Charles XII of Sweden
Charles XII was eighteen when three neighbours attacked his empire at once and thirty-six when he was shot in a trench in Norway. He succeeded in 1697 at fifteen, and Denmark, Saxony-Poland and Russia formed a coalition in 1700 on the assumption that a boy could be robbed. His first year answered that. He landed in Zealand and knocked Denmark out in weeks, then took 8,000 men to relieve Narva in November and destroyed a Russian army of some 35,000 in a snowstorm, attacking through the blizzard with the wind at his back. He then spent six years in Poland deposing Augustus II and installing a king of his own, which was the decision that lost the war: it gave Peter I time to rebuild an army, take the Baltic coast and found a city there. The invasion of Russia in 1707 went south into Ukraine on a Cossack alliance, wintered in the coldest European winter in five hundred years, and was destroyed at Poltava in July 1709 with Charles wounded and carried on a litter. He escaped into Ottoman territory and stayed five years at Bender, pressing the sultan into a war with Russia and eventually fighting the janissaries sent to remove him. He rode back to Swedish Pomerania in fifteen days in 1714, disguised, and resumed the war. He was killed besieging a Norwegian fortress in November 1718. Whether the shot came from the fortress or from behind him has been argued in Sweden for three centuries.
- Lived: 1682 CE – 1718 CE
- Nationality: Swedish
- Roles: king, military_leader
