Evening star., 1925-05-30
BEAUTIES OF ESTHONIA.
Ancient Russian Frontier City Re
calls Towns of the Near East.

From the London Times.
Narva, on a hot Summer day, with
its rough, narrow, cobbled streets. it's
white houses from which the suns
rays are flung back in a pitiless glare,
the green domes of the Orthodox
churches and it's abundance of jack
DAVIS, recalls the towns of the Near
East, writes a correspondent. L have
noticed this similarity once. before, and
that was in Midwinter, with 20 de-
grees of frost, when / saw the trees
that fringe the market-place of Dorpat
packed with hooded crows, and birds
in hundreds hopping about under the
feet of the traffickers in search of
edible remnants, as tame as the
pigeons in Regents Park. The re-
semblance, of course, is superficial,
for Narva is in many respects an up
to-date town, with a considerable trade
and industry, good shops and an ex-
cellent Russian tea-shop (the hotel is
not above the ordinary Esthonian
standard), while Dorpat is an ancient
seat of learning.
The frontier between Esthonia and
Russia runs a few miles east of Narva,
which is the last Esthonian outpost,
and in that capacity had to beat off
very heavy attacks from the bolshe-
vics in 1919. In ancient times the
Narova itself. flowing broad, swift and
broken between lofty banks, was the
frontier. In the days when the Ger
man knights faced the Muscovites
over the river, and after the Swedes
lin the sixteenth century, had become
the owners of the left bank, Narva
was the scene of fierce fighting; 1t
was from the great fortress of Ivan
gerod, on the Russian side of the river,
that Pontus de la Gardie, whose stone
effigy lies above his tomb in the Reval
Domkirche. carried off the great green
carved guns, the Hog and the Sow,
that stand in the courtyard of Grips
holm Castle, near Stockholm.
The typical Esthonian landscape of
family undulating agricultural plain.
patched with woodland, that lies west
of the town, is the scene of the IA
nous victory of the Swedes over the
Russians in 1900. The Battle of
Narva is one of the cases where a
small force under able leadership and
superior in courage or training, or
both, has utterly routed an army i'm
mensely superior in numbers, but in
competently led and deficient in either
or both of the said qualities-an ex-
treme example of which is the victory
of Garibaldi's Thousand over the large
Neopolitan army in Sicily in 1860.
At Narva, of course, the disparity
OIL strength was IlOL SO ldnIdSClCs
though great; the Swedes had 5000
men on the field of battle and the Rus
slams, about 10000 The Russians,
deceived as to the strength Of the
attacking enemy, had their tails
down from the start; the unframed
and unorganized peasant levies were
penned like sheep in their intrenched
camps and massacre in thousands.
Peter the Great, serving in his army
with the rank Of captain, was not
present at the catastrophe, having
gone to meet another force which
was moving toward the battlefield.
The battle afforded Charles XII,
at the age of IS, an opportunity Of
showing his complete fearlessness and
his generosity in the hour of triumph
he kept only his fat bag Of generals
as prisoners, and released all the
other officers and men captured-but
it's historical significance is negligible,
seeing that four years later Narya,
which the Swedish king had so bril-
liantly relieved, was taken by the
Russians and remained Russian until
the revolution and breakup OF the
empire, while nine years after the bat
tie Charles had been hopelessly and
finally defeated at Poltava and fed
to Turkey.