Narva

“ Who could not go away deeply thankful that they were not allowed to feel in that remote place that they were forgotten by their Church?
Narva is a great manufacturing community with a large staff of Englishmen, also a long journey away, and it so happens that they are nearly all Nonconformists there, but they value our services, and enjoyed mine with them, followed as it was by a special evening of music and recitations, about sixty being present. ”

“ During this recital the being whom Narva addressed regarded Una intently, her gaze manifesting an interest she was at no pains to conceal. Having heard Narva to the end she slowly approached Una and, to the latter’s amazement, spoke to her in English.
“I am Sajipona,” she said. “Some call me Queen of the Indians; I am a queen; but, of my kingdom, this last home of my fathers is all that your people have left [271] me. Deep underground, hidden from all men, few there are who know of its existence—and we guard the secret, if need be, with our lives. ”

“ At Narva Peter was equally successful. The siege was conducted under his own personal command. Sword in hand, he attacked three bastions that offered the strongest points of defence, carried them all, and burst into the town. The barbarities that ensued were of a nature to revolt even the czar himself. Pillage, slaughter, and lustful excesses were committed by the infuriated men; and Peter, shocked at the cruelties he witnessed, threw himself amongst the barbarians who refused to obey his orders and slew several of them in the public streets. ”

“ To Una, at least, bewildered by the intricacies of cave topography, this seemed the explanation of the course they were pursuing, although the mysterious doubling of their tracks brought little consolation—especially when she realized that her uncle and his companions were lost in the center of a maze the clew to which completely eluded her. Anxiety for their safety overrode, for the moment, every other consideration; she grasped Narva’s arm with a detaining gesture, a half uttered question on her lips. ”

“ Now that Strong was out of our hands we need not scruple to conceal the fact that he was perhaps the greatest rascal unhung, and that he and the hero of the Narva exploit were one and the same person.
Captain Edwards was naturally somewhat excited.
"The scoundrel ought to have been sent back to Narva," he said, "not brought on here and set free. You deserve what's happened for setting such a monster loose upon society. It's not fair dealing towards your kind, young men, upon my soul it isn't; you may take that from an older man than yourselves. ”

“ The only resistance he met was offered by the two regiments of the guard. All the rest fled or surrendered. A few Russians were drowned in the Narva. "If the river had been frozen," said Charles discontentedly, "I do not know that we should have contrived to kill a single man."
It was a total breakdown; the army had disappeared, and the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him the country's honor. That had sunk out of sight amid the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this undignified defeat. The Czar was in full flight. ”

“ Strong declared that he had been taken to Narva by the fishermen, having been bound by them while still unconscious from the effects of a blow on the head from Gavril's staff. At Narva he was thrust into a miserable prison or police cell, where he was interrogated by persons who could not understand him, nor he them. A Swedish interpreter was brought, and Strong was knocked about and bullied because he protested that he could understand Swedish no better than Russian. ”

“ At Narva, if I complained against the merciful gentleman for kicking me, he would be detained and fined. A gallon of vodka and twenty roubles is my price for being kicked by the honourable lord."
"Kicked how many times?" said Jack. "For that sum we shall certainly kick you round the island, my friend. The police at Narva will fine as much for one kick as for thirty. We shall take all our kicks, remember!"
Michail decided not to go to Narva, and to charge me for the original kicking only—the price of which was fixed at a vedro of vodka, to be brought back from Narva by Kuzmá, and one rouble. ”

“ It was just at the time that I was writing my last article, that the Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia (who has a perfect obsession for being in the middle of the picture) , was carrying out at the army manoeuvres at Narva, a certain strategic design, long-prepared and tested, by means of which he proposed to fill with amazement and admiration not only the Russian army but the Imperial Court—nay, all Russia, and the whole wide world! ”

“ His people will follow him and die beside him to the last man, to the last morsel of bread snatched from its starving jaws. A month hence, the fugitive from Narva will belong to a vanished, forgotten, almost improbable past; the future victor of Poltava will have taken his place.
Of the Russian army, as it had originally taken the field, about twenty-three thousand men remained—a certain number of troops—the cavalry under Sheremetief's command, and Repnin's division. The Czar ordered fresh levies. He melted the church-bells into cannon. In vain the clergy raised the cry of sacrilege ”

“ The bays of Kronstadt, Koporya, Luga and Narva afford good anchorage, but the coast is for the most part fringed with reefs and sandbanks. The chief river is the Neva. The feeders of Lake Ladoga-the Volkhov, the Syas, and the Svir, the last two forming part of the system of canals connecting the Neva with the Volga-are important channels of commerce, as also is the Narova. ”

“ The army destined to lay siege to Narva consisted of three divisions of novel formation, under the orders of three generals—Golovin, Weyde, and Repnin—with 10,500 Cossacks, and some irregular troops—63,520 men in all. Repnin's division, numbering 10,834 men, and the Little Russian Cossacks, stopped on the way, so that the actual force at disposal was reduced to about 40,000 men. But Charles XII, the new King of Sweden, could not bring more than 5300 infantry and 3130 cavalry to the relief of the town. ”

“ CHAPTER I BY the first day of October, Peter, after ravaging Ingria, found himself before Narva, swiftly bearing the thunders of his vengeance against his Northern rival, who, despite the extreme severity of the climate (it was already midwinter in this bitter latitude) , was steadily advancing to meet the last and most powerful of his enemies. ”

“ Arriving at Riga, I found that this town, like Narva, was neither handsome nor well-paved, but it is known to be a great commercial place and has a fine harbour. Most of the men are habited like Turks or Poles, and all women not of the populace put a gauze veil over their heads when they go out. ”

“ Those princes who have employed the leisure moments of peace in raising public works, have acquired to themselves a name: but that Peter, just after his misfortune at Narva, should apply himself to the junction of the Baltic, Caspian, and the Black seas, by canals, has crowned him with more real glory than the most signal victory. It was in the year 1702, that he began to dig that deep canal, intended to join the Tanais and the Wolga. ”

“ Had the Czar always shown such humanity he would have been the greatest of heroes. His ambition went beyond the destruction of towns. In the midst of his new conquests he was laying the foundations of a city not far from Narva. This was the city of Petersburg, which was henceforth his seat and the centre of his trade. It is between Finland and Ingria, in a marshy island, around which the Neva flows in several branches before it falls into the Gulf of Finland. He himself made the plan of the town, of the fortress, the port, the quays, which adorn it, and the fortifications defending its entry. ”

“ Now a quite different claim was put forward; the whole of Livonia was called upon to accept, not only a similar obligation, but the suzerainty of Moscow, 'on the same terms as the territories of Kazan and Astrakan.' Fürstenberg, Grand Master of the Order, and the bishops of Derpt and Riga, were to proceed to Moscow, and there do homage, and Narva and the other lately-conquered towns were to be simply annexed to the Empire. ”

“ After the thrashing they have had, the Russians will be months before they are in a condition to take the offensive again; while we are equally unable to move because, in the first place, we are not strong enough to do so, and in the second we have no baggage train to carry provisions with us, and no provisions to carry if we had it."
On the 13th of December, the king quitted Narva with the army, and on the 19th arrived at Lais, an old castle six miles from Derpt, and here established his headquarters. ”

“ Narva with his left, if one may speak of “chasing” when 4,000 men are in pursuit of nearly 50,000. The bridge broke under them as they fled; in a moment the river was full of dead bodies; the rest in despair returned to their camp without knowing the direction in which they were going. They found some huts behind which they stationed themselves; there they defended themselves for a time because they had no mean of escape; but finally their generals, Dolgorouky, Gollofkin and Federowitz surrendered to the King and laid down their arms at his feet. ”

“ Like the Russian army at Narva, it was sapped by demoralization before it was called on to do any serious fighting. Even among the Swedish staff, and in the King's intimate circle, all confidence in his genius and his lucky star had disappeared.
His best generals, Rehnskold and Gyllenkrook, his chancellor Piper, and Mazeppa himself were against any prolongation of the siege, which promised to be a long one. "If God were to send down one of his angels," he said, "to induce me to follow your advice, I would not listen to him!" ”

“ Karl was spending the winter encamped near Narva and Peter had come to Birsen, a little town in Lithuania, to meet informally (indeed it might be said that the Czar never did anything formally) his ally, Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, on whose trained troops Peter still relied, though Augustus had shown to but little advantage in the war, and had done nothing since he had gracefully submitted to necessity in raising the siege of Riga. ”

“ While the Swedish king was fighting in Poland, the provinces of Ingermanland, Esthonia and Livonia were overrun by the Russians, who devastated the country with acts of cruelty. Dorpat was captured and Narva fell after a bloody conflict, being bravely defended by Rudolph Horn. The Russians destroyed the Swedish navy of the Lake Peipus and penetrated to the province of Courland where Charles XII. had left a considerable detachment of troops. The plan of Czar Peter to conquer Courland and cut off Charles from the connections with his empire was frustrated by General Adam Louis Lewenhaupt. ”

“ During the great religious wars of the seventeenth century, Sweden had grown at the expense of her neighbours. The time had come, so the owners thought, to balance the account. At once war broke out between Russia, Poland, Denmark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. The raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beaten by Charles in the famous battle of Narva in November of the year 1700. ”

“ Losing more men before Narva, he put in execution there “the most bloody and cruellest massacre that ever was heard of in any age,” giving the spoil of the town to his Tartars. Following the custom of his country, the prisoners of war were all brought as slaves to Moscow, many dying on the way, some, including Scotch and English soldiers of fortune in the pay of the Swedes, thrown into prison in Moscow and there subsequently tortured and executed. ”

“ They might be surrounded by hostile forces, their destination might be a secret one, or at least a knowledge of it might involve danger to the man for whose preservation she firmly believed they were engaged. Narva, in warning her of this danger, hinted that whatever they had to fear was in some way due to the presence of Raoul Arthur in the cave. The enmity of the latter to David, moreover, was full of sinister possibilities, and the conviction that they were about to foil the evil thus threatened nerved Una to face anything. ”

“ Karl and his eight thousand were hurling themselves on the ranks of Muscovy; Marpha crept to the tent door and looked out, but the snow swirled in and blinded her; again the cannon and distant shouts; she sat huddled and silent, hating her lover for not being there.{85}
CHAPTER II “IF you do not believe that I shall redeem Narva you are a fool,” said Peter rudely. “The Swedes themselves will teach us how to defeat their own armies.” ”

“ I do not say that they are braver than our Swedes; they have not been tested in any desperate service; but they are healthier and more hardy, for their officers, since the battle of Narva, have kept them engaged in sports of all kinds--mimic battles, foot races, and other friendly contests. I have marked them at it several times, and wondered sometimes at the rough play. But it has had its effect. While the rest of Suborn's regiment suffered as much from fever as the other troops, scarce a man in this company was sick, and they have, all the winter, been fit for arduous service at any moment. ”