In the mean time, while these transactions had been taking place among the Russians, the King of Sweden had been gradually making his way toward the westward and southward, into the very heart of the Russian dominions. The forces of the emperor, which were not strong enough to offer him battle, had been gradually retiring before him; but they had devastated and destroyed every thing on their way, in their retreat, so as to leave nothing for the support of the Swedish army. They broke up all the bridges too, and obstructed the roads by every means in their power, so as to impede the progress of the Swedes as much as possible, since they could not wholly arrest it.
The Swedes, however, pressed slowly onward. They sent off to great distances to procure forage for the horses and food for the men. When they found the bridges down, they made detours and crossed the rivers at fording-places. When the roads were obstructed, they removed the impediments if they could, and if not, they opened new roads. Sometimes, in these cases, their way led them across swampy places where no solid footing could be found, and then the men would cut down an immense quantity of bushes and trees growing in the neighborhood, and make up the branches into bundles called _fascines_. They would lay these bundles close together on the surface of the swamp, and then level them off on the top by loose branches, and so make a road firm enough for the army to march over.
Things went on in this way until, at last, the farther progress of King Charles was arrested, and the tide of fortune was turned wholly against him by a great battle which was fought at a place called Pultowa. This battle, which, after so protracted a struggle, at length suddenly terminated the contest between the king and the Czar, of course attracted universal attention at the time, for Charles and Peter were the greatest potentates and warriors of their age, and the struggle for power which had so long been waged between them had been watched with great interest, through all the stages of it, by the whole civilized world. The battle of Pultowa was, in a word, one of those great final conflicts by which, after a long struggle, the fate of an empire is decided. It, of course, greatly attracted the attention of mankind, and has since taken its place among the most renowned combats of history.