all his projects. The art of war was a new art in which his people needed lessons.
Besides, he wanted a port on the east side of the Baltic for the execution of his great plans. He needed Ingria, which lies to the north-east of Livonia. ”

“ Accustomed in his hereditary dominions to absolute power, he was perhaps too confident that he could govern Poland like Saxony.
The beginning of his reign raised malcontents, his very first acts irritated the party which was opposed to his election, and alienated almost all the rest. The Poles resented the fact that their towns were filled with Saxon garrisons and their frontiers with troops. The nation, far more anxious to maintain their own liberties than to attack their neighbours, did not consider the king’s attack on Sweden and his invasion of Livonia as advantageous to the State. ”

“ Since the time of Hannibal there had been no instance of a general who, unable to hold his own against his enemies at home, had gone to attack them in their [Pg 305] own dominions. His brother-in-law, the Prince of Hesse, accompanied him. There is no way from Sweden to Norway except by dangerous by-ways, where at every turn one meets with pools of water, formed by the sea between the rocks; bridges have to be made every day. A very few Danes might have stopped the Swedish army, but they were not ready for such a rapid invasion. ”

“ We see his gift in a very luminous special form in his “Charles XII,” which luckily need offend no man’s susceptibilities.
We do not know whether that extraordinarily long indicative nose of his was at this time as telling a sign of his character, backed by his keen twinkling black eyes, as it became later? The two best pen-portraits of Voltaire we have belong to a later day than 1728, when “Charles XII” was written. The first takes us to the year when his “Sémiramis” was produced, when he appears in a strange disguise among the casual nightly apparitions of the Café de Procope. ”

“ An ambassador of France, a M. de Croissy, was then shut up with the King in Stralsund. To send a man on an embassy to Charles was like sending him to the trenches. The King would talk with Croissy for hours together, in the most exposed places, where people were falling on all sides, killed by the bombs and cannon; the King was unconscious of the danger, and the ambassador did not care to say anything to make him chose a safer place for business. Before the siege this minister tried his best to make a treaty between the Kings of Sweden and Prussia ”

“ The great Leipzig fair was held as usual, tradesmen attended it in perfect security; not one Swedish soldier was to be seen in the fair; it might have been said that the only object of the Swedish army in Saxony was to keep the peace: the King ruled throughout the Electorate with as absolute a power and as deep a tranquillity as in Stockholm.
King Augustus, a wanderer in Poland, and deprived both of his kingdom and his electorate, at last wrote a letter with his own hand to Charles XII to ask for a peace. ”

“ Time was necessary to bind up the wounds of Livonia, a fertile country which had suffered much from a fifteen years’ war, by fire, sword and plague—almost desolate of inhabitants, and a burden to the conqueror. ”

“ He remarked aloud after the meeting, “There is a man who will always be my friend,” and people knew that that meant, “There is a man who shall be king.”
When the Primate of Poland heard that the King had nominated the Palatine Leczinski, he hastened to Charles to try to make him change his mind, for he wished to put the crown on the head of a certain Lubomirski. “But what objection have you to Stanislas?” asked the conqueror. “Sire,” said the Primate, “he is too young.” “He is much about my own age,” answered the King dryly, turning his back on the Prelate. ”

“ To whatever house Cantemir belonged, he owed all to the Ottoman Porte. Scarcely had he been invested with his principality than he betrayed the Emperor his benefactor for the Czar, from whom he had greater expectations. He believed that the conqueror of Charles XII would easily triumph over an obscure vizir, with no military experience, who had appointed as his lieutenant the chief customs officer of Turkey; he reckoned on all Greece joining his faction, and the Greek priests encouraged him in his treachery. ”