CHAPTER IV.
GUSTAVUS AND HIS KINGDOM.
We have now these two young men, Gustavus Adolphus and Axel Oxenstiern, his chancellor, sitting down to play the game of war against all the powers of northern Europe. The stake was the national existence of Sweden.
Buckle thinks that, given the time, the man may be predicated. But the times did not produce Jesus Christ. Nero was the natural product of that period. Gustavus Adolphus, like Luther, was a special soul sent of God to be the incarnation of spiritual force against the evil and awful indifference of a corrupt age.
First, he enlarged the place of his generous cousin, Duke John, who doubtless had foreseen the great period of war before them, and gladly had placed the responsibility in the abler hands of Gustavus.
Then the young king pursued the war with Denmark until the King of Denmark renounced his claim to the Swedish crown. It took him two years to secure this concession. During these two years he enlarged the rights of his people, stirred the patriotism of the peasantry, won the affections of the nobility of Sweden, and unified his people into a strong nationality. When Gustavus Vasa introduced the doctrines of the Reformation into Sweden the inhabitants were a rude people, but fifty years of instruction on the part of the clergy and independent thinking on the part of the people had greatly changed this state of affairs.
The revival of learning and the Reformation which caused an active study of theology and literature, had greatly pushed forward the intellectual standing of Germany. Lutheranism has always been a scholarly faith; it was born in universities, and never took on the severities or iconoclasms of Calvinism.
Sweden now kept all that was brilliant, attractive and energizing in the ideas of the Reformation, and gave to the Lutheran faith a new impetus, so that in the time of Gustavus Adolphus the aristocracy of Sweden were among the most cultivated people of all Europe.
As in Scotland the Reformation changed the very nature of the entire nation, so now it did the same for Sweden, with this difference, that the Scots followed the doctrines of Calvin, which stripped religion of its æstheticism and made it severe and to some degree forbidding, while the Lutheranism of the Swedes beautified their lives, stirred their æsthetic taste and improved their intellects, so that from that day to this Sweden has been regarded as a scholarly country, and has produced its fair share of literary and scientific men and women, beside many great inventors, and artists of world-wide renown.
The personality of Gustavus had much to do with his success. He had a fine physique. In his youth he was of slender figure, pale, fair complexioned, long-shaped face, fair hair, with a touch of red in it, and a tawny, pointed beard. Every inch of his fine, tall body was trained by the judicious use of athletics and out-door exercise. He radiated health, which of itself made him magnetic.
His tinge of red showed the impetuosity of his nature, which often had to be restrained by the great Chancellor Oxenstiern. "If my heat did not put a little life into your coldness we should all freeze up," said the king on one occasion. The chancellor replied, "If my coldness did not assuage your majesty's heat, we should all burn up," whereat the king laughed and acknowledged that his temper was rather quick and his patience less than he would like.
No sketch of the great king and of his success would be complete without understanding his two chief advisers. Queen Elizabeth once heard that a courtier had said, "It is not the queen who is great, but her counsellors." The queen replied, "Well, who made them counsellors?" Gustavus had the quality of appreciating greatness in others, of supplementing his own talents with theirs, and of not being jealous.
Axel Oxenstiern was born at Fano, in Upland, June 16th, 1583. His family traced their lineage back to the thirteenth century, and had intermarried with both the Danish and Swedish royal families. His father died in 1597, and he was sent by his judicious mother to a German university. This gave him Swedish and German as colloquial tongues, and he became so proficient in Latin that he could use it equally well with either.
Latin had for many centuries been the language of the learned, in which people of different lands could converse intelligibly. The people of Europe needed no Esperanto while they were proficient in Latin.
Oxenstiern studied theology as thoroughly as if he expected to enter the ministry. Religion was the absorbing thought of good people during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was recalled to Sweden by Charles IX., who recognized his great ability, and sent him on several diplomatic missions. At the age of twenty-six he was made house guardian of the royal children, and the head of the regency, which, in case of the king's death, might cause him to be called to govern the realm during the minority of the heir-apparent.
Among the first acts of the young king was to appoint Oxenstiern chancellor. From this time during the entire life of the king, this great man became one of the chief factors in ruling Sweden. He was a true friend, never failing to restrain or reprove the impetuous, strong-minded, strong-natured boy-king. Oxenstiern was a man of action, and was as little given to "lying around among the shavings" as Gustavus himself.
But the king had another counsellor of a totally different type, and that was John Skytte, a fine scholar and a great traveler, who had acted first as the tutor of Gustavus; and later became a counsellor. The king made him a senator, and in 1629 made him governor-general of Livonia.
It is very amusing to read some of the letters which passed between the governor and his king at this time. The governor apologizes for certain things not being accomplished, Gustavus calls him a man of theories, and declares, "I expect results and not explanations."
Returning now to the direct history of Gustavus Adolphus, in July, 1621, Sigismund having denied even the title of king to Gustavus, and having sent strenuous threats of punishment to the Elector of Brandenburg for permitting his sister to marry him, Gustavus sailed from Elfsnabb Harbor with one hundred and fifty sail, manned by fourteen thousand soldiers, for the purpose of conquering Livonia. At Pernau he was joined by General de la Gardia with five thousand Finns.
In August, Riga was surrounded, and on September 15th, it surrendered to the Swedish forces. In October, Mittau, the capital of Courtland, was entered, and the season being too far advanced, the army went into winter quarters. After an eight years' bloody campaign Gustavus, with his brave army and his experienced generals, conquered Sigismund, the unrelenting enemy of the Swedish Vasas.
The war between the two branches of the house of Vasa extends from 1600 to 1660. Gustavus felt that in his war with Poland, from 1621 to 1629, he was not fighting for his crown alone, but that he was facing the great struggle of Protestantism against the Catholic reaction. This war really should be regarded as part of the Thirty Years' War.
Queen Eleanor, as the wife of Gustavus was now called, suffered much during this war, for she felt that Sigismund's attitude to the Elector of Brandenburg for permitting her marriage to her greatly-beloved husband had much to do with the awful sorrows of the time. The queen went several times to see the king while he was absent, always carrying with her money, food and reinforcements. On one occasion she came suddenly upon him, clasping him in her arms, exclaiming: "Now, Gustavus the Great, thou art my prisoner."
Gustavus took pains to assure her that the war was now far beyond the question of their marriage, or even his title to the throne. He made plain to her that Sigismund, a Roman Catholic prince, who had the Pope for master, the Hapsburgs for allies, the Jesuits for advisers, should not and could not be permitted, even though it cost much in blood and money, to set up any claim to the throne of a Lutheran country.
In our own land it was the small Indian wars which trained our ancestors to be the nation of warriors who successfully fought England in the Revolution. So Gustavus Adolphus, his great generals and his brave troops, had training in small wars for that part of the Thirty Years' War which was to make him the most prominent figure of his century.
Besides the wars with Denmark and with Poland, he also had a short campaign (in which he took several Prussian towns) with Brandenburg, the vassal and ally of Poland, although, like Sweden, a Lutheran country, so he had really the practical experience of three wars before entering that which gives him and his country their place in history.
The life of Gustavus was now even more precious to his subjects than at his coronation, because his brother, Duke Charles Philip, had died childless, January 25th, 1622.
He was a youth of great promise and of lovely spirit. On one occasion, when he was ill, he wrote home: "My brother is so attentive and takes so much pains to entertain me that I almost forget my 'illness.'" The death of this prince was a severe stroke to the Dowager Queen Christina, who had always loved him more than she had loved her gifted elder son.