Historical Tales
Chapter 90 : Giving his weary men scarcely any time for rest, Charles advanced against the Russians

Giving his weary men scarcely any time for rest, Charles advanced against the Russians with the impetuosity which had so far marked his career. A general warned him that the danger was very great.

"What!" he replied. "Do you not think that with my eight thousand brave Swedes I may easily beat eighty thousand Russians?"

Whether the general believed so or not, he did not venture any further remonstrances, and, at the signal of two musket shots and the war-cry of "With the aid of G.o.d!" the king and his handful of men marched forwards.

It was now about mid-day on the 20th of November, 1700.

A breach being made with their cannon in the Russian works, Charles led his men on with fixed bayonets, a furious snow-fall behind them driving full in the face of the enemy and making their position a very difficult one. After an engagement of three hours the entrenchments were stormed on all sides, the right wing of the Russians fleeing to the Narva and crowding the bridge with its retreating hosts. So dense was the ma.s.s that the bridge gave way beneath them, precipitating them into the stream, in which eighteen thousand of the panic-stricken wretches were drowned. The left wing then broke and fled in utter confusion, so many prisoners being taken that the best the captor could do was to disarm them and let them disperse where they would.

Thus ended this extraordinary battle, almost without a parallel in history and spreading the fame of the victor widely over Europe. For a boy little over eighteen years of age to achieve such a feat, defeating with eight thousand men an army of nearly a hundred thousand, raised him in men's minds to the level of the most famous conquerors. Unfortunately for himself, it redoubled his self-will and vanity, the adulation given him leading him into a course of wild and aimless invasion that brought upon him eventually misfortune and defeat and nearly ruined his kingdom.

Having disposed of two of the enemies who had plotted his destruction, in the following year Charles advanced against the third, King Augustus of Poland, led his victorious army into that kingdom, took Warsaw, its capital city, by storm, and in the battles of Klissov and Pultusk so thoroughly overthrew the forces of Augustus that he was forced to give up the throne of Poland and retire into his native dominion of Saxony, a Polish n.o.ble being proclaimed king in his place. The Swedish conqueror even pursued Augustus into Saxony, defeated his armies wherever met, and forced him at last to beg humbly for peace.

Such was the first era of the brilliant career of the young Swedish firebrand of war, who in four years had utterly overthrown his enemies and won a reputation for splendid military genius which placed him on a level, in the opinion of the military critics of the age, with Alexander the Great, whom he had taken as the model of his career.

But Charles had two great enemies with whom to contend, and as a result his later history was one of decline and fall, in which he lost all that he had won and remained for years practically a prisoner in a foreign land.

One of these enemies was himself. His faults of character--inordinate ambition, inflexible obstinacy, reckless daring--were such as in the end to negative his military genius and lead to the destruction of the great power he had so rapidly built up. The other was Czar Peter of Russia. It was unfortunate for the youthful warrior that fate had pitted him against a greater man than himself, Peter the Great, who, while lacking his military ability, had the other elements of a great character which were wanting in him, prudence, cool judgment, persistence in a fixed course of action. While the career of Charles was one of glitter and coruscation, dazzling to men's imaginations, that of Peter was one of cool political judgment, backed by the resources of a great country and the staying qualities of a great mind. What would have been the outcome of Charles's career if pitted against almost any other monarch of Russia that one could name it is difficult to imagine. But pitted against Peter the Great he was like a foaming billow hurling itself against an impregnable rock.

While it is not our purpose to tell the whole story of the exploits of Charles XII., yet his life is so interesting from the point of view of military history that a brief epitome of its remainder may be given.

After his great victories Charles remained in Saxony, entertaining the throng of princes that sought his friends.h.i.+p and alliance and the crowd of flatterers who came to s.h.i.+ne in his reflected glory. For six years in all he remained in Poland and Saxony, fighting and entertaining, while Peter the Great was actively engaged in carrying out the important purpose he had in mind, that of extending the dominion of Russia to the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic and gaining an outlet on the northern seas. As an essential part of his purpose he began to build a new city on the banks of the Neva, to serve as a great port and centre of commerce.

It was long before Charles awakened to the fact that Peter was coming threateningly near to the Swedish territories, and when he finally realized the purpose of his great enemy and set out to circ.u.mvent it, he did so without any definite plan. He decided, as Napoleon did a century later, to plunge into the heart of the country and attack its capital city, Moscow, trusting by doing so to bring his enemy to terms. In this he failed as signally as Napoleon did in his later invasion.

In June, 1708, with an army of forty-three thousand men, Charles crossed the Beresina and soon after met and defeated the Russian army near Smolensko. He considered this his most brilliant victory, and, as we are told by Voltaire, Peter now made overtures for peace, to which Charles, with the arrogance of a victor, replied, "I will treat with the Czar at Moscow."

He never reached Moscow, but was constrained to turn southward to the Ukraine, where he hoped to gain the aid of the Cossacks, under their chief, Mazeppa, a bitter enemy of the czar. In this march his men suffered terribly, more than half of them dying from hunger and cold. He had met that same enemy which Napoleon afterwards met in Russia, a winter of bitter severity. In the spring he had only about eighteen thousand Swedes and about as many Cossacks under his command, but he persisted in his designs. During the wintry cold he had shared in the privations of his men, eating the same coa.r.s.e food, while his only means of warming his tent was to have heated cannon b.a.l.l.s rolled along the floor.

The crisis came in the summer of 1709. Peter, who was keenly on the alert, had succeeded in winning to his side the Cossack chiefs, leaving Mazeppa without any followers. Then he intercepted the Swedish general Levenhaupt, who was marching with a new army to the aid of his king, and overwhelmed him with an immense force of Russians. Losing all his baggage and stores and more than half his men, Levenhaupt succeeded in reaching the king's camp with only six thousand battered and worn soldiers.

Charles had now only eighteen thousand men, and was in such sore need of food and clothing that he laid siege to the city of Pultowa, hoping to obtain supplies by its capture. Here he was met by Peter with an army three times his strength, and in the decisive battle that followed Charles was wounded and his army utterly defeated, only three thousand escaping death or capture. Charles himself narrowly escaped the latter, and only by a hazardous and adventurous flight over the steppes reached the town of Bender, in the Turkish realm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From stereograph, copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y. THE RETURN OF CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.]

Here the sultan, the bitter enemy of Russia, gave him refuge and treated him with much kindness, though he found the young Swede a very troublesome guest. In fact, at Charles's suggestion, the sultan went to war with Russia and got the czar into such a tight place that he only escaped by bribing the Turkish vizier.

Infuriated at his enemy's escape, Charles became so violent and unruly that the sultan tried to get rid of him, giving him large sums of money to pay his debts and make preparations to leave. When Charles spent all this and asked for more the sultan grew so angry that he ordered the arrest of his troublesome guest. It needed an army of men to take him, for he locked himself in his house and fought furiously with the few hundred of men under his command. Many Turkish soldiers were killed and he was only captured by setting fire to his house and seizing him as he fled from the flames.

The "Iron Head," as the Turks called him from his obstinacy, was guarded in a Turkish village for ten months by a force of Janizaries. Most of this time was spent in bed on pretence that he was dangerously ill. At the end of that time, finding that he could get no more help from the Turks, he resolved to escape. Accompanied by two persons only, he rode in the incredibly short period of fourteen days from Adrianople through Austria, Hungary, and Germany, reaching the Swedish post of Stralsund on November 7, 1713. Doubtless the sultan was glad to hear of his escape, since he had borne with his restless and unwelcome guest for more than four years.

When he came to the gates of Stralsund he presented himself to the guard under the name of Captain Peter Frisch. The guard was long in recognizing him, for he was haggard and worn in face and ragged and dirty in person, having never changed his clothes and rarely left the saddle, except to change horses, during his long and weary ride.

His long and needless absence in Turkey had left Sweden exposed to its enemies and it had severely suffered, the greater part of its territory south of the Baltic being seized, while Sweden itself had been attacked by the Danes and Saxons and only saved by an army of peasants, so poorly equipped and clothed that they were nicknamed the "Wooden Shoes."

As for Charles, his era of brilliant invasion was over and he was obliged to fight in self-defence. When he reached Stralsund it was under siege by an army of Russians, Saxons, and Danes. Taking command here, he defended it obstinately until the walls were blown up and the outworks reduced to ashes, when he went on board a small yacht and crossed the Baltic safely to Sweden, though a Russian admiral was scouring that sea to prevent his pa.s.sage.

A few words must suffice to complete the story of this remarkable man. He found Sweden largely depleted of men and money and in the new army which he sought to raise he was obliged to take boys of fifteen into the ranks.

With these he proposed, in the cold winter of 1716, to invade Denmark by leading an army over the Sound to the Danish islands, but a thaw set in and put an end to this adventurous project.

Then he invaded Norway, as a part of the Danish realm, and after some unsuccessful efforts, laid siege to the fortress of Frederikshald. Here the end of his strange career was reached. On the morning of December 11, 1718, while leaning over the side of a breastwork and giving directions to the men in the trenches, he was seen to stagger, his head sinking on his breast. The officers who ran to his aid found him breathing his last breath. A bullet had struck him, pa.s.sing through his head and ending his remarkable career at the early age of thirty-six.

With the death of this famous soldier ended the military glory and greatness of Sweden. As a result of his mad ambition and his obstinate persistence in Turkey, Sweden lost all the possessions won in previous reigns, losing them never to be regained. And with him also vanished the absolute rule of the Swedish kings. For with his death the n.o.bles regained their lost influence and drew up a compact in which the crown was deprived of all its overruling control and the diet of the n.o.bles became the dominant power in the state.

_THE ENGLISH INVADERS AND THE DANISH FLEET._

The Napoleonic wars filled all Europe with tumult and disorder, the far-northern realms of Norway and Sweden and the far-eastern one of Turkey alone escaping from being drawn into the maelstrom of conflict.

Denmark, the Scandinavian kingdom nearest the region of conflict, did not escape, but was made the victim of wars with which it had no concern to a disastrous extent.

Christian VII. was then the Danish king, but he was so feeble, both in mind and body, that the Crown Prince Frederick was made regent or joint-ruler in 1784, and was practically king until his father's death in 1808, when he came to the throne as Frederick VI. Count Bernstorf was minister of foreign affairs and kept Denmark at peace until his death in 1799, when troubles at once broke out between Denmark and England.

It was a different state of affairs now from that far-off time of Canute and the vikings, when the Danes overran England and a Dane filled its throne. The tide had long turned and Denmark was an almost helpless victim in the hands of the great maritime island, which sought to control the politics of the whole continent during the terrible struggle with Napoleon.

For some years the English made complaints against Denmark, saying that it was carrying food and forage into French and German ports in defiance of the laws of neutrality. As these laws were of English origin the Danes did not feel inclined to submit to them, and after the death of Bernstorf Danish men-of-war were sent to sea to protect their merchant vessels.

Quarrels and hostile feeling arose from this, but the crisis did not come until the summer of 1800, when Russia, Sweden, and Prussia formed a treaty for an "armed neutrality" and invited Denmark to join it. England at once took alarm. While the other nations were powerful enough to defy her, Denmark was poor and quite unprepared for warlike operations, and when, in the spring of 1801, a fleet under Admirals Parker and Nelson appeared on her waters she was by no means in readiness for such a demonstration.

Taken by surprise as they were, however, the Danes had no thought of weakly submitting to this hostile movement, and did their best to prevent the English from pa.s.sing the Sound. Their chief defence was the fortress of Cronberg, near Elsinore, where heavy cannon were mounted to command the narrow strait here separating Sweden and Denmark. But by closely hugging the Swedish coast Parker kept beyond the range of these guns, and in April, 1801, cast anchor in the harbor of Copenhagen. His fleet consisted of fifty-one vessels, twenty of them being line-of-battle s.h.i.+ps.

Alarmed by the coming of the fleet and taking advantage of the delays in its movement, the Danes had made every possible preparation for a vigorous resistance. Strong batteries defended the city and an imposing array of heavily armed s.h.i.+ps, drawn up behind a shoal, presented a formidable line of defence.

Some delay took place, against the wish of the fiery Nelson, who was second in command of the fleet. Nelson was eager for an immediate attack, and finally Parker gave way and left the matter in his hands.

Nelson was in command of the Elephant, but finding that s.h.i.+p too large for the waters before him he removed his flag to the St. George and led the way to the attack with the smaller vessels of the fleet, Parker remaining at anchor some miles distant with the larger vessels.

A fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y conflict ensued, lasting from four to five hours.

Nelson closed on his foe by getting within the shoal, but he met with a stout and vigorous resistance, the Danish seamen, under their able commander Olfert Fischer, fighting with the daring for which their people had been noted in the far past. Three times the aged Fischer left one burning s.h.i.+p to hoist his flag on another, and several of the younger captains fought their s.h.i.+ps against Nelson's larger vessels as long as the shattered hulks kept above water.

So protracted and obstinate was the defence that Parker grew alarmed and signalled Nelson to retreat. This was the last signal to be thought of by a man like Nelson and, clapping the gla.s.s to his blind eye, he said, "I really do not see the signal," and kept on fighting.

Nelson was between two fires, that from the sh.o.r.e batteries and that from the s.h.i.+ps, and though he destroyed the first line of the Danish defence and threatened the capital with serious injury, the batteries were not silenced and the English s.h.i.+ps were suffering severely.

He therefore sent an English officer on sh.o.r.e with a flag of truce, declaring that unless the Danes on sh.o.r.e ceased firing he would burn the s.h.i.+ps in his hands without being able to save the crews, and pointing out that these crews were the worst sufferers, as they received a great part of the fire of both parties.

A suspension of hostilities was agreed upon to permit of the prisoners being removed, and in the end the crown prince, against the wishes of his commanders, stopped all firing and agreed to discuss terms of peace. Thus ended a battle which Nelson said was the fiercest and best contested of the many in which he had taken part.

The peace that followed lasted for several years, and Denmark, freed from connection with the hostilities existing in southern Europe, rapidly increased in trading activity. During these years, indeed, the Danes served as the commerce carriers for the other countries of Europe, and this prosperous state of affairs lasted till 1807, when new troubles arose and England repeated her violent act of 1801.

The English government either had, or fancied it had, good grounds for suspecting that Denmark had joined Alexander of Russia in a treaty with France, and on the plea that the fleet of Denmark might be used in the cause of the French emperor, an array of fifty-four s.h.i.+ps of war was sent to demand its immediate delivery to England.

Denmark was taken more fully by surprise than before. Its army was absent in Holstein to guard against an attack which was feared from Germany, and Copenhagen was thus left without protection. General Peymann refused to comply with the preposterous demand of the English admiral, whereupon an army of thirty-three thousand men was landed and the city attacked by land and sea.

For three days a fierce bombardment continued, and not until a large portion of the almost unprotected city was laid in ashes and the remainder threatened with like destruction did the general consent to admit the English troops into the citadel of Frederikshavn.

The outcome of this brigand-like attack, which had nothing more definite than a suspicion to warrant it, and is ranked in history as of the same type with the burning of Was.h.i.+ngton some years later, was the seizure of the entire Danish fleet by the a.s.sailants. The s.h.i.+ps carried off included eighteen s.h.i.+ps-of-the-line, twenty-one frigates, six brigs and twenty-five gunboats, with a large amount of naval stores of all kinds.