Charles XII of Sweden

Charles XII became King of Sweden as a fifteen-year-old in 1697 and spent nearly his whole reign at war. In the Great Northern War he won a string of startling victories over Denmark, Poland-Saxony and Russia, then lost his army at Poltava in 1709 and spent five years in exile in the Ottoman Empire. He was killed in 1718 besieging a Norwegian fortress, and within a few years Sweden had lost its status as a great power.

Charles was born in the royal castle of Tre Kronor in Stockholm on 17 June 1682, the first son of Charles XI and Queen Ulrika Eleonora. His father kept him close and trained him for kingship and for war. When Charles XI died in April 1697, a regency was arranged, but by November the Riksdag had declared the fifteen-year-old of age. He inherited absolute royal power, the only Swedish ruler ever to do so by succession.

In 1700 Denmark-Norway, Augustus II of Saxony and Poland, and Peter the Great of Russia attacked Swedish lands together, opening the Great Northern War. Charles landed on Zealand with some 8,000 men and forced Denmark to make peace at Travendal that August. In November, in a blizzard, he routed a Russian army perhaps four times the size of his own at Narva. Instead of pursuing the Russians he turned on Augustus, won at Kliszów in 1702 and, after Augustus was deposed, had his ally Stanisław Leszczyński made king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1704. In 1706 Saxony too was forced out of the war.

Meanwhile Peter rebuilt his army and founded Saint Petersburg on conquered Swedish land. In late 1707 Charles marched east with about 35,000 men, hoping for support from the Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa. He won at Holowczyn in 1708, but the Russians destroyed a supply column under Lewenhaupt at Lesnaya and crushed Mazepa's rising before the Swedes arrived. After a bitter winter in Ukraine, the army met Peter at the Battle of Poltava in July 1709. Charles, wounded in the foot, could not command, and his roughly 23,000 men were beaten by a Russian force of some 45,000. Most of the survivors surrendered days later at Perevolochna.

Charles fled with about 1,000 men into the Ottoman Empire and settled near Bender. He helped persuade the sultan to go to war with Russia, but the peace that followed disappointed him. His long stay and mounting debts strained Ottoman patience, and in 1713 Ottoman troops stormed his camp and took him into custody. Meanwhile Russia overran Finland and Sweden's Baltic provinces, and Prussia and others attacked its German possessions. In 1714, warned that his council might make peace without him, he rode back across Europe in about fifteen days.

Facing Russia, Denmark, Prussia, Hanover and Britain, Charles tried to knock Denmark out of the war by invading Norway. In 1716 he occupied Christiania but could not take its fortress. In 1718 he returned with a much larger army and besieged Fredriksten, above the town of Fredrikshald. On 30 November 1718 he was shot in the head while inspecting the trenches and died at once. Whether the shot came from the fortress or from his own side has long been debated; recent studies favour grapeshot fired from the Norwegian defences.

Charles never married. His sister Ulrika Eleonora succeeded him but had to surrender most royal power to the Riksdag, beginning Sweden's Age of Liberty, and the peace of Nystad confirmed the loss of much of its empire. Admired by Voltaire and later celebrated in Sweden as a heroic warrior king, he was condemned by others, including August Strindberg, as the man who ruined his country.

Our 1700 map shows Sweden at the height of its Baltic empire as the war began, and the 1715 map shows its provinces lost or occupied during his absence.