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* wił I CII

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ESSAYS IX SWEDISH HISTORY

across the terrible dilapidations for which his son was respon-sible. could judgc Kim less harshly than their fathers had done, for they were able to discern, not only the abhorred 'sovemgnt\ , but also the solid achievements which sovereignty had brought with it. Hópken thought it worth while to compare Charles xi \rith Gustav Adolf, not wholly to his disad vantage;^1S8 Nils Reuterholm, though an irreconcilable enemy to absolutism, had no doubt that

he was a great king, who in many respects need not yield pride of place to Gustav i or n, and whose like few kingdoms but Sweden łiave ever had. Through this sovcreign’s unwearied, wise and economical go\emment, Sweden achieved an interna! strength and an extemal prestige such as she never had befbre.¹*⁹

But the high nobility, in his own time and long afterwards, thought otherwise* and they could neither forgive nor foiget what he had done to them. Sooner than they had a right to hope. their oppressor was struck down: on 5 April 1697 Charles xi died of cancer of the stornach, aged only forty-one.

\Vhile his body lay yet unburied in the old castle of Stock-hohn, almost all the building, together with much precious archival materiał, was destroyed in a fire which contemporaries obscureh⁷ felt to marktheend ofan epoch. Thereis a story¹⁷⁰-fon troDOto, I fear, rather than true — that in the emergency the king’s corpse was hastily transferred to the only portion of the castle to reski the flames. This was the wing which housed the office occupied by the officials of the reduktion; men said afterwards that no fire could bite on it, for it was drenched with the tears of the victims. And on the table around which the reduktion had been wont to do its business, they are said to have dumped the coffin of King Charles xi. To some of his subjects, at least, it would have seemed an appropriate resting-place.

NOTES

¹ This paper is an espanded version of the Enid Muir Memoriał Lec turę, delivered in the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 25 March 1965, and was published in History, 1965.

¹ He wrote, for instance, ‘Wrgellan’ for Wrangel, ‘seiag* for saga, ‘hem-marsien⁵ for ‘hemresan’: Karl XI :s bręf till NilsBielke (Historiska Handlingar, 18, no. 2), Stockhołm, 1900, pp. 3, 64, 74.

*    Alf Aberg, Karl XI, Stockholm, 1958, p. 99.

⁴ Sec Birgitta Odćn, ‘Karl x Gustav och det andra damka kriget* Swndm, 1961, especially pp. 88-94, ¹⁰5^_7-

⁴ Birger Fahlborg, Soeriges yttre politik 1660-1664, Stockholm, 1932, i, 17-18,

•    Ibid., pp. 12—13.

^I    Gustaf Clcmensson, FlotUms forlaggning liii Karlskrona, Stockholm, 1938, PP- 12, 35, 46.

⁸    Akc Stille, Studier óver Bcngt Oxenstiemas politiska system, Uppsala, 1947, pp. 24, 248; id., ‘Nigra synpunkter pi den svenska krigsmaktens historia med sarskild hansyn dli sjovapnets roli’ (Sbrijler utg. av Sjóhistoriska Sam-fundet), Uppsala, 1941, p. 17. In December 1671 the ród agreed that it was beyond Sweden’s economic capacity to maintain an adeąuate army on German soil: Birger Fahlborg, ‘Sveriges fbrbund med Frankrike 1672’ (.Historisk Tidskrift, 1935), p. 310.

⁹    Aberg, Karl XI, p. 26.

¹⁰    Rudolf F&hraeus, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, Uppsala, 1936, p. 128.

^II    Georg Wittrock, ‘Riksskattmastaren Gustaf Bondes politiska program’. (.Historisk Tidskrift, 1913), pp. 44-6; Birger Fahlborg, ‘Westfalska folk-rattsprinciper och svensk jamviktspolitik’ (Historiska Studier tilldgnade Soai Tunberg) Stockholm, 1942, passim. In 1666 de la Gardie said that if Sweden ‘wanted not to be in praedam for her provinces, she could not at this time disband any troops, or then a mere prince of Luneburg could make a fool of them.. . . But to keep such troops in being was for Sweden impossible of her own resources, and therefore she must have a powerful alliance which would provide her with money’: Frederik Lagerroth, FrihetstidensfirfaUmng, Stockholm, 1915, p. 147.

¹⁸ Georg Landberg, Den soenska utrikespolitikms historia 1648-1697, Stockholm, 1952, p. 150.

¹⁸ Ali this runs counter to Fahlborg’s main contentions: see, e.g., the long argument in ‘Sveriges fbrbund med Frankrike*, pp. 321-31 (and contrast ibid., pp. 310 and n. 5, 311-12).

¹⁴    Ibid., p. 311.

¹⁵    Landberg, op. cit., p. 169.

¹⁶    N. Wimarsson, ‘Karl Gustaf Wrangel och brytningen med Brandenburg 1674* (Historisk Tidskrift, 1920), passim; Sven Ulric Palmę, *Sveriges politiska ledning under 1670-talets kris’ (Historisk Tidskrift, 1937), p. 91; Landberg, op. cit., pp. 175-90, for a elear account of this very comples crisis; Ame Munthe, Joel Gripenstiema. En storftnansidr fran Karl XI:s tid, Uppsala, 1941, pp. 84-6, 91-2, for French pressure.

¹⁷    Birger Fahlborg, *Sveriges fbrbund med Frankrike 1672’, p. 373.

¹⁸    O. Varenius, Raf sten med Karl XI :sfirmyndare, Uppsala, 1910-13, i, 83,

¹⁹    Birger Fahlborg, *Sverige pi fredskongressen i Nijmegen, 1676-78’

(.Historisk Tidskrift, 1944), p. 212.

⁸⁰    Sir W. Tempie, Works, Edinburgh, 1754, ii, 7, 12.

⁸¹    L. Andre, Louis XIV et l*Europę, Paris, 1950, p. JO. On the deterioradon of the Swedish army, cf. Lorenzo Magalotri, Soerige under dr 1674, Stockholm, 1912, pp. 16-20; on the generał scarcity of money, ibid,, pp. 45-6,

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