The King ate simply—a breakfast of bread and, when it was available, butter, which he spread with his thumb. His dinner was meat with fat, coarse vegetables, bread and water. He ate silently, with his fingers, rarely taking more than fifteen minutes, and during long marches he ate in the saddle.
Even when the army was in camp, Charles wanted strenuous evercise. He kept a horse saddled in the courtyard of the Altranstadt castle so that when he felt the need, he could leap into the saddle and ride for miles, favoring days filled with storm, wind and rain. When cooped up in a room, he was restless, endlessly pacing. His literary style was rough—his letters were splotches of ink and blottings of attempted erasures—and he preferred to dictate, pacing the room, his gloved hands clasped behind his back, then seizing a pen to add in his illegible scrawl, "Charles."
For all his restlessness, he was a patient listener, sitting with a half-smile on his face, his hand resting quietly on the hilt of his long sword. If the King was on horseback when someone spoke to him, he took off his hat and tucked it under his arm for as long as the conversation lasted. His manner toward subordinates (and, with rare exceptions in his life, Charles spoke only to subordinates) was calm, reassuring and friendly but never familiar; a distance always remained between sovereign and subject. He almost never got angry, and in day-to-day matters he found it difficult to refuse his officers' requests. He liked those around him to be lively and cheerful and he would sit back, watching and listening with his quiet smile. He preferred subordinates who were forceful, direct and optimistic, and permitted those who disagreed with him great freedom of expression.
It was in adversity that Charles became more animated.
Challenge brought out the steel—the streaks of hardness and ruthlessness in his character. With the approach of combat, the King stepped forward, projecting an aura of power and determination. It was then that argument stopped and the King's decisions were obeyed. Charles commanded not only by rank but by example. His officers and soldiers saw his self-discipline, his physical courage, his willingness not only to share but to exceed their own physical hardship. They not only respected him as a king, but admired him as a man and a soldier. They had come to believe implicitly in his command. They would attack wherever he pointed his sword: If he asked it, it could be done. As one victory followed another, a supreme confidence, an absolute assurance was inculcated, both in the men and in the leader. This, in turn, reinforced Charles' superb control and ease of command, permitting him to relax and enjoy his men without lowering all the barriers between them.
Charles' strength as well as his weakness was his single-mindedness. Obstinately, he pursued his goal, neglecting all other considerations. Whether it was hunting a hare, attacking a specific piece in a game of chess or overthrowing a hostile monarch, he fixed on his objective and would consider nothing else until he had achieved this purpose. Like the other royal field commander of the age, William III, Charles was convinced that he was acting as God's instrument to punish those who had begun an "unjust" war. Prayer was part of his daily life and that of the Swedish army. In camp, his soldiers were summoned to prayer twice a day. Even on the march, the army was halted by a trumpet call at seven in the morning and at four in the afternoon. Thereupon, each soldier removed his hat, knelt in the middle of the road and said his prayers.
Because of his faith, Charles was fatalistic. He calmly accepted that destiny would watch over him only as long as he was needed to fulfill God's purpose. Although prone to accidents from his reckless behavior, he rode into battle, contemptuous of danger and death. "I shall fall by no other bullet than that which is destined for me, and when that comes, no prudence will help me," he said. But though Charles was calm at the thought of his own death and hardened to taking responsibility for the death of others, when he ordered his infantry to attack in the face of enemy fire, he was prompted by a desire for victory, not love of death. In fact, the King mourned the loss of his soldiers and once, as an alternative to this repeated carnage on the battlefield, suggested to Piper that he challenge | Tsar Peter to single combat. Piper dissuaded him.
Even during this year of relative ease in Saxony, while his soldiers grew fat around him, Charles' life remained simple and dedicated to war. He lived in his castle at Altranstadt as if he were living in a tent with a battle expected the following morning. He refused permission to his two sisters who wanted to visit him in Germany, and turned a deaf ear to his grandmother's plea that he come home to Sweden, at least for a visit, saying that it would set a bad example for his soldiers.
Sexually, Charles remained chaste. "I am married to the army for the duration of the war," the King declared; he had also decided against sexual experience while the war continued. As Charles saw it, this code of asceticism and self-denial was necessary to a military commander, but it has raised the suggestion that the King of Sweden was homosexual. Charles had had little contact with women in his life. At six, he was taken from his mother and reared in the company of men. He liked to look at pretty girls, and in adolescence there was a flirtation with the wife of a concertmaster, but there were no passions. In his years in the field, Charles wrote frequently to his sisters and his grandmother, but for seventeen years he did not see any of his female relatives, and by the time he returned to Sweden, both his grandmother and his older sister were dead. When the King met ladies in society, his manner was polite but not warm. He did not seek the companionship of women and where possible, he avoided it; it seemed to embarrass him.
As much as possible, Charles modeled the Swedish army on himself. He wanted an elite corps of unmarried men who thought only of duty and not of home, who saved their strength for battle rather than the pursuit of women and the cares of marriage. Married men with children were less likely to advance courageously across a field into a storm of enemy bullets and bayonets. Charles admired and faithfully sought to emulate the example of his father, Charles XI, who had conscientiously practiced abstinence during the years Sweden was at war.
As the years went by, the King's lack of interest in women became more pronounced. During the army's year of rest at Saxony, many Swedish-fathered babies were conceived, but there were no rumors from the headquarters of the twenty-five-year-old King. Later, when Charles spent five years as a prisoner-guest in Turkey, with long evenings devoted to plays by Moliere and concerts of chamber music, still there were no whispers of women. Perhaps having denied himself both love and women so long, he simply had lost the capacity for interest in either.
And if he was not interested in women, was he therefore interested in men? There is no evidence of this. In the early years of war, Charles slept alone. Later, a page slept in his room, but an orderly slept in Peter's room and sometimes the Tsar napped with his head on this young man's stomach; this did not make either Charles or Peter homosexual.
With Charles, one can only say that the fires which burned in him had reached the point of obsession, obliterating everything else. He was a warrior. For Sweden's sake, for the sake of his army, he chose hardness. Women were soft, a distraction. He had no sexual experience; perhaps he sensed the enormity of its power and held himself in check, not daring to test it. In this respect, Charles XII was abnormal. But we already know that in many ways the King of Sweden was not like other men.
Peter's reaction to Augustus' dethronement and the election and coronation of Stanislaus had been to immediately crown his own court fool as King of Sweden, but he knew that the events in Poland were deadly serious for Russia. Over the years, the Tsar had come to understand that he was dealing with a fanatic; that Charles was determined to overthrow Augustus, and that the Swedish King's invasion of Russia would be postponed until this victory in Poland was achieved. Therefore, realizing his own great stake in preserving Augustus' power, Peter had poured Russian money and soldiers into the effort to sustain the Elector of Saxony on the Polish throne. As long as the war was fought in Poland, it would not be fought in Russia.