CHARLES XI. (1655-1697), king of Sweden, was five years old at the death of his father, Charles X., and was left under the regency of his mother and of a council. Brought up without care, he arrived at manhood unable even to read. In 1672 he assumed the government, and, under the influence of France, was speedily engaged in the invasion of the electorate of Brandenburg. The elector was assisted by Denmark and Holland ; and -Charles s army at first met with serious reverses ; but afterwards, taking the command in person, he won several battles, including those of Lund and Landskrona ; and in 1679 peace was signed. Charles now devoted his energy to establish the absolute independence of the kingly authority. He diminished the number of senators, and made them mere royal councillors ; he reunited to the Crown all the lands which had been divorced from it since 1609; and in December 1 682 the States were induced to declare that the king was responsible for the use of his authority to none but God, that he was not bound by forms of government, and that he need only seek the consent of the senate at his own pleasure. The power thus gained was creditably used for purposes of government. Charles paid the public debts, published annual accounts of the finances, travelled through the country that he might be personally acquainted with the needs and circumstances of the people, defended them from the tyranny of the nobles, established a strong and just legal administration, and commenced the drawing up of a general code. He also added largely to the territory of the kingdom. Under his reign no religion was tolerated but Lutheranism ; and the king often showed himself stern and rough. He died at Stockholm in 1697.
CHARLES XII., king of Sweden, was born at Stockholm on June 27, 1682. He received an excellent education, and was able to speak German, French, and Latin fluently. In the spring of 1697 his father, Charles XL, died, and the prince, then only in his fifteenth year, was declared of age by the States-General and invested with the royal authority. As might have been expected, the boy-king showed himself but little disposed for state affairs. His time was divided between study and amusement ; now he was poring over the exploits of Alexander in the pages of Quintus Curtius, now spending whole hours in gymnastic exercises, or joining a hunting party in the pursuit of the bear ; and thus he was rapidly developing the iron strength of constitution which he displayed in his subsequent campaigns. At this juncture Frederick IV., king of Denmark, conceived the idea of wresting the crown from the young king, and adding Sweden to his possessions in the Scandinavian peninsula, and Augustus II., king of Poland and elector of Saxony, and the czar, Peter the Great, agreed to second his enterprize by seizing the con tinental provinces of Sweden. The Danes struck the first blow by invading the territories of Holstein Gottorp, and the duke, who had married the sister of Charles, fled to Stockholm and begged for assistance to recover his states, Charles proposed immediate operations against Denmark, confident in his own prowess and in promises of substantial aid received from the court of St James s, for William of Orange saw in Sweden a valuable ally for his Continental policy, and was resolved not to allow the balance of power in the north to be destroyed by the triple alliance. Sir George Rooke, with an Anglo-Dutch squadron, formed a junction with the Swedish fleet, and at the head of fifty-four sail of the line swept the Baltic, drove the Danish fleet into Copenhagen, and bombarded the city, doing, however, little damage. Meanwhile Charles had landed in Zealand with a Swedish army, leading his troops to the shore in person, and wading through the water up to his chin in hi eagerness to land. The Danes, inferior in numbers, retired before him, and Frederick seeing his capital threatened with a siege by land and sea, abandoned the triple alliance,, and sued for peace, leaving Charles free to turn his arms against Russia and Poland.
From this campaign we may date Charles s assumption of those Spartan manners which distinguished him for the rest of his life. He gave up the use of wine ; at night he slept upon his cloak spread upon the floor of his room or on the ground in the open air. His dress was of the plainest, his whole wardrobe consisting of a suit of blue cloth with copper buttons. He seemed to care for no pleasure or amusement ; he had an amount of endurance which defied fatigue, and he was alike insensible to the heat of summer and the almost arctic cold of a northern winter. Hardy, brave to the extent of recklessness, capable of inspiring in his followers personal devotion to himself, and with all that astute and sagacious in council, he was the very model of a soldier king. Yet in the end Sweden reaped no advantage even from his victories. He had left Stockholm to defend the country from a pressing danger, but once he had tasted the pleasures of military success, he allowed himself to be allured onward to a career of conquest, and he never saw his capital again.
threatening Narva and the Swedish province of Livonia on the Gulf of Finland, while Augustus II., elector of Saxony and king of Poland, was besieging Riga, then a Swedish town. Charles disembarked in Livonia with 20,000 men. The Russian army, said to have been 50,000 strong, lay before Narva in an entrenched camp. With 10,000 of the splendidly disciplined infantry of Sweden, Charles attacked them there on November 30, 1700. In a quarter of an hour the camp was stormed, and the Russian army, which must have been largely composed of raw troops, was completely routed and dispersed. Turning southward, Charles marched against the Saxons and Poles, defeated them on the banks of the Dwina, and raised the siege of Riga. He might now have dictated a peace which would have given Sweden an undisputed pre-eminence in Northern Europe. But "his ambition was aroused; Augustus was by no means a popular king, and while continuing the war against him, Charles intrigued with the party adverse to him in Poland. The Saxon army of Augustus was defeated in the battle of Clissow (1703), and Poland was occupied by the victorious Swedes. Radziejowski. the cardinal primate, declared the throne vacant, and under the influence of Charles, the diet conferred the crown upon his friend Stanislas Leszczynski, the young palatine of Posnania. But even now Charles would not sheath the sword. He carried the war into Saxony, over ran the hereditary states of Augustus, and in 1706 dic tated to him the peace of Altranstadt, by which Augustus resigned all claim to the throne of Poland, and further agreed to give up to the conqueror John Reginald Patkul, the ambassador of the czar at Dresden. Patkul was by birth a Livonian, and therefore a subject of Sweden, but he had transferred his allegiance to Russia, and it was said that he was the real author of the league between Russia. Poland, and Denmark. It was very doubtful if he could have been adjudged guilty of treason, and in any case his position as ambassador ought to have protected him ; but Charles thought only of vengeance, and after the form of a trial had been gone through, Patkul was condemned to be broken on the wheel, and the cruel sentence was executed, the king refusing to mitigate it in the least degree. The whole affair has left an indelible blot upon his memory, and it shows how much of vindictive passion was con cealed under a perfectly impassive exterior. Even had Charles been willing now to bring the war to a close, the execution of his ambassador would not have allowed the
czar to accept a peace. Twice he invaded Poland, but each