CHARLES XII. (1682-1718), king of Sweden, the only sur viving son of Charles XI. and Ulrica Leonora, daughter of Fred erick III. of Denmark, was born on June 17, 1682. He was carefully educated by excellent tutors under the watchful eyes of his parents. Charles XI. personally supervised his son's physical training. He was taught to ride before he was four and at eight he was quite at home in his saddle.
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 adminis tration. 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 diplo matic methods. On the whole, his early training was admirable; but the young prince was not allowed the opportunity of gradu ally gaining experience under his guardians. At the Riksdag assembled at Stockholm in 1697, the estates, jealous of the influ ence 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 sub jects. The general opinion of the young king was, however, still favourable. His conduct was evidently regulated by strict prin ciple and not by mere caprice. His intense application to affairs is noted by the English minister, John Robinson (1650-1723).
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 appren ticeship, and forced the sword into his hand. The young king re solved to attack Denmark the nearest of his three enemies—Den mark, Poland and Russia—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 accom plish what his grandfather, fifty years before, had vainly attempted —the destruction of the Danish-Norwegian monarchy by captur ing 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 sov ereignty to Charles's ally and kinsman the duke of Gottorp, besides paying him an indemnity of 200,000 rix-dollars and sol emnly engaging to commit no hostilities against Sweden in future. From Sjaelland Charles now hastened to Livonia with 8,000 men. On Oct. 6 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 Nov. 13 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 first two passes were unoccupied; and the third, Pyhajoggi, was captured by Charles, who with 400 horsemen put 6,000 Russian cavalry to flight. On Nov. 19 the little army reached Lagena, a village about 9m. 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 night fall the whole position was in the hands of the Swedes : the Rus sian army was annihilated. The triumph was as cheap as it was crushing; it cost Charles less than 2,000 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 discon tent caused by the reforms of Peter the Great ; and so disable Russia for some time to come. But Charles was determined to punish the treachery of Augustus of Poland (see POLAND: History). It is easy from the vantage-point of two centuries to criticize Charles XII. for neglecting the Russians to pur sue 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 over vaulting ambition, but of prudential self-defence.
First, however, Charles cleared Livonia of the invader (July 1701), subsequently occupying the duchy of Courland and con verting it into a Swedish governor-generalship. In Jan. 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 May 14. 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 July 2 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 corona tion city were both in the possession of the Swedes. Af ter Klis sow, 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.
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 5o men. On July 2, 2704, 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 Sept. 24, 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 Aug. 5, 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 par ticular, 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 head quarters, "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 tyran nical severity, in direct contravention of the treaty of Osnabruck, of which Sweden was one of the guarantors ; and Charles de manded 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 mari time 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 Aug. 13, 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 Nov. 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 July 4, 1708 he cut in two the line of the Russian army, 6m. long, which barred his progress on the Wabis, near Holowczyn, and compelled it to re treat. 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. The Russians slowly retired before the invader, burning and destroying everything in his path. On Dec. 20 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 100,00o horsemen and a fresh and fruitful land at his disposal. Short of falling back upon Livonia, it was the best plan adoptable in the circum stances, but it was rendered abortive by Peter's destruction of Mazepa's capital Baturin, so that when Mazepa joined Charles at Horki, on Nov. 8, 1708, it was as a ruined man with little more than 1,300 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 I 708 was the severest that Europe had known for a century. By Nov. I 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 Ukranian fortress of Hadjacz in January 1709, wine and spirits froze into solid masses of ice; birds on the wing fell dead.
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 Feb. 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 June 7 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 June 26 Charles held a council of war, at which it was resolved to attack the Russians in their entrench ments 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, ex hausted and demoralized, surrendered two days later at Pere volochna on Dnieper. Charles himself with 1,5oo 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 Russophil grand viziers in succession, and between 1710 and 1712 induced the Porte to declare war against the tsar three times. But of ter Nov. 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 Feb. 1, 1713 he was attacked by the Turks in his camp at Bender, and made prisoner. Charles lingered on in Turkey 15 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 de spairing 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 Sept. 20, 1714, and attended by a single squire arrived unexpectedly at midnight, on Nov. 11, at Stralsund.
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 on 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 him self on the Scanian coast in 17'6 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 Dec. II, when the Swedish approaches had come within 28o paces of the fortress of Fredriksten, which the Swedes were closely besieging, Charles looked over the parapet of the fore most trench, and was shot through the head.
(R. N. B.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Charles XII., Die eigenhiindigen Bride Konig Karls Bibliography.-Charles XII., Die eigenhiindigen Bride Konig Karls XII. (1894) ; M. Weibull, Sveriges Storhedstid (1881) ; F. F. Carlson, Sveriges Historia under Konungarne of Pfalziska Huset (1883-85) ; Oscar II., Nagra bidrag till Sveriges Krigshistoria wren 1711-1713 (1892) ; D. Krmann, "Historia ablegationis D. Krmann ad regem Sueciae Carolum XII.," in Monumenta Hungariae Historica vol. 33, 34 (Budapest, 1894) ; R. N. Bain, Charles XII. and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire (1895) ; Bidrag til den Store Nordiske Krigs Historic (official publ. Copenhagen, 1899-1900) ; G. Syveton, Louis XIV. et Charles XII. (1900) ; C. Hallendorff, Karl XII. i Ukraina (1915) ; N. Herlitz, Studier over Carl X 11.'s Politik 1703-04 (1916) ; R. Fahraens, Karl XI. och Karl XII. in "Sverige's Historia" Series (1921) ; Ballagi Aladar, XII. Kciroly es a svedek Atvonulasi Mag yarorszagon (Budapest, 1922) ; A. Munthe, Karl XII. och den Ryska Sjomakten (5924) ; E. Godley, Charles XII. of Sweden (1928).