“Voltaire’s ‘Charles XII,’” says Brandes, “stands as a portrait of
a remarkable man, executed by a master. It caused Europe to take an
interest in the Sweden of that time comparable with what Denmark must
thank Shakespeare for in the case of Hamlet.
“Characteristically enough, Voltaire starts his story by a dramatic
contrast between the two main persons, Charles XII and Peter the
Great, both of whom are sketched in detail. Peter is immediately
brought on the scene because no matter how great the interest of
the author in the Swedish King’s grandly-planned character and his
remarkable fate, his real hero is not Charles, but Peter; not only
that bellicose and obstinate in Peter’s character that plunged his
country into misfortune, but the sovereign who in spite of the brutal
in the pleasures that he sought, in spite of the wildness and cruel
vengefulness was an educator, a civilizing influence who conquered
a barbarism many centuries old, and introduced industry, technique,
building art, science among a people gifted in a way, but fighting
against innovations.
“With that clarity that is Voltaire’s foundation quality as historian
he places Polish society and the Polish nation side by side with
the Swedish and the Russian, and thus the description of August
the Strong’s and later Stanislaw Leszczynski’s personalities is as
necessary as a background as the characterization of the Swedish and
Russian nature through the presentation of Charles XII and Peter the
Great.”
With regard to Voltaire’s relations to Russia as a whole, Brandes tells
how Frederick the Great looked with jealous eyes on the attention
that Voltaire paid to the Russian people in depicting the life-work
of Peter, since he looked for undivided devotion of the man whose
pen in that day was enough to shed luster on a country. Elizabeth,
the daughter of Peter the Great, while uncouth in many ways, was not
without taste for intellect and wit, and in approaching Voltaire after
becoming Empress sent him her portrait surrounded by large diamonds.
But it was in the person of Catherine II that Voltaire a second time
enters into acquaintance with a sovereign who is also a genius, a
decided and reformative genius, who puts herself into apprenticeship
under him and does everything to show him how grateful she is for what
he has done.
“There are certain parallels between Frederick and Catherine,” states
Brandes. “Both were of German antecedents and had in their blood German
respect for intellectual superiority, the German taste for knowledge
and mental values. But neither one stood in any cultural relation
to Germanism; both wrote and spoke French to perfection. Both were
Voltairians to their fingers’ tips. But in spite of their love for
French civilization neither one of them had ever seen Paris or France.”