See Martin Veibull, Sveriges Storhedstid (Stockholm, 1881); Frederick Ferdinand Carlson, Sveriges Historia under Konungarne af Pfalziska Huset (Stockholm, 1883-1885); E. Haumant, La Guerre du nord et la paix d’Oliva (Paris, 1893); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia (Cambridge, 1905); G. Jones, The Diplomatic Relations between Cromwell and Charles X. (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1897).
(R. N. B.)
CHARLES XI. (1655-1697), king of Sweden, the only son of Charles X., and Hedwig Leonora of Holstein-Gottorp, was born in the palace at Stockholm, on the 24th of November 1655. His father, who died when the child was in his fourth year, left the care of his education to the regents whom he had appointed. So shamefully did they neglect their duty that when, at the age of seventeen, Charles XI. attained his majority, he was ignorant of the very rudiments of state-craft and almost illiterate. Yet those nearest to him had great hopes of him. He was known to be truthful, upright and God-fearing; if he had neglected his studies it was to devote himself to manly sports and exercises; and in the pursuit of his favourite pastime, bear-hunting, he had already given proofs of the most splendid courage. It was the general disaster produced by the speculative policy of his former guardians which first called forth his sterling qualities and hardened him into a premature manhood. With indefatigable energy he at once attempted to grapple with the difficulties of the situation, waging an almost desperate struggle with sloth, corruption and incompetence. Amidst universal anarchy, the young king, barely twenty years of age, inexperienced, ill-served, snatching at every expedient, worked day and night in his newly-formed camp in Scania (Skåne) to arm the nation for its mortal struggle. The victory of Fyllebro (Aug. 17, 1676), when Charles and his commander-in-chief S.G. Helmfeld routed a Danish division, was the first gleam of good luck, and on the 4th of December, on the tableland of Helgonabäck, near Lund, the young Swedish monarch defeated Christian V. of Denmark, who also commanded his army in person. After a ferocious contest, the Danes were practically annihilated. The battle of Lund was, relatively to the number engaged, one of the bloodiest engagements of modern times. More than half the combatants (8357, of whom 3000 were Swedes) actually perished on the battle-field. All the Swedish commanders showed remarkable ability, but the chief glory of the day indisputably belongs to Charles XI. This great victory restored to the Swedes their self-confidence and prestige. In the following year, Charles with 9000 men routed 12,000 Danes near Malmõ (July 15, 1678). This proved to be the last pitched battle of the war, the Danes never again venturing to attack their once more invincible enemy in the open field. In 1679 Louis XIV. dictated the terms of a general pacification, and Charles XI, who bitterly resented “the insufferable tutelage” of the French king, was forced at last to acquiesce in a peace which at least left his empire practically intact. Charles devoted the rest of his life to the gigantic task of rehabilitating Sweden by means of a reduktion, or recovery of alienated crown lands, a process which involved the examination of every title deed in the kingdom, and resulted in the complete readjustment of the finances. But vast as it was, the reduktion represents only a tithe of Charles XI.’s immense activity. The constructive part of his administration was equally thorough-going, and entirely beneficial. Here, too, everything was due to his personal initiative. Finance, commerce, the national armaments by sea and land, judicial procedure, church government, education, even art and science—everything, in short—emerged recast from his shaping hand. Charles XI. died on the 5th of April 1697, in his forty-first year. By his beloved consort Ulrica Leonora of Denmark, from the shock of whose death in July 1693 he never recovered, he had seven children, of whom only three survived him, a son Charles, and two daughters, Hedwig Sophia, duchess of Holstein, and Ulrica Leonora, who ultimately succeeded her brother on the Swedish throne. After Gustavus Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus Charles XI. was, perhaps, the greatest of all the kings of Sweden. His modest, homespun figure has indeed been unduly eclipsed by the brilliant and colossal shapes of his heroic father and his meteoric son; yet in reality Charles XI. is far worthier of admiration than either Charles X. or Charles XII. He was in an eminent degree a great master-builder. He found Sweden in ruins, and devoted his whole life to laying the solid foundations of a new order of things which, in its essential features, has endured to the present day.
See Martin Veibull, Sveriges Storhedstid (Stockholm, 1881); Frederick Ferdinand Carlson, Sveriges Historia under Konungarne af Pfalziska Huset (Stockholm, 1883-1885); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia (Cambridge, 1905); O. Sjõgren, Karl den Elfte och Svenska Folket (Stockholm, 1897); S. Jacobsen, Den nordiske Kriegs Krönicke, 1675-1679 (Copenhagen, 1897); J.A. de Mesmes d’Avaux, Négociations du comte d’Avaux, 1693, 1697, 1698 (Utrecht, 1882, &c.).
(R. N. B.)
CHARLES XII. (1682-1718), king of Sweden, the only surviving son of Charles XI. and Ulrica Leonora, daughter of Frederick III. of Denmark, was born on the 17th of June 1682. He was carefully educated by excellent tutors under the watchful eyes of his parents. His natural parts were excellent; and a strong bias in the direction of abstract thought, and mathematics in particular, was noticeable at an early date. His memory was astonishing. He could translate Latin into Swedish or German, or Swedish or German into Latin at sight. Charles XI. personally supervised his son’s physical training. He was taught to ride before he was four, at eight was quite at home in his saddle, and when only eleven, brought down his first bear at a single shot. As he grew older his father took him on all his rounds, reviewing troops, inspecting studs, foundries, dockyards and granaries. Thus the lad was gradually initiated into all the minutiae of administration. The influence of Charles XI. over his son was, indeed, far greater than is commonly supposed, and it accounts for much in Charles XII.’s character which is otherwise inexplicable, for instance his precocious reserve and taciturnity, his dislike of everything French, and his inordinate contempt for purely diplomatic methods. On the whole, his early training was admirable; but the young prince was not allowed the opportunity of gradually gaining experience under his guardians. At the Riksdag assembled at Stockholm in 1697, the estates, jealous of the influence of the regents, offered full sovereignty to the young monarch, the senate acquiesced, and, after some hesitation, Charles at last declared that he could not resist the urgent appeal of his subjects and would take over the government of the realm “in God’s name.” The subsequent coronation was marked by portentous novelties, the most significant of which was the king’s omission to take the usual coronation oath, which omission was interpreted to mean that he considered himself under no obligation to his subjects. The general opinion of the young king was, however, still favourable. His conduct was evidently regulated by strict principle and not by mere caprice. His refusal to countenance torture as an instrument of judicial investigation, on the ground that “confessions so extorted give no sure criteria for forming a judgment,” showed him to be more humane as well as more enlightened than the majority of his council, which had defended the contrary opinion. His intense application to affairs is noted by the English minister, John Robinson (1650-1723), who informed his court that there was every prospect of a happy reign in Sweden, provided his majesty were well served and did not injure his health by too much work.
The coalition formed against Sweden by Johann Reinhold Patkul, which resulted in the outbreak of the Great Northern War (1699), abruptly put an end to Charles XII.’s political apprenticeship, and forced into his hand the sword he was never again to relinquish. The young king resolved to attack the nearest of his three enemies—Denmark—first. The timidity of the Danish admiral Ulrik C. Gyldenlõve, and the daring of Charles, who forced his nervous and protesting admiral to attempt the passage of the eastern channel of the Sound, the dangerous flinterend, hitherto reputed to be unnavigable, enabled the Swedish king to effect a landing at Humleback in Sjaelland (Zealand), a few miles north of Copenhagen (Aug. 4, 1700). He now hoped to accomplish what his grandfather, fifty years before, had vainly attempted—the destruction of the Danish-Norwegian monarchy by capturing its capital. But for once prudential considerations prevailed, and the short and bloodless war was terminated by the peace of Travendal (Aug. 18), whereby Frederick IV. conceded full sovereignty to Charles’s ally and kinsman the duke of Gottorp, besides paying him an indemnity of 200,000 rix-dollars and solemnly engaging to commit no hostilities against Sweden in future. From Sjaelland Charles now hastened to Livonia with 8000 men. On the 6th of October he had reached Pernau, with the intention of first relieving Riga, but, hearing that Narva was in great straits, he decided to turn northwards against the tsar. He set out for Narva on the 13th of November, against the advice of all his generals, who feared the effect on untried troops of a week’s march through a wasted land, along boggy roads guarded by no fewer than three formidable passes which a little engineering skill could easily have made impregnable. Fortunately, the two first passes were unoccupied; and the third, Pyhäjoggi, was captured by Charles, who with 400 horsemen put 6000 Russian cavalry to flight. On the 19th of November the little army reached Lagena, a village about 9 m. from Narva, whence it signalled its approach to the beleaguered fortress, and early on the following morning it advanced in battle array. The attack on the Russian fortified camp began at two o’clock in the afternoon, in the midst of a violent snowstorm; and by nightfall the whole position was in the hands of the Swedes: the Russian army was annihilated. The triumph was as cheap as it was crushing; it cost Charles less than 2000 men.
After Narva, Charles XII. stood at the parting of ways. His best advisers urged him to turn all his forces against the panic-stricken Muscovites; to go into winter-quarters amongst them and live at their expense; to fan into a flame the smouldering discontent caused by the reforms of Peter the Great, and so disable Russia for some time to come. But Charles’s determination promptly to punish the treachery of Augustus prevailed over every other consideration. It is easy from the vantage-point of two centuries to criticize Charles XII. for neglecting the Russians to pursue the Saxons; but at the beginning of the 18th century his decision was natural enough. The real question was, which of the two foes was the more dangerous, and Charles had many reasons to think the civilized and martial Saxons far more formidable than the imbecile Muscovites. Charles also rightly felt that he could never trust the treacherous Augustus to remain quiet, even if he made peace with him. To leave such a foe in his rear, while he plunged into the heart of Russia would have been hazardous indeed. From this point of view Charles’s whole Polish policy, which has been blamed so long and so loudly—the policy of placing a nominee of his own on the Polish throne—takes quite another complexion: it was a policy not of overvaulting ambition, but of prudential self-defence.