CHAPTER I: THE USURPER'S HEIR

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS II (1594-1632)

ELECTED KING OF SWEDEN, OF THE GOTHS AND VANDALS

Gustavus Adolphus II. Elected King of Sweden, of the Goths and Vandals

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"Even such is Time, which takes in Trust,
Our Youth, our Joy, our All we Have,
And pays us but with Earth and Dust,
Who in the Dark and Silent Grave,
Where we have wandered all our Ways,
Shuts up the story of our Days
But from this Earth, this Grave, this Dust,
My God will raise me up, I trust."
—Walter Raleigh.

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"Ille faciet..."
—King Charles IX, of Gustavus Adolphus II.

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"Virtue alone outlasts the Pyramids
Her monuments remain, when Egypt's fall."
—Edward Young.

CHAPTER I

THE USURPER'S HEIR

He was poor and his country was obscure, far north, bleak, barren and forgotten; less than a century of civilization had passed over these rude people when he was born in the huge palace of Nyköpingshus, not far from Stockholm, which his ancestors, in preference to the ancient, royal Uppsala of the Vikings, had made the capital of Sweden.

To these ancestors, the great House of Vasa, this country, so long ignored by Europe, owed everything; under the guidance of Gustavus I, the Swedes had warmly embraced the tenets of the Reformation; following these, commerce, learning, the arts had flourished on the shores of the Baltic; the culture of Sweden, under the Vasa Kings, first equalled and then surpassed any culture of the north; the world began to hear of Sweden; these people, of Viking descent, cold, hardy, brave and sane, seemed the fitting exponents of the era of common sense inaugurated by Martin Luther.

Roman Catholicism had never been adapted either to the character, the traditions or the needs of the north, and when it was swept away from these stern lands it was swept away for ever; when, however, Gustavus Adolphus II was born (on the 9th of December, 1594) the rest of Europe was possessed by the Counter-Reformation, or Catholic Reaction; it must have seemed to many then that if Protestantism survived at all, it would only survive in those far north countries where it had taken so deep a root; for the dominating power in Europe was the House of Habsburg, which, in the person of Charles V, had vowed to defend the ancient Faith against all encroachment of heresy, and had well kept the promise pledged at the Diet of Worms.

Philip II, son of Charles V, still ruled Spain, the New World, and had recently annexed Portugal and her colonies; the rebellious Northern Netherlands had scarcely struggled into freedom; Henry of Navarre had sacrificed the Reformed Faith for the crown of France, the Emperor Ferdinand I was also a Habsburg and his policy marched with that of Spain. Even in these dark fastnesses of the North the Reformation had been threatened and with it the strong central authority vested by Gustavus I in the family of Vasa; this King had sworn as passionately to defend the new Faith as Charles V had sworn to destroy it, and had made Protestantism the same as Nationalism.

Eric XIV and John III, sons of the first Vasa, had followed him as Kings of Sweden; their successor, Sigismund I, son of John, elected King of Poland (1587) on the extinction of the male House of Jagellon (whose heiress was his wife) and the death of István Báthory, was a Roman Catholic and one into whom had been instilled by Jesuit preceptors the idea that his duty was to regain Sweden for the Pope; he had had, however, to swear to maintain the Confession of Augsburg at his coronation and was forced to exercise his own faith in secret; while he was in his more congenial Kingdom of Poland, his uncle, Charles, Duke of Sudermania, youngest son of Gustavus I, ruled in his name; he was a Protestant, popular, able, and playing for the crown.

He named his son, born in 1594, Gustavus, after his father, and Adolphus, after the father of his second wife, Christina of Schleswig-Holstein, granddaughter of that Philip of Hesse who had been the friend and protector of Luther.

The boy was therefore brought up, both by a pious, honest and practical father, and a pious, learned and practical mother, in all the ideals, aspirations and tenets of the Reformation; he had a younger brother, Charles Philip, a sister, Mary Elizabeth, and a step-sister, Catherine, child of his father's first marriage with a daughter of the Elector Palatine.

When Gustavus was five years old (1599) his father was proclaimed King of Sweden as Charles DC, the elder branch of the Vasa family, in the person of Sigismund, King of Poland, being deposed on the ground of his Catholicism and his obvious preference for his larger kingdom; owing to the claims of an elder half-brother of Sigismund, Charles did not call himself King till 1604, when this pretender, Duke John, resigned his claims, and was not crowned till 1607.

His reign was spent in a struggle with his nephew and the Poles; in strengthening the Protestantism founded by his father, and in an almost passionate attention to the education of his sons, in particular that of his heir, Gustavus.

Charles was harsh and fanatical, dry and grim, he had to the full the usual faults of the early Protestants, he was also the least well educated of the sons of Gustavus I and not naturally brilliantly gifted, but he was patriotic, level headed, warmly attached to his House and faith, and passionately desirous of the success of his country and his son.

The latter was such as to delight the heart of any man, of any King; in Gustavus Adolphus a noble race had culminated in what seemed a piece of perfection; the mingled Swedish and German blood had produced a pure Viking type, the proper symbol and ideal of the North.

The boy was precocious in mind, superb in body, of a milk-white fairness, with large bright blue eyes, features grand and mild, hair, like his grandfather's locks, that seemed of golden silk, early brushed into the favoured military tuft.

The anxious King and States had given him a carefully selected tutor, the learned John Skytte, who educated him on the humanistic principles of the scholars of the Reformation; he was taught first the Bible, second, the classics, then mathematics and the science of war; in this last there was a soldier, the Count de la Gardie, of French origin, to instruct the young Prince.

Gustavus responded eagerly to these lessons; he learnt everything with ease; his proficiency in languages was such that later his correspondence was to be polyglot, a sentence in this tongue or that as best expressed his quick thought, the only European speech unknown to him being English. Latin, the language of the cultured, became to him as a mother tongue; he also early mastered Greek; he was deeply interested in history, in theology, in music, and, above all, in warfare.

Educated entirely by men, by earnest and single-minded scholars and upright and cultured aristocrats, the boy received the teaching best suited to his nature, for he was born simple, honourable, passionate, lofty and gentle, with a temper warm and sweet, abilities that amounted to genius, a commanding and powerful intellect.

There was little luxury, even in the palaces of Sweden; the culture so industriously fostered by Gustavus I had taken no soft nor effeminate forms; the learned and accomplished nobility lived plainly and Gustavus was brought up to despise ease and pleasure, indeed, scarcely to know what these words meant, and to live a stern, vigorous life in which the full powers of mind and body were equally exercised.

He absorbed all the accomplishments of chivalry without any effort, and with equal facility the rarer arts of diplomacy; his father, practical in all things, took him early from the schoolroom.

At thirteen he was receiving foreign envoys, at fifteen he was allowed to administer his own Duchy of Sudermania, and to address the States from his father's throne. He cast a lustre on all he undertook and the most extravagant hopes were formed as to his future; he became the delight and the support of his bleak little country whose political position was so difficult and whose faith was so assailed; it was early predicted that this brilliant son of a remarkable family would become one of the great men of all time and the Swedes fondly hoped to find in him a more resplendent hero even than Gustavus Vasa himself.

For Gustavus Adolphus possessed what excellent and useful men have not always possessed, what has, indeed, too often been the gloss on worthlessness, the attribute of the scoundrel or the coward—great natural charm; the sweetness and strength of his personality, his ingenuous gaiety and simple enthusiasm for honour and nobility, his tenderness and his lively animation, fascinated and dazzled all who approached him; his one fault was that most easily condoned; he was too fiery, too impetuous, in all directions his courage ran to daring extremes; he was impatient of prudence, and no one greatly censured so generous a failing in a young Prince.

War came to be the main occupation of his thoughts, for his country was at war on all sides, with Denmark, which held the two main fortresses of the Swedes, Kalmar and Älvsborg, with Russia, with Poland, clutching at the shores of the Baltic, with even more than this, with the whole power of the Habsburgs which always menaced the heretic with the entire force of Spain and the Empire.

It was as well that the young Swedish Prince sat up late at night reading Xenophon and listening to the accounts of the deeds of Prince Maurice in the Netherlands, brought home by the mercenary officers who had served under the illustrious Nassau, it was as well that he had no taste for pleasure or indolence, but burned with the Viking ardour for adventure and battle, conquest and colonization.

In 1611 he was knighted and allowed to take part in the fighting with the Danes, redoubtable adversaries of the same stuff as himself, at Kalmar.

The maiden knight took the town of Christianopel and the island of Oland, and the rich promise of his childhood seemed redeemed by the first action of his youth; he had need now of all his genius and all his courage, for in the October of this year, 1611, he was called back to the death-bed of his father.

"Ille faciet," said the dying King proudly looking at his splendid son, who was indeed as grand a figure as was ever crowned by a nation's hopes.

His beauty had grown with his intelligence, and at seventeen years of age he was of magnificent height and just, slender proportions, the golden hair cropped into waves on the top of his head, tinged with tawny red, his long face still of a smooth and healthy pallor, his blue eyes large and vivid behind the thick golden lashes; the Dutch Ambassador, coming to see him soon after his accession, found him standing before his throne dressed in black silk and black fur, near a marble table with silver feet on which lay the regalia of Sweden, and was impressed by his comeliness, intelligence and courtesy.

The crown of Sweden did not undisputably belong to Gustavus; Sigismund of Poland, his cousin, the deposed King, had not abated his claims, even though he was not able to enforce them, and behind these claims were the warm wishes, if not the active aid, of all the Roman Catholic potentates, headed by the Habsburgs; there was also John, another cousin and brother of Sigismund, with prior rights, but he was married to the second daughter of Charles IX and gave way to Gustavus, who was declared of age by the Diet of Nyköping (1611) and proclaimed by the title used by his father, "Elected King and Hereditary Prince of the Swedes, Goths and Vandals."

The majority of the Kings of Sweden had been fixed at twenty-four, but the country was in no state for a regency and eager to trust the brilliant youth from whom so much was hoped; the Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, was the King's chief adviser and his closest friend; he was himself only twenty-eight years old, but, like his master, possessed genius.

The task between these two men was formidable enough; they had to protect a nation and a faith, both struggling for existence.

Denmark, then at the height of her fame, was the nearest foe; she had, under an excuse of a dispute about the title "King of the Lapps" assumed by the Swedish Kings, but really to maintain her mastery of the Sound, seized the keys of Sweden, the fortresses of Elfsborg and Kalmar; Christian IV, most powerful of Danish Kings and brother-in-law of James I of England, haughtily quartered the three crowns of Sweden and dared the descendant of Gustavus Vasa to wrench them from his shield.

The young King took up the challenge at once; the first winter of his reign was passed in a cruel frontier war on the ice where Gustavus displayed dazzling bravery; once, when crossing the frozen lake of Widsjö, his horse crashed into the water and the King was only plucked from death by the prompt courage of a soldier who snatched him from the ice hole.

This fierce campaign did not regain the coveted forts, but Denmark was in a disturbed internal state and her nobility brought pressure on the fierce Christian to conclude peace.

The King of Great Britain acted as mediator, and Gustavus concluded his first treaty, January 1613, at Knarod.

It was not, from his point of view, brilliant, yet not altogether unsatisfactory.

Denmark was to keep the three crowns on her coat of arms, but she was to restore Kalmar and Elfsborg, this latter for a sum of a million riksdalers.

Gustavus now went home to raise the money, sending all his own silver plate to the mint to assist the country in redeeming this important port.

The entire sum was cheerfully raised in two years, and the keys of Sweden were again in the hands of the Swedish King.

Gustavus was now forced to look towards Russia, where Sigismund of Poland and Charles IX had so long supported rival candidates for the throne of Moscow and struggled so bitterly for the province of Livonia.

Charles Philip, the younger brother of Gustavus, had been suggested as a future Tsar, but the young King had refused this complication, and the first of the Romanoffs, Michael, became the leader of the National party in Russia whose main object was to get back the Baltic provinces; the basis of all these Northern wars was the jealous struggle for the limited seaboard and the scanty ports.

The Netherlands had become a competitor on this field, having taken the commercial place of the old Hansa League, and though they played a cautious and waiting game they were to be reckoned with; at present they leaned towards Sweden, but rather hoped for a general embroilment of the Northern Powers in which they might snatch their own advantage.

Gustavus hurled himself against Russia as he had hurled himself against Denmark, and was everywhere victorious.

The Peace of Stolbova (1617) put an end to this contest.

It was favourable to Sweden; Russia conceded much more than she need have conceded had she known her strength, including the provinces of Ingria and Carelia, frowning with fortresses, the keys of Finland and Livonia.

Gustavus made a triumphant return to Stockholm and enthusiastically addressed the States.

"Now," he declared, "Russia cannot launch a boat on the Baltic without our consent—two huge lakes, thirty miles of fortresses and morasses are between us. I hope, in God's name, they will find that frontier too wide to jump."

In war and politics he had been alike successful; at twenty-three he was a tried soldier, a competent commander, an able statesman; the lustre of his personal qualities was everywhere renowned; Europe began to notice with admiration Sweden and Sweden's King.

He had done more for his country than merely to regain fortresses and safeguard frontiers, advantages that the fortunes of war might at any moment snatch away; he had roused a sturdy patriotism in the brave, wilful peasantry, in the cultured, learned aristocracy that resulted in an enthusiastic resolve to sacrifice everything in the national cause.

Such a spirit, of such inestimable value to a nation, can only be evoked by greatness in a leader; inspired by a hero, a nation becomes invincible, even when faced by incredible odds; the Netherlands had lately proved as much and were to do so again in 1672.

Sweden in 1617, poor, exhausted, hemmed in, yet rose full of confidence and hope to stand solid behind her splendid young King.

The sincere piety of Gustavus, his lofty high-mindedness, his serene courage, his extraordinary gifts v were with every year more apparent, and the fascination of his personality increased as he achieved his full manhood.

Like most great spirits absorbed in great designs he had found little time or wish for pleasure or amusements; his only diversions were manly exercises and the playing of the flute, for he was most susceptible to the enchantment of music.

Not all the distractions of war and politics could, however, prevent the noble and passionate youth from falling in love.

The object of this first, pure and deep attachment was a lady named the Countess Ebba Brahe whom Gustavus had met at his mother's Court.

The House of Brahe was not greatly inferior to that of Vasa, the lady was lovely, accomplished, high minded; Gustavus had no hesitation in choosing her as his Queen.

There was a simplicity and a beauty about this resolve in keeping with the King's character; it would have given an added brightness to his reign had he married this Swedish woman whom he loved, and there seems no good reason why he should not have done so.

But his mother was firm in the usual belief that a king must make foreign alliances by his marriage, and threw the weight of her strong character against Ebba Brahe.

For some while, however, without effect; Gustavus was not a man to be influenced by any one, and his ardent and romantic love had taken a deep hold on him; in his tent amid the ice and snows, the morasses or wild forests, he wrote sonnets and a sheaf of glowing letters still preserved; when he returned to his rude palace in Stockholm his golden head bent near to hers as they played duets or sang the old songs of chivalry; from the midst of one of his bitterest campaigns he plucked a small blue flower from a stream "which the Germans call 'forget-me-not,'" he wrote, and enclosed it in a letter to Ebba Brahe.

No woman was likely to forget him, a King, a genius, a handsome and accomplished knight, one of the most conspicuous figures in Europe, and he himself was deep and constant, yet this tender love came to nothing.

Gustavus promised his mother not to see Ebba for three years; we do not know which of them tired, or, indeed, if either tired, or what pressure was brought to bear on them, but at the end of that period Ebba Brahe married James de la Gardie, son of the King's old military tutor, and the romance was over.

Nothing had been gained and much perhaps lost by this forcing apart of the lovers; the affair is obscure and we cannot tell how far Gustavus consulted his own ambition, how far he voluntarily resigned the lady to his friend.

It is more likely that the Queen Mother wrought on the unfortunate maiden, by every means in her power, to give up her royal suitor, and that Gustavus himself would have put the marriage through.

Soon after this rupture with his first love, his only son was born to the young King; the mother was a Dutch lady who was only for a short time connected with Gustavus; he perhaps turned to her in the reaction of his desertion by Ebba; the boy, Gustaf Gustafson, grew to be an able warrior; how much would not the great King have given to have had him his heir, in those later years when he knew that he must leave his kingdom to a little girl!

Immediately after the Peace of Stolbova, Sigismund marched troops into Swedish Livonia in pursuit of his cousin's crown; he was heartened by a little gold from Madrid and a great many priests from Vienna.

Gustavus hurried to meet him, and after two years of indecisive warfare signed an armistice in 1618.

While this Polish war lasted he had been politically active; the Barneveldt party in the Netherlands were favourable to Sweden, and were able, before the fall of their chief, to persuade the powerful Elector of Brandenburg to give his daughter to Gustavus, who negotiated a Dutch-Swedish alliance with the purpose of putting a check on Denmark; one project was the cutting of a canal from the Oder to the Elbe: a sound commercial proposition to avoid the Danish tolls on the Sound, and one carried out afterwards by the Great Elector of Brandenburg.

These useful schemes were cut short by the fall of Barneveldt (1619)his opponent, Maurice of Orange, the early hero of Gustavus, was not so friendly to Sweden and the proposed alliance came to nothing.

The marriage project nearly came to nothing also; Gustavus himself suggested that his proposed bride should be given to Prince Charles of England and the Elector was averse to the match.

Gustavus was, however, anxious to form as many links as possible with the German Protestants; the affair with Ebba Brahe was over, and with it, perhaps, his dreams of romantic love; he was, at twenty-five, wholly absorbed in public affairs and the high responsibilities of his position.

He also retained an ingenuous fondness for adventure and visited Berlin in disguise, as Charles Stewart visited Madrid in disguise, to see for himself the suggested wife.

Maria Eleanora was neither very beautiful nor very sensible; in after years she was reported almost a fool and her conduct was then certainly shallow and frivolous, but in her youth she was probably pretty and gentle, pleasing enough in her eager desire to please the magnificent knight who came wooing her in secret; Gustavus, one may assume, had not fixed his expectations of the charms of a political bride too high; at least he was satisfied enough to return in 1620 to try to obtain in person the consent of the mother and brother of Maria Eleanora.

Gustavus this time called himself Captain Gars (G. A. Rex Sueciae), one of those conceits that always pleased the romantic soldier, and used all his personal charm to persuade the Brandenburgs to give him his bride; there seems no great reason either for his eagerness or their reluctance; the indolent, dull George William of Brandenburg was not such a useful ally after all, and, on the other hand, the insignificant little German Princess could hardly have hoped for a finer marriage portion than the crown of Sweden.

The importance of the marriage seems to have been exaggerated on both sides, Gustavus hoping for a stronger hold in Germany than he was likely to get through such a passive brother-in-law, and George William fearing greater penalties from his overlord, Sigismund of Poland (Prussia was then a Polish fief), than were likely to be exacted.

Captain Gars at length overbore all opposition and returned home by way of the Palatinate and the rich, noble lands of the Rhine.

The Elector Frederic, son-in-law of James I of Great Britain, had just left his rose-red castle on the banks of the Neckar to assume his futile crown at Prague, driving out the grim Ferdinand of Styria who was afterwards to take such a stern revenge.

This Frederic, now calling himself King of Bohemia, possessed most of the qualifications of the great leader of Protestantism then expected by all, hoped for by some, dreaded by others; and Gustavus as he passed through Heidelberg may have pondered on this man, to whom scope and opportunity had been given to consolidate Protestantism, a task that even then must have been to the taste of Captain Gars, who could scarcely have known what was so soon to be apparent to all the world, that the Elector Palatine could never accomplish anything, however rich his chance, because he was weak, foolish and fearful.

Captain Gars in his elk-skin coat and his fine fresh linen, so grand and noble-looking in his golden fairness that the passers-by turned to stare at him, rode slowly by day along the fertile banks of the Rhine, musing on the future of this opulent land, so different from his own bleak, barren and beloved patrimony, and at night sat in his inn chamber softly playing the flute to religious pieces of his own composition.

With every hour of musing, with every breathed prayer the seriousness of his task increased to the young King's mind; he began to think of himself as raised up, appointed and supported by that remote Deity in whom he so passionately believed; the sense of being set aside and inspired by his God came strongly to him, as it has come strongly to many men of genius, reared in a stern and simple faith, and this sense brought with it, as it always does, a certain fatalism which is in itself the greatest strength; Gustavus began to believe that nothing could hurt or hinder him until he had done the work intended for him to do on earth.

It is curious that Protestantism, in itself rather arid, cold and material, should so often have inspired this idealistic type of hero; probably because this faith was then so beset and almost overwhelmed, because it represented the minority always championed by the generous spirit, and because too it did then stand for liberty and enlightenment, it attracted the type of men like Gustavus Adolphus, the Princes of Orange and Oliver Cromwell; no such heroes adorned the safe, smug Protestantism of the eighteenth century when the struggle was over, the battle won.

To Gustavus also, as to the Princes of the House of Nassau, Protestantism was bound up with the very existence of his country; the quarrel with his cousin, Sigismund, that he had inherited, had become a religious quarrel; the triumph of Poland would be the triumph of Catholicism and the absorption of a Lutheran State into a Popish one; if the elder branch of the House of Vasa could press its claim, the religion and the individual nationality of Sweden would alike cease to exist.