The prime agency in bringing about this state of things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X.
or Karl-Gustav.

Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism.

To see him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the Empire, had come to be Cromwell's desire and the desire in Great Britain generally.

For a time that had seemed probable.

In the great Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and, Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the Swede, "_actum jam videbatur de Polonia_" as an old annalist says: "it seemed then all over with Poland." But a medley of powers, for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to his own side of the Baltic.