One day he was amusing himself in the King’s room by looking over some geographical plans, one of a town in Hungary taken by the Turks from the Emperor, and the other of Riga, capital of Livonia, a province conquered by the Swedes a century earlier. At the foot of the map of the Hungarian town was this quotation from the Book of Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The young Prince read these words, then took a pencil and wrote beneath the map of Riga, “The Lord gave thee to me, and the devil shall not take thee from me.” Thus, in the most insignificant acts of his childhood, his resolute disposition revealed traits characteristic of greatness, showing what he was one day to be. He was eleven years old when he lost his mother; she died from an illness brought on by the anxiety caused her by her husband and by her own efforts to conceal it. By means of a kind of court called the Chamber of Liquidation, Charles XI had robbed many of his subjects of their property. A crowd of citizens ruined by this court--merchants, farmers, widows and orphans--filled the streets of Stockholm, and daily poured forth their useless lamentations at the gate of the Palace. The Queen gave all her substance to help these poor wretches: her money, jewels, furniture and even her clothes. When she had nothing left to give them she threw herself weeping at her husband’s feet, praying him to have compassion on his subjects. The King answered sternly, “Madam, we have taken you that you may give us children, not advice.” Henceforward he is reported to have treated her with such severity that he shortened her life. He died four years after her, in the fifty-second year of his age and the thirty-seventh of his reign, just as the Empire, Spain and Holland on the one hand, and France on the other, had referred the decision of their quarrels to his arbitration, and when he had already begun the work of peace-making between these powers. To his son of fifteen he left a kingdom secure at home and respected abroad. His subjects were poor, but brave and loyal; the treasury in good order and managed by able ministers. Charles XII, on his accession, not only found himself absolute and undisturbed master of Sweden and Finland, but also of Livonia, Carelia and Ingria; he possessed Wismar, Wibourg, the Isles of Rügen, Oesel, and the most beautiful part of Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen and Verden, all conquests of his ancestors, assured to the crown by long tenure and by the solemn treaties of Munster and Oliva, strengthened by the prestige of Swedish arms. The peace of Ryswick, begun under the auspices of the father, was completed by the son; who was thus arbiter of Europe from the beginning of his reign.