here to them.

Charles was led to hope that this proposal might perhaps be successful,
from the fact that there was a portion of his army who had not been
engaged at Pultowa that was still safe; and he had no doubt that a very
considerable number of men would succeed in escaping from Pultowa and
joining them. Indeed, the number was not small of those whom the king
had now immediately around him, for all that escaped from the battle
made every possible exertion to discover and rejoin the king, and so
many straggling parties came that he soon had under his command a force
of one or two thousand men. This was, of course, but a small remnant
of his army. Still, he felt that he was not wholly destitute of means
and resources for carrying on the struggle in case Peter should refuse
to make peace.

So he sent a trumpeter to Peter's camp with the message; but Peter sent
word back that his majesty's assent to the terms of peace which he had
proposed to him came too late. The state of things had now, he said,
entirely changed; and as Charles had ventured to penetrate into the
Russian country without properly considering the consequences of his
rashness, he must now think for himself how he was to get out of it.
For his part, he added, he had got the birds in the net, and he should
do all in his power to secure them.

After due consultation among the officers who were with the king, it
was finally determined that it was useless to think for the present of
any farther resistance, and the king, at last, reluctantly consented to
be conveyed to the Turkish frontier. He was too ill from the effects
of his wound to ride on horseback, and the distance was too great for
him to be conveyed in a litter. So they prepared a carriage for him.
It was a carriage which belonged to one of his generals, and which, by
some means or other, had been saved in the flight of the army. The
route which they were to take led across the country where there were
scarcely any roads, and a team of twelve horses was harnessed to draw
the carriage which conveyed the king.

No time was to be lost. The confused mass of officers and men who had
escaped from the battle, and had succeeded in rejoining the king, were
marshaled into something like a military organization, and the march,
or rather the flight, commenced. The king's carriage, attended by such
a guard as could be provided for it, went before, and was followed by
the remnant of the army. Some o