The Swedish army was defeated, but it had not surrendered. In early afternoon, while Peter was sitting at dinner with his Swedish guests, the surviving remnants of the Swedish army dribbled back into the camp at Pushkarivka. Added to the troops in the siege trenches before Poltava and the detachments guarding the baggage train and the crossings on the lower Vorskla, the total came to more than 15,000 Swedes plus 6,000 Cossacks still under arms, awaiting the command of the King and his generals. Some of these were freshly wounded, others were still invalided from battles or frostbite the previous winter. Only a few of those remaining were foot soldiers; most of the survivors were cavalrymen.
Charles was among the last to reach Pushkarivka. While his foot was again rebandaged and he ate a piece of cold meat, he asked for Rehnskjold and Piper and it was then that he learned they were missing. Lewenhaupt was now the senior general of this Swedish army, and it was on the "little Latin colonel" that the wounded King would not have to rely.
There was no question what must be done. The Swedes must get away before the Russians fully realized the extent of their success and began to pursue. Nor was there any question about which way to go. North, east and west lay divisions of Peter's victorious army. Only the road to the south lay open. This was the best and most direct path to the Tatar lands where they might find sanctuary under the protection of Devlet Gerey. Charles was realistic enough to understand that his arrival would be received far differently now that his army was only a shattered fragment, but he hoped that the Khan would offer sanctuary long enough for the beaten troops to rest and gather strength before beginning the long march through the Tatar and Turkish borderlands back to Poland.
Thus, the immediate decision was to march south down the west bank of the Vorskla toward Perevoluchna eighty miles away, the point at which the Vorskla flows into the Dnieper. Along the way, there were several fords known to the Cossacks, and if the army crossed the river to the east bank, it could then join the road which ran from Kharkov to the Crimea. This road was clear, and led through several Cossack towns along the way which could help feed and succor the army.
The order was given to march that same afternoon. The retreat from Pushkarivka was orderly, with the artillery and baggage wagons going ahead. Kreutz, in command of the rearguard, abandoned and set fire to the heavier wagons, taking the wagon horses and giving them to the infantry to make for greater mobility. As the hastily reorganized columns began to move, they were not in headlong flight; this was a disciplined army defeated in battle but still conducting a properly structured retreat. There were still many thousands of veteran soldiers who, if called upon to fight, could wage a formidable battle.
Yet the Swedes, both officers and men, were in a state of fatigue. They had not slept the night before—only eighteen hours earlier, the army had been assembling for the dawn assault on the redoubts. Toward evening, the soldiers were stumbling, blindly following their officers, spurred mainly by the desire to get away. Charles' own condition had deteriorated. Exhausted by lack of sleep, weakened by the reopening of his wound, stricken by the shock of the disaster, the somber uncertainties of the future and the stifling heat, he had lain in a wagon until he fell asleep. When he awoke, the army in motion, his mind was clouded and he had no clear idea as to what was happening. He asked again for Piper and Rehnskjold; when told that they were not there, he lay back and said, "Yes, yes, do what you will."
The following day, June 29, the march south continued through the oppressive heat. Propelled by the fear that the Russians were pursuing, the army marched past first one, then a second and then a third of the Vorskla fords without giving a serious thought to crossing. It was easier to keep going south on land than to stop and ford a river. Behind loomed the specter of the Russians, a specter made real at four a.m. on the 30th when Kreutz caught up with the main body and reported that the Russian pursuit had started; not just Cossacks, but regular Russian troops were following.
For two days, the Swedish columns straggled into the tip of land at the junction of the Vorskla and Dnieper. On the evening of the 29th, the artillery, the remaining wagons and the mass of men began to pour into Perevoluchna at the point where the two rivers joined. Here there were no fords, and as the soldiers looked out over the broad Dnieper, a feeling of panic gripped them. The town itself and the hundreds of boats assembled there by the Zaporozh-sky Cossacks had been burned by Peter's lightning raid in April. Obviously, the army was far too numerous to cross in the remaining boats; only a few would make it before the Russians caught up. Conceivably, the whole force could march back cross north to cross the Vorskla, but the Russians there must be drawing closer. To the south, east and west lay the two rivers. The Swedish army was trapped.
It was a moment of decision: A few could cross the Dnieper. Who should go? Lewenhaupt and Kreutz dropped to their knees and begged the King to grasp this chance to escape. At first, Charles refused, insisting on staying with the army and sharing its fate. Then, as pain and fatigue overwhelmed him, he agreed to go. Subsequently, there were those who said that Charles abandoned his army to save himself, knowing that his flight would mean death or captivity for the men who had followed him so bravely. But Charles' decision was based on legitimate reasoning. He was wounded. The army faced a long march south, probably under close pursuit from a strong, victorious enemy. Most of the men were mounted now and could ride fast, but Charles, lying in a wagon, would be no more than a worry and a hindrance to the officers who exercised command. And Charles was King of Sweden. If he was captured the Tsar might humiliate him by parading him through the streets. More certainly, in Russian hands, he would be a huge liability in any peace negotiations with Russia. To obtain freedom for its monarch, Sweden would have to pay dearly in Swedish territory.
There were other reasons for Charles to escape. If he went with the army to the Crimea, then, even if the march was successful, he would be cut off from his homeland at the opposite end of Europe, totally unable to influence events. Further, he knew that the continent would soon be ringing with news of Peter's triumph. He wanted to reach a place from which he could rebut Peter's boasts and promote Sweden's side of the story. Then, too, if he reached the Ottoman dominions, he might persuade the Turks to make an alliance, provide him with a new army and enable him to continue the war. Finally, there were the Cossack followers of Mazeppa and
Gordeenko to be considered. They were now Charles' responsibility. If Charles or his Swedes were captured, the Cossacks would be treated as traitors and tortured and hung. It would be a stain on Swedish honor to permit these allies to fall into Russian hands.
For all these reasons, it was decided that the King, with as many wounded Swedes as possible, plus an escort of fighting soldiers, would go with the Cossacks straight across the steppe to the Bug River, the boundary of the Ottoman Empire. There they would ask for sanctuary and wait for their wounds to heal and for the rest of the army to join them. The army itself would go north to the Vorskla fords, cross the river and march south along the Dnieper to the Khan's dominions, to rejoin the King at Ochakov on the Black Sea. Reunited, the entire force would return to Poland.
That very night, Charles was ferried across the Dnieper on a stretcher. His coach was brought after him, its weight distributed between two boats lashed together. Through the night, small fishing boats were rowed back and forth, carrying wounded officers and men. With him, the King took the survivors of the Drabant Corps, now only eighty strong, about 700 cavalrymen and some 200 infantrymen, plus members of his household and chancery staffs. Many of Mazeppa's Cossacks who were expert swimmers swam the river holding on to the tails of their horses. The boats also brought over part of the Swedish army treasury and two barrels of gold ducats which Mazeppa had carried with him from Baturin. In all, about 900 Swedes and 2,000 Cossacks crossed the river. At dawn, before departing, Charles looked back and felt uneasy at seeing no sign of movement from the army still camped along the water's edge. Some Swedes saw clouds on the horizon which they thought might be dust from a mass, of approaching horesmen.