The March That Turned Into a Graveyard

In the winter of 1718, 10,000 soldiers set out from a Swedish border city on a mission to conquer Norway. However, what followed would result in one of the single largest losses of life in Swedish history since the bubonic plague. But surprisingly, this wasn't due to the people they encountered.

This is the story of the Carolean Death March, and as always, viewer discretion is advised. [intro music] Back in the early 1700s, most countries were suffering growing pains of all kinds. The Enlightenment and the first uses of science and medicine, which somewhat resembled the modern day, were only just beginning, and the Industrial Revolution was just a few decades away.

But some of the first signs of it were beginning to show and would change the lives of millions of people for better or for worse. One of those was the very foundation of how armies were put together and how they worked. Before, in more feudal centuries, it wasn't unusual for people conscripted into the military service to be expected to provide their own equipment.

Now, this wasn't always the case, and especially since we're generalizing a large amount of time, but for the most part, it didn't really matter if 2 or even 200 people in an army had spears that weren't exactly the same length. As long as they were close enough and could do the same job, it was fine; but the same could not be said in the age of gunpowder. Before, to reach out and attack an enemy, kingdoms needed to do things like mandate weekly longbow practice for their citizenry, as the English did, or to craft and assemble complicated siege engines like trebuchets to hurl stones into and over walls.

But more and more it became apparent just how much potential there was in firearms. The sheer power a cannon could hit a castle with was enough to make old designs obsolete already, yet they were also smaller, more portable, and faster-firing than trebuchets. Muskets, meanwhile, offered the average farmer the ability to kill a fully armored knight where they stood, with only a few hours of training.

And though armor did keep up for a while, there was only so far it could stretch using materials of the era. The only real downside was cost, because unlike most other weapons in history to that point, firearms demanded chemists and the production of large and precisely crafted mechanisms on a scale no other form of weapon ever had. To put it simply, the idea of a common citizen being drafted and expected to provide their own musket, gunpowder, and bullets, was never gonna work well.

Mismatched sizes, different qualities, and production errors on that scale couldn't be tolerated in an age where nearly every major power saw warfare on par with everyday trade and diplomacy. If you couldn't hold on to the borders of your own kingdom, then quite likely, your neighbor would be happy to look after them for you. So if that neighbor also happened to replace more of their archers with musketeers, then you needed to as well.

And the only way to make sure all of your soldiers were using compatible equipment, which would work the way you wanted it to, was for the state to fund everything. This meant direct national taxation of the production of gunpowder on an increasingly industrial scale. Before this, the idea of a nation being an identity people would associate with, wasn't a common thing.

Instead, you might more closely identify as being from a certain city, a religion, a clan, or family. And in fact, depending on the shifting desires of those in power, you could just as easily find yourself fighting with other people who spoke the same language as you and grew up in the same system. But as time went on with the need to centralize power to afford modern armies built on a foundation of gunpowder, those nations needed to concentrate power and grow.

This then only made them bigger targets for their neighbors to keep up with in a cyclical process— essentially expand or be conquered. That brings us to the Caroleans, or Karoliner in Swedish. They were named for the Swedish King Charles XI who oversaw their creation because Sweden had an extra set of problems to overcome in the 1600s and 1700s.

If they couldn't secure their place and that of Scandinavia as a whole as a major power, they would be at constant risk of being overrun or cut out by other opportunistic forces in Europe. The huge expanse of forests and mountains in Scandinavia offered plenty of access to lumber and metal of all kinds, but not nearly as much food or weather that made farming easy. This left them with a much smaller population and plenty of natural riches that others might decide to invade and claim for themselves.

So the Caroleans were planning to embody a high risk, high reward strategy, not because Charles XI enjoyed taking risks, but because it was a necessity. Rather than the old system, which randomly selected one out of every ten men in Sweden for military service, the Caroleans were trained under something known as the New Allotment System. This was where each small community was expected to select one volunteer to serve as a professional soldier.

This volunteer would then spend around a month each year training with the rest of the Caroleans, learning their skills far better than any drafted conscript. Then, otherwise, they'd be a member of their community and economy, farming, working, and living their lives 11 months out of the year. This already offered an edge to the Swedish army, but it was how the men fought that truly set them apart.

Most armies at the time would march to a range of about 100 to at most 125 meters from each other, before firing musket volleys and then gradually advancing until one side broke and retreated. It sort of had to be done this way so that men in an army were within earshot of their officers, and those officers were also able to hear horns and see signal flags from generals; but it also made them large vulnerable targets. In contrast, the Caroleans knew they couldn't stand up to other nations like that.

Their entire army was only around 40,000 to 50,000 people during peacetime, which was minuscule by comparison to other major powers of the era. So instead, they devised a way to end their battles as quickly as possible. Rather than stopping at 100 meters, the Caroleans marched directly to 50 meters, or later on, ran to just 20 before opening fire.

Then, instead of bothering to reload, their front and rear ranks would trade places, fire their remaining shots, and then draw their swords and charge the enemy immediately. This reduced the amount of time the enemy was given to fire back at them and saved their own fire for when they were closer to the enemy, where it would be more accurate. This was then also followed with a charge to put as much stress on the enemy as possible.

But even beyond that, the Caroleans made use of what was thought of as an obsolete technology at the time, which were pikes. These are spears three to five times the height of a person. Rather than in their original purpose of warding off cavalry, they used them in the charge because pikes gave them a reach advantage over bayonets.

This unusual strategy was known as Gå–På, meaning "go on or go to", and saw the Caroleans become some of the first-ever shock troops in the world. All of this, combined with the Caroleans' fervent religious belief that any death in battle was preordained, made them terrifying opponents to face, with reputations not far off from the legendary Swiss Guard. Maybe the only problem was that if they ever became bogged down or lost the initiative, the Caroleans were fragile and couldn't afford to suffer heavy losses.

By the year 1718, the Caroleans were 18 years into the Great Northern War, facing Russia, Polish–Lithuanian, Denmark–Norway, and several others, with their rare allies most of being separated by the North Sea or residing farther south. Major defeats in the east had lost territory to Peter the Great, and Sweden found themselves stretched too thin to retake any land. So instead, a plan was devised to attack Norway and the west, and force them to negotiate a peace treaty so that Sweden could make up for its lost land and political influence.

Then after that, they could focus on Russia without having to worry about a second front on their western side. So in August 1718, Swedish officer Carl Gustaf Armfeldt prepared to do just that. He then gathered an army of 10,073 Caroleans, 7,000 horses, and 3,300 cattle in the village of Duved in preparation to take the city of Trondheim.

This was the connection point between Norway's more populous southern regions and its long northern coast, and this would effectively split the country in two. Most men fighting assembled were Finnish veterans including Armfeldt himself, but by this point in the war, the troops were not at their best. By then, it had been 18 long years of seasonal fighting that had left them underequipped, and the exhaustion of fighting a war so long that some of the people involved weren't even born when it began, weighed heavily on everyone.

Still, the hope was that if they could capture Trondheim before the winter came and hold it until the following spring, the weather would help protect them from a counterattack and hopefully be enough to force peace negotiations. In the meantime, in another area, another army of 40,000 men would march into Southern Norway under the personal leadership of the young King Charles XII. This larger army would rely on Armfeldt's army as both a diversion and a backup plan while they tried to conquer all of Norway in a coordinated attack.

And this might sound like an ambitious plan, and that's because it was. As part of this plan, Armfeldt was given six weeks to take Trondheim, but immediately, this was complicated because the region had seen several years of famine and a rainy summer that had washed out many of the local roads. This then bogged down the army as it marched, so when the army finally did leave Duved, all 10,073 men had unknowingly sealed their own fates.

Already, around 300 horses and 800 cattle were killed and used to feed the army while they camped at Duved. The locals just couldn't afford to feed them all, and this was the first warning sign of the campaign that went unheeded. Either way, the army marched on and first crossed the border towards Stene Skanse, which was a small fort by the Verdal River.

The army then captured this area by circling around behind it off the road while a smaller force distracted them from the front. When they arrived at Stene on both fronts, the Norwegians recognized their forces were inferior and surrendered without a fight. This was a good early victory, but also a piece of false hope.

In fact, just reaching the fort had taken over three weeks because of the terrible road conditions. Then, as Armfeldt and the Caroleans continued along the river to the coastal village of Verdal and then south, more and more small groups of Norwegians harassed them along the way. Under the command of Major General Vincens Budde, the Norwegians turned the many mountain passes into death traps at every opportunity.

Armfeldt would even call the pass at Langstein "the sum of bad roads", when just a tiny group of 300 Norwegians was able to hold them back for a time, almost as if they were reenacting the Greek Battle of Thermopylae. Even today, this area is little more than a two-lane road between densely forested mountain cliffs on one side, and the freezing ocean on the other. Worse still, when the army reached the river at Stjørdal, they found its water high and fast from the heavy rains.

And with the Norwegians also holding the other side, crossing would now be impossible. By then, five weeks of slow progress had run through most of the army's food, and Armfeldt decided to wait at the river crossing for supplies from Duved to catch up to them. But as the days passed, none arrived, and the army actually had to turn back to the village of Verdal where they could find food, undoing two weeks of marching and fighting through thin coastal roads.

When they made it back to Verdal in October, the village was already pressed hard by years of famine, just like Duved. And normally, plundering was an offense punishable by death in the Caroleans, but the weather and poor planning had pushed them to the brink, so this community that they had previously left untouched, became a pantry. The presence of so many thousands of extra people then pushed the local food stores to the brink of collapse, before the army once again turned south in the last days of October for another attempt to take Trondheim.

While they were there, they actually received a letter from the king, ordering them to take Trondheim immediately which he expected to be done by then. By then, however, Budde had regrouped and prepared a new defense, while Armfeldt's army was weakened further, and their artillery had become stuck and abandoned along the muddy roads. So although Armfeldt planned a little better and marched along a different route and built a 200-meter floating bridge to cross the river, when they began to lay siege to Trondheim for weeks, there was no longer any chance of taking the city.

Without siege weapons, it was all a wasted effort, and Budde knew this. All he had to do was wait them out as both sides suffered from disease, lack of food, and the harsh winter, which would hurt the Swedes more in their tents than the Norwegians in a city. So knowing that their situation was not good, by November, Armfeldt sent a hero of his army on a mission home to deliver mail and also possibly to scout a route back, but he was then recognized by villagers when he stopped to rest back in the village of Stjørdal and was fatally shot in an ambush the next morning.

Meanwhile, on their southern and larger front, on the 30th of November, King Charles was killed while inspecting siege fortifications around the city of Fredriksten. After 18 years of leading his men into dozens of battles, a little bit of overconfidence and a single well-placed musket shot was all it took. Official news wouldn't reach Armfeldt, 400 kilometers to the north, just as their message never reached south, but by then, it was pretty obvious that their mission was a failure anyway.

The rumors had also reached Trondheim, and to add insult to injury, the defenders were firing salutes in celebration, knowing they'd already won. In the end, the Caroleans had been fighting the exact kind of battle they were least suited for, and of the 10,000 men they had began with, only 6,000 remained in a nearby village while no supplies had arrived for months. So finally, Armfeldt ordered the retreat back to Sweden, but even doing that would be hard-fought.

On their way, the Caroleans set to loot in the surrounding villages and farms for winter clothing, food, and anything they could use to survive. They then burned the bridge over the river behind them and had one final church service on Christmas Eve before beginning the march home. In some cases, they even ripped up floorboards to use as firewood before they left.

A direct route plotted 30 kilometers east through the mountains to Tydal, then over the Tydal mountains, another 50 kilometers back into Sweden, would take them to the friendly town of Handöl, but it would be a hard walk. Luckily, the winter so far had been mild, with mostly heavy rains, but either way, with food running low, as short a route as possible was seen as the best choice. A few days later, as the Caroleans made their way from village to village, a local community story tells of how two young soldiers arrived before the rest of the army in Hilmo, and then they came to a farm, seeking warmth and food.

The farmer's wife, who was home alone, took pity on them and gave them warm mittens and heated milk in front of a fireplace, only for her husband to arrive home and go into a rage. He knew of the bounty that General Budde had put on the Caroleans' heads, and refused to listen to the men, saying that they only wished to go home, or even his wife's pleading for their lives. He then demanded the mittens back, which they gave him, before he killed them both where they were.

The same story tells of a cross that still stands in the wilderness near where they were buried. As they went, the army passed through a line of villages, and five days into their trek, made it to their last stop in the Norwegian village of Østby in Tydal. , And horrifyingly, even in these first few days, 200 men weakened by disease and starvation, froze to death in a blizzard.

14 on skis were then sent ahead with the critical job of letting their own people know that they were coming and in desperate need of food and medical attention. While they stayed in Østby, they interacted with the locals and found two elderly farmers who were too weak to travel far south and escape the village in advance of the war, and so they had remained behind with several of the women— one of whom had recently given birth to twins. In addition to these older men and the women, another villager found that he was the cousin of one of the soldier's grandfathers and gave them all the advice he could.

He would go on to tell them that if they planned to cross the mountains, it was best done with skis and proper winter clothing, which no Carolean there had. He also said that the bare mountain pass that they planned to take was best avoided. The only real shelter was in the birch forest lower to the river, even if the path was less clear.

Following their stay, when the army finally set off across the Tydal mountains, it was a cloudless night on New Year's Eve. This early progress seemed easy and almost invited them home. So it must have seemed like winter had been waiting for them, because the moment the army made it to the cliffside mountain roads, another blizzard was on top of them.

And the storm could not have possibly hit at a worse time. On the bare mountainside, with only dwarf trees and small shrubs, the men had no cover and nothing to burn. Soon, the blizzard grew so strong that it was impossible to see where they were going, and the entire army had to stop for fear of accidentally walking off a cliff.

In stark contrast in past years, this might not have even been notable. The Caroleans had once taken the city of Narva by charging through unprepared Russian lines through a raging blizzard, and won against an army four times their size. Up to that point, they were a legendary force with decades of victories behind them, but there on that mountain, they were little more than freezing men who didn't even have winter coats because the campaign was supposed to be over by September.

This also meant that months of pointless suffering and taking food from village people who needed it to survive the winter, had only brought them to a bone-chilling death, with nothing to show for it. Another 200 men froze to death on that first day, but some pressed on, refusing to stop, only to become lost in the snow. Horses also died by the dozens, and with each one, hundreds of pounds of supplies that the Caroleans could not carry, were abandoned.

Then as the storm carried on into the second day, hundreds upon hundreds more men and animals froze to death, littering the road like statues. Some huddled around each other, curled up, or even still holding the reins of the horses that froze under them. Meanwhile, the men tried to burn the sleds once pulled by the dying horses, the stocks of their own rifles, and use gunpowder for kindling, but it just didn't matter.

Even still, some continued on, winding through the mountains, and several groups, including Armfeldt's, came upon the River Ena and cut holes into the ice to see which way the water underneath flowed and followed it downstream. Others who lost their way found themselves in meter-deep snow, wandered through dense forests, or following the tracks of others just as lost as they were. It wasn't until three days after the army left Østby that the first survivors made it to Handöl on the 15th and 16th of January.

By then, they were no longer marching as an army, but hundreds of tiny groups; scattered, lost, and barely able to save themselves, never mind anyone else. Many groups took completely different routes, some by luck alone, and others because they were fortunate enough to have one member who knew where they were going. Their guides from the village had frozen to death on the first night, but truly, their fates had been sealed months earlier, when a six-week mission was planned in such desperate conditions.

Of the 5,800 soldiers who marched up into the mountains, less than half made it to the other side. A full 3,000 men lay behind them in a grim stop-motion retelling of their journey. But even Handöl wasn't the salvation they were looking for.

It was a village of only four farms and had little to offer the survivors, so even after reaching safety, another 700 men would die of exposure on the extended journey back to the village of Duved where they began. And then once they arrived, another 600 men suffered life-changing injuries and amputations from frostbite. And of those, 451 would be serious enough to be discharged from the army.

Even beyond that, the entire army never even made it there. The army's rearguard returned to Østby to wait out the storm, which lasted an entire week until the 18th before making their way home. There's also some speculation, though not proven, that the route given to the army by the villagers was a slightly different route than usual to avoid a group of setters or summer houses.

It's thought that the farmers may have been using these to hide food and their families from the Swedish army. However, the different route likely would not have made a difference anyway. The loss of so many Caroleans and the death of their King Charles XII was unrecoverable.

The next year in 1719 saw Sweden's return to a constitutional monarchy, followed by a peace treaty in 1721. Though the army would bear the same equipment and tactics for the next 60 years, they would never again be known as the Caroleans, and the dream of the Swedish Empire rising to the stage of world power, was over. And in the end, the ill-conceived campaign led to the deaths of 7,900 Carolean soldiers, thousands more Norwegian citizens, and an unknown number of working animals, camp followers, and others who starved as a result of their occupation.

It was and remains one of the single largest losses of life in Norway since the bubonic plague. If you made it this far, thanks so much for watching. If you want to listen to the audio-only version of these videos, you can listen wherever you listen to podcasts.

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