Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden

by Voltaire

In the meantime they put the King to bed, as he had not rested for sixteen days. They had to cut his boots from his legs, so much were they swollen from excessive fatigue. He had neither linen nor clothes. They hastily manufactured a wardrobe from whatever would fit him best that was in the town. When he had had some hours’ sleep, he got up to go and review his troops, and visit the fortifications. That very day he sent his orders to all parts for renewing the war against his enemies with more vigour than ever.

Europe was now in a very different condition from that she had been in when Charles went away in 1709. The war in the South, between England, Holland, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, was over; this general peace was due to some private quarrels in the English Court. The Earl of Oxford, a clever minister, and Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest geniuses and most eloquent men of his century, were in the ascendant against the famous Duke of Marlborough, and persuaded Queen Anne to make peace with Louis XIV. France having made peace with England, soon forced the other Powers to terms. Philip IV, grandson of Louis XIV, was beginning a peaceful rule over the ruins of the Spanish monarchy. The Emperor, master of Naples and Flanders, was firmly settled in his vast dominions. The only thing that Louis asked was to finish his long career in peace. Queen Anne of England died in August 1714, hated by half the nation for having given peace to so many States. Her brother James Stewart, an unfortunate prince excluded from the throne almost from his birth, failing to appear in England to try to recover a succession which new laws would have settled on him, had his party prevailed, George I, Elector of Hanover, was unanimously chosen King of Great Britain. The throne came to him not by right of descent, but by Act of Parliament.

Called at an advanced age to rule a people whose language he did not understand, and where everything was strange, George considered himself rather Elector of Hanover than King of England; his whole ambition was for the improvement of his German States; nearly every year he crossed the seas to visit the subjects who adored him. In other ways he preferred a private to public life; the pomp of majesty was burdensome to him, and what he liked was a familiar talk with a few old courtiers. He was not the most dazzling king of Europe, but he was one of the wisest of the kings, and perhaps the only one who could, as king, taste the pleasures of friendship and a private life. These were the chief princes, and this was the position of affairs in South Europe. The changes that had occurred in the North were of another kind: the kings there were at war, but all united against the King of Sweden.

Augustus had been long restored to the crown of Poland, by the help of the Czar, and with the consent of the Emperor, Queen Anne, and the States-General, who, though guarantors of the Peace of Altranstadt, in Charles’s better days, forgot their obligations when they found there was no longer anything to fear from him. But Augustus was not at peace in his kingdom. His people’s fears of arbitrary power returned with the return of their King; they had taken up arms to make him submit to the Pacta Conventa, a solemn compact they had with their King.

They seemed to have summoned him home only to make war on him. At the beginning of these troubles not a word was said of Stanislas, his party seemed to have disappeared, and the King of Sweden was no more remembered than as a kind of torrent, which had for a time borne down all before it.

Pultawa and Charles’s absence, which caused the fall of Stanislas, was also the cause of the fall of the Duke of Holstein, Charles’s nephew, who was dispossessed of his dominions by the King of Denmark. The King of Sweden had a great regard for the father, and was moved and humiliated by the son’s losses. Besides, as he only acted for the sake of glory, the fall of princes which he had himself set up was as vexing to him as his own losses. His enemies vied with each other in profiting by his ruin. Frederic William, the new King of Prussia, who seemed as anxious for war as his father had been for peace, took Stetin and a part of Pomerania for four hundred thousand crowns, which he advanced to the King of Denmark and the Czar. George, Elector of Hanover, now King of England, had the Duchy of Bremen and Verden for three-score thousand pistoles which he had lent to the King of Denmark. Thus was Charles spoiled, and those who had gained these territories as pledges were from their interests as much opposed to him as those who had taken them from him. The Czar was indeed most of all to be feared. His former losses, his victories, and his very mistakes, combined with his diligence to learn, and care to teach his subjects in their turn, and his hard work, made him a remarkable man.

Riga, Livonia, Ingria, Carelia, part of Finland, and all the countries that had been won by Charles’s ancestors, were now subject to Russia. Peter, who had only twenty years before not so much as one ship on the Baltic, had gained control of those seas with a fleet of no fewer than thirty ships of the line. He built one of these ships with his own hands; he was the best carpenter, admiral and pilot in the North. From the Gulf of Bothnia to the ocean he had sounded every league of the way. He had united the labour of a common sailor to the experiments of a theorist, and having become admiral gradually, and by dint of victories, as he had before when he aimed at land command. While Prince Gallitsin, a general made by him, and the best at seconding his plans, was completing the conquest of Poland, by taking Vasa and beating the Swedes, this Emperor put to sea to make a descent on Alan, on the Baltic, about twelve leagues from Stockholm.

He went on the expedition in the beginning of July 1714, while his rival Charles was in bed at Demotica.

He embarked at Cronslot, a harbour he had built four miles from St. Petersburg. The harbour, the fleet, the officers and sailors were all the work of his own hands, and he could see nothing that he had not made himself.

The Russian fleet found itself off Aland on the 15th of July; it consisted of thirty ships of the line, fourscore galleys, and a hundred half-galleys; it carried twenty thousand men, and was commanded by Admiral Apraxin, the Russian Emperor being Rear-Admiral.