THE SWEDISH EMPIRE.

 

THE history of Sweden, it has well been said, is the history of her kings. Till the reign of Gustavus Vasa there was no such thing as a Swedish State in the modern sense of the word. Sweden in those days was a name rather than a nation. Even so late as the third decade of the sixteenth century she cheerfully submitted to the humiliation of being treated as little better than a trading colony by the Hansa League to avoid absorption by Denmark. Gustavus I laid the foundations of her national existence as well as of her future greatness in the strong monarchy which he bequeathed to his sons, and so well did he do his work that even their follies and blunders could not seriously shake it. Gradually the young State began to feel her power and expand in every direction. The complications resulting from the collapse of the German Order first gave her a footing on the other side of the Baltic, and with the acquisition of Reval (1561) her dominion in the North may be said to have been founded. From Esthonia she advanced, step by step, into Livonia, though here the way was barred, for a time, by the valour of the Polish chivalry and the genius of the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz. Nevertheless, in Livonia also, Sweden, on the whole, stood her ground, and it was the tenacity of that cruel but eminently capable monarch, Charles IX, that prepared the way for the ultimate triumph of his illustrious son. Gustavus Adolphus inherited from his father a war with Russia as well as a war with Poland. Only two years before, Charles IX had combined (1609) with Tsar Vasily Shuisky against their common foe Poland, but the swift and irresistible advance of the Poles upset all the calculations of the allies. Vasily was deposed and carried off to Warsaw; a Polish prince was placed on the Muscovite throne, and Russia was straightway plunged into such a horrible state of anarchy that her speedy and complete dissolution seemed inevitable. Unable to assist their ally, the Swedes had now to look to themselves. Their plans alternated between raising up a Swedish tsar against his Polish competitor, or appropriating all Russia between Great Novgorod and Archangel; but, ultimately, the vastness of Russia’s domains and the doggedness of her people saved her now as they had saved her from the Tartars two centuries before. With the election of the first Romanov, a new era began for the distracted country, and after a glorious but indecisive six years’ struggle, Gustavus, recognising the impossibility of obliterating his eastern neighbour, dictated a peace that was to paralyse her for a century. By the Peace of Stolbova (27 Feb., 1617) Russia abandoned all her claims to Esthonia and Livonia, ceded Carelia and Ingria to Sweden, and paid besides a war indemnity of 200,000 rubles. By this humiliating treaty the frontier of Russia was thrust back beyond Lake Ladoga and she was totally excluded from the Baltic.

The war with Poland (then at the height of her short-lived power) proved a much more serious business. It took Gustavus nine years of hard fighting to wrest Livonia from her grasp; but the victory of Wallhof (7 June, 1626) finally completed the work. With Riga in his possession, he was now master of the Dwina, and in 1626 he transferred the war to West Prussia (then a fief of Poland) that he might gain the command of the Vistula likewise and so deprive Poland also of her northern seaboard. Imperial indeed was the policy of the great Swede. It was his secret but steadfast resolve to found the Scandinavian empire with the Baltic for its Mediterranean; nay, there is good reason to believe that, had he lived to realise his ambition, he would have transferred his capital from the shores of the remote Malare to a more central position on the very spot where Peter the Great, a century later, with equal prescience, was to erect Petersburg. Unfortunately for Sweden, this magnificent project was postponed to a nobler but less practical ambition—the heroic monarch determined to champion the desperate cause of his suffering co-religionists in Germany. No vision of an imperial crown, as some have thought, tempted him to draw his sword in their behalf. There can now be no doubt that, in this matter, he consulted his conscience rather than his common-sense, and not without reason has grateful Protestantism regarded him, ever since, as her ideal hero and her typical saint, her Bayard and her St. Louis in one.

Yet, although Gustavus’s German crusade is his fairest title to fame, politically it was a serious blunder, for glorious as were its immediate results, its ultimate consequences proved mischievous and even ruinous to his country. His original project of establishing a compact, connected and, to a certain extent, homogeneous empire round the shores of the Baltic was well within the reach of Sweden’s resources, and had he stopped short at the Dwina, or even at the Vistula, it could easily have been accomplished and Sweden might, to this day, have remained the Mistress of the North. But every step he took westward of the Vistula was a false step because it removed him farther and farther from the real centre of his power; he was now fighting other peoples’ battles instead of his own; his very triumphs were illusory because they blinded his country to her inherent weakness and, but for the genius of the extraordinary man he left behind him to sustain his empire during the minority of his daughter, even the crowning victory of Breitenfeld (7 Sept., 1631) had like to have been the grave of Sweden’s greatness.

For it was the unerring eye and steady hand of the Swedish Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna (“that axle on which the world turns,” as the French diplomatists called him), that during the next twelve anxious years steered Sweden safely through the sea of troubles which threatened every moment to engulph her. That she emerged from the Thirty Years’ war, not merely a great Power, but the acknowledged head of Continental Protestantism, was mainly due to the wisdom and courage of this great statesman. It was he who, throughout the crisis of the struggle, kept her wavering, allies together; skilfully hid her weakness from the watchfulness of her foes; gave fresh generals to her armies and fresh armies to her generals; inspired the Swedish Senate and the Swedish Estates with something of his own patriotism and withstood the Queen herself at the Council Board when her levity seemed likely to fritter away the fruits of so many costly triumphs. Christina herself was obliged to respect the veteran statesman who had been her father’s most cherished counsellor and her own faithful guardian; but her vanity chafed against an authority which obscured while it protected the throne. Though she could not set aside she delighted to thwart the all-powerful Chancellor, and it was chiefly due to her interference that the Peace of Westphalia was not so advantageous to Sweden as Oxenstierna tried to make it. Inadequate, almost paltry, was the reward which Sweden thereby obtained for the services and the sacrifices of eighteen years. Western Pomerania with the islands of Rügen and Usedom, a small strip of Eastern Pomerania with the towns of Stettin, Damin, Golbrow and the Isle of Wollin; Wismar and the district of Poel and Neukloster; the former Bishopric of Bremen and Verden with a seat and a vote in the German Reichstag and the direction of the Lower Saxon circle alternately with Brandenburg, was all that fell to her share. These new possessions, it will be seen, gave Sweden the control of the three chief rivers of Germany, the Oder, the Elbe and the Weser, and she had the exclusive right to all the tolls levied thereon. They were, indeed, her most lucrative possessions so long as she held them, but a single glance at the map of Europe will suggest, at once, the difficulty she would have in retaining these scattered, outlying possessions. Her former allies already began to regard her as an intruder, and it was not to be expected that Germany would tamely submit to a foreign Power having the practical control of her external trade. These German possessions, moreover, were mischievous to Sweden in another way. They gave her a false importance on the Continent which she was always endeavouring to increase and thus withdrew her from her natural policy, the consolidation of her northern dominions round the Baltic, a task now needing all her energies and resources. For so poor and thinly populated a country to attempt to dominate Germany and remain the Mistress of the North at the same time meant inevitable disaster, though favourable circumstances and an extraordinary succession of great rulers postponed the evil day for something more than half a century. Moreover, Christina’s boundless extravagances during the last six years of her reign did not tend to improve matters. The resources of the State in those days were mainly derived from the vast crown-lands, and these Christina distributed so recklessly among her favourite courtiers that, at last, the permanent annual loss to the Crown was no less than £200,000, and when, in 1654, she voluntarily resigned the crown to her cousin Charles, the new King found the realm not very far removed from bankruptcy. His first care was to summon the Estates to relieve his more pressing wants and, at his suggestion, and with their consent, it was resolved to reduce, or, as we should say, recover a certain proportion of the alienated crown-lands; and a fresh department of state was formed to carry out this very necessary reform. Then, after celebrating his marriage with the Princess Hedwig Eleanora of Holstein, the King embarked for the Continent to begin a war that he was never to finish.

The marvellous exploits of Charles X, though not nearly so well-known as they should be, can, nevertheless, only be hinted at here. Charles’s policy was a continuation and extension of the original policy of Gustavus Adolphus freely interpreted by the extravagant imagination of a Prince, who, with all his genius, was much more of a knight-errant than a statesman or even a general. It was his intention, primarily, to round off and weld together Sweden’s Baltic possessions by adding thereto all the Polish territory intervening between Pomerania and Livonia. The wretched condition of Poland, engaged as she then was in a mortal struggle with her own rebellious Cossacks aided by Russia, seemed to promise him an easy triumph, and, in fact, within six months he had driven John Casimir, the Polish King, into exile and taken possession of nearly the whole of Poland proper. But he soon found that it was easier to beat the Polish hosts than to subdue the Polish nation. The tyranny of the northern invader led to a general rising and in Stephen Czarniecki (vir molestissimus, as Charles X.called him) the Poles found at last a deliverer. Despite fresh victories (notably the great three days’ battle of Warsaw, 18-20 July, 1656), Charles found himself steadily losing ground and, to add to his troubles, Russia now fell upon Livonia and Esthonia; Denmark, instigated by the Emperor, invaded Bremen and South Sweden simultaneously, while Brandenburg, his sole ally, suddenly went over to his enemies. Then it was that Charles dissipated the league that seemed about to overwhelm him by leading a host of 13,000 men across the barely frozen waters of the Belt, a feat absolutely without a parallel in history, annihilating the Danish forces that barred the way to Copenhagen, and dictating to the terrified Danish Government the humiliating Peace of Roskilde (26 Feb., 1658). In pursuance of his Pan-Scandinavian policy, Charles tried by this treaty to detach Denmark from Holland, so as to “have his back free,” as he expressed it, while dealing with his other foes. But the Dutch, well aware of Charles’s intention to exclude them altogether from the Baltic, secretly encouraged the Danes to refuse to ratify the treaty and, accordingly, after six months of diplomatic fencing, a second war between the two northern Powers began. Charles, thoroughly determined this time to wipe out the Danish monarchy altogether, invaded Zealand in August, 1658, captured the fortress of Kronberg commanding the Sound, and proceeded to invest Copenhagen. But a strong Dutch fleet under Van Weisenaer, after six hours’ hard fighting, forced the passage of the Sound (29 October, 1658) and threw supplies and reinforcements into the beleaguered city. Still Charles persisted, but the heroic resistance of the besieged, the destruction of a Swedish army-corps in Funen and a general invasion of all his continental possessions by his numerous foes inclined him, at last, to peace. Wisely trusting rather in the support of his own subjects than to the mediation of interested foreign Powers, he summoned a Riksdag, or Diet, to Gothenburg at the end of 1659. He was now willing to come to terms with Denmark, Holland and Poland so as to have his hands free to deal with Russia and Brandenburg; but death overtook him (13 February, 1660) at the very moment when his country had most need of his genius to extricate her from the difficulties into which his ambition had plunged her. He left behind him an only son, a child four years of age.

Had the enemies of Sweden only realised her utter prostration they would not have listened so readily to the pacific overtures that she now hastened to make to them. But the victories of Charles X, if they did nothing else, at least inspired Europe with a wholesome fear and a respect of the Swedish arms, and thus materially assisted the Swedish regency in its endeavours to come to terms with the hostile coalition. The ambitious dreams of Charles X had indeed to be abandoned; but, on the other hand, Sweden lost nothing at all on the Continent, while in the Scandinavian peninsula itself she gained at last her natural frontiers by the acquisition of the provinces of Scania, Halland and Bleking, which had belonged to Denmark time out of mind.

The regency appointed by Charles X consisted of the Queen Dowager and the five great officers of state. The Queen herself was a nonentity, but as the five magnates had grown grey in the public service and each, in his own line, had already done notable deeds, the dying monarch had good reason to believe that he had left his infant son in safe and strong hands. As a matter of fact this regency was the weakest and most mischievous Sweden ever had. The most respectable of the five regents were Counts Gustaf Bonde and Per Brahe, excellent types of the old-fashioned conservative aristocracy at its best, and so long as the former was alive and the latter in health, things went fairly well; but, ultimately, the management of affairs fell entirely into the hands of the Chancellor, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, always the evil genius of the regency. The brilliant accomplishments, immense wealth and princely liberality of De la Gardie had made him the most conspicuous figure in Sweden during three successive reigns; but he had never shown any particular aptitude for affairs and his boundless extravagance and frivolity were as ruinous to his country as to himself. Under his misrule Sweden sunk lower than she had ever sunk before. At home De la Gardie’s administration was marked by the most criminal recklessness. The salutary reduction scheme, whereby Charles X had hoped gradually to diminish the national debt and double the national revenue, was allowed to stand still because it was unpopular with the nobility; the prodigalities of Christina were renewed and the supporters of the Minister were enriched at the public expense while the soldiers of the frontier garrisons were starving and the salaries of half the civil service remained unpaid for lack of funds. Moreover, the financial difficulties of the country reacted injuriously on her foreign policy. Sweden now became what she had never been before, a mere mercenary of France. The continental complications resulting from the ambition of Louis XIV led both France and the allies banded against her to bid against each other for the support of the great northern Power. De la Gardie was the friend of France, but his opponents in the Senate were for a watchful neutrality whose object should be to check the extravagant pretensions of le grand Monarque by drawing nearer to England and Holland. For a time, too (1668-1672), they carried their point, and the Triple Alliance which compelled Louis XIV to accept the terms of the allies was mainly their work. But, in the long run, De la Gardie prevailed. By the Treaty of Stockholm (14 April, 1672) Sweden virtually sold herself to Louis XIV, by engaging to hold an army­corps of 16,000 men in Germany at his disposal in return for ample subsidies. At the same time De la Gardie flattered himself that he would be able to steer clear of a war and so get the indispensable subsidies for nothing. But the course of events proved too strong for him. Throughout 1673-4 Sweden tried, in vain, to mediate between the belligerents. Then Louis grew impatient and peremptorily demanded that Sweden should give him the covenanted assist­ance for which he had already paid; and so, at last, in December, 1674, Marshal Wrangel invaded Brandenburg and went into winter quarters there. There was a pause of suspense during which all Germany looked for fresh proofs of Sweden’s ancient prowess, and then the seed sown by twelve years of sloth and slackness was reaped in manifest disaster. Anticipating attack by himself attacking, the Elector of Brandenburg surprised a Swedish division at Fehrbellin (28 June, 1675) and defeated it with the loss of 600 men, whereupon the Swedes fell back at all points.

The so-called Battle of Fehrbellin was little more than a sharp engagement, but its moral effect was tremendous. The general belief in the invincibility of the Swedish arms was rudely shaken; her German allies drew back, and Denmark, Brandenburg, Holland and the Emperor fell upon her simultaneously. By the end of 1676 nearly all her German possessions were lost, while her fleet was annihilated by the combined Dutch and Danish squadrons under Juel and Van Tromp at the great two days’ battle of Oland. At this crisis it was the heroic energy of the young King that alone saved the country. Charles XI was at this time a rough lad of twenty whose education had been shamefully neglected by his guardians; but the bitter ordeal of the next six years was to ripen, or rather harden, him into a stern and precocious manhood. At first, indeed, it seemed as if the poor youth were absolutely stunted and stupefied by the disasters which crashed down upon him one after another; but, hampered though he was at every step by craven counsellors and incompetent ministers, his unconquerable courage sustained him to the end, and his shrewd common-sense (always his strong point) divining that a victory obtained at any cost was now the sole remedy for the universal demoralisation, he led his army straight against the invading Danes and utterly routed them at the battle of Halmstad (17 August, 1676). At the end of the same year the young King again attacked the Danes at Lund, against the advice of all his generals, and won another victory which, relatively to the numbers engaged, was the bloodiest of the century, 8300 out of 16,000 combatants perishing on the field. The year 1677 was marked by two crushing naval defeats of the Swedes at the hands of the Danes and Dutch and the total loss of Pomerania; but, in Sweden itself, Charles with only 9000 men defeated 12,000 Danes at the battle of Landscrona after a fierce struggle of eight hours. This crowning victory enabled the Swedes in 1678 to recover all the Scanian fortresses captured by the Danes; but an invasion of Prussia from Livonia failed utterly— thus, after seven years of incessant fighting, Sweden had been barely able to keep the foe at bay at home and had lost everything abroad. Fortunately, for her, an uninterrupted series of victories had, in the meantime, made her ally, Louis XIV, the arbiter of Europe, and the terms which he condescended at last to offer his antagonists, in the course of 1678, included a full restitution of all the territory wrested from Sweden. Protestations were in vain, on this point le grand Monarque was inexorable. He needed a strong power in the North devoted to his interests, and by the treaties of Nijmegen, St. Germaine, Celle and Lund, Sweden recovered all her German possessions except a few trifling strips of territory which her high-handed protector took upon himself to cede to her more importunate creditors without her knowledge or consent. Upon the proud and sensitive mind of Charles XI, however, the dictatorial, almost contemptuous, tone of his magnificent protector produced an ineffaceable impression. Henceforth he was possessed by an inveterate dislike and distrust of everything French, and we shall see that in this, as in so many other respects, Charles XII was his father’s own son.

Charles XI devoted the rest of his days to setting his house in order. The fiery ordeal through which he had just passed had opened his eyes to the real situation of his country; his practical common-sense was convinced that only the most rigid economy could make her Government strong and stable once more, and he really seems to have believed himself divinely commissioned to reform her abuses and re­establish her greatness. His plan was a very simple one. He determined to thoroughly carry out his father’s reduction, or land-recovery, scheme, well aware that in this he could count upon the support of his people; and he addressed himself to the task with an energy and a perseverance compared with which even the labours of a Frederick the Great or a Joseph II seem insignificant. Never, indeed, was any Swedish monarch so popular as Charles XI. The nation at large thoroughly believed in him and contrasted his manifold energy and manifest honesty with the slackness and problematical probity of the aristocratic classes. Ever since the days of Gustavus Adolphus the nobility and gentry of Sweden had tended to become more and more of a dominating and exclusive military caste gradually appropriating the bulk of the crown-lands and, as a matter of fact, both impoverishing the State (which in those days was synonymous with the Crown) and gradually obliterating the yeomanry and peasant proprietors. So violent and vindictive, indeed, was class feeling in Sweden in those days, that the Riksdag or Diet was now inclined to give the King even more than he asked for; the noble and the non-noble orders bid repeatedly against each other to win his favour, and if at the end of his reign Charles XI found himself one of the most absolute princes in Europe, it was far less the result of his own seeking than of his people’s choosing. From the first the three lower Estates (Clergy, Burgesses and Peasants) warmly supported the King’s land-redemption project, not so much because the State would gain as because the gentry would suffer by it. The Riksdags of 1682, 1686 and 1693 successively authorised Charles XI to examine all the title-deeds of all the landed estates in the realm with a view to their ultimate recovery by the Crown; zealously interpreted all the fundamental laws in a non-natural, monarchical sense, and even revived long obsolete laws for the express benefit of the Crown. It is remarkable, too, that, in all these matters the Estates themselves took the initiative. The King, all along, kept discreetly in the back­ground, skilfully taking advantage of the antagonism of the Estates; now and then putting leading questions to them as to the exact limits of his prerogatives and invariably using their invariably favourable responses as the starting-points for fresh pretensions. At last the Riksdag became little more than the obsequious mouth-piece of royalty, and the climax of self-surrender was reached when the Riksdag of 1693 by its so-called “Süveranetets-forklaring” or Declaration of Sovereignty, solemnly declared his Majesty to be “an all-commanding sovereign king responsible for his actions to none on earth, but with power and authority as a Christian King to rule and govern his realm as it seemeth him best.” On the other hand, it is only fair to add that Charles XI made excellent use of his practically unlimited power. His ordering, reforming hand was felt in every corner of the realm, and though the redemption of the crown-lands was frequently pressed on with a relentless sternness not easily distinguishable from cruelty, and though such an economical revolution could not fail, for a time, to depreciate all sorts of property and thus have a very unsettling effect generally, yet, in the long run, it was a distinct and lasting benefit to the State and the nation. The finances were regulated, the treasury was replenished, trade developed, agriculture improved and the national defences were strengthened and multiplied.

And the moral improvement of Sweden under Charles XI was even more remarkable than her material improvement. It stands to reason that under an absolute monarch whose every action was determined by a stern sense of duty, and who was known to work all his days and half his nights in the public service, thrift and industry would be regarded as the cardinal virtues and none would have the slightest chance of preferment who was not prepared to work at least as hard as his master. The people naturally followed the example of their King and the wholesome influence of Charles XI had a bracing, hardening effect upon the national character which was perhaps the real secret of that wonderful elasticity which enabled the nation to sustain a twenty years’ war against the banded might of Europe beneath the banner of his heroic son.

The stability of Sweden at home corresponded with her renewed importance abroad. In the latter days of Charles XI she once again became a great Power whose friendship was coveted and whose enmity was avoided. The King himself, who had no great liking for diplomacy (he seems to have regarded it as little else than lying on a large scale), left the department of foreign affairs almost entirely in the hands of his Chancellor, the aged Bengt Oxenstjerna, whose cautious circumspection managed, though not without some difficulty, to keep Sweden clear of all continental complications. Oxenstjerna shared his master’s distrust of Louis XIV, and the guarantee treaty of The Hague which he concluded with Holland in September, 1681 (Spain and the Emperor acceding to it a year later), aimed at keeping France in her proper place. Louis retaliated by arming Denmark and Brandenburg against Sweden, and in 1683 a Franco-Danish fleet actually appeared in the Baltic; but Holland hastened to the assistance of her ally and the Peace of Regensburg ultimately restored the tranquillity of Europe for the next five years. In 1688, however, the ambition of Louis XIV raised up a fresh coalition against him and led to another European war. Strenuous efforts were made on both sides to draw Sweden into it; but though Charles XI, mindful of his youthful exploits, was strongly tempted to draw his sword once more, his constant regard for the true welfare of his country prevailed. He waited, therefore, until the belligerents were exhausted and then (1697) offered his mediation which was accepted at the great peace congress at Rijswijk, the history of which belongs to the reign of his son.

Such, in short, prior to the accession of Charles XII, was the political history of Sweden, an outline of which was necessary to the right understanding of that monarch’s reign. We have seen, to sum up briefly, how the modern Swedish State was, in the main, the creation of Gustavus Vasa; how its normal development was interrupted under his sons, and diverged eccentrically under his grandson; how the weakness of Sweden’s neighbours and the greatness of her own rulers enabled her, for a time, to persevere in her glorious but mistaken policy; how the slightest reverse (e. g. Fehrbellin) sufficed to shake the imposing but unsubstantial fabric of her greatness to its very base, and how, finally, only the casual assistance of a foreign potentate permitted that painstaking master-builder, Charles XI, to shore up again, though not for long, the subsiding political structure. But such an unnatural state of things could not last forever. Indefensible historically and impossible geographically, the Swedish Empire was bound to fall sooner or later, and it is the heroic but hopeless struggle of Charles XII to still uphold it when its time had come, which gives to his adventurous career its inexhaustible interest and its tragic pathos.

 

Nicolas Catinat (1 September 1637 – 22 February 1712 French military commander and Marshal of France under Louis XIV, Catinat was born in Paris . He entered the Gardes Françaises at an early age and distinguished himself at the Siege of Lille in 1667.

He became a brigadier ten years later, maréchal de camp in 1680, and lieutenant-general 1688. He served with great credit in the campaigns of 1676–1678 in Flanders during the Franco-Dutch War, and was later employed in the persecution of the Vaudois in 1686. After taking part in the Siege of Philippsburg at the opening of the Nine Years War, he was appointed to command the French troops in the south-eastern theatre of war. In 1691 he crossed into the County of Nice, and captured the towns Nice and Villefranche.

His victories against Victor Amadeus of Savoy at the Battle of Staffarda in 1690, and the Battle of Marsaglia in 1693, were amongst his greatest achievements, (Victor Amadeus II later abandoned the Allied coalition and concluded peace with King Louis by signing the Treaty of Turin on 29 August 1696). In 1693 Catinat was made a marshal of France and in 1697 he led the French forces in the victorious Siege of Ath.

At the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, Catinat was placed in charge of operations in northern Italy, but he was much hampered by the orders of the French court and the weakness of his forces. Outmanoeuvred by Prince Eugene of Savoy, Catinat suffered a reverse at Carpi and was soon afterwards superseded by Marshal Villeroi.

With Catinat acting as Villeroi's second-in-command, French forces were again defeated by Eugene's Imperialists at the Battle of Chiari. Catinat died at Saint-Gratien in 1712. His memoirs were published in 1819.

The British historian Geoffrey Treasure sums up Catinat:

Catinat was not the typical soldier of this period. He had begun life as a lawyer, with no advantage of birth, and made his way by sheer merit. He was a careful general, thorough and sparing of the lives of his men, unambitious and something of a philosopher. After his failure in the Italian campaign of the next war [i.e., the War of the Spanish Succession], he retired to the country to cultivate his garden.