Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden

GUSTAVUS II ADOLPHUS, King of Sweden. - B. 19 Dec. 1594 at Stockholm, d. 16 Nov. 1632 at Lützen, fighting against Wallenstein's troops in retreat. Having succeeded his father Charles IX in 1611 while Sweden was at war with Denmark and Russia, the young sovereign concluded the Peace of Knäred (1613) with the Danes and that of Stolbova (1617) with the Russians. The peace with Christian IV was burdensome, but it allowed the king, now free from the Danish danger, to turn his full attention to the Baltic.

The Peace of Stolbova, by which every outlet to the sea was taken from Russia, in fact laid the foundations of the King's future foreign policy, which assured Sweden predominance over the Baltic after the victorious war with Poland that, at intervals, dragged on for fully nine years, until the armistice of Altmark (1629). The Baltic had by now become a Swedish lake: Poland had in fact recognized G. A.'s possession of Livonia and of certain Prussian territories, as well as the right to collect the duties at the mouth of the Vistula. The course of the Thirty Years' War, which had meanwhile registered the defeat of Christian IV and the invasion of the imperial troops into the Jutland peninsula, drove G. A. to intervene in Germany. Already in Feb. 1629, at the meeting of Ulfsbäck (southern Sweden), the king of Sweden had proposed an alliance to Christian IV. The offer having been rejected, G. A. landed in Germany, near Peenemünde, in the summer of 1630. France, which considered it in her interest to weaken the House of Habsburg, granted subsidies to Sweden (Treaty of Bärwölde, Jan. 1631). Having crossed the Elbe, G. A. pushed as far as southern Germany, defeating the imperial troops in repeated battles and occupying Mainz, Frankfurt, Augsburg and Munich.

With G. A. Sweden became a great European power, and remained so until the death of Charles XII. The King's intervention in the Thirty Years' War saved Protestantism from dissolution as a political power, but it is doubtful whether the King was moved to intervene in Germany by the merely ideal motive of defending the Lutheran faith, or whether he rather intended to create a vast Swedish empire on the shores of the Baltic Sea, extending to Norway, part of Denmark, Pomerania, Mecklenburg and the lands on the shores of the Baltic ceded by Russia and Poland, and to assume the title of emperor of Scandinavia.

Silvio Furlani