Caroleans
Caroleans, from Carolus, the Latin form of the name Charles, is a term used to describe soldiers of the Swedish army during the reigns of Kings Charles XI and Charles XII of Sweden, and specifically from 1680, when Charles XI instituted an absolute monarchy and embarked on a series of sweeping military reforms, to the death of Charles XII in 1718.
The Caroleans are particularly associated with Charles XII and his campaigns in the Great Northern War, during which they achieved a series of impressive victories, often against considerably larger enemy forces, and established themselves as one of the most feared and respected armies in Europe. However, the main Swedish field army was almost entirely annihilated after defeat at the Battle of Poltava, and the war eventually ended in utter defeat and the dissolution of the Swedish Empire.
Overall, 350,000 soldiers from Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic provinces died in the service of Charles XII during the Great Northern War, mostly from non-combat causes. Two-thirds of these, or over 230,000, died in the years 1700 to 1709. These losses constituted an unusually large percentage of the pre-war population of 2.5 million. The losses of their enemies are known to have been even higher.
Creation of the Carolean army
In the early and mid-seventeenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden established a large empire in the Baltic Sea region and Northern Germany. Its success rested in large part on the quality of its armed forces, which pioneered numerous innovations later adopted by other European armies and were well-organised and generally well-led. However, the military was allowed to go into decline during the early reign of Charles XI, when the king was a child and the country was directed by a council of regents led by Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie; many of the regents were openly corrupt, and embezzlement of royal revenues was widespread during this period.The neglect of the armed forces almost led to disaster during the Scanian War, when Sweden was invaded by Denmark-Norway. The attackers were eventually repulsed, but only after numerous setbacks and at the cost of appalling losses; indeed the 1676 Battle of Lund is widely reckoned to be the bloodiest battle ever fought in Scandinavia.
The travails of the Swedish army during the Scanian War convinced Charles, who was by now of age, that wholesale reform of the Swedish state was necessary in order to guarantee the security of the Swedish Empire. In 1680 he therefore instituted absolutism, overthrowing the previous system of semi-constitutional monarchy under the 1634 Instrument of Government, restored the royal finances by means of the so-called Great Reduction, and set about rebuilding the army, most notably through an overhaul of the allotment system.
New allotment system
Since the sixteenth century, the Swedish army had used the so-called allotment system to raise troops. In 1682, Charles completely reformed it, establishing what modern historians refer to as the "new allotment system".Under the new system, Swedish farmers were to provide the crown with regiments of 1,000 or 1,200 men, complete with weapons and uniforms. Either independently or as rotes of no more than five, farmers would contract with the crown, with each rote providing and supporting one soldier, including giving the soldier a cottage and a garden plot. Each cavalryman was additionally provided with a horse. In exchange for these burdensome policies, each rote was granted a reduction in taxes.
The allotment system provided Charles XI with a professional army of 18,000 infantrymen and 8,000 cavalrymen. The system also provided for the deployment of 6,600 seamen, bolstering Sweden's navy. Adding to Sweden's numbers, Finland provided an additional 7,000 infantrymen, 3,000 cavalrymen, and 600 seamen.
Equipment
Uniforms
Carolean soldiers wore the Swedish Standard Uniform introduced by Charles XI—which featured blue great coats with yellow cuffs, white breeches, and yellow vests—with many regiments wearing variants thereof. For example, the dragoons of Bohuslän had green coats, and the regiment of Närke-Värmland had red cuffs. The artillery had grey coats with blue cuffs. As headgear, most Caroleans wore tricorne hats or a special cap called a karpus.Weaponry
About two thirds of each infantry company were armed with muskets, and the rest with a 5.55 meters pikes. Every infantryman was also armed with a sword, a straight-bladed rapier designed principally for thrusting.At the outbreak of the Great Northern War, the Swedish musketeers were mostly equipped with a calibre flintlock musket without a bayonet. Twelve men of each company—typically the strongest and tallest—were grenadiers, who were the only soldiers to have bayonets affixed to their muskets, as regular musketeers were meant to use their rapiers for hand-to-hand combat. Grenadiers were often placed on the flanks of a unit to protect against cavalry. A bayonet-equipped musket was considered to be more practical for that, as it gave greater reach than a sword when facing a mounted opponent and could be braced against the impact of a charge. Eventually all musket-armed soldiers were issued bayonets as well in 1704, though they also still retained their swords.
The Swedish heavy cavalryman was equipped with a rapier almost one metre long, a carbine and two pistols. They also wore a steel breastplate and a buff coat. Each dragoon was equipped with a rapier, a musket, and two pistols.
Rations
A soldier's daily ration was to consist of of dry bread, of butter or pork, of peas, and of beer. The butter or pork was often replaced by fish if the latter were available. Water was generally avoided since it was often contaminated.Units and formations
A Carolean infantry regiment consisted of roughly 1,200 men, divided into two battalions of 600 men each. The battalion was the smallest tactical unit of the Swedish army and consisted of four companies of 150 men each. Prior to battle, the men were usually formed into four ranks, however, a battalion could also be späckad in six ranks. About one-third of the men were pikemen. These pikemen often were in the middle of each battalion with musketeers on their flanks; however, if the battalion was späckad, the pikemen were placed in the third and fourth ranks. Grenadiers were often on the flanks of the musketeers—on the left and right of each battalion—to protect against enemy cavalry and to toss grenades to break enemy formations. On occasion, the grenadiers formed their own battalions, such as the Life Grenadier Regiment. The width of a battalion was roughly .A cavalry regiment consisted of roughly 800 men with 1000 horses among them, divided into four squadrons of 200 men each. The squadron was the tactical unit of the cavalry and consisted of two companies of 100 men each.
The Drabant Corps was a special unit made up of approximately 150 men under the personal command of King Charles XII, of which he was captain. To become a private in the corps, one had to attain the rank of captain in the regular army. The corps second in command was a colonel with the title of Kaptenlöjtnant. This corps fought to the bitter end, and some of its veterans carried Charles XII's coffin to Stockholm for burial in 1719.
Certain irregular units were also used, most notably the Vlachs cavalry. However, these were not suited for combat, but only reconnaissance and to chase routed enemies.
Tactics
Swedish military doctrine of the Carolean era was distinguished by its emphasis on aggressive action and shock tactics, the so-called gå-på method. This attitude stood in contrast to other European armies of the period, which were coming to rely increasingly on musketry, delivered in the form of volley fire by line infantry, to win battles. As such, Swedish armies continued to field large numbers of pikemen throughout the Great Northern War, even though the weapon had largely disappeared from western European battlefields by that time. Similarly, the proportion of heavy cavalry in the Swedish army was unusually high by western standards. Indeed, of the 31,000 Swedish soldiers who participated in Charles XII's Russian campaign, some 16,800 troops, over half the overall force, were cavalrymen.Gå-på tactics enabled the Caroleans to repeatedly overcome much larger enemy armies, as the psychological impact of their rapid approach and their steely discipline under fire, combined with their fearsome reputation, often served to unsettle the opposing troops even before physical contact was made. Moreover, if some enemy troops lost their nerve and fled then panic could quite easily spread through the rest of the enemy force, so a quick success against even a relatively small enemy unit was often enough to trigger a general rout. The preference for aggressive action also served, perhaps counterintuitively, as a way to reduce losses, as it ensured that battles would be resolved quickly rather than degenerating into bloody attritional struggles, as often happened when two armies using volley tactics clashed. This was especially important for the Swedish army as it lacked the manpower reserves of larger neighbours like Poland-Lithuania and Russia, and thus could not replenish its ranks after heavy defeats.
File:KarolinskBataljon.png|thumb|Diagram illustrating two different methods of attack by Carolean infantry:
A) by company, B) by battalion.
The downsides of the gå-på doctrine were that it required strict discipline on the part of the soldiers, and that it was, like all shock tactics a fundamentally risky strategy which could backfire horribly if the commander misjudged the time or place to mount an attack, or if an assault was mounted against enemies with high morale in prepared defensive positions. The latter scenario occurred at the Battle of Poltava, where Peter the Great was able to lure Charles XII into mounting an attack against a Russian camp protected by field fortifications, leading to an overwhelming Swedish defeat.