Charles XIV John

French king of Sweden and Norway (r. 1818-1844)

• Born: January 26, 1763
• Birthplace: Pau, France
• Died: March 8, 1844
• Place of death: Stockholm, Sweden

Charles XIV lived two virtually distinct lives. First, he was a soldier in the French army with strong republican convictions; later, he became the conservative king of Sweden.

Early Life

Charles XIV was born Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte in the southern French province of Gascony. The son of Henri, an attorney, and Jeanne, he was reared in a typical provincial bourgeois manner. He abandoned his law education after the death of his father in 1780 and joined the army. An intelligent young man, with a better education than the French army was accustomed to, he rose through the ranks. On the eve of the French Revolution, he held the rank of sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned position in the army. When the revolution opened the ranks of the officer corps to men of ability, Bernadotte was among the first to benefit. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in November, 1791.

Soon after France went to war with Russia and Austria in April, 1792, Bernadotte was promoted to captain. He first saw combat at the head of a company in 1793. Promotions came quickly for able officers in those crucial years of the French Republic, and Bernadotte was catapulted in one year, 1794, from captain to general of division. While campaigning in Belgium and on the Rhine, he earned the reputation of a competent and careful division commander.

Bernadotte took an active part in the campaigns of 1795 and 1796. Then in February, 1797, he was sent to Italy with reinforcements for Napoleon I . This was the first time that he served under the future emperor of the French. As was the case with the other generals of division in the army of Italy, Bernadotte was senior in time served but with the same rank as Napoleon and resented the fact that he had to serve under an officer who had never commanded a division in combat until he was given the army of Italy in 1796. Bernadotte was also six years older than the twenty-seven-year-old aristocrat from Corsica and had much more combat experience. However, Napoleon had already won stunning victories over the Austrians at Castiglione, Arcola, and Rivoli before Bernadotte had arrived and had established somewhat of a reputation. The newcomer from the Rhine had no choice but to take orders. He played a waiting game.

Life’s Work

Bernadotte spent all of his adult life as a soldier until 1798. Duirng that year, he was appointed by the government of the Directory to be ambassador to Austria. His stay in Vienna was brief, as a lack of social graces combined with strong republican beliefs caused him to be quite unacceptable in the heart of aristocratic Europe. Returning to Paris after only a few months in Vienna, he met and quickly married Désirée Clary. In 1795, Napoleon had unsuccessfully sought her hand in marriage after his brother Joseph had married Désirée’s sister Julie. As a result of his marriage, Bernadotte became a part of the extended Bonaparte family. Despite this relationship, he was seldom on good terms with the man who would rule France for fifteen years.

When Napoleon went to Egypt in 1798, Bernadotte remained in Paris, and in July of the following year he was appointed minister of war by the Directory. It was his strong republican views that won for him this position, but he did not work well with the directors, and within a few months he was relieved of the office. When Napoleon returned to France and took part in the coup d’état of Brumaire, Bernadotte refused to have any part in the overthrow of the government. He sat on the sidelines while Napoleon made himself master of France with the title of first consul.

To ingratiate the staunch republican, Napoleon named Bernadotte councillor of state in January, 1800. Despite the fact that he remained a republican, he accepted the prestigious position and gave tacit support to the new regime. He was also given a command in the army, and between 1800 and 1804 he served in the west of France and in northern Europe. It seems to have been during the first decade of the nineteenth century that Bernadotte was transformed from a republican into a monarchist. Napoleon showered him with wealth, titles, honors, and decorations, which he could never have gained under a republic. However, if the emperor was able to buy his loyalty and support, he was not able to purchase his affection. Bernadotte never came to like Napoleon.

In 1805, when war again broke out with Austria and Russia, Bernadotte commanded the I Corps of the Grand Army. At the Battle of Austerlitz, he held the left flank and supported Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult’s decisive attack against the center of the Russian line. His corps fought well, and he contributed to this, perhaps Napoleon’s finest, victory.

The following year, Bernadotte was made prince of Ponte-Corvo. By the end of the summer of 1806, France was again at war with a Continental power. This time it was Prussia and the campaign was in southeast Germany. Unlike at Austerlitz, however, Bernadotte and his I Corps sat idly in between the Battles of Jean and Auerstadt on October 16. He was strongly criticized by Napoleon and the army for not marching to the aid of Marshal Louis N. Davout, who fought and defeated a Prussian army at Auerstadt that was more than twice the size of his III Corps.

Although the emperor threatened to court-martial Bernadotte for his lack of initiative, no action was taken against him, and the I Corps, rested and unscarred, led the pursuit of the devastated Prussian army. Bernadotte received the surrender of the city of Lübeck and then marched east to support the main army. He was not at the Battle of the Eylau in February, 1807, but he was wounded in action at Spanden in June of the same year, shortly before the campaign came to a victorious conclusion with the defeat of the Russian army at Friedland. Upon his recovery from his wound, he was named governor of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck.

During the two years Bernadotte spent in northern Germany he had various dealings with Serden, which had held territory on the south Baltic coast. The renewal of hostilities with Austria in the spring of 1809 brought Bernadotte back into Central Europe at the head of the IX Corps. Following the victory at Eckmuhl and a setback at Aspern-Essling, Napoleon engaged the Austrian army at Wagram on July 5. Bernadotte’s Saxon Corps held the left center of the French line. When the Austrians attacked the French left, the Saxons broke and fled to the rear. Despite Bernadotte’s efforts, it was necessary to fill the gap created by redeploying Marshal André Masséna’s IV Corps. Napoleon was furious with Bernadotte. He accused him of losing the battle, which the French eventually won, and of cowardliness in the face of the enemy. Bernadotte was ordered to leave the army in disgrace and to retire to Paris.

The year 1810 was a pivotal one for Bernadotte. In 1809, the Swedish king, Gustavus IV Adolphus, was forced into exile, and his uncle was put on the throne with the title of Charles XIII. With the death of Charles XIII’s adopted son, the Swedish Parliament elected Bernadotte crown prince. Having formally changed his name—he was now known as Charles John—and his religion, he left France with Napoleon’s blessing, landing in Sweden on October 20, 1810. As crown prince, Charles John did not become involved with domestic affairs, but he did play an active role in foreign policy. He realized that Sweden’s interests lay in cooperation with Russia and England, not France. Therefore, in 1813 he encouraged the Swedes to declare war on France in order to acquire Norway, owned by Denmark, as compensation for the loss of Finland, which had been taken by the Russians in 1809.

Charles John led a Swedish army of twenty thousand men into Germany to fight against France. He defeated Marshal Nicolas Charles Oudinot at Gross-Beeren on August 23, 1813, and arrived at Leipzig on the last day of the three-day battle to witness the defeat of Napoleon. He played a minor role in the campaign of 1814 that forced the French emperor to abdicate in April of that year. He seems to have grasped at the hope of becoming king of France but was never seriously considered by the French. Most Frenchmen, and in particular those in the army, considered him to be a traitor.

After returning to Sweden, Charles John played no part in the campaign of the Hundred Days when Napoleon returned in 1815. However, Sweden did receive Norway as a reward for having joined the grand alliance against France in 1813. When Charles XIII died in 1818, the once-strong republican was crowned Charles XIV, king of Sweden. His twenty-six-year reign was not particularly eventful. He had been put on the throne by the grace of Parliament, and he did not overstep the limitations placed on the Crown. He became progressively more conservative, and during the later years of his reign clashed with the reform-minded Parliament. Charles John died at Stockholm on March 8, 1844, and was succeeded by his son Oscar I.

Significance

As Charles XIV John, king of Sweden, the man born Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte found an improbable fulfillment of his ambitions. If his story sounds like something out of the pages of Alexandre Dumas, père, the reality was considerably less romantic. The reign of Charles XIV John came at a time in Sweden’s history when power was decisively shifting from the throne to Parliament; this period was the foundation of modern Swedish democracy. Still, if Charles’s role was sharply circumscribed, his years on the throne were peaceful and prosperous ones for Sweden, and history has labeled him as a good king.

Bibliography

Barton, Dunbar Plunket. Bernadotte: The First Phase, 1763-1799. London: John Murray, 1914.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Bernadotte and Napoleon, 1799-1810. London: John Murray, 1921.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Bernadotte, Prince and King, 1810-1844. London: John Murray, 1925. Taken together, these three volumes still represent the definitive work on Charles John. They provide a detailed account of his long and active life with numerous quotations from his correspondence. See also the abridged one-volume edition of Barton’s work entitled The Amazing Career of Bernadotte (1929), which is much more widely available then the multivolume study.

Dewes, Simon. Sergent Belle-Jombs: The Life of Marshal Bernadotte. London: Rich & Cowan, 1943. This readable account, favorable toward its central figure, concentrates on Charles John’s military career during the Napoleonic years. Dewes is primarily concerned with military affairs and tends to minimize the political and administrative aspects of Bernadotte’s life.

Heathcote, T. A. “’Serjent Belle-Jambe’: Bernadotte.” In Napoleon’s Marshals, edited by David G. Chandler. New York: Macmillan, 1987. A very good twenty-two-page chapter in an excellent study of the marshals of the Napoleonic Empire. The emphasis is on Charles John’s early years and his career in the French army. There is virtually nothing on him as king of Sweden.

Palmer, Alan. Bernadotte: Napoleon’s Marshall, Sweden’s King. London: John Murray, 1990. Most recent books about Charles are written in languages other than English; this popular biography is one of the rare English-language books, and it offers a nonscholarly overview of Charles’s life.

Scott, Franklin D. Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935. This is a scholarly study of Charles John’s role in the removal of Napoleon from the throne of France in 1814. Although it covers only a brief period of the life of Charles John, it provides a good understanding of the man and his ambitions and motivations.

Wencker-Wildbery, Friedrich. Bernadotte: A Biography. London: Jarrolds, 1936. Written in a popular style with many undocumented quotes, this is a very readable account of the life of Charles John. It also contains a number of good pictures of him and his family into the twentieth century. Although it is reasonably accurate, it is not a scholarly work.