Charles XII

Charles XII (born June 17, 1682, Stockholm—died November 30, 1718, Fredrikshald, Norway) was the 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. 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.

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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 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.

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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 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 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.