Charles II of the United Kingdoms of Scandinavia
| Charles II | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden | |||||
| Reign | 11 February 1845 - 30 April 1866 | ||||
| Coronation | 20 May 1845 | ||||
| Predecessor | Charles I | ||||
| Successor | Charles III | ||||
| Minister of Defence for Belgium | |||||
| In office | 1832 - 1834 | ||||
| Preceded by | Félix de Merode | ||||
| Succeeded by | Louis Evain | ||||
| Governor-general of Norway | |||||
| Tenure | 16 February 1814 - 5 February 1818 | ||||
| Predecessor | Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark | ||||
| Successor | Johan August Sandels | ||||
| Born | Charles Christian August Frederick 5 November 1796 Augustenborg Palace, Augustenborg, Denmark | ||||
| Died | 30 April 1866 (aged 69) Amalienborg, Copenhagen, Denmark | ||||
| Burial | |||||
| Spouse | |||||
| Issue | |||||
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| House | Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg | ||||
| Father | Charles I | ||||
| Mother | Princess Louise Augusta of Denmark | ||||
| Religion | Church of Denmark Church of Norway Church of Sweden | ||||
Charles II, or Carl II (5 November 1796 - 30 April 1866), was the King of the United Kingdoms of Scandinavia. Originally born in November 1796 as a minor Danish prince, he instead subsequently became a Swedish prince and second in line to the Swedish throne at the age of thirteen, when his father was adopted by the childless King Charles XIII of Sweden amidst a succession crisis facing the kingdom.
At the age of eighteen, the younger Charles first took part in the campaign of unifying the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, then previously under Danish suzerainty, after which, he was made Crown Prince of Sweden and Norway following his father's ascension to the throne. Subsequently, during his tenure as crown prince, he notably oversaw various reforms to the traditionally decentralised Scandinavian militaries, whilst also serving as an advisor, and on several occasions, a field officer for several European armies along with his brother, Prince Gustav, thereby earning him the nickname, The Mercenary Crown Prince. Furthermore, Charles was also notable in sponsoring the efforts of a renewed Scandinavian colonialism, particularly in both Africa and the Middle East.
Charles II, along with his father, Charles I and his eldest son, Charles III, are collectively known and remembered as "The Three Great Charles", with the period from the beginning of his father's reign as king of a unified Scandinavia until the end of the reign of his son, Charles III, being named as the Great Carolean Era, or the Golden Carolean Century.
Early Life
Charles was born on November 5th 1796 as the only son of the then Prince Christian August of Augustenborg and Princess Louise Augusta of Denmark. Born Charles Christian August Frederick, he shared his father's later adopted Swedish name, Charles, and the latter's own middle name, August, whilst also being given the names commonly used by previous Danish monarchs, Christian and Frederick.
Nevertheless, the young Charles had been born in his father's absence, the latter whom, prior to his birth, had enlisted for the recently beginning Napoleonic Wars. Consequently, for roughly the first five years of his life, the young prince rarely saw his father around, and instead grew close to his mother, Princess Louise Augusta. At the same time, he grew up considerably well himself in the family residence of Augustenborg Palace, located in the southern region of Denmark. On several occasions, he was able to visit his Oldenburg cousins in Copenhagen, whom generally received the young prince warmly, as his own mother was of the dynasty itself.
At the age of thirteen, when his father was made Governor-general of Norway, the family of three subsequently moved to Oslo, where the young prince was said to had been wholly fond of the city's coastal scenery. For instance, at the age of fourteen, he had his father employ a personal tutor to teach him in the ways of sailing, which would in turn allow him to freely sail around the Baltic Sea by himself. Then, upon completing his sailing training, he successively acquired a modest sailing ship, which he nicknamed Nelson after the deceased British admiral, Horatio Nelson whom, prior to his demise, had ironically led the Royal Navy in the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 against Denmark-Norway.
Prince of Sweden
When the young Charles was sixteen years old, his family's fortunes rapidly turned when his father, then the Governor-general of Norway, was adopted by the childless King Charles XIII of Sweden, thereby placing himself second in line to the throne as his father's only child at the time. Following the family of three's arrival, with the personal approval of the King of Sweden himself, Charles and his parents were allowed to take up residence at Drottningholm Palace, located at the outskirts of the Swedish capital of Stockholm.
While living in his new residence, as a result of his own father's demands, the younger Charles was extensively subjected to almost daily trainings in the arts of warfare, although his education in other subjects, such as history, mathematics, and others were also equally prioritised. Eventually, his first chance at earning some degree of military experience came soon enough when he was tasked with accompanying his father, the Crown Prince of Sweden, in a supposedly peaceful expedition to subjugate and wrestle Norway from Denmark, an ally of Napoleon in the War of the Sixth Coalition. Thus, while his father marched for several days from the Swedish-Norwegian border for the Norwegian capital, the younger Charles was instead given the task to march southwards, where he was expected to counter any potential Danish attempts to invade Sweden itself, an attempt that never materialised throughout the brief duration of the conflict.
Eventually, having been the main Swedish representative in the correspondence of letters with King Frederick VI himself, Charles was initially invited over by the Danish monarch to Copenhagen, with the intent of inaugurating a subsequent peace treaty. However, Charles promptly repudiated the offer, going so far as to warn the Danish king to travel to Oslo instead for the peace negotiations, or "the whole army of Sweden will do his own bidding on his own behalf". He later received the Danish king at the Norwegian capital, where he then oversaw the settlement of the Oslo Treaty, which confirmed Sweden's acquisition of Norway from Denmark. In the aftermath of the treaty, for his diplomatic efforts, the younger Charles was made the new Governor-general of Norway under Swedish suzerainty, a position once held by his own father, with the latter then being under Danish suzerainty. Following his father's ascension to the throne, Charles promptly retired from his post as to make way for a more active role as the new Crown Prince of Sweden-Norway.
Crown Prince of Sweden-Norway
Following his father's ascension to the throne on February 5th 1818, the young Charles quickly found himself in a more powerful, and politically active position. Thus, as crown prince, he began spearheading various military reforms, particularly in the army, in which most of his reforms were of the Napoleonic model, whilst also encouraging the expansion and improvement of both the Swedish and Norwegian navies. Interestingly enough, despite his general preference for the army in most military situations, Charles himself never abandoned, nor neglected the importance of the navy, a fact made evident by a notable quote he uttered to a Swedish naval officer, "The men will have the forts and the winter, while the ships will have the finest sailors in all of Europe".
The Mercenary Prince
Having had his first direct military experience during the conquest of Norway, which was led primarily by his own father, Charles's first opportunity at independently serving in the battlefield came when the former, with unilateral parliamentary approval, authorised the creation of an expeditionary force, then assembled to an approximately 10,000 strong force, to assist the Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire, with the general assistance from Britain, Russia, and France. Nevertheless, as to not present himself as merely an ally or a "servant" of his more superior allies, Charles, along with his 10,000 strong force, composed entirely of a mix of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish soldiers landed on the far northwest portion of the Peloponnese peninsula while the bulk of the allied army had landed further south in the western half of the peninsula itself.
Greek Campaign
Upon his landing on the peninsula, on approximately August 22nd, Charles first came across a rather numerically inferior force of roughly 1,500 Ottoman soldiers holding the city of Amaliada, which the prince was able to occupy following a brief bombardment which promptly compelled the Turkish defenders to surrender. Then, around five days later, having marched along the western Peloponnesian coast, he once more came across a roughly similar situation at the city of Pyrgos which, despite a slightly more determined resistance by the Turks, also fell to the Scandinavian force.
Invigorated by his immediate double successes on the battlefield, Charles, upon ceding control of the occupied areas along the northwestern coast to the allied belligerents, subsequently marched northward in order to capture the strategic coastal city of Patras, located on the far north of the peninsula. After a week long march to the coastal city, Charles first intentionally kept his own army at bay from ever directly sieging the city, as he instead had a small squadron of ships under Captain Jonathan Ström besiege the city in total from the coast, thereby denying it of necessary provisions from the outside. In the end, after a briefly unsuccessful attempt to lift the siege by a nearby Ottoman force from the city of Aigio in the northeast, in which they were infamously "massacred" by the prince by a series of heavy-handed bombardments with only two battleships of the Swedish fleet, the defenders ultimately surrendered to the Scandinavian force, after which, the victorious Charles then notably had the Ottoman prisoners safely transported across to mainland Greece by the fleet previously blockading the city, an act that later earned him a sizable degree of admiration from his Ottoman adversaries, and also from the local Greek populace in general.
In particular, during his visit to the Ottoman Empire in 1843, he was notably awarded with the Ottoman decoration of the Order of Glory by Sultan Abdulmejid I, whom he subsequently befriended throughout the rest of the latter's life.
The Belgian Revolution
Following the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution which saw the secession of an independent Belgium from the former United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Charles, always a militarily enthusiastic man himself, was keen to assist the new and fragile Belgian state. To that end, just a day after the new King Leopold I was crowned King of the Belgians, Charles promptly departed from Copenhagen to Ostend, eventually arriving in the country just a couple of days before the beginning of the Dutch invasion. Nevertheless, following his arrival, he immediately garnered much favour from the new Belgian monarch, whom promptly made him an honorary Brigadier general in the Belgian Army along with the position of assistant to the then Minister of Defence, Albert Goblet d'Alviella. Then, with the onset of the Ten days' campaign initiated by the Dutch, Charles was subsequently given command of the Belgian Army of the Meuse, which numbered around 13,000 men, which was also roughly half of the total Belgian force, and was at least four times smaller than the opposing Dutch force.
Faced with a severely underfunded and unprepared army under his command, Charles quickly opted in refraining from any sort of direct military confrontation against their DUtch adversaries, opting instead to controversially abandon the city of Hasselt, before marching southwards in a ruse to confuse the Dutch commanders as halfway through the retreat, he then had the army rerouted up north along the Belgian-German border, eventually reaching the city of Maaseik on August 5th, where they remained until the following day, when Charles then ordered the army further northeast to the city of Venlo, which would give them a position to threaten the Dutch city of Eindhoven, thus possibly disrupting the Dutch war effort. In response, the major Dutch commander, William, Prince of Orange, instinctively turned his army back into the Netherlands, meant to relieve a supposed siege of Eindhoven, which the Belgian army under the prince promptly lifted, in line with the latter's employed non-confrontational policy. Nevertheless, on August 10th, as the Belgian force were positioned on the outskirts of Roermond, the Dutch army under the Prince of Orange was able to finally catch up to their much smaller adversaries. In the following battle, with the Belgian force close to disintegration, a hasty cavalry charge personally led by the prince himself proved to be a major, and resounding setback against the Prince of Orange and his men whom, having initially anticipated a generally inferior Belgian force as their primary foes, were then caught off-guard by the unexpected charge, leading to a hasty retreat.
Nevertheless, the prince's distinguished efforts were not enough to save the Belgian state as a whole, although an impromptu military intervention by the French, along with that of the Scandinavians, with the latter having been orchestrated by Charles's own father, during the latter stages of the conflict, proved decisive in turning the ultimate tides of the war, thereby leading to a formal recognition of Belgium as an independent nation. Soon after the end of the war, Charles found himself personally offered to remain in Belgium for the time being by King Leopold I, whom then also granted him an additional, and notable promotion to General, along with the accompanying position as Belgium's new Minister of Defence, thereby replacing his former superior and predecessor, Albert Goblet d'Alviella, whom concurrently became the new Prime Minister of Belgium. After some initial contemplation, Charles ultimately took the king up in his offer, in which he served in that capacity for roughly two years long before ultimately retiring from the position.
Marriage
Inconclusive Beginnings
Shortly after the successful Template:Swedish "conquest" of Norway, through which the young Charles consequently became a prince of both Sweden and Norway, his father, Crown Prince Charles of Sweden-Norway, was also quick to begin making marital arrangements on behalf of his then only son, as the latter wanted to avoid the fate of the childless Swedish monarch himself, which then made it a necessity for the younger Charles to immediately have a natural heir of his own to succeed him in the case of an early death before he himself could ascend to the throne. To that end, in the initial phase, it was first suggested that the future King of Sweden and Norway was to marry his Danish-born first cousin once removed, Princess Juliane Sophie of Denmark whom, at the time of the consideration, was roughly twenty-six years old. At the same time, a more likely candidate, namely his soon-to-be stepmother, and daughter of the King of Prussia, Frederick William III, Princess Charlotte of Prussia, was also briefly considered as a potential wife, as she was only two years his junior, but nevertheless, just four years later, the Prussian princess was instead married off to Charles's own father instead in order to produce more children with the now middle-aged king, with the hopes of averting a succession crisis should Charles, as feared by his father, die prematurely.
The Anlgo-Russian Dilemma
When the first two candidates were dismissed, the third candidate however, this time of British ancestry, was quick to gain much larger traction within both the Swedish and Norwegian courts, as the young Charles was suggested to marry the similarly-aged Princess Charlotte of Wales, whom at the time, due to the surrounding circumstances, was expected to succeed both her grandfather, King George III and her own father, the later King George IV. On paper, as Charles and Charlotte were both coincidentally second in line to their respective royal thrones, it was viewed by a number of ministers and members of the nobility that a firm Anglo-Scandinavian alliance, primarily against the Russians in the east, would be of immense value, although it was established by diplomats from both sides that upon the death of the other, the "union" would be divided among their respective children. However, this predicament also led to a complicated dilemma, for at the same time, the then Tsar Alexander I of Russia also had two eligible younger sisters, the recently widowed Catherine Pavlovna and the unmarried Anna Pavlovna. In a manner similar to that of the situation with the British, prospects of a marriage between the prince and a Russian grand duchess would also benefit through a guarantee of mutual alliance between the two neighbouring kingdoms, although as a trade-off, Scandinavia would instead abandon the chance of being closely affiliated with an unrivalled naval power.
Eventually, after much bitter debate and arguments among the ministers and the nobility regarding Charles's marital prospects, it was then decided that an alliance with Russia, a much larger neighbouring power whom, in contrast to Britain, could directly threaten Scandinavia when necessary, was more suitable than that of an alliance with Britain. The decision was also influenced by the fact that due to her gender, the princess could be easily sidelined from the throne by the birth of a younger brother in accordance with the British succession laws at the time, thus potentially stripping the benefits of a political union between the two countries that was to be reaped from the marriage. Thus, on January 18th 1815, Charles, along with a small group of escorts, arrived in the capital city of Saint Petersburg where after having a brief audience with the Tsar of Russia, Charles promptly focused on earning the attention of Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna instead. This effort, despite a brief faux pas in which the prince attempted to greet the grand duchess in the Russian language, proved ultimately successful as Anna Pavlovna was quick to convince her brother, the Tsar to agree on a prospective marriage between the two. Thus, following a mutual sense of agreement from both sides, the couple was married several days later, on January 22nd, at Saint Petersburg, although Charles himself was reported of having said, "I considered myself wed tonight with my darling wife", on the night of Anna's own birthday celebration, which was the very same day that the Scandinavian delegation had arrived at the city.
Family
From the beginning of their marriage, both Charles and Anna Pavlovna of Russia were generally described of having a mutual sense of love for one another, made evident by the birth of a child just four years later, following an initially stillborn child several months into their marriage, which briefly tested the couple's commitment to one another. At the same time, following the second marriage of his father to the much younger Princess Charlotte of Prussia, whom was herself two years and three years Charles and Anna's junior respectively, strong rumours surrounding the court at the time then subsequently spoke of a supposed ilicit affair between the prince and his stepmother, although this was never officially confirmed, with the most likely evidence being simply that of the two being emotionally close to one another which, despite it being most likely due to their much smaller age range compared to that with Charles's own father, was expected of a relationship between a mother and a son. On Anna's part at least, she was reported of having been "undisturbed" and "unaffected" by the rumours, which Anna herself personally referred to as "damaging" and "unwarranted" insults to the hopeful prince and his stepmother.
Death
Titles & Honours
- 5 November 1796 - 15 July 1809 His Royal Highness Prince Charles Christian of Augustenborg
- 15 July 1809 - 30 May 1814 His Royal Highness Prince Charles of Sweden
- 30 May 1814 - 5 February 1818 His Royal Highness Prince Charles of Sweden-Norway
- 5 February 1818 - 11 February 1845 His Royal Highness The Crown Prince of Scandinavia
- 11 February 1845 - 30 April 1866 His Majesty The King