sides, the right wing of the Russians fleeing to the Narva and
crowding the bridge with its retreating hosts. So dense was the mass that
the bridge gave way beneath them, precipitating them into the stream, in
which eighteen thousand of the panic-stricken wretches were drowned. The
left wing then broke and fled in utter confusion, so many prisoners being
taken that the best the captor could do was to disarm them and let them
disperse where they would.

Thus ended this extraordinary battle, almost without a parallel in
history and spreading the fame of the victor widely over Europe. For a
boy little over eighteen years of age to achieve such a feat, defeating
with eight thousand men an army of nearly a hundred thousand, raised him
in men's minds to the level of the most famous conquerors. Unfortunately
for himself, it redoubled his self-will and vanity, the adulation given
him leading him into a course of wild and aimless invasion that brought
upon him eventually misfortune and defeat and nearly ruined his kingdom.

Having disposed of two of the enemies who had plotted his destruction, in
the following year Charles advanced against the third, King Augustus of
Poland, led his victorious army into that kingdom, took Warsaw, its
capital city, by storm, and in the battles of Klissov and Pultusk so
thoroughly overthrew the forces of Augustus that he was forced to give up
the throne of Poland and retire into his native dominion of Saxony, a
Polish noble being proclaimed king in his place. The Swedish conqueror
even pursued Augustus into Saxony, defeated his armies wherever met, and
forced him at last to beg humbly for peace.

Such was the first era of the brilliant career of the young Swedish
firebrand of war, who in four years had utterly overthrown his enemies
and won a reputation for splendid military genius which placed him on a
level, in the opinion of the military critics of the age, with Alexander
the Great, whom he had taken as the model of his career.

But Charles had two great enemies with whom to contend, and as a result
his later history was one of decline and fall, in which he lost all that
he had won and remained for years practically a prisoner in a foreign
land.

One of these enemies was himself. His faults of character--inordinate
ambition, inflexible obstinacy, reckless daring--were such as in the end
to negative his military genius and lead to the destruction of the great
power he had so rapidly built u