eir knees before him. His ultimatum to the
petitioners was that he would spare the city on the payment of four
hundred thousand rix-dollars. They were also commanded to supply his camp
with provisions, for which he promised they would be honestly paid. They
did not dare refuse, and were very agreeably surprised when Charles kept
his word and paid good prices for all he got.

Charles now sent word to King Frederick that he had made war only to
require him to make peace, and he must agree to act justly towards the
Duke of Holstein or the city of Copenhagen would be destroyed and his
dominions laid waste with fire and sword.

Frederick, utterly taken aback by the warlike vigor of King Charles, was
very glad to accept this proposal and thus to escape from the dangerous
position in which he had placed himself, and the negotiations were driven
through by Charles with the same abrupt energy he had shown in his
military movements. In less than six weeks from the beginning of the war
it was ended and the treaty made, a surprising achievement for the first
campaign of an eighteen-year-old warrior. The treaty was favorable to
Frederick, Charles exacting nothing for himself, but demanding that the
Duke of Holstein should be repaid the expenses of the war.

The boy king had reason for haste, for the town of Riga, in his
dominions, was being invested by a combined army of Russians, Poles, and
Saxons. The treaty was no sooner signed than he sailed in all haste to
its relief. It had made a gallant and nearly desperate defence under
General Dahlberg, but the besiegers did not wait for the impact of
Charles's army, hastily retreating and leaving the field open to him for
a great feat of arms, the most famous one in his career.

The town of Narva, in Ingermanland, was then invested by a great Russian
army, sixty thousand--some say eighty thousand--strong, the Czar Peter
being in supreme command, the Duc de Croy commanding under him. But the
unskilled Russians had not proved very successful in the art of
besieging, having failed for six weeks to take a city that was very
poorly fortified and whose governor, Baron Herre, had but a thousand
regular troops in his garrison.

It was in mid-November, 1700, that the czar heard that the Swedish king
had landed an army of about thirty-two thousand men, and was coming to
the relief of Narva. Not content with his great force, Peter hurried
forward a second army of thirty thousand men, proposing t