Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/352

338 domestic troubles, arising chiefly from the evil propensities of his son Eric. Gustavus was thrice married: first to Catharine of Saxe-Lauenburg, the mother of his son and successor Eric; secondly to Margaret de Laholm, the daughter of a Swedish noble; and thirdly to Catharine Stenbock, niece of Margaret.  GUSTAVUS II., Adolphus, king of Sweden, sixth of the line of Vasa, son of Charles IX. and Christina of Schleswig-Holstein, born in Stockholm, Dec. 9, 1594, killed at Lützen, Nov. 6 (new style 16), 1632. His father was the youngest son of Gustavus Vasa, and had been called to the throne on the exclusion of his nephew Sigismund, king of Poland, who was the rightful heir, but had given umbrage to the states by professing the Roman Catholic religion. (See of Sweden.) Sigismund had made an alliance with Russia for the recovery of the Swedish crown, and Gustavus Adolphus, on the death of his father, Oct. 30, 1611, inherited a war with the Poles and Russians, besides a long standing hostility with the Danes. Securing the assistance of his nobles by confirming their privileges, he made a peace with Denmark on favorable terms, and then, turning his arms against the Russians, drove them from Ingria, Karelia, and part of Livonia. He made a treaty with the czar at Stolbova in 1617, by which he retained much of the conquered territory, and was then in a condition to prosecute the Polish war with greater advantage. He overran the Baltic coast from Riga to Dantzic, made himself master of a large part of Polish Prussia, defeated the Poles in several engagements, but was repulsed and wounded before Dantzic, and on Sept. 30, 1627, fought a bloody but indecisive battle. The emperor Ferdinand II. now took part in the contest, placed Gustavus under the ban of the empire, and sent 10,000 men under Wallenstein into Pomerania. The Swedes, however, continued victorious, and by the mediation of France and England a truce for six years was concluded in September, 1629, on terms highly favorable to Gustavus. Meanwhile the expense of the war had raised several seditions at home, which the king put down by alternate mildness and severity. Leaving the care of his kingdom to the chancellor Oxenstiern, Gustavus now turned his attention to fresh foreign conquests. The growing power of Austria on the Baltic, the affront put upon him by Ferdinand in the late war, and the danger that threatened the Protestant cause in the great religious contest which then divided Germany, joined to an ambition to aggrandize his country, induced him to declare war against the emperor; and having presented to the states assembled at Stockholm his daughter Christina as the heiress of his throne, he set sail with about 20,000 men, and landed at the mouth of the Oder, June 24, 1630. By July 10 he had seized almost the whole of Pomerania. He levied a heavy contribution in this province, disciplined his troops, taught them a new system of tactics, and then, having

received an accession of six Scottish regiments under the duke of Hamilton, led a division of his army into Mecklenburg. Ferdinand, who at first looked with contempt upon the movements of this “king of snow,” now proposed a truce; but Gustavus preferred to follow up his successes, and in eight months from the time of his landing he had taken 80 fortified places. The imperialists under Tilly and Pappenheim gained several successes, but many of the Austrian magazines fell into the hands of the Swedes; and Gustavus, having first carried Frankfort-on-the-Oder by assault, pushed on toward Magdeburg, which Tilly was then investing. Before he could reach it the city was stormed, and more than 25,000 of the inhabitants were massacred. In September, 1631, Gustavus was joined by the elector of Saxony, with whom he at once gave battle to Tilly, and defeated him at Breitenfeld, near Leipsic, Sept. 7. This signal victory over a general never vanquished before, which displayed the superiority of the king's mode of fighting, based on boldness of attack and celerity of movement, at once established his reputation as a general. The Protestant states now hailed him as their leader. The elector of Saxony carried the war into Bohemia, while Gustavus marched into Franconia and the Palatinate, defeated Tilly again at Würzburg, and wintered at Mentz. Oxenstiern would have had him attack Vienna, but Gustavus, anxious to appear not as a conqueror, but as the liberator of the Protestants, had resolved to confine the operations of his armies to the N. and W. provinces. Ferdinand now determined to recall Wallenstein, who had been dismissed about the time of the Swedish landing; but before he could obey the summons Gustavus had attacked the Austrians at the river Lech (April, 1632), and had driven them into Ingoldstadt. Tilly was mortally wounded in the action. Munich surrendered to the Swedes in May; almost the whole of Bavaria was in their hands, and the elector was forced to take refuge in Ratisbon. The Lutheran peasants of Upper Austria took up arms; the Swiss granted permission to the king to raise levies in their territory, and the Swedish standard was carried triumphantly by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar to Lake Constance and the Tyrolese mountains. At this juncture Wallenstein appeared at the head of 40,000 men, drove the Saxons from Bohemia, entered Prague on May 4, effected a junction with the elector of Bavaria at Eger on June 11, and thence advanced toward Nuremberg, where he found Gustavus intrenched. The hostile armies remained in sight of each other for three months, each endeavoring to conquer by famine and disease. At last Gustavus, having made an unsuccessful attempt to storm the position of the enemy, retired toward the upper Danube, and in November entered Saxony, where Wallenstein was spreading carnage and desolation. On the 5th he found himself face to face with the enemy at Lützen, with 12,000 foot and