Chapter XIII: Period of Political Grandeur--Charles XII (2)

In Sweden the peculiar Turkish adventures of Charles XII. were not understood or appreciated, and the country seemed forsaken by all, even by the king, who by many was thought to be insane. The state council saw no possibility of maintaining a government without the consent and goodwill of the people. Plans for a new constitution, a reduction of the royal power and a peace at any cost were in the air. Princess Ulrica Eleonore was called as a member of the state council and a Riksdag was convoked, to meet toward the end of 1713. The Estates declared that they were, in case of necessity, ready to seek peace under the auspices of the princess and the state council, and were in favor of appointing the princess to the regency. Arvid Horn, the leading spirit of the state council, used the utmost of his influence in keeping the Riksdag from the revolutionary acts which would be involved in making Ulrica Eleonore regent, but he saw to it that the declaration of the Riksdag, of intended peace-making through the princess and state council, was communicated to the king. Hans Henric von Liewen, one of the state councillors, was selected to carry this communication to the king, together with letters from the queen-dowager and the state council. Count Liewen gave a full and true account to the king, telling him in plain words that if he did not return home without delay his kingdom would be lost to him.

King Charles at last decided to return to his country. He sent an embassy of seventy-two people to officially announce his departure to the sultan at Constantinople, made a loan of a considerable sum of money, and left Demotika with a large escort. In Wallachia he left the Turks behind, and continued on his way through Hungary and Germany, followed by two Swedish officers. The emperor of Germany, who was desirous of winning over the Swedish king for his plans, prepared a hospitable reception, but Charles passed Vienna _incognito_ as Captain Peter Frisk. He rode on, through night and day, taking care of his own horse and never changing his clothes. Charles arrived at the gate of Stralsund, in Swedish Pomerania, in the night of November 11, 1714, accompanied by one officer. In a fortnight he had, on horseback, traversed a stretch of 1,300 miles.

The situation at the arrival of Charles XII. in Stralsund was beset with new dangers and complications. Prussia had ceased to be friendly and was planning to seize the Swedish possessions in Germany. Hanover, united with England under the same ruler, had the same ambition. The dilapidated fortifications of Stralsund were attacked by Saxons and Danes, commanded by their respective kings, August and Frederic. For more than a year, Charles, with admirable heroism, withstood the siege. Once, while the king was dictating a letter to a secretary, the latter sprang to his feet in consternation, a bomb having shattered the roof of the building. “The bomb, your majesty, the bomb!” exclaimed the scribe. Charles answered: “What connection is there between the bomb and my letter?” quietly continuing his dictation. The king found it at last impossible to keep up the defence of Stralsund, leaving it a stormy December night, and arriving safely in the town of Trelleborg, on the southernmost point of Sweden, December 15, 1715.

What a different country that Sweden was which Charles XII. left in August, 1699, at the very summit of her political grandeur, to the impoverished and suffering Sweden in which he had now landed! And what a different man he had himself become during these sixteen years of absence! Sweden had won a new hero king, of greater fame than any of his predecessors or successors, but lost her prosperity for the time being and her political grandeur forever. The people received the king with demonstrations of joy and with reviving hope for an honorable peace. The state council and the intelligent few received him with badly concealed hopelessness and indifference. They knew that although the young ambitious king had changed to a world-famous hero, prematurely aged in victory and defeat, the unyielding stubbornness and the never satiated desire for glory had remained unchanged in Charles XII. Charles was met by a message from the dying queen-dowager, his grandmother, with an ardent prayer for peace. Charles answered to hopes and prayers, to silent indifference and despair, with a command of more money and more troops! He wanted peace, but as he spoke in the same terms as when he was the victorious commander of an apparently invincible army, nobody cared to consider his demands in earnest. The absolute power reached its last stage of development, a military despotism which had no other policy than war, no other administration than the one requisite to maintain and provide the requirements of war. The state council fell in deepest disgrace, and its functions ceased, in 1715.

During the last years of his reign, Charles XII. took no advice of Swedish men. Foreign adventurers and schemers were in charge of the affairs of state, principal among whom was Baron George Henric Gœrtz. This man was a minister of state of the young duke of Holstein-Gottorp, in whose service he remained, and in whose interests, as a successor to Charles XII. on the throne of Sweden, he zealously worked, while developing into the all-powerful minister of the Swedish king. Charles granted him authority to act in his name in almost every branch of the government, interior as well as foreign. Gœrtz was a genius, but utterly reckless. For his acts the king was responsible, not he. Gœrtz was a foreigner and working for the cause of a foreign master. He tried to obtain loans abroad, made compulsory loans within the country, placed a tax on articles of luxury, and put in circulation coins of copper which were a kind of “promissory notes,” worthless in themselves, but each representing a Swedish dollar. At first these “coins of need” were issued to the amount of a sensible sum, but were soon increased in number at the command of Charles XII. himself, so that they represented higher sums than the crown could redeem, and thus lost their value. The people refused to take them, while the prices of everything in the market rose to an astounding height. The government, in order to save itself from this difficulty, took possession of all coined money and uncoined silver, and gave the “coins of need” in exchange, perpetrating several other scandalous acts of violence against the rights of private property.

The situation grew almost insupportable. Commerce and industry, injured by the war, ceased entirely because nobody was inclined to sell, only to receive in exchange worthless coins. Wars and hard years combined in creating misery and distress everywhere. The peasants were recklessly treated, and a disregard for moral obligations grew out of the bad examples set by the government. The students and scientists had in great numbers been carried away by the bloody wars, and the interest in the fields of culture was slackened by the power of financial depression. The wealthy and well-to-do saw their means daily diminish, and, losing their interest in public welfare, they tried to save the remnants of their own property. The members of the state council were threatened by investigations which Gœrtz and his friends were scheming to institute against them. In the nobility, the plans for a change of the constitution matured, the leaders in this movement being Count Per Ribbing and the old Gyllencreutz, who had prophesied the outcome of an absolute monarchial government.

Charles XII., in spite of his all-absorbing passion for war, did not lack interest for the pursuits of peace. He encouraged several men of genius, of whom two were eminently worthy of distinction; viz., Nicodemus Tessin, Junior, the architect, and Christopher Polhem, the engineer.

Nicodemus Tessin was born in Nykœping in 1654. His father and namesake belonged to an old Pomeranian family, and had come to Sweden during the reign of Queen Christine. Nicodemus Tessin, Senior, was an able architect, who built the castle of Drottningholm for Queen-dowager Hedvig Eleonore, a moderately gifted but art-loving woman. The latter gathered around herself artists and architects at her castle of Drottningholm, in Lake Mælar, among whom were Ehrenstrahl, a famous artist of German birth, who founded the first school of Swedish painters. The younger Tessin belonged to this circle and was, in their respective times, in the favor of Charles XI. and Charles XII., acting as court architect to both. The work which won for him an immortal fame is the royal palace of Stockholm, an architectural creation worthy of the admiration of all Europe, and, in Sweden, standing unsurpassed to this day. It was planned and commenced by Tessin, but completed according to his plans a hundred years after his death. Charles XI. ordered a reconstruction of the old castle, which enterprise Tessin undertook. Shortly after the death of Charles XI., both the old and the reconstructed parts of the palace were burned, and the body of the king with difficulty saved from the conflagration. Charles XII. ordered Tessin to build an entirely new palace. The work was commenced in 1698, but was gradually abandoned during the war times, to cease shortly before the battle of Pultowa. Charles was highly interested in it and wrote from Turkey to Tessin about his views. Tessin intended to decorate the exterior according to the taste of his day, but Charles raised opposition, finding the severe beauty of the stern yet graceful outlines perfect in themselves. The work on the new palace was recommenced after the death of Charles XII. King Adolphus Frederic was the first who took up his residence within its walls. Tessin rose high on the social ladder. From Turkey, the king made him a count and chancellor of the University of Lund; after his return to Sweden he appointed him marshal-colonel. Tessin stood in strong opposition to Baron Gœrtz, and after the death of King Charles joined the leaders of the revolutionary nobles. He was of universal fame.

Christopher Polhem was the first of great Swedish engineers and inventors. He was born at the ancient town of Visby, in the island of Gothland, in 1661, and was the son of a merchant, who died when Christopher was a child. When only twelve years of age he had to make his own living. As secretary to a widow of wealth, he early developed his genius as a mechanician, building his own shop of carpentry, sloyd, etc., making watches and devising smaller inventions. His want of a classical education was detrimental to him, and he commenced, when twenty-four years of age, to study Latin with various ministers in the country, in exchange for works of his genius and handicraft. At last he was able to enter the University of Upsala by means of recommendations from his last teacher. Soon after his arrival he created considerable attention and admiration by a proof of his ingenuity. Behind the high altar in the Upsala Cathedral there was a clock of the finest workmanship, devised in mediæval times by a monk of the monastery of Vadstena. It was out of order, and not for a hundred years had anybody attempted to set it right. Polhem undertook to reconstruct the whole work, connecting with the main mechanism all the hands which pointed out the hours of the day, the eclipses of the moon and the motions of the “ruling” planets, according to the system of the astrologers. Polhem succeeded in his task, and was allowed to test his invention of automatic haulers of ore in the mines. The college of mining, before which the invention was successfully demonstrated, accepted it, and Charles XI. appointed Polhem a mining engineer. In 1694, Polhem made an extensive journey through England and the Continent. In Paris he learned that several mathematicians were in vain endeavoring to construct a clock which would simultaneously show the time of the day in various countries and strike the hours at the same time. Polhem announced through the Swedish ambassador in Paris that he was willing to solve the problem. He constructed a model which gave universal satisfaction. Louis XIV. had a clock made after this model and gave it as a gift of honor to the Turkish sultan. Upon his return he proposed the founding of a _laboratorium mechanicum_, which in several respects served as a pattern for the later technological institutes of Stockholm and Gothenburg. The youthful Charles XII. embraced the idea with interest, but the promising institution came to a standstill during the wars. Among Polhem’s more remarkable inventions was one for the leading of water-power, to be used at considerable distances. Charles XII. said that a man like Polhem was not to be had for several centuries, and that for this reason he ought to be made useful as long as he lived. A task of gigantic proportions was intrusted to him--the construction of a dock for the navy yards at Carlskrona. The great engineer filled it in an admirable way, and was appointed councillor of commerce and ennobled under the name of Polhem, his original name having been Polhammar, which to modern ears sounds just as fine and a good deal more suggestive.

Another gigantic task worthy of the genius of Polhem was the construction of a navigable route from the North Sea across the great inland seas of Sweden to the Baltic, but he was not allowed to finish it. Charles XII. intrusted the work to Polhem, who was to have it ready in five years. In 1718, Polhem commenced by forming an immense sluice, by means of explosions in the rock at Trollhetta. The great waterfalls of said place were to be avoided and the work of completing the sluice was begun, when it was all destroyed by unknown enemies, who dropped beams and planks in the river above, which carried away the dam. The death of King Charles and the impoverished condition of the country made it impossible to continue the work on the great canal system, which had to wait for more than a century for its ultimate completion. With the death of Charles XII. the era of ambitious enterprises came to an end; but Polhem was employed in various works of mechanic improvements in the interest of agriculture, industry and manufactures. Czar Peter of Russia, King George I. of England, and several other monarchs made brilliant offers in order to win Polhem for their countries. He executed several works and inventions abroad, but loved his own country too much to leave it. Polhem exerted a great influence in the interest of his science, both by instruction and by the publication of technical works. Active to the last, he died in 1751. Polhem was a man of a harmonious endowment, amiable and dignified, and preserved his plain mode of living throughout his brilliant career.

Gœrtz led with superior skill the negotiations for peace, while the impoverished country suffered untold miseries as a consequence of his unscrupulous financial schemes. He tried to benefit by the sudden but lasting enmity between Czar Peter and George I., desiring to gain the support of either against the other. The deliberations were held in the archipelago of Aland, with Gœrtz as the representative of the Swedish government. Czar Peter wanted to keep Ingermanland, Esthonia and Livonia, but was ready to cede Finland, which country he occupied, and to assist King Charles with troops in an attack on Denmark. Norway was to be the compensation for the lost Baltic provinces, and the attack on Denmark was to be made from Germany. Charles XII. had no confidence in the czar as an ally and had commenced the conquest of Norway directly and without his aid. No decision was reached in the negotiations with England.

In February, 1716, Charles XII., from Bohuslæn and Vermland, made an invasion into Norway, penetrating over the Glom River to Christiania. He captured the capital, where he held his headquarters for several weeks, but was not able to take the fortress of Akershus, which, with its artillery, commanded the city. The Swedish army, 10,000 strong, suffered a great deal from want of provisions and through a guerilla war, skilfully conducted by the Norwegians. Charles was in danger of being surrounded by the enemy, and with difficulty retreated to Sweden, over the Strait of Svinesund. The dangers were increased by the Norwegian naval hero, Peter Tordenskiold, who, with some Danish ships under his command, had destroyed a flotilla of Swedish transport vessels. An invasion into Scania by Denmark and her allies was planned for the summer, but did not materialize. King Charles took up his headquarters at Lund.

The war offered no aspect of interest during the year 1717, except some unsuccessful attempts made by Tordenskiold to capture the towns of Strœmstad and Gothenburg. Charles prepared another attack on Norway, and, by draining the last resources of his country, managed to equip an army of 60,000 men. In August, 1718, a smaller army, under the command of Charles Gustavus Armfelt, was sent through Jemtland over the mountains into the diocese of Drontheim. King Charles, with an army of 30,000 men, invaded Norway from Bohuslæn, Dal and Vermland, and took in possession the country east of the Glom River. Within a few days the king laid siege to the fortress of Fredericsten, close by the town of Fredricshall. November 27th the fort of Gyldenlœve was captured, and the Swedes moved their trenches ever closer to the fortress, which seemed doomed to surrender. In the evening of November 30th the king was seen in one of the trenches watching the work of his soldiers, and leaning against the rampart. He remained there a long time, not heeding the appeals of his officers, who grew uneasy on account of the apparent danger to his person. Suddenly his head sank down on his breast. A bullet from the fortress had reached him, penetrating his temples and causing instant death. He met death in the manner he most desired it, although not while engaged in battle.

Charles XII. was of an enigmatic character, which attracts, through its strength and superiority over his contemporaries, but which is repulsive through its tenacity, unyielding sternness and inaccessibility to reason or persuasion. His moral greatness has won admiration. It had its limitations, but was superior to the standards of his time. His ideals were pure and lofty, but, through lack of contact with the realities and facts of life, only assumed a tragic grandeur, without proving beneficent to mankind. His faults were such that his education and experience as an absolute monarch aggravated them. Charles XII. was the most remarkable man of his age and one of the greatest soldiers that ever lived. He was also a great general, although the proper balance between the soldier and the field marshal, perhaps, was to some extent lacking. The influence of his personality and example had a miraculous effect upon his soldiers. He suffered his one great defeat in open battle when wounded, suffering, and not able to exert his usual influence to its full extent.

Charles XII. has been idolized by his countrymen of all ages, who in him have recognized an impersonation of all their chief national virtues, with a few of their national faults, enlarged into the image of a patriotic hero of almost supernatural grandeur. The Swedish people were forced to accept absolute power as a salvation from the impending thraldom of oligarchy. In Charles XII. it saw to what a climax of abuse this power could attain, even in hands which were deemed righteous and free from stains. With Charles XII. the political grandeur and the absolute monarchy of Sweden came to an end, although attempts to restore both were to be made. A new phase of her development, with new improvements and new evils, commenced with the reign of Ulrica Eleonore.