CHAPTER XII.
THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA, A.D. 1709.
Dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede,
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and fortune of the war
Had passed to the triumphant Czar.
Napoleon prophesied, at St. Helena, that all Europe would soon be either Cossack or Republican. Three years ago, the fulfillment of the last of these alternatives appeared most probable. But the democratic movements of 1848 were sternly repressed in 1849. The absolute authority of a single ruler, and the austere stillness of martial law, are now paramount in the capitals of the Continent, which lately owned no sovereignty save the will of the multitude, and where that which the Democrat calls his sacred right of insurrection was so loudly asserted and so often fiercely enforced. Many causes have contributed to bring about this reaction, but the most effective and the most permanent have been Russian influence and Russian arms. Russia is now the avowed and acknowledged champion of monarchy against democracy; of constituted authority, however acquired, against revolution and change, for whatever purpose desired; of the imperial supremacy of strong states over their weaker neighbors against all claims for political independence and all strivings for separate nationality. She had crushed the heroic Hungarians; and Austria, for whom nominally she crushed them, is now one of her dependents. Whether the rumors of her being about to engage in fresh enterprises be well or ill founded, it is certain that recent events must have fearfully augmented the power of the Muscovite empire, which, even previously, had been the object of well-founded anxiety to all Western Europe.
It was truly stated, eleven years ago, that "the acquisitions which Russia has made within the [then] last sixty-four years
