- Project Runeberg -  The Scots in Sweden. Being a contribution towards the history of the Scot abroad /
152

(1907) [MARC] Author: Thomas Alfred Fischer
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V.

The Period after Charles XII.

When on that other fatal November day the bullet
pierced Charles the Twelfth’s head as he stood in the
trenches before Fredrikshald, watching his men at work,
it put an end not only to a young heroic life but also to
Sweden’s position as one of the Great Powers. The
Conqueror King left his own country on the verge of ruin.
Considering the state of its utter exhaustion, distress, and
discontent, the marvel is that such a country as Sweden
does at the present day exist at all. Then or never, one
would think, the opportunity presented itself to her
numerous enemies to annihilate their troublesome neighbour.

It would be unjust, however, to blame Charles XII.
alone for the rapid decline of Sweden’s power. His
headstrong policy only accelerated a process which in any case
had become inevitable. Provinces which had been
violently torn from their mother-country, like Bremen,
Pomerania, and Finland, naturally gravitated towards the whole
to which they historically and geographically belonged.

Even now a strong and wise king might have done
much, but Charles XII.’s successor was neither the one nor
the other, neither strong enough to subdue his foreign
enemies without, nor wise enough to break the power of
an ambitious nobility within.

Frederik of Hessen-Kassel, the husband of Charles’s
younger sister Ulrika Eleonora, who had assumed the
government in 1720, was a tool in the hand of the parties,
which, under the influence of Russia, France, and England,
disturbed and polluted the political life of the country.
The two chief parties were called the “ Hats ” and the

1 Liitzen, 6th November, 1632; Fredrikshald, 30th November, 1718.

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