hardy as he was brave. At five years old he killed his first fox; at seven
he could manage his horse like a young centaur; and at twelve he had his
first successful bear hunt. He was as obstinate as he was hardy; he
steadily refused to learn Latin or French--the languages of the
court--until he heard that the kings of Denmark and Poland understood
them, and then he speedily mastered them.
His lady-mother's death, when he was scarce twelve years old, was a great
sadness, and nearly caused his own death, but, recovering his health, he
accompanied his father on hunting parties and military expeditions, and
daily grew stronger and hardier than ever.
In April, 1697, when the Prince was not yet fifteen, King Charles the
Eleventh, his stern-faced father, suddenly died, and the boy king
succeeded to the throne as absolute lord of "Sweden and Finland, of
Livonia, Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Wibourg, the islands of Rugen and Oesel,
of Pomerania, and the duchies of Bremen and Verdun,"--one of the finest
possessions to which a young king ever succeeded, and representing what is
now Sweden, Western Russia, and a large part of Northern Germany.
A certain amount of restraint is best for us all. As the just restraints
of the law are best for men and women, so the proper restraints of home
are best for boys and girls. A lad from whom all restraining influences
are suddenly withdrawn--who can have his own way unmolested,--stands in
the greatest danger of wrecking his life. The temptations of power have
been the cause of very much of the world's sadness and misery. And this
temptation came to this boy king of Sweden, called in his fifteenth year
to supreme sway over a large realm of loyal subjects. Freed from the
severity of his stern father's discipline, he found himself responsible to
no one--absolutely his own master. And he did what too many of us, I fear,
would have done, in his position--he determined to have a jolly good time,
come what might; and he had it--in his way.
He and his brother-in-law, the wild young Duke of Holstein, turned the
town upside down. They snapped cherry pits at the king's gray-bearded
councillors, and smashed in the windows of the staid and scandalized
burghers of Stockholm. They played ball with the table dishes, and broke
all the benches in the palace chapel. They coursed hares through the
council-chambers of the Parliament House, and ran furious races until they
had ruined several fine horses. They beheaded sheep in the palace till the
floors ran with blood, and then pelted the passers-by with sheep's heads.
They spent the money in the royal treasury like water, and played so many
heedless and ruthless boy-tricks that the period of these months of folly
was known, long after, as the "Gottorp Fury," because the harum-scarum
young brother-in-law, who was the ringleader in all these scrapes, was
Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.
But at last, even the people--serfs of this boy autocrat though they
were--began to murmur, and when one Sunday morning three clergymen
preached from the text: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child,"
the young sovereign remembered the counsels of his good mother and
recalled the glories of his ancestors, saw how foolish and dangerous was
all this reckless sport, turned over a new leaf, became thoughtful and
care-taking, and began his career of conquest with the best victory of
all--the conquest of himself!
But though he curbed his tendency to profitless and hurtful "skylarking,"
he had far too much of the Berserker blood of his ancestors--those rough
old vikings who "despised mail and helmet and went into battle
unharnessed"--to become altogether gentle in manners or occupation. He
hated his fair skin, and sought in every way to tan and roughen it, and to
harden himself by exposure and neglect of personal comfort. Many a night
was passed by the boy on the bare floor, and for three nights in the cold
Swedish December he slept in the hay-loft of the palace stables, without
undressing and with but a scanty covering.
So he grew to be a lad of seventeen, sturdy, strong, and hardy, and at the
date of our story, in the year 1699, the greater part of his time was
given up to military exercises and field sports, with but little attention
to debates in council or to the cares of state.
Among his chief enjoyments were the sham fights on land and water. Many a
hard-fought battle was waged between the boys and young men who made up
his guards and crews, and who would be divided into two or more opposing
parties, as the plan of battle required. This was rough and dangerous
sport, and was attended often with really serious results. But the
participants were stout and sturdy Northern lads, used to hardships and
trained to physical endurance. They thought no more of these encounters
than do the boys of to-day of the crush of football and the hard hitting
of the base-ball field, and blows were given and taken with equal good
nature and unconcern.
One raw day in the early fall of 1699, sturdy young Arvid Horn, a stout,
blue-eyed Stockholm boy, stripped to the waist, and with a gleam of fun in
his eyes, stood upright in his little boat as it bobbed on the crest of
the choppy Maelar waves. He hailed the king's yacht.
"Holo; in the boat there! Stand for your lives!" he shouted, and levelled
his long squirt-gun full at the helmsman.
Swish! came the well-directed stream of water plump against the helmsman's
face. Again and again it flew, until dripping and sore he dropped the
tiller and dashed down the companion-way calling loudly for help.
Help came speedily, and as the crew of the king's yacht manned the rail
and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the
principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval
engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or
so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid
Horn. One by one he drove them back, while as his boat drifted still
nearer the yacht he made ready to spring to the forechains and board his
prize. But even before he could steady himself for the jump, another tall
and fair-haired Stockholm lad, darting out from the high cabin, rallied
the defeated crew and bade them man the pumps at once.
A clumsy-looking fire-engine stood amidship, and the crew leaped to its
pumps as directed, while the new-comer, catching up a line of hose, sprang
to the rail and sent a powerful stream of water straight against the
solitary rover.
"Repel boarders!" he cried, laughingly, and the sudden stream from the
fire-engine's nozzle sent young Arvid Horn staggering back into his boat.
But he rallied quickly, and with well-charged squirt-gun attacked the new
defender of the yacht. The big nozzle, however, was more than a match for
the lesser squirt-gun, and the small boat speedily began to fill under the
constant deluge of water from the engine.
"Yield thee, yield thee, Arvid Horn; yield thee to our unconquerable
nozzle," came the summons from the yacht; "yield thee, or I will drown you
out like a rat in a cheese-press!"
"Arvid Horn yields to no one," the plucky boy in the boat made answer, and
with a parting shot and a laughing "_Farval_" he leaped from the sinking
boat into the dancing Maelar water. Striking boldly out he swam twice
round the boat in sheer bravado, defying the enemy; now ducking to escape
the pursuing stream, or now, while floating on his back, sending a return
shot with telling force against the men at the pump--for he still clung to
his trusty squirt-gun.
The fair-faced lad in the yacht looked at the swimmer in evident
admiration.
"Is it, then, hard to swim, Arvid Horn?" he inquired.
"Not if one is fearless," called back the floating boy.
"How; fearless?" exclaimed the lad on the yacht, hastily. "Do you perhaps
think that I am afraid?"
"I said not so," replied young Arvid, coolly sending a full charge from
his squirt-gun straight up in air.
"No; but you mean it--good faith, you mean it then," said the lad, and
flinging off wig, cocked hat, and long coat only, without an instant's
hesitation, he, too, leaped into the Maelar lake.
There is nothing so cooling to courage or reckless enthusiasm as cold
water--if one cannot swim. The boy plunged and floundered, and, weighty
with his boots and his clothing, soon sank from sight. As he came
spluttering to the surface again, "Help, help, Arvid," he called
despairingly; "I am drowning!"
Arvid, who had swum away from his friend, thinking that he would 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 loth, 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, 't is a rare good sport."
"Could it be done on horseback, think you?" queried Arvid, always on the
look-out for sensation.
"And why not? 'T is 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' 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 aurochs, 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 fire-arms.
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 nightfall."
"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 each other 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
were secretly obtained, a council of defence was appointed to govern
Sweden during the absence of the king, and on the twenty-third of April,
1700, two months before his eighteenth birthday, King Charles bade his
grandmother and his sisters good-bye and left Stockholm for ever.
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 the third of August, 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.
"'T is 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 be my music."
In the face of this "music" the shore was gained, the trenches were
carried by fierce assault, and King Charles' 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 beseiging 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.
[Illustration: EAGLE-FLAG OF SWEDEN.]
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 30th 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.