TWELVE AGAINST THE GODS CHARLES XII OF SWEDEN TWELVE AGAINST THE GODS The Story of Adventure BY WILLIAM BOLITHO LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD. First published 1950 Printed in Great Britain at The Windmill Press, Kingswood, Surrey. Contents Introduction i I Alexander the Great *3 II Casanova 53 in Christopher Columbus 87 IV Mahomet 123 V Lola Montez *59 VI Cagliostro (and Seraphina) 191 VII Charles XU of Sweden 223 VIII Napoleon I *53 IX Lucius Sergius Catiline 279 X Napoleon m 3°5 XI Isadora Duncan 33i XII Woodrow Wilson 357 & List of Illustrations Charles XII of Sweden Frontispiece Alexander the Great 14 Portrait of Casanova 54 Christopher Columbus 88 Mahomet 124 Lola Montez 160 Cagliostro 192 Seraphina Wife of Cagliostro 199 Charles XII of Sweden 224 Sketch of Napoleon I 254 Death Mask of the Due de Reichstadt Son of Napoleon I 266 Cicero’s Attack on Catiline in the Roman Senate 280 Photograph of Napoleon III 306 Photograph of Napoleon III 316 Isadora Duncan 332 President Woodrow Wilson 358 TWELVE AGAINST THE GODS INTRODUCTION 38 79 MAHOMET So begins the “ Lola Regime,” one of the most curi LE COMTE DE CAGLIOSTRO, In the end, instead, the Sultan determined to expe NAPOLEON m 333 343 INTRODUCTION ADVENTURE is the vitaminizing element in histories both individual and social. But its story is unsuitable for a Sabbath School prize book. Its adepts are rarely chaste, or merciful, or even law- abiding at all, and any moral peptonizing, or sugaring, takes out the interest, with the truth, of their lives. It is so with all great characters. Their faults are not mud spots, but structural outcroppings, of an indivisible piece with their personality. But there is a special reason for the inveterate illegality, or if you prefer, wickedness, of your true adventurer, which is inherent in the concept of Adventure itself. Adventure is the irreconcilable enemy of law ; the adventurer must be unsocial, if not in the deepest sense anti-social, because he is essentially a free