The Emperor’s Generals found in him more than a match. He was cut off, however, very early in life. He was with his devoted men before Lützen preparing for a great battle. As usual, they prepared by worshipping God. They sang the King’s hymn, “Fear not, little flock,” and then engaged in prayer. The next day the King mounted his horse to lead his army. When his officers saw him, he was without his armour. They urged him to put it on. “God is my cuirass,” said the King, and galloped into the thick of the fight. It was a desperate fight, and a critical moment, when his riderless horse was seen rushing madly out of the fray. Gustavus Adolphus was dead. He had died in the hour of victory. He was not only a great man, but also a good man. He believed in God’s willingness to help the right. “To pray often is almost to conquer,” was a favourite saying of his. Charles XII. was another warrior-King of Sweden, and was one of Europe’s greatest and youngest of soldiers. At the age of fifteen, when most boys are thinking of amusement, he ascended the throne of Sweden after the death of his father, and a few months later took the reins of government into his hand and placed himself at the head of his army. He was possessed of great energy, very courageous--perhaps oftentimes foolhardy--but too ambitious of winning glory. Within twelve months, when he was only nineteen years of age, he had to encounter Denmark, Russia, and Poland. He first so attacked Denmark that the King had to sue for peace. On a November morning, with 8,000 Swedes, he attacked 50,000 Russians under the walls of Narva, and inflicted on them a great defeat. He then dethroned the King of Poland and put another in his place. His hatred of Russia was his downfall. In 1708 he again invaded that country. He spent the winter in an impoverished and hostile land, and when the Czar, Peter the Great, with 70,000 men, attacked him, he had but 23,000 worn-out and destitute men. He was defeated, and fled to Turkey, where he found a refuge; but at the end of 1715 he returned to Sweden. Notwithstanding his reverses, his passion for fighting led him to attack Norway in 1716 and 1718, when he was killed at Frederikshald at the early age of thirty-six. He is one of the heroes of Sweden. He called upon his men to suffer much, which they did willingly, as they were devoted to him, because of his courage, his sympathy with them, and his ever-cheerful countenance. He, however, exhausted the country, as the wars he carried on drained her of her best blood, and emptied her treasury. From this date Sweden was no longer one of the great military powers. It was of Charles that Dr. Johnson wrote, in his “Vanity of Human Wishes,” the celebrated lines: “His fall was destin’d 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.”