Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/354

Rh 334 G U B T A V U S of the Baltic provinces stretching from Finland to Livonia. Gustavus clearly foresaw the advantage to Russia and the danger to Sweden if the former power were allowed to plant itself on the Baltic coast ; and he now congratulated his country on a peace which assured her against such a j risk. In 1620 Gustavus married a sister of the elector of Brandenburg, with whom he lived happily till his death. After being for many years engaged in an intermittent war with Poland, Sweden (1621) entered upon a more active j conflict with that power. With some interruptions the j struggle lasted till 1629, and proved an excellent training I for Gustavus. Sigismund, king of Poland, wis his cousin, j and had at one time been king of Sweden, bat had been forced to resign owing to his Catholic opinions. Ke still laid claim to the crown of Sweden. In this war Gustavus took Riga, and made many other conquests in Livonia as well as in Courland and Prussia, part of which he retained , by the peace of Altmark, concluded under the mediation ; of Richelieu. That great statesman wished to get Gustavus s hands free j for a more important conflict, in which the king himself had long been eager to engage. While Gustavus had been involved in his Baltic war, the Catholic house .of Austria had been swiftly raising itself on the ruins of German Pro testantism to a position of absolute supremacy. In this early period of the Thirty Years War which dates from 1618, the armies of Protestantism had been everywhere overthrown by Tilly and Wallenstein. The latter, raising a host at his own cost and bearing desolation wherever he went, garri soned Brandenburg and Pomerania, occupied Mecklenburg, and overran the continental dominions of Denmark. The only town that successfully resisted the imperial general was Stralsund ; the king of Denmark was obliged to make peace. Such a colossus, with its gigantic force of oppression and devastation and its invincible armies, Gustavus now ven tured to attack. It seemed a foolhardy undertaking which excited the laughter of his enemies, when in midsummer 1630 he landed on the coast of Pomerania with his little army of 15,000 men. Yet there were many things in his favour, the despair of the Protestant princes, who saw a great part of their lands threatened by the Edict of Restitu tion ; the disunion of the Catholics, who forced the emperor to dismiss Wallenstein shortly after the landing of Gustavus; the help of Richelieu, who now inaugurated the French policy of weakening Germany by dividing it. This help was formally assured him by the treaty of Biirwalde (January 1631). Yet the German princes showed no haste to join Gustavas ; the duke Boguslav reluctantly consented to receive the Swedish army into his capital Stettin. But the marvellous discipline of the Swedes, so different from the wild barbarism of the imperial army, soon gained ths confidence of the German people; robbery and licence were unknown ; morning and evening the soldiers assembled for. prayer round their regimental chaplains ; such an army had never been seen in Europe. It was not less distin guished for its hardy bravery in war; keeping the field in winter as well as summer, it soon drove the imperialists out of Pomerania and the lower basin of the Oder, and stormed Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In the midst of those successes, Gustavus was greatly moved by the sack of Magdeburg (May 1631). Fearful of being cut off from his basis of operations, he could not advance to the relief of tbe city without the cooperation or consent of the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony. During the delay thus caused, Magdeburg was taken by Tilly, and became a scene of the most fearful atrocities. Too late Gustavus forced the elector of Brandenburg to hand over to him the fortresses required ; a desolating invasion of Saxony by Tilly com pelled even the Saxon elector to seek the aid of Sweden. The union of the Swedish and Saxon forces was followed by the battle of Breitenfeld (near Leipsic), in which Tilly- was completely overthrown, and the supremacy of Catholic Austria shattered at a single blow (September 1631). While the Saxons overran Bohemia, Gustavus, now hailed as the liberator of Protestantism, marched westwards towards the Rhine, gathering round him the friendly Germans, and driving out the imperial garrisons. Wiirtzburg and Frankfort were occupied ; at Oppenheim he forced the passage of the Rhine against the Spaniards ; he spent Christmas in the ecclesiastical city of Mainz. Early next spring he advanced into Bavaria, forcing the passage cf the Lech in the face of Tilly (who was mortally wounded). Munich had to pay a war contribution to the Swede. In this overwhelming reverse of fortune, the emperor Ferdinand was obliged to invoke the aid of Wallenstein, who soon changed the course of the war. He gathered a mighty host, cleared the Saxons out of Bohemia, and marching westwards threatened the wealthy city of Nurem berg. Afraid of a repetition of the horrors of Magdeburg, Gustavus hastened northwards and threw himself into the city with a small force. In the neighbourhood Wallenstein threw up a fortified camp resolving to starve his rival out ; and here the great captains watched each other for several weeks. After drawing his scattered forces together, Gustavus offered battle to the enemy, and when that was declined assaulted his intrenched position, but without effect. Leaving a sufficient garrison to defend the exhausted city, he advanced a second time into Bavaria, where he hoped to draw Wallenstein after him, and thus transfer the seat of war to the enemy s country. But Wallenstein made a desolating march through Thuringia into Saxony, which he resolved to make his winter quarters; and again Gustavus was obliged to leave his Bavarian conquests to save his ally from such a cruel guest. On a misty Nov ember day (1632) he attacked the army of Wallenstein at Lutzen (near Leipsic). The numbers engaged were not great: according to Ranke, the Swedes were 14,000, the imperialists only 12,000 at the beginning of the conflict; but the battle was one of the fiercest recorded in history. The Swedes had carried the strong positions of the enemy and turned his own cannon against him, when the cavalry of Pappenheim, which had left the main army shortly before the battle, appeared on the field. The Swedes were hurled j back ; and the king, too eagerly hurrying forward to re-form I the battle, was separated from his guards and shot. Wild with rage and sorrow the Swedes renewed the attack, overthrew the enemy, and won his artillery again. With out making any effort to recover it, Wallenstein retreated into Bohemia, while the Swedes carried the disfigured body of their king from the battlefield. It was laid to rest in
 * the Riddarholm church at Stockholm.

Gustavus Adolphus is justly regarded as one of the noblest and greatest figures in history. Even in the art of war he made an epoch. To the huge and unwieldy masses of Tilly he opposed a light and flexible formation of three deep, which he manoeuvred with unwonted rapidity. The activity of his movements was equalled by the dexterity with which his artillery and muskets were handled ; at Leipsic his guns fired three shots for the enemy s one. The political plans which Gustavus enter tained have been the subject of some discussion. That he aimed at founding a Swedish empire of the Baltic, and succeeded in doing so, is certain ; he meant also to unite under his protection the corpus evangelicum of Germany. i Probably too he aspired to become a candidate for the empire ; and if so, he had only one disqualification, that he was a foreigner. Even with this drawback it would have been the best course available for Germany ; to have enjoyed for a generation the rule of such a man would have been an unspeakable blessing, at any rate infinitely better