Russian line. Wrote one Swedish officer, 'If Weide had had the courage to attack us, he would certainly have beaten us, for we were extremely tired, having scarcely eaten or slept for several days, and besides this, all our men were drunk with brandy that they had found in the Muscovite tents, so that it was impossible for the few officers that remained to keep them in order.' But the Weide threat quickly evaporated. Although his troops had not been heavily engaged, Weide himself had been wounded. When he learned of the surrender of the northern wing, he had no stomach to continue alone. At daybreak, seeing himself alone and encircled by Swedish cavalry, he too capitulated. Through the rest of the morning, scattered troops across the battlefield surrendered to the Swedes.
By daybreak, the bridge had been repaired, and the beaten Russians began to cross it. Charles stood by the bridge and watched the long lines of enemy soldiers as they removed their hats, laid their banners at his feet and trudged off to the east, back to Russia. When muster was taken in the Swedish ranks, the losses were found to be 31 officers and 646 men killed, 1,205 wounded. Losses on the other side could only be estimated, even by the Russians themselves. Eight thousand at least had been killed or wounded, and the wounded stood little chance of getting home across the now freezing countryside. Ten Russian generals, including the Due du Croy, ten colonels and thirty-three other senior officers were held as prisoners, along with Dr. Carbonari, the Tsar's personal physician, and Peter Lefort, nephew of the Tsar's dead favorite. The prisoners were sent to Reval for the winter, and in the spring, when the ice freed the Baltic, they went to internment in Sweden. Most of them remained there many years.*
*The Due du Croy suffered a more curious fate. Allowed to remain at Reval after the defeat, he wrote from there to the Tsar asking for money to pay his expenses. Peter promptly sent him 6,000 roubles. In the spring of 1702, he died and was mourned by his former Russian employer. 'I am sincerely sorry about the fine old man,' said Peter when he heard the news. 'He was in truth an able and experienced military commander. Had I entrusted the command to him fourteen days earlier. I would not have suffered defeat at Narva.'
When the Duke died, he was once again insolvent. Peter was informed and intended to pay the debt, but never got around to it. Whereupon the Duke's creditors in Reval invoked an ancient law which stated that those who died in debt could not be buried. The body was placed in a church vault, where in the dry atmosphere it did not decay but mummified. Eventually, it was taken out and placed under glass. For almost 200 years, visitors to Reval were taken to see the Duke lying before them still in his wig and uniform. A few years before the revolution, (the imperial government decided that the spectacle was unseemly and the Duke was finally buried.
The principal Swedish booty was the Russian artillery: 145 cannon, 32 mortars, 4 howitzers, 10,000 cannonballs and 397 barrels of powder. Peter's army was effectively stripped of the Tsar's favorite weapon. Seeing the mass of beaten Russians marching away, and contemplating the prisoners and the booty, Magnus Stenbock was moved to say, 'It is God's work alone, but if there is anything human in it, it is the firm, immovable resolution of His Majesty and the ripe dispositions of General Rehnskjold.'
News of the Battle of Narva made a sensational impression throughout Europe. Accounts of the brilliant victory and glowing praise of Sweden's youthful monarch rippled westward. There was satisfaction in some quarters at Peter's humiliation and much snickering at the Tsar's 'flight' on the eve of battle. A medallion struck by Charles showing a man with Peter's face running away caused much amusement. Leibniz, who earlier had shown interest in Russia, now expressed his sympathy with Sweden and expressed his wish that its 'young king reign in Moscow and as far as the River Amur.'
Although Rehnskjold's 'ripe dispositions' and seasoned command had played an indispensable part in the successful outcome, it is also true that without the King's 'firm, immovable resolution' to attack there would have been no victory at Narva. Certainly, Charles himself fully accepted the popular estimate of himself as an invincible warrior. He was exuberant—almost intoxicated with victory—when he rode over the battlefield with Axel Sparre, chattering excitedly like an adolescent boy. 'But there is no pleasure in fighting with the Russians,' he said disdainfully, 'for they will not stand like other men but run away at once. If the river had been frozen, we should hardly have killed one of them. The best joke was when the Russians got upon the bridge and it broke under them. It was just like Pharaoh in the Red Sea. Everywhere you could see men's heads and horses' heads and legs sticking up out of the water, and our soldiers shot at them like wild ducks.'
From that moment on, war became the great object of Charles' life. And in this sense, while Narva was the King's first great victory, it was also the first step toward his doom. A victory so easily won helped persuade Charles that he was unconquerable. Narva, added to the dramatic success of the descent on Zealand, began the legend of Charles XII—which he himself accepted— that with a handful of men he could rout vast armies. Narva also instilled in Charles a dangerous contempt for Peter and for Russia. The ease with which he had overwhelmed Peter's army convinced him that Russians were worthless as soldiers and that he could afford to turn his back on them for as long as he liked. Years later, in the summer dust of the Ukraine, the King of Sweden would pay dearly for these moments, of exaltation on the snow-covered battlefield of Narva.
26
'WE MUST NOT LOSE OUR HEADS'
Peter had not gone many miles from Narva when news of the battle overtook him. Stunned by the swiftness and magnitude of the disaster, he also understood that a far greater danger lay ahead: If Charles decided to follow up his victory and march all the way to Moscow, nothing could prevent him.
One of Peter's qualities was that when confronted with disaster he did not despair. Failure only spurred him forward; obstacles served as challenges to stimulate new effort. Whether his resilience, perseverance and determination were grounded in stubbornness, arrogance, patriotism or wisdom did not matter—he had suffered a crushing, humiliating defeat, but there were no recriminations. He kept his composure and vowed to continue. Two weeks after the battle, he wrote to Boris Sheremetev, 'We must not lose our heads in misfortune. I order the work we have undertaken to go on. We do not lack men; the rivers and marshes are frozen. I will hear no excuses.'
The nine years between Narva and Poltava were desperate years for Peter. He never knew how much time he had remaining. Often sick and stretched on his bed with fever, plagued by revolts among the Bashkirs and Don Cossacks behind his back, he nevertheless hurled his colossal energy into preparing Russia. He played recklessly, staking everything, impoverishing his Treasury and his people, distributing huge subsidies to keep Augustus, his one remaining ally, in the field. And always he was haunted by the knowledge that Charles might rise one morning and decide to turn his shining, invincible bayonets against Russia.
Years later, after Poltava, Peter was able to see all this in perspective. His calm, Olympian tone is that of a man looking back from the pinnacle of victory. But there is in his words an accurate assessment of the influence of Narva on himself, on the development of the Russian army and on Russia itself:
Our army was vanquished by the Swedes—that is incontestable. But one should remember what sort of army it was. The Lefort regiment was the only old one. The two regiments of Guards had been present' at the two assaults of Azov, but they had never seen any field fighting, especially with regular troops. The other regiments consisted—even to some of the colonels—of raw recruits, both officers and soldiers. Besides that, there was the great famine because, on account of the late season of the year, the roads were so muddy that the transport of provisions had to be stopped. In brief, it was like child's play [for the Swedes). One cannot, then, be surprised that against such an old, disciplined and experienced army, these untried pupils got the worst of it. The victory, then, was indeed a sad and severe blow to us. It seemed to rob us of all hope for the future, and to come from the wrath of God. But now, when we think of it rightly, we ascribe it rather to the goodness of God than to his anger; for if we had conquered then, when we knew as little of war as of government, this piece of luck might have had unfortunate consequences. . . . That we lived through this disaster, or rather this good fortune, forced us to be industrious, laborious and experienced.
The defeated Russian army which had retreated from Narva under the gaze of the victorious King of Sweden straggled into Novgorod. Lacking cannon, powder, tents, baggage and, in many cases, muskets, the men were little more than a disorganized mob. Fortunately, one division of the army, that which Prince Nikita Repnin had mustered along the Volga, had not reached Narva in time to participate in the debacle, and Peter ordered Repnin to march to Novgorod and use his troops as a cadre to discipline the beaten regiments streaming into the city. Three weeks later, when the stragglers had been counted, Repnin reported to Peter that 22,967 of them had been formed into fresh regiments. Adding Repnin's own force of 10,834 men, this gave Peter an army of nearly 34,000 men. In addition, 10,000 Cossacks were on the way from the Ukraine. Peter's Own first command on reaching Moscow was to instruct Prince Boris Golitsyn to raise ten new regiments of dragoons of 1,000 men each.
As commander-in-chief of the rebuilding army, Peter appointed Boyar Boris Sheremetev, who represented an unusual mixture of old and new in Peter's Russia. Twenty years older than the Tsar and a descendant of one of the
