Charles XII

1682-1718, king of Sweden 1697-1718.

* * *

Swedish Karl

born June 17, 1682, Stockholm, Swed.

died Nov. 30, 1718, Fredrikshald, Nor.

King of Sweden (1697–1718).

Son of Charles XI, he became absolute monarch at age 15. He defended his country for 18 years in the Second Northern War, gradually taking increased responsibility for planning and executing armed operations. He launched a disastrous invasion of Russia (1707–09) that resulted in the collapse of the Swedish armies and the loss of Sweden's status as a great power. Ruling early in the Enlightenment, he promoted significant domestic reforms. He was killed during an invasion of Norway.

* * *

▪ king of Sweden

Introduction

born June 17, 1682, Stockholm

died Nov. 30, 1718, Fredrikshald, Nor.

 king of Sweden (1697–1718), an absolute monarch who defended his country for 18 years during the Great Northern War and promoted significant domestic reforms. He launched a disastrous invasion of Russia (1707–09), resulting in the complete collapse of the Swedish armies and the loss of Sweden's status as a great power. He was, however, also a ruler of the early Enlightenment era, promoting domestic reforms of significance.

Early life

      Prince Charles was the second child and eldest (and only surviving) son of Charles XI of Sweden and Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark. His early childhood was happy and secure, but the close family circle was broken by his mother's death in 1693. Charles XI's chief consolation was a close companionship with his heir, and from this time onward Prince Charles accompanied his father on travels of inspection and on all kinds of official occasions. After his father's death in April 1697, Charles XII had to take on the burden of absolute kingship—he was the first and only Swedish king born to absolutism—when he was barely 15 years old. Charles XI had stipulated a regency, but the regents proved anxious to obtain the new king's concurrence in all decisions, and the Riksdag called in November 1697 declared him of age.

      Charles XII had been carefully prepared for his task by excellent tutors and governors. He was, however, exceptionally strong willed and gave repeated proof of his obstinate adherence to those standards he accepted from the religious and moral teaching of his family and his governors. In adolescence a personal program for toughening physique—in particular, his intrepid horsemanship and his predilection for risks—worried the old and staid among the courtiers. He had been open and confiding; but on succeeding to the crown he assumed a noncommittal behaviour in public, though in private he was much influenced by the instructions that his father had left for his political guidance and by the counsel of his father's advisers.

      After negotiations for Charles's marriage to a Danish cousin, the daughter of Christian V, were begun on Denmark's initiative, Charles's advisers held back until the outcome of Danish negotiations with other powers was known. These negotiations led in fact to a coalition between Denmark, Saxony, and Russia that, by attacking Sweden in the spring of 1700, began the Great Northern War (Northern War, Second). The speedy success hoped for by the three allied powers did not materialize, and rumours of rebellion by the Swedish nobility against the absolutist monarchy, in case of war, proved false.

Military leadership, 1700–09

      The early campaigns—the descent on Zealand (August 1700), which forced Denmark out of the war; the Battle of Narva (November 1700), which drove the Russians away from the Swedish trans-Baltic provinces; and the crossing of the Western Dvina River (1701), which scattered the troops of Augustus II (elector of Saxony and king of Poland)—were all planned and directed by the officers whom Charles had inherited from his father; but the King, while developing his military skill, gave valuable help in fostering morale by his courage, his religiously coloured optimism, and his faith in the cause of Sweden as the victim of a concerted attack.

      Charles's responsibility in planning and executing armed operations constantly increased, so that from 1702 he became the superior of most of his officers. Also from 1702 he began to take a greater part in political decisions, his senior advisers having died or retired through ill health. Most significant of these personal decisions was that to fight Augustus II in Poland and to transform Poland from a divided country, where Augustus had both partisans and opponents, into an ally and a base for the final campaign against Russia. This transformation was to be accomplished by dethroning Augustus and substituting a Polish-born king willing to cooperate with the Swedes. By the time this program had been brought to success and Stanisław Leszczyński (Stanisław I) elected king of Poland—Augustus being forced to accept the settlement by a Swedish invasion of Saxony in September 1706—Charles XII had matured both as a general and as a statesman.

      Charles was not unmindful of Sweden's role in central and western Europe; his support of the Silesian Protestants against the Catholic Habsburg emperor was firmly based on the Swedish guarantee of the Peace of Westphalia, and he continued that policy of the “balancing role” between the great coalitions of the west to which Swedish rulers and statesmen since 1660 had aspired in the hope of achieving prestige and territory by armed mediation in suitable circumstances. His first necessity in 1706, however, was to secure Sweden's position in relation to Russia, which, under Peter I the Great, had from 1703 onward made good use of Charles XII's campaigns in Poland to train its army and undertake a piecemeal conquest of the Swedish east Baltic provinces. Charles's troops left Saxony to invade Russia in the late autumn of 1707. They won the Battle of Hołowczyn in July 1708, but Russian scorched-earth tactics forced Charles to abandon his route to Moscow and turn instead into the Ukraine. Thereafter, the Russians interfered successfully with the Swedes' communications, and by the summer of 1709 Charles XII had no choice between accepting battle with the Russians or withdrawing once more into Poland. Though wounded in the foot and unable to lead the army in person, Charles chose battle and attacked the Russian fortified camp at Poltava (Poltava, Battle of) on July 8 (June 27, old style; June 28, Swedish style). The attack failed, and three days later the bulk of the Swedish Army surrendered to the Russians at Perevolochna. Charles was by then already on his way to Turkish-held territory, where he hoped to find allies.

Years in Turkey (Ottoman Empire), 1709–14

      Turkey's desire to reconquer Azov from Peter the Great augured well for its cooperation with Charles XII, but—in spite of four Turkish declarations of war against Russia—as the army expected from Sweden never arrived, the Swedish king was unable to pursue his plans vigorously.

      He became the object of Turkish intrigues and in February 1713 had to fight a regular battle, the kalabalik of Bender (modern Bendery, Moldova), to avoid a plot to deliver him into the hands of Augustus of Saxony, now restored in Poland. The closing of the Turko-Habsburg frontier due to the plague, and the determination of the anti-French alliance in the War of the Spanish Succession to prevent Sweden from using its bases in Germany to attack its enemies further circumscribed Charles XII's freedom of action in these years. The Swedish council, virtually in charge of affairs at home during his absence, was preoccupied with threats to Sweden from Denmark.

      The administrative and financial reforms that Charles promulgated from Turkey in order to distribute the burden of the war effort fairly and to increase both resources and efficiency were largely sabotaged and were put into effect only after his return to Swedish Pomerania in November 1714 (having ridden incognito through Habsburg and German lands in 14 days and nights).

Decline of Swedish power

      For more than a year, Charles fought a delaying action in Pomerania to keep Swedish troops on German soil as long as possible, attempting to restore the prestige of Swedish arms, to keep the war away from Sweden itself, and to prepare his diplomatic offensive for splitting the coalition, augmented after 1714 by Hanover and Prussia. A subsidy treaty with France, intrigues with the Jacobites (the adherents of the exiled branch of the Stuart monarchs) to threaten the Elector of Hanover in his position as king of England, and separate negotiations with the enemies averted the danger to Sweden once Charles, in December 1715, had been forced to leave Stralsund and Wismar.

      From 1713 onward Charles had realized that sacrifice of territory would be necessary but was set on retaining Sweden's great power status either by ceding land for money for a given number of years only, not in perpetuity, or by allowing outright cession only as the price for guaranteed and considerable military help. He argued that any satisfactory peace on these lines could only be gained if military action backed up the diplomatic effort; to some extent, therefore, all negotiations, and especially those with the Russians at Åland throughout the year 1718, were designed to gain time. By the autumn of 1718, Charles XII had collected an army of 60,000 men, but his strategic plan was never fully unfolded, for at the siege of Fredrikshald (Halden), at an early stage in the invasion of Norway, he exposed himself to fire from the fortress and was fatally shot through the head. Rumours that he had been killed by someone from his own side began to circulate shortly after his death. The debate on this question continues.

Ragnhild Marie Hatton

Assessment

      Charles XII was not the simple and uneducated soldier-king he has often been made out to be. His intellectual pursuits were many and varied. He became increasingly occupied with new ideas in administration, and many of his administrative reforms were far ahead of their time. He demanded considerable sacrifices of those classes in Sweden who were lukewarm about the war effort once the years of bad fortune set in after 1709.

      In military matters Charles was a skilled tactician. He had a good eye for choosing a battleground and insisted on personal leadership in battle. His strategic talent, however, has been criticized, especially his decision to wage war in Poland for such a long time and his Russian campaigns in 1707–09.

      Charles XII is one of the most controversial and most written about figures in Swedish history. In 1731 Voltaire published his Histoire de Charles XII, which contains two views that have since predominated in analyses of the king: admiration for his personal qualities and criticism of his political strategy. Charles XII also played an important role as a national and conservative symbol in 19th- and early 20th-century Sweden, though he has been considered a war monger by radicals.

Ragnhild Marie Hatton Sven Nordlund

Additional Reading

R.M. Hatton, Charles XII of Sweden (1968), offers a one-volume modern study of the King as a person and as a ruler. Of the review articles on this biography, the following may be mentioned since they add specifically to the historical argument: J.H. Plumb in The New York Times Review of Books (June 22, 1969); and Michael Roberts in the English Historical Review, 84:796–801 (1969). A three-volume German work by Otto Haintz, König Karl XII. von Schweden (1958, with reprints of vol. 1 and 2 originally published in 1935 and 1951), concentrates on the military history of the reign. A briefer book, The Life of Charles XII (U.S. title, The Sword Does Not Jest, 1960), consists of an abbreviated version of the Swedish two-volume, beautifully written, but historically less valuable study by Frans G. Bengtsson, Karl XII:s levnad (1935–36).

* * *