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NARVA 93

and make fascines, to enable the troops to cross the ditches.
The intrenchment was a formidable one, being provided
with parapets armed with chevaux-de-frise and flanked by
strong exterior works, while several batteries had been
placed to sweep the ground across which an enemy must
advance.

The right column under General Welling was to march
to a point nearly in the centre of the great semicircle,
while the left under General Rhenschild was to assault a
point about half-way between the centre and the river,
where one of the largest and most powerful of the enemy’s
batteries was placed. The king himself was with this wing
with his body-guard, and he hoped that here he might meet
the czar commanding in person. ‘The Russian emperor had,
however, left the camp that morning to fetch up forty thou-
sand men who were advancing from Plescow, and the com-
mand of the army had been assumed by the Duke of Croy.

The Swedish left wing had with it a battery of twenty-
one guns, while sixteen guns covered the attack on the right.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon when two guns gave the
signal for the advance.

Hitherto the weather had been fine, but it had become
gradually overcast, and just as the signal was given a tre-
mendous storm of snow and hail began. It set right in
the face of the Russians, and concealed from them the
movement of the Swedes, for which, indeed, they were
wholly unprepared, believing that the small force they saw
was but the advance-guard of a great Swedish army, and
that no attack need be expected until the main body arrived.
‘The consequence was the Swedes were almost at the edge
of the ditch before they were perceived, and both columns
attacked with such vigour and courage that in a quarter
of an hour they had gained a footing in the intrenchments
and had so filled up the ditch with the fascinés that the
cavalry were able to follow them,