Welcome to a slap shot episode of the Russian rulers podcast. Today's episode is on Peter the Great's Arch Nemesis, Charles the 12th of Sweden.

Charles was born on the 17th of June 16th. Sweden. 11th and Ulrika Eleonora, the elder. He became King of Sweden upon the death of his father in 1697 at the age of 15. He was to rule Sweden for almost 22 years, many of them, as a military man.

He was considered one of the most skilled generals of his era or any era.

He would take very small armies and defeat much larger ones like he did at Nava against Peter.

There's been a lot of talk about whether Charles was a genius

or if he was perhaps not quite as smart as everybody thought he was. I'm kind of a mixed

bag on Charles the 12th. He was brilliant in the field, but he made some

disastrous decisions over the years.

The whole idea of attacking Russia the way he did over those years, not retreating from

the winters and allowing his men to suffer as he did.

And then to fight a battle of almost Peter's choosing just because he had this pig-headed type of mind that he had to get the decisive battle which he got and

lost when he lost at Poldava. A couple of interesting things about Charles. He

was not the 12th Charles as King of Sweden.

He was actually only the sixth.

Why he called himself Charles the 12th, and why his father would have called himself Charles the 12th and why his father would have called

himself Charles the 11th when he was only the 5th Charles. Now it's interesting

they used Swedish mythology and numerology as a way of choosing what number would come after your name.

So, you know, there was a kind of an interesting little thing as you would have actually been Charles the 6th instead of the 12th.

He fought a number of fights out there. He went obviously against Russia.

He also defeated both Saxony and the Denmark-Norway combination

who had joined to kind of attack Charles and attacks Sweden as part of this great northern war.

He was quite adept at fighting these people.

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