Charles XIV John
Former King of SwedenWikipedia
116
MENTIONS
11
EPISODES
9
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Search complete. 116 mentions across 11 episodes found for "Charles XIV John".
Oct 9, 2026
Phil CraigHOST
I love a map.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
The front cover's gorgeous as well, isn't it? It is Bernadotte.
Phil CraigHOST
You
Andrew RobertsGUEST
must be very pleased.
10 MINS LATER
Andrew RobertsGUEST
The 1806 campaign, yes, there were some rows.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
By the way, in the 1805 campaign, there was a row between Ney and Murat.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
In the 1806 campaign, rows between Lan and Murat and Bernadotte.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
By the 1809 campaign, you have Bernadotte falling out with Davout over the fact that he didn't appear at the Battle of Auerstadt.
DamonHOST
By the 17th of March, which is still celebrated as Norway's National Day, they drafted their own constitution and declared Norway an independent kingdom with Christian Frederick as king.
DamonHOST
However, Bernadotte, who'd spent considerable Swedish blood securing Norway as a prize, was not inclined to let a constitution get in the way of his ambitions.
DamonHOST
A short, sharp, Swedish-Norwegian war followed that summer.
DamonHOST
A string of small engagements through July and August, most of them narrow wins for one side or the other, but none of them quite decisive enough to settle anything by force alone.
DamonHOST
What settled it in the end was Bernadotte's political sense.
DamonHOST
Rather than crush Norwegian resistance outright, he accepted the Eidsvoll Constitution largely as written, and Norway entered a union with Sweden in November 1814, as a separate kingdom with its own constitution and its own parliament, and a Swedish king wearing two crowns, rather than one country simply absorbing the other.
DamonHOST
It's a curious little postscript to the Napoleonic Wars, a 400-year union between Denmark and Norway dissolved in a room in Germany that Norway wasn't even invited to, followed by Norway essentially bluffing and negotiating its way into a far better deal than the one it had been handed.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
In that case, he is a, um, disloyal disaster.
Paul LayHOST
Now, you've touched on, um, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.
Paul LayHOST
Um, this is undoubtedly, I think, the strangest trajectory of any of, uh, Napoleon's marshals because he ends up as Crown Prince of Sweden and, uh, and ultimately fights against Napoleon.
Paul LayHOST
He is another one who-
Andrew RobertsGUEST
And there were lots who were true believers in Bonapartism, like, uh, Berthier and, and Davout, Ney.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
Um, so, so you had a lot of, um, and, and a lot of people in between, of course.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
So politically, Bernadotte was what we would think of as of the extreme left.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
Um, now, of course, he, uh, was willing to dump all that when he became Crown Prince of Sweden.
Cipha SoundsHOST
Like, when it starts getting-
Seasick SteveGUEST
Karl Johan
Cipha SoundsHOST
... those fancy stores.
Seasick SteveGUEST
Yeah, yeah.
EmHOST
I'm familiar with that one.
KatieHOST
And then Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.
KatieHOST
He was a commoner and a French general under Napoleon and was elected as an heir to the Swedish throne in 1810.
KatieHOST
He founded the House of Bernadotte, which still reigns in Sweden today.
DamonHOST
Sweden's involvement came with its own small irony.
DamonHOST
It was led by Crown Prince Karl Johan, formerly Marshal Bernadotte of the French army, who would spend 1813 fighting his old master with, it must be said, a certain amount of relish.
DamonHOST
Now something odd had happened back in May when the Swedish general, Derbelin, hearing that the Danes had told Napoleon that they would remain on his side and protect as much of northern Germany as they could, suddenly, and without receiving orders from anyone, occupied the wealthy and important city of Hamburg.
DamonHOST
Napoleon immediately sent Marshal Davout with around 34,000 troops to retake the city, which he did.
Danny BarkerHOST
plague.
Johnny CruzHOST
And the guy who got really angry, mostly at Napoleon for this, was a guy named Bernadotte, who we'll talk about later.
Johnny CruzHOST
He suggested Napoleon should be arrested for desertion and for breaking the quarantine protocol.
Johnny CruzHOST
But in the face of public opinion, Bernadotte had to, like, step back and be like, actually, it's not that big of a deal.
Johnny CruzHOST
Don't worry about it.
Johnny CruzHOST
Because everybody fucking loved Napoleon, you know? The people, not, like, the
1 HR 3 MINS LATER
Johnny CruzHOST
So that was just an intersection of contention for the two of them.
Johnny CruzHOST
An agreement to this effect, signed by Colin Cohen January 1810, was repudiated by Napoleon, and the modifications he proposed were unacceptable to Russia.
Andrew MuellerHOST
Back in Norway, some decades passed and so did some Swedish kings.
Andrew MuellerHOST
Charles XIII was succeeded by Charles XIV John, Oscar I, Charles XV and in 1872 by Oscar II.
Andrew MuellerHOST
The Norwegians never really learned to be happy about being ultimately reigned over by the mob next door, but nothing much ever came of their dissatisfaction and besides which they had sardines to catch.
speaker_4UNKNOWN
We'll be right back.
John ViscardoHOST
Even Murat gets in trouble with it here in a minute, trying to figure out which side to pick.
John ViscardoHOST
And And Bernadotte, you know, he becomes king of Sweden.
John ViscardoHOST
Yes, he picks the right side, but he never gets to go to his home country ever again.
John ViscardoHOST
So it's I think it's a hard thing to do in this era to be on the right side of things.
1 more episode mentions Charles XIV John.
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