Carl 12

The 3rd king of the Palatinate-weibrücken dynasty in Sweden .

Although he ascended to the throne at a young age , he was a strong king whose hobbies included hunting wolves and bears . Although his tactical sense was at the highest level at the time, he fell because he showed weakness in diplomacy and turned neighboring countries into enemies. From the time he was born and able to understand horses, he learned horseback riding, swordsmanship, and military techniques. He ascended to the throne at the age of 15, fought in the Great Northern War at the age of 18, and died young at the age of 36 , meaning he died after fighting for half his life.[2] In a way, it was Sweden 's last spark .

When his father, Charles XI , died suddenly in 1697 , he was crowned King of Sweden at the age of 15. In the beginning, he showed obedience and did not disobey the words of the Regency Committee that assisted him, but when the Regency Committee began to split over interests, he took advantage of the gap to eliminate all opposing nobles and take strong royal power . And at this time, the rapidly changing waves of history rushed in front of Charles XII.

At that time, Peter I of the Tsardom of Russia, in order to secure a port for access to the Baltic Sea , allied with Denmark and Poland-Lithuania and started the Great Northern War against Sweden . This incident occurred almost immediately after his accession to the throne, and this war was effectively the beginning and end of Charles XII's life.

In 1700, the Saxony pre-preemptive and Polish-Lithuanian allied forces invaded the Liga fortress of the Swedish Rigoria, and 16,000 Danish troops also invaded the Holstein Gotorf, and Ruth Tsar also mobilized 40,000 to attack the Narba Fortress. Carl XIII judged that it would be effective to collapse alliance through reverse balls rather than preventing attacks from all sides.

With the cooperation of the Kingdom of England , Karl They succeeded in landing on the northern coast of Copenhagen and eventually forced Denmark to withdraw from the alliance. And without delay, they advanced to Swedish Livonia and Swedish Estonia , and engaged in a fierce battle with the Tsarist Rus army that was attacking them. In the first battle, the Battle of Narva, the well-trained Swedish army's surprise attack was successful, and at the same time, the Tsarist Rus army ignored the mercenaries they had hired, ultimately outnumbering them three times in simple terms.[3] The Russian Tsarist army suffers a crushing defeat. Not only the weapons but also the elite soldiers had been destroyed, so if he had advanced directly to Moscow , Peter I would have had no way to do anything . Charles XII's associates also suggested an advance to Moscow, but Karl[4]

Facing the 20,000-strong allied army of Saxony, Poland, Lithuania, and Rus at Fraustadt, King Charles XII led an attack with 10,000 Swedish troops and won a truly overwhelming victory. At this time, only 400 Swedish soldiers were killed, while the allied forces lost 7,000 killed and 7,000 captured.

Two years later, in the Battle of Klisow in 1702, he used genius tactics to crush the combined Polish-Lithuanian army and sweep through northern Poland, leaving it in ruins. In the end, Poland-Lithuania declared surrender and sided with Sweden after dethroning August II , Elector of Saxony. This was his prime .

Among the forces that had invaded Sweden , only the Tsarist Rus, where Peter I was holding out, remained, and Charles XII immediately turned around and launched an invasion of Moscow , but in the meantime, Peter I succeeded in restoring military power.

In July 1708, Charles XII and the Swedish army, who had defeated the Russian Tsardom in the Battle of Holoftsyn, were tied down by strong resistance in Smolensk . They suffered massive casualties from the spread of infectious diseases due to the scorched earth tactics and the winter campaign, and had no choice but to abandon the direct route to Moscow and turn towards Ukraine .

At that time, Ivan Mazepa, a Cossack from Ukraine, dreamed of independence from the Russian Tsardom and rose up to help the Swedish army. Charles XII led a combined Swedish and Cossack army of 16,000 men and attacked Poltava, the Russian Tsardom, in the summer of 1709. Upon hearing this news, Peter I personally led 42,000 soldiers to the campaign, and the greatest war heroes of the time faced each other.

But at this time, Karl XII was injured in the leg.[5] Because he was unable to properly command, Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld ^{(1651–1722),} Charles XII's chief military advisor and deputy commander of the army , took over as deputy commander. The resulting breakdown in the command structure, numerical inferiority, and the effectiveness of Peter I's strategy led to a painful defeat for Charles XII and the Swedish army, who had never known defeat, in the Battle of Poltava .

The defeated Karl Ahmet III , who suffered defeat by the Russian Tsardom, treated Karl XII very kindly.

The Swedish and Ottoman armies defeated the Russian Tsardom at the Battle of Prut River in 1711 . However, when Peter I requested a truce, Ahmed III accepted it on the condition that Azov be returned. As a result, Karl Moreover, not only was it discovered that he was plotting to instill pro-Swedish influence in the Ottoman imperial family, but the cost of stationing himself and his subordinates put a strain on the finances of the Ottoman Empire and his close associates incurred enormous debts, so the Janissaries, who were connected to merchants , invaded. After a small conflict broke out, I was trapped without being able to make a sound.

In the meantime, Sweden was cornered on all sides as Denmark, Saxony, Poland-Lithuania, the Kingdom of Prussia , and the Electorate of Hanover all joined in. Even so, Sweden could not give up its ambition to defeat the Russian Tsardom by force, and it returned to its homeland in 1715, but upon its return, it invaded Denmark and started another war.

On November 30, 1718, while attacking the Norwegian fortress of Hallen, which was then part of Denmark, Charles XII was killed instantly by a stray bullet through his temple. After the king was killed, the Swedish army withdrew.

After his death, Sweden continued to wage war with the Russian Tsardom and Denmark, but was eventually defeated at Nystad in 1721.[6] The war ended with a treaty. With this treaty, Sweden lost most of the Baltic coast and northern Germany that it had acquired in the 17th century, and Russia opened its gateway to the Baltic Sea and began its rise as a European power.

After the death of Karl However, public sentiment in Sweden at the time was in a state of negative public opinion as Charles The assassination theory described later also emerged from this background.

There are two views on the death of Charles XII. One was that he was killed by a musket shot by an enemy sniper or a grapeshot fired from a fort. The trench where Charles XII died was the site of many casualties from bullets and cannonballs fired from the fortress, and the holes in his hat and wounds on his head are similar to those made by grapeshot fired at a slow rate of fire.

Another is that he was assassinated.[7] Because the king died so suddenly, rumors of his assassination have been around since the time of his death, and judging from the photo at the beginning of this paragraph, the hole in the temple is so large that the cause of death is not a grenade but a close-quarters shot to the temple with a musket.[8] Also, the body was found lying face down in a trench at the time of discovery , and although the body was facing the fort, the fact that his gunshot wound was horizontal was also highlighted as strange. Besides, there were many people around him, but it was dark and no one saw the king die. Furthermore, there was a story that a soldier had collected and stored a bullet made of a brass button from the body of Carl XII. DNA testing revealed that the blood's DNA matched that of Carl XII, but the amount was so small that it was difficult to draw a definitive conclusion. In any event, as a result of this, rumors of an assassination once seemed prevalent, but the matter remains controversial, with Peter From debunking the brass button legend in 2005 as absurd.

If he was truly assassinated, the suspects are largely divided into two. One is the subordinates of Charles XII, who must have been exhausted from the war. After 1716, even though the trend of war was waning, Charles The other are nobles who were close to royal power. Since Karl _ There is also a possibility that he instigated the assassination.

Although autopsies were performed three times until 1917, no clear conclusion has been reached, and even now, there is a constant debate in the Swedish and Western historical circles as to whether the death of King Carl XII was an assassination or a warrior. In 2022, there was also a theory that he was shot by a grape shot based on ballistics tests and the fact that there were no lead marks on the king's skull .

Charles XII was unmarried and did not designate a successor.[9] He was killed. Three people emerged as potential successors: Karl Friedrich, son of his older sister Hedvig Sophia, his younger sister Ulrika Eleonora , and his paternal cousin Gustav Samuel Leopold (son of Johann Adolf, younger brother of Charles X Gustav ), who inherited the Palatinate of Zweibrücken due to Salic law . However, Gustav Samuel Leopold was old and childless, and compared to the first two, his cause and support base were weak. In the end, the succession to the Swedish throne became a contest between Karl Friedrich and Ulrika Eleonora. Since Hedvig Sophia was older than Ulrika Eleonora, Hedvig Sophia's son Karl Friedrich was ahead of his aunt Ulrika Eleonora in the line of succession. However, Ulrika Eleonora compromised with Arvid Horn on the condition that her royal power be limited, and became queen. Her husband, the Landgraf of Hesse - Kassel ,[10] He passed the throne to Frederick , and when both died, Adolf Frederick, a cousin of Charles XII , became king of Sweden, and his line, the House of Holstein-Gottorp , continued until the Napoleonic Wars .

In 1703, the Bible was retranslated into Swedish , and the Bible version that came out at this time was used by the Swedish Church for 217 years. #

In Japan, he is nicknamed "King of Meteor" . This person is the King of Meteor of a small northern country mentioned in The Legend of the Galactic Heroes as being similar to Reinhard von Lohengram .

When I stayed in the Ottoman Empire , I was fascinated by the local cuisine , Keppte, and in the process, I passed the recipe of Kippe and spread it to Sweden, which became Swedish Meat Ball Schette Bulle .

The Swedish metal band Sabathon 's album and song of the same name, Carolus Rex, Poltava and Konungens Likfärd, all sing about or relate to Carl XII.[11]

He was a brave and fearless man in many ways . With the nickname Bear Slayer, it was standard for the king and commander-in-chief to charge from the front line. When he stuck his head out of the trench in the middle of the battlefield and personally scouted, the French officer who came to help him was surprised and said, "Your Majesty. The bullet was not taken." When he gave a very common-sense warning, “They will fly at you regardless of your identity,” he said, “Don’t worry, do you think Jim saw a bullet once or twice?” He answered, and a nearby Swedish officer said, “ If you stop him, he will act more dangerously, so leave him alone.”

He is a symbol of Swedish extreme rightists, and is said to have become a scourge on Swedish society in many ways, with extreme rightists holding a march on November 30th when he died.[12]

In the strategy simulation Total War: Empire, he appears as the king of Sweden at the start.