o enclose King
Charles between these two hordes and hoping thus to annihilate him. He
reckoned without his host. Charles landed at Pernow and made a forced
march to Reval, followed by his cavalry, fourteen thousand strong, but
with only four thousand foot soldiers.

Marching, in his usual ardent manner, in the van of his army, he did not
wait for the rear, making his way onward by nearly impassable roads and
coming before the outposts of the supplementary Russian army with only
eight thousand men. With apparently utter indifference to the vast
disproportion in numbers, the Swedish firebrand rushed forward, the
Russians, not dreaming of such mad temerity, being sure that he had his
whole army behind him.

The advance guard of the Russians, five thousand strong, was posted in a
rocky pass where a body of a hundred resolute men might have checked the
progress of an army, yet it fled in dismay before the onset of the
Swedes. The twenty thousand men behind them shared their panic and joined
in their flight, terror and confusion pervading the whole army. In two
days' time Charles carried all their posts, winning what might have been
claimed as three distinct victories, yet not delaying an hour in his
advance. Having thus disposed of the army sent to intercept him, Charles
marched with all speed to Narva, leaving his main army still far in the
rear. With his eight thousand men, exhausted with their long march and
their hard fight, he suddenly appeared before the czar's great force of
sixty or eighty thousand men and one hundred and fifty cannon.

Giving his weary men scarcely any time for rest, Charles advanced against
the Russians with the impetuosity which had so far marked his career. A
general warned him that the danger was very great.

"What!" he replied. "Do you not think that with my eight thousand brave
Swedes I may easily beat eighty thousand Russians?"

Whether the general believed so or not, he did not venture any further
remonstrances, and, at the signal of two musket shots and the war-cry of
"With the aid of God!" the king and his handful of men marched forwards.
It was now about mid-day on the 20th of November, 1700.

A breach being made with their cannon in the Russian works, Charles led
his men on with fixed bayonets, a furious snow-fall behind them driving
full in the face of the enemy and making their position a very difficult
one. After an engagement of three hours the entrenchments were stormed on
all