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CHAPTER VI

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS

(1630-2)

IN the "proposition" which on May 30, 1629, Gustavus Adolphus addressed from Elbing to the Swedish Estates, and which first distinctly placed before them the plan of the great liberating expedition that has immortalised his name, he declared that to defend Sweden was to defend her faith. He won his last and greenest laurels as the champion of Protestantism, the advancement and maintenance of which had, from Gustavus Vasa onwards, been an unchanging principle of action in the Kings of Sweden. But, as the Elbing "proposition" itself indicates, it was the immediate question of the national safety which determined Gustavus Adolphus to call upon his hard-tried people for an unprecedented warlike effort. The response given by that people was, all things considered, not less heroic than the summons. For Sweden was a poor country, very heavily taxed; and its population, including that of Finland, numbered not more than a million and a half. The King was ready at the last moment to draw back from his enterprise if his conditions were granted; nor would he have embarked in it at all as the mere servant of a Protestant propaganda or as the swordbearer of any interests but those of his own land. He would not have done battle on German soil to suit the schemes of Richelieu, the wishes of England, or the interests of the United Provinces, or to redress the grievances of the German princes deprived of their territorial acquisitions by the Edict of Restitution. He believed that the maritime designs of the House of Habsburg, which had been already known to his father before him, aiming as they did at the control of the Sound and the mastery of the Baltic, would strangle the national life of the kingdom which by unflinching valour and provident governance he had made doubly his. And so he went forth to carry war into the Empire, not indeed unaware of the possibility that success might carry him beyond the achievement of his immediate end, or insensible, as his great counsellor Oxenstierna afterwards phrased it, of the fundamental importance of

1613-28] Retrospect of Gustavus Adolphus' political action 191

momenta temporum; but nevertheless intent upon a well-defined purpose from which no obstacle would cause him to swerve.

From this point of view it will be worth while to recapitulate in brief the successive steps in the historic process which ended in the landing of Gustavus Adolphus on the island of Usedom, at the mouth of the Peene, on June 26, 1630. Sweden first entered into the complications of Western politics when, a little more than a year after she had made peace with Denmark (January, 1613), she concluded a defensive alliance with the United Provinces, brought about by the vigilance of Oldenbarneveldt (April, 1614). Although in 1615 and the following year, when a decisive stage of his struggle with Poland seemed near, Gustavus Adolphus was necessarily desirous of an alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia, nor was it until November, 1620, that his marriage with the young Elector George William's sister, Maria Eleonora, was celebrated. Shortly before that date, at the time of the outbreak of the Great War, an intervention in the affairs of the Empire was first suggested to him. But neither the application of the Bohemian leaders for aid, nor the solicitations of King Frederick, brought to Stockholm in March, 1620, by Gustavus' brother-in-law, the Count Palatine John Casimir, came to anything. The Swedish King's preoccupation with Poland would have of itself sufficed to account for his refusal to take part in the abortive Danish attempt of 1620-1 to bring about a European Protestant alliance. But when, in 1623, this attempt revived with the sudden resumption of a policy of aggressive ambition by Spain under Philip IV and Olivares, Gustavus Adolphus was found ready to take part in the project-at first by a "diversion" into the Austrian lands, and then even by an attack upon the Palatinate. But he demanded the double guarantee of a large Dutch and English fleet, and the transfer to his keeping of the ports of Bremen and Wismar. James I, who preferred Danish leadership, juggled the Swede first out of the offer of the supreme command, and then out of a share in it. In return, Gustavus declined to join the Hague Concert, and while leaving Christian IV to fight out his Lower Saxon War, made himself master of Livonia (1625), and Prussia (1626), so that he controlled the whole line of the Baltic east of Pomerania. During this period the notion of a flank attack upon Poland's ally, Austria, was in the King's mind; but the force of events led him to adopt a more direct course.

The plan of maritime domination which in 1627-8 Wallenstein had begun to carry out on behalf of the House of Habsburg, and which aimed at the control of the Baltic from the Sound to the Haffs of Pomerania and Prussia, had been primarily directed against both the Scandinavian Powers, and they accordingly became allies (April, 1628), and jointly took part in the defence of Stralsund. But Gustavus, who was aware that his still unbroken power would have to bear the brunt of the struggle, fortified himself at the outset by a solemn engagement

192

Gustavus, Poland, and the German War

[1627-9

on the part of a committee of his Diet (December, 1627-January, 1628); and, in June, 1629, gave a pledge of the action on which he had resolved by his treaty with Stralsund. By the autumn he had 5000 troops in the city, and a foothold on German soil. The rescue of Stralsund was followed by negotiations with the other Hanse Towns, which contributed to their final rejection of the Habsburg maritime proposals, and the consequent collapse of the great design (September-October, 1628).

Sweden's defensive action-as from her point of view it may still fairly be called-against that design was without loss of time seized upon by the promoters of the Grand Protestant Alliance as a proof that she must speedily proceed to the offensive. It was at this time that Sir Thomas Roe, fresh from his successful efforts at Constantinople to delay the ratification of the Peace of Szön between the Emperor and the Porte, sought to convince both Frederick Henry of Orange and Gustavus himself as to the expediency of a combined war against the House of Habsburg, of which the Swedish King should be the head (1628-9). In December, 1628, Gustavus met his Riksråd, and, still insisting upon the dominium maris as the essential issue, obtained its assent to an anticipation of the Emperor's attack by carrying the war into the Empire. In March, by way of a preliminary measure, the island of Rügen (which Denmark was proposing to purchase from the Duke of Pomerania) was occupied by a division of the troops in Stralsund under Leslie, and gradually cleared of Imperialists.

While Gustavus Adolphus was thus revealing the design in which he was now fully prepared to engage, and at the same time offering moderate terms of peace to Poland, his proceedings were suddenly thwarted by a masterstroke on the part of his most persistent adversary. Wallenstein had from the first recognised where the chief obstacle to his and the House of Habsburg's designs was to be sought and found. In April, 1629, he dispatched Arnim with a force of 15,000 men to the Polish frontier; and Sigismund was now so strong, that, while making an abortive attempt to induce the Emperor and Wallenstein to abandon their northern policy, Gustavus had to take his departure for the seat of war. The intention was to isolate him at the very moment of his proposed interference; and herein also Wallenstein was successful. One of the reasons for the singularly easy terms granted to Christian IV at the Peace of Lübeck (June) was undoubtedly the wish once more to alienate the Danish from the Swedish King. At the same time an intolerable insult was offered to Gustavus Adolphus by excluding his ambassadors from the peace negotiations.

But the device, masterly though it was, proved only temporarily successful. After Sigismund's failure at Stuhm (June 17) to repulse the Swedes, he began to incline to peace; and soon Richelieu's agent Charnacé was on the spot to bring about a solution entirely in accordance with the Cardinal's policy; Roe, who had also found his way

1629-30]

Landing of Gustavus.

His army

193

to Prussia, co-operating. A six years' truce was concluded at Altmark (September 26, 1629), on a basis of mutual concession; but Gustavus Adolphus retained the port of Pillau, and not long afterwards (February, 1630) concluded a separate treaty with Danzig. At last his hands were free for the great German enterprise.

During his absence in Prussia, the Riksdag, in response to the royal "proposition" already mentioned, had voted the taxes, contributions and ships demanded; and on the King's return a final consultation was held at Upsala (October 27), at which, after a most elaborate discussion of pros and cons, all the royal councillors present declared individually for the offensive. War was now solemnly decreed. The Imperial design for the mastery of the Baltic, and implicitly of Sweden itself, was once more put in the forefront; nor can any reasonable doubt be thrown upon the truth of Oxenstierna's statement, made after his master's life had been sacrificed in the venture, that the King had regarded Pomerania and the Baltic coast as the outworks of Sweden, and had gone to war in order to secure them.

Danzig, proposed by
But the negotiations,

Even now he agreed to a conference at Christian IV in his new character of mediator. after dragging through the spring and summer of 1630, came to nothing; and Christian may have been right in maintaining that Gustavus had now no desire for peace on conditions which his opponents could be expected to grant. Yet, when at last, after final delays caused by the weather, he on June 26, 1630, anchored off the island of Usedom at the mouth of the Peene in Pomerania, and during the next two days disembarked his troops, he still had good cause for avoiding anything like rashness or haste in his movements. On his fleet, in addition to 3000 marines, were 13,000 soldiers, whose numbers were soon after his landing increased by accessions from Sweden, Livonia, and Stralsund to a marching force of some 40,000 men; while at home and in the Baltic lands in his rear he may have left behind over 30,000 more. Rather more than half of the soldiery were Swedish or Finnish by birth; among the foreign levies the Scots were specially notable, but the Baltic lands in general, and even Brandenburg and Poland, had contributed their share. They were all welded together by confidence in their commander, by a firm discipline, and, it cannot be doubted, by the influence of the religious observances with which that discipline was interfused. The infantry was, for the most part, armed with muskets of comparatively light weight and, in part at least, fired by flintlocks in lieu of the old cumbrous matchlocks; mounted foot-soldiers, known as dragoons, formed a complement of the cavalry, which was Gustavus' weakest arm. strongest was his artillery, for which light iron cannon were largely employed; the so-called "leather" guns fell into disuse early in the German War. Here, and throughout, extreme mobility was a leading principle of Gustavus' method of warfare, and proved a chief cause of its success.

C. M. H. IV.

13

His

194 Gustavus and the German Protestant Princes [1629-32

The cost of maintaining this army, which in 1630 led to a deficit of nearly a million of dollars in the Swedish budget, was a matter of anxious forethought; and as a matter of fact the war expenditure of 1630 was diminished by half in the following year, and that of 1631 in 1632. The chief anxiety of Gustavus at the time of his landing, and the main reason for the slowness of his initial advance, was his lack of allies, either outside the Empire or within it. In the negotiations which after the conclusion of the Polish truce Charnacé had carried on in Sweden (where in February, 1630, he had had audience of the King at Västerås), some hitch had occurred, possibly due to Richelieu's sudden action in Italy. Though anxious to keep up the war with Spain, the United Provinces, besides being dissatisfied by the burden of the Swedish tolls at Pillau, now added to that of the Danish at the Sound, were unwilling to take part in a German war except by granting secret subsidies and allowing the levy of troops. England, on the point of concluding peace with Spain, was quite out of the reckoning; while Christian IV was falling back into his old attitude of hostility towards his Swedish rival, and intent upon his own ambitious designs against Hamburg. Bethlen Gabor, whose ultimate co-operation had long been a constant factor in the calculations of Gustavus, and with whom active negotiations had been carried on in 1629, had died in November of that year.

But of more immediate importance was the question of alliances within the Empire, on which the progress of the Swedish arms could not but largely depend. Although already in 1629 Duke George of Lüneburg-Celle had entered into communication with Gustavus, and although early in 1630 Gustavus had sent his able secretary Philip Sattler to several of the Protestant Courts and cities, the question was obviously one of alliances, which would not be settled till the die had been cast. On July 9 the Swedish army crossed the Great Haff, and on the following day Duke Bogislav of Pomerania was obliged to admit a Swedish garrison into his capital, Stettin. His visitor then compelled him to conclude a treaty of alliance, by which his duchy and his troops were placed under Swedish control, and he paid a contribution of 200,000 dollars. Inasmuch as on Bogislav's death his duchy would pass to Brandenburg, it was stipulated that, until his successor should have accepted this treaty, or in the event of a disputed succession, Pomerania should be held in sequestration by Sweden.

In all the negotiations into which the Restitutor Germaniae (as Oxenstierna styled his master) now entered with the dispossessed Mecklenburg Dukes, with the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and with his Brandenburg brother-in-law, he showed himself resolved not only on the Pomeranian "satisfaction," but also on an "assecuration" or safeguard. This was to consist of a series of fortresses to be placed under his protection. But George William of Brandenburg, as has been seen, was now

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