Years in Turkey, 1709–14

Turkey’s desire to reconquer Azov from Peter the Great augured well for its cooperation with Charles XII, but—in spite of four Turkish declarations of war against Russia—as the army expected from Sweden never arrived, the Swedish king was unable to pursue his plans vigorously.

He became the object of Turkish intrigues and in February 1713 had to fight a regular battle, the kalabalik of Bender (modern Bendery, Moldova), to avoid a plot to deliver him into the hands of Augustus of Saxony, now restored in Poland. The closing of the Turko-Habsburg frontier due to the plague, and the determination of the anti-French alliance in the War of the Spanish Succession to prevent Sweden from using its bases in Germany to attack its enemies further circumscribed Charles XII’s freedom of action in these years. The Swedish council, virtually in charge of affairs at home during his absence, was preoccupied with threats to Sweden from Denmark.

The administrative and financial reforms that Charles promulgated from Turkey in order to distribute the burden of the war effort fairly and to increase both resources and efficiency were largely sabotaged and were put into effect only after his return to Swedish Pomerania in November 1714 (having ridden incognito through Habsburg and German lands in 14 days and nights).

Decline of Swedish power

For more than a year, Charles fought a delaying action in Pomerania to keep Swedish troops on German soil as long as possible, attempting to restore the prestige of Swedish arms, to keep the war away from Sweden itself, and to prepare his diplomatic offensive for splitting the coalition, augmented after 1714 by Hanover and Prussia. A subsidy treaty with France, intrigues with the Jacobites (the adherents of the exiled branch of the Stuart monarchs) to threaten the Elector of Hanover in his position as king of England, and separate negotiations with the enemies averted the danger to Sweden once Charles, in December 1715, had been forced to leave Stralsund and Wismar.

From 1713 onward Charles had realized that sacrifice of territory would be necessary but was set on retaining Sweden’s great power status either by ceding land for money for a given number of years only, not in perpetuity, or by allowing outright cession only as the price for guaranteed and considerable military help. He argued that any satisfactory peace on these lines could only be gained if military action backed up the diplomatic effort; to some extent, therefore, all negotiations, and especially those with the Russians at Åland throughout the year 1718, were designed to gain time. By the autumn of 1718, Charles XII had collected an army of 60,000 men, but his strategic plan was never fully unfolded, for at the siege of Fredrikshald (Halden), at an early stage in the invasion of Norway, he exposed himself to fire from the fortress and was fatally shot through the head. Rumours that he had been killed by someone from his own side began to circulate shortly after his death. The debate on this question continues.

Legacy

Charles XII was not the simple and uneducated soldier-king he has often been made out to be. His intellectual pursuits were many and varied. He became increasingly occupied with new ideas in administration, and many of his administrative reforms were far ahead of their time. He demanded considerable sacrifices of those classes in Sweden who were lukewarm about the war effort once the years of bad fortune set in after 1709.

In military matters Charles was a skilled tactician. He had a good eye for choosing a battleground and insisted on personal leadership in battle. His strategic talent, however, has been criticized, especially his decision to wage war in Poland for such a long time and his Russian campaigns in 1707–09.

Charles XII is one of the most controversial and most written about figures in Swedish history. In 1731 Voltaire published his Histoire de Charles XII, which contains two views that have since predominated in analyses of the king: admiration for his personal qualities and criticism of his political strategy. Charles XII also played an important role as a national and conservative symbol in 19th- and early 20th-century Sweden, though he has been considered a warmonger by radicals.