Chapter XV: Part VI: After the Reformation (9)

But his internal government was on the whole beneficial to the country. He began by compelling the people of Madrid to give up emptying their slops out of the windows, and when they objected he said they were like children who cried when their faces were washed. In 1766 his attempt to force the Madrilenos to adopt the French dress led to a riot during which he did not display much personal courage. For a long time after it he remained at Aranjuez, leaving the government in the hands of his minister Aranda. All his reforms were not of this formal kind. Charles was a thorough despot of the benevolent order, and had been deeply offended by the real or suspected share of the Jesuits in the riot of 1766. He therefore consented to the expulsion of the order, and was then the main advocate for its suppression. His quarrel with the Jesuits, and the recollection of some disputes with the pope he had had when king of Naples, turned him towards a general policy of restriction of the overgrown power of the church. The number of the idle clergy, and more particularly of the monastic orders, was reduced, and the Inquisition, though not abolished, was rendered torpid. In the meantime much antiquated legislation which tended to restrict trade and industry was abolished; roads, canals and drainage works were carried out. Many of his paternal ventures led to little more than waste of money, or the creation of hotbeds of jobbery. Yet on the whole the country prospered. The result was largely due to the king, who even when he was ill-advised did at least work steadily at his task of government. His example was not without effect on some at least of the nobles. In his domestic life King Charles was regular, and was a considerate master, though he had a somewhat caustic tongue and took a rather cynical view of mankind. He was passionately fond of hunting. During his later years he had some trouble with his eldest son and his daughter-in-law. If Charles had lived to see the beginning of the French Revolution he would probably have been frightened into reaction. As he died on the 14th of December 1788 he left the reputation of a philanthropic and "philosophic" king. In spite of his hostility to the Jesuits, his dislike of friars in general, and his jealousy of the Inquisition, he was a very sincere Roman Catholic, and showed much zeal in endeavouring to persuade the pope to proclaim the Immaculate Conception as a dogma necessary to salvation.

See the _Reign of Charles III._, by M. Danvila y Collado (6 vols.), in
the _Historia General de Espana de la Real Academia de la Historia_
(Madrid, 1892, &c.); and F. Rousseau, _Regne de Charles III d'Espagne_
(Paris, 1907).

CHARLES IV. (1748-1819), king of Spain, second son of Charles III. and his wife Maria Amelia of Saxony, was born at Portici on the 11th of November 1748, while his father was king of the Two Sicilies. The elder brother was set aside as imbecile and epileptic. Charles had inherited a great frame and immense physical strength from the Saxon line of his mother. When young he was fond of wrestling with the strongest countrymen he could find. In character he was not malignant, but he was intellectually torpid, and of a credulity which almost passes belief. His wife, Maria Luisa of Parma, his first cousin, a thoroughly coarse and vicious woman, ruled him completely, though he was capable of obstinacy at times. During his father's lifetime he was led by her into court intrigues which aimed at driving the king's favourite minister, Floridablanca, from office, and replacing him by Aranda, the chief of the "Aragonese" party. After he succeeded to the throne in 1788 his one serious occupation was hunting. Affairs were left to be directed by his wife and her lover Godoy (q.v.). For Godoy the king had an unaffected liking, and the lifelong favour he showed him is almost pathetic. When terrified by the French Revolution he turned to the Inquisition to help him against the party which would have carried the reforming policy of Charles III. much further. But he was too slothful to have more than a passive part in the direction of his own government. He simply obeyed the impulse given him by the queen and Godoy. If he ever knew his wife's real character he thought it more consistent with his dignity to shut his eyes. For he had a profound belief in his divine right and the sanctity of his person. If he understood that his kingdom was treated as a mere dependence by France, he also thought it due to his "face" to make believe that he was a powerful monarch. Royalty never wore a more silly aspect than in the person of Charles IV., and it is highly credible that he never knew what his wife was, or what was the position of his kingdom. When he was told that his son Ferdinand was appealing to the emperor Napoleon against Godoy, he took the side of the favourite. When the populace rose at Aranjuez in 1808 he abdicated to save the minister. He took refuge in France, and when he and Ferdinand were both prisoners of Napoleon's, he was with difficulty restrained from assaulting his son. Then he abdicated in favour of Napoleon, handing over his people like a herd of cattle. He accepted a pension from the French emperor and spent the rest of his life between his wife and Godoy. He died at Rome on the 20th of January 1819, probably without having once suspected that he had done anything unbecoming a king by divine right and a gentleman.

See _Historia del Reinado de Carlos IV._, by General Gomez de Arteche
(3 vols.), in the _Historia General de Espana de la Real Academia de
la Historia_ (Madrid, 1892, &c.).

CHARLES IX. (1550-1611), king of Sweden, was the youngest son of Gustavus Vasa and Margareto Lejonhufrud. By his father's will he got, by way of appanage, the duchy of Sodermanland, which included the provinces of Nerike and Vermland; but he did not come into actual possession of them till after the fall of Eric XIV. (1569). In 1568 he was the real leader of the rebellion against Eric, but took no part in the designs of his brother John against the unhappy king after his deposition. Indeed, Charles's relations with John III. were always more or less strained. He had no sympathy with John's high-church tendencies on the one hand, and he sturdily resisted all the king's endeavours to restrict his authority as duke of Sodermanland (Sudermania) on the other. The nobility and the majority of the _Riksdag_ supported John, however, in his endeavours to unify the realm, and Charles had consequently (1587) to resign his pretensions to autonomy within his duchy; but, fanatical Calvinist as he was, on the religious question he was immovable. The matter came to a crisis on the death of John III. (1592). The heir to the throne was John's eldest son, Sigismund, already king of Poland and a devoted Catholic. The fear lest Sigismund might re-catholicize the land alarmed the Protestant majority in Sweden, and Charles came forward as their champion, and also as the defender of the Vasa dynasty against foreign interference. It was due entirely to him that Sigismund was forced to confirm the resolutions of the council of Upsala, thereby recognizing the fact that Sweden was essentially a Protestant state (see SWEDEN: _History_). In the ensuing years Charles's task was extraordinarily difficult. He had steadily to oppose Sigismund's reactionary tendencies; he had also to curb the nobility, which he did with cruel rigour. Necessity compelled him to work rather with the people than the gentry; hence it was that the _Riksdag_ assumed under his government a power and an importance which it had never possessed before. In 1595 the _Riksdag_ of Soderkoping elected Charles regent, and his attempt to force Klas Flemming, governor of Finland, to submit to his authority, rather than to that of the king, provoked a civil war. Technically Charles was, without doubt, guilty of high treason, and the considerable minority of all classes which adhered to Sigismund on his landing in Sweden in 1598 indisputably behaved like loyal subjects. But Sigismund was both an alien and a heretic to the majority of the Swedish nation, and his formal deposition by the _Riksdag_ in 1599 was, in effect, a natural vindication and legitimation of Charles's position. Finally, the diet of Linkoping (Feb. 24, 1600) declared that Sigismund and his posterity had forfeited the Swedish throne, and, passing over duke John, the second son of John III., a youth of ten, recognized duke Charles as their sovereign under the title of Charles IX.

Charles's short reign was an uninterrupted warfare. The hostility of Poland and the break up of Russia involved him in two overseas contests for the possession of Livonia and Ingria, while his pretensions to Lapland brought upon him a war with Denmark in the last year of his reign. In all these struggles he was more or less unsuccessful, owing partly to the fact that he had to do with superior generals (e.g. Chodkiewicz and Christian IV.) and partly to sheer ill-luck. Compared with his foreign policy, the domestic policy of Charles IX. was comparatively unimportant. It aimed at confirming and supplementing what had already been done during his regency. Not till the 6th of March 1604, after Duke John had formally renounced his rights to the throne, did Charles IX. begin to style himself king. The first deed in which the title appears is dated the 20th of March 1604; but he was not crowned till the 15th of March 1607. Four and a half years later Charles IX. died at Nykoping (Oct. 30, 1611). As a ruler he is the link between his great father and his still greater son. He consolidated the work of Gustavus Vasa, the creation of a great Protestant state: he prepared the way for the erection of the Protestant empire of Gustavus Adolphus. Swedish historians have been excusably indulgent to the father of their greatest ruler. Indisputably Charles was cruel, ungenerous and vindictive; yet he seems, at all hazards, strenuously to have endeavoured to do his duty during a period of political and religious transition, and, despite his violence and brutality, possessed many of the qualities of a wise and courageous statesman. By his first wife Marie, daughter of the elector palatine Louis VI., he had six children, of whom only one daughter, Catherine, survived; by his second wife, Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein-Gottorp, he had five children, including Gustavus Adolphus and Charles Philip, duke of Finland.

See _Sveriges Historia_, vol. iii. (Stockholm, 1878); Robert Nisbet
Bain, _Scandinavia_ (Cambridge, 1905), caps. 5-7. (R. N. B.)

CHARLES X. [CHARLES GUSTAVUS] (1622-1660), king of Sweden, son of John Casimir, count palatine of Zweibrucken, and Catherine, sister of Gustavus Adolphus, was born at Nykoping Castle on the 8th of November 1622. He learnt the art of war under the great Lennart Torstensson, being present at the second battle of Breitenfeld and at Jankowitz. From 1646 to 1648 he frequented the Swedish court. It was supposed that he would marry the queen regnant, Christina, but her unsurmountable objection to wedlock put an end to these anticipations, and to compensate her cousin for a broken half-promise she declared him (1649) her successor, despite the opposition of the senate headed by the venerable Axel Oxenstjerna. In 1648 he was appointed generalissimo of the Swedish forces in Germany. The conclusion of the treaties of Westphalia prevented him from winning the military laurels he so ardently desired, but as the Swedish plenipotentiary at the executive congress of Nuremberg, he had unrivalled opportunities of learning diplomacy, in which science he speedily became a past-master. As the recognized heir to the throne, his position on his return to Sweden was not without danger, for the growing discontent with the queen turned the eyes of thousands to him as a possible deliverer. He therefore withdrew to the isle of Oland till the abdication of Christina (June 5, 1654) called him to the throne.

The beginning of his reign was devoted to the healing of domestic discords, and the rallying of all the forces of the nation round his standard for a new policy of conquest. He contracted a political marriage (Oct. 24, 1654) with Hedwig Leonora, the daughter of Frederick III., duke of Holstein-Gottorp, by way of securing a future ally against Denmark. The two great pressing national questions, war and the restitution of the alienated crown lands, were duly considered at the _Riksdag_ which assembled at Stockholm in March 1655. The war question was decided in three days by a secret committee presided over by the king, who easily persuaded the delegates that a war with Poland was necessary and might prove very advantageous; but the consideration of the question of the subsidies due to the crown for military purposes was postponed to the following _Riksdag_ (see SWEDEN: _History_). On the 10th of July Charles quitted Sweden to engage in his Polish adventure. By the time war was declared he had at his disposal 50,000 men and 50 warships. Hostilities had already begun with the occupation of Dunaburg (Dvinsk) in Polish Livonia by the Swedes (July 1, 1655), and the Polish army encamped among the marshes of the Netze concluded a convention (July 25) whereby the palatinates of Posen and Kalisz placed themselves under the protection of the Swedish king. Thereupon the Swedes entered Warsaw without opposition and occupied the whole of Great Poland. The Polish king, John Casimir, fled to Silesia. Meanwhile Charles pressed on towards Cracow, which was captured after a two months' siege. The fall of Cracow extinguished the last hope of the boldest Pole; but before the end of the year an extraordinary reaction began in Poland itself. On the 18th of October the Swedes invested the fortress-monastery of Czenstochowa, but the place was heroically defended; and after a seventy days' siege the besiegers were compelled to retire with great loss.

This astounding success elicited an outburst of popular enthusiasm which gave the war a national and religious character. The tactlessness of Charles, the rapacity of his generals, the barbarity of his mercenaries, his refusal to legalize his position by summoning the Polish diet, his negotiations for the partition of the very state he affected to befriend, awoke the long slumbering public spirit of the country. In the beginning of 1656 John Casimir returned from exile and the Polish army was reorganized and increased. By this time Charles had discovered that it was easier to defeat the Poles than to conquer Poland. His chief object, the conquest of Prussia, was still unaccomplished, and a new foe arose in the elector of Brandenburg, alarmed by the ambition of the Swedish king. Charles forced the elector, indeed, at the point of the sword to become his ally and vassal (treaty of Konigsberg, Jan. 17, 1656); but the Polish national rising now imperatively demanded his presence in the south. For weeks he scoured the interminable snow-covered plains of Poland in pursuit of the Polish guerillas, penetrating as far south as Jaroslau in Galicia, by which time he had lost two-thirds of his 15,000 men with no apparent result. His retreat from Jaroslau to Warsaw, with the fragments of his host, amidst three converging armies, in a marshy forest region, intersected in every direction by well-guarded rivers, was one of his most brilliant achievements. But his necessities were overwhelming. On the 21st of June Warsaw was retaken by the Poles, and four days later Charles was obliged to purchase the assistance of Frederick William by the treaty of Marienburg. On July 18-20 the combined Swedes and Brandenburgers, 18,000 strong, after a three days' battle, defeated John Casimir's army of 100,000 at Warsaw and reoccupied the Polish capital; but this brilliant feat of arms was altogether useless, and when the suspicious attitude of Frederick William compelled the Swedish king at last to open negotiations with the Poles, they refused the terms offered, the war was resumed, and Charles concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the elector of Brandenburg (treaty of Labiau, Nov. 20) whereby it was agreed that Frederick William and his heirs should henceforth possess the full sovereignty of East Prussia.

This was an essential modification of Charles's Baltic policy; but the alliance of the elector had now become indispensable on almost any terms. So serious, indeed, were the difficulties of Charles X. in Poland that it was with extreme satisfaction that he received the tidings of the Danish declaration of war (June 1, 1657). The hostile action of Denmark enabled him honourably to emerge from the inglorious Polish imbroglio, and he was certain of the zealous support of his own people. He had learnt from Torstensson that Denmark was most vulnerable if attacked from the south, and, imitating the strategy of his master, he fell upon her with a velocity which paralysed resistance. At the end of June 1657, at the head of 8000 seasoned veterans, he broke up from Bromberg in Prussia and reached the borders of Holstein on the 18th of July. The Danish army at once dispersed and the duchy of Bremen was recovered by the Swedes, who in the early autumn swarmed over Jutland and firmly established themselves in the duchies. But the fortress of Fredriksodde (Fredericia) held Charles's little army at bay from mid-August to mid-October, while the fleet of Denmark, after a stubborn two days' battle, compelled the Swedish fleet to abandon its projected attack on the Danish islands. The position of the Swedish king had now become critical. In July an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between Denmark and Poland. Still more ominously, the elector of Brandenburg, perceiving Sweden to be in difficulties, joined the league against her and compelled Charles to accept the proffered mediation of Cromwell and Mazarin. The negotiations foundered, however, upon the refusal of Sweden to refer the points in dispute to a general peace-congress, and Charles was still further encouraged by the capture of Fredriksodde (Oct. 23-24), whereupon he began to make preparations for conveying his troops over to Funen in transport vessels. But soon another and cheaper expedient presented itself. In the middle of December 1657 began the great frost which was to be so fatal to Denmark. In a few weeks the cold had grown so intense that even the freezing of an arm of the sea with so rapid a current as the Little Belt became a conceivable possibility; and henceforth meteorological observations formed an essential part of the strategy of the Swedes. On the 28th of January 1658, Charles X. arrived at Haderslev (Hadersleben) in South Jutland, when it was estimated that in a couple of days the ice of the Little Belt would be firm enough to bear even the passage of a mail-clad host. The cold during the night of the 29th of January was most severe; and early in the morning of the 30th the Swedish king gave the order to start, the horsemen dismounting where the ice was weakest, and cautiously leading their horses as far apart as possible, when they swung into their saddles again, closed their ranks and made a dash for the shore. The Danish troops lining the opposite coast were quickly overpowered, and the whole of Funen was won with the loss of only two companies of cavalry, which disappeared under the ice while fighting with the Danish left wing. Pursuing his irresistible march, Charles X., with his eyes fixed steadily on Copenhagen, resolved to cross the frozen Great Belt also. After some hesitation, he accepted the advice of his chief engineer officer Eric Dahlberg, who acted as pioneer throughout and chose the more circuitous route from Svendborg, by the islands of Langeland, Laaland and Falster, in preference to the direct route from Nyborg to Korsor, which would have been across a broad, almost uninterrupted expanse of ice. Yet this second adventure was not embarked upon without much anxious consideration. A council of war, which met at two o'clock in the morning to consider the practicability of Dahlberg's proposal, at once dismissed it as criminally hazardous. Even the king wavered for an instant; but, Dahlberg persisting in his opinion, Charles overruled the objections of the commanders. On the night of the 5th of February the transit began, the cavalry leading the way through the snow-covered ice, which quickly thawed beneath the horses' hoofs so that the infantry which followed after had to wade through half an ell of sludge, fearing every moment lest the rotting ice should break beneath their feet. At three o'clock in the afternoon, Dahlberg leading the way, the army reached Grimsted in Laaland without losing a man On the 8th of February Charles reached Falster. On the 11th he stood safely on the soil of Sjaelland (Zealand). Not without reason did the medal struck to commemorate "the glorious transit of the Baltic Sea" bear the haughty inscription: _Natura hoc debuit uni._ An exploit unique in history had been achieved. The crushing effect of this unheard-of achievement on the Danish government found expression in the treaties of Taastrup (Feb. 18) and Roskilde (Feb. 26, 1658), whereby Denmark sacrificed nearly half her territory to save the rest (see DENMARK: _History_). But even this was not enough for the conqueror. Military ambition and greed of conquest moved Charles X. to what, divested of all its pomp and circumstance, was an outrageous act of political brigandage. At a council held at Gottorp (July 7), Charles X. resolved to wipe from the map of Europe an inconvenient rival, and without any warning, in defiance of all international equity, let loose his veterans upon Denmark a second time. For the details of this second struggle, with the concomitant diplomatic intervention of the western powers, see DENMARK: _History_, and SWEDEN: _History_. Only after great hesitation would Charles X. consent to reopen negotiations with Denmark direct, at the same time proposing to exercise pressure upon the enemy by a simultaneous winter campaign in Norway. Such an enterprise necessitated fresh subsidies from his already impoverished people, and obliged him in December 1659 to cross over to Sweden to meet the estates, whom he had summoned to Gothenburg. The lower estates murmured at the imposition of fresh burdens; and Charles had need of all his adroitness to persuade them that his demands were reasonable and necessary. At the very beginning of the _Riksdag_, in January 1660, it was noticed that the king was ill; but he spared himself as little in the council-chamber as in the battle-field, till death suddenly overtook him on the night of the 13th of February 1660, in his thirty-eighth year. The abrupt cessation of such an inexhaustible fount of enterprise and energy was a distinct loss to Sweden; and signs are not wanting that, in his latter years, Charles had begun to feel the need and value of repose. Had he lived long enough to overcome his martial ardour, and develop and organize the empire he helped to create, Sweden might perhaps have remained a great power to this day. Even so she owes her natural frontiers in the Scandinavian peninsula to Charles X.

See Martin Veibull, _Sveriges Storhedstid_ (Stockholm, 1881);
Frederick Ferdinand Carlson, _Sveriges Historia under Konungarne af
Pfalziska Huset_ (Stockholm, 1883-1885); E. Haumant, _La Guerre du
nord et la paix d'Oliva_ (Paris, 1893); Robert Nisbet Bain,
_Scandinavia_ (Cambridge, 1905); G. Jones, _The Diplomatic Relations
between Cromwell and Charles X._ (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1897).
(R. N. B.)

CHARLES XI. (1655-1697), king of Sweden, the only son of Charles X., and Hedwig Leonora of Holstein-Gottorp, was born in the palace at Stockholm, on the 24th of November 1655. His father, who died when the child was in his fourth year, left the care of his education to the regents whom he had appointed. So shamefully did they neglect their duty that when, at the age of seventeen, Charles XI. attained his majority, he was ignorant of the very rudiments of state-craft and almost illiterate. Yet those nearest to him had great hopes of him. He was known to be truthful, upright and God-fearing; if he had neglected his studies it was to devote himself to manly sports and exercises; and in the pursuit of his favourite pastime, bear-hunting, he had already given proofs of the most splendid courage. It was the general disaster produced by the speculative policy of his former guardians which first called forth his sterling qualities and hardened him into a premature manhood. With indefatigable energy he at once attempted to grapple with the difficulties of the situation, waging an almost desperate struggle with sloth, corruption and incompetence. Amidst universal anarchy, the young king, barely twenty years of age, inexperienced, ill-served, snatching at every expedient, worked day and night in his newly-formed camp in Scania (Skane) to arm the nation for its mortal struggle. The victory of Fyllebro (Aug. 17, 1676), when Charles and his commander-in-chief S.G. Helmfeld routed a Danish division, was the first gleam of good luck, and on the 4th of December, on the tableland of Helgonaback, near Lund, the young Swedish monarch defeated Christian V. of Denmark, who also commanded his army in person. After a ferocious contest, the Danes were practically annihilated. The battle of Lund was, relatively to the number engaged, one of the bloodiest engagements of modern times. More than half the combatants (8357, of whom 3000 were Swedes) actually perished on the battle-field. All the Swedish commanders showed remarkable ability, but the chief glory of the day indisputably belongs to Charles XI. This great victory restored to the Swedes their self-confidence and prestige. In the following year, Charles with 9000 men routed 12,000 Danes near Malmo (July 15, 1678). This proved to be the last pitched battle of the war, the Danes never again venturing to attack their once more invincible enemy in the open field. In 1679 Louis XIV. dictated the terms of a general pacification, and Charles XI, who bitterly resented "the insufferable tutelage" of the French king, was forced at last to acquiesce in a peace which at least left his empire practically intact. Charles devoted the rest of his life to the gigantic task of rehabilitating Sweden by means of a _reduktion_, or recovery of alienated crown lands, a process which involved the examination of every title deed in the kingdom, and resulted in the complete readjustment of the finances. But vast as it was, the _reduktion_ represents only a tithe of Charles XI.'s immense activity. The constructive part of his administration was equally thorough-going, and entirely beneficial. Here, too, everything was due to his personal initiative. Finance, commerce, the national armaments by sea and land, judicial procedure, church government, education, even art and science--everything, in short--emerged recast from his shaping hand. Charles XI. died on the 5th of April 1697, in his forty-first year. By his beloved consort Ulrica Leonora of Denmark, from the shock of whose death in July 1693 he never recovered, he had seven children, of whom only three survived him, a son Charles, and two daughters, Hedwig Sophia, duchess of Holstein, and Ulrica Leonora, who ultimately succeeded her brother on the Swedish throne. After Gustavus Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus Charles XI. was, perhaps, the greatest of all the kings of Sweden. His modest, homespun figure has indeed been unduly eclipsed by the brilliant and colossal shapes of his heroic father and his meteoric son; yet in reality Charles XI. is far worthier of admiration than either Charles X. or Charles XII. He was in an eminent degree a great master-builder. He found Sweden in ruins, and devoted his whole life to laying the solid foundations of a new order of things which, in its essential features, has endured to the present day.

See Martin Veibull, _Sveriges Storhedstid_ (Stockholm, 1881);
Frederick Ferdinand Carlson, _Sveriges Historia under Konungarne af
Pfalziska Huset_ (Stockholm, 1883-1885); Robert Nisbet Bain,
_Scandinavia_ (Cambridge, 1905); O. Sjogren, _Karl den Elfte och
Svenska Folket_ (Stockholm, 1897); S. Jacobsen, _Den nordiske Kriegs
Kronicke, 1675-1679_ (Copenhagen, 1897); J.A. de Mesmes d'Avaux,
_Negociations du comte d'Avaux, 1693, 1697, 1698_ (Utrecht, 1882,
&c.). (R. N. B.)

CHARLES XII. (1682-1718), king of Sweden, the only surviving son of Charles XI. and Ulrica Leonora, daughter of Frederick III. of Denmark, was born on the 17th of June 1682. He was carefully educated by excellent tutors under the watchful eyes of his parents. His natural parts were excellent; and a strong bias in the direction of abstract thought, and mathematics in particular, was noticeable at an early date. His memory was astonishing. He could translate Latin into Swedish or German, or Swedish or German into Latin at sight. Charles XI. personally supervised his son's physical training. He was taught to ride before he was four, at eight was quite at home in his saddle, and when only eleven, brought down his first bear at a single shot. As he grew older his father took him on all his rounds, reviewing troops, inspecting studs, foundries, dockyards and granaries. Thus the lad was gradually initiated into all the _minutiae_ of administration. The influence of Charles XI. over his son was, indeed, far greater than is commonly supposed, and it accounts for much in Charles XII.'s character which is otherwise inexplicable, for instance his precocious reserve and taciturnity, his dislike of everything French, and his inordinate contempt for purely diplomatic methods. On the whole, his early training was admirable; but the young prince was not allowed the opportunity of gradually gaining experience under his guardians. At the _Riksdag_ assembled at Stockholm in 1697, the estates, jealous of the influence of the regents, offered full sovereignty to the young monarch, the senate acquiesced, and, after some hesitation, Charles at last declared that he could not resist the urgent appeal of his subjects and would take over the government of the realm "in God's name." The subsequent coronation was marked by portentous novelties, the most significant of which was the king's omission to take the usual coronation oath, which omission was interpreted to mean that he considered himself under no obligation to his subjects. The general opinion of the young king was, however, still favourable. His conduct was evidently regulated by strict principle and not by mere caprice. His refusal to countenance torture as an instrument of judicial investigation, on the ground that "confessions so extorted give no sure criteria for forming a judgment," showed him to be more humane as well as more enlightened than the majority of his council, which had defended the contrary opinion. His intense application to affairs is noted by the English minister, John Robinson (1650-1723), who informed his court that there was every prospect of a happy reign in Sweden, provided his majesty were well served and did not injure his health by too much work.

The coalition formed against Sweden by Johann Reinhold Patkul, which resulted in the outbreak of the Great Northern War (1699), abruptly put an end to Charles XII.'s political apprenticeship, and forced into his hand the sword he was never again to relinquish. The young king resolved to attack the nearest of his three enemies--Denmark--first. The timidity of the Danish admiral Ulrik C. Gyldenlove, and the daring of Charles, who forced his nervous and protesting admiral to attempt the passage of the eastern channel of the Sound, the dangerous _flinterend_, hitherto reputed to be unnavigable, enabled the Swedish king to effect a landing at Humleback in Sjaelland (Zealand), a few miles north of Copenhagen (Aug. 4, 1700). He now hoped to accomplish what his grandfather, fifty years before, had vainly attempted--the destruction of the Danish-Norwegian monarchy by capturing its capital. But for once prudential considerations prevailed, and the short and bloodless war was terminated by the peace of Travendal (Aug. 18), whereby Frederick IV. conceded full sovereignty to Charles's ally and kinsman the duke of Gottorp, besides paying him an indemnity of 200,000 rix-dollars and solemnly engaging to commit no hostilities against Sweden in future. From Sjaelland Charles now hastened to Livonia with 8000 men. On the 6th of October he had reached Pernau, with the intention of first relieving Riga, but, hearing that Narva was in great straits, he decided to turn northwards against the tsar. He set out for Narva on the 13th of November, against the advice of all his generals, who feared the effect on untried troops of a week's march through a wasted land, along boggy roads guarded by no fewer than three formidable passes which a little engineering skill could easily have made impregnable. Fortunately, the two first passes were unoccupied; and the third, Pyhajoggi, was captured by Charles, who with 400 horsemen put 6000 Russian cavalry to flight. On the 19th of November the little army reached Lagena, a village about 9 m. from Narva, whence it signalled its approach to the beleaguered fortress, and early on the following morning it advanced in battle array. The attack on the Russian fortified camp began at two o'clock in the afternoon, in the midst of a violent snowstorm; and by nightfall the whole position was in the hands of the Swedes: the Russian army was annihilated. The triumph was as cheap as it was crushing; it cost Charles less than 2000 men.

After Narva, Charles XII. stood at the parting of ways. His best advisers urged him to turn all his forces against the panic-stricken Muscovites; to go into winter-quarters amongst them and live at their expense; to fan into a flame the smouldering discontent caused by the reforms of Peter the Great, and so disable Russia for some time to come. But Charles's determination promptly to punish the treachery of Augustus prevailed over every other consideration. It is easy from the vantage-point of two centuries to criticize Charles XII. for neglecting the Russians to pursue the Saxons; but at the beginning of the 18th century his decision was natural enough. The real question was, which of the two foes was the more dangerous, and Charles had many reasons to think the civilized and martial Saxons far more formidable than the imbecile Muscovites. Charles also rightly felt that he could never trust the treacherous Augustus to remain quiet, even if he made peace with him. To leave such a foe in his rear, while he plunged into the heart of Russia would have been hazardous indeed. From this point of view Charles's whole Polish policy, which has been blamed so long and so loudly--the policy of placing a nominee of his own on the Polish throne--takes quite another complexion: it was a policy not of overvaulting ambition, but of prudential self-defence.

First, however, Charles cleared Livonia of the invader (July 1701), subsequently occupying the duchy of Courland and converting it into a Swedish governor-generalship. In January 1702 Charles established himself at Bielowice in Lithuania, and, after issuing a proclamation declaring that "the elector of Saxony" had forfeited the Polish crown, set out for Warsaw, which he reached on the 14th of May. The cardinal-primate was then sent for and commanded to summon a diet, for the purpose of deposing Augustus. A fortnight later Charles quitted Warsaw, to seek the elector; on the 2nd of July routed the combined Poles and Saxons at Klissow; and three weeks later, captured the fortress of Cracow by an act of almost fabulous audacity. Thus, within four months of the opening of the campaign, the Polish capital and the coronation city were both in the possession of the Swedes. After Klissow, Augustus made every effort to put an end to the war, but Charles would not even consider his offers. By this time, too, he had conceived a passion for the perils and adventures of warfare. His character was hardening, and he deliberately adopted the most barbarous expedients for converting the Augustan Poles to his views. Such commands as "ravage, singe, and burn all about, and reduce the whole district to a wilderness!" "sweat contributions well out of them!" "rather let the innocent suffer than the guilty escape!" became painfully frequent in the mouth of the young commander, not yet 21, who was far from being naturally cruel.

The campaign of 1703 was remarkable for Charles's victory at Pultusk (April 21) and the long siege of Thorn, which occupied him eight months but cost him only 50 men. On the 2nd of July 1704, with the assistance of a bribing fund, Charles's ambassador at Warsaw, Count Arvid Bernard Horn, succeeded in forcing through the election of Charles's candidate to the Polish throne, Stanislaus Leszczynski, who could not be crowned however till the 24th of September 1705, by which time the Saxons had again been defeated at Punitz. From the autumn of 1705 to the spring of 1706, Charles was occupied in pursuing the Russian auxiliary army under Ogilvie through the forests of Lithuania. On the 5th of August, he recrossed the Vistula and established himself in Saxony, where his presence in the heart of Europe, at the very crisis of the war of the Spanish Succession, fluttered all the western diplomats. The allies, in particular, at once suspected that Louis XIV. had bought the Swedes. Marlborough was forthwith sent from the Hague to the castle of Altranstadt near Leipzig, where Charles had fixed his headquarters, "to endeavour to penetrate the designs" of the king of Sweden. He soon convinced himself that western Europe had nothing to fear from Charles, and that no bribes were necessary to turn the Swedish arms from Germany to Russia. Five months later (Sept. 1707) Augustus was forced to sign the peace of Altranstadt, whereby he resigned the Polish throne and renounced every anti-Swedish alliance. Charles's departure from Saxony was delayed for twelve months by a quarrel with the emperor. The court of Vienna had treated the Silesian Protestants with tyrannical severity, in direct contravention of the treaty of Osnabruck, of which Sweden was one of the guarantors; and Charles demanded summary and complete restitution so dictatorially that the emperor prepared for war. But the allies interfered in Charles's favour, lest he might be tempted to aid France, and induced the emperor to satisfy all the Swedish king's demands, the maritime Powers at the same time agreeing to guarantee the provisions of the peace of Altranstadt.

Nothing now prevented Charles from turning his victorious arms against the tsar; and on the 13th of August 1707, he evacuated Saxony at the head of the largest host he ever commanded, consisting of 24,000 horse and 20,000 foot. Delayed during the autumn months in Poland by the tardy arrival of reinforcements from Pomerania, it was not till November 1707 that Charles was able to take the field. On New Year's Day 1708 he crossed the Vistula, though the ice was in a dangerous condition. On the 4th of July 1708 he cut in two the line of the Russian army, 6 m. long, which barred his progress on the Wabis, near Holowczyn, and compelled it to retreat. The victory of Holowczyn, memorable besides as the last pitched battle won by Charles XII., opened up the way to the Dnieper. The Swedish army now began to suffer severely, bread and fodder running short, and the soldiers subsisting entirely on captured bullocks. The Russians slowly retired before the invader, burning and destroying everything in his path. On the 20th of December it was plain to Charles himself that Moscow was inaccessible. But the idea of a retreat was intolerable to him, so he determined to march southwards instead of northwards as suggested by his generals, and join his forces with those of the hetman of the Dnieperian Cossacks, Ivan Mazepa, who had 100,000 horsemen and a fresh and fruitful land at his disposal. Short of falling back upon Livonia, it was the best plan adoptable in the circumstances, but it was rendered abortive by Peter's destruction of Mazepa's capital Baturin, so that when Mazepa joined Charles at Horki, on the 8th of November 1708, it was as a ruined man with little more than 1300 personal attendants (see MAZEPA-KOLEDINSKY). A still more serious blow was the destruction of the relief army which Levenhaupt was bringing to Charles from Livonia, and which, hampered by hundreds of loaded wagons, was overtaken and almost destroyed by Peter at Lyesna after a two days' battle against fourfold odds (October). The very elements now began to fight against the perishing but still unconquered host. The winter of 1708 was the severest that Europe had known for a century. By the 1st of November firewood would not ignite in the open air, and the soldiers warmed themselves over big bonfires of straw. By the time the army reached the little Ukrainian fortress of Hadjacz in January 1709, wine and spirits froze into solid masses of ice; birds on the wing fell dead; saliva congealed on its passage from the mouth to the ground. "Nevertheless," says an eye-witness, "though earth, sea and sky were against us, the king's orders had to be obeyed and the daily march made."

Never had Charles XII. seemed so superhuman as during these awful days. It is not too much to say that his imperturbable equanimity, his serene _bonhomie_ kept the host together. The frost broke at the end of February 1709, and then the spring floods put an end to all active operations till May, when Charles began the siege of the fortress of Poltava, which he wished to make a base for subsequent operations while awaiting reinforcements from Sweden and Poland. On the 7th of June a bullet wound put Charles _hors de combat_, whereupon Peter threw the greater part of his forces over the river Vorskla, which separated the two armies (June 19-25). On the 26th of June Charles held a council of war, at which it was resolved to attack the Russians in their entrenchments on the following day. The Swedes joyfully accepted the chances of battle and, advancing with irresistible _elan_, were, at first, successful on both wings. Then one or two tactical blunders were committed; and the tsar, taking courage, enveloped the little band in a vast semicircle bristling with the most modern guns, which fired five times to the Swedes' once, and swept away the guards before they could draw their swords. The Swedish infantry was well nigh annihilated, while the 14,000 cavalry, exhausted and demoralized, surrendered two days later at Perevolochna on Dnieper. Charles himself with 1500 horsemen took refuge in Turkish territory.

For the first time in his life Charles was now obliged to have recourse to diplomacy; and his pen proved almost as formidable as his sword. He procured the dismissal of four Russo-phil grand-viziers in succession, and between 1710 and 1712 induced the Porte to declare war against the tsar three times. But after November 1712 the Porte had no more money to spare; and, the tsar making a show of submission, the sultan began to regard Charles as a troublesome guest. On the 1st of February 1713 he was attacked by the Turks in his camp at Bender, and made prisoner after a contest which reads more like an extravagant episode from some heroic folk-tale than an incident of sober 18th-century history. Charles lingered on in Turkey fifteen months longer, in the hope of obtaining a cavalry escort sufficiently strong to enable him to restore his credit in Poland. Disappointed of this last hope, and moved by the despairing appeals of his sister Ulrica and the senate to return to Sweden while there was still a Sweden to return to, he quitted Demotika on the 20th of September 1714, and attended by a single squire arrived unexpectedly at midnight, on the 11th of November, at Stralsund, which, excepting Wismar, was now all that remained to him on German soil.

For the diplomatic events of these critical years see SWEDEN: _History_. Here it need only be said that Sweden, during the course of the Great Northern War, had innumerable opportunities of obtaining an honourable and even advantageous peace, but they all foundered oh the dogged refusal of Charles to consent to the smallest concession to his despoilers. Even now he would listen to no offers of compromise, and after defending Stralsund with desperate courage till it was a mere rubbish heap, returned to Sweden after an absence of 14 years. Here he collected another army of 20,000 men, with which he so strongly entrenched himself on the Scanian coast in 1716 that his combined enemies shrank from attacking him, whereupon he assumed the offensive by attacking Norway in 1717, and again in 1718, in order to conquer sufficient territory to enable him to extort better terms from his enemies. It was during this second adventure that he met his death. On the 11th of December, when the Swedish approaches had come within 280 paces of the fortress of Fredriksten, which the Swedes were closely besieging, Charles looked over the parapet of the foremost trench, and was shot through the head by a bullet from the fortress.

See Charles XII., _Die eigenhandigen Briefe Konig Karls XII._ (Berlin,
1894); Friedrich Ferdinand Carlson, _Sveriges Historia under
Konungarne af Pfalziska Huset_ (Stockholm, 1883-1885); Robert Nisbet
Bain, _Charles XII. and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire_ (London
and Oxford, 1895); _Bidrag til den Store Nordishe Krigs Historie_
(Copenhagen, 1899-1900); G. Syveton, _Louis XIV et Charles XII_
(Paris, 1900); Daniel Krmann, _Historia ablegationis D. Krmann ad
regem Sueciae Carolum XII._ (Budapest, 1894); Oscar II., _Nagra bidrag
till Sveriges Krigshistoria aren 1711-1713_ (Stockholm, 1892); Martin
Weibull, _Sveriges Storhedstid_ (Stockholm, 1881). (R. N. B.)

CHARLES XIII. (1748-1818), king of Sweden and Norway, the second son of Adolphus Frederick, king of Sweden, and Louisa Ulrica, sister of Frederick the Great, was born at Stockholm on the 7th of October 1748. In 1772 he co-operated in the revolutionary plans of his brother Gustavus III. (q.v.). On the outbreak of the Russo-Swedish War of 1788 he served with distinction as admiral of the fleet, especially at the battles of Hogland (June 17, 1788) and Oland (July 26, 1789). On the latter occasion he would have won a signal victory but for the unaccountable remissness of his second-in-command, Admiral Liljehorn. On the death of Gustavus III., Charles, now duke of Sudermania, acted as regent of Sweden till 1796; but the real ruler of the country was the narrow-minded and vindictive Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm (q.v.), whose mischievous influence over him was supreme. These four years were perhaps the most miserable and degrading in Swedish history (an age of lead succeeding an age of gold, as it has well been called) and may be briefly described as alternations of fantastic jacobinism and ruthless despotism. On the accession of Gustavus IV. (November 1796), the duke became a mere cipher in politics till the 13th of March 1809, when those who had dethroned Gustavus IV. appointed him regent, and finally elected him king. But by this time he was prematurely decrepit, and Bernadotte (see CHARLES XIV.) took over the government as soon as he landed in Sweden (1810). By the union of 1814 Charles became the first king of Sweden and Norway. He married his cousin Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp (1759-1818), but their only child, Carl Adolf, duke of Vermland, died in infancy (1798). Charles XIII., who for eight years had been king only in title, died on the 5th of February 1818.

See _Sveriges Historia_ vol. v. (Stockholm, 1884); _Drottning Hedwig
Charlottes Dagbokshandteckningar_ (Stockholm, 1898); Robert Nisbet
Bain, _Gustavus III. and his Contemporaries_ (London, 1895)_; ib.
Scandinavia_ (Cambridge, 1905). (R. N. B.)

CHARLES XIV. (1763-1844), king of Sweden and Norway, born at Pau on the 26th of January 1763, was the son of Henri Bernadotte (1711-1780), procurator at Pau, and Jeanne St Jean (1725-1809). The family name was originally Deu Pouey, but was changed into Bernadotte in the beginning of the 17th century. Bernadotte's christian names were Jean Baptiste; he added the name Jules subsequently. He entered the French army on the 3rd of September 1780, and first saw service in Corsica. On the outbreak of the Revolution his eminent military qualities brought him speedy promotion. In 1794 we find him as brigadier attached to the army of the Sambre et Meuse, and after Jourdan's victory at Fleurus he was appointed a general of division. At the battle of Theiningen, 1796, he contributed, more than any one else, to the successful retreat of the French army over the Rhine after its defeat by the archduke Charles. In 1797 he brought reinforcements from the Rhine to Bonaparte's army in Italy, distinguishing himself greatly at the passage of the Tagliamento, and in 1798 was sent as ambassador to Vienna, but was compelled to quit his post owing to the disturbances caused by his hoisting the tricolor over the embassy. On the 16th of August 1798 he married Desiree Clary (1777-1860), the daughter of a Marseilles banker, and sister of Joseph Bonaparte's wife. From the 2nd of July to the 14th of September he was war minister, in which capacity he displayed great ability. About this time he held aloof from Bonaparte, but though he declined to help Napoleon in the preparations for the _coup d'etat_ of November 1799, he accepted employment from the Consulate, and from April 1800 till the 18th of August 1801 commanded the army in La Vendee. On the introduction of the empire he was made one of the eighteen marshals of France, and, from June 1804 to September 1805, acted as governor of the recently-occupied Hanover. During the campaign of 1805, Bernadotte with an army corps from Hanover co-operated in the great movement which resulted in the shutting up of Mack in Ulm. He was rewarded for his services at Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) by the principality of Ponte Corvo (June 5, 1806), but during the campaign against Prussia, the same year, was severely reproached by Napoleon for not participating with his army corps in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, though close at hand. In 1808, as governor of the Hanse towns, he was to have directed the expedition against Sweden, via the Danish islands, but the plan came to nought because of the want of transports and the defection of the Spanish contingent. In the war against Austria, Bernadotte led the Saxon contingent at the battle of Wagram, on which occasion, on his own initiative he issued an order of the day, attributing the victory principally to the valour of his Saxons, which Napoleon at once disavowed.

Bernadotte, considerably piqued, thereupon returned to Paris, where the council of ministers entrusted him with the defence of the Netherlands against the English. In 1810 he was about to enter upon his new post of governor of Rome when he was, unexpectedly, elected successor to the Swedish throne, partly because a large part of the Swedish army, in view of future complications with Russia, were in favour of electing a soldier, and partly because Bernadotte was very popular in Sweden, owing to the kindness he had shown to the Swedish prisoners during the late war with Denmark. The matter was decided by one of the Swedish couriers, Baron Karl Otto Morner, who, entirely on his own initiative, offered the succession to the Swedish crown to Bernadotte. Bernadotte communicated Morner's offer to Napoleon, who treated the whole affair as an absurdity. Bernadotte thereupon informed Morner that he would not refuse the honour if he were duly elected. Although the Swedish government, amazed at Morner's effrontery, at once placed him under arrest on his return to Sweden, the candidature of Bernadotte gradually gained favour there, and, on the 21st of August 1810, he was elected crown-prince.