THE THIRD DAY BEFORE

"One day more... another day, another destiny..."
The untimely death of Gustavus Adolphus on the bloody and foggy plains of Lützen in early November 1632 is something known to every Swede from eleven years upwards...
Esaias Tegnér's Romantic poem Axel is set during the reign of Charles XII, half a century later. In this excerpt, a Russian invasion in what is now Finland calls all able men of the shire to arms:

But, at the summons of alarm, 
Children and feeble veterans arm, 
With swords and halberts, which were new, 
When Gustaf Adolf's banner flew 
Victorious o'er the Baltic main, 
And triumphed upon Lützen's plain...

Those scarred veterans must have been beardless youths when 

the fateful confrontation took place. 

It must have marked the lives of those few survivors...

What were their thoughts before, during, and after the battle?

And upon the Russian invasion five decades later?