Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden

by Voltaire

Charles’s power and the greatness of Sweden were now drawing to their last phase. For some time more than ten crowned heads had viewed the extension of Sweden beyond her natural boundaries, to the other side of the Baltic, and from the Duna to the Elbe, with fear and envy. Charles’s fall and absence awakened the interests and jealousy of all these princes, after they had lain dormant for a long time through treaties and inability to break them.

The Czar, who was more powerful than them all together, making the best use of his victory, took Wibourg, and all Carelia, inundated Finland with troops, besieged Riga, and sent a corps into Poland to help Augustus to recover the throne. The Emperor was then what Charles had once been—the arbiter of Poland and the North; but he consulted only his own interests, whereas Charles’s ambitions were always of glory or vengeance. The Swedish monarch had helped his friends, and overcome his enemies, without exacting the smallest reward for his victories; but the Czar, rather a prince than a hero, would not help the King of Poland except on condition that Livonia should be given up to him, and that this province, for the sake of which Augustus had begun war, should belong to the Russians for ever.

The King of Denmark, forgetting the treaty of Travendal as Augustus had that of Altranstadt, had from that time thoughts of making himself master of the Duchies of Holstein and Bremen, to which he renewed his claim. The King of Prussia had long-standing claims to Swedish Pomerania which he wished to revive; the Duke of Mecklenburg was provoked at seeing Sweden still in possession of Wismar, the finest city in his duchy. This Prince had married the Emperor of Russia’s niece, and his uncle was only looking for an excuse to establish himself in Germany, after the example of the Swedes. George, Elector of Hanover, also wanted to enrich himself from the spoiling of Charles. This Bishop of Munster, too, would have been glad to have made some claims had he possessed the means to do so.

There were about 12,000 or 13,000 Swedes defending Pomerania, and the other districts which Charles held in Germany; here was the seat of war. But this storm alarmed the Emperor and his allies. It is a law of the Empire that whoever invades one of the provinces should be considered an enemy to the whole Germanic body.

But there was still greater difficulty involved, for all these princes, except the Czar, were then leagued against Louis XIV, whose power had for some time been as formidable to the Empire as that of Charles himself.

At the beginning of the century Germany found herself hard pressed between the French on the south and the Swedes on the north. The French had crossed the Danube, and the Swedes the Oder; if their victorious forces had united, the Empire would have been lost. But the same fatality that had ruined Sweden had also humbled France; yet some resources still remained to Sweden, and Louis carried on the war with vigour, though unsuccessfully. If Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen became the seat of war, it was to be feared that the Empire would suffer, and being weakened on that side would be the less able to withstand Louis. To prevent this, the Princes of Germany, Queen Anne of England, and the States of Holland, concluded at the Hague, in 1709, one of the most extraordinary treaties ever signed.

It was stipulated by these powers that the seat of the war should not be in Pomerania, nor any other German State, but that Charles might be attacked by his enemies anywhere else. The King of Poland and the Czar themselves agreed to this treaty, and had a clause inserted which was as strange as the treaty itself, to the effect that the 12,000 Swedes in Pomerania should not leave it to defend their other provinces.

To safeguard the treaty it was proposed to raise an army, which was to encamp on the Oder, to maintain this imaginary neutrality. It was an unheard-of thing, to levy an army to prevent war! Those who were paying the forces were, for the most part, very much concerned to bring about the war they were pretending to prevent. The army was, by the treaty, to consist of the troops of the Emperor, the King of Prussia, the Elector of Hanover, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Bishop of Munster.

This project was, as might be expected, not carried through. The princes who were to furnish their quota for the army contributed nothing; not two regiments were formed. There was much talk of neutrality, but no one observed it; and all the Northern princes who had any controversy with the King of Sweden were left at full liberty to dispute who should have his spoils.

At this point the Czar, having stationed his forces in Lithuania and left orders for carrying on the siege of Riga, returned to Moscow, to show his people a sight as new as anything he had yet done in his kingdom. It was a triumph little inferior to that of the ancient Romans. He made his entry into Moscow under seven triumphal arches, erected in the streets, and adorned with all that could be produced in that climate, and that the flourishing trade which his energy had nourished could supply. The procession began with a regiment of guards, followed by the artillery taken from the Swedes at Lesnow and Pultawa, each piece being drawn by eight horses with scarlet trappings hanging to the ground. Then came the standards, kettle-drums, and the colours won at these two battles, and carried by the officers who had won them; all the spoils were followed by the Czar’s picked troops. After they had filed past, the litter of Charles XII, in a chariot made for the purpose, appeared as it had been found on the battle-field, all shattered by cannon-shot. Behind this litter marched the prisoners two by two, and among them Count Piper, Prime Minister of Sweden, the famous Marshal Renschild, Count Levenhaupt, Generals Slipenbak, Hamilton, and Stackelburg, and all the officers and soldiers who were later scattered through Russia. Immediately behind them came the Czar, riding the same horse he had used at Pultawa; just behind him were the generals who had their share in the success of this battle; after them came another regiment of guards, and the wagons loaded with Swedish ammunition brought up the rear.