Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/32

 tyrant. With this view he discovered himself to the peasants, who regarded him as one of those superior beings to whom the common herd of mankind are naturally inclined to submit. These savage boors he soon improved into hardy and warlike soldiers. He attacked Christian and the archbishop, beat them in several encounters, banished them both from Sweden, and, at last, was justly chosen by the states king of that country, of which he had been the deliverer.

Hardly was he established on the throne, when he undertook an enterprise still more difficult than his conquests. The real tyrants of the state were the bishops, who having engrossed into their own hands almost all the riches of Sweden, employed their ill-gotten wealth in oppressing the subjects, and in making war upon the king. This power was the more formidable, as, in the opinion of the ignorant populace, it was held to be sacred. Gustavus punished the Catholic religion for the crimes of its ministers; and, in less than two years, introduced Lutheranism into Sweden, rather by the arts of policy, than by the influence of authority. Having thus conquered the kingdom, as he was wont to say, from the Danes and the clergy, he reigned a happy and an absolute monarch to the age of seventy, and then died full of glory, leaving his family and religion in quiet possession of the throne.

One of his descendants was that Gustavus Adolphus, who is commonly called the great Gustavus. He conquered Ingria, Livonia, Bremen, Verden, Wismar, and Pomerania, not to mention above a hundred places in Germany, which, after his death,