follow after, heard the cry and caught a still louder one from the
yacht: "The king, the king is sinking!"
A few strokes brought him near to the over-confident diver, and
clutching him by his shirt-collar, he kept the lad's head above
water until, after a long and laborious swim, he brought his kingly
burden safe to land--for the fair-haired and reckless young knight
of the nozzle was none other than his gracious majesty, Charles
the Twelfth of Sweden.
"Truly it is one thing to be brave and another to be skilful,"
said the king, as he stood soaked and dripping on the shore. "But
for you, friend Arvid, I had almost gone."
"You are very wet, sire, and may take cold," said Arvid; "let us
hasten at once to yonder house for warmth and dry clothes."
"Not so, Arvid; I do not fear the water--on land," said the king.
"I am no such milksop as to need to dry off before a kitchen fire.
See, this is the better way"; and catching up a stout hazel-stick,
he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loath, Arvid Horn accepted
the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he
rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each
other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout at "single-stick."
They were soon thoroughly warmed up by this vigorous exercise,
and forgot their recent bath and the king's danger. It was a drawn
battle, however, and, as they paused for breath, King Charles said:
"Trust that to drive away cold and ague, Arvid. Faith,'tis a rare
good sport."
"Could it be done on horseback, think you?" queried Arvid, always
on the lookout for sensation.
"And why not? 'Tis well thought," said the king. "Let us straight
to the palace yard and try it for ourselves."
But ere they reached the palace the idea had developed into still
greater proportions.
The king's guards were summoned, and divided into two parties.
Their horses were unsaddled, and, riding "bareback" and armed with
nothing but hazel-sticks, the two forces were pitted against each
other in a great cavalry duel of "single-stick."
King Charles commanded one side, and young Arvid Horn the other. At
it they went, now one side and now the other having the advantage,
the two leaders fighting with especial vigor.
Arvid pressed the king closely, and both lads were full of the
excitement of the fray when Charles, careless of his aim and with
his customary recklessness, brought his hazel-stick with a terrible
thwack upon poor Arvid's face. Now Arvid Horn had a boil on his
cheek, and if any of my boy readers know what a tender piece of
property a boil is, they will know that King Charles's hazel-stick
was not a welcome poultice.
With a cry of pain Arvid fell fainting from his horse, and the
cavalry battle at "single-stick" came to a sudden stop. But the
heat and the pain brought on so fierce a fever that the lad was
soon as near to death's door as his friend King Charles had been
in the sea fight of the squirt-guns.
The king was deeply concerned during young Arvid's illness, and
when the lad at last recovered he made him a present of two thousand
thalers, laughingly promising to repeat the prescription whenever
Arvid was again wounded at "single-stick." He was greatly pleased
to have his friend with him once more, and, when Arvid was strong
enough to join in his vigorous sports again, one of the first
things he proposed was a great bear-hunt up among the snow-filled
forests that skirted the Maelar Lake.
A day's ride from Stockholm, the hunting-lodge of the kings of
Sweden lay upon the heavily drifted hill-slopes just beyond the
lake shore, and through the forests and marshes two hundred years
ago the big brown bear of Northern Europe, the noble elk, the now
almost extinct auroch, or bison, and the great gray wolf roamed in
fierce and savage strength, affording exciting and dangerous sport
for daring hunters.
And among these hunters none excelled young Charles of Sweden.
Reckless in the face of danger, and brave as he was reckless, he
was ever on the alert for any novelty in the manner of hunting that
should make the sport even more dangerous and exciting. So young
Arvid Horn was not surprised when the king said to him:
"I have a new way for hunting the bear, Arvid, and a rarely good
one, too."
"Of that I'll be bound, sire," young Arvid responded; "but-how may
it be?"
"You shall know anon," King Charles replied; "but this much will I
say: I do hold it but a coward's part to fight the poor brute with
firearms. Give the fellow a chance for his life, say I, and a fair
fight in open field--and then let the best man win."
Here was a new idea. Not hunt the bear with musket, carbine, or
wheel-lock? What then--did King Charles reckon to have a wrestling
bout or a turn at "single-stick" with the _Jarl_ Bruin? So wondered
Arvid Horn, but he said nothing, waiting the king's own pleasure,
as became a shrewd young courtier.
And soon enough he learned the boy-hunter's new manner of bear-hunting,
when, on the very day of their arrival at the Maelar lodge, they
tracked a big brown bear beneath the great pines and spruces of the
almost boundless forest, armed only with strong wooden pitchforks.
Arvid was not at all anxious for this fighting at close quarters,
but when he saw King Charles boldly advance upon the growling bear,
when he saw the great brute rise on his hind legs and threaten to
hug Sweden's monarch to death, he would have sprung forward to aid
his king. But a huntsman near at hand held him back.
"Wait," said the man; "let the 'little father' play his part."
And even as he spoke Arvid saw the king walk deliberately up to the
towering bear, and, with a quick thrust of his long-handled fork,
catch the brute's neck between the pointed wooden prongs, and with
a mighty shove force the bear backward in the snow.
Then, answering his cry of "Holo, all!" the huntsmen sprang to
his side, flung a stout net over the struggling bear, and held it
thus, a floundering prisoner, while the intrepid king coolly cut
its throat with his sharp hunting-knife.
Arvid learned to do this, too, in time, but it required some extra
courage even for his steady young head and hand.
One day, when each of the lads had thus transfixed and killed his
bear, and as, in high spirits, they were returning to the hunting-lodge,
a courserman dashed hurriedly across their path, recognized the
king, and reining in his horse, dismounted hastily, saluted, and
handed the king a packet.
"From the council, sire," he said.
Up to this day the young king had taken but little interest in the
affairs of state, save as he directed the review or drill, leaving
the matters of treaty and of state policy to his trusted councillors.
He received the courserman's despatch with evident unconcern, and
read it carelessly. But his face changed as he read it a second
time; first clouding darkly, and then lighting up with the gleam
of a new determination and purpose.
"What says Count Piper?" he exclaimed half aloud; "Holstein laid
waste by Denmark, Gottorp Castle taken, and the duke a fugitive?
And my council dares to temper and negotiate? _Ack; so!_ Arvid
Horn, we must be in Stockholm ere night-fall."
"But, sire, how can you?" exclaimed Arvid. "The roads are heavy
with snow, and no horse could stand the strain or hope to make the
city ere morning."
"No horse!" cried King Charles; "then three shall do it. Hasten; bid
Hord the equerry harness the triple team to the strongest sledge,
and be you ready to ride with me in a half hour's time. For we
shall be in Stockholm by nightfall."
And ere the half hour was up they were off. Careless of roadway,
straight for Stockholm they headed, the triple team of plunging
Ukraine horses, driven abreast by the old equerry Hord, dashing down
the slopes and across the Maelar ice, narrowly escaping collision,
overturn, and death. With many a plunge and many a ducking, straight
on they rode, and ere the Stockholm clocks had struck the hour of
six the city gates were passed, and the spent and foaming steeds
dashed panting into the great yard of the Parliament House.
The council was still in session, and the grave old councillors
started to their feet in amazement at this sudden apparition of
the boy king, soiled and bespattered from head to foot, standing
there in their midst.
"Gentlemen," he said, with earnestness and determination in his
voice, "your despatch tells me of unfriendly acts on the part of the
King of Denmark against our brother and ally of Holstein-Gottorp.
I am resolved never to begin an unjust war, but never to finish an
unjust one save with the destruction of mine enemies. My resolution
is fixed. I will march and attack the first one who shall declare
war; and when I shall have conquered him, I hope to strike terror
into the rest."
These were ringing and, seemingly, reckless words for a boy of
seventeen, and we do not wonder that, as the record states, "the
old councillors, astonished at this declaration, looked at one
another without daring to answer." The speech seemed all the more
reckless when they considered, as we may here, the coalition against
which the boy king spoke so confidently.
At that time--in the year 1699--the three neighbors of this young
Swedish monarch were three kings of powerful northern nations--Frederick
the Fourth, King of Denmark; Augustus, called the Strong, King of
Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Peter, afterward known as the
Great, Czar of Russia. Tempted by the large possessions of young
King Charles, and thinking to take advantage of his youth, his
inexperience, and his presumed indifference, these three monarchs
concocted a fine scheme by which Sweden was to be overrun, conquered,
and divided among the three members of this new copartnership
of kings--from each of whom, or from their predecessors, this boy
king's ancestors had wrested many a fair domain and wealthy city.
But these three kings--as has many and many another plotter in
history before and since--reckoned without their host. They did not
know the mettle that was in this grandnephew of the great Gustavus.
Once aroused to action, he was ready to move before even his would-be
conquerors, in those slow-going days, imagined he had thought of
resistance. Money and men were raised, the alliance of England and
Holland was secretly obtained, a council of defence was appointed
to govern Sweden during the absence of the king, and on April 23,
1700, two months before his eighteenth birthday, King Charles bade
his grandmother and his sisters good-by and left Stockholm forever.
Even as he left, the news came that another member in this firm of
hostile kings, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, had invaded Sweden's
tributary province of Livonia on the Gulf of Finland. Not to be
drawn aside from his first object--the punishment of Denmark--Charles
simply said, "We will make King Augustus go back the way he came,"
and hurried on to join his army in southern Sweden.
By August 3, 1700, King Charles had grown tired of waiting for his
reserves and new recruits, and so, with scarce six thousand men,
he sailed away from Malmo--clear down at the most southerly point
of Sweden--across the Sound, and steered for the Danish coast not
twenty-five miles away.
Young Arvid Horn, still the king's fast friend, and now one of
his aids, following his leader, leaped into the first of the small
barges or row-boats that were to take the troops from the frigates
to the Danish shore. His young general and king, impatient at the
slowness of the clumsy barges, while yet three hundred yards from
shore, stood upright in the stern, drew his sword, and exclaimed:
"I am wearied with this pace. All you who are for Denmark follow
me!" And then, sword in hand, he sprang over into the sea.
Arvid Horn quickly followed his royal friend. The next moment
generals and ministers, ambassadors and belaced officials, with
the troops that filled the boats, were wading waist-deep through
the shallow water of the Sound, struggling toward the Danish shore,
and fully as enthusiastic as their hasty young leader and king.
The Danish musket-balls fell thick around them as the Danish troops
sought from their trenches to repel the invaders.
"What strange whizzing noise is this in the air?" asked the young
king, now for the first time in action.
"'Tis the noise of the musket-balls they fire upon you," was the
reply.
"_Ack_, say you so," said Charles: "good, good; from this time
forward that shall he my music."
In the face of this "music" the shore was gained, the trenches were
carried by fierce assault and King Charles's first battle was won.
Two days later, Copenhagen submitted to its young conqueror, and
King Frederick of Denmark hastened to the defence of his capital,
only to find it in the possession of the enemy, and to sign a
humiliating treaty of peace.
The boy conqueror's first campaign was over, and, as his biographer
says, he had "at the age of eighteen begun and finished a war
in less than six weeks." Accepting nothing for himself from this
conquest, he spared the land from which his dearly remembered mother
had come from the horrors of war and pillage which in those days
were not only allowable but expected.
King Augustus of Poland, seeing the short work made of his ally
the King of Denmark, by this boy king, whom they had all regarded
with so much contempt, deemed discretion to be the better part of
valor and, as the lad had prophesied, withdrew from Livonia, "going
back by the way he came." Then the young conqueror, flushed with his
successes, turned his army against his third and greatest enemy,
Czar Peter, of Russia, who, with over eighty thousand men, was
besieging the Swedish town of Narva.
A quaint old German-looking town, situated a few miles from the
shores of the Gulf of Finland, in what is now the Baltic provinces
of Russia, and near to the site of the czar's later capital of St.
Petersburg, the stout-walled town of Narva was the chief defence of
Sweden on its eastern borders, and a stronghold which the Russian
monarch especially coveted for his own. Young Arvid Horn's uncle,
the Count Horn, was in command of the Swedish forces in the town,
which, with a thousand men, he held for the young king, his master,
against all the host of the Czar Peter.
The boy who had conquered Denmark in less than six weeks, and forced
a humiliating peace from Poland, was not the lad to consider for
a moment the question of risk or of outnumbering forces. In the
middle of November, when all that cold Northern land is locked in
ice and snow, he flung out the eagle-flag of Sweden to the Baltic
blasts, and crossed to the instant relief of Narva, with an army of
barely twenty thousand men. Landing at Pernau with but a portion
of his troops, he pushed straight on, and with scarce eight thousand
men hurried forward to meet the enemy. With a courage as daring
as his valor was headlong, he surprised and routed first one and
then another advance detachment of the Russian force, and soon
twenty-five thousand demoralized and defeated men were retreating
before him into the Russian camp. In less than two days all the
Russian outposts were carried, and on the noon of the thirtieth of
November, 1700, the boy from Sweden appeared with his eight thousand
victory-flushed though wearied troops before the fortified camp
of his enemy, and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered instant
battle.
"Sire," said one of his chief officers, the General Stenbock, "do
you comprehend the greatness of our danger? The Muscovites outnumber
us ten to one."
"What, then!" said the intrepid young king, "do you imagine that
with my eight thousand brave Swedes I shall not be able to march
over the bodies of eighty thousand Muscovites?" And then at the
signal of two fusees and the watchword, "With the help of God," he
ordered his cannon to open on the Russian trenches, and through a
furious snow-storm charged straight upon the enemy.
Again valor and enthusiasm triumphed. The Russian line broke before
the impetuosity of the Swedes, and, as one chronicler says, "ran
about like a herd of cattle"; the bridge across the river broke under
the weight of fugitives, panic followed, and when night fell, the
great Russian army of eighty thousand men surrendered as prisoners
of war to a boy of eighteen with but eight thousand tired soldiers
at his back.
So the boy conqueror entered upon his career of victory. Space does
not permit to detail his battles and his conquests. How he placed
a new king on the throne of Poland, kept Denmark in submission,
held the hosts of Russia at bay, humbled Austria, and made his
name, ere yet he was twenty, at once a wonder and a terror in all
the courts of Europe. How, at last, his ambition getting the better
of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make
Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into
Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and foolhardy
endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and
his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians
at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a
prisoner of state for over five years; and how, finally, when once
again at the head of Swedish troops, instead of defending his own
home-land of Sweden, he invaded Norway in the depth of winter, and
was killed, when but thirty-six, by a cannon-shot from the enemy's
batteries at Frederickshall on December 11, 1718.
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden was one of the most remarkable of the
world's historic boys. Elevated to a throne founded on despotic
power and victorious memories, at an age when most lads regard
themselves as the especial salt of the earth, he found himself launched
at once into a war with three powerful nations, only to become in
turn the conqueror of each. A singularly good boy, so far as the
customary temptations of power and high station are concerned--temperate,
simple, and virtuous in tastes, dress, and habits--he was, as one
of his biographers has remarked, "the only one among kings who had
lived without a single frailty."
But this valorous boy, who had first bridled his own spirit, and
then conquered the Northern world, "reared," as has been said,
"under a father cold and stern, defectively educated, taught from
childhood to value nothing but military glory," could not withstand
the temptation of success. An ambition to be somebody and to do
something is always a laudable one in boy or girl, until it supplants
and overgrows the sweet, true, and manly boy and girl nature, and
makes us regardless of the comfort or the welfare of others. A
desire to excel the great conquerors of old, joined to an obstinacy
as strong as his courage, caused young Charles of Sweden to miss
the golden opportunity, and instead of seeking to rule his own
country wisely, sent him abroad a homeless wanderer on a career of
conquest, as romantic as it was, first, glorious, and at the last
disastrous.
In the northern quarter of the beautiful city of Stockholm, surrounded
by palaces and gardens, theatres, statues, and fountains, stands
Molin's striking statue of the boy conqueror, Charles the Twelfth
of Sweden. Guarded at the base by captured mortars, the outstretched
hand and unsheathed sword seem to tell of conquests to be won and
victories to be achieved. But to the boy and girl of this age of
peace and good-fellowship, when wars are averted rather than sought,
and wise statesmanship looks rather to the healing than to the
opening of the world's wounds, one cannot but feel how much grander,
nobler, and more helpful would have been the life of this young
"Lion of the North," as his Turkish captors called him, had it been
devoted to deeds of gentleness and charity rather than of blood
and sorrow, and how much more enduring might have been his fame and
his memory if he had been the lover and helper of his uncultivated
and civilization-needing people, rather than the valorous, ambitious,
headstrong, and obstinate boy conqueror of two centuries ago.
THE TRUE STORY OF A KIDNAPPED BOY AS TOLD BY HIMSELF
By Peter Williamson
I was born in Hirulay, in the county of Aberdeen, Scotland.
My parents, though not rich, were respectable, and so long as I
was under their care all went well with me. Unhappily, I was sent
to stay with an aunt at Aberdeen, where, at eight years old, when
playing on the quay, I was noticed as a strong, active little fellow
by two men belonging to a vessel in the harbor. Now, this vessel
was in the employ of certain merchants of Aberdeen, who used her
for the villanous purpose of kidnapping--that is, stealing young
children from their parents and selling them as slaves in the
plantations abroad.
These impious monsters, marking me out for their prey, tempted me
on board the ship, which I had no sooner entered than they led me
between the decks to some other boys whom they had kidnapped in
like manner. Not understanding what a fate was in store for me, I
passed the time in childish amusement with the other lads in the
steerage, for we were never allowed to go on deck while the vessel
stayed in the harbor, which it did till they had imprisoned as many
luckless boys as they needed.
Then the ship set sail for America. I cannot remember much of the
voyage, being a mere child at the time, but I shall never forget
what happened when it was nearly ended. We had reached the American
coast, when a hard gale of wind sprang up from the southeast, and
about midnight the ship struck on a sandbank off Cape May, near
Delaware. To the terror of all on board, it was soon almost full
of water. The boat was then hoisted out, and the captain and his
fellow-villains, the crew, got into it, leaving me and my deluded
companions, as they supposed, to perish. The cries, shrieks, and
tears of a throng of children had no effect on these merciless
wretches.
But happily for us the wind abated, and the ship being on a sandbank,
which did not give way to let her deeper, we lay here till morning,
when the captain, unwilling to lose all his cargo, sent some of
the crew in a boat to the ship's side to bring us ashore. A sort
of camp was made, and here we stayed till we were taken in by a
vessel bound to Philadelphia.
At Philadelphia, people soon came to buy us. We were sold for £16
apiece. I never knew what became of my unhappy companions, but I
was sold for seven years to one of my countrymen, Hugh Wilson, who
in his youth had suffered the same fate as myself in being kidnapped
from his home.
Happy was my lot in falling into his power, for he was a humane,
worthy man. Having no children of his own, and pitying my sad
condition, he took great care of me till I was fit for business,
and at twelve years old set me about little things till I could
manage harder work. Meanwhile, seeing my fellow-servants often
reading and writing, I felt a strong desire to learn, and told my
master that I should be glad to serve a year longer than the bond
obliged me if he would let me go to school. To this he readily
agreed, and I went every winter for five years, also learning as
much as I could from my fellow-servants.
With this good master I stayed till I was seventeen years old, when
he died, leaving me a sum of money, about £120 sterling, his best
horse, and all his wearing apparel.
I now maintained myself by working about the country, for any one
who would employ me, for nearly seven years, when I determined to
settle down. I applied to the daughter of a prosperous planter,
and found my suit was acceptable both to her and her father, so
we married. My father-in-law, wishing to establish us comfortably,
gave me a tract of land which lay, unhappily for me, as it has since
proved, on the frontiers of Pennsylvania. It contained about two
hundred acres, with a good house and barn.
I was now happy in my home, with a good wife; but my peace did not
last long, for about 1754 the Indians in the French interest, who
had formerly been very troublesome in our province, began to renew
their old practices. Even many of the Indians whom we supposed to
be in the English interest joined the plundering bands; it was no
wonder, for the French did their utmost to win them over, promising
to pay £15 for every scalp of an Englishman!