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'Charles XII' King of Sweden

'Carl XII', ''Karl XII'' or ''Carolus Rex'', (June 17, 1682 – November 30, 1718), the ''Alexander of the North'', nicknamed in Turkish as ''Demirbaş Şarl (Charles the Habitué)'', was King of Sweden from 1697 until his death in 1718. He was the fourth king of the Wittelsbach dynasty in Sweden. As a child, many people thought he was going to be sickly but Charles strengthened his body for war by riding horses bareback and hunting wolves in Sweden's fir forests.
When his father died, Charles assumed the crown at the age of fifteen. He left the country three years later to embark on a series of battles overseas. These battles were part of the Great Northern War and many of them were fought against Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia.
His youth gave other nations a pretext to invade Sweden; Saxony, Denmark-Norway, Poland and Russia joined in a coalition to attack Sweden, starting what would later be known as the Great Northern War.The underestimated Charles XII, however, proved to be a great military leader and tactician and defeated every one of his opponents.
However, his strong tactical abilities were not accompanied by strategic and political wisdom. He is quoted by Voltaire as saying upon the outbreak of the Great Northern War, "I have resolved never to start an unjust war but never to end a legitimate one except by defeating my enemies." He took this resolution to an extreme level, which eventually resulted in the end of the Swedish Empire and its position as the dominant country in northern Europe.

Contents

Royal Title

Campaigns

Campaign against Denmark, Russia and Poland

Russian resurgence

Exile in the Ottoman Empire

Death

Legacy

Scientific contributions

Ancestors

References

External links

Royal Title

Charles, like all Kings, was Styled by a Royal Title, which collected all his titles into one single phrase. This was:
''We Charles, by the Grace of God of the Swedes, the Goths and the Vends King, Grand Duke of Finland, Duke of Estonia and Karelia, Lord of Ingria, Duke of Bremen, Verden and Pommerania, Prince of Rügen and Lord of Wismar, and also Count Palatine by the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, Count of Zweibrücken-Kleeburg, as well as Duke of Jülich, Cleve and Berg, Count of Waldenz, Spanheim and Ravensberg and Lord of Ravenstein''

Campaigns

Campaign against Denmark, Russia and Poland

In 1700, Denmark-Norway, Saxony, and Russia united in an alliance against Sweden, using the perceived opportunity as Sweden was ruled by the young and inexperienced King. Early that year, all three countries declared war against Sweden. Charles had to deal with these threats one by one.
Charles's first campaign was against Denmark-Norway, ruled by his cousin Frederick IV of Denmark, which threatened a Swedish ally, Charles' brother-in-law Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp. For this campaign Charles secured the support of England and the Netherlands, both maritime powers anxious about Denmark's threats to close the Sound. Leading a force of 8,000 and 43 ships in an invasion of Zealand, Charles rapidly compelled the Danes to submit to the Peace of Travendal in August 1700, which indemnified Holstein.
Having defeated Denmark-Norway, King Charles turned his attention upon the two other powerful neighbors, King August II of Poland (cousin to both Charles XII and Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway) and Peter the Great of Russia, who also had entered the war against him.
Russia had opened their part of the war by invading the Swedish territories of Livonia and Estonia. Charles countered this by attacking the Russian garrison at the Battle of Narva. From the beginning, this was considered a headstrong move. The Swedish army of ten thousand men was outnumbered four to one by the Russians. Still, Charles attacked under cover of a blizzard, and effectively split the Russian army in two. Many of Peter's troops that fled the battlefield drowned in the Narva River, and the total number of russian casualities reached about 15 000 at the end of the battle, while the swedes lost less than 700 men. The battle was a crushing Swedish victory.
Charles, disregarding his advisors, did not pursue the Russian army. Instead, he then turned against Poland-Lithuania, which was formally neutral at this point, disregarding Polish negotiation proposals, supported by the Swedish parliament. Charles defeated the Polish king Augustus II and his Saxon allies at the Battle of Kliszow in 1702 and captured many important cities of the Commonwealth. After the deposition of the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Charles XII filled the void with his own man, Stanisław Leszczyński .

Russian resurgence

Meanwhile, while Charles enjoyed easy victories in the Commonwealth, the Russian Tsar Peter the Great embarked on a giant military reform plan that soon produced results. The new Russian army had been greatly improved since their defeat at Narva. Russian forces had managed to retake Livonia and even established a new city Saint Petersburg there. This prompted Charles to make the fatal decision to attack the Russian heartland with an assault on Moscow, allying himself with Ivan Mazepa, Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks.
Peter the Great managed to cripple Swedish forces near the Baltic coast before Charles could combine his forces, and Charles' Polish ally, Stanisław Leszczyński, was facing internal problems of his own. Charles expected the support of a massive Cossack rebellion led by Mazepa in Ukraine but the Russians destroyed the rebel army before they could aid the Swedes. The harsh climate took its toll as well, as Charles marched his troops through Ukraine.

By the time of the decisive Battle of Poltava, Charles had been wounded, one-third of his infantry was dead, and his vulnerable supply train destroyed. The king himself, incapacitated by a coma resulting from his injuries, was unable to rally the Swedish forces. The battle was a disaster, and Charles fled south to the Ottoman Empire, where he set up camp at Bender with about 10,000 men who were called ''Caroleans'' ("Karoliner" in Swedish). The Poltava Swedish disaster marked both the end of the Swedish Empire and the rise of Russian Empire.

Exile in the Ottoman Empire

The Turks initially welcomed the Swedish king, who managed to incite a war between the Ottomans and the Russians. His expenses during his long stay in the Ottoman Empire were covered from the Ottoman state budget, as part of the fixed assets (''Demirbaş'' in Turkish), hence his nickname ''Demirbaş Şarl'' (Fixed Asset Charles) in Turkey. ''Demirbaş'', the Turkish word for fixed asset, is literally ''ironhead'' (''demir'' = iron, ''baş'' = head), which is the reason why this nickname has often been translated as ''Ironhead Charles''.
However, the sultan Ahmed III eventually tired of Charles' endless scheming and besieged the city. The Janissaries refused to shoot at Charles. The next day he was captured and put under house-arrest in Istanbul. During his time the King played chess and studied the Turkish navy.
Meanwhile, the king's old enemies Russia and Poland took advantage of his absence to regain and even expand their lost territories. Great Britain, an ally of the Swedes, defected from its alliance obligations while the Prussians also attacked Swedish holdings in Germany. Russia seized Finland and Augustus II regained the Polish throne.

Death

Charles succeeded in leaving his imprisonment in Istanbul and raced on a horse across Europe in just fifteen days to return to Swedish Pomerania. His efforts to reestablish his lost empire failed. It seems he had two Turkish style war-ships built in Sweden, the Yildirim ("The Lightning") and the Yaramaz ("The Rogue"). He invaded Norway in 1716, occupied the capital Christiania, today Oslo, and laid siege to the Akershus fortress. However, the siege had to be lifted after the conquest of the Swedish supply fleet by Tordenskjold at the battle of Dynekilen.
In 1718 Charles once more invaded Norway and laid siege to the strong fortress of Fredriksten, overlooking the border town of Halden. While inspecting trenches close to the perimeter of the fortress, he was mortally hit by a bullet on December 11 (Swedish calendar: November 30), 1718. The unsuccessful invasion was abandoned, and Charles' body was brought across the border. Another army corps under Carl Gustaf Armfeldt marched against Trondheim, but had to make a disastrous retreat, during which most of the 5,000 soldiers perished in a severe winter storm.
The exact circumstances around Charles' death are unclear. The most likely theory is that he was hit by a bullet from a Norwegian musket, but he may also have been killed by a grapeshot bullet from a cannon. Another theory is that he was killed by one of his own uniform buttons that had been re-made into a bullet. The button-bullet theory is coupled with speculation that he was shot from the Swedish side, making his death an assassination, because he should allegedly have been so unpopular in Sweden at the time.
The most recent and thorough study was presented in 2005 by Peter From. With the help of expertise from around the world, From argues that the mortal bullet was fired by a Norwegian musket. The theory has gained support by renowned historians Peter Englund and Dick Harrison, among others.
Charles was succeeded to the Swedish throne by his sister, Ulrika Eleonora. Von Görtz, his minister, was beheaded in 1719.

Legacy

Exceptional for abstaining from alcohol and women, he felt most comfortable during warfare. Contemporaries report of his seemingly inhuman tolerance for pain and his utter lack of emotion. Also, he was known to wrestle bears wielding only a net. The king brought Sweden to its pinnacle of prestige and power through his brilliant campaigning. However, his over-ambitious invasion of Russia coupled with the overwhelming power of a revived anti-Swedish coalition brought about Sweden's downfall as a Great Power.

Scientific contributions

Apart from being a monarch, the King's interests included mathematics, and anything that would be beneficial to his warlike purposes. He is attributed as having invented an octal numeral system, which he considered more suitable for war purposes because all the boxes used for materials such as gunpowder were cubic. According to a report by contemporary scientist Emanuel Swedenborg, the King had sketched down a model of his thought on a piece of paper and handed it to him at their meeting in Lund in 1716. The paper was reportedly still in existence a hundred years later, but has since been lost. Several historians of science suspect that either the multi-talented Emanuel Swedenborg or the brilliant inventor Christopher Polhem – also present at the meeting in Lund – may have been the true inventor behind this feat, or at least a main contributor.

Ancestors

References

External links

★ The Great Northern War and Charles XII

★ Charles XII and his Life and Death (Swedish)

★ http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/swedhis/swed1700.htm