CHARLES XI.
Robert Nisbet Bain
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition pg 929
CHARLES XI. (1655-1697), king of Sweden, the only son of Charles
X., and Hedwig Leonora of Holstein-Gottorp, was born in the palace at
Stockholm, on the 24th of November 1655. His father, who died when the child
was in his fourth year, left the care of his education to the regents whom he
had appointed. So shamefully did they neglect their duty that when, at the age
of seventeen, Charles XI. attained his majority, he was ignorant of the very
rudiments of statecraft and almost illiterate. Yet those nearest to him had
great hopes of him. He was known to be truthful, upright and God-fearing; if he
had neglected his studies it was to devote himself to manly sports and
exercises; and in the pursuit of his favourite pastime, bear-hunting, he had
already given proofs of the most splendid courage. It was the general disaster
produced by the speculative policy of his former guardians which first called
forth his sterling qualities and hardened him into a premature manhood. With
indefatigable energy he at once attempted to grapple with the difficulties of
the situation, waging an almost desperate struggle with sloth, corruption and
incompetence. Amidst universal anarchy, the young king, barely twenty years of
age, inex perienced, ill-served, snatching at every expedient, worked day and
night in his newly-formed camp in Scania (Sk~ne) to arm the nation for its
mortal struggle. The victory of Fyllebro (Aug. 17, 1676), when Charles and his
commander-in-chief S. G. Helmfeld routed a Danish division, was the first gleam
of good luck, and on the 4th of December, on the tableland of Helgonaba~ck,
near Lund, the young Swedish monarch defeated Christian V. of Denmark, who also
commanded his army in person. After a ferocious contest, the Danes were
practically annihilated. The battle of Lund was, relatively to the number
engaged, one of the bloodiest engagements of modern times. More than half the
combatants (8357, of whom 3000 were Swedes) actually perished on the
battle-field. All the Swedish commanders showed remarkable ability, but the
chief glory of the day indisputably belongs to Charles XI. This great victory
restored to the Swedes their self-confidence and prestige. In the following
year, Charles with 9000 men routed 12,000 Danes near Malmo (July is, 1678).
This proved to be the last pitched battle of the war, the Danes never again
venturing to attack their once more invincible enemy in the open field. In 1679
Louis XIV. dictated the terms of a general pacification, and Charles XI., who
bitterly resented " the insufferable tutelage" of the French king,
was forced at last to acquiesce in a peace which at least left his empire
practically intact. Charles devoted the rest of his life to the gigantic task
of rehabilitating Sweden by means of a r'duktion, or recovery of
alienated crown lands, a process which involved the examination of every title
deed in the kingdom, and resulted in the complete readjustment of the finances.
But vast as it was, the reduklion represents only a tithe of Charles XI.
'5 immense activity. The constructive part of his administra tion was equally
thorough-going, and entirely beneficial. Here, too, everyth~g was due to his
personal initiative. Finance, commerce, the national armaments by sea and land,
judicial procedure, church government, education, even art and science~
everything, in short-emerged recast from his shaping hand. Charles XI. died on
the 5th of April 1697, in his forty-first year. By his beloved consort Ulrica
Leonora of Denmark, from the shock of whose death in July 1693 he never
recovered, he had seven children, of whom only three survived him, a son
Charles, and two daughters, Hedwig Sophia, duchess of Holstein, and Ulrica
Leonora, who ultimately succeeded her brother on the Swedish throne. After
Gustavus Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus Charles XI. was, perhaps, the greatest of
all the kings of Sweden. His modest, homespun figure has indeed been unduly
eclipsed by the brilliant and colossal shapes of his heroic father and his
meteoric son; yet in reality Charles XI. is far worthier of ~dmiration than
either Charles X. or Charles XII. He was in an eminent degree a great
master-builder. He found Sweden in ruins, and devoted his whole life to laying
the solid founda tions of a new order of things which, in its essential
features, has endured to the present day.
See Martin Veibull, Seeriges Storheditid (Stockholm, 1881);
Frederick Ferdinand Carlson, Seeriges Historia under Konu"garne~af
Pfalziska Huset (Stockholm, 1883-18 85); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia
(Cambridge, 1905);O.Sjo.·gren, Karl den Elfte och Svenska
Folket (Stockholm, 1897); 5. Jacobsen, Den nordiske Knegs Kronicke,
1675-1679 (Copenhagen, 1897); J. A. de Mesmes d'Avaux, Nigociations du comte
d'Avaux, 1693, 1697, 1698 (Utrecht, 1882, &c.). (R. N. B.)
