Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden · Voltaire
BOOK I
Outline of Swedish history up to the time of Charles XI--Charles’s education--His enemies--Character-sketch of the Czar, Peter Alexiowitz--His peculiarities--Alliance of Russia, Poland, Denmark against Charles XII. THE kingdom which is made up of Sweden and Finland is, according to our measurement, about 200 leagues broad and 300 long, and stretches from south to north as far as the 55th degree or thereabouts. The climate is severe; there is scarcely any spring or autumn, but there are nine months of winter in the year, and the heat of summer follows hard upon the excessive cold of winter. Frost from the month of October onwards is continuous, nor are there any of those imperceptible gradations between the seasons which, in other countries, render changes less trying. In compensation Nature has endowed the Swedes with clear sky and pure air. The summer sunshine, which is almost continuous, ripens fruit and flowers very rapidly. The long winter nights are shortened by the twilight evenings and dawns, which last in proportion to the sun’s distance from Sweden; and the light of the moon, unveiled by any clouds, and intensified by reflection from the snow-clad ground, and often, too, by lights like the Aurora Borealis, makes travelling in Sweden as easy by night as by day. The fauna are smaller than in the more central parts of Europe, on account of the poor pastures. The people are well developed; the purity of the air makes them healthy, and the severity of the climate hardens them. They live to a good old age when they do not undermine their constitutions by the abuse of strong drink, which Northern nations seem to crave the more because they have been denied them by Nature.
The Swedes are well built, strong and active, and capable of undergoing the most arduous labours, hunger and want; they are born fighters, high spirited and daring rather than industrious. They have long neglected commerce and are still poor business men, though commerce alone can supply their country’s wants. Tradition says that it was chiefly from Sweden (a part of which is still called Gothland) that there poured those hordes of Goths who overran Europe and wrested it from the sway of Rome, who for the past 500 years had played the rôle of tyrant, usurper and lawgiver in that country. The Northern countries were at that time far more populous than they are to-day; there was no religious restraint preventing the citizens from polygamy; the only reproach known to the womenfolk was that of sterility or of idleness, and as they were both as industrious and as strong as the men, the period of maternity was of longer duration. In spite of this, Sweden, together with what remains to it of Finland, has not above 4,000,000 inhabitants. The soil is sterile and poor, and Scania is the only district which produces barley. There is not more than four millions current money in the whole land. The public bank, the oldest in Europe, was established to meet a want, because, as payments are made in brass and iron coin, difficulties of transport arose.
Sweden enjoyed freedom until the middle of the fourteenth century; during this long period several revolutions occurred, but all innovations were in the direction of liberty. The chief magistrate had the title King, which in different countries involves very different degrees of power. Thus in France and Spain it implies an absolute monarchy, while in Poland, Sweden and Finland it stands for a representative or limited monarchy. In Sweden the King was powerless without the Council, and the Council in turn derived its powers from the Parliament, which was frequently convened. In these great Assemblies the nation was represented by the nobility, the bishops, and deputies from the towns. In course of time even the peasantry, that section of the community which had been unjustly despised and enslaved throughout almost the whole of North Europe, was admitted to the Parliament. In about 1492 this nation, essentially liberty-loving, and never forgetful of the fact that she had conquered Rome thirteen centuries before, was brought into subjection by a woman and a nation weaker than the Swedes. Margaret of Valdemar, the Sémiramis of the North, Queen of Denmark and Norway, conquered Sweden partly by force of arms and partly by means of diplomacy, and united her vast estates into one kingdom.
After her death Sweden was rent by civil war; she alternately shook off and submitted to the Danish yoke, and was ruled by kings and ministers alternately. In about 1520 she passed through a period of cruel oppression at the hands of two tyrants: one was Christian II, King of Denmark, a monarch with all the vices, and no one redeeming feature; the other, Archbishop of Upsala, and Primate of the kingdom, was as cruel as the former. One day these two, acting in concert, had the consuls, the magistrates of Stockholm and ninety-four senators seized and massacred by the executioners, on the ground that they had been excommunicated by the Pope for having defended the State against the Archbishop. Whilst these two men, united in oppression, but opposed when it was a question of dividing the spoil, were exercising the utmost tyranny and the cruelest vengeance, a new event changed the whole aspect of affairs in the North. Gustavus Vasa, a youth descended from the old line of kings, issued from the depths of the forest of Delecarlia, where he had been in hiding, and appeared as the deliverer of Sweden. He was one of those rare products of Nature, a great genius with all the qualities of a commander of men. His noble stature and an air of distinction brought him adherents the moment he appeared. His eloquence, reinforced by his good looks, was all the more persuasive because it was unassumed. His genius led to the conception of great undertakings, which ordinary people deemed foolhardy, but which, in the eyes of the great, were simply brave. His never-failing courage carried him through all difficulties. He combined valour with discretion, was essentially gentle in an age of savagery, and had a reputation for uprightness, as far as that is possible for a party leader.
Gustavus Vasa had been a hostage of Christian, and kept prisoner contrary to the laws of nations. Having escaped from prison he had wandered, disguised as a peasant, in the mountains and woods of Delecarlia; there, to provide himself both with a livelihood and with a hiding-place, he found himself forced to work in the copper-mines. While buried in these vaults he dared to form the project of dethroning the tyrant. He revealed himself to the peasants, and impressed them as a man of extraordinary gifts, whom ordinary men instinctively obey. In a short time he turned these barbarians into veterans. He attacked Christian and the Archbishop, gained several victories over them, and drove them both from Sweden. Then the States duly elected him King of the country which he had liberated. Scarcely was he firmly seated on the throne before he embarked on an enterprise of greater difficulty than his conquests. The real tyrants of the State were the bishops, who, possessing nearly all the wealth of Sweden, employed it to oppress the people and to make war on the kings. This power was all the more terrible because, in their ignorance, the people regarded it as sacred. Gustavus punished the Catholic Church for the crimes of her priests. In less than two years he introduced Lutheranism into Sweden, using as a means diplomacy rather than force. Having thus, as he put it, wrested the kingdom from the Danes and the clergy, he reigned in prosperity and absolutism, and died at the age of seventy, leaving his dynasty securely seated on the throne, and his form of faith firmly established.
One of his descendants was that Gustavus Adolphus who is called the Great. This king conquered Livonia, Ingria, Bremen, Verden, Vismar, Pomerania, besides more than a hundred towns in Germany, given up by Sweden after his death. He shook the throne of Ferdinand II, and protected the Lutherans in Germany, his efforts in that direction being furthered by the intrigues of Rome herself, who stood more in awe of the power of the Emperor than of heresy itself. He it was who, by his victories, contributed to the downfall of the House of Austria, an undertaking accredited to Cardinal Richelieu, who was past master in the art of gaining a reputation for himself, while Gustavus contented himself with great deeds. He was on the point of carrying war across the Danube, with the possibility of dethroning the Emperor, when, at the age of thirty-seven, he was killed in the battle of Lutzen, where he defeated Valstein. He carried with him to the grave the title of “Great,” the regrets of the North, and the esteem of his enemies. His daughter Christine, an extremely gifted woman, preferred disputations with savants to the government of a people whose knowledge was confined to the art of war.
She won as great a reputation for resigning the throne as her ancestors had gained in winning and securing it. The Protestants have defamed her, as if Lutherans have the monopoly of all the virtues; and the Papists exulted too much in the conversion of a woman who was a mere philosopher. She retired to Rome, where she passed the rest of her life surrounded by the arts which she loved, and for the sake of which she had renounced an empire at the age of twenty-seven. After her abdication she induced the States of Sweden to elect as her successor her cousin Charles Gustavus, the tenth of that name, son of the Count Palatinate, Duke of Deux Ponts. This king added new conquests to those of Gustavus Adolphus. First he invaded Poland, where he gained the celebrated three days’ battle of Warsaw; for some time he waged war successfully against the Danes, besieged their capital, re-united Scania to Sweden, and secured the tenure of Sleswick to the Duke of Holstein. Then, having met with reverses, and made peace with his enemies, his ambition turned against his own subjects.
He conceived the idea of establishing absolutism in Sweden, but, like Gustavus the Great, died at the age of thirty-seven, before having achieved the establishment of that despotism which his son, Charles XI, completed. The latter, a warrior, like all his ancestors, was more absolute than them all. He abolished the authority of the Senate, which was declared to be a royal and not a national assembly. He was economical, vigilant, and hard-working--in fact, such a king as would have been popular had not fear dominated all other sentiments in the hearts of his subjects. He married, in 1680, Ulrica Eleanora, daughter of Ferdinand, King of Denmark, a virtuous princess worthy of more confidence than her husband gave her; the offspring of this marriage was Charles XII, perhaps the most extraordinary man ever born--a hero who summed up in his personality all the great qualities of his ancestors, and whose only fault and only misfortune was that he carried them all to excess. It is of him, and all that is related of his actions and person, that we now purpose writing. The first book they gave him to read was _Samuel Puffendorf_, in order that he might become early acquainted with his own and neighbouring States. He then learned German, which he henceforward spoke as fluently as his mother tongue. At seven years old he could manage a horse. Violent exercise, in which he delighted and which revealed his martial inclinations, early laid the foundation of a strong constitution equal to the privations to which his disposition prompted him.
Though gentle enough in early childhood he was unconquerably obstinate; the only way to manage him was to appeal to his honour--he could be induced to do anything in the name of honour. He had an aversion to Latin, but when he was told that the Kings of Poland and Denmark understood it, he learned it quickly, and for the rest of his days remembered enough to speak it. Recourse was had to the same means to induce him to learn French, but he was so obstinately determined against it that he could not be prevailed upon to use it even with French ambassadors who knew no other language. As soon as he had some knowledge of Latin they made him translate Quintus Curtius; he took a liking to the book rather for the subject than the style. The tutor who explained this author to him asked him what he thought of Alexander. “I think,” said the Prince, “that I would like to be like him.” “But,” was the answer, “he only lived thirty-two years.” “Ah!” replied the Prince, “and is not that long enough when one has subdued kingdoms?” These answers were reported to the King his father, who exclaimed, “That child will excel me and he will even excel Gustavus the Great.”
One day he was amusing himself in the King’s room by looking over some geographical plans, one of a town in Hungary taken by the Turks from the Emperor, and the other of Riga, capital of Livonia, a province conquered by the Swedes a century earlier. At the foot of the map of the Hungarian town was this quotation from the Book of Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The young Prince read these words, then took a pencil and wrote beneath the map of Riga, “The Lord gave thee to me, and the devil shall not take thee from me.” Thus, in the most insignificant acts of his childhood, his resolute disposition revealed traits characteristic of greatness, showing what he was one day to be.
He was eleven years old when he lost his mother; she died from an illness brought on by the anxiety caused her by her husband and by her own efforts to conceal it. By means of a kind of court called the Chamber of Liquidation, Charles XI had robbed many of his subjects of their property. A crowd of citizens ruined by this court--merchants, farmers, widows and orphans--filled the streets of Stockholm, and daily poured forth their useless lamentations at the gate of the Palace. The Queen gave all her substance to help these poor wretches: her money, jewels, furniture and even her clothes. When she had nothing left to give them she threw herself weeping at her husband’s feet, praying him to have compassion on his subjects. The King answered sternly, “Madam, we have taken you that you may give us children, not advice.” Henceforward he is reported to have treated her with such severity that he shortened her life. He died four years after her, in the fifty-second year of his age and the thirty-seventh of his reign, just as the Empire, Spain and Holland on the one hand, and France on the other, had referred the decision of their quarrels to his arbitration, and when he had already begun the work of peace-making between these powers.
To his son of fifteen he left a kingdom secure at home and respected abroad. His subjects were poor, but brave and loyal; the treasury in good order and managed by able ministers. Charles XII, on his accession, not only found himself absolute and undisturbed master of Sweden and Finland, but also of Livonia, Carelia and Ingria; he possessed Wismar, Wibourg, the Isles of Rügen, Oesel, and the most beautiful part of Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen and Verden, all conquests of his ancestors, assured to the crown by long tenure and by the solemn treaties of Munster and Oliva, strengthened by the prestige of Swedish arms. The peace of Ryswick, begun under the auspices of the father, was completed by the son; who was thus arbiter of Europe from the beginning of his reign. Swedish law fixes the age of the King’s majority at fifteen years; but Charles XI, who exercised absolute power in all points, deferred that of his son, by will, to the age of eighteen. By this will he favoured the ambitious views of his mother, Edwiga Eleanora of Holstein, widow of Charles X.
This Princess was nominated by Charles XI guardian of her grandson and, in conjunction with a Council of six persons, regent of the kingdom. The regent had taken part in politics during the reign of the King her son. She was old, but her ambition, greater than her strength and ability, made her hope to enjoy the sweets of authority long during the minority of the King, her grandson. She kept him away from public business as far as possible; the young Prince passed his time hunting, or busied himself with reviewing his troops. Sometimes he even went through their exercises with them. These pursuits seemed the natural outcome of the vivacity of youth, and there was nothing in his conduct to alarm the regent. Then, too, she flattered herself that the dissipation of these exercises made him unable to apply himself, and so gave her the opportunity of a longer regency. One November day, the very year of his father’s death, after he had reviewed several regiments accompanied by the State-councillor Piper, he was standing plunged apparently in deep thought. “May I take the liberty,” said the latter to him, “of asking your Majesty of what you are thinking so seriously?”
“I am thinking,” answered the Prince, “that I feel worthy of the command of those fine fellows, and that it is not my will that either they or I should receive our orders from a woman.” Piper at once seized the chance of making his fortune, and realizing that his own influence was not strong enough for him to venture on so dangerous an enterprise as depriving the Queen of the regency, and declaring the King of age, he proposed the matter to the Count Axel Sparre, an ambitious and aspiring man, pointing to the King’s confidence as a likely reward. Sparre was credulous, undertook the business, and worked hard in Piper’s interests. The Councillors of the Regency were drawn into the scheme, and vied with one another in hastening the execution of it in order to gain the King’s favour. They went in a body to propose it to the Queen, who did not in the least expect such a declaration. The States-General were then assembled, the Councillors of the Regency laid the matter before them, and they voted unanimously for it. The affair was hastened on with a rapidity which nothing could check; so that Charles XII merely expressed a wish to rule, and within three days the States handed over the government to him. The power and influence of the Queen melted away at once. Henceforth she lived in private, a life more suited to her age, but less to her taste.
The King was crowned on the following 24th of December. He made his entry into Stockholm on a sorrel horse, shod with silver, with a sceptre in his hand, and amid the acclamations of a whole nation--a nation always extravagantly fond of novelty and full of great expectations of a young Prince. The right of consecrating and crowning the King belongs to the Archbishop of Upsala, and is almost the only privilege remaining to him from among a number claimed by his predecessors. After having anointed the Prince according to custom, he was holding the crown ready to put on his head, when Charles seized it from his hands, and, with a proud glance at the Prelate, crowned himself. The mob, always impressed by a touch of majesty, applauded the King’s action; even those who had suffered most from the tyranny of the father could not refrain from praising the pride which was the inauguration of their servitude.
As soon as Charles was master, he took Councillor Piper into his confidence, and handed over the direction of affairs to him, so that he was soon Premier in all but name. A few days later he made him Count, a title of distinction in Sweden, and not, as in France, an empty title to be assumed at will. The first period of the King’s rule did not give people a good impression of him; it looked as if he had been rather impatient of rule than deserving of it. As a matter of fact, he indulged no dangerous passions, and the only remarkable thing about him seemed to be youthful fits of rage and a settled obstinacy. He seemed proud and unable to apply himself. Even the ambassadors to his court took him for a second-rate genius, and so described him to their masters. The Swedish people had the same opinion of him; no one understood his character; he himself had not realized it, when storms arising in the North suddenly gave his hidden talents an opportunity of displaying themselves. Three strong princes, taking advantage of his extreme youth, made simultaneous plans for his ruin. The first was Ferdinand IV, King of Denmark, his cousin; the second Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland; the third, and most dangerous, was Peter the Great, Czar of Russia. It is necessary to explain the beginning of these wars, which had such great results. We will begin with Denmark.
Of the two sisters of Charles XII, the elder had married the Duke of Holstein, a young prince of great courage and kindliness. The Duke, oppressed by the King of Denmark, came to Stockholm with his consort, in order to put himself under the King’s protection, and ask his help, not only as a brother-in-law, but also as King of a people which nourishes an undying hatred for the Danes. The ancient house of Holstein, merged with that of Oldenburg, was elected to the throne of Denmark in 1449. All the Northern kingdoms were at that time elective, but that of Denmark shortly after became hereditary. One of its kings, Christian III, had an affection for his brother Adolphus for which there are few parallels in history. He neither wished to leave him powerless, nor could he dismember his own States. By an extraordinary arrangement he shared with him the duchies of Holstein-Gottorp and Sleswick. The descendants of Adolphus should, in future, rule Holstein in conjunction with the kings of Denmark, so that the two duchies should be common property, and the King could do nothing in Holstein without the sanction of the Duke, and _vice versa_. This extraordinary union, of which there had, however, been a parallel instance a few years previously, was, for more than eighty years, a source of quarrels between the Denmark and Holstein branches of the dynasty, since the kings always made it their policy to oppress the dukes, and the dukes were equally determined on independence. The struggle had cost the last Duke his liberty and his supremacy. He had regained both at the Conference of Altena in 1689, through the mediation of Sweden, Holland and England, the guarantors of the treaty.
But as a treaty between princes is often only a temporary makeshift, until the stronger is able to oppress the weaker, the quarrel between the new Danish King and the young Duke began again more violently than ever. While the Duke was at Stockholm, the Danes had already begun hostilities in the district of Holstein, and had made a secret alliance with the King of Sweden himself. Frederic Augustus, Elector of Saxony, whom neither the eloquence and schemes of the Abbé de Polignac, nor the great qualifications of the Prince of Conti, his competitor for the throne, had been able to deprive of election as King of Poland, was a prince still more famed for his courage and chivalrous ideals, than for his incredible physical strength. His court, after that of Louis XII, was second to none in Europe in distinction. There was never a prince more generous or liberal, nor one who gave with so good a grace. He had bought half the votes of the Polish nobility, and gained the other half by force on the approach of a Saxon army. He considered it better to keep a standing army to strengthen himself on the throne; but he wanted a pretext for keeping it in Poland. He had, in fact, planned to send it against the King of Sweden, on the occasion we are now going to relate.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.