He is often regarded as one of the greatest military commanders in modern history, with use of an early form of combined arms. His most notable military victory was the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631. With his resources, logistics, and support, Gustavus Adolphus was positioned to become a major European leader, but he was killed a year later at the Battle of Lützen. He was assisted in his efforts by Count Axel Oxenstierna, the Lord High Chancellor of Sweden, who also acted as regent after his death.
Gustavus Adolphus' politics also show progressive tendencies: for example, in 1631, in the conquered territory of Estonia he forced the local nobility into granting more individual rights to the commoners. He also encouraged education, opening a school in Tallinn in 1631, today known as Gustav Adolf Grammar School (Estonian: Gustav Adolfi Gümnaasium). On 30 June 1632, Gustavus Adolphus signed the decree for the foundation of Academia Dorpatensis in Estonia, today known as the University of Tartu.
Gustavus Adolphus inherited three wars from his father when he ascended the throne: against Denmark–Norway, which had attacked Sweden earlier in 1611; against Russia, due to Sweden having tried to take advantage of the Russian Time of Troubles; and against Poland-Lithuania, due to King Charles's having deposed King Sigismund III, his nephew, as King of Sweden.
In March 1632, Gustavus Adolphus invaded Bavaria, an ally of the Emperor. He forced the withdrawal of his Catholic opponents at the Battle of Rain, marking the high point of the campaign. In the summer of that year, he sought a political solution that would preserve the existing structure of states in Germany, while guaranteeing the security of its Protestants. But achieving these objectives depended on his continued success on the battlefield.
Gustavus Adolphus was born in Stockholm on 9 December 1594, eldest son of Duke Charles of the House of Vasa and his second wife, Christina of Holstein-Gottorp. At the time, his cousin Sigismund was both King of Sweden and Poland. The Protestant Duke Charles forced the Catholic Sigismund to abandon the throne of Sweden in 1599, part of the preliminary religious strife before the Thirty Years' War, and reigned as regent before taking the throne as Charles IX of Sweden in 1604. Crown Prince Gustav Adolph had Gagnef-Floda in Dalecarlia as a duchy from 1610. Upon his father's death in October 1611, a sixteen-year-old Gustavus inherited the throne, being declared of age and able to reign himself at seventeen as of 16 December. He also inherited an ongoing succession of occasionally belligerent dynastic disputes with his Polish cousin, Sigismund III, who persisted in his effort to regain the Swedish throne. He also briefly assumed the title of tsar of Russia in the beginning of his reign.
In a round of this dynastic dispute, Gustavus Adolphus invaded Livonia when he was 31, beginning the Polish–Swedish War (1626–1629). In the course of it he won a victory at Wallhof, fought at Gniew, Dirschau, and suffered a defeat at Trzciana. His reign became known from his actions a few years later when, in June 1630, he landed in Germany, marking the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War. Gustavus Adolphus intervened on the anti-Imperial side, which at the time was losing to the Holy Roman Empire and its Catholic allies; the Swedish forces would quickly reverse that situation.
Gustavus Adolphus was married to Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg,[a] the daughter of John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, and chose the Prussian city of Elbing as the base for his operations in Germany. He died in the Battle of Lützen in 1632. His death was a great loss to the Lutheran side, resulting in large parts of Germany and other countries, which had been conquered for Lutheranism, to be reconquered for Catholicism (via the Counter-Reformation). His involvement in the Thirty Years' War gave rise to the nickname "the Lion from the North".
Political philosophy
Despite significant hardships for the common people, the period of Swedish rule over Estonia has been idealized in local folklore as the "good old Swedish times", which has been attributed to comparisons with the harder times that followed under the Russian rule.
Military commander
The war against Denmark–Norway (Kalmar War), during which Gustavus fought in minor military actions, — the victorious for Sweden Storming of Kristianopel and the unsuccessful Battle of Vittsjö, — was concluded in 1613 with a peace that did not cost Sweden any territory except for Älvsborg Castle, which Sweden had to pay to get back, but it was forced to pay a heavy indemnity to Denmark–Norway (Treaty of Knäred). During this war, Gustavus Adolphus let his soldiers plunder towns and villages, and as he met little resistance from Danish forces in Scania, they pillaged and devastated twenty-four Scanian parishes. His memory in Scania has been negative because of that fear. The largest destroyed settlement was the Town Væ, which two years later was replaced by Danish–Norwegian King Christian IV as the nearby Christiansted (after the Swedification process, spelled Kristianstad), the last Scanian town to be founded by a Danish king.
The war against Russia (Ingrian War) marked Gustavus' involvement in the successful Siege of Gdov and the failed Siege of Pskov and ended in 1617 with the Treaty of Stolbovo, which excluded Russia from the Baltic Sea. The final inherited war, the war against Poland, ended in 1629 with the Truce of Altmark, which transferred the large province of Livonia to Sweden and freed the Swedish forces for the subsequent intervention in the Thirty Years' War in Germany, where Swedish forces had already established a bridgehead in 1628.
The electorate of Brandenburg was especially torn apart by a quarrel between the Protestant and Catholic parties. The Brandenburg minister and diplomat baron Samuel von Winterfeld [de] influenced Gustavus Adolphus to support and protect the Protestant side in Germany. When Gustavus Adolphus began his push into northern Germany in June–July 1630, he had just 4,000 troops. He was soon able to consolidate the Protestant position in the north, however, using reinforcements from Sweden and money supplied by France at the Treaty of Bärwalde.
After Swedish plundering in Brandenburg (1631) endangered the system of retrieving war contributions from occupied territories, "marauding and plundering" by Swedish soldiers was prohibited. Meanwhile, a Catholic army under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly was laying waste to Saxony. Gustavus Adolphus met Tilly's army and won a decisive victory at the First Battle of Breitenfeld in September 1631. He then marched across Germany, establishing his winter quarters near the Rhine, making plans for the invasion of the rest of the Holy Roman Empire.
Some other military actions in the Thirty Years' War with Gustavus at the head were: the victorious battles of Frankfurt an der Oder and Werben, the botched Siege of Nuremberg, the Battle of Fürth, and the unfavourable Battle of the Alte Veste.
Gustavus Adolphus is reported to have entered battle without wearing any armor, proclaiming, "The Lord God is my protector!" However, it is more likely that he simply wore a padded cuirass rather than going into battle wearing no battle protection whatsoever. In 1627, near Dirschau in Prussia, a Polish soldier shot him in the muscles above his shoulders. He survived, but the doctors could not remove the bullet, so from that point on, he could not wear iron armor and two fingers of his right hand were paralyzed. The plate cuirass normally worn by important officers at that time was replaced by a buff coat made of moose hide, which would have serious consequences later.
Death and aftermath
On 6 November 1632, Gustavus encountered the Imperial Army under Albrecht von Wallenstein at Lützen, in what would prove to be one of the most significant battles of the Thirty Years' War. Gustavus was killed when, at a crucial point in the battle, he became separated from his troops while leading a cavalry charge on his wing. Lützen was a victory for the Protestants, but cost them their leader, which caused their campaign to lose direction and finally suffer a crushing defeat at Nördlingen.
Towards 1:00 pm, in the thick mix of gun smoke and fog covering the field, the king was separated from his fellow riders and suffered multiple shots. A bullet crushed his left arm below the elbow. Almost simultaneously his horse suffered a shot to the neck that made it hard to control. In the mix of fog and smoke from the burning town of Lützen the king rode astray behind enemy lines. There he sustained yet another shot in the back, was stabbed and fell from his horse.
Lying on the ground, he received a final, fatal shot to the temple. His fate remained unknown for some time. However, when the gunnery paused and the smoke cleared, his horse was spotted between the two lines, Gustavus Adolphus himself not on it and nowhere to be seen. His disappearance stopped the initiative of the hitherto successful Swedish right wing, while a search was conducted. His partly stripped body was found an hour or two later, and evacuated from the field in a Swedish artillery wagon.
As late as the 19th century several stories were retold about Gustav Adolphus's death. In most of them the assassin was named as Prince Francis Albert of Saxe-Lauenburg, who was next to the king on the occasion and was thought to be acting on behalf of the enemy. When King Charles XII of Sweden was shown purported evidence in 1707 he dismissed the theory out of doubt that "any prince could be so ungrateful".
In February 1633, the Riksdag of the Estates gave him the title "Gustavus Adolphus the Great", or Gustav Adolf den Store in Swedish, the only Swedish monarch to be so honoured.
As those Vasa princes who descended from deposed monarchs were excluded from the throne and Gustavus Adolphus's younger brother had died ten years before, his young daughter Christina became his successor, with Maria Eleonora and other ministers governing on her behalf. He left one other known child, his illegitimate son Gustav, Count of Vasaborg.
Legacy
Gustavus Adolphus is widely commemorated by Protestants in Europe as the main defender of their cause during the Thirty Years' War, with multiple churches, foundations and other undertakings named after him. He became a symbol of Swedish pride, and his name is attached to city squares in major Swedish cities like Stockholm, Gothenburg and Helsingborg. Gustavus Adolphus Day is celebrated in Sweden and Finland each year on 6 November, the day the king died at Lützen. One of the traditions on this day is the Gustavus Adolphus pastry. In Finland, the day is also celebrated as "Swedish heritage day". Gustavus Adolphus College, a Lutheran college in St. Peter, Minnesota, is also named for him.
The Gustav-Adolf-Werk (GAW) of the Evangelical Church in Germany, founded on the bicentennial celebration of the Battle of Lützen, has as its object the aid of other churches and commemorates Gustavus' legacy. It is responsible for taking care of the Diaspora work of the EKD and has separate branches internationally. The organization in Austria is called the Gustav-Adolf-Verein. The project of forming such a society was first broached in connection with the bicentennial celebration of the Battle of Lützen on 6 November 1832.
A proposal to collect funds for a monument to Gustavus Adolphus was agreed to, and it was suggested by Superintendent Grossmann that the best memorial to Gustavus Adolphus would be the formation of a union for propagating his ideas. It quickly gained popularity in Germany. The lack of political correctness received some criticism; however, the organization used GAW as its brand in the meanwhile. The Swedish royal family visited the GAW headquarters in Leipzig on the 400th birthday of Gustavus Adolphus, in 1994.
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