“He (Peter) used all endeavours to bring matters to an accommodation. He proffered very advantageous conditions; Petersburg only, a trifle as he pretended, which he had set his heart upon, he would retain; and even for that he was willing some other way to give satisfaction. But the King of Sweden was too well acquainted with the importance of that place to leave it in the hands of an ambitious Prince, and thereby to give him an inlet into the Baltic. This was the only time since the defeat at Narva, that the Czar’s arms had no other end than that of self-defence. They might, perhaps, even have fallen short therein, had not the King of Sweden (through whose persuasion is still a mystery), instead of marching the shortest way to Novogorod and to Moscow, turned towards Ukraine, where his army, after great losses and sufferings, was at last entirely defeated at Pultawa. As this was a fatal period to the Swedish successes, so how great a deliverance it was to the Muscovites, may be gathered from the Czar’s celebrating, every year, with great solemnity, the anniversary of that day, from which his ambitious thoughts began to soar still