Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden

THE “Life of Charles XII” that Mr. John Burns once bought for a penny in the New Cut--an incident in itself historical if one looks at it in the right way--was, he writes to say, an English version of Voltaire’s book. The “Histoire de Charles XII, Roi de Suède,” was first published at Rouen in 1731, first freely translated into English by Alexander Henderson in 1734, and soon afterwards reduced into a chap-book, which made the King a proverbial hero in English fairs and market-places. There have been other translations since Henderson’s, and it is now retranslated by Miss Todhunter with a closer correspondence than his to Voltaire’s original.

The book may claim a particular right to an English hearing, apart from the main interest of its subject. It was in England that the life of Charles XII was written by Voltaire, when he was on a visit of exigency there after the Rohan escapade and his second Bastille imprisonment. The effect of this stay in England was that of a determining event in his career. “Voltairism,” writes Mr. John Morley, “may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive ‘hegira,’ from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held seriously to date.” We may supplement this passage from the criticism of a French critic of another school, who says, “England at this time was worked by a spirit of dogmatic irreligion which based itself on a false erudition, a bold criticism and an insidious metaphysic. It was the time of Woolston, of Toland, of Tindal, of Chubb, of Collins, of Bolingbroke. Until then, an insouciant disciple and imitator of the epicureans of the Temple and the roués of the Regency, Voltaire had only ventured on impiety by sallies; dogmas and mysteries had so far only inspired him with bon mots. In the school of the English philosophers he learnt to reason out his incredulity.”

Voltaire had had time by this to mend his youth and find his intellectual stature. Born in 1694, he was now a man approaching thirty-three. He had written plays, for his love for the theatre, as it lasted late in him, began early; he had completed his epic, “la Henriade”; he had used his wit irresponsibly, and, thanks to it, had twice been in the Bastille. In England he learnt, if one may say so, to take his wit seriously, that is, to realize it as a decisive weapon in his inevitable revolt and warfare. Similarly he was to use some of his other faculties in their most adroit perfection. If in the “Henriade” the epic method had failed him, considered by the side of other poems as ambitious and as long, he was able to sit down on his return from his English exile and complete this rapid piece of biography, in effect a short prose epic, which shows us the narrative art used by a consummate master in that art.

More than this we need not claim for him. If we admit Carlyle’s stigma of “persifleur” as applying to his first period, we need not go on to write him down now philosopher, by way of compensation, because he had studied for a brief period under certain notorious English philosophers. He was neither a persifleur nor a philosopher: he was a militant scribe and hyper-critic with a master bias, anti-religious or anti-Catholic, and an inimitable gift of expression. We see his gift in a very luminous special form in his “Charles XII,” which luckily need offend no man’s susceptibilities.

We do not know whether that extraordinarily long indicative nose of his was at this time as telling a sign of his character, backed by his keen twinkling black eyes, as it became later? The two best pen-portraits of Voltaire we have belong to a later day than 1728, when “Charles XII” was written. The first takes us to the year when his “Sémiramis” was produced, when he appears in a strange disguise among the casual nightly apparitions of the Café de Procope.

“M. de Voltaire, who always loved to correct his works, and perfect them, became desirous to learn, more specially and at first hand, what good or ill the public were saying of his Tragedy; and it appeared to him that he could nowhere learn it better than in the Café de Procope, which was also called the Antre (Cavern) de Procope, because it was very dark even in full day, and ill-lighted in the evenings; and because you often saw there a set of lank, sallow poets, who had somewhat the air of apparitions. In this café, which fronts the Comédie Française, had been held, for more than sixty years, the tribunal of those self-called Aristarchs, who fancied they could pass sentence without appeal, on plays, authors and actors. M. de Voltaire wished to compear there, but in disguise and altogether incognito. It was on coming out from the playhouse that the judges usually proceeded thither, to open what they called their great sessions. On the second night of ‘Sémiramis’ he borrowed a clergyman’s clothes; dressed himself in cassock and long cloak; black stockings, girdle, bands, breviary itself; nothing was forgotten. He clapt on a large peruke, unpowdered, very ill combed, which covered more than the half of his cheeks, and left nothing to be seen but the end of a long nose. The peruke was surmounted by a large three-cornered hat, corners half bruised-in. In this equipment, then, the author of ‘Sémiramis’ proceeded on foot to the Café de Procope, where he squatted himself in a corner; and waiting for the end of the play, called for a bavaroise, a small roll of bread, and the Gazette. It was not long till those familiars of the Parterre and tenants of the café stept in. They instantly began discussing the new Tragedy. Its partisans and its adversaries pleaded their cause with warmth; each giving his reasons. Impartial persons also spoke their sentiment; and repeated some fine verses of the piece. During all this time, M. de Voltaire, with spectacles on nose, head stooping over the Gazette which he pretended to be reading, was listening to the debate; profiting by reasonable observations, suffering much to hear very absurd ones and not answer them, which irritated him. Thus, during an hour and a half, had he the courage and patience to hear ‘Sémiramis’ talked of and babbled of, without speaking a word. At last, all these pretended judges of the fame of authors having gone their ways, without converting one another, M. de Voltaire also went off; took a coach in the Rue Mazarine, and returned home about eleven o’clock. Though I knew of his disguise, I confess I was struck and almost frightened to see him accoutred so. I took him for a spectre, or shade of Ninus, that was appearing to me; or, at least, for one of those ancient Irish debaters, arrived at the end of their career, after wearing themselves out in school-syllogisms. I helped him to doff all that apparatus, which I carried next morning to its true owner--a Doctor of the Sorbonne.”

Another cartoon, still better known, is that of the familiar scene of his apotheosis at the Comédie Française. A briefer sketch of that same year of his death, 1778, may be given, because it contrasts with his sharp sketch of Charles XII at Adrianople, carried on a sofa from his carriage, when, to avoid been seen, the King covered his face with a cushion--

“M. de Voltaire appeared in full dress on Tuesday, for the first time since his arrival in Paris. He had on a red coat lined with ermine; a large peruke, in the fashion of Louis XIV, black, unpowdered; and in which his withered visage was so buried that you saw only his two eyes shining like carbuncles. His head was surmounted by a square red cap in the form of a crown, which seemed only laid on. He had in his hand a small nibbed cane; and the public of Paris, not accustomed to see him in this accoutrement, laughed a good deal.”

One interesting point about Voltaire’s English associations, in so far as they prepare the way for the writing of his “Charles XII,” has not hitherto been pointed out. It is this: that a history of the “Wars of Sweden,” written by no less a hand than Defoe’s, was in existence when Voltaire was studying English literature in London. The work, or at any rate its first part, was anonymously published, like Voltaire’s, in 1715; a continuation was added, and the two parts were then issued together in 1720. Between these two dates, let us note, or in 1719, “Robinson Crusoe” had appeared. Defoe’s career has some incidents of prison and persecution that are like enough to Voltaire’s to warrant a fanciful apposition of the two rebel authors. He was in severe straits when he wrote the first part of his Wars of Charles XII; deeply involved in political intrigues. He had had, too, a severe illness--a violent fit of apoplexy--at the end of the previous year; and his trial for libelling Lord Annesley in the whig “Flying Post” was impending. His sentence, and curious escape from being imprisoned, and his “Hymn to the Mob,” have at best a remote bearing on the present book. But one notes these ironical lines to the Mob as having an added irony, when read in the light of his “Charles XII” and Voltaire’s interest in his writings--

“Thou art the Essence of the War; Without thee who wou’d in the Field appear? ’Tis all thy own, whoever gets the Praise-- Thy Hands that fight, and ’tis thy purse that pays. How partial is the common state of things, And how unjust the Fame of Emperors and Kings!”

Defoe’s “History of the Wars” is written as “by a Scots gentleman in the Swedish service.” It is a more documentary book than Voltaire’s, to all outward appearance; and in it he has written with characteristic fidelity to the make-believe of his literary double the pseudo “Scots gentleman.” It has much the air of the off-hand, matter-of-fact military narrator, who does not look for rhetorical openings, or greatly trouble himself to make the most of his subject.

In his preface he says of Charles XII: “He has done Actions that Posterity will have room to Fable upon, till they make his History Incredible, and turn it into Romance.” The romance is already in process in Defoe’s pages. The following passage in the text may be quoted to give an idea of his Scots gentleman’s estimate of the King--

“And such as these were his Discourses to us, who were his Servants, which so effectually convinc’d us, that his Cause was just, and his Foundations right, that however black the Prospect was, which we had before us; for we could see nothing attending us in the Process of the War, but Death, or being made Prisoners of War, which among Northern Princes especially, is but one Degree less in its Nature to a Soldier; and yet it must be said, in Honour of his Swedish Majesty’s Service, and of his Servants too; that not an Officer of Note deserted him to the Day of his Death, or quitted his Service, tho’ always unfortunate; nay, even the foreign Officers did not desert him; for we all thought, so much Virtue, such personal Bravery, such gallant Principles, such immoveable Steadiness, could not fail, but one Time or other must necessarily have a Turn of Fortune in the World, must some Time or other find Friends to support it: For who could imagine, that so gallant a Prince should at once be abandon’d of all the Princes of the Earth, from whom any Assistance could be expected; and that he, whose Ancestors had been the Refuge and Sanctuary of all the Protestant Powers and Princes in Germany, in their Distress, should at last receive Help from none of the Successors of those very Princes, who were establish’d by the Blood and Power of Sweden; nay, to apply it nearer, should at last be driven out of his Possessions by those very Powers, whose Ancestors ow’d the Being of their Government, to the Gallantry and Friendship of the King of Sweden’s Predecessors.”