He obliged the Polish Diet to dethrone Augustus
and to accept a king of his own choice in the person of a certain
Stanislaus Leszczynski (1704).
All these things had been done by a young man between the age of
seventeen and twenty--two. It was quite natural that he should be
puffed up with pride in his ability and successes. It was almost as
natural that, hardened at an early age to the horrors of war, he should
become increasingly callous and cruel. Many instructions the impulsive
youth sent out over conquered districts in Russia, Poland, and Saxony
"to slay, burn, and destroy." "Better that the innocent suffer than
that the guilty escape" was his favorite adage.
Small wonder, then, that neither Peter the Great nor the Elector
Augustus would abandon the struggle. While Charles was overrunning
Poland, Peter was reorganizing his army and occupying Karelia and
Ingria; and when the Swedish king returned to engage the Russians,
Augustus drove out Stanislaus and regained the crown of Poland. Yet
Charles, with an unreasoning stubbornness, would not perceive that the
time had arrived for terminating the conflict with a few concessions.
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