The Swedish decision was for Livonia. Two enemies, Augustus and Peter, were attacking in that region; two major Swedish fortresses, Riga and Narva, were in danger. The king thereafter closed his mind to everything else and devoted his energy to getting his expedition under way before storms and ice on the Baltic made movement by sea impossible. In a letter from Swedish headquarters, one of Charles' officers declared, "The King is resolved to go to Livonia. He refuses to see the French and
Brandenburg ambassadors lest they be carrying peace proposals. He wishes at any price to fight with King Augustus and is annoyed at anything which seems likely to hinder his doing this."
On October 1, spurning all warnings of danger from autumn storms on the Baltic, Charles sailed from Karlskrona for Livonia. Although the troops were crowded aboard the ships, there still were only enough transports to carry 5,000 men on this first voyage. On the third day, with the fleet in mid-Baltic, a storm swept down as predicted and scattered the ships far and wide. Some anchored and rode out the storm off the coast of Courland, others foundered and were lost. Many of the cavalry horses were crippled as the ships heaved and rolled in the waves, and Charles was desperately seasick.
On October 6, what was left of the battered Swedish fleet entered the port of Pernau at the top of the Bay of Riga. The mayor and the city council greeted the King on the quay, and an honor guard of soldiers fired its muskets in the air as he walked through the cobbled streets to his temporary lodgings. As soon as the storm damage could be repaired, the fleet was dispatched to Sweden to bring another 4,000 men, more horses and the remainder of the artillery. In Pernau, Charles heard that Augustus of Poland had lifted the siege of Riga, halted military operations and withdrawn into winter quarters. Back in mid-July, the Polish King had personally joined the siege with 17,000 Saxon soldiers, but the news of the Peace of Travendal with its sudden toppling of his once-bellicose Danish ally had surprised and disheartened him. Now, learning of the impending Swedish descent on Livonia, Augustus had prudently withdrawn to await developments. Charles received this intelligence with bitter disappointment. He had hoped to fight Augustus; he was determined to fight somebody. And, in this context, there remained a possibility. Only 150 miles away, Peter of Russia was in the field with a Russian army, besieging the fortress of Narva. Charles made his decision quickly: If the Saxons would not fight, he would fight the Russians. He would march against the Tsar to the relief of Narva.
Charles began by concentrating all his available troops. With the men he had brought and the additional soldiers sailing from Sweden, plus some of the Riga garrison now freed by Augustus' retirement, he estimated that he could amass 7,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry by November. For five weeks, he intensively drilled the army at Wesenberg, and during this period Swedish cavalry patrols skirmished regularly with Sheremetev's horsemen along the road to Narva.
Not everyone in the Swedish camp was enthusiastic about the idea of a winter campaign against the Russians. To many of Charles' officers, the enterprise seemed extremely hazardous. The Russian army, they argued, outnumbered them four to one—some rumors said eight to one; the Russians would be defending a fortified line which the Swedes, despite their inferior numbers, would have to attack; it was a seven-day march to Narva through a burned, despoiled countryside, on dangerous, boggy roads winding through three formidable passes which the Russians would certainly defend; illness had begun to spread among the Swedish soldiers and the ranks were thinning; winter was coming and no winter quarters had been prepared.
To these arguments Charles retorted simply that they had come to fight and an enemy awaited them. If the Swedish army withdrew and Narva was taken, the Russians would flood through Ingria, Estonia and Livonia and then all the eastern Baltic provinces would be lost. The King's optimism and energy won over some of the officers and helped improve the morale of the troops. All understood that responsibility for the campaign, its success or failure, would belong entirely to the eighteen-year-old King. "If the King succeeds," declared Rehnskjold before the march began, "there never was anyone who had to triumph over such obstacles."
At dawn on November 13, without waiting for the arrival of 1,000 cavalrymen expected from Reval, the expedition set out. The columns following the blue-and-yellow flag included every man fit to march, 10,537 in all. The conditions were, as predicted, appalling. The roads were mired by autumn rains and the men had to march and sleep in thick, syrupy mud. The ravaged country was studded with burned-out farmhouses, set alight by Russian horsemen. There was no fodder for the horses and no food for the men except what they carried in their knapsacks. Throughout the march, a steady, cold November rain drenched the men to the skin. At night, when the temperature dropped, the rain turned to flurries of snow and sleet and the ground began to freeze. The King slept with his men under the open sky, receiving the rain and snow on his face.
Despite the bad weather, the Swedish army was pleasantly surprised to find its march almost unopposed. Two of the three passes along the road were entered and occupied without any opposition at all. On the fourth day, the leading troopers of the advance Swedish cavalry screen rode into the Pyhajoggi Pass, eighteen miles west of Narva, where the road ran alongside a stream through a deep valley surrounded by steep hills. Five thousand Russian horsemen commanded by Sheremetev waited on the far side of the stream, but the bridge across had not been cut.
Charles, riding with the advance guard, was informed of
Sheremetev's presence. He ordered that eight pieces of horse artillery be brought forward. Then, at the head of a detachment of dragoons and a part of a battalion of Guards—no more than 400 men in all—the King charged down the valley. The Swedish horse artillery, screened from Russian eyes by the line of galloping dragoons and brought up unexpectedly to the very front line, was suddenly unmasked and opened fire at close range on the clusters of Russian horsemen on the opposite bank. The Russians, startled and frightened by the sudden flash and roar of cannon and having no guns of their own with which to reply, wheeled their horses and galloped away, leaving the pass undefended. Subsequently, it was learned that the Russian retreat was a planned withdrawal and not a flight, as Sheremetev had orders from Peter not to involve his troops in a fight with the main Swedish army. But by the weary Swedes, the charge of a small part of the army followed by what seemed a Russian rout was seen as a victory and provided much-needed encouragement. A pass which properly defended, could have cost the Swedish army heavily to force had been taken for nothing. The road to Narva lay open.