Charles Xii Quotes

“[Charles XII] seldom took a more active part in the council than to cross his legs upon the table.”
― Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suede. Par Monsieur de Voltaire. Nouvelle edition, revue & corrigée par N. Salmon. ... of 2; Volume 2

“And so begins the strangest campaign in military history : a competent general and a seasoned army of eighty thousand men chased like deer, in their own country, by an invader who used his vastly smaller forces more like a pack of hunting dogs than men; laying them on the scent rather than mapping routes, caring no more for their feelings, their fatigues, their lives, than a hunter who is rather fond of a good dog. Up and down the map of East Germany they ran, hunter and hunted, in an Alexandrian zig-zag of the best manner. The only strategical question in Charles’ science was “ Where are they ? ” Never, “ How many ? How entrenched ? ” At last Charles had made war into what schoolboys dreamed it ought to be.”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

“He had come to prospect the intentions of Charles towards the French and the Anglo-Austrian coalition, and even if Charles had thrown his jack-boot at his head, it would not have disturbed him from his mission. Marlborough was a slow negotiator. He was never in a hurry to make propositions or ask questions, preferring under cover of a banal conversation to use his extremely acute faculties of observation, and his art of unraveling other men’s
motives, as it were, sideways. The ablest diplomat will never boast of understanding a man, but only his intentions.”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

“Gendemen, I have resolved never to make an unjust war, but to end a just one only with the utter ruin of my enemies. I will attack the first to take the field, conquer him, and then deal with the others.”- Charles XII”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

“If he had wished, he could have annexed Denmark; and ended a thousand years of war and history. But Charles had no weaknesses; now and thereafter he was behaving out of a book. The first maxim of Alexanderism is never to stop; Charles continued.”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

“He fought with Augustus and Peter, not with Russia or Poland. He aimed at full apologies, not conquests.”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

“All these outposts were broken in,and that which in other histories would have counted as three victories did not delay the progress of Charles for one hour”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

“In its greatest moments, memory seems to desert human beings ; only tiny ordinary events leave clear detailed trace. Probably none at the pitch of exaltation which Charles and his men had reached had any remembrance of what happened; we can be supermen only on condition of going into a trance. The result alone is related”
― William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods