The intervention offered by the neighboring powers was refused by the proud Swedish king, who, surrounded by dangers on all sides, now issued a call for a meeting of the estates of the realm at Gothenburg, while at the same time preparing to invade Norway as a part of the Danish dominions. At this interval he was suddenly taken sick and died soon after reaching Gothenburg. A treaty followed with the widowed queen, regent of Sweden, and Frederick preserved his realm, though not without loss of territory.
CHARLES XII. THE FIREBRAND
OF SWEDEN.
On the 27th of June, 1682, was born one of the most extraordinary of men, the Alexander of modern times, one of those meteors of conquest which have appeared at rare intervals in the history of the world. Grandson alike of Charles X. of Sweden and Frederick III. of Denmark, Charles XII. of Sweden united in himself all the soldierly qualities of his ancestors, his chief fault being that he possessed them in too intense a degree, being possessed by a sort of military madness, an overweaning passion for great exploits and wide-spread conquests. In his career Sweden reached its greatest height of power, and with his death it fell back into its original peninsular status.
His daring activity began almost with his birth. At seven years of age he could manage a horse, and the violent exercises in which he delighted to indulge gave him the vigorous constitution necessary for the great fatigues of his later life, while he developed an obstinacy which made him a terror to his advisers in later years.
Charles was extraordinary in the fact that he performed the most remarkable of his exploits before he reached the age of manhood, and in a just sense may be given the name of the boy conqueror. His mother died when he was eleven years of age and his father when he was fifteen, his grandmother being appointed regent of the kingdom, with a council of five nobles for her advisers.
Sweden, when he came to the throne, had risen to a high rank among the powers of Europe. In addition to its original dominion, it possessed the whole of Finland, the finest part of Pomerania, on the southern shores of the Baltic, and also Livonia, Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Viborg, the Duchies of Bremen and Verden, and other realms, all of long possession and secured by conquest and treaty. But it had dangerous enemies with whom to deal, especially Peter the Great of Russia, then bent on bringing his barbarian dominions into line with the great powers of the continent.
Such was the inheritance of the fifteen-year-old king, who quickly showed the material of which he was composed. One day in the first year of his reign, after reviewing a number of regiments, he was seen by his special favorite, Charles Piper, in a spell of abstraction.
"May I ask your Majesty," said Piper, "of what you are thinking so deeply?"
"I am thinking," replied the boy monarch, "that I am capable of commanding those brave fellows; and I don't choose that either they or I shall receive orders from a woman."