Charles XI of Sweden

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Charles XI
King of Sweden, the Goths and the Wends; Grand Prince of Finland; Duke of Skåne, Estonia, Livonia, Karelia, Bremen, Verden, Stettin, Pomerania, Kashubia and Wendia; Prince of Rügen; Lord of Ingria and Wismar; Count Palatine of the Rhine; Duke of Bavaria, Jülich, Cleves and Berg
Charles XI at the Battle of Lund in 1676. Painting by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl in 1682.
Reign	13 February 1660 – 5 April 1697 (regency until 18 December 1672)
Coronation	28 September 1675
Born	24 November 1655
Birthplace	Stockholm Palace, Sweden
Died	5 April 1697 (aged 41)
Place of death	Stockholm Palace, Sweden
Buried	Riddarholmen Church, Stockholm
Predecessor	Charles X
Successor	Charles XII
Consort	Ulrike Eleonora of Denmark
Issue	Hedvig Sophia, Charles Ulrika Eleonora
Royal House	Palatinate-Zweibrücken
Royal motto	Herren är vorden min beskyddare ("The Lord is become [sic] my protector")
Father	Charles X of Sweden
Mother	Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp

Charles XI (Swedish: Karl XI) (24 November 1655 – 5 April 1697) was King of Sweden from 1660 until his death and during the same time succeeded his father as Pfalzgraf. He was the only son of King Charles X of Sweden and Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp.

[edit] Under guardian rule

Charles was born in the palace at Stockholm. His father, who died when Charles was four years old, left the care of his education to the regents whom he had appointed; his mother was the formal president of the regency, but never had much to do with politics. Charles was deeply devoted to his mother his entire life; she is described as a very dominating personality, while Charles was shy as a boy; during his first sittings with the parliament, when he was still a minor, he spoke to the members of the parliament through her; he would whisper the questions he had to his mother, and she would ask the government loud and clear. At the age of seventeen, when Charles XI attained his majority, he devoted himself to sports and exercises, including the pursuit of his favourite pastime, bear-hunting, and appeared ignorant of the very rudiments of state-craft and almost illiterate. According to many contemporary sources, the king was considered poorly educated and therefore not qualified to conduct himself effectively in foreign affairs.^[1] Charles was thus dependent on his advisors and diplomats, mainly because he had no foreign language skills beside German and therefore could not interact with the foreign envoys, but also because he was ignorant of the world outside the borders of Sweden.^[2]

[edit] Foreign affairs

King Charles XI’s Italian pistols, made at Brescia.

The general situation produced by the speculative policy of his former guardians has been called forth to explain the king's qualities and to show why he was hardened prematurely.^{[citation needed]} He is said to have attempted to grapple with the difficulties of the situation, waging a struggle against what is referred to as sloth, corruption and incompetence.^{[citation needed]} The 20-year old king was inexperienced and considered ill-served amidst what has been called the anarchy in the nation and is said to have worked day and night in his newly-formed camp in Scania to arm the Swedish nation for struggle in the Scanian War.^{[citation needed]}

The victory of Halmstad (August 17, 1676), when Charles and his commander-in-chief Simon Grundel-Helmfelt defeated a Danish division, was the first gleam of good luck for him, and on December 4, on the tableland of Helgonabäck, near Lund, the Swedish monarch defeated Christian V of Denmark, who also commanded his army in person. The Battle of Lund was, relative to the number engaged, one of the bloodiest engagements of modern times. More than half the combatants (8,357, of whom 3,000 were Swedes) actually perished on the battle-field. All the Swedish commanders showed ability, but the chief glory of the day have been attributed to Charles XI.

In the following year, Charles with 9,000 men routed 12,000 Danes at the Battle of Landskrona. This proved to be the last pitched battle of the war, in September 1678 Christian V evacuated his army back to Zealand. In 1679 Louis XIV of France dictated the terms of a general pacification, and Charles XI, who is said to have bitterly resented "the insufferable tutelage" of the French king,^{[citation needed]} was forced at last to acquiesce in a peace which at least left his empire practically intact.

Sweden's weak economy didn't favour wars, even if Sweden was very successful in conflicts, conscription was hated by the peasants and mercenaries, and drained government revenue. Therefore, Charles initiated a dividing system; each region would contribute one citizen for warfare and supply him in peacetime.

[edit] Domestic affairs

Charles devoted the rest of his life to the task of rehabilitating Sweden by means of a reduction, 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 nation's finances. In 1680 he intimidated the Riksdag into authorizing the reversion to the Crown of counties, baronies and large lordships from the nobility.^[3] In addition to reduction, Charles XI's administration was involved in many other activities which are considered constructive and beneficial today. However, he was not solely responsible for the various activities that aimed to strengthen the Swedish state. Charles XI had numerous advisors, many who came from German or Baltic noble families, who were behind several reform projects during the king's rule. Changes in finance, commerce, the national armaments by sea and land, judicial procedure, church government, education, even art and science emerged during this period. Charles XI died on April 5, 1697, in his forty-first year.

On May 6, 1680, he had married Ulrike Eleonora (1656 - 1693), daughter of King Frederick III of Denmark (1609-1670). He had previously been engaged to his cousin Juliana of Hesse-Eschwege, but the engagement had been broken and he was engaged to Ulrike in 1675, and married her after the war as apart of the peace treaty. Ulrike Eleonora was beautiful and kind, and, though she always had to stand back to his mother, was a wife genuinely loved by him, and from whose death in July 1693 Charles would never recover; when she was alive, he could not fully express his feelings towards her, but after she died, he told his mother he had never been happy since she died.^{[citation needed]}

Charles XI, like Gustav Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus, has sometimes been described in Sweden as the greatest of all the Swedish kings, unduly eclipsed by his father Charles X and his son Charles XII. In nationalistic lore, he is often depicted as a modest, homespun figure, and a master-builder who found Sweden in ruins and devoted his whole life to laying a solid foundations of a new order which, in its essential features, has endured to the present day, with the exception of absolute monarchy.

[edit] Ancestors

[edit] Children

He had seven children, of whom only three survived him, a son Charles, and two daughters, Hedwig Sophia, duchess of Holstein-Gottorp and grandmother of Tsar Peter III, and Ulrike Eleonora, who ultimately succeeded her brother on the Swedish throne.

1. Hedwig Sophia (1681-1708)
2. King Charles XII (1682-1718)
3. Gustav (1683-1685)
4. Ulrich (1684-1685)
5. Friedrich (1685-1685)
6. Carl Gustav (1686-1687)
7. Queen Ulrika Eleonora (1688-1741)

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Charles XI of Sweden

• Swedish Empire
• Carlsten
• Caroleans

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

1. ^ Upton, Anthony F. (1998). Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660-1697. Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0521573904, p. 91: "There was a widespread contemporary impression that the king was poorly qualified and ineffective in foreign affairs [...] The Danish minister, M. Scheel, reported to his king how Charles XI seemed embarrassed by questions, kept his eyes down and was taciturn [...] The French diplomat, Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, described him as 'a prince with few natural talents', so obsessed with getting money out of his subjects that he 'does not concern himself much with foreign affairs'. The Dane, Jens Juel, made a similar comment."
2. ^ Upton, p. 91.
3. ^ Trager, James (1979). The People's Chronology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 256. ISBN 0-03-017811-8. 

• Herman Lindqvist, "Historien om Sverige", (In Swedish).