were driven out in disorder, having lost 10,000 in the
trenches, while many more fell in the fight. The Swedes
lost 600 only.”
Fleeing from the battle, the Russian troops ran
through the ice-filled Narva River, only to crack the ice
and drown in untold thousands. The battle was a disaster
for Peter and Russia, and, having dealt them such a huge
defeat, Charles turned against Poland and Augustus.
Marching into Livonia, he defeated the Poles at Riga on
17 June 1701. The following month, he invaded Poland
and defeated a Russian-Saxon army at Dunamunde on
9 July 1701. On 14 May 1702, he moved into Warsaw,
and his armies marched to Klezow (also Klissow), where
Charles fought against a joint Polish-Saxon army and
defeated them (9 July 1702), allowing him to march into
Krakow. A further defeat of a Saxon army at Pultusk (21
April 1703) led to Augustus’s removal from the Polish
throne. Charles replaced him with his own appointee,
Stanislas Leszcynski.
While Charles was in Poland, Russia’s Peter the
Great recovered from his defeat at Narva and moved
his army into Livonia a second time. Instead of head-
ing to Livonia to again take on Peter’s forces, Charles
made the fateful decision to invade Russia instead. Like
Napoleon a century later and Hitler two centuries later,
Charles learned the hazards of the Russian winter. When
his troops finally reached the Ukraine on 27 June 1709,
he stopped at Poltava on the Vorskla River. There, Peter’s
forces, some 25,000 men, met Charles’s troops, estimated
at 40,000 strong but tired and hungry from marching
with few supplies. A Swedish attack failed to push the
Russians back; the counterattack by the Russians led to
a bloody battle. Charles, wounded, fled with his chief
officers south toward Turkey; the Swedish army he left
behind surrendered two days after the battle began, hav-
ing lost nearly 10,000 dead and wounded. The Turks im-
prisoned Charles for a short time but ultimately released
him. Russia, unopposed, moved into Finland, and Au-
gustus was placed back onto the Polish throne. Charles
then spent the next four years in Turkey in an unsuccess-
ful attempt to persuade them to attack Russia.
Angered by the defeat, Charles traveled back home
in 1714 to prepare his forces for another fight. In 1716,
he repelled an invasion of Sweden by a Danish-Nor-
wegian army at Scania (also Scane). He then advanced
into Norway. On 30 November 1718, while leading his
troops at Frederickshald, he was shot in the head and
killed instantly; he was only 36 years old. Sweden lost
the war with Norway and was forced to sign the Treaty
of Nystad (1721), by which it ceded Livonia and its Bal-
tic possessions to Norway. With Charles’s death, his sis-
ter, Ulrike Eleanora, became the queen, serving for one
year until her husband Frederick I of the House of Hesse
took the throne.
Samuel Johnson, in his 1748 work The Vanity of
Human Wishes, wrote of Charles:His fall was destined to a barren strand,
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left the name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.References: Bengtsson, Frans Gunnar, The Sword Does
Not Jest: The Heroic Life of King Charles XII of Sweden
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960); Hatton, Ragnhild
Marie, Charles XII of Sweden (New York: Weybright and
Talley, 1968); Windrow, Martin, and Francis K. Mason,
“Charles XII, King of Sweden,” in The Wordsworth Dic-
tionary of Military Biography (Hertfordshire, U.K.: Word-
sworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 47–48; Latimer, Jon, “Storm
of Snow and Steel at Narva, Military History” 17, no. 5
(December 2000): 58–64; Bruce, George, “Narva,” in
Collins Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCol-
lins Publishers, 1995), 174; Johnson, Samuel, The Vanity
of Human Wishes. The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated by
Samuel Johnson (London: R. Dodsley, 1748), 219.Charles XIV John See bernadotte, Jean
baPtiste Jules, Prince de PontecorVo.Charles, archduke of Austria (Charles Louis
Habsburg) (1771–1847) Austrian general
An epileptic, Charles Louis Habsburg was born in 1771,
the fifth child of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II
and the brother of Francis II (also Franz II). Although
Charles was sickly for his entire life, he learned military
strategy from a former adjutant of frederick ii (the
Great), and at age 21 he entered the Austrian army with
the rank of major general. He saw action against France
in the revolutionary war, including at the battle of Je-
mappes (6 November 1792). Named governor-general
of the Netherlands, he fought and defeated the French
at Neerwinden (18 March 1793) in an effort to end the
French invasion of that nation. However, he lost to the chARleS xiv John