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 Nov. 24, 1655. His father, who died when the child was in his fourth year, appointed a regency of five great ministers of state with the queen as presi dent. For the history of the regency, of the settlement of the Danish and Russian loans, and the later humiliating dependence on France (see SWEDEN : History) . The young king's education was neglected. When he attained his majority, he was ignorant of the very rudiments of state-craft and almost illiterate. It was the disaster of the Scanian war which first called forth his sterling qualities and hardened him into a premature manhood. In 1675 the Brandenburgers, Pomeranians and Danes had over run Pomerania and Bremen, and the Danes were preparing to invade Sweden itself. 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 (Slane) to arm the nation for its mortal struggle. The Danes launched invasion from three directions in 1676. The victory of Fyllebro (Aug. 17, 1676), when Charles and his com mander-in-chief S. G. Helmfeld routed a Danish division, was the first Swedish success, and on Dec. 4, 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 (8,357, of whom 3,00o were Swedes) actually perished on the battle-field. All the Swedish commanders, notably John Gyllenstierna, 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 9,000 men routed 52,000 Danes near Landskrona (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 Germany, the Swedes, faced by the Great Elector, lost ground. In 1679 Louis XIV. dictated the terms of a general pacification, and Charles XI., who bitterly resented "the insufferable tutelage" of the French king, acquiesced in a peace which at least left his empire practically intact. Both Christian V. of Denmark and Frederick William, the Great Elector, were forced to restore their conquests (see SWEDEN : History). Good understanding between Denmark and Sweden followed the peace of Lund, and there relations were cemented by the marriage of Charles with Ulrica Leonora, sister of Christian V. 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. 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. For the strengthening in his reign of the power of the crown, which left Sweden practically an absolute monarchy (see SWEDEN : History). Charles XI. died on April 5, 1697, in his forty-first year. 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 of Pfalziska Huset (Stockholm, 1883-1885) ; Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandi navia (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, Negocia tions du Comte d'Avaux, 1693, 1697, 1698 (Utrecht, 1882, etc.) .