Peter prepared for Narva as though for a trial of his own memory, and appointed himself the victor in advance.
Almost two years passed between Evdokia's taking of the veil and the war. The court proposed a new marriage to Peter several times: envoys brought pedigrees, terms of alliance and portraits of women whom reasons of state made suitable brides. After Anna, he entered into no new liaisons and did not return to his former revels. From the outside, it might have looked like fidelity.
One day Peter looked too long at the portrait of a princess he had never met and caught himself not taking an interest but making a comparison. He was calculating how old Martha would be by the next campaign and thinking that any new union would later have to be broken for the sake of a woman from his memory.
The envoy asked which quality the sovereign considered most important in a bride. Peter could not answer. The woman he regarded as destined for him had never once seen him and had promised him nothing.
The portrait was returned without explanation. Peter did not use any of these women as a temporary substitute for Martha, but he caught himself in a different lie. He lived alone while assuming in advance that the place beside him belonged to a woman who did not yet know him.
He did not settle the question. He immersed himself in the preparations for Narva, where the future, at least, could be divided into regiments, powder and hours.
Peter changed the disposition of the units, divided the powder stores, clarified the order of command and made the officers rehearse their actions in the event of lost communications. Three mistakes from the first line were corrected before the battle began. Not one familiar weakness remained on the map.
The commanders repeated the plan without hesitation. One young officer asked what they should do if the wind and snow came from the other direction.
Peter answered too quickly: they would come from the right one.
The Book did not confirm his certainty. It showed the known causes, but did not know which way the wind would turn in an hour.
Afanasy Naryshkin drew up a separate procedure for evacuating the wounded. Each unit was assigned an assembly point, carts and a man authorised to change the route without the sovereign's permission. Advocates of a decisive battle grumbled that such preparations taught men to retreat.
"No," Afanasy said. "They teach the wounded not to wait until it suits the sovereign to notice them."
Peter left the procedure in force. He considered it a precaution that would not be needed.
Two days before the battle he arranged a test of the command. He stepped away from the table himself, while two officers were simultaneously given conflicting reports: the baggage train had been delayed, the enemy had appeared by the crossing, and one of the senior commanders was wounded. The first officer waited for Peter and lost an entire hour. The second checked the reports with two messengers, moved the carts and only then sent the sovereign a written account of his decision.
Peter judged the second procedure correct. The Book confirmed the independent check, but refused to call it Might: the officer had acted only once, in an exercise, when the right to contradict the sovereign had been granted beforehand. For the rule to become a source of power, it had to survive real fear.
The same young officer proposed two provisos to the general plan. If the signal came earlier than expected, the reserve should begin moving after confirmation from two observers. If the snow concealed the direction of the attack, the nearest commander should not wait for the tsar's messenger. Peter accepted the second proviso and struck out the first. In his memory, an early signal could only be a sentry's mistake.
That evening Russian patrols captured a Swedish scout. They found on him a crude sketch of the new road, with the stores and several Russian fortifications marked. The drawing did not reveal Charles XII's plan, but it proved a simple fact: the enemy could see Peter's changes and had time to adapt. Peter strengthened the guard on the stores, but did not reconsider the hour or place of the main attack. He believed that although the enemy knew the Russian preparations, he himself still knew what tomorrow would bring.
Charles XII proved younger than many of the Russian officers and quicker than expected. Scouts reported Swedish movements, but the timing did not match Peter's memory. The first messenger arrived before the appointed hour and said that the enemy was moving towards the flank that had remained secondary in the old battle.
Peter decided that the messenger had seen an advance detachment.
The second messenger brought the same report and named two observers, as the rejected proviso had required. The third reported that the Swedes were advancing along the road the Russians had cleared for their own supplies. A road built on Peter's orders was now helping the enemy.
The commander asked to begin redeploying. This would require opening part of the fortifications and briefly weakening a familiar sector. Peter refused. He expected the main attack where it had come in the first line.
The snow began, but did not fall as a solid wall. The wind shifted in gusts, exposing the Russian positions instead of concealing them. Shots thundered on the other flank.
Peter heard the battle before he accepted the report.
Peter ordered the old position held a little longer, so the forward regiment received its orders late and the neighbouring regiment decided communications had been cut. The officer whom Peter had once saved from a clan purge did not wait for fresh confirmation, but moved the reserve to where he saw the threat. In doing so, he closed one gap and opened another.
No one betrayed Peter. The messengers reported what they had seen, the officers followed the established rules, and the Swedes made use of the Russian road. It was the tsar himself who was wrong.
The Swedish attack came through the open gap. The Russian units faltered. Foreign officers shouted commands in different languages, carts blocked the passage, and men began looking for the tsar instead of their nearest commander.
Peter was close by. For that very reason, the panic grew worse for several moments: everyone waited for the sovereign to restore the familiar order with a single command.
Peter ordered the reserve towards the position where the breach had opened in the first line. The reserve obeyed and found an empty space. The real attack was already unfolding elsewhere.
The tsar's mistake was seen by the officers, drummers and soldiers who had repeated his flawless plan only that morning.
One regiment still had a route to the crossing. A young drummer saw the neighbouring units begin to lose formation and sounded a withdrawal that was not in Peter's plan. The commander took it up. The regiment began to fall back in ranks, keeping its weapons and bringing the wounded inside the formation.
Ivan Naryshkin shouted that it was treason, and Peter too heard disobedience in the drum. One word would have brought punishment.
But the regiment was not fleeing. It was withdrawing.
The first correct order at Narva was not given by Peter. And it was an order to retreat.
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