55

CHARLES’ LAST OFFENSIVE

When Peter called off the allied invasion of Sweden in September 1716, Charles XII could not know whether the landing had been permanently canceled or merely postponed until spring. Accordingly, he remained through the winter in the southernmost tip of Sweden, at Lund near Malmö, just across the sound from Copenhagen. The house in which he stayed belonged to a professor; to suit the King’s taste, some of the rooms were enlarged and painted in the Swedish colors of blue and yellow. In the spring, a new well was dug, fresh vegetables were planted and two pools were created to be filled with fish fresh for Charles’ table.

In this house, Charles was to live and work for almost two years. In the summer, his day began at three a.m., when the sun was already up and the sky filled with light. Until seven, he worked with his secretaries or received visitors. Then, whatever the weather, the King mounted his horse and rode until two, visiting and inspecting the numerous regiments stationed along the southern coast. Dinner, in mid-afternoon, was short and simple. Homemade marmalade was Charles’ only delicacy, and this was regularly supplied by his younger sister, Ulrika, who made most of it herself. The table service was pewter, the silver service having long before been sold to raise money for the war. At nine p.m., the King lay down to sleep on a straw mattress.

During these quiet months, Charles had time to indulge his peaceful interests and curiosities. He attended lectures and enjoyed discussions with professors of mathematics and theology at the University of Lund. With his court architect, Tessin, he planned new palaces and public buildings to be constructed in the capital once peace had come. He designed new flags and uniforms for some of his regiments, prohibiting the color green—perhaps because that was the color worn by Peter’s Russian soldiers. People found the King enormously changed from the headstrong, impetuous youth who had scandalized Sweden with his adolescent escapades; this was a gentler, more serene man who, at thirty-four, showed a wide tolerance of human faults and weaknesses. And yet, in one overwhelmingly important matter, the King had not changed: Charles XII remained determined to continue the war.

Because of this, many Swedes found the King’s return an unfortunate blessing. When Stralsund and Wismar fell, they were almost relieved, believing that the loss of these last fragments of empire meant that at last the war would end. Their desire for glory and even commercial profit had long since given way to an overpowering desire for peace. The King, aware of these feelings, explained his plans to Ulrika, herself torn between a desire for peace and loyalty to her brother: “This does not mean that I am against peace. I am in favor of a peace that is defensible in the eye of posterity. Most states are willing to see Sweden weaker than she was. We must rely on ourselves first and foremost.” More war meant more men and more money, yet Sweden was devastated. Half the farmland was out of cultivation because there were no laborers. Fisheries were abandoned. Foreign trade was ruined by the blockade of the allied fleets; the number of Swedish merchant ships fell from 775 in 1697 to 209 in 1718.

In these circumstances, Charles XII’s plans for a new military offensive sent men fleeing into the woods to avoid military service. They were dragged from church in the middle of services, brought up from the mines, carried off from public taverns. University students, even schoolboys, were conscripted. Some cut off a finger or shot themselves in a foot to avoid service, but a new edict decreed that they should be given thirty lashes and forced to serve anyway. (If they succeeded in disabling themselves beyond use as soldiers, they were given sixty lashes and assigned to compulsory labor as convicts.) As a result, a Dutch traveler in Sweden in 1719 found himself driven only by gray-haired men, women, or boys under twelve. “In the whole of Sweden, I have not seen a man between twenty and forty,” he said. Old taxes were increased and new taxes were created. The tax on land was doubled and trebled, the tax on the post was increased and the tax on all luxuries—tea, coffee, chocolate, lace, silk, gold and silver ornaments, fur robes, smart hats and carriages—made them almost nonexistent.

It seemed impossible that even a king like Charles could extract the fresh reserves of money and manpower he was demanding from his exhausted and sullen country. That Charles was able to, was due to the appearance at his side of an extraordinary man who served him both as administrator at home and as diplomat overseas, the brilliant, unscrupulous, much maligned and eventually ill-fated Baron Georg Heinrich von Goertz, an audacious international adventurer without real ties of nationality but with a taste for power and a passion for intrigue. He had a complex, versatile intellect which allowed him to work on several divergent, even contradictory schemes simultaneously. It has been said of him that “he achieved twenty times as much as Talleyrand or Metternich while working with less than one twentieth of their resources.”

For four years—from 1714 to 1718—Goertz, armed with the power of the king, loomed over Sweden. In person, he was a dramatic figure, tall, handsome (in spite of an artificial eye, made of enamel, which replaced one lost in a student duel), charming and a brilliant conversationalist. Born in South Germany into a noble Franconian family, he studied at the University of Jena and then, seeking a situation in which his adventurous spirit could flower, he attached himself to the court of the young Duke Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp who had been Charles’ madcap companion and had married Charles’ sister, Hedwig Sophia. Shortly before the Duke went off to war at Charles’ side, Hedwig Sophia produced a son, Charles Frederick. In 1702 at the Battle of Klissow, still at Charles’ side, the Duke was killed, leaving his two-year-old son as his successor and Georg Heinrich von Goertz as the real ruler of Holstein-Gottorp. More important, until Charles XII married and produced a child, the infant Charles Frederick was the male heir to the throne of Sweden.

Goertz conducted all the duchy’s affairs. He toured Europe, calling on the Tsar, Queen Anne, the King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover. In 1713, he proposed to strengthen the duchy’s position by a Russian alliance, the seal to be a marriage between the twelve-year-old Duke and Peter’s oldest daughter, five-year-old Anne. Goertz once proposed to Menshikov the idea of cutting a ship canal through Holstein at the base of the Danish peninsula, thus giving Russian ships an exit from the Baltic into the North Sea without having to pass through the sound and subject themselves to Danish tolls or cannon.^* It was Goertz who arranged for Magnus Stenbock’s Swedish army, victorious at Gadebusch but being pursued by larger Saxon, Danish and Russian forces, to be admitted into the Holstein fortress of Tonning. And it was also Goertz who, five months later, when the besieged army could hold out no longer, arranged the terms of its surrender.

Successful though he was, in time Goertz came to feel that the little duchy of Holstein-Gottorp was too narrow an arena for his abilities. He had long admired Charles XII, the legendary uncle of his own young master, and when Charles appeared at Stralsund in November 1714 after his ride across Europe, Goertz hurried to meet him. In a single long conversation, he won Charles’ favor and emerged an unofficial advisor. Before much more time had passed, Charles relied on him totally. He admired Goertz’ energy, his breadth of vision, his analytical capacity and his willingness to attempt, like Charles himself, vast, grand-scale schemes and radical solutions even with limited resources. As Charles saw it, Goertz applied in administration and diplomacy the same dash and reckless bravado which the King employed in war.

Thereafter, until Charles’ death, Goertz was indispensable to him. He took absolute control of Sweden’s finances and all the great domestic departments of state. He became the King’s voice, if not his brain, in Swedish diplomacy. By February 1716, he was describing himself as Director of the Finances and Commerce of Sweden. In effect, he became Charles’ prime minister, although he held no actual rank or title in Sweden and was still nominally the servant of Charles’ nephew, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

Goertz knew how to deal with the King. As a condition for accepting service, he had won Charles’ promise that all communications should be between themselves and not through intermediaries. He knew it was best not to bother Charles with details in areas in which the King was not interested. He found that if the King did not agree with him when presented with an oral argument, he could put his views in writing in his clear, incisive style and usually get his way.

As Sweden felt the resourceful, ruthless hand of Baron von Goertz, hatred of the King’s foreign advisor spread through every class. Bureaucrats hated him because he exercised power outside the normal channels of administration. The Hessian party, formed around Charles’ sister, Ulrika, and her husband, Frederick of Hesse, hated him because they imagined him working to ensure the succession for his young Holstein master, to their own exclusion. And Swedes everywhere hated him for the enthusiasm and ingenuity with which he set to work to wring more men and money from the exhausted nation to continue the war. He issued paper currency. He raised taxes higher and then higher still. He was accused of lining his own pockets, but these accusations were untrue—in money matters, Goertz was totally honest. He even spent his own small income in an effort to achieve more efficiency in mobilizing Swedish resources for the new war effort. In his commanding role, Goertz was called by furious Swedes “the Grand Vizier.” Although he was known to be only a creature of the King, he was clothed in the King’s power. For as long as Charles stood behind him, Goertz was invincible.

Although it was Goertz’ domestic policies which infuriated the average Swede, he was even more useful to the King as a diplomat. He was a master of this subtle art, and Charles gave him a free hand to perform his juggling tricks all over Europe. This was Goertz’ analysis of Sweden’s situation: As Sweden could not possibly defeat all her enemies, she must make peace, and perhaps even an alliance, with one in order to fight the others. Either Charles could make peace with Russia and concentrate his efforts against Denmark, Prussia and Hanover, or he could make peace with Denmark, Prussia and Hanover and renew his attack on the Tsar in the upper Baltic. Goertz preferred the first alternative—peace with Russia. It meant sacrificing the provinces of Ingria, Karelia, Estonia, Livonia and possibly Finland, as well as acquiescence in a major Russian naval and commercial presence on the Baltic, but it would free Charles to win back the lost German provinces of Pomerania, Bremen and Verden and allow him perhaps to seize Mecklenburg and Norway as well. Goertz’ preference may have been partly due to the fact that a reassertion of Swedish power in North Germany would be useful to his youthful master in Holstein-Gottorp, but Goertz was also now inclined to rate Peter’s power and resolve as much greater than those of Russia’s allies. Peter had demonstrated his tenacious determination to hold and expand his window on the Baltic. The growth of his fleet, the far-flung operations of his army and the Tsar’s implacable will combined to suggest that even an enormous Swedish effort would not easily dislodge the Russians from their entrenched position on the Baltic coast.

Most leading Swedes, however, disagreed with Goertz. They were not unhappy to see the former German possessions go; they had always believed Sweden’s position in the empire to be a source of weakness. If there had to be continued war, they preferred to make peace in Germany and to regain the Baltic provinces. The rich farmland of Livonia, called “the corn barn of Sweden,” and the great port of Riga with its rich customs tolls from the Russian trade were assets which could be used directly to make up the great losses of wealth which Sweden had suffered in the war.

No matter which direction the Swedish offensive eventually took, the important thing was that simply by raising the idea of separate peace treaties and new alliances Goertz had placed the balance of power in the Baltic back in Charles’ hands. As the months progressed, Goertz skillfully exploited this new situation, making it clear that from then on anything might be expected of Sweden in the way of new alignments and combinations. He negotiated with every one of Sweden’s enemies except Denmark, for ultimately the Holsteiner meant to make Denmark pay the bill. It was a virtuoso performance. Overnight, his diplomacy transformed Sweden from a victim about to be overpowered by a grand coalition of powers into the initiator of events, able to choose which of the allies it would favor with peace and which would become the targets of its renewed offensive. Not since Poltava had Sweden held such power in Europe.

Already Goertz had tested the bonds of the anti-Swedish alliance and found them remarkably weak. All of Peter’s allies were apprehensive about Russia’s growing strength, but the weakest point in the coalition lay in the personal antagonism between Peter and King George I of England, who was also Elector of Hanover. Knowing this, Goertz began negotiating simultaneously with both, aware that when one monarch heard he was treating with the other, it would automatically improve Goertz’ hand with both. He went first to Peter, meeting the Tsar in Holland in June 1716. Peter respected him, although when Goertz was directing only the affairs of tiny Holstein, his dreams of turning kingdoms and empires around his finger made the Tsar laugh; to the Holstein envoy Bassewitz, Peter once said, “Your court, directed by the vast schemes of Goertz, seems to me like a skiff carrying the mast of a man-of-war—the least side-wind will upset it.” But the same man managing the diplomacy of Sweden was a different matter. At their meeting, Peter and Goertz discussed the idea of a new balance in Northern Europe based on an alliance between Sweden and Russia, to be guaranteed by France. In the peace, Russia would restore Finland to Sweden but keep all her other conquests, while Sweden would be free to regain whatever she could from Denmark and Hanover. Goertz knew that Charles would never cede as much territory as Peter demanded; nevertheless, he was pleased by the Tsar’s willingness to negotiate at all, and before their conference ended, they had agreed that a formal peace conference should be convened as soon as possible in the Aland Islands in the Gulf of Bothnia, islands being thought more inaccessible to spies.

News of this interview was diligently spread by Goertz’ agents through Europe. Both George I of England and Frederick IV of Denmark were alarmed, although George claimed that Peter would never make peace without keeping Riga and he thought it impossible that Charles XII would agree to give it up. Nevertheless, as Goertz had foreseen, all of Sweden’s enemies were now eager to come to terms. George I dispatched an envoy to Charles at Lund declaring that if Sweden would cede Bremen and Verden to Hanover, he would help Charles drive the Russians out of the Baltic. Charles refused.

The proposed invasion of Scania suspended the idea of direct negotiations between Russia and Sweden, but once the invasion had itself been suspended, Goertz proceeded with his plan. He discussed it with Prince Kurakin in Holland in the summer of 1717, and the Russian confirmed the Tsar’s willingness to go ahead. In fact, Peter wanted the negotiations to begin as soon as possible, although during the winter and spring of 1718 the most dangerous and important problem facing Peter was not the negotiations with Sweden but his relationship with his son, a drama which deeply overshadowed the effort to bring the war to an end. Partly for this reason, it was not until May that the two sides faced each other across a table.

The Aland Islands, a group of 6,500 red-granite islets in the middle of the Gulf of Bothnia, are carpeted with pine forests and grassy meadows. On Lofo, two large barns were built to house the two delegations. Originally, Peter had suggested that the negotiations be conducted informally, with no ceremonies and modest accommodations; he even suggested that the two sides live in a single house, each side having a room but with no wall between them so that they could work efficiently. This was not at all what the Swedes had in mind, and Goertz arrived on Lofo with a suite of gentlemen, secretaries, servants and soldiers and a table service and silver borrowed from the Duke of Holstein.

The Swedish delegation was led by Goertz and Count Gyllenborg, the Swedish ambassador in London. Across the table, the Russians were led by General James Bruce, a Scot who had proved himself in the Finnish campaign and by the Councilor for Foreign Affairs, Andrew Osterman. Osterman, a Westphalian brought to Russia by Vice Admiral Cruys, was one of the ablest of all the foreigners who made their careers in Russia during Peter’s reign. He spoke German, Dutch, French, Italian and Latin as well as Russian; he had accompanied Shafirov and Peter on the Pruth expedition and assisted in the negotiations with the Grand Vizier; in 1714, he had journeyed to Berlin to help persuade the Prussians to join the alliance against Sweden.

Now it was a major test of his skill to be pitted against Goertz (although Bruce was nominally the leader of the Russian delegation, Osterman provided the real diplomatic skills). In a sense, it was ironic: Here were two Germans—Osterman born in Westphalia and Goertz born in Franconia—sitting across a table bargaining on behalf of Russia and Sweden. Goertz, at fifty-one, was the older and more experienced, but he represented the waning power of Sweden, whereas Osterman, thirty-two but no less skillful, represented the waxing power of Russia.

The basis of the negotiations as understood by both sides was that Goertz would seek a peace with Russia which would enable Sweden to regain some of its territories lost to Peter while freeing it to act against its adversaries in North Germany. Peter was generally agreeable; he had seized more Swedish territory than he needed or desired and was willing to give some of it back in return for a peace treaty which would confirm his right to keep the rest. Despite this general agreement, the specific proposals and instructions from their monarchs which the two negotiating teams carried in their pockets were so far apart that, unless a diplomatic miracle occurred, there could be no treaty. Thus, as a preliminary condition for negotiations Bruce and Osterman demanded Swedish cession of Karelia, Estonia, Ingria and Livonia; only Finland west of Vyborg was negotiable. Goertz had heard these conditions the previous summer from Kurakin in Holland, but, knowing what Charles’ reaction would be, he had never dared present them to the King; his tactic, instead, was to persuade Charles first to agree to negotiations and then lead him gradually into whatever concessions were necessary. In fact, when he arrived at Lofo, Goertz brought signed instructions from Charles XII which, had he laid them on the table, would have terminated the peace conference immediately. For Charles demanded that Russia not only restore all conquered provinces to Sweden in exactly the state in which they had been before the war began, but also pay to Sweden an indemnity for having begun an “unjust war.”

In these opening sessions, Goertz played his weak hand brilliantly. By the princely pomp with which he surrounded himself, by the nonchalance with which he affected to listen to Russian proposals as if Charles rather than Peter were the victor, he established a strong psychological base from which to present his case. Further, he skillfully exploited the fact that Sweden was now the crux of all diplomacy in the North. Bruce and Osterman knew that, concurrently with the negotiations in the Aland Islands, Charles was also negotiating with George I. Goertz insinuated that those negotiations, which could only have an anti-Russian outcome, were rapidly approaching a favorable conclusion. Under this kind of pressure, the Russian negotiators backed away from their own preconditions and Osterman offered a modified settlement in which Russia would restore all of Livonia and Finland, being allowed to keep only Ingria, Karelia and Estonia. At the end of this first round of talks, the dispute had narrowed to the issue of the port of Reval (Tallinn); the Swedes insisted it be returned as necessary to control Finland, and the Russians equally firmly refused to return it, saying that without this port which commanded the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, the Tsar’s fleet and merchant trade would be at Sweden’s mercy.

In the middle of June, as Goertz was returning to Sweden to consult with Charles, Osterman, on Peter’s instructions, privately promised Goertz that if a treaty was worked out which the Tsar could sign, Peter’s gratitude would take the form of the finest sable cloak anyone had ever seen plus 100,000 thalers. Goertz reported to Charles, who, as he expected, rejected the terms as much too favorable to Russia and sent him back to Lofo to reopen negotiations.

Goertz returned in mid-July bearing a set of new and astonishing proposals which, it turned out, came only from Goertz, not from Charles. As he explained his scheme privately to Osterman, Sweden would cede Ingria and Livonia to Russia and Karelia and Estonia would be discussed later. The other ingredient of the plan was a new Swedish-Russian military alliance in which the Tsar should help the King to conquer Norway, Mecklenburg, Bremen, Verden and even parts of Hanover. For Peter, this would mean war with Denmark and Hanover. Osterman’s initial reaction was that the Tsar would not fight as an open ally of Sweden; however, in return for Swedish territorial concessions, he might provide 20,000 men and eight men-of-war to Charles as “auxiliaries.” Interestingly, Osterman added that should such a plan be agreed on, Peter would want a special clause inserted in the treaty by which Charles bound himself not to expose his person to danger in military campaigns, as the success of the plan obviously depended on the Swedish King being able to command.

Goertz went jubilantly back to Charles, while Osterman returned to St. Petersburg to consult with the Tsar. But Goertz’ triumph was brief. Charles serenely rejected all that Goertz and Osterman had tentatively agreed to, on the grounds that the Baltic provinces could not be ceded for such uncertain and illusory gains in Germany. At last, making a slight concession to Goertz, the King declared that while he might permit the Tsar to keep Karelia and Ingria, which had once belonged to Russia, Peter must “naturally give up Livonia, Estonia and Finland, which had been conquered in an unjust war.” “Good,” said Goertz in a bitter aside to another Swedish minister, “but there is one little difficulty—that the Tsar will never give them back.” Once again, Charles sent Goertz back to negotiate, with almost nothing to offer. “My mission,” he said as he departed, “is to fool the Russians if they are big enough fools to be fooled.”

Goertz’ position was becoming increasingly vulnerable. His plan had been based on the assumption of a speedy and acceptable peace with either Russia or Hanover or both, which the majority of Swedes would accept; otherwise, as he well knew, he personally would be blamed for the resumption of the war. Returning to Lofo, Goertz heard Peter’s reply to his own earlier offer: The Tsar would not change any of his earlier territorial demands, and he refused to join Sweden in any alliance against Frederick IV of Denmark or Frederick William of Prussia. He would be willing to supply Charles with 20,000 Russian soldiers and eight men-of-war to serve under Swedish colors in a campaign against Hanover. Finally, Osterman told Goertz that the Tsar was wearying of Swedish procrastination and had declared that if a treaty were not arranged during the month of December, the peace conference would be terminated. Goertz, pledging his word of honor that he would return within four weeks, went again to consult with Charles, who by this time was with his army in Norway.

Four weeks passed, but Goertz did not reappear. In the final days of December, a courier arrived from Stockholm with news that plunged the Swedish delegation into confusion and dismay: Goertz had been arrested; all ships in Stockholm harbor were forbidden to leave, and all correspondence abroad was being held. Ten days passed without further news. Then, on January 3, a Swedish captain arrived, and the following morning the Swedish delegates informed Osterman and Bruce that while besieging a town in Norway, King Charles XII had been killed.

From Lofo, Osterman had written to Peter, putting his finger on a major potential flaw in the negotiations: the possibility that Charles might not be there to sign any treaty. The King, Osterman feared, “through his foolhardy actions some time or other will either be killed or break his neck riding at a gallop.” Osterman’s worries were well grounded. The truth was that during the summer of 1718, even as Goertz shuttled back and forth to the Aland Islands bearing offers and counter-offers to the Russians, making peace with Peter was far from Charles’ mind. As always, the King relied on his sword far more than on the diplomatic intrigues of Goertz to break out of the impasse in which he found himself. For Charles, therefore, the Aland talks were valuable primarily as a device for gaining time; by conducting negotiations, Charles made sure that the Russians would not attack his coast that summer and drain away the strength of his new army in efforts to repulse these raids.

In planning his strategy, Charles accepted the fact that, for the moment, Russia was too strong—no frontal attack on the Russian Baltic could dislodge the Tsar from these conquered territories. The first opponent would be Denmark. He would begin with a campaign to seize southern Norway, then cross to Zealand and Jutland to knock Denmark out of the war. From there, his army would pass south to reconquer Bremen and Verden and his 50,000 Swedes would be joined by 16,000 Hessians, supplied by his brother-in-law, Frederick of Hesse. At the head of this force, he would either impose a peace on, or invade, Hanover, Prussia and Saxony, according to the preference of their rulers. Finally, with the Swedish position in Germany once more secure, he could march again on Russia—unless, of course, the Tsar desired to give back the lands he had unjustly taken. All of this, Charles said, might take “forty years of war,” but “it would be much more harmful to Sweden to agree to a hard and insecure general peace than to accept a long war conducted outside the frontiers of Sweden proper.”

The first objective was Norway, and 43,000 troops were designated for this campaign. An invasion force thrust toward Trondheim in August 1718, and the King marched on Kristiania (Oslo) in October. Moving through the hilly, sparsely populated country west of the Swedish border, the army waded or swam the rivers and stormed the hastily erected defenses thrown up by the Norwegians in the mountain passes. By November 5, the main army had arrived before Frederiksten, a strongly held fortress on the road to Kristiania. Charles brought up his heavy cannon, and a classical siege operation began.

From the beginning of the campaign, Charles was aware that this was his last army and he spared nothing, least of all his own comfort or personal safety, to inspire in his men a courageous fatalism and a willingness to obey any command that was given. Charles resolved to ask nothing of his officers and men which he was not willing to do himself; if the King was seen taking dire risks, every man would follow. Thus, on November 27, the King himself led 200 grenadiers up storm ladders to capture Gyldenløve, an outwork of the Frederiksten fortress. Thereafter, he remained with the front-line troops. Although the main headquarters of the Swedish army was at Tistedal, Charles ate and slept in a small wooden hut near Gyldenløve, just behind the first trenches.

On the afternoon of November 30, Charles rode to army headquarters. Staff officers at Tistedal noticed that he seemed preoccupied and sad, and that he burned some of the papers he sorted. He put on fresh linen, a clean uniform, boots and gloves, and at four p.m. swung back into the saddle, waved his hat in farewell and returned to the front. His servant Hultman brought his supper, and Charles seemed relaxed. “Your food is so good, I’ll promote you to Master Cook,” he bantered. The easy relationship between the two permitted the cook to say, “I’ll have that in writing, Sire.”

After supper, Charles returned to the front-line trench to observe the digging of further assault trenches which was going on steadily every night, using darkness to shield the diggers from the enemy. A party of 400 soldiers had begun at dusk, working with spades and picks, and carrying bundles of twigs for protection. The Norwegians hung out wreaths of burning pitch on the fortress ramparts and shot fire bombs from their cannon to light the surrounding landscape. By this illumination, sharpshooters on the fortress walls kept up a steady fire at the Swedish soldiers toiling before the trenches, well within musket range. Their fire was accurate; between six o’clock and ten o’clock they killed seven Swedish soldiers and wounded fifteen.

At about nine-thirty p.m. Charles, who was in the deep front-line trench with some of his officers, decided to climb up the side to see what was happening. He kicked two footholds into the earth of the side of the trench and clambered up until his arms rested on the parapet. His head and shoulders were above the breastwork, exposed to the musket balls whistling about. His aides, standing below in the trench, their heads on a level with the King’s knees, were worried. “It is not a fit place for Your Majesty,” said one, urging him to come down. But those who knew him best hushed the others, saying, “Let him be. The more you warn him, the more he will expose himself.”

The night was thick and cloudy, but the flares burning on the fortress walls and the frequent Norwegian fire bombs gave some light. Charles, leaning on the top of the trench, his shoulders wrapped in his cloak, his head supported by his left hand on his cheek, was clearly visible to the Swedish working party out in front of the trench. He remained in this position a long time while his officers debated how to get him down. But the King was in a good mood. “Don’t be frightened,” he said and stayed where he was, looking out over the top of the trench.

Suddenly, the men below heard a special sound, as if “a stone had been thrown with great force into mud,” or “the sound one hears when one slaps two fingers sharply against the palm of one’s hand.” Afterward, there was no movement from Charles except that his hand fell from his left cheek. He remained above them, supported by the breastwork. Then, an officer below realized that something had happened. “Lord Jesus,” he cried, “the King is shot!” Charles was lowered into the trench, where the horrified officers found that a musket ball had pierced the King’s left temple, traveled through the skull and exited from the right side of his head. He had died instantly.

To give themselves time to think, the officers posted guards at the entrances to the trench. A stretcher was brought and the body placed on it with two cloaks spread over the corpse to hide its identity. Twelve guardsmen, unaware of the importance of their burden, carried the King out of the trench and down a road to the rear, but one of the guardsmen stumbled, the stretcher tipped and the cloak over the upper part of the body fell off. Just at that moment, the clouds parted overhead and the moon shone through onto the dead face. The horrified soldiers instantly recognized their King.

Charles’ death had an immediate, decisive effect not only on the siege, but on the entire war plan of which the Norwegian campaign was to have been only a prologue. Even the Norwegian defenders of Frederiksten realized that something had happened. “Immediately everything became so quiet not only the whole night through, but even the next day,” said one. In fact, once the stunned Swedish commanders met at Tistedal headquarters later that night, there seemed nothing to do; without Charles, his leadership and inspiration, even the war seemed meaningless. Two days later, the generals solemnly abandoned the Norwegian campaign. The soldiers were withdrawn from the trenches, and the supply wagons, one carrying the King’s body, rumbled back across the hills into Sweden. After an absence of eighteeen years, Charles XII finally returned to Stockholm. The body was embalmed and lay in state at the Carlberg Palace.

He had been away so long and was responsible for so many burdens of war that the general population did not mourn. But those who knew him were brokenhearted. His nephew, Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein, wrote to the Council in Stockholm, “This nearly unbearable sorrow touches my heart [so deeply that] I can write no more.” The King’s tutor and comrade-in-arms, Field Marshal Rehnskjold, recently returned to Sweden in an exchange of officers, described “this inimitable king” filled with wisdom, courage, grace and gentleness, who had died so young. “We shall miss him when success comes,” said Rehnskjold. “To see him lie dead before our eyes is grief indeed.”

The funeral was held in Storkyrkan, the cathedral in which Charles had been crowned, and then the body was transferred to the Riddarhom Church, the burial place of Swedish kings and queens. He lies there now in a black marble sarcophagus covered with a bronze lion’s skin and surmounted by a crown and a scepter. Opposite Charles, on the other side of the church, is the Italian marble sarcophagus of Sweden’s other legendary military hero, Gustavus Adolphus. Over their heads, the church is hung with hundreds of military standards and banners captured in their wars, now faded and slowly crumbling into dust.

* One hundred and seventy-four years later, in 1887, the Kiel Canal was built.