In a few days came the news that Augustus had met Karl at Klissow, and that despite a desperate resistance and heroic bravery, had suffered a complete reverse, his stores, flags, artillery, falling into the hands of the Swedes who drove him before them in headlong flight.
Karl entered Cracovia as he had entered Varsovia, overwhelmed all by the sheer terror of his arms, established a Swedish garrison, taxed the town 100,000 rix-dollars, and proceeded to follow Augustus who fled towards Marienbourg.
Livid with anger and despair Aurora von Königsmarck had rushed from room to room of the palace, snatching her jewels, her gold and silver ornaments, her tapestries and clothes, calling together her maids, pages, dogs, and monkeys, and in hasty retreat with coaches and baggage-mules, fled to Lublin, accompanied by Mdle. D’Einsiedel, whose entire being was occupied in prayers for the safety of General Patkul.
When the weary women reached their new place of refuge they were relieved by the news that Augustus had a respite.
Karl, hotly pursuing his enemy, had fallen from his horse and broken his leg, which necessitated his return to Cracovia and would keep him confined several weeks to his bed.
“Now--if you have a man’s courage and a prince’s spirit--is your opportunity,” wrote Aurora, in a fiery letter to the vanquished Prince, who was striving to gather together once more his resources at Marienbourg.
“Victrices copias aliam laturus in orbem.”--LUCAN.
The Czar Peter listened in silence to the news from Poland; he had appeared lately to have forgotten the war, and to have become entirely absorbed in the building of his new city and fort on the mud-banks of the Neva.
Anxious to break the spirit of the Malo-Russians who had shown themselves restive under his autocratic rule, he had transported thousands of these men whose forced labor was draining the morass as a preliminary to the foundations of the new city.
That hundreds of them died through the unhealthfulness of the district and the hard conditions of their life was nothing to the Czar.
He had decided that the new capital was to be called St Petersburg, and that the great fortress therein was to be named St. Peter and St. Paul and used for the burial-place of the Czars of Russia, instead of the church of St Michael in Moscow.