, circa 1860
Daniel Nordlander (upper left), with Adjutant
Fritz von Dardel, Ordonnance Officer
Ferdinand-Alphonse Hamelin,
General Henri-Pierre Castelnau, King Charles XV of Sweden and Prince Oscar, future King
Oscar II, at the
International Exposition (1867) in
Paris,
France.
Early life He was born in
Stockholm Palace, Stockholm, in 1826 and dubbed
Duke of Scania at birth. Born the eldest son of
Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and his wife
Crown Princess Josephine, he would be second in line to the throne of his grandfather, the ruling King
Charles XIV John. During his childhood he was placed in the care of the royal governess, Countess Christina Ulrika Taube. When he was 15, he was given his first officer's commission in 1841 by his grandfather the king.
Crown Prince The aging King Charles XIV John would suffer a stroke on his 81st birthday in 1844, dying little more than a month later. His successor would be his son, Charles's father Oscar, who ascended the throne as King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway. Upon his father's accession to the throne in 1844, the youth Charles was made a chancellor of the universities of
Uppsala and
Lund, and in 1853 chancellor of
Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. On 11 February 1846, he was made an honorary member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Crown Prince was
Viceroy of Norway briefly in 1856 and 1857. He became Regent on 25 September 1857, and king on the death of his father on 8 July 1859.
Reign As Crown Prince, Charles's brusque manner had led many to regard his future accession with some apprehension, yet he proved to be one of the most popular of Scandinavian kings and a constitutional ruler in the best sense of the word. His reign was remarkable for its manifold and far-reaching reforms. Sweden's existing municipal law (1862), ecclesiastical law (1863) and criminal law (1864) were enacted appropriately enough under the direction of a king whose motto was:
Land skall med lag byggas – "With law shall the land be built".), he was actually the ninth Swedish king by that name, as his predecessor
Charles IX (reigned 1604–1611) had adopted a numeral according to a fictitious history of Sweden. Charles, like his father Oscar I, was an advocate of
Scandinavianism and the political solidarity of the three northern kingdoms, and his friendship with
Frederick VII of Denmark, it is said, led him to give half promises of help to Denmark on the eve of the
war of 1864, which, in the circumstances, were perhaps misleading and unjustifiable. In view, however, of the unpreparedness of the Swedish army and the difficulties of the situation, Charles was forced to observe a strict neutrality. On behalf of Charles,
Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, Dutch diplomat in Japan, concluded a "Vänskaps-, handels- och sjöfartstraktat" ("Friendship, Trade and Maritime Treaty") between Sweden-Norway and Japan on 11 November 1868 (see the
Treaty of Yokohama). The treaty opened
Hakodate,
Yokohama,
Nagasaki,
Kobe and
Osaka to trade for Swedish and Norwegian traders (Article 3). The treaty also gave Sweden-Norway the opportunity to send consuls to the newly opened ports, where they were given the right to exercise jurisdiction over Swedes and Norwegians (
consular jurisdiction). Plagued by ill-health for the last years of his life, Charles succumbed to
abdominal tuberculosis in
Malmö on 18 September 1872. He was followed on the thrones of both Norway and Sweden by his brother, crowned Oscar II.
Personal life Charles XV attained some eminence as a painter Charles's popularity often had him referred to
colloquially as "Kron-Kalle" (
Crown-Charlie). ==Issue==