Endeavouring to regain southeastern European lands (in the region of modern-day Bulgaria) recently lost to the Ottoman Turks, a coalition of western European and Hungarian ‘crusaders’, under the titular leadership of John the Fearless, heir to the throne of Burgundy, besieged the Turkish-held town of Nicopolis. In response, Emperor Bayezid I marched to the relief of the town. After refusing a tactical suggestion by Hungarian King Sigismund I, John chose to mount a cavalry charge against the Ottoman forces. Initially succeeding against a screen of lightly armed cavalry and infantry, this charge faltered after it could not penetrate the solid infantry formation arrayed behind a line of stakes. A second charge also failed. Crusader infantry forces not engaged fled from the battlefield, with many of the cavalry captured and put to death by the Turks. This battle put paid to the likelihood of the Christian kings stemming the tide of Ottoman gains in southeast Europe.

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Battle of Nicopolis: 25 September 1396

The battle of Nicopolis, fought on 25 September 1396 on the plains south of the central Bulgarian city of that name, saw a truly diverse soldiery on the field that day. On one side, Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Turks, led a force manned by troops from his homeland, Asia Minor, and from his and his predecessors’ conquered and vassal peoples, namely Serbs, Bulgarians, Bosnians and Albanians. Added to these was the Turkish janissary corp, filled with young Christian tribute-children and prisoners of war, now converted to Islam and dedicated to the defeat of their old religious allies. The total Turkish number, estimated by contemporary chroniclers (mostly western writers) at more than 100,000, was probably closer to 15,000.

Opposing Bayezid was a force composed of allied troops from throughout western and central Europe. Called a crusade army by all contemporary western authors, it was composed of Hungarian, Wallachian, Transylvanian, Hospitaller, German, Burgundian, French and English soldiers. Fewer in number than the Turks, although closer to a total of 12,000 than to the 100,000 found in contemporary sources, it was controlled by the Franco-Burgundian cavalry troops and their leaders. This control became a problem, for the soldiers were foreigners to the region, and they refused to listen to the advice of those who lived closer to the enemy. In particular, the Franco-Burgundian generals were reluctant to listen to the recommendations of the Hungarian king, Sigismund I. (The generals were Phillip of Artois, the constable of France; Jean II Ie Meingre dit Boucicault, the marshal of France; Jean de Vienne, the admiral of France; Guillaume de la Tremoille, the marshal of Burgundy; Sir Enguerrand de CoucyVII; and the 23-year-old John the Fearless, whose succession to the throne of Burgundy gave him titular leadership over all of the Franco-Burgundian forces.) Their collected experience in military conflict, extremely impressive as it was, seemed more important to them than Sigismund’s knowledge of and experience in fighting the Turks.

Nicopolis was the first battle where the Ottomans encountered a western European army. To this point, rivals of the Ottoman Turks had been either Byzantine armies or local, southeastern European militias. Of course, the Ottoman Turks were not an old political entity. In fact, they had existed for only about 100 years. Mythical origins aside – and these are numerous in later centuries – the Ottomans seem to have originated as a small, familial clan which under the initial leadership of Osman I (1280-1324) quickly expanded out from their local Asia Minor geography to conquer much of the eastern Mediterranean and southeastern European peoples. By 1396 they controlled most of Asia Minor and much of the Balkan Peninsula. Among the casualties of these conquests was the once extensive Byzantine Empire. This had shrunk to little more than Constantinople and its neighbourhoods, with other states disappearing.

Western European powers began to worry about the Ottoman Turks from their earliest beginnings. The Ottoman speed of conquest and their European targets caused some, especially those of the papal court, to become frightened at the prospect of having to fight an Islamic enemy closer to their homelands than the Middle East or Spain. During the Hundred Years’ War, however, neither the French or English monarchs were willing to make peace and redirect their bellicose activities towards the Ottomans. Meanwhile, the various German and Italian political leaders possessed neither the strength nor the inclination to fight a crusade against Islam. Only the Hungarians, primarily because of their proximity to the early Ottoman conflicts, began to prepare both an offensive and a defensive military response to the Turkish enemies.

In 1396, a 28-year truce was arranged in Paris in an attempt to halt the Hundred Years’ War. It was dependent on the marriage of the English monarch, Richard II, who was still young, to Isabella, one of Charles VI’s daughters, and a coequal Anglo-French attendance on a crusade to the east against the Ottoman Turks. Initially, it was expected that both the kings of France and England would lead the crusade, but soon they had passed this responsibility onto their relatives, Louis, duke of Orleans, Philip the Good, count of Burgundy, and John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Soon, however, they too had sidestepped this responsibility and leadership tasks fell to the young John the Fearless and his cadre of French military leaders.

The crusaders gathered at Dijon on 20 April 1396, from where they marched quickly and without difficulty throughout central Europe to Buda, in Hungary, arriving there at the end of June. There John the Fearless gathered his troops and those who had joined the crusade along the way. He also listened to those who had witnessed Ottoman warfare first-hand, and he discussed strategy and tactics with his generals and with Sigismund I, the king of Hungary. All, except for Sigismund, decided to march directly against the nearest Ottoman holdings, fortifications and towns which lay south of the Danube River, the king of Hungary counselling for a defensive posture, one where the crusaders would help him to defend his land against what he felt was an imminent Ottoman invasion. He was overruled by the other leaders.

The Battle

Initial attacks against these fortified locations were quite successful. Vidin and Rahova (present-day Oryakhovitsa) surrendered after strong attacks from the crusading soldiers. However, news of these victories soon reached Bayezid, then attacking the remnants of Byzantium, and he moved quickly to counter the western armies’ advance. He did this seemingly without the crusaders discovering his plans or knowing his progress. Indeed, it would not be until the day before the battle, and within only 6.4km (4 miles) of Nicopolis, that John the Fearless knew that the Ottomans were close by and were willing to fight against him. The crusaders, who had been besieging the town of Nicopolis before the arrival of Bayezid’s army, broke off their siege and prepared for battle.

John the Fearless called a council of war. Sigismund recommended that his and the other central European troops, almost entirely infantry, should be in the vanguard, there to meet the irregular infantry of the Turks who stood in front of their own army. They would take a defensive stance and try to provoke the Ottoman army into a charge which would either be defeated at the contact of the two infantry forces or could be reinforced by the strong Franco-Burgundian cavalry ordered in the rear. This strategy the Franco-Burgundian s refused to follow. Despite agreement with Sigismund by Enguerrand de Coucy, perhaps the most sage and experienced of the Franco-Burgundian leaders, Robert ofArtois used his influence and constabulary office to counter the Hungarian king’s proposal. This leader, in concert with most of the other crusader generals, believed that superiority on the battlefield lay in the heavy cavalry and the mounted shock charge.

With a flurry of pride and enthusiasm the Franco-Burgundian cavalry charged head-long into their Turkish opponents, infantry safely guarded behind a line of stakes. Initially, the force of this mounted shock charge brought success, breaking through the stakes and pushing the Turkish irregular infantry back. The Ottoman-Turkish lines, however, did not break, and quickly reformed their organization and order in the lull before a second charge could be mounted. That second crusader attack achieved similar success, yet still the Turks did not flee. When a counter-attack came from Bayezid’s regular troops, consisting of cavalry, infantry and archers the impetus of the crusader soldiers had been spent and, even though some German and Hungarian infantry troops rushed to re-inforce them, all were routed. Those who were still able, tried to retreat from the battlefield, but the Danube River blocked their path and few were actually able to leave the scene of what had in reality become a slaughterhouse.

Among those who were able to flee were the Walachians and Transylvanians. They had not been involved in the fight on that day. Instead, when the tide of battle turned against their allies they had refused to go to their fellow crusaders’ aid. King Sigismund himself retreated to the Danube, boarded a boat and sailed to safety. The battle had lasted probably no more than an hour.

The effects of the Battle of Nicopolis were quickly felt. On the battlefield, Franco-Burgundian soldiers, used to the protection of ransom in western warfare, were instead hewed down without mercy. Only after the capture of John the Fearless were prisoners accepted, and even then several hundred more Christian troops were summarily executed at the sultan’s order.

A mere 300, from a total of perhaps as many as 6000 who had been involved in the fighting, were eventually spared. Their ransom paid, an amount of more than 200,000 ducats, they returned home some nine months later. The Turks had also suffered huge losses, perhaps giving a reason for their blood-thirstiness, but they suffered far less than did the crusaders.

The Parthians made to charge, but instead they surrounded the Roman square. Crassus ordered his light troops to attack, but the Parthians rode away, shooting arrows as they fled. Crassus ordered his son Publius to attack with a detachment. The Parthians wheeled about and rode off. Publius pursued, but after ‘fleeing’ for a distance, the ‘fugitives’ were joined by more troops. The Romans halted, to find cataphracts in their front and horse archers riding around on all sides. Publius then charged the cataphracts. It was an unequal struggle. The survivors retreated to a hillock, shot up by the horse archers, and then cut down by the cataphracts. Publius committed suicide. Seeing his head on a spearpoint, Crassus’ men lost heart. The Parthians returned to the attack, this time adding charges by their cataphracts to the arrows of their horse archers. Fighting in this manner continued until nightfall, when the Romans were at last able to retreat, the Parthians being ill-equipped to fight at night.

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These Parthians were in origin the Parni, a tribe of the semi-nomadic Dahae who lived north of Hyrcania and provided the Achaemenid Persians with horse archers. By the middle of the first century BC, they had taken control of Persia and Mesopotamia, establishing themselves as a landowning military aristocracy. Its king, of the Arsacid line, was the feudal superior of his nobles, including the seven great Pahlavi families that dominated entire regions. The Parthians developed an all-cavalry army, the nobles being cataphracts, their retainers horse archers. Having large grazing lands, the Parthians were able to adopt the steppe nomad practice of bringing along herds of horses as re-mounts, giving their armies excellent strategic mobility.

The Parthians had come into contact with the Romans during the latter’s conquest of Anatolia and Armenia during the first half of the first century BC. Relations were at first good, but soon soured due to high-handed Roman behaviour. It was not long before the Romans were tempted to intervene in Parthian affairs, and in 54 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus took command of the province of Syria with the goal of invading Parthia. Crassus had no casus belli; he simply needed military victories to cement his family’s political position in Rome. He was accompanied on the campaign by his son Publius, who had served with Caesar in Gaul, conquering Aquitania. He brought 1000 crack Gallic horse to Syria, where he was one of his father’s chief officers.

By the autumn of 54 BC, Crassus was ready to lead his seven Roman legions on campaign. He crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma and conquered Parthian Mesopotamia as far as the river Balissos (modern Balikh), taking Carrhae (modern Harran), Zenodotium, Nicephorium, Ichnae and probably Batnae. The Parthians were currently distracted by a civil war, and the local satrap, Sillaces, was no opposition. Crassus left 7000 infantry and 1000 cavalry to garrison the cities and returned to Syria for the winter. The Parthians harassed the cities during the winter, but recaptured none of them. In the next year’s campaign, Crassus aimed to drive into Mesopotamia. Artavasdes, king of Armenia, urged Crassus to invade Parthia through his territory, where he would enjoy the shelter of the hilly country against the Parthian cavalry, and have the assistance of 10,000 Armenian cataphracts. Because he had left garrisons in northwestern Mesopotamia, Crassus felt he had to return to relieve them. He nevertheless expected Artavasdes and his cavalry to join him there.

Gaius Cassius Longinus, another of Crassus’ commanders (and one of the future assassins of Julius Caesar), advised him to proceed down the Euphrates, thus ensuring that he always had the river as a supply route and flank guard. Instead, Crassus crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma. He followed a caravan trail shown him by Abgar, the Roman client king of Edessa, and set out in pursuit of what he thought was a retreating Parthian army. He and his men came to, and crossed, the stream of the Balissos – not a strong current but still flowing in May. His army endured a forced march throughout the day and then had to prepare for an encounter with the Parthian army somewhere south of Carrhae.

The Parthian troops came from the personal following of the head of one of the seven great Pahlavi clans, the Surenas, who ruled Seistan as their fief. We do not know his name, the Greeks and Romans calling him Surena; we do know he was not yet 30 years old, but already the second most powerful man in the kingdom and a noted warrior. He was accon1panied by a train of 10,000 people, including servants, concubines and the drivers of 1000 camels, but also, more importantly, 1000 cataphract lancers and a larger number of horse archers, perhaps as many as 6000. The local satrap, Sillaces, and his following were also present. Most of the Parthian Army had followed the king, Orodes, into Armenia instead; Crassus would receive no help from Artavasdes.

When word reached Crassus that the enemy was ahead, he first followed Cassius’ advice and formed his army in one long, thin line with his cavalry stationed on both flanks, in order to keep the Parthians from getting around him easily. But then he changed his mind, formed his army into a square and advanced. As the Greek biographer Plutarch describes it, the square had 12 cohorts of 500 legionaries on each side, each cohort having a squadron of cavalry stationed with it to aid in local counterattacks. Since Crassus had 7 legions, 4000 cavalry and 4000 light troops, there should have been 70 cohorts present, but 14 of them had probably been left in the Mesopotamian garrisons the year before, while the remaining 8 cohorts were probably kept within the square as a reserve, along with the light troops and Publius’ 1000 Gallic horse. The other 3000 cavalry were divided into the support squadrons for the cohorts, and would have numbered about 60 men each.

Although Crassus had not led an army since 70 BC, when he played a major role in the defeat of Spartacus, he did have reason to feel confident. The Romans had encountered cataphracts and horse archers on a number of occasions in the past 1SO years, and had emerged triumphant. That these victories had involved large infantry armies and particular terrains would not have seemed important to a Roman. Moreover, the oncoming Parthians appeared few and weak, for Surena had deployed his men in column so that only the head of the force showed, and ordered his cataphracts to cover their armour with skins and robes.

When they neared the Romans, however, Surena gave a signal. His musicians sounded their great kettle drums, and his cataphracts threw off their coverings to reveal gleaming bronze and steel. The Parthians then made to charge the 112 Romans, but seeing the surprise had not noticeably shaken the enemy’s composure, they broke ranks and seemed to disperse. Before Crassus realized what was happening, they had ridden around and surrounded the legionary square. He ordered his light-armed troops to charge, only to see them driven back into the square by a shower of arrows. Plutarch wrote:

‘The Parthians, taking position at a distance from each other, began to fire their arrows from all sides at once, not with accurate fire (for the close-packed ranks of the Romans would not allow even someone who wished to do so to miss his man), but giving strong and violent impacts from bows that were strong, large, and so very curved that they could send off missiles with great force.’

By this point composite bows had ‘ear laths’ stiff, straight tips made of bone, which acted as levers to increase the force of the bow beyond that of the Scythian model. Plutarch says their arrows fractured armour and tore their way through every covering. If they kept their ranks, the Romans were wounded in great numbers, while if they charged and tried to come to close quarters, the Parthians rode away and turned in the saddle to shoot as they fled, making the proverbial ‘Parthian shot’.

As long as they could hope the enemy would run out of arrows and then depart, or fight at close quarters, the Romans held out and made futile local counterattacks. But when they saw that many of Surena’s camels were laden with arrows, from which the Parthians took a fresh supply, it became clear there would be no end to the ordeal. Crassus then sent messages to his son, in command of the right wing, and ordered him to force an engagement, since the enemy was especially numerous on that side and threatened an encirclement. Publius accordingly took his 1000 Gallic horse, 300 other cavalry, 500 archers and the 8 cohorts nearest him (their places presumably taken by the reserve cohorts) and led them all to the charge. This had worked for Alexander at Gaugamela, where the Persians had fought as a large, formed army. Here the Parthians wheeled about and rode off. Shouting that they did not stand their ground, Publius pursued. But after ‘fleeing’ for a long distance, the seeming fugitives wheeled back about and were joined by additional troops. The Romans halted, to find cataphracts in their front and horse archers riding around on all sides in loose formation, firing incessantly and raising so much dust that the Romans could barely see. Victims of the ancient steppe nomad tactic of the feigned retreat, many of the legionaries were killed and most of the rest incapacitated.

Publius then led his cavalry in a vigorous charge against the cataphracts. It was an unequal struggle, Publius’ men ‘striking with small, weak spears against breastplates of rawhide and steel, but the Gauls’ lightly equipped and unprotected bodies being struck by kontoi’, as Plutarch says. Nevertheless the Gauls worked wonders:

‘ …for they laid ahold of the kontoi, and grappling with the men pulled them from their horses, although it was hard to move them owing to the great weight of their armour. Many of them got off their own horses and, crawling under those of the enemy, stabbed them in the belly; these would rear up in their anguish and die trampling upon their riders and enemies mixed together. But the Gauls suffered most of all from the heat and thirst, to which they were unaccustomed, and most of their horses were destroyed by being driven against the kontoi of the enemy.’

The survivors were forced back upon the legionaries, taking with them a badly wounded Publius. They all retreated to a hillock, only to be shot up by the horse archers, then charged by the cataphracts. Only 500 men survived to be taken prisoner. Publius committed suicide, as did the other Roman notables present.

Meanwhile, Crassus had started to move forward, coming to his son’s aid, but presently he and his army beheld Publius’ head being carried forward on spearpoint by the Parthians. Although Crassus put on a brave front, his men lost heart. Now the Parthians returned to the attack, this time adding the charges of their cataphracts to the arrows of their horse archers. Some men dared to attack the cataphracts, but did little damage and were quickly killed, for the kontoi struck with such force, Plutarch claims, that they could often penetrate two men’s bodies at once. Fighting in this manner continued until nightfall.

Retreat and Slaughter

The rest of the story may be summed up quickly. The Romans retreated by night, when the Parthians were ill-equipped to fight, leaving behind some 4000 wounded to be slaughtered by the enemy. Most of the Roman survivors made it to Carrhae, although four cohorts lost their way and were destroyed. Surena moved up to blockade the city, and the Romans tried to withdraw, again by night. Many escaped, over 10,000 in all, but Crassus was intercepted and killed, his head being carried to Armenia by Sillaces as a present for the king, who had just reached an agreement with Artavasdes. The two monarchs, enjoying a production of Euripides’ Bacchae at a banquet, saw Crassus’ head used as a prop in the play. As many as 20,000 other Romans met their ends in the desert, with 10,000 others being captured and enslaved.

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Fortunately for the Romans, the all-cavalry Parthian armies were poor at siege warfare, and had a difficult time operating in forests and mountainous terrain, so their counter-invasions of Syria were easily repulsed and the war petered out. Over the decades, the Romans learned to cope with the Parthians. Roman shield-bearing cavalry could harass cataphracts with javelins while using their greater speed and agility to evade a countercharge, and chase away horse archers if there were not enough cataphracts to protect them. At short range, horse archers were at a disadvantage, lacking the shields western cavalrymen carried to protect themselves against missiles. A short, controlled charge could keep the horse archers out of effective range, but as the fate of Publius showed, it did not do to pursue the enemy too far. In addition, since a horse that has been ridden all day must rest and graze at night, Parthian camps were vulnerable to Roman night attacks, making close blockades of Roman cities dangerous for the Parthians and causing them to camp far from enemy forces. It was also useful to increase the number of missile-armed infantry in the army, particularly slingers, whose heavy stones and lead shot could injure even cataphracts. Crassus had too few light troops, and too many of them were javelin-throwers, to judge from the charge he ordered. The legionary square remained in use, with caltrops thrown down to maim the cataphracts’ horses. Finally, the Romans raised their own alae of horse archers, adding cataphracts in the third century AD.

In October 1718 Swedish king Charles XII invaded southern Norway with 35,000 troops, determined to reduce the lynchpin of the enemy’s frontier defences at Fredrikshald to rubble through a regular siege, led by a hired professional French artillery officer, Colonel Maigret. The Swedes, commanded in person by the king, stormed and captured the outer fort of Gyldenlove on 27 November. Three days later the Swedes, facing only 1400 enemy troops holding the fortress of Fredriksten, dug a parallel trench to the fortress, followed by an approach trench (to a second parallel), and seemed to be on the verge of a great – and relatively easy – victory. Once the siege artillery had the fortress within range it could be forced through bombardment to capitulate, as Colonel Maigret had assured the king. But on 30 November Charles XII was killed in the most mysterious of circumstances in the forward trenches, saving the Norwegians from what would have been a humiliating defeat and eventual occupation by their neighbours.

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The Great Northern War had been going on for 16 long years when Sweden’s formidable warrior king, Charles XII, laid plans to invade Norway in 1716.This country was only a stepping stone in his grandiose plans to invade Britain, dethrone George I and crown James Stuart, before moving on to deal with Denmark and Russia.

Charles’ plan in 1716 was for a blitzkrieg-style attack on Norway with only a small army of 7700 men, in three columns. The Swedes hoped that by treating the Norwegians with silk gloves they would welcome their ‘liberators’. The Swedes knew that their small invasion army faced a Norwegian army twice their size. But it consisted of poorly equipped, badly trained peasant recruits. As the aggressors the Swedes held the initiative, which ensured that the Norwegian army was strung out along the long frontier not knowing where or when the Swedes would strike. Norway was similar to Canada, built like a natural fortress, especially in winter with frozen lakes, rivers, marshes, wooded hills and endless forests sparsely sprinkled with small peasant settlements. It was not an easy country for an invader to stage a European-style campaign.

The Norwegians could also rely on the support of the Danish Navy. Danish and Norwegian vessels led by Norway’s ‘Nelson’, Admiral Peter Tordenskjold, disrupted Swedish coastal communications and prevented vital supplies reaching the invading army. Sweden’s naval weakness was a major problem for the plans Charles had laid. The Norwegians had also built a formidable line of six major fortifications along the main river barrier in eastern Norway, called the Glomma Line. To add further defences to this Glomn1a Line the Norwegian commander, General Liitzow, constructed field fortifications at the two main hill passes blocking the entrance to Christiania. These field forts were held by 1500 cavalry and 5600 infantry.

When Charles, who had crossed the frontier in early March, reached this line his attack against one of these forts failed and he was forced to retreat south. He then turned north but was surprised by the speed with which his enemy erected a barrier of logs and felled trees 192 that his troops could not force. Like the Canadians, the Norwegians were adept at throwing up defensive lines. But Charles marched his men across frozen ice on the Oslo fjord to outflank his enemy, and by 21 March he was outside the empty Norwegian capital.

Once news arrived of the Lion of the North’s approach the population fled westwards. Christiania’s garrison of 3000 regulars had plentiful supplies and was under the command of a tough German officer in Danish service, Colonel ]orgen von Klenow. The Swedish invasion began to run into difficulties with the Norwegian fortifications. Charles occupied Christiania on 22 March, but the town was built with its streets perpendicular to the fortresses’ guns so that the guns could shoot straight down the street and onto any Swede foolish enough to venture out. The Swedes tore up paving stones, houses and anything else they could find to erect breastworks or dig trenches to protect themselves. Assaults on other forts were beaten back with heavy losses. Charles did not give up hope but his officers were pessimistic and a defeatism that had marred the Swedish army’s morale since the catastrophic defeat at Poltava in 1709 now surfaced. The officers feared they would be cut off and starved into submission due to their long supply lines. Charles marched south and took the town of Fredrikshald (present-day Halden) in July. However, he could not take its fortress, Fredriksten, or the city’s inner defence wall, which was held by an armed force of the town’s inhabitants.

When Charles invaded Norway again in 1718 his approach was very different. If the Norwegians would not greet the Swedes as liberators then they would be bludgeoned into submission and crushed by sheer military might. Bearing in mind his experiences in 1716, he was determined to take Fredriksten first. It was Norway’s most formidable fortress and it straddled Sweden’s supply routes and the lines of communication all the way back to Sweden.

The first step in this plan was to get a galley flotilla into the Iddefjord in order to reduce Sponviken fort and then bombard Halden from the fjord as well from the land side. The flotilla would avoid having to run the gauntlet of Fredrikstad’s fortress batteries and the deadly attentions of Tordenskjold’s fleet hovering off the coast. Charles ordered 800 troops and 1000 horses to haul his galleys and gunboats across the peninsula between the North Sea and Iddefjord.

Fredriksten, meaning Frederick’s rock, was built on top of a massive granite mountain above the city of Fredrikshald on the Norwegian side of Iddefjord, which connected in the west with the waters of Svinesund. On three sides this eagle’s nest was protected by water, cliffs or deep valleys and it was only to the south-east that it was open to attack. Even on that side the approaches were protected by marshes and three forts.

This time Charles was taking no chances. He created a huge, well-supplied army of 40,000 troops accompanied by a well-equipped siege train led by a professional fortification officer with a wide experience of sieges. The French colonel of fortification, Philippe Maigret, had been trained by Vauban and now prepared to conduct a siege in this northern wilderness according to his illustrious teacher’s masterly system. Fredriksten would be completely encircled and cut off from the outside world. Parallel trenches would be dug to surround the fortress in concentric circles. Approaches would be dug to close in on the fort and in such a way that they avoided its artillery. Then heavy siege mortars and guns would be used to make a breach in the walls. Meanwhile, Maigret told the Swedes, the garrison would become demoralized by their isolation, the absence of news and the growing lack of supplies. Once this had been done the Swedes could storm the fortress.

Swedish preparations had been so painstaking that the invasion of Norway only began in late October. Charles arrived ahead of schedule with 900 cavalry forcing the Norwegians to sink their transport flotilla on Iddefjord. Nevertheless it was only by 20 November that the siege artillery was in place. In total Charles had 35,000 men in southern Norway while Colonel Landsberg, the Norwegian commandant of Fredriksten, admitted that the fortress was totally cut off by the siege, and that he had only 1400 troops. Charles could not resist taking risks and personally commanded a daring attack on 27 November, which stormed and then took the outlying Gyldenhove fort.

The Swedes were now engaged in the tedious and unusual task of digging trenches to approach Fredriksten. Hard and unpleasant work in the rocky soil around the fortress, the troops dug in the face of Norwegian fire from the main fort and the two remaining outer works. On 30 November the first parallel was completed and a sap had been dug. Charles wanted Maigret to begin digging the second line as soon as possible. Earlier Maigret had assured the impatient king that the fortress would fall within eight days and even Fredriksten’s commander, Colonel Landsberg, admitted that Fredriksten could not hold out longer than a week.

As the soil was thin the Swedes had to reinforce their trenches with 600 fascines and 3000 bags every day. Once the second parallel had been dug and reinforced with breastworks Maigret’s siege artillery of 18 heavy pieces (six 16-kg [36-lb] howitzers and six 34-kg [75-lb] mortars) would bombard the walls and make a breach. Landsberg knew that the walls had not been properly embedded in the rock and that they would fall apart at the first Swedish barrage.

Fortunately for the Norwegians Charles, always in the front line, was in the sap during the evening of 30 November when, supposedly, a stray bullet hit him in the head and killed him instantly. The Swedish officers in command immediately ordered a retreat and all dreams of empire vanished. Today it is thought that the bullet was probably fired by a hired assassin, paid by the king’s ruthless and ambitious brother-in-law, Prince Frederick of Hesse, who later became King Frederick I of Sweden.