Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World

9

TWELVE TRUMPETS, FOUR KETTLEDRUMS, AND A BAG OF GOLD

Now that I was free, and my own master, I supposed that I could do anything, achieve anything. I had only to take one leap, and I could rise and fly through the air.

—JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, CONFESSIONS

RUDBECK’S COMBINATION OF talent, charm, and groveling would win back the favor of Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie with stunning speed. For the count had a weak spot for avoiding unpleasant conflict and an even weaker spot for the clever professor. The count, it seemed, had an almost unlimited tolerance for Rudbeck’s shenanigans.

De la Gardie was certainly in a very different position than were the professors who had to deal with Rudbeck on a day-to-day basis. Given his political influence, economic power, and social status, De la Gardie had the luxury of admiring Rudbeck’s extraordinary gifts. He could afford to look away when his favorite professor slipped up, acting in some rash if not also irresponsible ways.

Many scholars at Uppsala, by contrast, did not appreciate Rudbeck’s complete disregard for the rules, deeply resenting his lawsuit, his support of the sloppy printer, his flirtations with Cartesian thought, and of course the decreases in salaries that were so closely linked to his carefree building spree. Still others were probably just threatened by Rudbeck’s abilities, which, together with his lack of humility, sometimes made him look like an annoying, reckless show-off who did as he pleased. And when he got into trouble, as he was bound to do, De la Gardie would come to the rescue.

So, once again, despite Rudbeck’s scandalous behavior in suing the university, De la Gardie listened, forgave, and forgot. Rudbeck’s offense was overshadowed, in the count’s mind at least, this time by his latest spectacular discovery. The count was thrilled with the hunt for Atlantis, and did not wish to see Rudbeck hindered in any way, least of all by something as trivial as a lack of funds.

A longtime patron of Swedish antiquities, De la Gardie promised financial assistance to help cover Rudbeck’s printing costs. He sent over stacks of paper, right away, for the first printing of the images to accompany the texts, which, as Rudbeck planned, would be extravagant.

Detailed maps of Atlantis were to show the capital, the temple, and the racetrack. Representations of the layers of humus around the old burial mounds were also being cut, pictorially confirming the great age of Sweden. Rudbeck’s ambitions would soon be growing here as well, preparing not just images, but life-size reproductions of the objects he had found and which were housed in his makeshift curiosity cabinet, a seventeenth-century predecessor to the private museum.

Nails, rings, ax heads, swords, drums, and castration knives would all be lauded as artifacts of Atlantis. Some of his gifted mathematical students, including the experienced College of Antiquities draftsman Petrus Törnewall, were hard at work helping prepare the woodcuts and copper engravings that De la Gardie was so generously funding. The count was once again, as Rudbeck said, “his greatest admirer,” offering timely advice, support, and encouragement. He also promised to praise the merits of the work to the king.

Sitting on the throne was Charles XI, still at this time a young, inexperienced, and remarkably insecure monarch. The worldly Italian diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti described his first encounter with the new king on his visit in 1674. He was told to avoid engaging the king in conversation, so as not to embarrass or perplex him, or otherwise cause him any discomfort in trying to think of a response. Unexpectedly, however, the king offered his hand to the Florentine nobleman. Obeying convention, the diplomat kissed it. The flustered king then acted in a distinctly unroyal manner: he fled the room. Two years on the throne had not changed Sweden’s ruler, who still appeared “shy and afraid of everything.” “It looks as if he does not dare to look someone in the face, and he moves as if he walked on glass,” Magalotti concluded.

Knives, ax heads, and other artifacts supposedly of Atlantis were on display in Rudbeck’s museum.

Charles XI has not been remembered as Sweden’s most cultured monarch, either. Despite high ambitions for his studies, one of the most grandiose plans ever devised for a Swedish prince, his education was “shamelessly neglected.” Observers regularly noted that his progress was slow. He confused letters, reversed numbers, and spelled atrociously. The governor charged with overseeing his education, Christopher Horn, had hardly taken up his position with zest. He was given a room in the royal palace, where, instead of teaching, he indulged, his critics said, in eating, drinking, and displaying “all the qualities which incompetence can bring.”

But the emphasis on the king’s total lack of learning is very much overplayed. It also seems at least partly based on a misunderstanding of Charles XI’s dyslexia, a condition he almost certainly had. Like many in his situation, the king would compensate with some exceptional talents in other areas. He excelled in hunting, riding, and outdoor activities, even collecting enough wild animals to open his own zoo in the Stockholm palace. He looked completely different when he sat on a horse. No longer timid, shy, reserved, or full of insecurity, Charles XI, on such occasions, as Magalotti put it, “really looks like a king.”

Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie had known the monarch well, having led the regency government since 1660, when the crown prince was only four years old. Relying on years of trust, the count put in a good word for Rudbeck, and this was certainly a favorable moment for winning the king over to the extraordinary quest. In fact, Charles XI had just told De la Gardie how much he hated to turn away any good citizen who came in search of assistance. Given his potential, Rudbeck would surely be classified as one of these good citizens, and his search deemed worthy of royal support.

By a happy coincidence, Rudbeck was soon to come to the king’s attention in his own memorable way. Although Charles XI had assumed power in 1672, he was not officially crowned until September 1675. For this occasion, Rudbeck, the discoverer of Atlantis, was asked to arrange the decorations and festivities in Uppsala Cathedral. Hurriedly the university was whipped into shape for the royal coronation. The Gustavianum was turned into a “house of nobility,” the piles of trash beside the river were moved out of sight, and Rudbeck himself transported the dung piles near the horse stalls in the exercise hall to more secluded gardens.

No one knew it at the time, but this was to be one of the last great baroque ceremonies of Sweden’s imperial age. And Rudbeck put on quite a show. He wrote the music for the king’s coronation—and then sang the piece himself in Uppsala Cathedral in such a way that his thundering voice was said to overpower some twelve trumpets and four kettledrums playing with all their might.

Sure enough, the performance made a lasting impression on the young king. Reportedly, Rudbeck’s emphasis on the loud and the bombastic was well advised, as Charles XI was then learning to play the drums, and seemed totally engrossed in what Rudbeck called his “little noise.” Every time the king came to Uppsala for the rest of his life, it was said, he insisted on hearing Olof Rudbeck sing. More immediately, the king pledged additional funding, some five hundred daler silvermynt, for Rudbeck’s adventure.

The same degree of success during the coronation, however, cannot be said for Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie. In the initial moments before the procession into the cathedral, the count’s horse reared and threw him to the ground. The brand-new crimson velvet and ermine-trimmed robes unveiled on that occasion were stained, and De la Gardie’s wig was tossed into the mud. The imperial orb fell out of his grip, banged on the cobblestones, and dented on impact. De la Gardie regained his composure for the rest of the ceremony, but the man who liked so much to party went home uncharacteristically early that night.

RUDBECK’S MUSIC at the coronation must have been a pleasant diversion for the young king on the silver throne. Nineteen years old and about to turn twenty in a couple of months, this awkward boy was nevertheless anxiously excited about the future. He had just been engaged to be married.

His bride-to-be was a Danish princess, Ulrika Eleonora, and, historically speaking, a radical choice. She was the sister of Christian V, king of Denmark, which had been Sweden’s enemy for as long as anyone alive could remember. There was even a word in Swedish coined to describe this hostility, Danskhat, which roughly translates as “hatred of the Danes.”

King Charles XI’s own father, Charles X, had come to exemplify the high passions animating the northern rivalry. Back in the abnormally cold winter of 1658, when the waters separating the two kingdoms had frozen hard, Charles X had made the decision to march his army over the ice to Denmark. The plan was to kidnap the Danish royal family, disperse the ruling aristocracy, and raze Copenhagen to the ground. The Swedes intended literally to destroy the independence of Denmark.

Despite the sounds of cracking ice and the water seeping through their natural bridge, the seven thousand soldiers managed to cross the channel with surprisingly few losses. The Danes were taken by complete surprise. The Swedish king was prevented from obliterating his rival only by the timely intervention of foreign powers. He did, however, leave the negotiation table with new territories for his kingdom, rich provinces in the west and south that are still part of Sweden today (Skåne, Blekinge, Bohuslän, Halland, and others).

Now, less than fifteen years after Charles X’s audacious march, his son was marrying the daughter of the man who had just barely escaped the attack. A sign of the changing times, this proposed marriage between the new Swedish king and the Danish princess aimed to bring the two constantly quarreling kingdoms closer together and seal a lasting peace treaty. This marriage would later be remembered as marking an important beginning to a long process of reconciliation between the two bitter Nordic belligerents.

So the engagement was made, the two kings looked happy, and the plan seemed to be working. But all the fireworks and merry toasts to eternal friendship could not stop the Danish king, only a few months later, from declaring war.

A few weeks after this royal engagement had been announced in June 1675, Swedish troops experienced an engagement of a different kind. Allied with the French, the Swedes were dragged into hostilities with one of Louis XIV’s enemies in northern Germany, the Brandenburg prince Frederick William. They had not particularly wanted war, but, bound by treaty, they attacked anyway on the fields of Fehrbellin. To great surprise on all sides, the Swedes were repulsed. The German prince effectively exploited the orderly retreat to shout out to the world that the Swedes were no longer invincible.

Marriage proposal and celebrated engagement aside, the ever-vigilant king of Denmark, Christian V, sensed that this was too good an opportunity to miss. The current situation—a Swedish loss on the battlefield—surely constituted an exception to the general words of goodwill and reconciliation just pledged. Denmark had long wanted to regain the lost provinces, that valuable territory full of fortresses and fertile lands which Charles XI’s dad had forced Christian V’s dad to hand over. With Sweden distracted by the German enemy, now was their chance.

The Danes declared war immediately. Their allies, the Dutch, also found this logic persuasive, and followed suit, looking toward more control over the lucrative Baltic trade. As if this coalition with its combined naval strength were not difficult enough to fight, the Hapsburg emperor also saw the possibility of finally kicking out the Swedes from nearby German territories—lands that he thought he could better dominate by himself.

As formidable enemies were mobilizing their troops on a frankly nightmarish number of fronts, the previous nonchalance at the loss at Fehrbellin started to undergo a real change. When De la Gardie finally showed up in Stockholm again, three weeks after that defeat, he found a rather irate group of Riksråd (Council) and parliamentary officials. Serious questions were posed about the actions of the old regency government and the man who stood at its center, namely, De la Gardie himself.

With Riksråd and parliamentary leaders distancing themselves from the past, there came a call for an official investigation. Many wanted to know how Sweden had entered into this alliance with France and had then agreed to fight in a war for which they were so obviously ill prepared. After only fourteen years of peace, statesmen also demanded to know why the Swedish military had fallen into such a poor condition. Again eyes turned to De la Gardie’s leadership. What on earth had happened to the army that only a few years ago was the feared hammer of the north?

In the midst of the uproar and hysteria, more accusations were leveled against the chancellor. High-ranking men of society came forward claiming to have heard De la Gardie utter some treacherous words about the king, calling him a “rascal” and urging his removal. Led by Claes Rålamb, Stockholm’s highest official, and Knut Kurck, president of the Commerce College, the politicians took their information straight to the king.

The count fell on his knees and begged his innocence. Their words were all lies and hearsay, he pleaded, and in turn, he accused the rivals of spreading false rumors. With such prominent people on both sides of the issue, the inexperienced king was uncertain how to proceed. Prudently, though, he steered a middle course. He refused to consider this a matter of state, and suggested that the two sides settle the dispute between themselves.

But as both sides were conscripting allies in the autumn of 1675 for what would certainly have been a vicious struggle, something happened that would sway many of the remaining undecided opinions.

EARLIER THAT SUMMER the king had ordered the Royal Navy to launch a preemptive strike on the Danish and Dutch warships gathering in the south. Three months and countless delays later, the Swedes were still preparing for the attack. By late October, as sailing conditions were rapidly deteriorating, sixty-six large and well-armed vessels sailed out in one of the largest fleets ever assembled on the Baltic. This Swedish armada was to put a stop to the malicious designs of the Danes and their ill-advised declaration of war.

Ten days later the first ships were seen creaking back to shore, sails torn, ropes rotten, and anchors lost. And they had not even met an enemy. A nasty storm had emerged on the choppy Baltic Sea, causing dismal visibility and disrupting established means of communication. Some ships literally crashed into each other. Many supplies, including the stores of food, went overboard. It was an embarrassing performance, and the admiral, Gustaf Otto Stenbock, was fired for his incompetence. Prior to his appointment as admiral, it turned out, he had never even been to sea.

As much as this disaster hurt De la Gardie’s prestige, things did not unfortunately improve. At the next opportunity, the summer of 1676, the Swedes pulled out their greatest weapon, the flagship Kronan (Crown). Drawing on the most advanced naval architecture developed by the great maritime powers England and Holland, Kronan was one of the largest and best-armed ships of its day. About 180 feet in length and forty-three in width, the man-of-war boasted a terrifying 126 cannon, including some highly regarded thirty- and thirty-six-pounders.

As Kronan started to attack near the Baltic island of Öland on the first day of June 1676, one of the Swedish naval officers sent a message to his superior, the admiral Lorentz Creutz. Now, the admiral was new, and he had never fought a battle, with his previous experience consisting mainly of prosecuting witches. In the general confusion of the melee, Creutz misunderstood his officer’s message. Instead of continuing the fight as signaled, he ordered the monstrous ship to set a new course. At the same time, the inexperienced commander seems to have forgotten to give the accompanying order to adjust the sails and close the gunports. The enemy Dutch and Danish commanders looked on in bewilderment at what happened next to Sweden’s most feared warship: “Kronan careened, water poured in through the hatches, the cannons broke loose, a slow match ended up in the gunpowder stocks, and Kronan exploded and sank.” Of a crew of 850, only forty-two were known to have survived.

A tragedy, a disaster, an embarrassment, and a stunning reversal—and it was not over yet. The second-largest ship in the navy, Svärdet (Sword), did not last much longer; and a third, Äpplet (Apple), went down as well. The commander of this ship, too, seems to have known frighteningly little of naval warfare. “He cannot even differentiate the forecastle and the poop,” the minutes of the later trial revealed. Evidently the commander’s previous position had been running a restaurant.

None of this reflected well on De la Gardie’s stewardship. A total of eleven ships, including the three most impressive, went down with some three thousand sailors of the Swedish Royal Navy. In the wake of this overwhelming loss, Swedish defenses lay prostrate. It was only a matter of time before an all-out Danish invasion would begin.

Morale had sunk very low in Stockholm, and the new king seemed manifestly depressed. Although he had long trusted De la Gardie, he was now inclined to listen to the pleas of the furious and the disenchanted who blamed the overall sorry state of the navy on De la Gardie’s government. For twelve years it had concentrated power too much, blocked access to the king, and, some suspected, kept the monarch in a state of ignorance about the true conditions of the kingdom.

Sweden was now paying the price for these faults in the naval fiascoes and criminally ill-prepared forces. Soon it would also have to face a Danish invasion, one certain to be as bold, determined, and set on revenge as had been the Swedes who marched over the ice. Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie watched helplessly as the king reluctantly ordered an investigation into the charges of widespread misrule. Rudbeck, too, was anxious about these developments. Neither the war nor the prosecution of his patron boded well for his hunt for Atlantis.