ied
suddenly and was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII.

This was the moment for which many of the northern states had waited.
During the great religious wars of the seventeenth century, Sweden had
grown at the expense of her neighbours. The time had come, so the owners
thought, to balance the account. At once war broke out between Russia,
Poland, Denmark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. The
raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beaten by Charles in
the famous battle of Narva in November of the year 1700. Then Charles,
one of the most interesting military geniuses of that century, turned
against his other enemies and for nine years he hacked and burned his
way through the villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Denmark and
the Baltic provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in
distant Russia.

As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the Moscovites
destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles continued to be a
highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero of romance, but in his vain
attempt to have his revenge, he ruined his own country. In the year
1718, he was accidentally killed or assassinated (we do not know which)
and when peace was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost
all of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new Russian
state, created by Peter, had become the leading power of northern
Europe. But already a new rival was on the way. The Prussian state was
taking shape.

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN
GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA

THE history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district. In
the ninth century, Charlemagne had transferred the old centre of
civilisation from the Mediterranean to the wild regions of northwestern
Europe. His Frankish soldiers had pushed the frontier of Europe further
and further towards the east. They had conquered many lands from the
heathenish Slavs and Lithuanians who were living in the plain between
the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the Franks administered
those outlying districts just as the United States used to administer
her territories before they achieved the dignity of statehood.

The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally founded by
Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions against raids of the wild
Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic tribe which inhabited that region