lace, owing to defect of wind. They say, he even heard the chamade
beating in Stralsund next day, and that a Danish frigate had nearly
taken him; both which statements are perhaps also a little mythical.
Certain only that he vanished at this point into Scandinavia; and
general Europe never saw him more. Vanished into a cloud of untenable
schemes, guided by Alberoni, Baron Gortz and others; wild schemes,
financial, diplomatic, warlike, nothing not chimerical in them but his
own unquenchable real energy;--and found his death (by assassination, as
appears) in the trenches of Frederickshall, among the Norway Hills, one
winter night, three years hence. Assassination instigated by the Swedish
Official Persons, it is thought. The bullet passed through both his
temples; he had clapt his hand upon the hilt of his sword, and was found
leant against the parapet, in that attitude,--gone upon a long march
now. So vanished Charles Twelfth; the distressed Official Persons and
Nobility exploding upon him in that rather damnable way,--anxious to
slip their muzzles at any cost whatever. A man of antique character;
true as a child, simple, even bashful, and of a strength and valor
rarely exampled among men. Open-hearted Antique populations would have
much worshipped such an Appearance;--Voltaire, too, for the artificial
Moderns, has made a myth of him, of another type; one of those
impossible cast-iron gentlemen, heroically mad, such as they show in the
Playhouses, pleasant but not profitable, to an undiscerning Pub1ic. [See
Adlerfeld (_Military History of Charles XII._ London, 1740, 3 vols.,
"from the Swedish," through the French) and Kohler (_Munzbelustigungen,_
ubi supra), for some authentic traits of his life and him.] The last of
the Swedish Kings died in this way; and the unmuzzled Official Persons
have not made much of kinging it in his stead. Charles died; and, as we
may say, took the life of Sweden along with him; for it has never shone
among the Nations since, or been much worth mentioning, except for its
misfortunes, spasmodic impotences and unwisdoms.

Stralsund instantly beat the chamade, as we heard; and all was surrender
and subjection in those regions. Surrender; not yet pacification, not
while Charles lived; nor for half a century after his death, could
Mecklenburg, Holstein-Gottorp, and other his confederates, escape a sad
coil of calamities bequeathed by him to them. Friedrich Wilhelm returned
to Berlin, victorious from