What battle took place after the death of Charles 12. The last monarch of Europe who died on the battlefield. Siege of Fredrikshald, during which Charles XII died
Charles XII was 15 when he was crowned as the sole ruler of great Sweden.
The war was his life and became his death.
Even as a teenager, the king with a sword unsheathed led his caroliners into battle, gaining one victory after another.
Military luck betrayed him on a June day in 1709 near Poltava, where the Russian Tsar Peter I defeated the Swedish army.
Charles XII died in 1718 from a bullet during the siege of the Fredriksten fortress, and with his death the era of Swedish great power ended.
The young heroic King Charles is black with smoke and gunpowder, and the roof of his majestic Royal House is on fire.
The shot almost took his life, blood running from the wound on his nose and cheek. The left hand is also bleeding, where the saber blow fell.
Several enemies the king impales on his long sword, others he kills with shots from a pistol.
With a sword in his bloodied hand and a pistol in the other, he runs out of the house on fire. He trips over his own spurs and falls to the ground. The Turks rush at Charles XII, they were promised a good reward if they took the king alive.
The Bendery Kalabalyk is finished.
The proud army of royal caroliners until recently inspired fear in the whole world.
Now the king is on the ground, and the enemy boots have pressed his head into the mud.
There are only a few drabants left. 12 seriously wounded, 15 fell in battle.
The dramatic events in Bender are an important part of Swedish history. But more on that later.
Good signs, harbingers of good luck and success
June 17, 1682, at a quarter to seven in the morning. The sun shines through the windows of the Tre Krunur castle in Stockholm. The royal residence is a fortress built by Jarl Birger four centuries earlier.
The troubled man in the office is called "Gray Cape". This is the 27-year-old Swedish King Charles XI.
He got his nickname because he used to dress in gray and sit unrecognized in the back pews of churches and courts.
The "grey cloak" is the nightmare of the Swedish nobility. If he sees a judge, governor or church minister neglecting his duties, the culprit will be resigned, investigated and punished.
It is popular, truly loved by peasants and lower-class citizens who have suffered for centuries from oppression by aristocrats and officials.
From the roar of a cannon shot among the stone walls, the king shudders. The first is followed by more volleys, a salute of twenty-one shots from the palace tower, and then twenty-one more without any delay.
The number of volleys is important, it means that Queen Ulrika Eleonora gave birth to a prince - the heir to the throne.
In the sky of early summer, the constellation Leo twinkles and its brightest star is Regulus, the lion's heart. The royal astrologer says this is a good sign.
Karl was born in a shirt, that is, with a piece of the fetal bladder sitting on the top of his head like a hat.
This is a very special sign: such a child is destined for great luck and success in life.
Like any mother, Ulrika Eleonora believes that her son is handsome. He inherited her high forehead, full lips, protruding chin. He has a big nose.
From his father, the prince received clear blue eyes and a name. After 15 years, he is crowned as King Charles XII.
He is only six when he is taken away from his mother queen and settled on a separate floor of the castle. The prince has his own teachers. He is brought up as the future autocrat of great Sweden.
Prince Carl is trained to fight
The father draws up a schedule of classes: Prince Karl must learn to read and count, cramming laws and government regulations and, most importantly, learn piety.
The strict professor Anders Nordenhielm opens the world of books to the prince and explains how to behave at court, how to speak with peasants in their dialect, and with pundits in Latin.
The purpose of reinforced learning is to gain experience and the courage to make decisions without asking the opinions of others.
Little Carl is interested in mathematics. He is learning several languages, learning Danish from his mother. German and Latin were also important at that time, and Karl was an able student. He crams French reluctantly. Young Charles considers the French, whom he meets at court, rude and arrogant. The prince's favorite lesson is classes with officer Carl Magnus Stuart, an expert on fortification.
The prince likes to look at the drawings depicting the battles in which his grandfather and father participated. Will the cavalry attack from the western flank? Wouldn't it be better to place the cannons on a hill and shoot down? Is the infantry positioned correctly?
Prince Carl is training to fight.
The Baltic is almost an inland sea in Sweden
Grandfather Charles X was a soldier king. His most famous war was the war with the sworn enemy Denmark, during which he reached the ice from Jutland to Copenhagen.
The war ended with the Peace of Roskilde, Denmark ceded Skåne, Blekinge, Bohuslän, Bornholm and Trøndelag to Sweden.
Father Charles XI was also a war hero. With the help of cavalry, he defeated the Danish king Christian V at the Battle of Lund on December 4, 1676. It was one of the largest battles in the history of Scandinavia. In eight hours, six thousand Danes and three thousand Swedes died, blood flooded the battlefield.
Young Carl also wants to be a hero.
In June 1689 he is seven years old and has recently learned to write. His notebook is preserved:
"I would like to one day have the good fortune to follow my father's example on the battlefield."
When Karl is 11, his 36-year-old mother Ulrika Eleonora dies. The 41-year-old father passes away four years later, on April 5, 1697, after a serious illness. He is sure that he was poisoned (but the autopsy shows stomach cancer).
No Swedish king has yet inherited such a powerful state.
The population of great Sweden is 2.5 million people. The Baltic Sea is practically the Swedish inland sea.
Charles is 15. The will of his father says that the country will be ruled by a regency government until Charles comes of age.
Three days after the funeral, the young man dissolves the Riksdag and becomes the sole ruler of Sweden.
He is a cheeky young man. During the coronation in the church of St. Nicholas, the king himself puts the crown on his head. As a ruler by the grace of God, he does not take the royal oath, but allows the bishop to perform the ritual of anointing to the kingdom.
The nobility pursued their own interests when they tried to recognize the king as an adult as early as possible (at that time, age 18 was usually considered the age of majority).
Noble families lost both dignity and possessions when Charles XI carried out the so-called reduction and nationalized the lands of the crown.
Now the aristocracy seized the opportunity to regain their wealth and privileges.
The boy king is easy to manipulate. How wrong they were.
The clergy, one of the four estates in Sweden at the time, protested. Priest Jacob Boëthius of Mura wrote a letter to the nobility of Stockholm in which he objected to absolutism as a form of government.
The fifteen-year-old king is furious. Six horsemen went to Dalarna, seized the priest in the middle of the night and brought him to Stockholm. He was sentenced to death for treason and, while awaiting execution, was placed in the fortress of Nöteborg (Nutlet, - approx. Per.) on Ladoga. Twelve years later, the priest was granted pardon.
Women are not interested in him
Carl was brought up as a real man. At the age of four, he sat on his own horse in front of his father, the king, and took his first military parade of the guards on the Jerdet field in Stockholm.
Carl loves to hunt. In those days, Stockholm was surrounded by wild lands. At the age of eight, he shot a wolf for the first time on Lidingö. The first bear - at eleven on the island of Djurgården.
Not much time passes, and Karl begins to feel that hunting a bear with a gun is too boring. He is armed with a club or wooden pitchfork, which is much more exciting, although deadly. In this way, Karl kills or captures many bears.
At 13, Karl falls ill with a common disease - smallpox. The disease is benign, and soon the prince is healthy again.
He loves horseback riding. One May day, twelve-year-old Karl and his father Karl XI travel to Stockholm from Södertälje in just two and a half hours. All the way they do the fastest gallop.
Context
Ambassador of Sweden to Russia: Poltava sent us in a peaceful direction
BBC Russian Service 29.06.2009The myth of Poltava after 1709
Mirror of the Week 11/30/2008Day: why Mazepa turned away from Peter I
Day 28.11.2008As Peter I ruled
Die Welt 08/05/2013 When Karl becomes king, he is still a pimply teenager. 176 centimeters, boots, narrow hips, broad shoulders. Blue eyes, brown hair under a baroque wig. Proud of the smallpox marks on his cheeks that make his face look older.Power inherited by Charles XII
The Swedish state included Finland and Karelia. In the Baltic States, Sweden owned the provinces of Livonia, Estonia and Ingria. We owned a large part of Norway. In northern Germany, Sweden controlled Bremen and Verden, part of Pomerania, and the city of Wismar.
Charles XII dreamed of annexing new lands and closing the country around the Baltic Sea, but the defeat of the army of caroliners near the Ukrainian Poltava on June 28, 1709 made the dream unrealizable.
The young unmarried ruler of the powerful Swedish state is an interesting match for many royal houses in Europe. But women are not interested in him.
Princes and kings send him portraits of their daughters with their marriage proposal. The princess from the royal house of Württemberg, as well as the daughter of Prince von Hohenzollern, personally visit Stockholm, but their attempts to charm the king are unsuccessful.
Politely, but adamantly, Charles XII rejects all candidates. Later, he does not communicate with the prostitutes who always accompany caroliners on campaigns.
Some historians believe that the king was homosexual, but there is no evidence for this.
Governing a country takes time. The aristocrats, who thought they could control the fifteen-year-old king, are deeply disappointed. Charles XII chases away almost all schemers, the only one he trusts is 50-year-old Secretary of State Carl Piper.
“This is my will, and so be it,” says Charles XII if the councilors object to his decisions.
The Bible is the law for the young king. When married guardsman Johan Schröder's relationship with a comrade's wife is revealed, the guardsman is put on trial. The advisers offer to punish him with prison, because such a sin is not punished more severely in any Christian country. The king wants the Lord himself to reveal his punishment, and offers to shoot the guardsman. Let it be so.
A month after the death of Charles XI, a fire breaks out at Tre Krunur Castle. Karl, who is now an orphan, together with the court moves first to Karlberg (now the military academy), and then to the Wrangel Palace on Riddarholmen (now the Court of Appeal). There he arranges wild festivities.
The real madness begins when the second cousin and future son-in-law of the king, Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, arrives in the summer of 1698 to woo the king's beloved sister, Hedwig Sophia.
We know about what happened within the walls of the castle from the diary of the royal page Leonard Kagg.
One day, Friedrich and Carl release wild hares in the Carlberg galleries and compete to see who can shoot the most. Another time, on August 9, 1699, according to the diary, they dine at the same table with a tame bear. The bear eats a sugar pyramid, drinks a jug of wine and falls out of a third floor window. There was a case when the servants were ordered to deliver the calves and goats after dinner. Charles XII and Frederick compete in chopping off heads with one blow. Blood spatters carpets and furniture.
Foreign diplomats write to their capitals about a young savage who seems to have lost his mind.
On the throne is a young and inexperienced reveler
There are enemies both nearby and in the distance, for example, two cousins of Charles XII. One is called August, he is the King of Poland and the Elector of Saxony. The second is Frederick IV, King of Denmark.
The third is Russian Czar Peter, a power-hungry 28-year-old ruler who intends to make his underdeveloped kingdom a superpower.
Swedish ambitions irritate neighboring countries. Since the time of Eric XIV in the 16th century, we have captured more and more new territories.
Russia lost Ingria and Kexholm. The Germans lost Vorpommern, parts of Vorpommern, Wismar, Stettin, Bremen and Verden, as well as the important islands of Rügen, Usedom and Wollin. Poland ceded Livonia to us.
Sweden is the second largest state in Europe, only Russia is larger than it.
The king wishes to make the Baltic Sea inland. There is also a reason for this in the field of security: the state needs a buffer zone.
On our throne is a young, inexperienced king whom diplomats call a reveler.
The King's Most Dangerous Enemy
The Russian Tsar Peter I (1672-1725) was 28 years old when he started the war against Charles XII. The first battle - the battle of Narva - ended in a shameful defeat for the king.
The next major clash between the Swedish and Russian forces was the battle of Poltava. Charles XII lost, and luck turned away from the Swedish state.
And Peter the Great built St. Petersburg on land reclaimed from Sweden.
Many Swedish prisoners of war worked in construction under slave conditions, and many of them died in the swamps near the Neva River, where the tsar founded his new city.
Neighbors want revenge
There is a chance to split Sweden, and the enemies are secretly plotting.
A conspiracy between the king's cousins and Tsar Peter leads to what is called the Great Northern War in the history books.
August, nicknamed the Strong, becomes king of Poland in the same year that Charles XII comes to power. 28-year-old August dreams of defeating the Swedes, annexing new lands and laying the foundations for a strong monarchy.
Augustus is known for political cunning, he is a real intriguer. August willingly displays his physical strength at feasts, such as straightening horseshoes with his bare hands.
Women are his passion. According to some sources, he acknowledged the paternity of 354 children. Married to Christiane Eberhardina Brandenburg, he has only one child - the son of Friedrich August, the future Elector of Saxony.
The 29-year-old Frederick IV is more interested in glitz and luxury than in the boring affairs of state. He devoted most of his 31-year reign to pleasures, holidays and love affairs.
But Frederick also has a dream - to regain the provinces that his father lost under the terms of the Treaty of Roskilde.
Tsar Peter is a real giant with a height of 203 centimeters. He is 10 years older than Charles XII, and his main desire is to defeat the Swedes, open his way to the shores of the Baltic Sea and make Russia a great European power.
Thank Charles XII for the tax return
The king believed that the current system of taxation was unfair. Many, including the nobility and townspeople, did not pay income tax in accordance with their incomes. In 1712, Charles XII introduced the universal tax return. A certain percentage of income should be deducted for taxes that the king needed to strengthen the army. The Swedes protested loudly, so the system was abolished after the death of the king. However, in 1902 the declarations were returned.
Signal: the fatherland is in danger
In the late winter of 1700, Charles XII travels to Kungsør to hunt a bear. On March 6, Johan Brask, a deadly tired messenger from the Nyland Infantry Regiment, gallops through the snow bearing ominous tidings.
The Bothnian Sea froze over, and the messenger rode for four weeks from Finland and northern Sweden to convey an important message.
The troops of Augustus the Strong have stormed Kobronschanz in Swedish Livonia and are now advancing towards Riga.
At the same time, the Danes occupied the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp.
Sweden was attacked from two sides. Soon there will be a third front, but no one knows about it yet. Tsar Peter marches to Ingermanland.
Sweden is ready for war. All over the country, church bells ring during the day, this is a signal: the fatherland is in danger.
We have a peasant army of 18,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry, the so-called Indelta soldiers, who received military surnames that have survived to this day - Mudig (“brave” - approx. transl.), Hord (“severe”, - approx. transl.), Rusk (“quick”, — approx. transl.), Flink (“agile”, — approx. transl.), Tupper (“brave”, — approx. transl.).
They interrupt their work in the field and in the woods, put on their soldier's uniforms and go to the gathering places, where they meet with their corporals. Before they were trained, now they are serious. The fleet has 15,000 men and 38 battleships. In addition, there are recruit troops in the Life Regiment and in the garrisons.
In total, Sweden has 70 thousand people - 12 cavalry regiments and 22 infantry regiments to protect the king and the fatherland. It was the turn of the caroliners.
In the early morning of April 14, 1700, Charles XII mounts his horse Brandklipparen, kisses his grandmother, Dowager Queen Hedwig Eleanor, on the cheek, and gallops south. Charles's four dogs, Caesar, Pompe, Turk, and Snyushane, are running nearby. None will survive the wars.
The 17-year-old king is the commander-in-chief of the greatest and best army in Swedish history.
Charles XII would never see his capital again. He will return to Stockholm only in a coffin, after 18 years of fighting.
The king has been preparing for this morning for a long time
First you need to deal with the recalcitrant cousin Frederick. He sent 20,000 men to capture the fortresses of Holstein.
King Karl arrives in Karlskrona, a new city founded by his father to establish a base for the Swedish fleet south of Stockholm.
A storm rages when Charles, with four infantry battalions of about three thousand men, crosses the strait on the evening of July 25, 1700. The king and soldiers get into boats and row to the shore in the Humlebeck area, while warships pour fire on the defenders on the shore.
The attack begins at dawn. Charles XII leads the troops. This is a real battle, he has been practicing and preparing for this morning for a long time.
Bullets whistle, cannonballs scatter sand and earth, tear apart the bodies of enemies.
“Let this be my music from now on,” declares the king.
The first battle of Charles XII does not last long. The Danes have yielded, they are fleeing. Caroliners are chasing them. They are about to take Copenhagen and the king surrenders. Charles XII won his first victory on the battlefield.
Denmark defeated but not broken, she remains a threat until the end of the life of Charles XII.
Narva - the triumph of Charles XII
For now, teach the second cousin a lesson. The Swedish provinces in the Baltic are under threat. As Karl boards the warship Westmanland at Karlhamn, a messenger arrives with new news: Tsar Peter wants to capture Narva, the most important Swedish city in Estonia near the Russian border.
Charles XII changes plans, Narva is more important than the campaign against Augustus. We must save the strategic fortress.
Caroliners walk several miles a day in Estonian rain. It is difficult for horses to pull cannons through clay mud. The soldiers are hungry. Their bread is moldy.
On the morning of November 20, 1700, the king stands on a hill and examines the besieged city through a telescope.
There are 30,000 Russians there.
The king is relentless.
"The battle is won by the will of the Lord, and he is with us."
At half past two, the king kneels before his people. He wears a simple soldier's blue and yellow uniform without insignia, coarse boots with high tops and a black cocked hat. He has a long sword on his side.
Together with the caroliners, the king sings the psalm they have studied:
"The Lord, who created heaven and earth, will help us and comfort us."
At this moment, something happens that will give the Swedes a huge advantage. Heavy snow begins. The west wind and blizzard hit the faces of the Russians, they do not see what is happening on the opposite side of the battlefield.
The king is 18 years old, and here is his baptism of fire.
The Swedes are on the offensive. No drums and trumpets, in complete silence the caroliners march through the blizzard, lances and muskets raised. At the forefront are grenadiers with hand grenades, fuse-filled explosive projectiles that are thrown at the enemy in close combat.
The Russians notice the caroliners when they are only 30 meters away. Swedish troops with all their might rush to the offensive with their swords drawn.
The blood of the dead and wounded is mixed with ice porridge. The Russian army was cut in two and squeezed between the defenses and the icy waters of the Narva River.
The Russians panic and flee. Many try to cross the river on a wooden bridge, it breaks, thousands of Russians drown. From the shore, caroliners shoot at swimming enemies.
The Russians capitulate, and all the tsarist military leaders are taken prisoner.
In the battle, 700 caroliners were killed and 1,200 were wounded. Russian troops lost about 10 thousand people.
This is the biggest victory of Charles XII. He later finds a bullet in his scarf, lodged within a few millimeters of his carotid artery.
For Peter the Great, this defeat is a severe setback. For the next nine years, he will prepare for revenge.
Three big wins in one year
On June 17, 1701, when the king was celebrating his 19th birthday, the caroliners went on the offensive against Augustus the Strong. Reinforcements came from Sweden to replace those who fell in battle or died from disease.
The forces meet on the Western Dvina River, near Riga in what is now Latvia.
The commander of the strategic Swedish fortress in Riga, Count Erik Dahlbergh, waited a long time for the king with reinforcements. He masterfully kept the defense. He ordered to make a hole in the ice of the river in order to prevent the enemy from crossing it. When the enemy began the assault, Dahlberg's drabants poured boiling tar on him.
The troops of Augustus were grouped on the south bank of the river, and 10,000 caroliners came from the north.
The attack begins at dawn on 9 July. Caroliners set fire to damp hay and dung and, under cover of smoke, transport six thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry to the other side. Guns in blockhouses terrify Poles and Saxons.
The battle lasts only a few hours, then the enemy flees.
Another triumph of Charles XII. He has already won three major victories in one year.
Commemorative medals are issued in Stockholm, on which the Swedish king is depicted with three defeated monarchs at his feet.
But Cousin August is not defeated. Charles XII and the Caroliners have been fighting in Poland and Saxony for five long and hard years, and it takes many bloody battles to force Augustus to make peace. The Treaty of Altranstedt was signed in 1706.
Scorched earth tactics
To Moscow. The king must be defeated, forced to capitulate. Charles XII is sure of victory. God is on his side.
In the autumn of 1707, the king leads a 44,000-strong army, they bypass the lands that now belong to Belarus.
For the first time, they manage to measure their strength with the tsar in the city of Golovchin, not far from the present-day Minsk in Belarus. The Russian army is four times larger than the Swedish one, but the caroliners destroy it.
“This is my most glorious victory,” declares the king, according to the diary of army chaplain Andreas Westman.
Tsar Peter is furious. Defeat haunts him. He removes his generals from their posts, and orders the soldiers wounded in the back to be shot on suspicion of fleeing from the battlefield.
The path to Moscow leads along an endless plain. Tsar Peter used the scorched earth tactics. His soldiers burn Belarusian villages, slaughter livestock, put the population to flight.
Caroliners have nowhere to buy or steal. Their food supplies are running out.
Tatarsk is located 40 miles east of Moscow. There is a turning point in the war. Ahead - only adversity.
September 10, another battle. 2,400 caroliners against four times the size of the Russian forces. Charles XII at the head of the army, as always. His horse falls dead from the bullet.
But this does not decide the outcome of the battle. The Russians are retreating. This is the king's new tactic. His soldiers carry out quick surprise attacks and just as quickly disappear, this is a tactic of guerrilla warfare.
The goal is to inflict as much damage on the Swedes as possible without risking your own life.
Retreating, the Russians set fire to villages and cities.
“Everything is on fire, everything is in hell,” writes 26-year-old dragoon Joachim Lyth in his diary.
A crisis is coming. The way forward is closed. Charles XII, with a starving army, decides to turn around and head south to Ukraine, and from there go to Moscow in a different way.
You have to go fast. There is a danger that the king will be the first to succeed and burn all the villages and fields again.
But Tsar Peter has a powerful "ally" - the Russian winter.
Charles XII is the first to be defeated by frost.
Napoleon will be next in a hundred years. His march on Moscow in 1812 would be a catastrophe that would cost him dearly. And in World War II, Adolf Hitler's attack on the Kremlin would fail for the same reason.
Russian winter, the worst winter of the century
December 1708, the worst winter of the century. Deadly winds sweep across the Ukrainian fields.
Caroliners slowly freeze to death, sitting on horseback or on the box trains. Worst of all is the infantry. They have shoes with birch-bark soles, and they just can't walk when their toes turn to ice.
Three thousand people die, many more become crippled after field surgeons amputate frostbitten body parts without any anesthesia.
Spring is coming. The war has been going on for nine years. Charles XII 26. Only 25 thousand people remained from the army of caroliners. The troops were stationed in several villages near Poltava.
Poltava: Caroliners march towards death
In the spring of 1709, unrest grows in Stockholm. Several months have passed, and there is no news from Charles and his victorious army. Mail doesn't work well. The enemy stops and captures mounted Swedish messengers. Letters that do reach, often turn out to be half a year old.
Poltava stands on the Vorskla River in Ukraine. There is a Russian garrison, rich in food and ammunition.
Behind the protective shaft - 4,200 Russian soldiers, easy prey, according to Charles XII.
What mistake. Disaster unfolds. The era of great power in Sweden is coming to an end.
Everything goes wrong from the start. On June 17, the king celebrates his 27th birthday. In the morning, he, along with several officers, leaves the base camp on horseback to reconnoiter the location of the enemy camps.
They meet Russians by the river. They fire a few shots from the muskets. The king is sitting on the Brandklipparen, but the officers see that blood is dripping from his left boot.
An infection gets into the wound, it is filled with yellow pus. Karl has a fever.
“Probably the king has less than a day to live,” writes an army doctor to General Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld.
Russian spies report to Tsar Peter that the Swedish king has been wounded. At sunrise on June 28, 1709, Peter arrives in Poltava with reinforcements. He is sure of his victory.
From the dais, the equestrian king looks over his troops, which are lined up in battle order. He sees through binoculars how enemy foot soldiers in blue uniforms with yellow belts raise muskets with bayonets and begin to advance.
The king cannot lead the attack, he lies on a litter carried by a pair of horses.
There are twice as many Russians, and they are better armed.
The Caroliners march towards death. Burning cannonballs, flying fragments, buckshot tear people and horses to pieces. Cannons rumble, and the tsar from his observation post sees how the Swedes are thinning out.
Of the Uppland regiment, consisting of seven hundred people, only 14 survived.
At eleven o'clock the Tsar takes off his hat in a gesture of victory. The Swedes are defeated. Poltava was the end of Swedish greatness.
Charles XII went into battle with 19,000 caroliners. Almost half - 9,700 people - died or were taken prisoner.
The king flees to Bendery. July 1, 1709 General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt capitulates at Perevolochna.
Charles XII rules the state from afar
Bendery is a city on the Dniester River in what is now the Republic of Transnistria between Moldova and Ukraine. During the time of Charles XII the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. Karl stays there for several years along with the Caroliners who survived the Battle of Poltava.
In the village of Varnitsa, a few kilometers from the city walls, a small town of its own is being built, which the Swedes call Karlopolis.
The main building is the Charles House with thick brick walls. The building, 35 meters long, has one floor, the roof is covered with sawdust, large windows let in a light breeze on hot summer days.
Within the defenses there is another house - the Great Hall. From there, King Charles XII rules his state far to the north of Europe. All orders are sent to Sweden by messenger.
The king is an autocratic monarch, and councilors in Stockholm cannot decide anything without his approval. Every now and then messengers arrive from Stockholm with papers requiring the royal signature.
We are talking now about the appointment of vicars, then about the construction of a new royal palace. Everything requires the king's resolution.
Charles XII is a political refugee, an exiled king, and powerful enemy troops stand between him and his defeated power, who are just waiting for an opportunity to end him.
The Sultan and the King have a common enemy
Without funds, ingloriously defeated by Tsar Peter, King Charles XII lives under the protection of the 35-year-old Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Ahmed III.
The Sultan is forced to receive the King as a guest. Turkey, or, as it was called, the Ottoman Empire, was the largest state of the continent, it included the current Turkish territories, the African Mediterranean coast, the Middle East and the region around the Persian Gulf.
For 25 million subjects, Ahmed is a demigod, he is called the shadow of a god on earth. He lives in the Topkapi Palace (there is now a museum) on a hill where the Golden Horn separates the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. His city is called Constantinople (now Istanbul).
Ahmed III allows Charles XII to stay in Bendery. The reason is that they have a common enemy, Tsar Peter.
Peter, later nicknamed the Great, is a warlike ruler, he is a threat to both the Swedish state and the Ottoman Empire.
The two rulers believe that together they can defeat the Russian bear, which is gaining power.
We just have to wait for the right moment.
Kalabalyk in Bendery
Five years pass. The Sultan already considers Charles XII a freeloader, whose maintenance is too expensive. Besides, Carl is practically powerless.
Tsar Peter offers peace to the Sultan. Ahmed III secretly orders the commandant of Bendery Ismail Pasha to send the Swedes out.
February 1, 1713. The king had just listened to the Sunday sermon of the court priest Johannis Brenner in the great hall of the Charles House.
Through the open windows comes drumming and resounding invocations to Allah. The Turks are coming.
Cannons rumble, burning arrows whistle in the air, combat alert. The king runs out into the yard with a sword in his hand, and the drabants barely hear his cry through the roar of cannons:
"It's not time to talk, it's time to cut."
The French philosopher Voltaire, a devoted admirer of the king, writes in the biography of Charles XII that he impales four floundering Turks on a sword with one blow.
This is probably not true. But the king shows great courage, or perhaps recklessness, in the battle against superior enemy forces.
In dangerous moments, the young life-drabant Axel Erik Roos saves the king's life three times.
Our history books describe this day in awkward footnotes, and we learn a new word: kalabalik is Turkish for “turmoil.”
Execution as a way to apologize
Just a few days later, the Sultan changes his mind. He received word from Europe that General Magnus Stenbock had defeated the Danish King Frederick IV at the Battle of Gadebusch in Vorpommern. Caroliners still have gunpowder in their flasks. It's not over yet with King Charles.
The Battle of Gadebusch was the last major victory of the Swedish great power. But then no one knew about it.
Charles XII is again in favor with the Sultan, he is released from captivity.
But fate turned away from Ismail Pasha. His severed head is impaled on a pike and exposed to dry in the sun in the Seraglio of Constantinople, just on the day when the Swedish messenger arrives there. All those who participated in the attack on the king are executed or sent away.
This is the Sultan's way of apologizing. Charles XII remains in Turkey for some more time.
Caroliners brought cabbage rolls with them
The king and the caroliners remained in Bendery in the Ottoman Empire for several years. They fell in love with the local cuisine, especially the dish that the Turks call "dolma". It was prepared in an oriental way, in grape leaves and without pork (it is forbidden for Muslims).
We don't have vine leaves, so when they got home, the caroliners wrapped minced meat in scalded cabbage leaves. This is how our favorite homemade dish, cabbage rolls, appeared. On November 30, on the day of the death of Charles XII, Stuffed Cabbage Day is celebrated.
In addition, the caroliners brought meatballs (Turkish kufta), coffee and the word “kalabalik” from Turkey.
A single shot rang out in silence
In the autumn of 1713, Charles XII leaves his place of exile and begins his long journey home. He realized that the expectation was not justified. He will never lead the Swedish-Turkish army in battle against Peter the Great.
The king is eager to take revenge, he has new plans. Sweden is blocked by enemy fleets. It is necessary to force Denmark to submit and thereby break the blockade.
Finland and the Swedish possessions in Germany should be liberated.
Norway belongs to Denmark, and the plan of Charles XII is to annex Christiania (Oslo) and the southern regions to Sweden.
A new army is being assembled, 65,000 brave caroliners.
Lieutenant General Carl Gustaf Armfeldt makes a dash through the Swedish mountains to take Trondheim. The main forces come from the south, having built a bridge over Svinesund.
Fortress Fredriksten is the key to success. If she falls, then Norway will fall, and the Danish kingdom will be reduced by half. The fortress stands on a steep hill where the river Triste flows into Idefjord.
The fortress is under siege. The Caroliners are digging trenches in a semicircle, leaving room for cannons to smash enemy walls to smithereens.
November 30, 1718 is the first Sunday of Advent. Between nine and ten o'clock in the evening the king comes out to inspect the positions. Cold and dark. The king wraps up his blue uniform and climbs out of the trench onto the crest of the parapet.
A single shot sounds in silence. The bullet pierces the king's left temple and exits the right. Charles XII dies.
The mysterious death of the king
November 30, 1718 at eleven o'clock in the evening, Charles XII died from a bullet in a trench near the Norwegian fortress of Fredriksten.
The deadly bullet hit the king in the head.
A contract killer among the caroliners? Or a Norwegian shooter?
The death of Charles XII gave rise to much speculation.
In the museum of the city of Varberg you can see the so-called bullet-button. According to legend, the king was killed with a button from his own military uniform melted into a bullet. They say it was the war-weary caroliner who shot his commander.
Several times the king's grave was dug up for forensic and ballistic examinations, which could help solve the mystery.
The latest study, conducted in 2005 by historian Peter From, states that the king was killed by a Norwegian bullet. Both the direction and the distance between the Swedes and the Norwegian defenders of the fortress correspond to the nature of the wound in the head of the king.
Who was Charles XII?
Was the king a hero or a war-crazed madman who led his kingdom into decline?
Estimates have changed as new political and cultural currents have emerged in Sweden.
In the era of romanticism in the 19th century, Charles XII was the invincible king of doom. As Esaias Tegner wrote in a poem that all schoolchildren learn today, "he drew his sword from its scabbard and rushed into battle."
In the 1910s, Charles XII became a symbol of strong royal power, as well as right-wing politicians' resistance to democracy and universal suffrage (including for women).
During the Second World War, Charles XII was the favorite of the local Nazis, the Swedish Fuhrer.
In the Royal Garden in Stockholm there is a monument to Charles XII. In one hand he has a drawn sword, with the other he points to the east, where his enemy is waiting.
On the day of his death, racists and Nazis gather at the monument.
Interestingly, neo-Nazis consider Charles XII a hero. The king was a fourth-generation migrant (great-grandfather ended up in Sweden after the Thirty Years' War in what is now Germany). His mother was born in Denmark, which was then a sworn enemy of the Swedish state.
The state of Charles XII was multicultural, many nationalities, religions and languages coexisted in it. Charles XII's brother-in-arms was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and during his years in Turkey, the king learned to respect and even admire Islam.
Chronology
1697 - On December 14, the coronation of fifteen-year-old Charles is held, he becomes the sole king of Sweden after a six-month reign of the regency government.
1700 - In February, with the attack of August the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, the Great Northern War begins.
On September 13, Tsar Peter begins an offensive against Sweden in the Baltics.
On November 20, the Caroliners win a major victory at Narva.
1703 - The Charles XII Bible is published - the first official translation, which remains in use for about 200 years, until a new Bible appeared in 1917.
1706 - September 14, Charles XII marches into Saxony and wins a great victory at Fraunstadt. On the same day, Charles XII and Augustus the Strong conclude the Treaty of Altranstedt near Leipzig.
1708 - On September 28, the Russian troops of Tsar Peter defeat the caroliners at the Battle of Lesnaya in the territory of modern Belarus.
1709 - June 28 Charles is defeated near Poltava. In the battle against Tsar Peter, eight thousand caroliners die, three thousand end up in the hands of the enemy.
To escape the Russians, in August Charles XII flees to Bendery in the Ottoman Empire.
1713 - On February 1, Sultan Ahmed III, who is tired of supporting Charles XII and his caroliners, orders the Turks to attack the king's camp in Bender and send the Swedes out. Charles XII is captured.
1716 - From February to April, Charles XII fails, trying to capture Christiania (Oslo), which is under the rule of the Danes.
1718 - In October, the Caroliners again enter Norway and besiege the fortress of Fredriksten in Fredrikshald (now Halden).
Facts
Born: June 17, 1682 at Tre Krunur Castle.
Parents: Charles XI and Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark.
Children: no.
Coronation: at the age of 15.
Rule time: 21 years.
Career: war and again war.
Died: November 30, 1718. The king was 36 years old.
Successor: Sister Ulrika Eleonora.
National Museum of Sweden. Painting by Gustav Sederström. Carrying the body of Charles XII across the Norwegian border, 1884 variant
Who and why killed Charles XII is not exactly known until now - three centuries after his death on the battlefield
Autumn 1718. The Northern War, one of the largest military conflicts of the 18th century, has been going on for 18 years. It brought together the armies of Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Poland, England and other European countries. The fighting covered a vast territory - from the Black Sea to Finland.
On November 12, 1718, the Swedish army, led by the 36-year-old King Charles XII, laid siege to the well-fortified Fredrikshald fortress - today it is the city of Halden in southern Norway. Three hundred years ago, the now independent country was a province of Denmark.
(The Julian calendar was in effect in Sweden until 1753, and all the dates in this article are indicated in accordance with it for reliability. The Gregorian calendar in the 18th century was “ahead” of the Julian one by 11 days. Thus, the siege of Fredrikshald began on November 23 according to the Gregorian calendar. - note . author)
Within a couple of weeks, it became clear that the capture of the fortress was only a matter of time. The city was fired upon from three sides by 18 siege guns, methodically destroying the fortifications. Only 1,400 Danish and Norwegian soldiers defended Fredrikshald from the 40,000th Swedish army.
The Swedes built a system of trenches and sapper structures around the city, which allowed the besiegers to fire on the defenders of the fortress from a distance of only a few hundred steps (the metric system for measuring distances was not yet used at that time, and the step length in different countries corresponded to modern 77-88 centimeters).
The siege was led by Charles XII - an outstanding commander and an exceptionally brave man. On November 26, he personally led a detachment of 200 people to storm one of the Danish fortifications under the walls of the fortress. The king found himself in the center of hand-to-hand combat, could easily die, but was not injured and left the battle only after taking the fortification.
Karl himself supervised the engineering work and daily bypassed the Swedish positions within a few hundred paces from the Danish soldiers. The risk was huge - one well-aimed rifle shot or a successful cannon volley could deprive Sweden of the king. But this did not stop the monarch. He was bold to the point of recklessness. No wonder he was called "the last Viking."
On the evening of November 30, the king, together with a group of officers, went to the next inspection. From the trench, he looked at the walls of the fortress through a telescope for a long time and gave orders to the colonel of the engineering service, Philippe Maigret, who was standing nearby. It was already dark, but the Danes, in order to see the positions of the Swedes, launched bright flares. From time to time shots rang out - the defenders of Fredrikshald were firing harassing fire.
At some point, Karl wanted to get a better view. He climbed up the earthen parapet. Megre and the personal secretary of the monarch, Siquier, were waiting below for new instructions. The rest of the suite was also located nearby. Suddenly, the king fell off the embankment. The officers who ran up found that Karl was already dead, and a huge through wound was gaping in his head. Legend has it that Megre, at the sight of the murdered monarch, said: "Well, that's all, gentlemen, the comedy is over, let's go to dinner."
The deceased was transferred to the headquarters tent, where the court physician Melchior Nojman embalmed the body.
The death of the king dramatically changed the plans of the Swedish command. Already on December 1, the siege of Fredrikshald was lifted and a hasty retreat from the city began, more like a flight.
Karl's body was taken on a stretcher across half of Scandinavia to Stockholm. This funeral procession is captured in the painting by the Swedish artist Gustaf Sederström (Gustaf Cederström) "Transferring the body of Charles XII across the Norwegian border".
On February 15, 1719, the king was buried in Riddarholmen Church in Stockholm. Charles became the last monarch of Europe to be killed during the fighting. The throne was taken by his sister Ulrika Eleonora.
The hasty retreat from Fredrikshald did not allow for a full investigation into the circumstances of the death of the king. It was announced that he was killed by buckshot fired from Danish positions.
Immediately there were people who questioned this version. The doubts turned out to be so strong that 28 years later, in 1746, the Swedish king Fredrik I ordered the grave of Charles to be opened to re-examine the body. The court physician Melchior Neumann performed the embalming flawlessly, so the august deceased looked as if he had died quite recently.
The excellent preservation of the body made it possible to study in detail the wound on Karl's head. Doctors and the military, who are well acquainted with the nature of combat injuries, made a stunning conclusion: a through hole in the skull the size of a pigeon's egg was made not by a fragment of a canister shell, as previously assumed, but by a rifle bullet.
This immediately called into question the version of the fatal shot from the Danish side. From the advanced positions of the Swedish troops to the walls of the fortress there were about 300 steps. According to ballistic calculations, the probability of hitting a target measuring 1.2 x 1.8 meters from a smoothbore gun of the early 18th century from such a distance is only 25%, and the chance of hitting a person’s head from such a distance is much less.
It should also be taken into account that Karl was killed at night in the uneven light of engineering missiles, which would further complicate the task of the Danish sniper. The wound on the skull turned out to be through, which indicates the high speed of the bullet, which is maintained only at a short distance. No traces of lead or other metal were found in the head.
If the monarch had been killed by a bullet that had accidentally flown in from the Danish positions, it would have lost kinetic energy and stuck in the skull.
It would seem that the "Danish" version was untenable. But it received unexpected confirmation almost two centuries later.
It was said above how difficult it would be to hit Karl with a conventional smoothbore musket. But in 1718 there were already special fortress guns. These were heavy and bulky mechanisms with a barrel length of up to two meters and a weight of up to 30 kilograms. Such a gun is difficult to hold in your hands, so it was equipped with a wooden stand. The ammunition for him was conical lead bullets weighing 30-60 grams, and the range of destruction made it possible to pierce through the skull even from a very long distance. Could it have been used to shoot Karl?
In 1907, a Swedish physician and amateur historian, Dr. Njustrem, conducted an experiment. According to old drawings, he assembled a fortress gun and stuffed it with gunpowder, also made according to a recipe from the 18th century. At the site of the death of the king, the doctor set up a wooden target the size of a human body, and he himself climbed onto the fortress wall of Fredrikshald, from where he fired 24 times. Nyström himself believed that the Danes could not hit Karl from such a distance even with a fortress gun and wanted to confirm this.
But the result of the experiment turned out to be just the opposite. The doctor hit the target 23 times, proving that a good shooter from the fortress wall could well have killed the king.
In 1891, Baron Nikolai Kaulbar from Estland (as Estonia was called at that time) stated that he kept the gun from which, according to family tradition, Karl was shot. The aristocrat sent for examination to Stockholm two photographs of the family relic and a cast of a bullet.
The old gun turned out to be a very remarkable artifact. For some reason, the names of the courtiers from the inner circle of Charles were engraved on it, namely those who were present at his death.
The examination revealed that the rarity was released at the end of the 17th century, but the king was not shot from it. The terrible wound of the monarch did not correspond to the bullets fired from Kaulbar's gun.
In 1917, the remains were again removed from the crypt (there were four exhumations in just three centuries) and subjected to examination based on modern forensic techniques. For the first time, x-rays of the skull were taken.
The conclusions of experts were contradictory. On the one hand, the bullet hit the skull on the left and slightly behind, and, according to experts, could not have come from Fredrikshald. But on the other hand, the inlet was located just above the outlet - the bullet moved along an inclined trajectory, from a hill, for example, from an embankment or .... walls. The second conclusion already allowed a shot from the fortress.
In 1924, a new artifact appeared. Norwegian Carl Hjalmar Andersson (Carl Hjalmar Andersson) handed over to the museum of the Swedish city of Varberg (Varberg) an old bullet, which, in his opinion, killed the monarch, but there was no evidence of this. According to legend, the soldier Nilsson Stierna, who served in the Swedish army during the siege of Fredrikshald, saw the death of Charles, picked up a bullet that had pierced the king's skull, and kept it with him. Two centuries later, the artifact came to Andersson in a roundabout way.
It is noteworthy that the bullet was cast from a brass button, which was sewn onto the soldier's uniforms of the Swedish army. Those who believed that it was with this piece of metal that the monarch was killed turned to superstition for argument. Karl so many times emerged unscathed from bloody battles that many considered him to be under a spell. It was possible to kill him only with something unusual and close to the king. And what could be closer to a militant monarch than the soldier's uniform of his own army?
In 2002, a DNA test was carried out at Uppsala University. The researchers compared the biomaterials found on the pool with a brain sample taken during the exhumation of the remains of the king, and the monarch's blood left on clothes stored in the historical museum of Stockholm.
The result of the examination was again ambiguous. For 284 years, the samples have changed greatly under the influence of the environment. Researchers have identified only the general parameters of the genetic code. The conclusion was that the DNA found on the pool could belong to about 1% of the population of Sweden, including Karl. Moreover, traces of DNA of two people were found on the metal at once, which further confused the researchers. In general, the genetic examination did not clarify the historical mystery.
Over time, other facts appeared, indicating that Karl was not killed by Danish soldiers at all.
To begin with, it is necessary to briefly describe the political and economic situation at the beginning of the 18th century. For 18 years, the exhausting Northern War had been going on, in which Sweden opposed almost half of Europe. In the early years of the conflict, Charles managed to inflict serious defeats on Russia, Denmark and Poland, but then unsuccessful battles on land and at sea followed.
A real disaster for the Swedish army turned into a campaign against Russia in 1709. Karl suffered a crushing defeat near Poltava, where he himself was wounded and nearly captured.
The king was completely absorbed in the war and did not at all deal with the economy of Sweden, which was in a deplorable state. He carried out the infamous monetary reform, in which silver coins were equated in value with copper ones. This made it possible to cover military expenses, but caused a sharp rise in prices and the impoverishment of the population. The Swedes hated the financial innovations so much that the "author" of the reform, the German baron Georg von Görtz, was arrested and executed three months after the death of Charles.
The aristocrats repeatedly asked the king to start peace negotiations. In 1714, the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) even adopted a special resolution on this matter, which was sent to the monarch, who was in Turkey at that time.
Charles rejected him and, despite the defeats and economic problems, decided to continue the war to a victorious end. For such stubbornness, the Turks gave him another speaking nickname - "Iron Head". Since 1700, the monarch has practically not appeared in his homeland, spending his life in endless campaigns.
The German scientist Knut Lundblad in his book The History of Charles XII, published in 1835, put forward a version of the involvement of the English King George I in the murder of a Swedish colleague. At the beginning of the 18th century, George fought with the pretender to the throne, Jacob Stuart. In 1715, the standoff led to a Jacobite rebellion, which was put down by the royal forces.
Lundblad suggested that Charles XII was going to help Jacob by sending an expeditionary force of 20,000 soldiers to England to fight George. And the current English king decided to prevent this by organizing the assassination of Charles. This version has one weak point - Sweden, with all its desire, could not, either in 1718 or in subsequent years, land a large amphibious assault in England. After unsuccessful naval battles with Russia and Denmark, the Scandinavian kingdom lost most of its fleet. George could not be afraid of the Swedish invasion.
However, both inside Scandinavia and outside it, there were many influential people who wanted Charles dead.
Knut Lundblad also described such a story. In December 1750, Baron Carl Cronstedt, one of the best officers of Charles XII, was dying in Stockholm. He invited the priest to confess.
The dying man admitted that he was involved in a plot to kill Charles and demanded that the pastor go to another officer, Magnus Stierneroos, who also served under the late monarch.
Cronstedt stated that it was Stierneroos, his former subordinate, who shot the king. The baron considered his own confession insufficient and wanted to convince another officer involved in the murder to repent.
Stierneroos, after listening to the priest, said that Kronstedt was clearly out of his mind and did not understand what he was saying. The pastor conveyed the answer to the baron, to which he told in detail from which gun Karl was killed. It, according to Cronstedt, still hung on the wall of Stierneroos' office. The priest again went to the latter with a request for recognition, but the officer, in a rage, drove the pastor out of his house.
This story would have remained unknown, because the priest does not have the right to divulge what he heard in confession. He described the unusual squabble between the two officers in his diary, which he did not show to anyone. In 1759 the pastor died and his notes were made public.
The murder of Charles, according to the dying Cronstedt, was the result of a conspiracy of the Swedish aristocracy, dissatisfied with the policies of the king. As a direct executor of the murder, the baron attracted Stierneroos, his subordinate and an excellent shooter.
On the evening of November 30, he followed Charles and his retinue through the trenches, then got out of the trench and took up a position in front of an earthen embankment, to which the monarch approached from the other side. Stierneroos waited for the king to peek out from behind the parapet and fired. In the confusion that followed the assassination, he quietly returned to the trenches.
Cronstedt also admitted that he and other military leaders after the death of Charles did not behave in a noble way at all - they appropriated the entire military treasury. Stierneroos also received a very substantial monetary reward and subsequently rose to the rank of general of the cavalry.
The information contained in the notes of the late priest had no confirmation and could not serve as legal evidence. But it is known that in 1789 the Swedish king Gustav III, in a conversation with the French ambassador, said that he considered Kronstedt and Stierneroos to be the perpetrators of the murder.
Another suspect is also Carl's personal secretary, the Frenchman Sigur. Allegedly, it was he who shot the king. In Sweden, many believed in this version. Indeed, shortly after the murder, a Frenchman in Stockholm, in a fit of delirium tremens, shouted that he had killed the king and asked for forgiveness for this.
Many years later, the famous French philosopher Voltaire, who wrote a biography of Charles, spoke with Sigur, then a very old man, in his house in France. He said that the confession was false and was made due to a painful clouding of reason. Sigur had great respect for Charles and would never have dared to harm him.
After that, Voltaire wrote: “I saw him shortly before his death and I can assure you that not only did he not kill Karl, but he himself would have let himself be killed a thousand times for him. If he were guilty of this crime, it would, of course, be for the purpose of rendering a service to some state, which would reward him well. But he died in poverty in France and needed help.”
Above, different opinions about the direct executor were considered, but who was the organizer of the conspiracy, if one did take place?
The involvement of the English King George is unlikely. He didn't have enough motive to kill.
Most of all, Frederick of Hesse, the husband of his sister Ulrika Eleonora, who took the throne immediately after the death of her brother, won the most from the death of Charles. In 1720, she abdicated the crown in favor of her husband. Fredrik ruled Sweden until his death in 1751. Many conspiracy theorists believe that he was the mastermind behind the assassination.
But, perhaps, all these conclusions are incorrect and Karl died from a random bullet fired from the walls of Fredrikshald. A new examination of the remains using the most modern technical means could solve the riddle.
In 2008, Stefan Jonsson, professor of materials science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, in an interview with the BBC, announced the need for a new exhumation, already the fifth in a row. The scientist is going to examine the bones with an electron microscope.
“Even if there are the slightest traces of metal, we will be able to study their chemical composition,” said the professor. However, permission for the next exhumation of the remains of the "last Viking" has not been received to this day.
Text: Sergey Tolmachev
Candidate of Historical Sciences I. ANDREEV.
In Russian history, the Swedish king Charles XII was not lucky. In the mass consciousness, he is represented as an almost caricatured, extravagant, conceited young king, who first defeated Peter, and then was beaten. "He died like a Swede near Poltava" - this, in fact, is also about Karl, although, as you know, the king did not die near Poltava, but, having escaped capture, continued to fight for almost ten more years. Having landed in the mighty shadow of Peter, Karl not only faded, but got lost, cringed. He, like an extra in a bad play, had to occasionally appear on the historical stage and give remarks designed to profitably highlight the main character - Peter the Great. The writer A. N. Tolstoy did not escape the temptation to present the Swedish king in this way. It's not that Karl appears on the pages of the novel "Peter the Great" episodically. Significantly different - the motivation of actions. Carl is frivolous and capricious - a sort of crowned egocentrist who roams Eastern Europe in search of glory. He is absolutely opposite to Tsar Peter, albeit quick-tempered and unbalanced, but day and night thinking about the Fatherland. The interpretation of A. N. Tolstoy entered the blood and flesh of the mass historical consciousness. A talented literary work in its influence on the reader almost always outweighs volumes of serious historical works. The simplification of Charles is at the same time a simplification of Peter himself and the scale of everything that happened to Russia in the first quarter of the 18th century. This alone is enough to try to comprehend what happened through a comparison of these two personalities.
Peter I. Engraving by E. Chemesov, made from the original by J.-M. Nattier 1717.
Charles XII. Portrait by an unknown artist, early 18th century.
Young Peter I. Unknown artist. Early 18th century.
Officer of the Life Guards Semenovsky Regiment. First quarter of the 18th century.
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Personal belongings of Peter I: a caftan, an officer's badge and an officer's scarf.
Bust of Peter I by Bartolomeo Carlo Rastrelli. (Painted wax and plaster; Peter's hair wig; eyes - glass, enamel.) 1819.
View of Arkhangelsk from the bay. Early 18th century engraving.
Carl Allard's book "The New Golan Ship Structure" was translated into Russian by Peter's decree. There were several copies of this edition in Peter's library.
Cup carved by Peter I (gold, wood, diamonds, ruby) and presented by him to MP Gagarin for organizing a holiday in Moscow in honor of the victory over the Swedes near Poltava. 1709
A lathe created by craftsman Franz Singer, who worked for the Florentine Duke Cosimo III Medici for many years, and then came to St. Petersburg at the invitation of the Russian Tsar. In Russia, Singer headed the tsar's turning workshop.
Medallion with a relief image of the Battle of Grenham in the Baltic on July 27, 1720 (the work of a turning workshop).
Peter I in the battle of Poltava. Drawing and engraving by M. Marten (son). First quarter of the 18th century.
Peter and Carl never met. But for many years they argued in absentia with each other, which means that they tried on, looked at each other. When the king found out about the death of Charles, he was quite sincerely upset: "Ah, brother Charles! How sorry I am for you!" One can only guess what exactly the feelings were behind these words of regret. But it seems - something more than just royal solidarity ... Their dispute was so long, the king was so imbued with the logic of the illogical actions of his crowned opponent that it seems that with the death of Charles, Peter lost, as it were, a part of himself.
People of different cultures, temperaments, mentality, Karl and Peter were surprisingly similar at the same time. But this similarity is of a special nature - in dissimilarity to other sovereigns. Let us note that to acquire such a reputation in an age when extravagant self-expression was in vogue is not an easy task. But Peter and Karl overshadowed many. Their secret is simple - both did not strive for extravagance at all. They lived without fuss, building their behavior in accordance with the ideas of what should be. Therefore, much that seemed so important and necessary to others played almost no role for them. And vice versa. Their actions were perceived by the majority of contemporaries at best as eccentricity, at worst as ignorance, barbarism.
The English diplomat Thomas Wentworth and the Frenchman Aubrey de la Motre left descriptions of the "Gothic hero". Karl in them is stately and tall, "but extremely untidy and slovenly." Facial features are thin. The hair is blond and greasy and doesn't seem to meet a comb every day. The hat is crumpled - the king often sent it not on his head, but under his arm. Reiter's uniform, only cloth of the best quality. Boots are high, with spurs. As a result, everyone who did not know the king by sight took him for a Reiter officer, and not of the highest rank.
Peter was just as undemanding in dress. He wore a dress and shoes for a long time, sometimes up to holes. The habit of the French courtiers every day to appear in a new dress caused him only a mockery: "It seems that a young man cannot find a tailor who would dress him to his liking?" - he teased the Marquis of Libois, assigned to the high guest by the regent of France himself. At the reception of the king, Peter appeared in a modest frock coat made of a thick gray barakan (a kind of matter), without a tie, cuffs and lace, in - oh horror! - an unpowdered wig. The "extravagance" of the Moscow guest shocked Versailles so much that it became fashionable for a while. Court dandies for a month embarrassed court ladies with a wild (from the point of view of the French) costume, which received the official name "savage outfit".
Of course, if necessary, Peter appeared before his subjects in all the splendor of royal grandeur. In the first decades on the throne, it was the so-called Grand Sovereign attire, later - a richly decorated European dress. So, at the wedding ceremony of Catherine I with the title of Empress, the tsar appeared in a caftan embroidered with silver. The ceremony itself, and the fact that the hero of the occasion diligently worked on embroidery, obligated to this. True, at the same time, the sovereign, who did not like unnecessary expenses, did not bother to change his worn-out shoes. In this form, he laid on the kneeling Catherine the crown, which cost the treasury several tens of thousands of rubles.
To match the clothes were the manners of the two sovereigns - simple and even rude. Karl, according to his contemporaries, "eats like a horse," delving into his thoughts. In thoughtfulness, he can smear butter on bread with his finger. Food is the simplest and seems to be valued mainly in terms of satiety. On the day of his death, Karl, having dined, praises his cook: "You feed so well that you will have to be appointed head cook!" Peter is just as undemanding in food. His main requirement is that everything should be served piping hot: in the Summer Palace, for example, it was arranged in such a way that dishes fell on the royal table directly from the stove.
Unpretentious in food, the sovereigns differed greatly in their attitude to strong drinks. The maximum that Karl allowed himself was a weak dark beer: that was the vow that the young king gave after one plentiful libation. The vow is unusually strong, without retreats. Peter's unbridled drunkenness evokes nothing but a bitter sigh of regret from his apologists.
It is difficult to say who is to blame for this addiction. Most of the people close to Peter suffered from this vice. Clever Prince Boris Golitsyn, to whom the tsar owed so much in the fight against Tsarevna Sophia, according to one of his contemporaries, "drank incessantly." Not far behind him and the famous "deboshan" Franz Lefort. But he is perhaps the only person whom the young king tried to imitate.
But if the entourage dragged Peter into drunkenness, then the tsar himself, having matured, no longer tried to put an end to this protracted "service to the tavern." Suffice it to recall the "sessions" of the famous All-Joking and All-Drunken Council, after which the sovereign's head was shaking convulsively. The "patriarch" of the noisy company, Nikita Zotov, even had to warn "herr protodeacon" Peter against excessive prowess on the battlefield with "Ivashka Khmelnitsky".
Surprisingly, the king turned even a noisy feast to the benefit of his cause. His Most Joking Council is not just a way of wild relaxation and stress relief, but a form of affirming a new everyday life - the overthrow of the old with the help of laughter, demonism and abuse. Peter's phrase about "ancient customs" that are "always better than new ones" most successfully illustrates the essence of this plan - after all, the tsar praised "Holy Russian antiquity" at the clownish antics of the "crazy cathedral."
It is somewhat naive to oppose Karl's sober lifestyle to Peter's predilection "to be drunk all the days and never go to bed sober" (the main requirement of the charter of the Most Joking Council). Outwardly, this did not particularly affect the course of affairs. But only outwardly. A dark spot on the history of Peter falls not only the facts of unbridled drunken anger, anger to the point of murder, loss of human appearance. Formed "drunk" style of life of the court, the new aristocracy, deplorable in all respects.
Neither Peter nor Karl were distinguished by subtlety of feelings and sophistication of manners. Dozens of cases are known when the king, by his actions, caused a slight stupor in those around him. The German princess Sophia, smart and insightful, described her impressions after the first meeting with Peter in this way: the tsar is tall, handsome, his quick and correct answers speak of quickness of mind, but "with all the virtues that nature has endowed him with, it would be desirable that there was less rudeness in him."
Grub and Carl. But this is rather the underlined rudeness of a soldier. This is how he behaves in defeated Saxony, making it clear to Augustus and his subjects who lost the war and who should pay the bills. However, when it came to close people, both could be attentive and even gentle in their own way. Such is Peter in his letters to Catherine: "Katerinushka!", "My friend", "My friend, my heart's cue!" and even "Lapushka!". Karl is also caring and helpful in his letters to his relatives.
Karl avoided women. He was evenly cold with noble ladies and with those who, as women "for all," accompanied his army in the carts. According to contemporaries, the king, in dealing with the weaker sex, looked like "a guy from a provincial village." Such restraint over time even began to disturb his family. They repeatedly tried to persuade Karl to marry, but he avoided marriage with enviable persistence. The dowager queen-grandmother of Hedwig-Eleanor was especially baked about the family happiness of her grandson and the continuity of the dynasty. It was to her that Karl promised to "settle down" by the age of 30. When, upon reaching the deadline, the queen reminded her grandson of this, Karl in a short letter from Bender announced that he was "completely unable to remember his promises of this kind." Moreover, until the end of the war, he will be "overloaded beyond measure" - quite a weighty reason for postponing the matrimonial plans of "dear Mrs. Grandmother."
The "Northern Hero" passed away without marriage and without leaving an heir. This turned into new difficulties for Sweden and gave Peter the opportunity to put pressure on the stubborn Scandinavians. The fact is that Karl's nephew, Karl Friedrich Holstein-Gottor, the son of the king's deceased sister, Hedwig-Sophia, claimed not only the Swedish throne, but also the hand of Peter's daughter, Anna. And if in the first case his chances were problematic, then in the last - things quickly went to the wedding table. The king was not averse to taking advantage of the situation and bargaining. The tractability of the intractable Swedes was made by Peter dependent on their attitude towards peace with Russia: if you persist, we will support the claims of the future son-in-law; go to the signing of peace - we will take our hand away from Duke Charles.
Peter's treatment of the ladies was distinguished by impudence and even rudeness. The habit of commanding and stormy temperament did not help curb his seething passions. The king was not particularly picky in communications. In London, girls of easy virtue were offended by the completely non-royal payment for their services. Peter reacted immediately: what is the work, such is the pay.
It should be noted that what was condemned by the Orthodox Church and called "fornication" was considered almost the norm in Europeanized secular culture. Peter somehow quickly forgot about the first and easily accepted the second. True, he never had enough time and money for truly French "polites". He acted more simply, separating feelings from connections. Catherine had to accept this point of view. The endless campaigns of the king to the "metresses" became the subject of jokes in their correspondence.
Peter's wildness did not prevent him from dreaming of a home and a family. From there grew his affections. First, to Anna Mons, the daughter of a German wine merchant who settled in the German Quarter, then to Martha-Catherine, whom the tsar first saw in 1703 at Menshikov's. It all started as usual: a fleeting hobby, of which there were many in the sovereign who could not stand the refusal. But years passed, and Catherine did not disappear from the life of the king. Even temper, gaiety and warmth of soul - all this, apparently, attracted the king to her. Peter was at home everywhere, which meant he had no home. Now he has got a house and a mistress who gave him a family and a sense of family comfort.
Catherine is just as narrow-minded as the first wife of Peter, Tsarina Evdokia Lopukhina, imprisoned in a monastery. But Peter did not need an adviser. But, unlike the disgraced queen, Catherine could easily sit in a male company or, leaving things in a wagon, rush after Peter to the ends of the world. She did not ask the trifling question whether such an act was proper or obscene. The question just didn't cross her mind. Sovereign betrothed called - so it is necessary.
Even with a very large condescension, Catherine can hardly be called an intelligent person. When, after the death of Peter, she was elevated to the throne, the empress's complete inability to do business was revealed. Strictly speaking, it was with these qualities that she apparently pleased her supporters. But the limitations of Catherine the Empress became at the same time the strength of Catherine the friend, and then the wife of the Tsar. She was worldly smart, which does not require a high mind at all, but only the ability to adapt, not to annoy, to know her place. Peter appreciated the unpretentiousness of Catherine and the ability, if circumstances so required, to endure. Her physical strength also came to the heart of the sovereign. And right. It was necessary to have considerable strength and remarkable health in order to keep up with Peter.
Peter's personal life turned out to be richer and more dramatic than Karl's personal life. Unlike his opponent, the king knew family happiness. But he also had to fully drink the cup of family adversity. He went through a conflict with his son, Tsarevich Alexei, the tragic outcome of which placed on Peter the stigma of a son-killer. There was a dark story in the life of the king with one of the brothers of Anna Mons, chamberlain Willim Mons, caught in 1724 in connection with Catherine.
Peter, who had little regard for human dignity, once publicly mocked a certain cook of Catherine, who was deceived by his wife. The king even ordered deer antlers to be hung over the door of his house. And then he landed in an ambiguous position! Peter was beside himself. "He was pale as death, his wandering eyes sparkled ... Everyone, seeing him, was seized with fear." The banal story of betrayed trust in the performance of Peter received a dramatic coloring with echoes that shook the whole country. Mons was arrested, tried and executed. The vengeful king, before forgiving his wife, forced her to contemplate the severed head of the unfortunate chamberlain.
At one time, L. N. Tolstoy intended to write a novel about the time of Peter. But as soon as he delved into the era, many similar cases turned the writer away from his plan. The cruelty of Peter struck Tolstoy. "Rabid beast" - these are the words that the great writer found for the reformer king.
No such accusations were made against Karl. Swedish historians even noted his decision to ban the use of torture during the investigation: the king refused to believe in the reliability of the accusations received in this way. This is a remarkable fact, testifying to the different state of Swedish and Russian society. However, the feeling of humanism, combined with Protestant maximalism, was selective in Karl. It did not prevent him from reprisals against Russian prisoners taken in battles in Poland: they were killed and maimed.
Contemporaries, evaluating the behavior and manners of the two sovereigns, were more condescending to Peter than to Charles. They did not expect anything else from the Russian monarch. The rudeness and impudence of Peter for them is exotic, which must have accompanied the behavior of the ruler of the "Muscovite barbarians". Karl is more difficult. Charles is the sovereign of a European power. And neglect of manners is unforgivable even for a king. Meanwhile, the motivations for the behavior of Peter and Karl were largely similar. Karl rejected, Peter did not adopt what prevented them from being sovereigns.
The Swedish and Russian monarchs were distinguished by hard work. Moreover, this industriousness differed greatly from the industriousness of Louis XIV, who at one time proudly declared that "the power of kings is acquired by labor." It is unlikely that both of our heroes would dispute the French monarch in this. However, Louis' industriousness was very specific, limited by subject, time and royal whim. Louis did not allow not only clouds on the Sun, but also calluses on the palms. (At one time, the Dutch issued a medal on which the clouds obscured the Sun. The "Sun King" quickly figured out the symbolism and blazed with anger towards the fearless neighbors.)
Charles XII got his industriousness from his father, King Charles XI, who became a model of behavior for the young man. The example was reinforced by the efforts of the enlightened educators of the heir. From early childhood, the Viking King's day was filled with work. Most often, these were military concerns, a hard and troublesome bivouac life. But even after the end of hostilities, the king did not allow himself any indulgences. Karl got up very early, sorted out papers, and then went to inspect regiments or institutions. Actually, the very simplicity in manners and in clothes, which has already been mentioned, comes largely from the habit of working. Exquisite attire is just an obstacle here. Karl's manner of not unfastening his spurs was born not from bad manners, but from his readiness to jump on a horse at the first call and rush about business. The King has demonstrated this time and time again. The most impressive demonstration is Karl's seventeen-hour ride from Bender to the Prut River, where the Turks and Tatars surrounded Peter's army. It is not the fault of the king that he had to see only columns of dust over the columns of Peter's troops leaving for Russia. Karl had no luck with the "capricious girl Fortune". It is no coincidence that she was depicted in the 18th century with a shaved head: gape, did not grab her hair in time in front - remember her name!
“I heal my body with water, and my subjects with examples,” announced Peter in Olonets (Karelia, almost 150 kilometers from Petrozavodsk) at martial springs. In the phrase, the emphasis was on the word "water" - Peter was incredibly proud of the opening of his own resort. History rightly shifted the emphasis to the second part. The tsar really gave his subjects an example of tireless and disinterested labor for the good of the Fatherland.
Moreover, with the light hand of the Moscow sovereign, the image of a monarch was formed, whose virtues were determined not by prayerful zeal and indestructible piety, but by labors. Actually, after Peter, work was made the duty of a true ruler. A fashion began to work - not without the participation of enlighteners. Moreover, not just state labor was revered, as it was in debt. The sovereign was also charged with private labor, a work-example, during which the monarch descended to his subjects. So, Peter was a carpenter, built ships, worked in a lathe (historians lost count when counting the crafts that the Russian sovereign mastered). The Austrian Empress Maria Theresa regaled the courtiers with excellent milk, milking the cows on the imperial farm with her own hands. Louis XV, breaking away from love pleasures, was engaged in wallpaper craft, and his son Louis XVI, with the dexterity of a regimental surgeon, opened the mechanical womb of the clock and brought them back to life. In fairness, we must still note the difference between the original and copies. For Peter, work is a necessity and a vital need. His epigones have rather joy and fun, although, of course, if Louis XVI had become a watchmaker, life would have ended in bed, and not on the guillotine.
In the perception of contemporaries, the industriousness of both sovereigns, of course, had its own shades. Charles appeared to them primarily as a soldier king, whose thoughts and works revolved around the war. Peter's activities are more diverse, and his "image" is more polyphonic. The prefix "warrior" rarely accompanies his name. He is the sovereign who is forced to do everything. The versatile, ebullient activity of Peter was reflected in the correspondence. For more than a hundred years, historians and archivists have been publishing letters and papers of Peter I, but meanwhile it is still far from completion.
The remarkable historian M. M. Bogoslovsky, in order to illustrate the scale of the royal correspondence, took as an example one day from the life of Peter - July 6, 1707. A simple list of topics covered in the letters inspires respect. But the tsar-reformer touched them from memory, demonstrating great awareness. Here is the range of these topics: payment to the Moscow City Hall of amounts from the Admiralty, Siberian and local orders; coinage; recruitment of the dragoon regiment and its armament; issuance of grain provisions; construction of a defensive line in the Derpt chief commandant's office; translation of the Mitchel Regiment; bringing traitors and criminals to justice; new appointments; digging device; putting the Astrakhan rebels on trial; sending a clerk to the Preobrazhensky Regiment; replenishment of Sheremetev's regiments by officers; contributions; search for an interpreter for Sheremetev; the expulsion of the fugitives from the Don; sending convoys to Poland to the Russian regiments; investigation of conflicts on the Izyum line.
On that day, Peter's thought covered the space from Derpt to Moscow, from Polish Ukraine to the Don, the tsar instructed, admonished many close and not very close employees - princes Yu. V. Dolgoruky, M. P. Gagarin, F. Yu. Romodanovsky, field marshal B. P. Sheremetev, K. A. Naryshkin, A. A. Kurbatov, G. A. Plemyannikov and others.
The industriousness of Peter and Karl is the flip side of their curiosity. In the history of transformations, it was the tsar's curiosity that acted as a kind of "primal impetus" and at the same time perpetuum mobile - the perpetual motion machine of reforms. The inexhaustible inquisitiveness of the king is surprising, his ability to be surprised until his death is not lost.
Carl's curiosity is more restrained. She is devoid of Petrine ardor. The King is prone to cold, systematic analysis. This was partly due to the difference in education. It is simply incomparable - a different type and focus. Charles XII's father was guided by European concepts, personally developing a training and education plan for his son. The prince's tutor is one of the most intelligent officials, royal adviser Eric Lindsheld, the teachers are the future bishop, professor of theology from Uppsala University Eric Benzelius and professor of Latin Andreas Norkopensis. Contemporaries spoke of Karl's penchant for mathematics. There was someone to develop his talent - the heir to the throne communicated with the best mathematicians.
Against this background, the modest figure of the deacon Zotov, Peter's main teacher, loses a lot. He, of course, was distinguished by piety and for the time being was not a "hawker". But this is clearly not enough in terms of future reforms. The paradox, however, was that neither Peter himself nor his teachers could even guess what kind of knowledge the future reformer needed. Peter is doomed on the lack of European education: firstly, it simply did not exist; secondly, it was revered as evil. It's good that Zotov and others like him did not discourage Peter's curiosity. Peter will be engaged in self-education all his life - and his results will be impressive. However, the king clearly lacked a systematic education, which would have to be replenished through common sense and great work.
Karl and Peter were deeply religious people. The religious upbringing of Charles was distinguished by purposefulness. As a child, he even wrote essays on court sermons. Karl's faith bore a touch of earnestness and even fanaticism. "In any circumstances, - noted contemporaries - he remains true to his unshakable faith in God and His almighty help." Isn't this partly the explanation for the extraordinary courage of the king? If, according to divine providence, not a single hair flies off the head ahead of time, then why beware, bow to bullets? As a devout Protestant, Karl never for a moment leaves the exercise of piety. In 1708, he re-read the Bible four times, became proud (even wrote down the days when he opened the Holy Scriptures) and immediately condemned himself. Recordings flew into the fire under the comment: "I boast of it."
An exercise in piety is also a feeling of being a conductor of the divine will. The king is not just at war with Augustus the Strong or Peter I. He acts as the punishing hand of the Lord, punishing these named sovereigns for perjury and treachery - a motive extremely important for Charles. The extraordinary stubbornness, more precisely, the stubbornness of the "Gothic hero", who did not want to go to peace under any circumstances, goes back to his conviction that he was chosen. Therefore, all failures for the king are only a test sent by God, a test of strength. Here is one small touch: Karl in Bendery drew plans for two frigates (not only Peter did this!) And unexpectedly gave them Turkish names: the first - "Yilderin", the second - "Yaramas", which together translates as "here I will come!" The drawings have been sent to Sweden with strict orders to begin construction immediately, so that everyone knows: nothing is lost, it will come!
The religiosity of Peter is devoid of the earnestness of Charles. It is more base, more pragmatic. The king believes because he believes, but also because faith always turns to the visible benefit of the state. There is a story associated with Vasily Tatishchev. The future historian, upon his return from abroad, allowed himself caustic attacks against the Holy Scriptures. The king set out to teach the freethinker a lesson. "Teaching", in addition to measures of a physical nature, was reinforced by instruction, very characteristic of the "teacher" himself. “How dare you weaken such a string, which makes up the harmony of the whole tone? - Peter was furious. - I will teach you how to read it (Holy Scripture. - I. A.) and do not break the circuits that everything in the device contains".
Remaining a deep believer, Peter did not feel any reverence for the church and the church hierarchy. That is why, without any reflection, he began to remake the church dispensation in the right way. With the light hand of the tsar, the synodal period began in the history of the Russian church, when the highest administration of the church was, in fact, reduced to a simple department for spiritual and moral affairs under the emperor.
Both loved the military. The king plunged headlong into "Mars and Neptune's fun." But very soon he stepped over the boundaries of the game and set about radical military transformations. Carl didn't have to arrange anything like that. Instead of "amusing" regiments, he immediately received "ownership" of one of the best European armies. It is not surprising that he, unlike Peter, had almost no pause in his discipleship. He immediately became a famous commander, demonstrating outstanding tactical and operational skills on the battlefield. But the war, which completely captured Karl, played a cruel joke with him. The king very soon confused ends and means. And if the war becomes the goal, then the result is almost always sad, sometimes self-destruction. The French, after the endless Napoleonic wars that knocked out the healthy part of the nation, "decreased" in height by two inches. I don’t know exactly what the Northern War cost the tall Swedes, but it can definitely be argued that Charles himself burned down in the fire of war, and Sweden overstrained itself, unable to withstand the burden of great power.
Unlike "brother Charles," Peter never confused ends and means. The war and the transformations connected with it remained for him a means of exalting the country. When embarking on "peaceful" reforms at the end of the Northern War, the tsar declares his intentions in this way: zemstvo affairs must be "brought into the same order as military affairs."
Karl liked to take risks, usually without thinking about the consequences. Adrenaline boiled in his blood and gave him a feeling of fullness of life. Whatever page of Karl's biography we take, no matter how big or small the episode is subjected to close scrutiny, everywhere one can see the insane courage of the hero-king, the unceasing desire to test himself for strength. In his youth, he hunted a bear with one horn, and to the question: "Isn't it scary?" - He answered without any frills: "Not at all, if you are not afraid." Later, without bowing, he walked under the bullets. There were cases when they "stung" him, but until a certain time he was lucky: either the bullets were at the end, or the wound was non-fatal.
Carl's love of risk is his weakness and strength. More precisely, if we follow the chronology of events, we must say this: first - strength, then - weakness. Indeed, this trait of Karl's character gave him a visible advantage over his opponents, since they almost always followed "normal", risk-free logic. Karl appeared there and then, when and where he was not expected, acted as no one had ever acted. A similar thing happened near Narva in November 1700. Peter left the position near Narva the day before the Swedes appeared (he went to rush the reserves) not because he was frightened, but because he proceeded from the position: after the march, the Swedes should rest, set up a camp, reconnoiter, and only then attack. But the king did the opposite. He gave no rest to the regiments, the camp did not arrange it, and at dawn, barely visible, he rushed headlong into the attack. If you think about it, all these qualities characterize a true commander. With the proviso that there is a certain condition, the fulfillment of which distinguishes a great commander from an ordinary military leader. This condition: the risk must be justified.
The king did not want to reckon with this rule. He defied fate. And if fate turned away from him, then, in his opinion, let it be worse ... fate. Should we be surprised at his reaction to Poltava? “I’m doing well. And only recently, due to one special event, misfortune happened, and the army suffered damage, which, I hope, will soon be corrected,” he wrote in early August 1709 to his sister Ulrike-Eleonora. This is "everything is good" and a small "misfortune" - about the defeat and capture of the entire Swedish army near Poltava and Perevolnaya!
Carl's role in history is a hero. Peter did not look so brave. He is more circumspect and careful. Risk is not his forte. Even moments of weakness of the king are known, when he lost his head and strength. But the closer we are to Peter, who is able to overcome himself. It is in this that one of the most important differences between Charles and Peter finds its manifestation. They are both men of duty. But each of them understands duty in their own way. Peter feels himself a servant of the Fatherland. This view for him is both a moral justification for everything he has done, and the main motive that encourages him to overcome fatigue, fear, and indecision. Peter thinks of himself for the Fatherland, and not the Fatherland for himself: "And know about Peter that his life is inexpensive for him, if only Russia would live in bliss and glory for your well-being." These words, spoken by the tsar on the eve of the Battle of Poltava, perfectly reflected his inner attitude. Karl is different. With all his love for Sweden, he turned the country into a means of realizing his ambitious plans.
The fate of Peter and Charles is the story of the eternal dispute about which ruler is better: an idealist who put principles and ideals above all else, or a pragmatist who stood firmly on the ground and preferred real rather than illusory goals. Karl in this dispute acted as an idealist and lost, because his idea to punish, in spite of everything, treacherous opponents from the absolute turned into absurdity.
Charles, in a purely Protestant way, was sure that a person is saved by faith alone. And he believed in it unshakably. It is symbolic that the earliest surviving written by Charles is a quote from the Gospel of Matthew (VI, 33): "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you." Charles not only followed this commandment, he "implanted" it. In the perception of his destiny, the Swedish king is a more medieval sovereign than the king of the "barbarian Muscovites" Peter. He is seized with sincere religious piety. Protestant theology for him is completely self-sufficient in substantiating his absolute power and the nature of his relationship with his subjects. For Peter, however, the previous "ideological equipment" of the autocracy, which rested on theocratic foundations, was completely insufficient. He justifies his power more broadly, resorting to the theory of natural law and the "common good".
Paradoxically, Karl, in his incredible stubbornness and in his talent, contributed a lot to the reforms in Russia and the formation of Peter as a statesman. Under the leadership of Charles, Sweden not only did not want to part with the great power. She strained all her strength, mobilized all the potential, including the energy and intelligence of the nation, in order to maintain her position. In response, this required the incredible efforts of Peter and Russia. If Sweden yielded earlier, and who knows how strong the "roll" of reforms and the imperial ambitions of the Russian tsar would have been? Of course, there is no reason to doubt the energy of Peter, who would hardly have refused to goad and spur the country. But it is one thing to carry out reforms in a country that is waging a "three-dimensional war," another thing that is ending the war after Poltava. In a word, Karl, with all his skills to win battles and lose the war, was a worthy rival to Peter. And although there was no king among those captured on the Poltava field, the congratulations cup for teachers raised by the king undoubtedly had a direct bearing on him.
I wonder if Karl would have agreed - if he had been present at the same time - with his field marshal Renschild, who muttered in response to Peter's toast: "Well, you thanked your teachers!"?
In the autumn of 1718, the Swedish king Charles XII led his army against the Danes. The offensive was carried out in the direction of the city of Fredrikshald, an important strategic point of defense for all of southern Norway. Norway and Denmark at that time were a personal union (that is, a union of two independent and independent states with one head).
But the approaches to Fredrikshald were covered by the mountain castle Fredriksten, a powerful fortress with several external fortifications. Under the walls of Fredriksten, the Swedes came on November 1, locking up a garrison of 1,400 soldiers and officers in a siege. Overwhelmed by fighting enthusiasm, the king personally supervised all siege work. During the assault on the outer castle fortification of Güllenlöve, begun on December 7, His Majesty himself led two hundred grenadiers into battle and fought in desperate hand-to-hand combat until all the defenders of the redoubt fell dead. Less than 700 steps remained from the advanced trenches of the Swedes to the walls of Fredriksten. Three Swedish siege batteries of large caliber, six guns each, methodically bombarded the castle from different positions. Staff officers assured Charles that a week remained before the fall of the fortress. Nevertheless, sapper work on the front line continued, despite the continuous shelling of the Danes. As always neglecting the danger, the monarch did not leave the battlefield day or night. On the night of December 18, Karl wished to personally inspect the progress of earthworks. He was accompanied by: personal adjutant - Italian captain Marchetti, general Knut Posse, major general from the cavalry von Schwerin, sapper captain Schultz, lieutenant engineer Karlberg, as well as a team of foreign military engineers - two Germans and four Frenchmen. In the trenches, a French officer, adjutant and personal secretary of Generalissimo Friedrich of Hesse-Kassel, husband of His Majesty's sister, Princess Ulrika Eleanor, joined the king's retinue. His name was André Sicre, and there was no obvious reason for him to be present at that hour and in that place.
At about nine o'clock in the evening, Karl once again climbed the parapet and, with the flashes of lighting rockets launched from the castle, looked at the progress of work through a telescope. In the trench next to him stood the French colonel engineer Maigret, to whom the king gave orders. After another remark, the king fell silent for a long time. The pause was too long even for His Majesty, who was not known for verbosity. When the officers called out to him from the trench, Karl did not answer. Then the adjutants climbed onto the parapet and, by the light of another Danish rocket launched into the night sky, they saw that the king was lying face down, with his nose buried in the ground. When he was turned over and examined, it turned out that Charles XII was dead - he was shot in the head.
The body of the deceased monarch was taken out on a stretcher from the front lines and taken to the headquarters tent, handing it over to the life physician and personal friend of the deceased, Dr. Melchior Neumann, who began to prepare everything necessary for embalming.
The very next day, the military council that had gathered in the Swedish camp, in connection with the death of the king, decided to lift the siege and generally stop this campaign. Due to the hasty retreat, as well as the hustle and bustle surrounding the change of government, no investigation into the death of Charles XII was carried out in hot pursuit. There was not even an official protocol drawn up on the circumstances of his death. All those involved in this story were completely satisfied with the version according to which a buckshot the size of a pigeon's egg, fired through the trenches of the Swedes from a fortress cannon, hit the king's head. Thus, the main culprit for the death of Charles XII was declared a military accident, sparing neither kings nor commoners.
However, in addition to the official version, almost immediately after the death of Charles, another one arose - the German archivist Friedrich Ernst von Fabritz writes about this in his work The True History of the Life of Charles XII, published in 1759 in Hamburg. Many of the king's associates assumed that under Fredriksten he was killed by conspirators. This suspicion was not born out of nowhere: there were enough people in the royal army who wanted to send Charles to the forefathers.
The last conquistador
In 1700, the king went to fight with Russia, spent nearly 14 years in a foreign land. After military luck failed him near Poltava, he took refuge in the possessions of the Turkish Sultan. He ruled his kingdom from a camp near the village of Varnitsa near the Moldavian city of Bender, driving couriers across the continent to Stockholm. The king dreamed of a military revenge and intrigued in every possible way at the Sultan's court, trying to unleash a war with the Russians. Over time, he was pretty tired of the government of the Ottoman Empire, and several times he received delicate proposals to go home.
In the end he was placed with great honor in a castle near Adrianople, where he was given complete freedom. This was a cunning tactic - Karl was not forced to leave, but simply deprived of his ability to act (the couriers were not allowed through). The calculation turned out to be accurate - after lying on the sofas for three months, the fidget king, prone to impulsive actions, announced his desire to no longer burden the Brilliant Port with his presence and ordered the courtiers to get ready for the road. By the autumn of 1714, everything was ready, and the Swedish caravan, accompanied by an honorary Turkish escort, set off on a long journey.
On the border with Transylvania, the king released the Turkish convoy and announced to his subjects that he would go on, accompanied by only one officer. Having ordered the convoy to go to Stralsund - a fortress in Swedish Pomerania - and be there no later than a month later, Karl, with false documents in the name of Captain Frisk, crossed Transylvania, Hungary, Austria, Bavaria, passed Württemberg, Hesse, Frankfurt and Hanover, reaching to Stralsund in two weeks.
The king had good reason to hasten his return. While he enjoyed military adventures and political intrigues in distant lands, things were going very badly in his own kingdom. On the lands conquered from the Swedes at the mouth of the Neva, the Russians managed to establish a new capital, in the Baltic states they took Revel and Riga, in Finland the Russian flag fluttered over Kexholm, Vyborg, Helsingfors and Turku. The allies of Emperor Peter crushed the Swedes in Pomerania, Bremen, Stetten, Hanover and Brandenburg fell under their onslaught. Shortly after his return, Stralsund also fell, which the king left under fire from enemy artillery on a small rowboat, fleeing capture.
The economy of Sweden was completely ruined, but all the talk that the continuation of the war would turn into a complete economic disaster did not at all frighten the king-knight, who believed that if he himself was content with one uniform and one change of underwear, eating from a soldier’s boiler, then his subjects could be patient until he defeats all the enemies of the kingdom and the Lutheran faith. Von Fabrice writes that in Stralsund, the former Holstein minister, Baron Georg von Görtz, who was looking for service, introduced himself to the king, promising the king a solution to all financial and political problems. Having received carte blanche from the king, Mr. Görtz quickly pulled off a reform-scam, equating the Swedish silver daler with a copper coin called “notdaler” by decree. On the reverse of the notdalers, the head of Hermes was minted, and the Swedes called him “the god of Görtz”, and the coppers themselves were “money of need”. These unsecured coins were minted in 20 million pieces, which aggravated the economic crisis of the kingdom, but still made it possible to prepare for a new military campaign.
By order of Karl, the regiments were replenished with recruits, cannons were cast again, fodder and food were prepared, headquarters developed plans for new campaigns. Everyone knew that the king would still not agree to stop the war, even if only out of simple stubbornness, which he was famous for from childhood. However, the opponents of the war were not going to sit idly by either. The king placed his headquarters in Lund, announcing that he would return to the capital of the kingdom only as a winner, and news came from Stockholm, one more disturbing than the other. In 1714, when the king was still "visiting" the Sultan, the Swedish nobility assembled the Riksdag, which decided to persuade the monarch to seek peace. Charles ignored this decision and did not conclude peace, but he and his supporters had an opposition - an aristocratic party, the head of which was considered the Duke of Hesse Frederick, who in 1715 was legally married to Princess Ulrika-Eleanor, Charles's only sister and heir to the Swedish throne. Members of this organization became the first suspects in the preparation of the murder of their crowned relative.
Confessions of Baron Cronstedt
The death of Charles brought Ulrika-Eleanor, the wife of Frederick of Hesse-Kassel, the royal crown, and as Roman lawyers taught, Is fecit cui prodest - "The one who benefits" did it. In the spring of 1718, before setting off on a Norwegian campaign, Duke Friedrich instructed the court adviser Hein to draw up a special memorandum for Ulrika-Eleonora, which detailed her actions in the event that King Charles died and her husband was absent at that time in the capital. And the mysterious appearance at the scene of the assassination of the king's adjutant Prince Frederick, Andre Sikra, whom close officers initially believed to be the direct executor of the order of the conspirators, looks completely ominous.
However, if you wish, you can interpret these facts in a completely different way. The drafting of the memorandum for Ulrika-Eleonora is fully explained by the fact that her husband and brother did not go to the ball, but to the war, where anything could happen. Realizing that his wife, not distinguished by special abilities, is likely to be confused in a crisis situation, Friedrich could well attend to the issue of insurance. Adjutant Sicre had a solid alibi: on the night of the death of Charles XII, there were several more people in the trench next to Sicre, who testified that none of those present had fired. In addition, Sikra was standing so close to the king that, if he had fired, traces of gunpowder would certainly have remained in the wound and around it - but there were none.
Foreigners from the retinue of the king also fell under suspicion. As the German historian Knut Lundblad writes in the book The History of Charles XII, published in 1835 in Kristianstad, they were ready to record the engineer Megre as the murderers of the Swedish king, who allegedly could take sin on his soul in the name of the interests of the French crown. As a matter of fact, everyone who was in the trench that night was suspected in turn, but they did not find reliable evidence against anyone. However, rumors that King Charles was killed by conspirators did not subside for many years, thus casting doubt on the legitimacy of Charles's successors on the Swedish throne. Unable to otherwise refute this rumor, the authorities, 28 years after the death of Charles XII, announced the opening of an official investigation into the murder.
In 1746, by the highest order, the crypt in the Riddarholm Church of Stockholm, where the remains of the king rested, was opened, the corpse was subjected to a detailed study. At one time, the conscientious Dr. Neumann embalmed Karl's body so thoroughly that decay almost did not touch him. The wound on the head of the late king was carefully examined, and experts - doctors and military - came to the conclusion that it was not left by a round cannon buckshot, as previously thought, but by a conical rifle bullet fired from the side of the fortress.
Calculations, writes Lundblad, showed that the bullet would have reached the place of Karl’s death from where the enemy could have shot at him, but its lethal force was no longer enough to pierce through the head, knocking out the temple, as it turned out during the examination. Fired from the nearest Danish position, the bullet would have to remain in the skull, or even lodge in the wound itself. This means that someone shot at the king from a much closer distance. But who?
Four years later, says Lundblad, in December 1750, the pastor of the Stockholm church of St. Jacob, the famous preacher Tolstadius, was urgently called to the bedside of the dying Major General Baron Karl Kronstedt, who asked to receive his last confession. Clutching the pastor's hand, the baron begged him to immediately go to Colonel Stierneroos and demand from him, in the name of the Lord, a confession of the same thing that he himself, tormented by pangs of conscience, was going to repent of: they were both guilty of the death of the king of the Swedes.
General Kronstedt in the Swedish army was in charge of fire training and was known as the inventor of high-speed shooting methods. A brilliant marksman himself, the baron trained quite a few officers who today would be called snipers. One of his students was Magnus Stierneroos, who was promoted to lieutenant in 1705. Two years later, the young officer was enrolled in a detachment of drabants - the personal bodyguards of King Charles. Together with them, he went through all the alterations that so abounded in the biography of the militant monarch. What the general said on his deathbed did not at all fit in with the reputation of a loyal and valiant campaigner that Stierneroos enjoyed. However, fulfilling the will of the dying man, the pastor went to the colonel's house and gave him the words of Cronstedt. As expected, the colonel only expressed regret that his good friend and teacher before his death fell into madness, began to talk and talk nonsense in delirium. After listening to this answer of Stierneroos, reported to him by the pastor, Mr. Baron again sent Tolstadius to him, ordering him to say: “So that the colonel does not think that I am talking, tell him that he made“ this ”from a carbine hanging third on the weapon wall of his office " . The Baron's second message sent Stierneroos into an indescribable rage, and he kicked the respected pastor out. Bound by a secret confession, the Monk Tolstadius was silent, exemplarily fulfilling his priestly duty.
Only after his death, which followed in 1759, among the papers of Tolstadius was found a summary of the story of General Cronstedt, from which it followed that, on behalf of the conspirators, he picked up the shooter, offering this role to Magnus Stierneroos. Secretly, unnoticed by anyone, the general made his way into the trenches after the retinue of the king. Drabant Stierneroos followed at that time as part of a team of bodyguards who accompanied Karl everywhere. In the nighttime confusion of intertwining trenches, Stierneroos imperceptibly broke away from the general group, and the baron himself loaded the carbine and handed it to his student with the words: “Now it’s time to get down to business!”
The lieutenant got out of the trench, took up a position between the castle and the advanced fortifications of the Swedes. After waiting for the moment when the king rose above the parapet to the waist and was well lit by another rocket fired from the fortress, the lieutenant shot Karl in the head, and then managed to return to the Swedish trenches unnoticed. He later received 500 gold awards for this murder.
After the death of the king, the Swedes lifted the siege from the castle, and the generals divided the military treasury, which consisted of 100,000 dalers. Von Fabrice writes that the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp received six thousand, Field Marshals Renskold and Mörner took twelve each, someone received four, someone three. All major generals were given 800 dalers each, senior officers - 600 each. Kronstedt, 4000 dalers "for special merits" were transferred. The general assured that he himself gave Magnus Stierneroos 500 coins from the amount that was due to him.
The evidence recorded by Tolstadius is accepted by many as a true indication of the perpetrators of the assassination, but it did not in the least affect the career of Stierneroos, who rose to the rank of general of cavalry. The late pastor's record of the contents of Baron Cronstedt's dying confession was insufficient for a formal accusation.
Click to enlarge
Siege of Fredrikshald, during which Charles XII died
1. Fort Gyllenlöve, taken by the Swedes on December 8, 1718
2, 3, 4. Swedish siege artillery and sectors of its shelling
5. Swedish trenches erected during the siege of Gyllenlöve
6. The house where Charles XII lived after the capture of the fort
7. New assault trench of the Swedes
8. Front assault trench and the place where Charles XII was killed on December 17
9 Fortress Fredriksten
10, 11, 12. Sectors of shelling of the Danish fortress artillery and artillery of auxiliary forts
13, 14, 15 Swedish troops blocking the Danish retreat
16 Swedish camp
fortress gun
Already at the end of the eighteenth century, in 1789, the Swedish king Gustav III, in a conversation with a French envoy, confidently named Cronstedt and Stierneroos as the direct executors of the assassination of Charles XII. In his opinion, the English king George I acted as an interested party in this incident. Closer to the end of the Northern War (1700–1721), a complex multi-way intrigue ensued, in which Charles XII and his army played an important role. There was an agreement, writes Lundblad, between the Swedish king and supporters of the son of King James II, who claimed the English throne, according to which, after the capture of Fredriksten, the Swedish expeditionary force of 20,000 bayonets was to go from the coast of Norway to the British Isles to support the Jacobites (Catholics, supporters of James . - Approx. ed.), who fought with the army of the ruling George I. Baron Görtz, whom Karl completely trusted, agreed with the plan. Mr. Baron was looking for money for the king, and the English Jacobites promised to pay well for Swedish support.
But even here there is reason to doubt. The secret correspondence of the Swedes and the Jacobites was intercepted, the fleet, intended for the transfer of the Swedish army to the English theater of operations, was defeated by the Danes. After that, if there was still a threat of the Swedes entering the English civil strife, it was only speculative, not requiring an immediate attempt on the life of Charles XII. Lundblad says that the inconsistency and lack of evidence for the death of Charles XII at the hands of the conspirators has led some scholars to suggest that the death of the king was the result of an accident. A stray bullet hit him. Researchers cite practical experience and accurate calculations as arguments. In particular, they claim that a bullet fired from a so-called fortress gun hit the king's head. It was a kind of handgun, of greater power and caliber than conventional handguns. A shot from them was made from a stationary stand, and they hit further than ordinary infantry rifles, enabling the besieged to fire at the besiegers on the distant approaches to the fortifications.
A Swedish doctor, Dr. Nyström, one of the researchers interested in the history of Karl's death, in 1907 decided to check the version with a shot from a fortress gun. He himself was a staunch supporter of the version of the atrocity of the conspirators and believed that an aimed shot at the right distance from the fortress to the trench was impossible in those days. Having a scientific mind, the doctor was going to experimentally prove the fallacy of the statements of his opponents. By his order, an exact copy of a fortress gun from the beginning of the 18th century was made. These weapons were loaded with gunpowder, similar to that used at the siege of Fredrikshald, and exactly the same bullets as were used in the early 18th century.
Everything was reproduced down to the smallest detail. At the place where Charles XII was found dead, a target was installed, on which Nyström himself fired 24 bullets from the castle wall from a reconstructed fortress gun. The result of the experiment was amazing: 23 bullets hit the target, entering it horizontally, piercing through the target! So, proving the impossibility of this scenario, the doctor confirmed its full possibility.
The colorful life of King Charles is a treasure trove of plots for novelists and film screenwriters. But nothing has been established for sure so far.
17:45 - REGNUM Charles XII No wonder he is considered the most glorious of the Swedish kings. And the great Voltaire rightly said that with Charles, Europe, as it were, found itself again in the times of Hercules and Theseus.
In Russia, Charles XII is just a gloomy and disheveled antagonist of Peter the Great, a Swede who “burned out” near Poltava. It is not customary for us to remember that before Poltava Charles had Narva and dozens of brilliantly conducted battles. Charles XII in the Russian cultural space remained the same as A. Pushkin described him: “a militant vagabond”.
He is blind, stubborn, impatient,
Both frivolous and arrogant,
God knows what kind of happiness he believes;
He forces a new enemy
Success only measures the past -
Break his horns.
The confrontation of the "giant" Peter, who "all like God's thunderstorm"— and Carla, who glides over the abyss, "crowned with useless glory", in the context of a brilliant poem, of course, justified and appropriate. But is such a characterization fair in relation not to the character of a romantic work, but to a historical figure? A. Strindberg, the classic and founder of Swedish literature, would obviously agree with Pushkin. He strongly objected when, under him, Charles XII was called the northern Alexander of Macedon.
"Alexander spread enlightenment among the barbarians, acting like a student of Aristotle , - he was indignant, - while our beardless Langobard made only predatory campaigns ... Charles XII was a ghost who rose from the Hunnic graves, a Goth who needed to burn Rome again, Don Quixote, freeing convicts, while shackling his own subjects in iron, slaughtering them in blood " .
And the facts remain facts: Sweden, broken during the reign of Charles, could not recover, for a long time remaining a devastated and tormented country, and the military exploits of past years were bad consolation. The “useless glory” of the warrior king turned into hard, bleak times for the power entrusted to him ...
June 17 (according to the Julian calendar) 1682 in the morning in Stockholm, bad weather raged, the wind howled and tore the roof off the houses, carried clouds of dust and litter. The cannons thundered deafeningly - exactly 21 shots. Charles XI wrote in his diary: “On the seventeenth on Saturday at a quarter to 7 in the morning, my wife was allowed to have a son. Praise be to the Lord God who helped her!”
The child was baptized without delay, at the request of the king, the newborn prince was named Charles - like his father, Charles XI, like his grandfather, Charles X. Sweden breathed a sigh of relief: an heir was provided to the throne. Few people went to bed sober that night in Stockholm.
The young prince was given the best education, although most of all he had a penchant for military sciences - from history he was interested in the life of Alexander the Great and outstanding battles, he studied geography with close and avid interest. Pious, stubborn and terribly ambitious, since childhood, young Karl was the favorite of his stern father. He, a reformer and warrior - but, according to his recollections, a man very far from sophistication, was glad to see a military vein in his son and raised him like a man. Karl was put on a horse for the first time as a four-year-old kid, and soon the royal father willingly took his son with him to military reviews, to inspections of garrisons - and to hunt. Hunting in Sweden was not at all the same as courtly trips to the deer forests in Versailles or the complex ritual of falconry in Russia: it was a truly dangerous martial art with a predatory beast. The boy shot his first wolf at 8, and a bear at 11. The father was and remained a model for his son in everything, and in his childhood diary, Karl, answering a question about his cherished desire, wrote: “I would like to have the happiness of accompanying dad on a hike one day”. The prince's teachers, carefully selected by his father, taught him all the sciences that would be useful to the young prince when he ascended the throne. Historical documents were analyzed with him, he freely read and spoke Latin, German, French, and in fortification, artillery and military art he achieved serious successes under the leadership of Lieutenant General of the Quartermaster Service Karl Magnus Stuart, who, in the face of his high-born student, faced almost with a greater military fanatic than Stuart himself. Alas, solid theoretical knowledge and the makings of a strategist and commander were not all that was needed for a good and successful reign.
He was left an orphan very early - first his mother descended into the grave, and after some time his father. The boy was barely 14 - and the country was ruled by the Board of Trustees, along with the Dowager Queen Mother, Charles's grandmother. The guardians did not at all seek to protect the young man from power, he was invited to all meetings, asked his opinions on the issues under consideration, in essence, realizing that the honor of being the guardian of a teenage heir is partly akin to the sword of Damocles - it is too easy to make an enemy in the person of the future king. And the power of Charles as the ruler of Sweden was to become absolute. Almost all the reforms of his father, Charles XI, were aimed at this: in fact, it was through his labors and care that the Swedish army became the best in Europe, it was he who filled the state treasury, withdrawing from the aristocracy in favor of the crown the lands previously given away by the predecessor monarchs, if the nobles they could not document the original right to own these lands (the so-called "reduction"). At the disposal of the state were excellent specialists and understanding, efficient administrators, whose fathers were peasants and artisans. Charles XI strongly advocated for the Swedish language, including in liturgical practice, seriously engaged in industry and mining, and all this bore fruit when his son was on the throne. As his royal testament, he left his son simple and understandable rules of government, which he almost always strictly adhered to:
- rule with a firm hand
- don't give anyone a favour,
- keep the aristocrats under control,
- to value people according to their merits, and not according to their origin,
- be economical in spending public funds.
Perhaps if the young man had gained experience in everyday life, learned to correlate abstract ideals and simple everyday life, things would have gone completely differently. But history does not know the subjunctive mood.
The father, having selected guardians for his son and in general terms determining the development plan for the country, forgot to specify when exactly the young Charles could be considered old enough to take over the reins of government, and disputes arose on this issue repeatedly. Finally, it occurred to the nobles that the 15-year-old king would certainly be accommodating and manageable, and if so, then perhaps he would weaken the power of "reduction", restoring the former significance of the aristocracy. Representatives of the peasant class applauded this proposal, only individual representatives of the clergy were against it, believing that it was too early to govern the state at the age of 15.
Karl, having received absolute power at such a reckless age, behaved, frankly, unceremoniously. With a company of friends, for the sake of fun, they tore off hats from passers-by. Once, the merry fellows launched wild hares into the Sejm hall - and fired at them, competing who would shoot more, and then they argued who was faster and more dexterous with a saber - and ordered to bring them calves and kids for training: they chopped off their heads with one blow. The young king got drunk just monstrously, and anyone who tried to notice to him that such behavior was unworthy of a ruler, he rudely escorted out of his chambers. Money flowed like a river - for gifts, for the wedding of his beloved sister, for royal whims - so that by the beginning of hostilities the treasury was almost empty. It is no wonder that he was perceived as a “reveler on the throne”, with whom you can absolutely not stand on ceremony, and if so, then it is time to push Sweden off the world map and make it answer for all its past military successes.
The triple alliance was concluded between the sovereigns of Denmark, Saxony and Russia, which directly bordered on Sweden. They decided that now is the time to return the territories once taken by the "arrogant neighbor" - and satisfy their interests. In addition, it was known that Sweden had almost no allies in the international arena - partly because of Charles's disgusting diplomatic skills - therefore, there was nothing to fear from a serious conflict. August the Strong (elector of Saxony and ruler of Poland), Frederick IV of Denmark - and Tsar Peter agreed on a simultaneous attack on Sweden from different sides. Peter joined the union later than the others, because at first he had to settle things with the Turks, the war with which had been dragging on since the time of the Crimean campaigns of his sister, Princess Sophia. Peter did not want to get into trouble on two fronts at the same time, but Ingermanland and access to the Baltic Sea were such a tasty morsel that he supported the idea. To lull the suspicions of the Swedes, Russia made peace with Sweden - and Charles could never forgive Peter for this treachery. The Danes attacked the ally and son-in-law of Charles Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter with the army proceeded to Narva, and Augustus with his Saxons invaded Livonia and headed for Riga, the center of the Swedish Baltic.
But suddenly, in an extreme situation, when the attack followed not from one, but from as many as three sides, the young ugly and shame of the royal family was completely transformed. Unexpectedly for everyone, Sweden was supported by Holland and England. Charles himself completely stopped fooling around, in particular drinking, the army was mobilized, all instructions regarding state administration in the absence of the king were made - and soon the Swedes escorted their king to war. The battle at sea dragged on - despite the military assistance of the Anglo-Dutch squadron, and a risky plan for amphibious assault was adopted. As a result, the Swedes found themselves under the very walls of Copenhagen. To do this, they needed to cross the Øresund Strait. The 18-year-old king with four infantry battalions crossed the strait in boats in a storm, and by dawn on July 25 they attacked the Danes. The king, sword in hand, jumped from the ship first - and found himself up to his neck in the water, the soldiers fell behind him, holding muskets over their heads so that the gunpowder would not get wet. The fight didn't last long. Frederick IV hastily surrendered, angering his allies, and made peace with Holstein. Karl passionately wanted to finish off Denmark, to capture Copenhagen, but the allies categorically forbade him to do this. After all, Sweden did not declare war on Denmark - and the incident with Holstein is over. In addition, Sweden had no money to continue the war - and this operation was barely scraped together. Reluctantly, Charles was forced to agree with the arguments of the diplomats.
The next goal of Karl was the Russian giant - Peter, rushing to Narva. Karl was not going to lose Narva, in addition, the cunning of the Muscovites, who made peace - and immediately renounced their words - wounded him in the heart and demanded revenge. Having barely found the money, together with the soldiers, he set off on a long and difficult journey under the endless autumn rains. On November 20, Karl's army was near Narva. According to legend, Karl, in simple soldier's clothes, knelt down with his soldiers - and they all sang an old psalm. Karl, a devout believer, sincerely believed that if their cause was just, then God was on their side, and his army was ready to go through fire and into water for their desperate king. At that moment, a strong wind blew, snow fell - and in the snow, without drums and pipes, silently, the caroliners attacked the Russian fortifications. Because of the snowstorm, the Russians did not see the approach of the enemy - the Swedes appeared in front of them literally from nowhere. The defeat near Narva was complete - almost all the guns were in the hands of the Swedes, the losses of Peter's army were about 10,000 people, the losses of the Swedes amounted to 700 people killed and 1200 wounded. The name of Charles thundered throughout Europe.
August was the next target. And Karl with his army, in love with his soldier king, and here he turned out to be victorious. August was defeated - and moreover - overthrown from the Polish throne. True, it took an unreasonably long time, and all Karl’s advisers, who knew at least a little about the peculiarities of public administration in Poland, warned him and conjured him - in no case get involved in the deprivation of Augustus of the Polish throne ... But Karl, not listening to anyone’s advice , decided to do as he saw fit - and, in the words of Peter I, "stuck in Poland." He defeated Augustus and as a result managed to ensure that Stanislav Leshchinsky, loyal to the Swedes and personal friend of Karl, became the king of Poland. But all this took a lot of time. Only in 1706 did Charles obtain a peace treaty from Augustus II.
It was not for nothing that Peter called the Swedes “his teachers,” and we call him the Great not without reason. He knew how to extract great benefits even from completely desperate situations. After the terrible defeat at Narva, he developed a stormy activity, restoring artillery, collecting and training reinforcements, again and again analyzing both the causes of the defeat and the strengths of the Swedes. And while Karl, with his invincible army, was chasing the elusive August, either in Poland or in Saxony, the Russian tsar, having made all the necessary conclusions for himself, returned to Ingermanland with a rested and restored army. Noteburg (Nutlet) was taken - and became Shlisselburg, the key-fortress. Ivangorod and Narva again accepted Peter's garrisons. And finally - in the delta of the Neva, a new, unprecedented city - St. Petersburg was laid. Prior to access to the sea, ports, the Admiralty and shipyards remained at hand.
Karl was a hero and idol throughout Europe. His strange manners - or rather, the rejection of conventional manners - gave him a special charm in the eyes of enthusiastic admirers. He allowed himself not to wear a wig, dressed exclusively in a blue officer's uniform with copper buttons, wore a simple black neckerchief and a spacious cloak, which covered himself on a campaign. He was extremely unpretentious in food and easy to handle. His favorite food was bread and butter, ham, and he preferred Swedish salty crackers to delicacies. He did not drink any strong drinks, strictly keeping an old vow. He was wildly brave - legends and anecdotes told about his composure. In addition, his adherence to principles and piety became legendary, and in his spare time he read the biographies of the great Romans. In short, in the person of Charles, Europe received a new Alexander, Caesar and an object for worship - Charles became literally a superhero. In a hundred years, Napoleon Bonaparte will become the same idol and idol. Detractors, however, said that Karl stinks like a commoner, because he does not change his clothes for weeks, that he is rude and a martinet - and does not even unfasten his sharp spurs, that he avoids women and "eats like a horse" - is able to smear his sandwich with his finger, distractedly forgetting about the knife.
Russia repeatedly tried to conclude peace with Charles, wanting to protect itself from attack and legally try to take possession of the annexed territory. But he invariably refused, believing that there was no faith in the “cunning Muscovites”, in addition, the Swedish king was not going to cede at least a piece of Baltic land to the enemy. It was quite clear that war could not be avoided - and the dreamed-up city, which had been built for three years on formally alien territory, would have to be repulsed by force. Peter already roughly imagined how the strategy of war with an enemy like “our brother Carolus” should be built.
Finally, having finished with Augustus, Karl decided to return to Peter.
Initially, he planned to strike at Pskov - and cut off this area from the Empire. But new information led him to an even more ambitious plan. Having learned that in Russia not everyone is satisfied with the policy, and even more so with Peter's methods of action, he decided to go to Moscow and, having captured the capital, destroy this state. According to the new plan, Russia was supposed to be “modified”: the north (including Pskov and Novgorod) was to be cut off from Moscow, Ukraine and the Smolensk region were to go to Poland, the decentralization of the country and its transformation into separate principalities were to become a guarantee that the “northern giant” won't rise again. At the head of Moscow was to be the ruler who would continue to "know his place." In fact, the 18-year-old Tsarevich Alexei could have turned out to be such.
Karl was 26 years old, he expected to quickly and decisively crack down on his old enemy, knowing practically nothing about what had changed in the Russian army over the years. He furiously pondered the strategy and architectonics of this monumental campaign and developed his plan, including an increasing number of participants there - both Turks, Poles, and Finns ... Peter was 36 - and he saw something that Karl could not predict. He knew that heroism and impulse were important, but a hungry soldier would not win much, and a hungry horse would simply fall. And he knew perfectly well how easy it was to make an army go hungry as it passed through a foreign country.
While the "new generation Viking" lingered in Saxony, Peter furiously fortified a number of cities that were to turn into fortresses. Bridges were being repaired, roads were being laid. Along the proposed path of Charles, the population was warned about the need to build strong camouflaged shelters away from the roads, so that, if anything, they could go there themselves and take away the cattle. Smolensk, Velikiye Luki, Pskov, Novgorod and Narva were ordered to be defined as points where bread and all food and fodder were brought. In Moscow, grain and other strategic resources were stored in the Kremlin. It was forbidden to freely leave or enter cities designated as strategic points. The population was explained that if the enemy came, everything that was not hidden or surrendered would have to be burned without mercy. The following strategy was chosen for the army: never give battles to the enemy, leave, leaving scorched earth around. The population hated the conquerors in advance, but no less - and the "defenders". The Cossacks quickly set fire to the villages before the approach of the Swedish troops - and the Swedes were no longer able to fight the fire.
This tactic paid off: "baking" and exhausting the Swedish army worked much more effectively than direct battles, where the Swedes still managed to win. When it became clear that the proposed campaign was going completely wrong, Karl still continued to adhere to the chosen strategy.
Quartermaster General Axel Yllenkrok, in his notes on this war, gives a rather expressive case:“The king moved closer to the enemy and positioned himself in view of his retrenchments, which, being across the river, were surrounded on both sides by marshes. It was impossible to get through here, because the enemy had heavily fortified all the exits. We stayed at this place for several days. The king once entered my tent and told me to advise him on how to move the army further. I answered: "Not knowing Your Majesty's plan and the road you propose, I cannot give my opinion." The king replied that he had no plan. I said, “Your Majesty, kindly joke with me. I know that Your Majesty has a plan and where you intend to go. The king answered: "But I do not know where we will go with the army if you do not choose the road." I said, "Under such circumstances, it is very difficult for me to make any proposal." At that moment, an alarm was heard at the outposts, and the king immediately left me.
It was impossible to interrupt the campaign - in no small part because Charles's pride would have suffered severely. A poorly explored road, a single-handedly adopted plan to go to Moscow, deep into the country, and not limit itself to the already known road to Pskov, a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings led to the fact that the Swedish army suffered great hardships. General Levenhaup was ordered to collect a convoy and reinforcements in Courland and Livonia - and move to join the main army. Summer was ending, and the morale of the invincible Swedish army was also gradually shaken. Peter knew perfectly well what he was doing when he built his cruel but effective plan, taking hunger, cold and demoralization of the enemy as allies.
Fearing the approaching winter, Karl turned to Northern Ukraine and thereby further moved away from the Lewenhaup corps with wagon trains. A flying detachment under the personal command of Peter defeated the Lewenhaup corps, which was left without protection, near the village of Lesnoy on October 9, 1708 - and Karl no longer had to count on reinforcements. Lewenhaup, unable to recapture the convoys, with the remnants of the army at an accelerated pace went to join with Karl, but the army was left without fodder, food and weapons, all this went to the Russians. Peter then quite deservedly called this victory "mother of the Poltava battle".
The help that Hetman Mazepa could provide was not so great as to radically change the situation. And although the tactics of "scorched earth" ceased in the Hetmanate, the situation still remained very difficult. Winter came - and became disastrous for the Swedes, who could not find satisfactory winter quarters. The Cossacks-Cossacks, who went to Karl, significantly complicated the situation: like many irregular troops, they did not have sufficient training and discipline, they could not and did not want to join the Swedish army, it was almost impossible for officers to work with such detachments. The fortress of Poltava was besieged by the Swedes, as Hetman Mazepa convinced Karl that there was everything necessary there in abundance: both fodder and supplies. This turned out not to be the case, there was practically nothing useful for the army in the fortress - but it was not possible to take the fortress, and time was hopelessly lost: the Russian army surrounded the Swedes. The very population of the besieged Poltava - including women and children - in unison opposed the Swedes to such an extent that the townspeople tore to pieces a man who inadvertently mentioned a possible surrender to the mercy of the besiegers.
On June 16, 1709, on his birthday, Karl went on reconnaissance - right into the camp of the Cossacks loyal to Peter, a shootout ensued, during which Karl was wounded in the heel. The bullet was cut out, but after 11 days, Karl commanded the decisive battle from a stretcher. In addition, the Swedes were already terribly exhausted, the expected course of the battle was not sufficiently explained to the commanders, the preliminary plan - to quietly move into position - was thwarted. Luck irreparably turned away from Karl and his faithful caroliners. During the Battle of Poltava, the Swedish army, once the best in the world, was almost completely defeated, and Karl and Mazepa, surrounded by the remnant of loyal drabants - Karl's elite detachment - fled, breaking through the Russian redoubts. They found refuge near the Ottoman Empire - near the city of Bendery. A few hours later, Peter ordered the captured Swedish generals to be invited to his festive tent, seated them at the banquet table, returned the swords to Field Marshal Renschild and the Prince of Württemberg and generously drank to health "their teachers in military affairs".
The authority of the Russian army and Peter personally grew immeasurably in Europe. And Karl with Mazepa and his faithful warriors-drabants (a total of 300 people) found refuge near the Ottoman Empire - near the city of Bendery, where Karl spent almost 4 years in a strange position, either a prisoner or an overly overstayed guest - weaving intrigues, rolling up scandals and demanding active hostilities against Russia. In the end, Sultan Ahmed III was so tired of the exuberant king of the Swedes that he was expelled to Sweden after a huge scandal with shooting and storming the Swedish camp. The peace between Russia and Sweden, however, was concluded only 12 years later, and Russia received the coveted Ingermanland, which it claimed, as well as Estonia, Livonia and a number of other territories. St. Petersburg became a Russian city - and the capital of Russia. Karl had been dead for two years by then. It is still unknown what exactly caused his death - during the siege of the Danish castle Fredriksten: a sniper shot or an assassin sent by his own. However, the official version was that a fragment of the core hit the king in the temple. Dying, the king still managed to put his hand on the hilt of the sword - and died holding the weapon. He was 36 years old.