"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all the same his serf and huntsman.
Q: What does friendship among Soviet nationalities mean? A: It means that the Armenians take the Russians by the hand; the Russians take the Ukrainians by the hand; the Ukranians take the Uzbeks by the hand; and they all go and beat up the Jews.
Nothing now prevented Charles from turning his victorious arms against the tsar; and on the 13th of August 1707, he evacuated Saxony at the head of the largest host he ever commanded, consisting of 24,000 horse and 20,000 foot. Delayed during the autumn months in Poland by the tardy arrival of reinforcements from Pomerania, it was not till November 1707 that Charles was able to take the field. On New Year's Day 1708 he crossed the Vistula, though the ice was in a dangerous condition. On the 4th of July 1708 he cut in two the line of the Russian army, 6 m. long, which barred his progress on the Wabis, near Holowczyn, and compelled it to retreat. The victory of Holowczyn, memorable besides as the last pitched battle won by Charles XII., opened up the way to the Dnieper. The Swedish army now began to suffer severely, bread and fodder running short, and the soldiers subsisting entirely on captured bullocks. The Russians slowly retired before the invader, burning and destroying everything in his path. On the 20th of December it was plain to Charles himself that Moscow was inaccessible. But the idea of a retreat was intolerable to him, so he determined to march southwards instead of northwards as suggested by his generals, and join his forces with those of the hetman of the Dnieperian Cossacks, Ivan Mazepa, who had 100,000 horsemen and a fresh and fruitful land at his disposal. Short of falling back upon Livonia, it was the best plan adoptable in the circumstances, but it was rendered abortive by Peter's destruction of Mazepa's capital Baturin, so that when Mazepa joined Charles at Horki, on the 8th of November 1708, it was as a ruined man with little more than 1300 personal attendants (see MAZEPA-KOLEDINSKY). A still more serious blow was the destruction of the relief army which Levenhaupt was bringing to Charles from Livonia, and which, hampered by hundreds of loaded wagons, was overtaken and almost destroyed by Peter at Lyesna after a two days' battle against fourfold odds (October). The very elements now began to fight against the perishing but still unconquered host. The winter of 1708 was the severest that Europe had known for a century. By the 1st of November firewood would not ignite in the open air, and the soldiers warmed themselves over big bonfires of straw. By the time the army reached the little Ukrainian fortress of Hadjacz in January 1709, wine and spirits froze into solid masses of ice; birds on the wing fell dead; saliva congealed on its passage from the mouth to the ground. "Nevertheless," says an eye-witness, "though earth, sea and sky were against us, the king's orders had to be obeyed and the daily march made." Entry: CHARLES