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Stories from Swedish History: Charles XII

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Our story today is about King Charles XII, the main opponent of Peter I, his teacher, although the teacher was 10 years younger than the student. “Our first formidable teacher,” as Pushkin called him, King Charles forced Peter to become the Great, gaining strength to found St. Petersburg in spite of his arrogant neighbor, him, King Charles.

There is no person in Swedish history about whom they talked, wrote and argued so much and irreconcilably as about Charles XII. This is the most mysterious person, and the contribution of the warlike king to Swedish history is assessed as grandiose, but with both positive and negative signs. So, some episodes from the turbulent life of Charles XII - king, commander, man.

Karl was born in 1682. His grandfather Charles the 10th, a remarkable commander, expanded the borders of Sweden to immeasurable limits in the mid-17th century.
Father Charles the 11th strengthened the Swedish state, became an autocratic king and reformed the army, introducing a system of conscription and training of soldiers that had no analogues in Europe.
And the boy Karl was born for the mission of the autocratic king. He idolized his grandfather and father and studied in great detail all their battles and reforms. Military science was his favorite subject, although he received an excellent education in other areas.
He was 14 years old when his father died, and at fifteen he was recognized as an adult and became a full-fledged autocratic king.
At the coronation ceremony, he took an oath from representatives of all classes, but he himself did not take the royal oath of allegiance to the people, as has been customary in Sweden for centuries. For God’s anointed answered not to his subjects, but to the Lord God.

The king's youth was short and very stormy. He loved to go after a bear, having come up with a new method: he felled the animal with a club. He invented various amusements together with his brother-in-law, Duke of Holstein Fredrick the Fourth, the husband of his elder sister. This is what the French envoy in Stockholm, Count Davo, says about the morals of the young king, 1698.

“The King of Sweden always works in his office, and when he appears, his appearance is always serious, even stern. But when he is having fun in intimate company, he is overflowing. 8 days ago, he, together with the Duke of Holstein and two or three other friends, knocked out stoned all the windows in the house of the High Marshal, located opposite the palace. The next day they broke all the chairs on which they sit during the sermon in the palace, so that when the sermon began, more than half of those present were forced to stand."

And a couple of weeks later, also the French Ambassador Count Davot - to King Louis 14th:

“King Charles and the Duke of Holstein amused themselves in the royal room by cutting off the heads of dogs, calves and sheep and throwing them out of the windows into the street, which caused great indignation among the people who observed this.”

Duke Fredrik of Holstein was 11 years older than King Charles and taught him a lot. For example, shoot cherry pits at passers-by after drinking wine - throw glasses at walls, windows, and wherever necessary. The two of them, on the same horse, rode around Stockholm in their nightgowns, tore off the wig from the old Ricksmarshal, tore each other’s clothes, and so on. And all this was strangely combined with the king’s piety. His character, which caused so many events and turns in the fate of the entire kingdom, was already clearly defined at this time. One episode from 1698 is indicative, as told by historian and professor at Lund University Sverker Uredsson.

When King Charles had to decide the fate of a Swedish soldier who had an affair with a woman without being married to her, the king sentenced him to death. His advisers objected that he was a good soldier and such a punishment was too severe. Then the king said that the soldier had violated one of the biblical commandments, and we really need to follow them for sure and live in complete harmony with the Bible.
King Charles was only 16 years old at that time. This story is very characteristic of Charles XII and speaks of his strict principles:
he is extremely pious, never listens to advisers, makes decisions only himself, he is straightforward and does not make any compromises.

Charles received news of the beginning of hostilities against Sweden during a bear hunt: the King of Poland and at the same time the Elector of Saxony, Augustus II, invaded Swedish Livonia without declaring war and besieged the then largest city of the Swedish kingdom - Riga.
Then the Danes attacked Sweden-friendly Holstein, and in the summer the Russian Tsar Peter besieged the Swedish fortress of Narva. The 17-year-old boy, the king of Sweden, as it turned out, was opposed by a powerful coalition of states; Sweden had no allies.
The year was one thousand seven hundred. Thus began the Northern War, which in Sweden is called the Great War. It will last more than twenty years. Having left for this war, King Charles XII will never return to Stockholm and will spend his entire life in wars and campaigns.

Charles the 12th brought Denmark out of the war in one fell swoop by attacking Copenhagen. Under the cover of his own and the Anglo-Dutch fleet, he landed on the island of Zealand. This was the first battle of his life, and he was so nervous that he threw himself into the water before his boat even reached the shore. In view of the direct threat to Copenhagen, almost without a fight, the Danish king signed peace with Sweden.
Then Charles decided to deal with the Saxons and, having crossed the Baltic Sea, landed in Livonia, in Pernov (present-day Pärnu). By that time, Augustus II, nicknamed the Strong, having heard about the Danish events, lifted the siege of Riga.
And then King Charles receives a message about the Russian siege of Narva. And with a small army he quickly marches through Estland to Narva. More than a hundred kilometers in five days, off-road, knee-deep in mud, in rain and snow. On the evening of November 18 and all night it rained and snowed, and early in the morning the wet, hungry and exhausted soldiers had to accomplish what would be called a feat, the most amazing victory in the entire history of Swedish weapons.

The Swedes, who unexpectedly approached Narva on November 19, 1700, were, according to various sources, from eight to twelve thousand people. They were opposed by a 35,000-strong Russian army. According to the Swedes, there were even more Russians. Nevertheless, King Charles gave the order to attack.
The Swedes, under the cover of fog and blizzard, with a sudden blow broke through the center of the Russian positions, thousands of Russians ran away in complete disorder, and after the surrender of the Russian prisoners there were so many that the Swedes took and took only officers and generals to Stockholm, and released the rest.
During the battle, King Charles behaved heroically, boldly and even recklessly. He climbed into the thick of it, leading both cavalry and infantry into battle. A horse was killed under him, and his cocked hat was knocked off by a bullet. One day he fell into a deep ditch while trying to jump over it on a horse, and almost drowned. They barely pulled him out of there; the royal sword and boot remained in the quagmire. In the evening, when the king took off his scarf, a musket bullet fell out of it - the bullet got stuck in the scarf. This is where numerous folk legends about Charles' invulnerability originate. 12 th. The historian Vasily Klyuchevsky, a master of short aphoristic writing, writes about Narva:

“In a vicious November blizzard, the king crept up to the Russian camp, and a Swedish brigade of eight thousand destroyed the Russian corps. The Swedish eighteen-year-old boy expressed complete pleasure that he so easily rescued Narva and took over the entire generals. Eight months later, with the same unexpected attack, he rescued Riga completely defeating the Saxon and Russian troops who were going to besiege it."

After the fantastic victory near Narva, the name of the young Swedish king thundered throughout Europe. But then a period begins, which the same Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky called “intermittent mutual blood-sucking, which lasted 7 years.” The historian, Professor Sverker Uredsson, is at our microphone again.

After Charles's first high-profile victories over the Russians, Danes and Saxons, the king's advisers were of the same opinion that peace must now be made. The great powers also agreed with this: England, France, the Netherlands. Only King Charles disagreed. He believed that he had not punished Augustus the Strong enough for the fact that he attacked his possessions without declaring war.

And Charles the 12th demanded that the Poles elect another king instead of Augustus. Thus, King Charles alone, without listening to anyone, decided to start a war in Poland, which was destined to last for 6 whole years.
And he waged this long war mainly just to remove one person from the throne. He chased Augustus all these years across the Polish expanses, hating Augustus with a fierce hatred. There was both paranoid stubbornness and something chivalrous in this: Augustus, who ran away from Charles like a hare, violated ethical laws.

In a letter to King Louis 14th of France, Charles 12th expressed himself this way about Augustus: “His behavior is so shameful and vile that it deserves vengeance from God and the contempt of all right-thinking people.” Karl eventually managed to oust Augustus from the Polish throne, and Karl's protege Stanislav Leszczynski became the king of Poland.

Here is one remarkable episode from that Polish-Saxon period, with Sverker Uredsson at the microphone again.

The Swedish army defeated the combined forces of the Russians and Saxons at the Battle of Fraustadt. The Swedes were commanded by Marshal Renskjöld. Even those Russian soldiers who surrendered to the mercy of the winner were stabbed to death mercilessly. There were thousands of them. They were placed two or three people on top of each other and stabbed with spears. This shameful event for the Swedish army did not touch Charles the 12th at all. On the contrary, he strongly congratulated Marshal Rehnskiöld on his victory and was especially interested in what horse the marshal rode in the battle.
Such extreme coldness of feelings could be observed in King Charles more than once. This combination of childish military heroism in romantic forms and absolute insensitivity to the suffering of people is very characteristic of Charles the 12th.

Charles at 12 -he is already 25 years old, he is in the rays of glory, he terrifies his enemies, the monarchs of Europe are seeking his favor. The year is 1707, Saxony, where he stands with his army. This is the impression he makes on the English diplomat Thomas Wentworth.

"He is tall and handsome, but extremely dirty and neglected. His behavior is more rude than one would expect from so young a man. His light brown hair is very greasy, and he never combs it except with his fingers. He sits down without any ceremony on the table any chair, tucks a napkin under his chin and starts the meal with a large piece of bread and butter. With his mouth full, he drinks a low-intoxication drink from a large old silver goblet. He alternates each piece of meat with bread and butter, and he spreads the butter on the bread with his fingers. He never does not sit at table more than a quarter of an hour. Eats like a horse and does not speak a word. Near his bed lies a beautiful gilded Bible, and this is the only exquisite thing among his belongings. He is very capricious and stubborn, which is the cause of the fears of his allies. For he risks his life and his army as carelessly as other people do in a duel."

From the day the war began, that is, from March 1700, until his death, Charles the 12th, as far as we know, had no women. He simply didn’t seem to notice women. He believed that an officer would perform his duties better if he did not have to waste energy courting ladies. The king expressed his attitude towards marriage to both his mother and his secretary of state, Kasten Feif.

“As for me, I will marry when God gives us peace. And then I will look for a wife, but not for reasons of state interests. I will look for one who will really please me and who, I believe, can love me, so I will avoid the fate of keeping at home a woman who in French is called a maîtresse, and in Swedish a whore."

The year was 1707, continues Sverker Uredsson. - And during this time the Russians had already managed to capture the Swedish city of Nyen, on the site of which they founded and built St. Petersburg. They took many other Swedish fortresses in the Baltic states. And the natural goal of Charles the 12th should now have been Estland, Livonia, Ingria and other Swedish provinces that needed to be returned.
However, Karl decided here alone and in his own way: he went straight to Moscow.
Charles's ambitions, presumably, were as follows: he wanted to remove Peter from the throne just as he did with Augustus. And, probably, to elevate his protege to the throne in Russia. However, one could only guess about this, because no one knew what his plans really were except himself.

Peter the Great was terribly afraid of this man. He did not even think, for example, of defending the Swedish fortresses he had captured in Courland in the event of the arrival of the Swedish king there. When Karl moved east, towards Moscow, preparations for evacuation were already underway there. But Karl unexpectedly turned south, to Ukraine.

The Battle of Poltava, which radically changed the course of the war, is carefully and in detail described by historians and sung by the greatest Russian poet.

Let us only recall its results.
The Russian superiority in material terms was overwhelming. A Swedish army of twenty thousand went on the offensive against the forty-two thousand strong Russian army.
Swedish historian Peter Englund, calculating the losses of the Swedes in the battle, comes to the conclusion that every second Swede died or was captured. That the Battle of Poltava should be considered one of the bloodiest battles in world history, because 35 percent of the Swedish army died in it, and this is much more than the losses of the French in the Battle of Waterloo. And for every Russian killed, 5 Swedes died. But most importantly, the spirit of the Swedish army was broken.

“Peter’s Russian army destroyed the Swedish army, that is, 30 thousand emaciated, worn-out, demoralized Swedes who were dragged here by a 27-year-old Scandinavian tramp.”

Vasily Klyuchevsky.

Charles XII himself was only miraculously not killed or captured near Poltava. 10 days before the battle, he was wounded in the leg: a bullet hit him in the heel while he was inspecting positions under fire. He entrusted the command of the Battle of Poltava to Marshal Rehnskiöld, and he himself watched from a stretcher. The wounded king, lying on a stretcher, was constantly surrounded by a hedge of his subjects. Most of them died under crushing fire. Of the 24 Drabant bodyguards, only three survived. But the king still escaped; God gave him another 9 years of life.

After Poltava, Charles XII fled to his friend the Turkish Sultan and then lived for many years in Turkey, near the city of Bendery (now located in Moldova), in the Karlopolis camp built there by the Swedes. He persuaded the Sultan, with varying degrees of success, to start a war with Russia. But over time I got tired of it. And the Turkish hosts made it clear to the king that it was time for him to go. Otherwise, Carolopolis will have to be set on fire. But, as they say, the wrong one was attacked. And so on February 1, 1713, the army of the Turkish Janissaries approached Karlopolis. After artillery preparation, the Turks climbed with their crooked sabers through the low defensive rampart. In the shootout, the king was so called scratched - a bullet struck him on the nose and cheek. A saber battle began in the royal house. King Charles knew how to fight, and with his squad he cleared the house, being only slightly wounded in the arm. There were 40 Swedes left in it. Then the Turks set the building on fire. But the king had no desire to give up even now. And here he broke the promise he made to his grandmother 13 years ago: then he said that he would never touch wine again. In the burning house, King Charles was thirsty, and he drank the only liquid he had - a huge goblet of wine. He ordered the doors to be opened and, accompanied by his Carolines, he was the first to run out of the burning house with a saber and a pistol, deciding not to fall into the hands of the enemy alive, but then he tripped over his own spur and fell. The Turks immediately fell on him in a heap, and that was the end of this battle, which was later called by the Turkish word “kalabalik”. It means a monstrous mess, a dump, a fight, a riot. It has firmly entered the Swedish language and is now used not only in relation to this event. Immediately after the completion of this kalabalik, news came from Europe that the commander of the Swedish troops, Magnus Stenbock, had won a brilliant victory in Germany. And the King of Sweden again turned for a time into the dear guest of the Turkish Sultan. He stayed in Turkey for another year and a half and did not get out of bed for most of this time.

King Charles not only fought, but also was involved in civil affairs, especially in Turkey, where he had a lot of time. And although it was much more difficult to do this from afar, he nevertheless carried out several interesting economic reforms. Professor Oredsson is back at the microphone.

Charles XII introduced a new form of tax collection. And this was a fairer taxation system, because it applied equally to all classes, including the nobility. A property tax of 2 percent was levied on all the king's subjects. This was a completely new idea about equality of classes.

And what economic reforms of Charles XII survived him?

Almost none. Everything disappeared after his death. However, one of his brainchildren survived him and exists to this day: this is the Royal Palace of Stockholm. Charles XII was always very interested in the construction of this gigantic palace, which was erected in order to match the scale of great-power Sweden. However, this palace was built already when nothing remained of the Swedish great power.

But let's return to Turkey. It was the autumn of 1714, when Charles XII hurried from the Turkish region to his homeland. He had a passport with him in the name of Captain Peter Frisk. And from the border of the Ottoman Empire Charles XII, aka Captain Peter Frisk, rode across half of Europe on horseback. The path was not close. He galloped through what is now Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany. Managed to cover a huge distance in just 14 days. This was unheard of. At the gates of the Swedish fortress in Stralsund, where he was in such a hurry, they did not let him in for a long time: they did not recognize him. (Stralsund is on the Baltic coast in Germany, and then a Swedish possession). When the king was finally allowed in, he could not go to the bathhouse, but, sitting down in complete exhaustion, he immediately fell asleep at the table. When they undressed him sleepily, it was impossible to take off his boots; they had to be cut. The king did not take off his boots for six days.

From Stralsund, Charles XII headed to the south of Sweden, where he settled in the city of Lund and began preparing the capture of Norway, which then belonged to Denmark. Under the walls of the Norwegian fortress Fredriksten, he was killed by a bullet to the temple in 1718. Who shot the king - their own or someone else's - is still a mystery.

Professor of Uppsala University Alexander Kahn takes part in our program.

Working on his famous work about Charles e XII, Voltaire met with many people who knew the king. And this is how Voltaire sums up this man’s life in the book.

“Perhaps he was the only person who had no weaknesses. He carried the hero’s virtues to excess, so that they became no less dangerous than their opposite vices. His firmness turned into stubbornness, which gave rise to all the misfortunes that happened in Ukraine and delayed him for five years. years in Turkey. Generosity turned into extravagance, which ruined the whole of Sweden. Courage, carried to the point of recklessness, was the cause of his death. His great qualities, any of which could immortalize another sovereign, were the misfortune of the whole Kingdom. He never attacked first, but in his revenge showed intransigence rather than prudence. Ruthless both to others and to himself, he valued the lives of his subjects as little as his own. He was more a unique personality than a great man worthy of imitation. His life should show kings how much greater is a peaceful and happy reign than the loud glory of the conqueror."

Charles XII died at the age of thirty-six. Now he stands, sculptured in bronze, in the center of the Swedish capital, in Kungsträdgården park, and points his sword to the east, in the direction from which the threat to Sweden comes: to Russia.

He died defending his kingdom. For this he was raised and well trained from the cradle. And he fell victim to the system that created him.

The program from the series “Stories from Swedish History” was prepared and hosted by Sergei Karlov, the voice of Professor Sverker Uredsson was voiced in Russian by Maxim Lapitsky. All the best to you, friends, see you on the air on the waves of Radio Sweden.

The program was broadcast in February 2003, when preparations were underway to celebrate the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg.

Charles XII was 15 when he was crowned the sole ruler of great-power Sweden.

The war was his life and became his death.

While still a teenager, the king, sword drawn, led his Carolinians into battle, winning one victory after another.

Military luck betrayed him on a June day in 1709 near Poltava, where Russian Tsar Peter I defeated the Swedish army.

Charles XII died in 1718 from a bullet during the siege of the Fredriksten fortress, and with his death the era of Swedish great power ended.

The heroic young King Charles is black with smoke and gunpowder, and the roof of his majestic Royal House is on fire.

The shot almost took his life, blood runs from a wound on his nose and cheek. The left hand, where the saber hit, is also bleeding.

The king impales several enemies on his long sword, and kills others with pistol shots.

With a sword in his bloody hand and a pistol in the other, he runs out of the set fire to the house. He trips over his own spurs and falls to the ground. The Turks rush against Charles XII, they were promised a good reward if they take the king alive.

Bendery kalabalyk is finished.

The proud army of the Royal Carolinians until recently inspired fear throughout the world.

Now the king lies on the ground, and the enemy's boots have pressed his head into the mud.

There are only a few drabants left. 12 were seriously wounded, 15 died in the battle.

The dramatic events in Bendery are an important part of Swedish history. But more on that later.

Good signs, harbingers of good luck and success

June 17, 1682, quarter to seven in the morning. The sun shines through the windows of Tre Krunur Castle in Stockholm. The royal residence is a fortress built by Earl Birger four centuries earlier.

The troubled man in the office is called "Grey Cape". This is the 27-year-old Swedish king Charles XI.

He got his nickname because he used to dress in gray and sit unrecognized in the back pews of churches and courts.

The Gray Cloak is the nightmare of the Swedish nobility. If he sees a judge, governor, or church minister neglecting his duties, the culprit will face resignation, investigation, and punishment.

He is popular, truly loved by peasants and lower class citizens who have suffered centuries of oppression at the hands of aristocrats and officials.

The king shudders from the roar of a cannon shot among the stone walls. The first is followed by new volleys, a salute of twenty-one shots from the palace tower and then twenty-one more without any delay.

The number of volleys is important, it means that Queen Ulrika Eleonora has given birth to a prince - the heir to the throne.
The constellation Leo and its brightest star, Regulus, the lion's heart, twinkle in the early summer sky. The royal astrologer says this is a good sign.

Karl was born wearing a shirt, that is, with a piece of the amniotic sac sitting on the top of his head, like a cap.

This is a very special sign: such a child is destined for great luck and success in life.

Like any mother, Ulrika Eleonora believes that her son is handsome. He inherited her high forehead, full lips, and prominent chin. He has a big nose.

From his father, the prince received clear blue eyes and a name. 15 years later he would be crowned King Charles XII.

He is only six when he is taken from his mother, the queen, and placed on a separate floor of the castle. The prince has his own teachers. He is being raised as the future autocrat of great Sweden.

Prince Charles is training to fight

The father draws up a schedule of classes: Prince Charles must learn to read and count, cram laws and government regulations and, most importantly, learn piety.

Strict professor Anders Nordenhielm opens the world of books to the prince and explains how to behave at court, how to speak with peasants in their dialect, and with learned men in Latin.

The purpose of intensive training is to gain experience and courage to make decisions without asking the opinions of others.

Little Karl is interested in mathematics. He studies several languages, learning Danish from his mother. German and Latin were also important at that time, and Karl was a capable student. He crams French reluctantly. Young Charles considers the French he meets at court to be rude and arrogant. The prince's favorite lesson is with officer Carl Magnus Stuart, an expert in fortification.

The prince likes to look at drawings depicting battles in which his grandfather and father participated. Will the cavalry attack from the western flank? Wouldn't it be better to place the cannons on a hill and shoot from top to bottom? Was the infantry positioned correctly?

Prince Charles is training to fight.

The Baltic is almost an inland sea of ​​Sweden

Grandfather Charles X was a soldier king. His most famous war was with his arch-enemy Denmark, during which he walked across the ice from Jutland to Copenhagen.

The war ended with the Peace of Roskilde, Denmark ceded Skåne, Blekinge, Bohuslän, Bornholm and Trøndelag to Sweden.

Father Charles XI was also a war hero. With the help of cavalry, he defeated the Danish king Christian V at the Battle of Lund on December 4, 1676. This was one of the largest battles in the history of Scandinavia. In eight hours, six thousand Danes and three thousand Swedes died, blood flooded the battlefield.

Young Karl also wants to become a hero.

In June 1689 he is seven years old and has recently learned to write. His notebook has been preserved:

“I would like one day to have the happiness of following my father’s example on the battlefield.”

When Karl is 11, his 36-year-old mother Ulrika Eleonora dies. The 41-year-old father passed away four years later, on April 5, 1697, after a serious illness. He is sure that he was poisoned (but the autopsy shows stomach cancer).

No Swedish king has ever inherited such a powerful state.

The population of great Sweden is 2.5 million people. The Baltic Sea is practically a Swedish inland sea.

Charles is 15. His father's will states that the country will be ruled by a regency government until Charles reaches adulthood.

Three days after the funeral, the young man dissolves the Riksdag and becomes the sole ruler of Sweden.

He is a cocky young man. During the coronation in the Church of St. Nicholas, the king himself places the crown on his head. As a ruler, by the grace of God, he does not take a royal oath, but allows the bishop to perform the ritual of anointing for the kingdom.

The nobles pursued their own interests when they tried to recognize the king as an adult as early as possible (at that time, the age of majority was usually considered to be 18 years old).

Noble families lost both dignity and possessions when Charles XI carried out the so-called reduction and nationalized the lands of the crown.

Now the aristocracy seized the opportunity to regain their wealth and privileges.

The boy king is easy to manipulate. How wrong they were.

The clergy, one of the four Swedish estates at the time, protested. The priest Jacob Boëthius of Mura wrote a letter to the nobility of Stockholm, in which he objected to absolutism as a form of government.

The fifteen-year-old king is furious. Six horsemen went to Dalarna, captured the priest in the middle of the night and brought him to Stockholm. He was sentenced to death for treason and, awaiting execution, was placed in the Nöteborg fortress (Oreshek - approx. per.) on Ladoga. Twelve years later the priest was granted pardon.

He's not interested in women

Karl was raised as a real man. At the age of four, he sat on his own horse in front of his father the king and received his first military parade of guards on the Jerdet field in Stockholm.

Karl loves hunting. At that time, Stockholm was surrounded by wild lands. At the age of eight, he shot a wolf for the first time on Lidingö. The first bear is at eleven on the island of Djurgården.

Not much time passes, and Karl begins to think that hunting a bear with a gun is too boring. He arms himself with a club or a wooden pitchfork, which is much more exciting, although deadly. Karl kills or catches many bears this way.

At 13, Karl falls ill with a common disease - smallpox. The disease is benign, and soon the prince is healthy again.

He loves horse riding. One day in May, twelve-year-old Karl and his father Karl XI travel to Stockholm from Södertälje in just two and a half hours. They travel the entire way at the fastest gallop.

Context

Ambassador of Sweden to the Russian Federation: Poltava directed us in a peaceful direction

The myth of Poltava after 1709

Ivan Mazepa and Peter I: towards the restoration of knowledge about the Ukrainian hetman and his entourage

How Peter I ruled

Power inherited by Charles XII

The Swedish state included Finland and Karelia. In the Baltic states, Sweden controlled the provinces of Livonia, Estonia and Ingria. We owned a large part of Norway. In northern Germany, Sweden controlled Bremen and Ferden, part of Pomerania, as well as the city of Wismar.

Charles XII dreamed of annexing new lands and closing the country around the Baltic Sea, but the defeat of the Carolinian army near Ukrainian Poltava on June 28, 1709 made the dream unrealizable.

The young unmarried ruler of the powerful Swedish state is an interesting match for many royal houses in Europe. But he is not interested in women.

Princes and kings send him portraits of their daughters offering their hand in marriage. The princess from the royal house of Württemberg, as well as the daughter of Prince von Hohenzollern, personally pay a visit to Stockholm, but their attempts to charm the king are unsuccessful.

Politely but adamantly, Charles XII rejects all candidates. Later, he does not communicate with the prostitutes who always accompany the Carolinians on their hikes.

Some historians believe that the king was homosexual, but there is no evidence for this.

Running a country takes time. The aristocrats who thought they could control the fifteen-year-old king are deeply disappointed. Charles XII drives away almost all the intriguers; the only one he trusts is 50-year-old Secretary of State Carl Piper.

“This is my will, and so be it,” says Charles XII if his advisers object to his decisions.

The Bible is the young king's law. When the relationship between married guardsman Johan Schröder and a comrade's wife is discovered, the guardsman is put on trial. Advisors propose to punish him with prison, because such a sin is not punished more severely in any Christian country. The king wants the Lord to show his punishment himself, and proposes to shoot the guardsman. Let it be so.

A month after the death of Charles XI, a fire occurs in Tre Krunur Castle. Karl, who is now an orphan, moves with his court first to Karlberg (now the military academy), and then to the Wrangel Palace on Riddarholmen (now the Court of Appeal). There he organizes wild celebrations.

The real madness begins when the king's second cousin and future son-in-law, Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, arrives in the summer of 1698 to woo the king's beloved sister, Hedwig Sophia.

We know about what happened within the castle walls from the diary of the royal page Leonard Kagg.

One day, Friedrich and Karl release wild hares in the galleries of Karlberg and compete to see who can shoot the most. Another time, on August 9, 1699, according to the diary, they dined at the same table with a tame bear. The bear eats a sugar pyramid, drinks a jug of wine, and falls out of a third-story window. There was a case when the servants were ordered to deliver calves and goats after dinner. Charles XII and Frederick compete in cutting off heads with one blow. Blood splatters on carpets and furniture.

Foreign diplomats write to their capitals about a young savage who seems to have lost his mind.

On the throne is a young and inexperienced reveler

There are enemies both nearby and in the distance, for example, two cousins ​​of Charles XII. One is called Augustus, he is the king of Poland and the elector of Saxony. The second is Frederick IV, King of Denmark.

The third is Russian Tsar Peter, a power-hungry 28-year-old ruler who intends to make his underdeveloped kingdom a superpower.

Sweden's ambitions irritate neighboring countries. Since the time of Eric XIV in the 16th century, we have captured more and more new territories.

Russia lost Ingria and Kexholm. The Germans lost Vorpommern, parts of Western Pomerania, Wismar, Stettin, Bremen and Verden, as well as the important islands of Rügen, Usedom and Wollin. Poland ceded Livonia to us.

Sweden is the second largest country in Europe, only Russia is larger.

The king wants to make the Baltic Sea inland. There is also a security reason for this: the state needs a buffer zone.

On our throne is a young, inexperienced king, whom diplomats call a reveler.

The king's most dangerous enemy

Russian Tsar Peter I (1672-1725) was 28 years old when he began the war against Charles XII. The first battle - the Battle of Narva - ended in a shameful defeat for the king.

The next major clash between Swedish and Russian forces was the battle of Poltava. Charles XII lost, and luck turned away from the Swedish power.

And Peter the Great built St. Petersburg on land conquered from Sweden.

Many Swedish prisoners of war worked on the construction in slave-like conditions, and many of them died in the swamps near the Neva River, where the Tsar founded his new city.

Neighbors want revenge

There is a chance to split Sweden, and the enemies are secretly plotting.

A conspiracy between the king's cousins ​​and Tsar Peter leads to what the history books call the Northern War.

Augustus, nicknamed the Strong, becomes king of Poland in the same year that Charles XII comes to power. 28-year-old Augustus dreams of defeating the Swedes, annexing new lands and laying the foundations of a strong monarchy.

Augustus is known for his political cunning, he is a real intriguer. Augustus willingly demonstrates his physical strength at feasts, for example, straightening horseshoes with his bare hands.

Women are his passion. According to some sources, he recognized the paternity of 354 children. In his marriage to Christiane Eberhardina of Brandenburg, he has only one child - the son Friedrich August, the future Elector of Saxony.

29-year-old Frederick IV is more interested in glitz and luxury than in boring government affairs. He devoted most of his 31-year reign to pleasures, holidays and love affairs.
But Frederick also has a dream - to return the provinces that his father lost under the terms of the Roskilde Peace.

Tsar Peter is a real giant with a height of 203 centimeters. He is 10 years older than Charles XII, and his main desire is to defeat the Swedes, open his way to the shores of the Baltic Sea and make Russia a great European power.

Thank Charles XII for his tax return

The king believed that the current taxation system was unfair. Many, including the nobility and townspeople, did not pay income tax according to their income. In 1712, Charles XII introduced universal taxation. A certain percentage of the income had to be allocated to taxes, which the king needed to strengthen the army. The Swedes protested loudly, so the system was abolished after the death of the king. However, in 1902 the declarations were returned.

Signal: the fatherland is in danger

In the late winter of 1700, Charles XII travels to Kungsor to hunt bears. On March 6, a mortally tired messenger Johan Brask from the Nyland infantry regiment appears. He gallops through the snow, carrying ominous news.

The Bothnian Sea froze, and a messenger rode from Finland and northern Sweden for four weeks to convey an important message.

The troops of Augustus the Strong have stormed Kobronšantz in Swedish Livonia and are now advancing towards Riga.

At the same time, the Danes occupied the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp.

Sweden was attacked from two sides. A third front will soon arise, but no one knows about it yet. Tsar Peter marches to Ingria.

Sweden is ready for war. Throughout the country, church bells ring during the day, this is a signal: the fatherland is in danger.

We have a peasant army of 18 thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry - the so-called Indelta soldiers, who received military surnames that have survived to this day - Mudig ("brave" - ​​approx. transl.), Hord ("severe" - approx. trans.), Rask (“fast,” — trans.), Flink (“agile,” — trans.), Tupper (“brave,” — trans.).

They stop working in the fields and forests, put on their soldier's uniform and go to the rally areas where they meet with their corporals. Before they were studying, now everything is serious. The fleet has 15 thousand people and 38 battleships. In addition, there are recruiting troops in the life regiment and in garrisons.

In total, Sweden has 70 thousand people - 12 cavalry regiments and 22 infantry regiments to defend the king and the fatherland. It was the turn of the Carolineers.

In the early morning of April 14, 1700, Charles XII mounts his horse Brandklipparen, kisses his grandmother, Queen Dowager Hedwig Eleonora, on the cheek and gallops south. Karl's four dogs are running nearby - Caesar, Pompe, Turk and Snuskhane. None will survive wars.

The 17-year-old king is the commander-in-chief of the greatest and best army in Swedish history.

Charles XII would never see his capital again. He will return to Stockholm only in a coffin, after 18 years of battle.

The king had been preparing for this morning for a long time

First you need to deal with the rebellious cousin Frederick. He sent 20 thousand people to capture the fortresses of Holstein.

King Charles arrives in Karlskrona, a new city founded by his father with the aim of creating a base for the Swedish fleet south of Stockholm.

A storm is raging when Karl, with four infantry battalions of about three thousand people, crosses the strait on the evening of July 25, 1700 (Oresund - approx. transl.). The king and his soldiers board boats and row towards the shore near Humlebeek while the warships pour fire on the defenders on the shore.

The attack begins at dawn. Charles XII leads the troops. This is a real battle, he has been practicing and preparing for this morning for a long time.

Bullets whistle, cannonballs scatter sand and earth, tear apart the bodies of enemies.

“Let this be my music from now on,” declares the king.

The first battle of Charles XII does not last long. The Danes have given in and they are fleeing. They are pursued by the Carolineers. They are about to take Copenhagen and the king surrenders. Charles XII won his first victory on the battlefield.

Denmark is broken, but not broken, it remains a threat until the end of the life of Charles XII.

Narva - triumph of Charles XII

Now let's teach the second cousin a lesson. The Swedish provinces in the Baltic are under threat. As Karl boards the warship Västmanland in Karlhamn, a messenger arrives with new news: Tsar Peter wants to capture Narva, the most important Swedish city in Estonia near the Russian border.

Charles XII changes plans, Narva is more important than the campaign against Augustus. We need to save the strategic fortress.

Caroliners walk several miles a day in the Estonian rains. It is difficult for horses to pull cannons through clayey mud. The soldiers are hungry. Their bread is moldy.

On the morning of November 20, 1700, the king stands on a hill and examines the besieged city through a telescope.

There are 30 thousand Russians there.

The king is adamant.

“In battle we win by the will of the Lord, and he is with us.”

At half past two in the afternoon the king kneels before his men. He is wearing a simple soldier's blue and yellow uniform without insignia, rough boots with high tops and a black cocked hat. He has a long sword at his side.

Together with the Carolinians, the king sings a psalm they have learned:

“The Lord, who created heaven and earth, will help us and comfort us.”

At this moment something happens that will give the Swedes a huge advantage. It begins to snow heavily. The western wind and blizzard hit the faces of the Russians; they do not see what is happening on the opposite side of the battlefield.

The king is 18 years old, and this is his baptism of fire.

The Swedes are on the offensive. There are no drums or trumpets, in complete silence the Carolinians walk through the snowstorm, raising their pikes and muskets. In the vanguard are grenadiers with hand grenades - explosive shells with a fuse that are thrown at the enemy in close combat.

The Russians notice the Carolineers when they are only 30 meters away. The Swedish troops rush forward with all their might, swords drawn.

The blood of the dead and wounded mixes with the icy porridge. The Russian army was cut in two and sandwiched between defensive structures and the icy waters of the Narva River.

The Russians panic and flee. Many try to cross the river on a wooden bridge, it breaks, thousands of Russians drown. From the shore, caroliners shoot swimming enemies.

The Russians capitulate, and all the tsarist commanders are captured.

In the battle, 700 Carolinians were killed and 1,200 were wounded. Russian troops lost approximately 10 thousand people.

This is the greatest victory of Charles XII. He later finds a bullet in his scarf, lodged a few millimeters from the carotid artery.

For Peter the Great, this defeat is a serious setback. For the next nine years, he will prepare to take revenge.

Three big victories in one year

On June 17, 1701, when the king was celebrating his 19th birthday, the Carolinians launched an attack on Augustus the Strong. Reinforcements arrived from Sweden to replace those who had fallen in battle or died from disease.

The forces meet on the Western Dvina River, near Riga in what is now Latvia.

The commander of the strategic Swedish fortress in Riga, Count Erik Dahlbergh, waited a long time for the king with reinforcements. He held the defense masterfully. He ordered holes to be made in the ice of the river to prevent the enemy from crossing it. When the enemy began the assault, Dahlberg's drabants poured boiling tar on him.

Augustus' troops grouped on the southern bank of the river, and 10 thousand Carolinians came from the north.

The attack begins at dawn on July 9. The Carolinians set fire to raw hay and manure and, under the cover of smoke, transport six thousand infantry and a thousand cavalrymen to the other side. The cannons in the blockhouses terrified the Poles and Saxons.

The battle lasts only a few hours, then the enemy flees.

Another triumph for Charles XII. He has already won three major victories in one year.

In Stockholm, commemorative medals are issued in which the Swedish king is depicted with three defeated monarchs at his feet.

But Cousin Augustus is not defeated. Charles XII and the Carolinians fight in Poland and Saxony for five long and difficult years, and it takes many bloody battles to force Augustus to make peace. The Treaty of Altranstedt was signed in 1706.

Scorched earth tactics

To Moscow. The Tsar must be defeated and forced to capitulate. Charles XII is confident of victory. God is on his side.

In the autumn of 1707, the king leads an army of 44 thousand, they pass the lands that now belong to Belarus.

For the first time, they manage to measure their strength with the tsar in the city of Golovchin, not far from present-day Minsk in Belarus. The Russian army is four times larger than the Swedish one, but the Carolinians destroy it.

“This is my most glorious victory,” declares the king, according to the diary of army chaplain Andreas Westman.

Tsar Peter is furious. Defeat haunts him. He removes his generals from their posts, and orders soldiers wounded in the back to be shot on suspicion of fleeing the battlefield.

The path to Moscow leads along an endless plain. Tsar Peter used scorched earth tactics. His soldiers are burning Belarusian villages, slaughtering livestock, and putting the population to flight.

Carolinians have nowhere to buy or steal. Their food supplies are running low.

Tatarsk is located 40 miles east of Moscow. There comes a turning point in the war. There are only adversities ahead.

September 10, another battle. 2,400 Carolinians against four times the Russian forces. Charles XII is at the head of the army, as always. His horse falls dead from a bullet.

But this does not decide the outcome of the battle. The Russians are retreating. This is the king's new tactics. His soldiers carry out quick surprise attacks and disappear just as quickly, this is the tactics of guerrilla warfare.

The goal is to inflict as much damage on the Swedes as possible without risking your own life.

As the Russians retreat, they set fire to villages and towns.

“Everything is on fire, everything is like hell,” writes 26-year-old dragoon Joachim Lyth in his diary.

A crisis is coming. The path forward is blocked. Charles XII, with his starving army, decides to turn and head south to Ukraine, and from there go to Moscow by a different route.

We have to go quickly. There is a danger that the king will be the first to do so and will again burn out all the villages and fields.
But Tsar Peter has a powerful “ally” - the Russian winter.

Charles XII is the first to be defeated due to frost.

Napoleon will be next in a hundred years. His march on Moscow in 1812 would be a disaster that would cost him dearly. And in World War II, Adolf Hitler's offensive against the Kremlin would fail for the same reason.

Russian winter, the worst winter of the century

December 1708, the worst winter of the century. Deadly winds sweep across Ukrainian fields.

Caroliners slowly freeze to death while sitting astride horses or on carriage trains. The worst situation is for the infantry. They have shoes with birch bark soles, and they simply cannot walk when their toes turn to ice.

Three thousand people die, and even more become crippled after field surgeons amputate frostbitten body parts without any pain relief.

Spring is coming. The war has been going on for nine years. Charles XII is 26. Only 25 thousand people remain from the Carolinian army. The troops were stationed in several villages near Poltava.

Poltava: Carolineers are marching towards death

In the spring of 1709, anxiety grew in Stockholm. Several months have passed, and there is no news from Charles and his victorious army. Mail doesn't work well. The enemy stops and captures the mounted Swedish messengers. Letters that do arrive often turn out to be six months old.

Poltava is located on the Vorskla River in Ukraine. There is a Russian garrison there, rich in food and ammunition.

Behind the protective rampart are 4,200 Russian soldiers, easy prey, according to Charles XII.

What mistake. Disaster strikes. The era of great power in Sweden is coming to an end.

Everything goes wrong from the very beginning. On June 17, the king celebrates his 27th birthday. In the morning, he, along with several officers, leaves the base camp on horseback to reconnoiter the location of the enemy camps.

They meet Russians at the river. They fire several shots from muskets. The king is sitting on Brandklipparen, but the officers see blood dripping from his left boot.

The wound gets infected and fills with yellow pus. Karl has a fever.

“The king probably has less than a day to live,” writes an army doctor to General Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld.

Russian spies report to Tsar Peter that the Swedish king is wounded. At sunrise on June 28, 1709, Peter arrives in Poltava with reinforcements. He is confident of his victory.

From an elevated position, the equestrian king looks around at his troops, which are lined up in battle formation. He sees through binoculars how enemy infantrymen in blue uniforms with yellow belts raise muskets with bayonets and begin to advance.

The king cannot lead the attack; he lies on a stretcher, carried by a pair of horses.

There are twice as many Russians and they are better armed.

The Carolinians are marching towards death. Burning cannonballs, flying fragments, and buckshot tear people and horses to pieces. The guns roar, and the king from his observation post sees how the Swedes' line is thinning.

Of the Uppland regiment, consisting of seven hundred people, only 14 survived.

At eleven o'clock the king takes off his hat in a gesture of victory. The Swedes are defeated. Poltava was the end of Swedish greatness.

Charles XII went to battle with 19 thousand Carolinians. Almost half - 9,700 people - died or were captured.

The king flees to Bendery. On July 1, 1709, General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt capitulated at Perevolochna.

Charles XII rules the state from afar

Bendery is a city on the Dniester River in the territory of the current Republic of Transnistria between Moldova and Ukraine. During the time of Charles XII the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. Karl remains there for several years along with the Carolinians who survived the Battle of Poltava.

In the village of Varnitsa, a few kilometers from the city walls, a small town of its own is being built, which the Swedes call Karlopolis.

The main building is Charles's House with thick brick walls. The 35-meter-long structure has one floor, the roof is covered with sawdust, and large windows let in a gentle breeze on hot summer days.

Within the protective structures there is another house - the Great Hall. From there, King Charles XII rules his state in the far north of Europe. All orders are sent to Sweden by messenger.

The king is an autocratic monarch, and the advisers in Stockholm cannot decide anything without his approval. Every now and then messengers arrive from Stockholm with papers requiring the royal signature.

We are talking either about the appointment of vicars, or about the construction of a new royal palace. Everything requires the king's resolution.

Charles XII is a political refugee, an exiled king, and between him and his defeated power stand powerful enemy forces, just waiting to put an end to him.

The Sultan and the King have a common enemy

Without funds, ingloriously defeated by Tsar Peter, King Charles XII lives under the protection of the 35-year-old Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Ahmed III.

The Sultan is forced to receive the king as a guest. Turkey, or the Ottoman Empire as it was called, was the largest state on the continent, comprising what is now Turkish territory, the African Mediterranean coast, the Middle East, and the region around the Persian Gulf.

For 25 million subjects, Ahmed is a demigod; he is called the shadow of God on earth. He lives in Topkapi Palace (now a museum) on a hill where the Golden Horn separates the Bosphorus and the Sea of ​​Marmara. His city is called Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Ahmed III allows Charles XII to stay in Bendery. The reason is that they have a common enemy, Tsar Peter.
Peter, later called the Great, is a warlike ruler who poses a threat to both the Swedish state and the Ottoman Empire.

The two rulers believe that together they can defeat the increasingly powerful Russian bear.

You just have to wait for the right moment.

Kalabalyk in Bendery

Five years pass. The Sultan already considers Charles XII a freeloader whose maintenance is too expensive. Besides, Karl is practically powerless.
Tsar Peter offers peace to the Sultan. Ahmed III secretly gives the commandant Bender Ismail Pasha the order to expel the Swedes.

February 1, 1713. The king has just listened to the Sunday sermon of the court priest Johannis Brenner in the great hall of Charles's house.

Through the open windows you can hear the beating of drums and loud calls to Allah. The Turks are coming.

Guns roar, burning arrows whistle in the air, a combat alert. The king runs out into the courtyard with a sword in his hand, and the Drabants barely hear his cry through the roar of the cannons:

“It’s not time to chat, it’s time to fight.”

The French philosopher Voltaire, a devoted admirer of the king, writes in his biography of Charles XII that he impaled four floundering Turks on his sword with one blow.

This is probably not true. But the king shows great courage, or perhaps recklessness, in battle against superior enemy forces.

In dangerous moments, the young lifeguard Axel Erik Roos saves the king's life three times.

Our history books describe this day in awkward footnotes, and we learn a new word: kalabalyk is “turmoil” in Turkish.

Execution as a way to apologize

Just a few days later the Sultan changes his mind. He received a message from Europe that General Magnus Stenbock had defeated the Danish king Frederick IV at the Battle of Gadebusch in Vorpommern. The Carolineers still have gunpowder in their flasks. It's not all over with King Charles.

The Battle of Gadebusch was the last major victory of the Swedish great power. But then no one knew about it.

Charles XII is again in the favor of the Sultan, he is released from captivity.

But fate turned away from Ismail Pasha. His severed head is mounted on a pike and exposed to dry in the sun in the Seraglio of Constantinople, just on the day that the Swedish messenger arrives there. Everyone who took part in the attack on the king is executed or sent away.

This is the Sultan's way of apologizing. Charles XII remains in Turkey for some time.

The Carolinians brought cabbage rolls with them

The king and the Carolinians remained in Bendery in the Ottoman Empire for several years. They fell in love with the local cuisine, especially the dish that the Turks call “dolma”. It was prepared in the oriental way, with grape leaves and without pork (it is prohibited for Muslims).

We don't have grape leaves, so when we got home, the Caroliners would wrap the minced meat in scalded cabbage leaves. This is how our favorite homemade dish appeared - cabbage rolls. On November 30, the day of the death of Charles XII, Cabbage Rolls Day is celebrated.

In addition, the Carolinians brought meatballs (Turkish kofta), coffee and the word “kalabalik” from Turkey.

A single shot rang out in silence

In the autumn of 1713, Charles XII left his place of exile and began his long journey home. He realized that the wait was not worth it. He would never lead the Swedish-Turkish army in battle against Peter the Great.

The king is eager to take revenge, he has new plans. Sweden is blocked by enemy fleets. We must force Denmark to submit and thereby break the blockade.

Finland and Swedish possessions in Germany should be liberated.

Norway belongs to Denmark, and Charles XII's plan is to annex Christiania (Oslo) and the southern regions to Sweden.

A new army is being assembled, 65 thousand brave Carolinians.

Lieutenant General Carl Gustaf Armfeldt makes a dash across the Swedish mountains to occupy Trondheim. The main forces come from the south, having built a bridge across Svinesund.

Fredriksten Fortress is the key to success. If she falls, then Norway will fall, and the Danish kingdom will be halved. The fortress stands on a steep hill where the Triste River flows into Idefjord.

The fortress is under siege. Caroliners dig trenches in a semicircle, leaving room for cannons that should smash enemy walls into small pebbles.

November 30, 1718 - First Sunday of Advent. Between nine and ten o'clock in the evening the king comes out to inspect the positions. Cold and dark. The king wraps up his blue uniform and climbs out of the trench onto the crest of the parapet.

A single shot rings out in silence. The bullet pierces the king's left temple and exits the right. Charles XII dies.

The mysterious death of the king

On November 30, 1718, at eleven o'clock in the evening, Charles XII died from a bullet in a trench near the Norwegian fortress of Fredriksten.

The fatal bullet hit the king in the head.

Hitman among the Carolinians? Or a Norwegian shooter?

The death of Charles XII gave rise to much speculation.

In the Varberg Museum you can see the so-called bullet button. According to legend, the king was killed with a button from his own military uniform melted into a bullet. They say it was a war-weary Carolinian who shot his commander.

The king's grave was excavated several times to conduct forensic and ballistic examinations that could help solve the mystery.

The latest research, conducted in 2005 by historian Peter From, states that the king was killed by a Norwegian bullet. Both the direction and the distance between the Swedes and the Norwegian defenders of the fortress correspond to the nature of the wound in the king's head.

Who was Charles XII?

Was the king a hero or a war-crazed madman who led his kingdom to ruin?

Assessments changed as new political and cultural movements emerged in Sweden.

During the Romantic era of the 19th century, Charles XII was the invincible king of fate. As Esayas Tegner wrote in a poem that all today's schoolchildren learn, “he drew his sword from its scabbard and rushed into battle.”

In the 1910s, Charles XII became a symbol of strong royal power, as well as the resistance of right-wing politicians to democracy and universal suffrage (including for women).

During World War II, Charles XII was the favorite of the local Nazis, the Swedish Fuhrer.

There is a monument to Charles XII in the Royal Garden in Stockholm. In one hand he has a naked sword, with the other he points to the east, where his enemy is waiting.

On the day of his death, racists and Nazis gather at the monument.

Interestingly, neo-Nazis consider Charles XII a hero. The king was a fourth-generation migrant (his great-grandfather ended up in Sweden after the Thirty Years' War in what is now Germany). His mother was born in Denmark, which was then the sworn enemy of the Swedish state.

The state of Charles XII was multicultural, many nationalities, religions and languages ​​coexisted in it. Charles XII's brother-in-arms was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and during the years spent in Turkey, the king learned to respect and even admire Islam.

Chronology

1697 - On December 14, the coronation of fifteen-year-old Charles takes place, he becomes the sole king of Sweden after a six-month reign of the regency government.

1700 - In February, the Great Northern War begins with the attack of Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.

On September 13, Tsar Peter launches an attack on Sweden in the Baltic states.
On November 20, the Carolinians win a major victory at Narva.

1703 - The Bible of Charles XII is published - the first official translation, which remains in use for about 200 years until a new Bible appears in 1917.

1706 - September 14, Charles XII marches into Saxony and wins a great victory at Fraunstadt. On the same day, Charles XII and Augustus the Strong conclude the Peace of Altranstedt near Leipzig.

1708 - On September 28, the Russian troops of Tsar Peter defeat the Carolinians in the Battle of Lesnaya on the territory of modern Belarus.

1709 - June 28, Karl is defeated near Poltava. In the battle against Tsar Peter, eight thousand Carolinians die, three thousand end up in the hands of the enemy.

To escape the Russians, Charles XII flees to Bendery in the Ottoman Empire in August.

1713 - February 1, Sultan Ahmed III, who was tired of supporting Charles XII and his Carolinians, orders the Turks to attack the king’s camp in Bendery and expel the Swedes. Charles XII is captured.

1716 - From February to April, Charles XII fails in his attempt to capture Christiania (Oslo), which is under Danish rule.

1718 - In October, the Carolinians re-enter Norway and besiege the fortress of Fredriksten in Fredrikshalde (now Halden).

Data

Born: June 17, 1682 at Tre Krunur Castle.
Parents: Charles XI and Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark.
Children: no.
Coronation: at the age of 15.
Reign: 21 years.
Career: war and war again.
Died: November 30, 1718. The king was 36 years old.
Successor: Ulrika's sister Eleonora.

(1682-1718) swedish king since 1697

The image of Charles XII is usually formed under the influence of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Poltava”, where he is depicted as sick and inactive, as if already doomed in advance to defeat in the famous Battle of Poltava. Meanwhile, several dozen historical novels have been written about the reign of Charles XII, where he appears as a majestic and strong monarch.

Charles was born in Stockholm and was the fourth son of the Swedish King Charles XI. His three older brothers died in infancy, and Charles became the most beloved child in the royal family.

Unlike his younger brother and sister, he received an excellent education. He was prepared in advance for the throne, so his father repeatedly took his son on trips around the country and decided on state affairs with him. However, when Charles XI died suddenly in April 1697, power was transferred to the State Council. Only a year later, when Charles was sixteen years old, parliament recognized him as king.

It is noteworthy that, unlike his many predecessors, no magnificent ceremonies were held on the occasion of the coronation of Charles XII. Perhaps the reason was that at the end of the 17th century, Sweden was one of the richest and most steadily developing European countries. Even then it was famous for its deficit-free budget and the highest literacy rate in Europe. Therefore, it was decided that the country’s authority was already high enough and there was no need to strengthen it with a magnificent ceremony.

The main external threat was associated with the aggressive policy of Denmark, which sought dominance in the Baltic Sea. At the end of the nineties, an alliance was formed around Denmark - the so-called Northern League, which included Norway, Russia and Saxony.

When Russian troops besieged Narva in 1700, Charles XII had no idea that this was the beginning of a well-thought-out policy that led to the collapse of the great power that his father left him.

The defeat of the Russian troops near Narva, which brought the young king laurels as a commander, later played its fatal role. Charles XII believed in his invincibility and talent as a military leader, so he refused to negotiate in order to end the war through diplomatic means. From that time on, his life was forever connected with the army, and he never returned to his homeland.

Having defeated the Russian troops near Narva, Charles sent his army to Poland, where he also won a series of victories, as a result of which Stanislav Leszczynski, his creature, came to power. In the summer of 1706, together with Polish troops, Charles XII invaded Saxony, where he defeated the much inferior army of King Augustus and imposed peace on him, according to which he undertook to break the alliance with Russia.

Now Charles XII had only one enemy left - the Russian Emperor Peter I. Busy with the war in Poland and Saxony, Charles did not even imagine that gigantic military transformations were underway in Russia. And just a few years after the defeat at Narva, Russian troops began to represent an impressive force. During this time, Peter reconquered the territory around the Gulf of Finland and built there the new capital of Russia - the city of St. Petersburg.

Inspired by the Ukrainian hetman Mazepa, in 1708 Charles XII began a campaign against Russia, believing that he would crush the Russian army to smithereens. However, his expectations were not met. The Russian campaign became his biggest military miscalculation. In the first major battle near Poltava, he was defeated and, with a small group of followers, was forced to flee to the Turks. The army, which consisted of more than 15 thousand soldiers, was captured by the Russians.

Seeing that not a trace remained of the power of Charles XII, Denmark and Saxony, defeated by him, renewed their alliance with Russia. Soon Poland was again under the rule of King Augustus.

What was the further fate of Charles XII? At first, the Turks greeted him as an honored guest, a possible ally in the fight against Russia. He was given a residence in Bendery. However, the Turks needed Karl as bait. At the cost of handing him over to the Russians, they wanted to force Peter to reconsider the terms of the peace treaty concluded with Russia.

For his part, Charles XII tried to force Turkey to start a war with Russia. He himself wanted to move to Poland to become the head of the new army that came from Sweden. At first it seemed that Karl's plan was a success. In 1711, Türkiye and Russia found themselves at war. However, after the unsuccessful Prut campaign, Peter entered into negotiations, which led to the conclusion of peace on terms favorable to Turkey.

After this, the fate of Charles XII was decided: the Turkish Sultan ordered him to leave Turkish possessions as soon as possible and threatened him with arrest if he refused. Charles tried to disobey, but the Turks suddenly attacked his house and, despite resistance, captured Charles XII. During the skirmish he was seriously wounded. The captive Charles was taken to the Turkish fortress of Edirne. When the king recovered, he was escorted to the Turkish border, from where he was to travel back to Sweden, accompanied only by an aide-de-camp and a servant.

The journey through Europe took Charles XII more than a year, because he had to hide and secretly make his way through Bulgaria, Romania and Germany before he managed to reach Stralsund, which was still controlled by Swedish troops. There Charles stopped for a short rest, after which he again took command of the army. Everything he experienced did not cool his extravagant nature at all.

Having failed in Europe, Charles XII headed north, hoping to conquer Norway. True, his first campaign ended in failure, and he began to prepare for the second. Naturally, the king’s long absence from his homeland gave rise to all sorts of rumors and gossip. The situation was aggravated by the fact that he had no heirs, he was not even married.

The only contenders for the throne were Charles's two sisters - Hedwig Sophia and Ulrika Eleonora. Gradually, two groups of adherents formed around the sisters, neither of which needed Charles’ aggressive policy.

In the autumn of 1718, the king invaded Norway for the second time. At first he was successful. The Swedes besieged the Norwegian fortress of Friedrichsten, the defeat of which meant victory. However, a few days after the start of the siege, Charles XII was killed under circumstances that remain unclear to this day.

Queen Ulrika Eleonora ascended to the Swedish throne. In 1719, she adopted a new constitution, according to which Sweden became one of the first constitutional monarchies in Europe. All power in the country passed to the Riksdag and the State Council.

Having lost its position as a great power, Sweden forever abandoned military policy, which is reflected in its current status as a neutral country.

National Museum of Sweden. Painting by Gustav Cederström. Carrying the body of Charles XII across the Norwegian border, version 1884

Who and why killed Charles XII is still not known exactly - three centuries after his death on the battlefield

Autumn 1718. The Northern War, one of the largest military conflicts of the 18th century, has been going on for 18 years. The armies of Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Poland, England and other European countries met in it. The fighting covered a vast territory - from the Black Sea to Finland.

On November 12, 1718, a Swedish army led by 36-year-old King Charles XII besieged the well-fortified fortress of Fredrikshald - today the city of Halden in southern Norway. Three hundred years ago, the now independent country was a province of Denmark.

(In Sweden, until 1753, the Julian calendar was in effect and all dates in this article are indicated in accordance with it for reliability. The Gregorian calendar in the 18th century was “ahead” of the Julian calendar by 11 days. Thus, the siege of Fredrikshald began on November 23 in the Gregorian calendar. - approx. . author)

Within a couple of weeks it became clear that the capture of the fortress was only a matter of time. The city was shelled from three sides by 18 siege weapons, methodically destroying the fortifications. Fredrikshald was defended by only 1,400 Danish and Norwegian soldiers from the 40,000-strong Swedish army.

The Swedes built a system of trenches and sapper installations around the city, which allowed the besiegers to fire at the defenders of the fortress from a distance of only a few hundred steps (the metric system for measuring distances was not yet used at that time, and the length of a step in different countries corresponded to modern 77-88 centimeters).

The siege was led by Charles XII, an outstanding commander and an exceptionally brave man. On November 26, he personally led a detachment of 200 people to storm one of the Danish fortifications under the walls of the fortress. The king found himself in the center of hand-to-hand combat, he could easily have died, but he was not injured and left the battle only after the fortification was captured.

Karl himself supervised the engineering work and daily bypassed the Swedish positions within a few hundred steps of the Danish soldiers. The risk was enormous - one well-aimed rifle shot or a successful cannon salvo could deprive Sweden of its king. But this did not stop the monarch. He was bold to the point of recklessness. No wonder he was called “the last Viking.”

On the evening of November 30, the king, together with a group of officers, went on another inspection. From the trench, he spent a long time looking through the telescope at the walls of the fortress and gave orders to Colonel of the Engineering Service Philippe Maigret, who was standing nearby. It was already dark, but the Danes, in order to see the positions of the Swedes, launched bright flares. From time to time shots were heard as the defenders of Fredrikshald fired harassingly.

At some point, Karl wanted to get a better view. He climbed higher along the earthen parapet. Below, Maigret and the monarch’s personal secretary, Siquier, were waiting for new instructions. The rest of the retinue was also located nearby. Suddenly the king fell from the embankment. The officers ran up and found that Karl was already dead, and a huge through wound was gaping in his head. Legend has it that Maigret, upon seeing the murdered monarch, said: “Well, that’s all, gentlemen, the comedy is over, let’s go to dinner.”

The deceased was transferred to the headquarters tent, where the court physician Melchior Nojman embalmed the body.

The death of the king dramatically changed the plans of the Swedish command. Already on December 1, the siege of Fredrikshald was lifted and a hasty retreat from the city began, more like an escape.

Karl's body was taken on a stretcher across half of Scandinavia to Stockholm. This funeral procession is depicted in the painting “Carrying the Body of Charles XII Across the Norwegian Border” by Swedish artist Gustaf Cederström.

On February 15, 1719, the king was buried in Riddarholmen Church in Stockholm. Charles became the last European monarch to be killed in action. The throne was taken by his sister Ulrika Eleonora.

The hasty retreat from Fredrikshald did not allow a full investigation into the circumstances of the king's death. It was announced that he was killed by grapeshot fired from the Danish positions.

There were immediately people who questioned this version. The doubts turned out to be so strong that 28 years later, in 1746, the Swedish king Fredrick I ordered the opening of Charles’s grave to re-examine the body. The court physician Melchior Neumann carried out the embalming flawlessly, so the august deceased looked as if he had died quite recently.

The excellent preservation of the body made it possible to study in detail the wound on Karl’s head. Doctors and military personnel, well acquainted with the nature of combat injuries, made a stunning conclusion: a through hole in the skull the size of a pigeon egg was made not by a fragment of a grapeshot shell, as previously thought, but by a rifle bullet.

This immediately cast doubt on the version of the fatal shot from the Danish side. From the forward positions of the Swedish troops to the walls of the fortress there were about 300 steps. According to ballistics calculations, the probability of hitting a target measuring 1.2 x 1.8 meters from a smoothbore gun from the early 18th century from such a distance is only 25%, and the chance of hitting a person’s head from such a distance is much less.

It must also be taken into account that Karl was killed at night in the uneven light of engineering rockets, which would have further complicated the task of the Danish sniper. The wound on the skull turned out to be through, which indicates the high speed of the bullet, which persists only at a short distance. No traces of lead or other metal were found in the head.

If the monarch had been killed by a bullet that accidentally flew from the Danish positions, it would have lost its kinetic energy and lodged in the skull.

It would seem that the “Danish” version turned out to be untenable. But she received unexpected confirmation almost two centuries later.

It was said above how difficult it would be to hit Karl with a regular smoothbore musket. But in 1718, special serf guns already existed. These were heavy and bulky mechanisms with a barrel length of up to two meters and a weight of up to 30 kilograms. Such a gun is difficult to hold in your hands, so it was equipped with a wooden stand. The ammunition for it was conical lead bullets weighing 30-60 grams, and the range of destruction made it possible to pierce the skull even from a very long distance. Could it have been used to shoot Karl?

In 1907, a Swedish physician and amateur historian, Dr. Njustrem, conducted an experiment. Using old drawings, he assembled a serf gun and filled it with gunpowder, also made according to an 18th-century recipe. At the site of the death of the king, the doctor installed a wooden target the size of a human body, and he himself climbed the fortress wall of Fredrikshald, from where he shot 24 times. Nyström himself believed that the Danes could not hit Charles from such a distance even with a fortress gun and wanted to confirm this.

But the result of the experiment turned out to be exactly the opposite. The doctor hit the target 23 times, proving that a good shooter from the fortress wall could easily kill the king.

In 1891, Baron Nikolai Kaulbar from Estland (as Estonia was called at that time) stated that he kept the gun from which, according to family legend, Karl was shot. The aristocrat sent two photographs of the family heirloom and a cast of the bullet for examination to Stockholm.

The antique gun turned out to be a very remarkable artifact. For some reason, the names of courtiers from Karl’s inner circle, precisely those who were present at his death, were engraved on it.

The examination revealed that the rarity was released at the end of the 17th century, but it was not used to shoot the king. The monarch's terrible wound did not correspond to the bullets fired from Kaulbar's gun.

In 1917, the remains were again removed from the crypt (there were four exhumations in just three centuries) and examined using modern forensic techniques. For the first time, X-rays of the skull were taken.

The conclusions of experts turned out to be contradictory. On the one hand, the bullet hit the skull on the left and slightly behind, and, according to experts, could not have come from Fredrikshald. But on the other hand, the entrance hole was located slightly higher than the exit hole - the bullet moved along an inclined trajectory, from a hill, for example, from an embankment or .... walls. The second conclusion already allowed a shot from the fortress.

In 1924, a new artifact appeared. Norwegian Carl Hjalmar Andersson donated an old bullet to the museum of the Swedish city of Varberg, which, in his opinion, killed the monarch, but there was no evidence of this. According to legend, soldier Nilsson Stierna, who served in the Swedish army during the siege of Fredrikshald, saw the death of Charles, picked up the bullet that pierced the king’s skull, and kept it with him. Two centuries later, the artifact reached Andersson in a roundabout way.

It is noteworthy that the bullet was cast from a brass button, which was sewn onto soldiers' uniforms of the Swedish army. Those who believed that it was with this piece of metal that the monarch was killed turned to superstition for argumentation. Karl emerged unharmed from bloody battles so many times that many considered him to be under a spell. It was possible to kill him only with something unusual and close to the king. And what could be closer to a warlike monarch than the soldier’s uniform of his own army?

In 2002, DNA analysis was carried out at Uppsala University. The researchers compared biomaterials found on the bullet with a brain sample taken during the exhumation of the king's remains and the monarch's blood left on clothing kept at the Stockholm Historical Museum.

The result of the examination was again ambiguous. Over 284 years, the samples have changed greatly under the influence of the environment. Researchers have identified only general parameters of the genetic code. The conclusion was that the DNA found on the pool could belong to approximately 1% of the Swedish population, including Karl. Moreover, traces of DNA from two people were found on the metal, which further confused the researchers. In general, genetic testing has not clarified the historical mystery.

Over time, other facts emerged indicating that it was not Danish soldiers who killed Charles.

First, we need to briefly describe the political and economic situation of the early 18th century. For 18 years, the grueling Northern War had been going on, in which Sweden confronted almost half of Europe. In the early years of the conflict, Charles managed to inflict serious defeats on Russia, Denmark and Poland, but unsuccessful battles on land and sea followed.

The campaign against Russia in 1709 turned out to be a real disaster for the Swedish army. Karl suffered a crushing defeat near Poltava, where he himself was wounded and almost captured.

The king was completely absorbed in the war and was not at all concerned with the Swedish economy, which was in a deplorable state. He carried out the infamous monetary reform, in which silver coins were equal in value to copper ones. This helped cover military expenses, but caused a sharp rise in prices and impoverishment of the population. The Swedes hated the financial innovations so much that the “author” of the reform, German baron Georg von Görtz, was arrested and executed three months after Karl’s death.

The aristocrats repeatedly asked the king to begin peace negotiations. In 1714, the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) even adopted a special resolution on this matter, which was sent to the monarch, who was in Turkey at that time.

Karl rejected him and, despite the defeats and economic problems, decided to continue the war to a victorious end. For such stubbornness, the Turks gave him another telling nickname - “Iron Head”. Since 1700, the monarch practically did not appear in his homeland, spending his life on endless campaigns.

The German scientist Knut Lundblad, in his book “The History of Charles XII,” published in 1835, put forward a version of the involvement of the English king George I in the murder of his Swedish colleague. At the beginning of the 18th century, George fought with the pretender to the throne, Jacob Stuart. In 1715, the confrontation led to the Jacobite uprising, which was suppressed by royal troops.

Lundblad suggested that Charles XII was going to help James by sending an expeditionary force of 20 thousand soldiers to England to fight George. And the current English king decided to prevent this by organizing the murder of Charles. This version has one weak point - Sweden, with all its desire, could not, either in 1718 or in subsequent years, land a large amphibious assault in England. After unsuccessful naval battles with Russia and Denmark, the Scandinavian kingdom lost most of its fleet. George did not have to fear a Swedish invasion.

However, both inside and outside Scandinavia there were many influential people who wanted Charles dead.

Knut Lundblad also described such a story. In December 1750, Baron Carl Cronstedt, one of the best officers of Charles XII, died in Stockholm. He invited a priest to confess.

The dying man admitted that he had participated in a plot to kill Charles and demanded that the pastor go to another officer, Magnus Stierneroos, who also served under the late monarch.

Cronstedt stated that it was Stierneros, his former subordinate, who shot the king. The baron considered his own confession insufficient and wanted to convince another officer involved in the murder to repent.

Stierneros, after listening to the priest, said that Kronstedt was clearly not himself and did not understand what he was saying. The pastor conveyed the answer to the baron, to which he explained in detail what kind of gun Karl was killed with. It, according to Kronstedt, was still hanging on the wall of Stierneros' office. The priest again went to the latter asking for a confession, but the officer, in a rage, drove the pastor out of his house.

This story would have remained unknown, because the priest has no right to divulge what he heard during confession. He described the unusual altercation between the two officers in his diary, which he did not show to anyone. In 1759, the pastor died and his notes were made public.

The murder of Charles, according to the dying Kronstedt, occurred as a result of a conspiracy by the Swedish aristocracy, dissatisfied with the king's policies. The baron recruited Stierneros, his subordinate and an excellent marksman, as the direct executor of the murder.

On the evening of November 30, he followed Charles and his retinue through the trenches, then climbed out of the trench and took a position in front of the earthen embankment, to which the monarch approached from the other side. Stierneros waited until the king looked out from behind the parapet and fired. In the confusion that followed the murder, he quietly returned to the trenches.

Kronstedt also admitted that he and other military leaders, after the death of Charles, behaved in a completely unnoble manner - they appropriated the entire military treasury. Stierneros also received a very substantial monetary reward and subsequently rose to the rank of cavalry general.

The information contained in the notes of the late priest had no confirmation and could not serve as legal evidence. But it is known that in 1789, the Swedish king Gustav III, in a conversation with the French ambassador, said that he considered Kronstedt and Stierneros to be the perpetrators of the murder.

Karl's personal secretary, Frenchman Sigur, is also considered another suspect. Allegedly, it was he who shot the king. In Sweden, many believed this version. Indeed, shortly after the murder, a Frenchman in Stockholm, in a fit of delirium tremens, shouted that he had killed the king and asked for forgiveness for it.

Many years later, the famous French philosopher Voltaire, who wrote a biography of Charles, spoke with Sigur, then already a very old man, in his home in France. He said that the confession was false and was made due to a painful clouding of reason. Sigur respected Karl very much and would never dare to harm him.

After this, Voltaire wrote: “I saw him shortly before his death and I can assure you that not only did he not kill Charles, but he himself would have allowed himself to be killed a thousand times for him. If he were guilty of this crime, it would, of course, be for the purpose of rendering a service to some state, which would reward him well. But he died poor in France and needed help."

Different opinions about the direct perpetrator were discussed above, but who was the organizer of the conspiracy, if one did take place?

The involvement of the English King George is unlikely. He didn't have enough reason to kill.

The biggest winner from Charles's death was Fredrick of Hesse, the husband of his sister Ulrika Eleonora, who took the throne immediately after her brother's death. In 1720, she renounced the crown in favor of her husband. Fredrik ruled Sweden until his death in 1751. Many conspiracy theorists believe he was the organizer of the murder.

But perhaps all these conclusions are incorrect and Karl died from an accidental bullet fired from the walls of Fredrikshald. A new examination of the remains using the most modern technical means could solve the mystery.

In 2008, Stefan Jonsson, a professor of materials science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, spoke to the BBC about the need for a new exhumation, the fifth in a row. The scientist is going to study the bones using an electron microscope.

“Even if there are the slightest traces of metal, we can study their chemical composition,” the professor said. However, permission for the next exhumation of the remains of the “last Viking” has not been received to this day.

Text: Sergey Tolmachev

Charles 12 (born June 17 (27), 1682 - death November 30 (December 11), 1718) Swedish king (1697) and commander, participant in the Northern and conquest wars against Russia. Defeated near Poltava (1709).

Charles 12 was perhaps one of the most extraordinary personalities of his era. It is difficult to find ordinary affairs and events in his life - all the feelings, views and actions of the monarch aroused genuine admiration, surprise, and sometimes shocked friends and enemies. They said about the king that he was not afraid of anything and had no weaknesses, and he brought his virtues to such excess that they often bordered on vices. In fact, the commander’s firmness in most cases turned into stubbornness, justice into tyranny, and generosity into incredible wastefulness.

Childhood, young years

Swedish King Charles 12 was born in 1682 in Stockholm. The marriage of his father, the Swedish King Charles 11, and his mother, the Danish Princess Ulrika Eleonora, was a union of people who were completely different in character. The despotic ruler instilled fear in his subjects, while the queen tried in every possible way to alleviate their lot, often giving away her jewelry and dresses to the unfortunate.

Unable to withstand her husband's cruel treatment, she died in 1693, when her son-heir was only 11 years old. He grew up strong, physically and spiritually developed, and knew German and Latin perfectly. But even then the prince’s stubborn character and immoderate temper began to appear. To force a boy to learn something, it was necessary to hurt his pride and honor. Since childhood, the future king’s favorite hero was, the young man admired him and wanted to be like the legendary commander in everything.

Ascension to the throne

Charles 11 died, leaving his 15-year-old son a throne respected in Europe, a good army and prosperous finances. According to Swedish laws, Charles 12 could immediately take the throne, but before his death, his father stipulated a delay until he came of age - 18 years old - and appointed his mother, Hedwig Eleonora, as regent of the state. She was a very ambitious person who tried with all her might to keep her grandson away from business.

The young king usually amused himself with hunting and military reviews. But more and more often he thought that he was already quite capable of governing the state. Once Karl shared his thoughts on this matter with State Councilor Pieper, and he enthusiastically took up the task of placing the young ruler on the throne, seeing this as an excellent opportunity to make his career. A few days later, the queen's power fell.

During the coronation, Charles 12 took the crown from the hands of the Archbishop of Uppsala, when he was about to place it on the head of the sovereign, and crowned himself. People greeted the young king and sincerely admired him.

The first years of the reign

In the first years of his reign, Charles 12 established himself as an impatient, careless and arrogant king who was not very interested in the affairs of state, and in the Council he sat with a bored look, his legs crossed on the table. His true nature has not yet begun to reveal itself.

Meanwhile, storm clouds were gathering over the monarch's head. A coalition of four powerful powers - Denmark, Saxony, Poland and Muscovy - wanted to limit Sweden's dominance in the Baltic. 1700 - these states launched the Northern War against Charles 12 and his state.

Considering the current situation threatening, many of the advisers offered to negotiate with the enemies, but the monarch rejected all their arguments and said: “Gentlemen, I have decided never to wage an unjust war, but, having raised my arms in order to punish those who break the laws, I will not lay them down, until all my enemies are dead. I will attack the first one who rebels against me, and, I hope, by defeating him, I will instill fear in all others.” This warlike speech amazed the statesmen and became a turning point in the life of the ruler.

Preparing for war

Having ordered preparations for war, Charles 12 changed dramatically: he abandoned all pleasures and entertainment, began to dress like a simple soldier and eat the same way. In addition, he said goodbye to wine and women forever, not wanting the latter to influence his decisions. On May 8, the monarch left Stockholm at the head of the army. Karl could not even think that he would never return here...

Before leaving, the king brought order to the country and organized a defense council, which was supposed to deal with everything related to the army.

First victories

Karl won his first victory in Denmark. He besieged Copenhagen and after a short time took possession of it. 1700, August 28 - a peace treaty was concluded between the two states. It should be noted that the Swedish army was very strong and well organized, so it was predicted to have a brilliant future. Strict discipline reigned in it, which the young monarch tightened even more. So, being under the walls of Copenhagen, Swedish soldiers regularly paid for the products that Danish peasants supplied them, and while peace negotiations were underway, they did not leave the camp. Such severity of Charles 12 towards the army contributed to its numerous victories.

The next success awaited the Swedes near Narva. Charles 12 was extremely outraged by the behavior of Peter 1, who invaded there. The fact is that Muscovite ambassadors more than once assured the Swedish king of an unbreakable peace between the two powers. Karl could not understand how anyone could break his promises. Filled with righteous anger, he entered the battle with Russian troops, having several times fewer people than. “Do you doubt that with my eight thousand brave men I will defeat eighty thousand Muscovites?” - Charles 12 angrily asked one of his generals, who tried to prove the complexity of this enterprise.

War with Poland

Charles defeated the Russian army, and this became one of his brilliant victories. He carried out no less successful actions in Poland and Saxony. During 1701–1706 he conquered these countries and occupied their capitals, and in addition, he ensured that the Polish king Augustus 2 signed the Altranstadt Peace Treaty and abdicated the throne. In this place, the Swedish king placed the young Stanislav Leszczynski, who made a favorable impression on him and later became a loyal friend.

Peter 1 well understood the threat posed by the Swedish army, led by a talented and courageous monarch. Therefore, he sought to conclude a peace treaty, but Karl stubbornly rejected all proposals, saying that they would discuss everything when the Swedish army entered Moscow.

Later he had to regret this action. In the meantime, Charles 12 considered himself an invulnerable chosen one of fate. They said that bullets couldn't kill him. He himself believed in his invincibility. And there were many reasons for this: dozens of battles won during the Northern War, ingratiation on the part of England and France, as well as the actions of Peter 1, dictated by fear of Swedish power.

War with Russia

So, Charles 12 decided to go to war against Russia. 1708, February - he captured Grodno and waited for the onset of warm days near Minsk. The Russians have not yet made serious attacks against the Swedes, exhausting their forces in small battles and destroying food, fodder - everything that could be useful to the enemy army.

1709 - the winter was so severe that it destroyed a significant part of the Swedish army: hunger and cold exhausted it more than the Russians. What was left of the once magnificent troops was 24,000 exhausted soldiers. However, Charles 12 remained dignified and calm in this situation. At this time he received news from Stockholm, which announced the death of his beloved sister, the Duchess of Holstein. This heavy loss was a serious blow for the monarch, but did not break him: he did not abandon his intention to march on Moscow. In addition, no help arrived from Sweden, and the help of the Ukrainian Hetman Mazepa turned out to be weak.

Poltava campaign

At the end of May 1709, Charles besieged Poltava, which, according to Mazepa, had a large supply of food. The latter referred to allegedly intercepted information about this. The Swedes spent a lot of time storming the fortress, which actually had nothing in it, and found themselves surrounded by Russian troops.

On June 16, Karl 12 was wounded in the heel by a shot from a carbine. This wound refuted the legend of his invulnerability and led to serious consequences - the monarch controlled the army’s actions during the Battle of Poltava from a hastily constructed stretcher.

Battle and defeat near Poltava

The battle of Poltava took place on June 27 (July 8), 1709. The surprise that Karl, as usual, counted on, did not work out: Menshikov’s cavalry discovered Swedish columns that were moving in the silence of the night. The battle ended with the complete defeat of the Swedes. Only Charles 12, Mazepa and several hundred soldiers managed to escape.

The Poltava defeat destroyed not only the Swedish army, but also the Swedish great power. It seemed that everything was lost, but Karl was not going to give up. He fled to the Turks and met a worthy reception there. But although the Sultan showered the king with honors and expensive gifts, he was just a prisoner. The Swedish monarch put a lot of effort into ensuring that the Ottoman Porte declared war on Russia, but the Turkish government did not share Charles’s views and was in no hurry to quarrel with the tsar.

Bender seat

Charles 12 lived in luxury in Bendery. As soon as he recovered from the wound and was able to sit in the saddle, he immediately began his usual activities: he rode a lot, taught soldiers and played chess. The monarch spent the money he received from the Porte on intrigue, bribery and gifts to the Janissaries guarding him.

Charles continued to hope that he could force Turkey to fight, and did not agree to return home. With the help of his agents, he desperately intrigued and removed the viziers. In the end, he managed to provoke the Turks into a war with Russia. But the short war ended with the signing of a peace treaty on August 1, 1711 and did not cause Peter 1 much harm. The Swedish king was furious and reproached the Grand Vizier for signing the peace treaty. In response, he strongly advised the monarch to leave Turkey and eventually return home.

Karl refused and spent several more years in Turkey, despite the fact that the Sultan and the government openly told him about the need to return to Sweden. It seems that Porta is already tired of the annoying guest and his adventures, which the Swedish king embarked on at every step to achieve his goal.

Return and death

1714 - realizing the futility of his stay in Turkey, the Swedish king Charles 12 left its borders and returned to his homeland, torn apart by enemies. Therefore, the monarch immediately set about reorganizing the army and... without having yet solved all the state problems, in March 1716 he went to fight his enemies in Norway.

During the siege of the Frederikshall fortress, when the tireless monarch was personally inspecting the trenches, he was overtaken by a stray bullet. On December 11, 1718, the life of one of the great warriors and kings of Europe was cut short. The throne was inherited by Ulrika's sister Eleonora, who after some time abandoned it in favor of her husband.

Charles 12 - a personality in history

King Charles remained in history as the greatest conqueror and great stubborn man. He was not like other monarchs, he fought not to strengthen his position, but for glory, and loved to give out crowns. His stubbornness and reluctance to realistically assess the superiority of the enemy led to the defeat of the Swedish army and deprived Sweden of its position as the leading power in Europe.

However, at the same time, King Charles always remained an interesting person, which attracted many loyal friends to his side. He never boasted of victories, but he also did not know how to suffer for long from defeats. The king hid his sorrows deep within himself and rarely gave vent to his emotions. Legends were made about his composure and equanimity in all cases of life.

Voltaire wrote: “Once, when Charles was dictating a letter to his secretary in Sweden, a bomb hit the house and, having pierced the roof, exploded in the next room and smashed the ceiling into splinters. However, the king’s office not only was not damaged, but even through the open door not a single fragment. During the explosion, when it seemed that the whole house was collapsing, the pen fell from the secretary's hands. ""What's the matter? - asked the king. “Why don’t you write?” - “Sir, bomb!” - “But what does the bomb have to do with it, your job is to write a letter. Continue."

This was the Swedish king Charles 12: fearless, intelligent, courageous, who “valued the lives of his subjects as little as his own.”

A.Ziolkovskaya