Charles X. Gustavus was one of the most remarkable men of his day, whose wonderful deeds of bravery and genius caused amazement through their brilliancy, and anxiety through their recklessness. At the first glance his appearance gave no idea of the real man. He was short, and of an unusually square and clumsy build, with a head of coarse proportions. But there was the fire of genius in his sharp blue eyes; under the black hair, and below the thin black mustache, there was a mouth of firm and resolute lines. In the versatility of his endowment, he stands as one of the first among Swedish kings, the rich gifts of the Vasas and the Wittelsbachs being united in him. As a warrior he was great, yet more of a tactician than a strategist. As a statesman his views were almost as clairvoyant as those of his grandfather, Charles IX., but he gave way to the impressions and impulses of the moment. He failed to make the Baltic a Swedish inland lake, but gained for his country the inestimable gift of a natural frontier to the east and south, by the acquisition of Bohuslæn, Halland, Scania and Bleking, provinces more valuable to Sweden than a whole empire south of the Baltic.
_Charles XI._ was a child of four years at the death of his father; his country at war with a world, and in a sorely afflicted condition. In the will of Charles X., the queen-dowager, Hedvig Eleonore, was named to preside over the government, with two votes, and the brother of Charles X., the duke Adolphus John, was to take a seat with her as Riksmarsk. This arrangement displeased the nobility, understanding that it was directed against their influence, and they had the duke excluded from the government. The lower Estates of the Riksdag sided with the duke, but soon gave up his cause as they found that he was utterly vain, quick-tempered, and without stability or genius. Lars Kagg, a good warrior, was appointed Riksmarsk in his place. Herman Fleming, the able state treasurer, was removed as disagreeable to the nobility, his ill-health being taken as an excuse, and was succeeded by Gustavus Bonde. Peter Brahe remained Riksdrotset, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie state chancellor, and Charles Gustavus Wrangel state admiral. Kagg died in 1661 and was succeeded by Wrangel, Gustavus Otto Stenbock becoming state admiral.