A major victory over a much larger Russian army in 1700, at the Battle of Narva, compelled Peter the Great to sue for peace, an offer that Charles subsequently rejected.

That year, Swedish forces under general Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld won a decisive victory over a combined army of Saxony and Russia at the Battle of Fraustadt.

Charles spent the following years in exile in the Ottoman Empire before returning to lead an assault on Norway, trying to evict the Danish king from the war once more in order to aim all his forces at the Russians.

The result was the end of the Swedish Empire, and also of its effectively organized absolute monarchy and war machine, commencing a parliamentary government unique for continental Europe, which would last for half a century until royal autocracy was restored by Gustav III.

He was succeeded by his sister Ulrika Eleonora, who in turn was coerced to hand over all substantial powers to the Riksdag of the Estates and opted to surrender the throne to her husband Friedrich of Hesse-Kassel, who became King Frederick I of Sweden.

[3] His title in full as the king of Sweden was as follows: The Sovereign and Supreme Lord, His Majesty, Charles XII, by the Grace of God, King of Sweden, the Goths and the Wends, Grand Prince of Finland, Duke of Scania, Estonia, Livonia, Karelia, Bremen and Verden, Stettin, Pomerania, Rostock, of Kashubia and of Wenden, Prince of Rügen, Lord of Ingria and Wismar; Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke in Bavaria, of Jülich, Cleves and Berg.

[9] Around 1700, the monarchs of Denmark–Norway, Saxony (ruled by elector August II of Poland, who was also the king of Poland-Lithuania) and Russia united in an alliance against Sweden, mainly through the efforts of Johann Reinhold Patkul, a Livonian nobleman who turned traitor when the "great reduction" of Charles XI in 1680 stripped much of the nobility of lands and properties.

In late 1699, Charles sent a minor detachment to reinforce his brother-in-law Duke Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp, who was attacked by Danish forces the following year.

Leading a force of 8,000 and 43 ships in an invasion of Zealand, Charles rapidly compelled the Danes to submit to the Peace of Travendal in August 1700, which indemnified Holstein.

The size of the invading Swedish army was peeled off as Charles left Leszczyński with some 24,000 German and Polish troops, departing eastwards from Saxony in late 1707 with some 35,000 men, adding a further 12,500 under Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt marching from Livonia.

[16][17] After securing his "favorite" victory in the Battle of Holowczyn, despite being outnumbered over three to one by the new Russian army, Charles opted to march eastwards on Moscow rather than try to seize Saint Petersburg, founded from the Swedish town of Nyenskans five years earlier.

Eventually, "crowds" of townspeople attacked the Swedish colony at Bender and Charles had to defend himself against the mobs and the Ottoman janissaries involved.

According to Mrs. Ragnhild Marie Hatton, a Norwegian-British historian, in some of those letters Charles expressed his desire for a peace treaty which would be defensible in the future Swedish generations' eyes.

In it, those executive and legislative bodies told the absentee King that unless he quickly returned to Sweden, they would independently conclude an achievable peace treaty with Russia, Poland and Denmark.

More theories claim he was assassinated: one is that the killer was a Swedish compatriot and asserts that enemy guns were not firing at the time Charles was struck.

[41] Charles himself suggested in conversation with Axel Löwen that he actively resisted any match until peace could be secured[42] and was in some sense "married" to the military life.

[45] In his conversations with Löwen, he also stated that he did not lack taste for beautiful women, but that he held in his sexual desires for fear that they would get out of control if unchecked, and that if he committed to something like that, it would be forever.

His brilliant campaigning and startling victories brought his country to the pinnacle of her prestige and power, although the Great Northern War resulted in Sweden's defeat and the end of the empire within years of his own death.

[citation needed] In his youth, renowned Russian general Alexander Suvorov considered Charles XII his hero together with Julius Caesar.

[51] Charles's death marked the end of autocratic kingship in Sweden, and the subsequent Age of Liberty saw a shift of power from the monarch to the parliament of the estates.

"[60] Verner von Heidenstam however, one of his opponents in the feud, in his book Karolinerna instead "emphasized the heroic steadfastness of the Swedish people in the somber years of trial during the long-drawn-out campaigns of Karl XII" (Scott).

[61] In the 1930s, the Swedish Nazis held celebrations on the date of Charles XII's death, and shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Adolf Hitler received from Sweden a sculpture of the king at his birthday.

He is credited with having invented an octal numeral system, as well as a more elaborate one with the base 64, which he considered more suitable for war purposes because all the boxes used for materials such as gunpowder were cubic.

According to a report by contemporary scientist Emanuel Swedenborg, the King had sketched a model of his thoughts on a piece of paper and handed it to him at their meeting in Lund in 1716.

[65] The English man of letters Samuel Johnson wrote of Charles in his poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes":[citation needed] On what Foundation stands the warrior's pride, How just his hopes let Swedish Charles decide; A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire; O'er love, o'er fear, extends his wide domain, Unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain; No joys to him pacific sceptres yield; War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field; Behold surrounding kings their power to combine, And one capitulate, and one resign; Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain; "Think nothing gained", he cries, "till nought remain, On Moscow's walls till Gothic standards fly, And all be mine beneath the polar sky."

The march begins in military state, And nations on his eye suspended wait; Stern Famine guards the solitary coast, And Winter barricades the realms of Frost; He comes, not want and cold his course delay; - Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa's day: The vanquished hero leaves his broken bands, And shows his miseries in distant lands; Condemned a needy supplicant to wait, While ladies interpose, and slaves debate.

His fall was destined to a barren strand, A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; He left the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral or adorn a tale.

[70] He is referred to in the anime Legend of the Galactic Heroes as the Swedish Meteor; whose similarity to Reinhard von Lohengramm may portend the dynasty dying out without a successor.

The 1925 Swedish film Charles XII is a two-part silent epic starring Gösta Ekman the Elder portraying his reign.

Charles XII appears in the absurdist comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014), in which his army passes a modern-day cafe on their way to, and retreating from, the Battle of Poltava.