Northern prince

D. D. ALDRIDGE

Charles XII of Sweden R. M. Hatton (Weiden feld and Nicolson 84s)

At a time when the history-reading public is indc! creasingly exposed to 'trend' or 'epochal's.' history served up like thick slices of succulent Christmas cake, I would hope the curious browser will not take too seriously Professor Hatton's remark, over-modest in my judgment, that 'a picture in depth which puts Charles XII into perspective and makes him part of the history of Sweden and of 'Europe in the sense- of the "trends of the age" has not yet been achieved. . . ProfeSsor Hatton has succeeded in the prodigious task of attempting- a' bio- - graphy of the inscrutable Charlei, and, in my submission, she has come close to •achieving this kind of 'trend' study into the bargain.. For the truth is that unless Charles XII is seen• against Sweden's historic past, against the motives of his many foes, and the inhibitions of his potential allies, any study of him with claims to definition is done for. The under- lying strength of this book, which -goes far to explain its length of 656 pages (of which 130 are bibliography, notes and index), is that these problems are thoroughly tackled by some- one fully equipped to do so.'

Professor Hatton has given us, in effect, a survey of Europe as it affected Charles. XII such as we have never had before, an investi- gation which does not shirk either diplomatic tangles, or problems of strategy, or the logistics of war, or, indeed, the drives towards reform at home in which Charles had a very real hand himself. But this is, after all, a biography, and Professor Hatton presents a portrait of

the king made up of many inaccessible and mosaic-like fragments of information which reveal a figure whom readers of Bengtsson (and, dare I add, Von Heidenstam in his

Karolinerna) may have long discerned in out- line, but failed to fathom. This author would

not claim to have plumbed the depths, but nevertheless her Charles XII, while conceding nothing of his heroic qualities, comes across as movingly human and compassionate through the challenges of bitter experience and personal grief. It is a masterly evocation fashioned from unimpeachable evidence, and because of it the book must surely find its place among the most notable historical biographies of recent years.

Half of Charles XII's life was crowded in an almost unparalleled way by spectacular tri- umphs and numbing reverses, and, at least in Turkey, by a strangely tensed inactivity. He is a wonderfully dramatic subject for bio-

graphy, but it must be doubted, so stereo-

typed has he become as a monarch to whom 'no joys pacific sceptres yield,' whether he can

be given 'another chance' by generations who

have • too good cause to distrust militarism in any form. Certainly in Sweden, a country still nurturing the sort of liberal revulsion to abso- lutist government which caused a revolution there after Charles XII's death, that monarch is relegated to the museum-mustiness of cap- tured ordnance and faded standards. The one indifferent statue of Charles which Sweden boasts suggests nothing of a king who, though intent on defending his domains, could take a keen interest, for example, in the application

of new technologies, to industry and commerce, or the establishment of travelling scholarships. He had, too, a far more than conventional in- terest in the arts, especially those of the ancient east.

That Charles had a many-sidedness is abun- dantly brought out here, as are his devotion to a tragically dwindling family circle and his comradeship in the field with men such as Rehnskiold, Lowen and Grothusen. Professor Hatton is particularly revealing about the king's failure to marry: no evidence of sexual ab- normality as such, though perhaps an over- austere attitude towards women, and a cling- ing to the cherished ideal of marrying some- one whom Charles could 'love all his life,' once the war was over. The author is lucid on the

bridle placed on Charles XII's policies by. Britain and the Dutch early in his war, but I

consider she overstates the effectiveness of George I's contribution to the anti-Swedish alliance through use of British seapower, at

least in 1715. Neither would I describe

Frederick of Hesse, Charles's brother-in-law, as exactly 'wily.' Indubitably ambitious for the throne, he was too warm an admirer of

Charles, as Professor Hatton points out, ever to be a party to an assassination. Indeed, I

find her case generally against the murder theory almost unassailable. But to my mind there was little that was devious in Frederick, and his happiest memories were his years with British regiments in the war against Louis XIV, rendering this German prince self-confessedly anglophile. Once his trammelled kingship

soured on him he turned easily enough to women and hunting, the politically innocent interests of the shires. An able soldier, he was yet a baleful contrast to his Vasa predecessors.

Her belief in Charles's death through enemy action enables Professor Hatton to place in yet sharper relief not only the tearing sense of personal bereavement those nearest him suffered but also their conviction that Sweden

had been robbed of a ruler, matured in adver- sity (he was only twenty-seven at Poltava in 1709), who was about to lead her to a worthy peace. The contention that Charles might have made a fine peace-time ruler may surprise, but in these pages it is given substance. Unlike another youthful northern prince, with whom he shared both a neurotic reverence for a father's memory and a certain philosophic in- trospection, fate enabled Charles XII to prove himself 'most royally' And, as the victor of Narva and Holovzin alone, he must have a prior claim to a passing in which 'the soldiers music and the rites of war speak loudly for him.'