The situation at the arrival of Charles XII. in Stralsund was beset with new dangers and complications. Prussia had ceased to be friendly and was planning to seize the Swedish possessions in Germany. Hanover, united with England under the same ruler, had the same ambition. The dilapidated fortifications of Stralsund were attacked by Saxons and Danes, commanded by their respective kings, August and Frederic. For more than a year, Charles, with admirable heroism, withstood the siege. Once, while the king was dictating a letter to a secretary, the latter sprang to his feet in consternation, a bomb having shattered the roof of the building. “The bomb, your majesty, the bomb!” exclaimed the scribe. Charles answered: “What connection is there between the bomb and my letter?” quietly continuing his dictation. The king found it at last impossible to keep up the defence of Stralsund, leaving it a stormy December night, and arriving safely in the town of Trelleborg, on the southernmost point of Sweden, December 15, 1715.
What a different country that Sweden was which Charles XII. left in August, 1699, at the very summit of her political grandeur, to the impoverished and suffering Sweden in which he had now landed! And what a different man he had himself become during these sixteen years of absence! Sweden had won a new hero king, of greater fame than any of his predecessors or successors, but lost her prosperity for the time being and her political grandeur forever. The people received the king with demonstrations of joy and with reviving hope for an honorable peace. The state council and the intelligent few received him with badly concealed hopelessness and indifference. They knew that although the young ambitious king had changed to a world-famous hero, prematurely aged in victory and defeat, the unyielding stubbornness and the never satiated desire for glory had remained unchanged in Charles XII. Charles was met by a message from the dying queen-dowager, his grandmother, with an ardent prayer for peace. Charles answered to hopes and prayers, to silent indifference and despair, with a command of more money and more troops! He wanted peace, but as he spoke in the same terms as when he was the victorious commander of an apparently invincible army, nobody cared to consider his demands in earnest. The absolute power reached its last stage of development, a military despotism which had no other policy than war, no other administration than the one requisite to maintain and provide the requirements of war. The state council fell in deepest disgrace, and its functions ceased, in 1715.