[1] _Erste Linien eines Versuchs uber den Ursprung der alten Slaven_
(Leipzig, 1783-1789), p. 145.
[2] _La Guzla, ou choix de poesies lyriques recueillies dans la
Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie, &c._ (Paris, 1827).
[3] _Dissertations sur les antiquites de Russie_ (St Petersburg,
1795), pl. ii. No. 9, p. 31.
GUSTAVUS I. ERIKSSON (1496-1560), king of Sweden, was born at his
mother's estate at Lindholm on Ascension Day 1496. He came of a family
which had shone conspicuously in 15th-century politics, though it
generally took the anti-national side. His father, Erik Johansson of
Rydboholm, "a merry and jocose gentleman," but, like all the Swedish
Vasas, liable to sudden fierce gusts of temper, was one of the senators
who voted for the deposition of Archbishop Trolle, at the _riksdag_ of
1517 (see SWEDEN, _History_), for which act of patriotism he lost his
head. Gustavus's mother, Cecilia Mansdatter, was closely connected by
marriage with the great Sture family. Gustavus's youthful experiences
impressed him with a life-long distrust of everything Danish. In his
eighteenth year he was sent to the court of his cousin Sten Sture. At
the battle of Brannkyrka, when Sture defeated Christian II. of Denmark,
the young Gustavus bore the governor's standard, and in the same year
(1518) he was delivered with five other noble youths as a hostage to
King Christian, who treacherously carried him prisoner to Denmark. He
was detained for twelve months in the island fortress of Kalo, on the
east coast of Jutland, but contrived to escape to Lubeck in September
1519. There he found an asylum till the 20th of May 1520, when he
chartered a ship to Kalmar, one of the few Swedish fortresses which held
out against Christian II.
It was while hunting near Lake Malar that the news of the Stockholm
massacre was brought to him by a peasant fresh from the capital, who
told him, at the same time, that a price had been set upon his head. In
his extremity, Gustavus saw only one way of deliverance, an appeal for
help to the sturdy yeomen of the dales. How the dalesmen set Gustavus on
the throne and how he and they finally drove the Danes out of Sweden
(1521-1523) is elsewhere recorded (see SWEDEN: _History_). But his worst
troubles only began after his coronation on the 6th of June 1523. The
financial position of the crown was the most important of all the
problems demanding solution, for upon that everything else depended. By
releasing his country from the tyranny of Denmark, Gustavus had made the
free independent development of Sweden a possibility. It was for him to
realize that possibility. First of all, order had to be evolved from the
chaos in which Sweden had been plunged by the disruption of the Union;
and the shortest, perhaps the only, way thereto was to restore the royal
authority, which had been in abeyance during ninety years. But an
effective reforming monarchy must stand upon a sound financial basis;
and the usual revenues of the crown, always inadequate, were so
diminished that they did not cover half the daily expenses of
government. New taxes could only be imposed with extreme caution, while
the country was still bleeding from the wounds of a long war. And men
were wanted even more than money. The lack of capable, trustworthy
administrators in Sweden was grievous. The whole burden of government
weighed exclusively on the shoulders of the new king, a young man of
seven and twenty. Half his time was taken up in travelling from one end
of the kingdom to the other, and doing purely clerical work for want of
competent assistance. We can form some idea of his difficulties when we
learn that, in 1533, he could not send an ambassador to Lubeck because
not a single man in his council, except himself, knew German. It was
this lack of native talent which compelled Gustavus frequently to employ
the services of foreign adventurers like Berent von Mehlen, John von
Hoja, Konrad von Pyhy and others.
It was not the least of Gustavus's many anxieties that he had constantly
to be on the watch lest a formidable democratic rival should encroach on
his prerogative. That rival was the Swedish peasantry. He succeeded
indeed in putting down the four formidable rebellions which convulsed
the realm from 1525 to 1542, but the consequent strain upon his
resources was very damaging, and more than once he was on the point of
abdicating and emigrating, out of sheer weariness. Moreover he was in
constant fear of the Danes. Necessity compelled him indeed (1534-1536)
to take part in _Grevens fejde_ (Counts' War) (see DENMARK, _History_),
as the ally of Christian III., but his exaggerated distrust of the Danes
was invincible. "We advise and exhort you," he wrote to the governor of
Kalmar, "to put no hope or trust in the Danes, or in their sweet
scribbling, inasmuch as they mean nothing at all by it except how best
they may deceive and betray us Swedes." Such instructions were not
calculated to promote confidence between Swedish and Danish negotiators.
A fresh cause of dispute was generated in 1548, when Christian III.'s
daughter was wedded to Duke Augustus of Saxony. On that occasion,
apparently by way of protest against the decree of the diet of Vesteras
(15th of January 1544), declaring the Swedish crown hereditary in
Gustavus's family, the Danish king caused to be quartered on his
daughter's shield not only the three Danish lions and the Norwegian lion
with the axe of St Olaf, but also "the three crowns" of Sweden.
Gustavus, naturally suspicious, was much perturbed by the innovation,
and warned all his border officials to be watchful and prepare for the
worst. In 1557 he even wrote to the Danish king protesting against the
placing of "the three crowns" in the royal Danish seal beneath the arms
of Denmark. Christian III. replied that "the three crowns" signified not
Sweden in especial, but the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and that their
insertion in the Danish shield was only a reminiscence of the union of
Kalmar. But Gustavus was not satisfied, and this was the beginning of
"the three crowns" dispute which did so much damage to both kingdoms.
The events which led to the rupture of Gustavus with the Holy See are
set forth in the proper place (see SWEDEN: _History_). Here it need only
be added that it was a purely political act, as Gustavus, personally,
had no strong dogmatic leanings either way. He not unnaturally expressed
his amazement when that very juvenile reformer Olavus Petri confidently
informed him that the pope was antichrist. He consulted the older and
graver Laurentius Andreae, who told him how "Doctor Martinus had clipped
the wings of the pope, the cardinals and the big bishops," which could
not fail to be pleasing intelligence to a monarch who was never an
admirer of episcopacy, while the rich revenues of the church,
accumulated in the course of centuries, were a tempting object to the
impecunious ruler of an impoverished people. Subsequently, when the
Protestant hierarchy was forcibly established in Sweden, matters were
much complicated by the absolutist tendencies of Gustavus. The incessant
labour, the constant anxiety, which were the daily portion of Gustavus
Vasa during the seven and thirty years of his reign, told at last even
upon his magnificent constitution. In the spring of 1560, conscious of
an ominous decline of his powers, Gustavus summoned his last diet, to
give an account of his stewardship. On the 16th of June 1560 the
assembly met at Stockholm. Ten days later, supported by his sons,
Gustavus greeted the estates in the great hall of the palace, when he
took a retrospect of his reign, reminding them of the misery of the
kingdom during the union and its deliverance from "that unkind tyrant,
King Christian." Four days later the diet passed a resolution confirming
the hereditary right of Gustavus's son, Prince Eric, to the throne. The
old king's last anxieties were now over and he could die in peace. He
expired on the 29th of September 1560.
Gustavus was thrice married. His first wife, Catherine, daughter of
Magnus I., duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, bore him in 1533 his eldest son Eric.
This union was neither long nor happy, but the blame for its infelicity
is generally attributed to the lady, whose abnormal character was
reflected and accentuated in her unhappy son. Much more fortunate was
Gustavus's second marriage, a year after the death of his first consort,
with his own countrywoman, Margaret Lejonhufvud, who bore him five sons
and five daughters, of whom three sons, John, Magnus and Charles, and
one daughter, Cecilia, survived their childhood. Queen Margaret died in
1551; and a twelvemonth later Gustavus wedded her niece, Catharine
Stenbock, a handsome girl of sixteen, who survived him more than sixty
years.
Gustavus's outward appearance in the prime of life is thus described by
a contemporary: "He was of the middle height, with a round head, light
yellow hair, a fine long beard, sharp eyes, a ruddy countenance ... and
a body as fitly and well proportioned as any painter could have painted
it. He was of a sanguine-choleric temperament, and when untroubled and
unvexed, a bright and cheerful gentleman, easy to get on with, and
however many people happened to be in the same room with him, he was
never at a loss for an answer to every one of them." Learned he was not,
but he had naturally bright and clear understanding, an unusually good
memory, and a marvellous capacity for taking pains. He was also very
devout, and his morals were irreproachable. On the other hand, Gustavus
had his full share of the family failings of irritability and
suspiciousness, the latter quality becoming almost morbid under the
pressure of adverse circumstances. His energy too not infrequently
degenerated into violence, and when crossed he was apt to be tyrannical.
See A. Alberg, _Gustavus Vasa and his Times_ (London, 1882); R. N.
Bain, _Scandinavia_, chaps. iii. and v. (Cambridge, 1905); P. B.
Watson, _The Swedish Revolution under Gustavus Vasa_ (London, 1889);
O. Sjogren, _Gustaf Vasa_ (Stockholm, 1896); C. M. Butler, _The
Reformation in Sweden_ (New York, 1883); _Sveriges Historia_
(Stockholm, 1877-1881); J. Weidling, _Schwedische Geschichte im
Zeitalter der Reformation_ (Gotha, 1882). (R. N. B.)
GUSTAVUS II. ADOLPHUS (1594-1632), king of Sweden, the eldest son of
Charles IX. and of Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of
Holstein-Gottorp, was born at Stockholm castle on the 9th of December
1594. From the first he was carefully nurtured to be the future prop of
Protestantism by his austere parents. Gustavus was well grounded in the
classics, and his linguistic accomplishments were extraordinary. He may
be said to have grown up with two mother-tongues, Swedish and German; at
twelve he had mastered Latin, Italian and Dutch; and he learnt
subsequently to express himself in Spanish, Russian and Polish. But his
practical father took care that he should grow up a prince, not a
pedant. So early as his ninth year he was introduced to public life; at
thirteen he received petitions and conversed officially with the foreign
ministers; at fifteen he administered his duchy of Vestmanland and
opened the Orebro diet with a speech from the throne; indeed from 1610
he may be regarded as his father's co-regent. In all martial and
chivalrous accomplishments he was already an adept; and when, a year
later, he succeeded to supreme power, his superior ability was as
uncontested as it was incontestable.
The first act of the young king was to terminate the fratricidal
struggle with Denmark by the peace of Knared (28th of January 1613).
Simultaneously, another war, also an heritage from Charles IX., had been
proceeding in the far distant regions round lakes Ilmen, Peipus and
Ladoga, with Great Novgorod as its centre. It was not, however, like the
Danish War, a national danger, but a political speculation meant to be
remunerative and compensatory, and was concluded very advantageously for
Sweden by the peace of Stolbova on the 27th of February 1617 (see
SWEDEN: _History_). By this peace Gustavus succeeded in excluding
Muscovy from the Baltic. "I hope to God," he declared to the Stockholm
diet in 1617, when he announced the conclusion of peace, "that the
Russians will feel it a bit difficult to skip over _that_ little brook."
The war with Poland which Gustavus resumed in 1621 was a much more
difficult affair. It began with an attack upon Riga as the first step
towards conquering Livonia. Riga was invested on the 13th of August and
surrendered on the 15th of September; on the 3rd of October Mitau was
occupied; but so great were the ravages of sickness during the campaign
that the Swedish army had to be reinforced by no fewer than 10,000 men.
A truce was thereupon concluded and hostilities were suspended till the
summer of 1625, in the course of which Gustavus took Kokenhusen and
invaded Lithuania. In January 1626 he attacked the Poles at Walhof and
scattered the whole of their army after slaying a fifth part of it. This
victory, remarkable besides as Gustavus's first pitched battle,
completed the conquest of Livonia. As, however, it became every year
more difficult to support an army in the Dvina district, Gustavus now
resolved to transfer the war to the Prussian provinces of Poland with a
view to securing the control of the Vistula, as he had already secured
the control of the Dvina. At the end of 1626, the Swedish fleet, with
14,000 men on board, anchored in front of the chain of sand-dunes which
separates the Frische-Haff from the Baltic. Pillau, the only Baltic port
then accessible to ships of war, was at once occupied, and Konigsberg
shortly afterwards was scared into an unconditional neutrality. July was
passed in conquering the bishopric of Ermeland. The surrender of Elbing
and Marienburg placed Gustavus in possession of the fertile and easily
defensible delta of the Vistula, which he treated as a permanent
conquest, making Axel Oxenstjerna its first governor-general.
Communications between Danzig and the sea were cut off by the erection
of the first of Gustavus's famous entrenched camps at Dirschau. From the
end of August 1626 the city was blockaded, and in the meantime Polish
irregulars, under the capable Stanislaus Koniecpolski, began to harass
the Swedes. But the object of the campaign, a convenient basis of
operations, was won; and in October the king departed to Sweden to get
reinforcements. He returned in May 1627 with 7000 men, which raised his
forces to 14,000, against which Koniecpolski could only oppose 9000.
But his superior strategy frustrated all the efforts of the Swedish
king, who in the course of the year was twice dangerously wounded and so
disabled that he could never wear armour again. Gustavus had made
extensive preparations for the ensuing campaign and took the field with
32,000 men. But once again, though far outnumbered, and unsupported by
his own government, the Polish grand-hetman proved more than a match for
Gustavus, who, on the 10th of September, broke up his camp and returned
to Prussia; the whole autumn campaign had proved a failure and cost him
5000 men. During the ensuing campaign of 1629 Gustavus had to contend
against the combined forces of Koniecpolski and 10,000 of Wallenstein's
mercenaries. The Polish commander now showed the Swedes what he could do
with adequate forces. At Stuhm, on the 29th of June, he defeated
Gustavus, who lost most of his artillery and narrowly escaped capture.
The result of the campaign was the conclusion of the six years' truce of
Altmark, which was very advantageous to Sweden.
And now Gustavus turned his attention to Germany. The motives which
induced the Swedish king to intervene directly in the Thirty Years' War
are told us by himself in his correspondence with Oxenstjerna. Here he
says plainly that it was the fear lest the emperor should acquire the
Baltic ports and proceed to build up a sea-power dangerous to
Scandinavia. For the same reason, the king rejected the chancellor's
alternative of waging a simply defensive war against the emperor by
means of the fleet, with Stralsund as his base. He was convinced by the
experience of Christian IV. of Denmark that the enemies' harbours could
be wrested from them only by a successful offensive war on land; and,
while quite alive to the risks of such an enterprise in the face of two
large armies, Tilly's and Wallenstein's, each of them larger than his
own, he argued that the vast extent of territory and the numerous
garrisons which the enemy was obliged to maintain, more than neutralized
his numerical superiority. Merely to blockade all the German ports with
the Swedish fleet was equally impossible. The Swedish fleet was too weak
for that; it would be safer to take and fortify the pick of them. In
Germany itself, if he once got the upper hand, he would not find himself
without resources. It is no enthusiastic crusader, but an anxious and
farseeing if somewhat speculative statesman who thus opens his mind to
us. No doubt religious considerations largely influenced Gustavus. He
had the deepest sympathy for his fellow-Protestants in Germany; he
regarded them as God's peculiar people, himself as their divinely
appointed deliverer. But his first duty was to Sweden; and, naturally
and rightly, he viewed the whole business from a predominantly Swedish
point of view. Lutherans and Calvinists were to be delivered from a
"soul-crushing tyranny"; but they were to be delivered by a foreign if
friendly power; and that power claimed as her reward the hegemony of
Protestant Europe and all the political privileges belonging to that
exalted position.
On the 19th of May 1630 Gustavus solemnly took leave of the estates of
the realm assembled at Stockholm. He appeared before them holding in his
arms his only child and heiress, the little princess Christina, then in
her fourth year, and tenderly committed her to the care of his loyal and
devoted people. Then he solemnly took the estates to witness, as he
stood there "in the sight of the Almighty," that he had begun
hostilities "out of no lust for war, as many will certainly devise and
imagine," but in self-defence and to deliver his fellow-Christians from
oppression. On the 7th of June 1630 the Swedish fleet set sail, and two
days after midsummer day, the whole army, 16,000 strong, was disembarked
at Peenemunde. Gustavus's plan was to take possession of the mouths of
the Oder Haff, and, resting upon Stralsund in the west and Prussia in
the east, penetrate into Germany. In those days rivers were what
railways now are, the great military routes; and Gustavus's German war
was a war waged along river lines. The opening campaign was to be fought
along the line of the Oder. Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, and the
key of the Oder line, was occupied and converted into a first-class
fortress. He then proceeded to clear Pomerania of the piebald imperial
host composed of every nationality under heaven, and officered by
Italians, Irishmen, Czechs, Croats, Danes, Spaniards and Walloons.
Gustavus's army has often been described by German historians as an army
of foreign invaders; in reality it was far more truly Teutonic than the
official defenders of Germany at that period. Gustavus's political
difficulties (see SWEDEN: _History_) chained him to his camp for the
remainder of the year. But the dismissal of Wallenstein and the
declaration in Gustavus's favour of Magdeburg, the greatest city in the
Lower Saxon Circle, and strategically the strongest fortress of North
Germany, encouraged him to advance boldly. But first, honour as well as
expediency moved him to attempt to relieve Magdeburg, now closely
invested by the imperialists, especially as his hands had now been
considerably strengthened by a definite alliance with France (treaty of
Barwalde, 13th of January 1631). Magdeburg, therefore, became the focus
of the whole campaign of 1631; but the obstructive timidity of the
electors of Brandenburg and Saxony threw insuperable obstacles in his
way, and, on the very day when John George I. of Saxony closed his gates
against Gustavus the most populous and prosperous city in North Germany
became a heap of smoking ruins (20th of May). Gustavus, still too weak
to meet the foe, entrenched himself at Werben, at the confluence of the
Havel and Elbe. Only on the 12th of September did the elector of Saxony,
alarmed for the safety of his own states, now invaded by the emperor,
place himself absolutely at the disposal of Gustavus; and, five days
later, at the head of the combined Swedish-Saxon army, though the Swedes
did all the fighting, Gustavus routed Tilly at the famous battle of
Breitenfeld, north of Leipzig.
The question now was: In what way should Gustavus utilize his advantage?
Should he invade the Austrian crown lands, and dictate peace to
Ferdinand II. at the gates of Vienna? Or should he pursue Tilly
westwards and crush the league at its own hearth and home? Oxenstjerna
was the first alternative, but Gustavus decided in favour of the second.
His decision has been greatly blamed. More than one modern historian has
argued that if Gustavus had done in 1631 what Napoleon did in 1805 and
1809, there would have been a fifteen instead of a thirty years' war.
But it should be borne in mind that, in the days of Gustavus, Vienna was
by no means so essential to the existence of the Habsburg monarchy as it
was in the days of Napoleon; and even Gustavus could not allow so
dangerous an opponent as Tilly time to recover himself. Accordingly, he
set out for the Rhine, taking Marienberg and Frankfort on his way, and
on the 20th of December entered Mainz, where he remained throughout the
winter of 1631-1632. At the beginning of 1632, in order to bring about
the general peace he so earnestly desired, he proposed to take the field
with an overwhelming numerical majority. The signal for Gustavus to
break up from the Rhine was the sudden advance of Tilly from behind the
Danube. Gustavus pursued Tilly into Bavaria, forced the passage of the
Danube at Donauworth and the passage of the Lech, in the face of Tilly's
strongly entrenched camp at Rain, and pursued the flying foe to the
fortress of Ingolstadt where Tilly died of his wounds a fortnight later.
Gustavus then liberated and garrisoned the long-oppressed Protestant
cities of Augsburg and Ulm, and in May occupied Munich. The same week
Wallenstein chased John George from Prague and manoeuvred the Saxons
out of Bohemia. Then, armed as he was with plenipotentiary power, he
offered the elector of Saxony peace on his own terms. Gustavus suddenly
saw himself exposed to extreme peril. If Tilly had made John George such
an offer as Wallenstein was now empowered to make, the elector would
never have become Gustavus's ally; would he remain Gustavus's ally now?
Hastily quitting his quarters in Upper Swabia, Gustavus hastened towards
Nuremberg on his way to Saxony, but finding that Wallenstein and
Maximilian of Bavaria had united their forces, he abandoned the attempt
to reach Saxony, and both armies confronted each other at Nuremberg
which furnished Gustavus with a point of support of the first order. He
quickly converted the town into an entrenched and fortified camp.
Wallenstein followed the king's example, and entrenched himself on the
western bank of the Regnitz in a camp twelve English miles in
circumference. His object was to pin Gustavus fast to Nuremberg and cut
off his retreat northwards. Throughout July and August the two armies
faced each other immovably. On the 24th of August, after an unsuccessful
attempt to storm Alte Veste, the key of Wallenstein's position, the
Swedish host retired southwards.
Towards the end of October, Wallenstein, after devastating Saxony, was
preparing to go into winter quarters at Lutzen, when the king surprised
him as he was crossing the Rippach (1st of November) and a rearguard
action favourable to the Swedes ensued. Indeed, but for nightfall,
Wallenstein's scattered forces might have been routed. During the night,
however, Wallenstein re-collected his host for a decisive action, and at
daybreak on the 6th of November, while an autumn mist still lay over the
field, the battle began. It was obviously Gustavus's plan to drive
Wallenstein away from the Leipzig road, north of which he had posted
himself, and thus, in case of success, to isolate, and subsequently,
with the aid of the Saxons in the Elbe fortresses, annihilate him. The
king, on the Swedish right wing, succeeded in driving the enemy from the
trenches and capturing his cannon. What happened after that is mere
conjecture, for a thick mist now obscured the autumn sun, and the battle
became a colossal melee the details of which are indistinguishable. It
was in the midst of that awful obscurity that Gustavus met his
death--how or where is not absolutely certain; but it would seem that he
lost his way in the darkness while leading the Smaland horse to the
assistance of his infantry, and was despatched as he lay severely
wounded on the ground by a hostile horseman.
By his wife, Marie Eleonora, a sister of the elector of Brandenburg,
whom he married in 1620, Gustavus Adolphus had one daughter, Christina,
who succeeded him on the throne of Sweden.
See _Sveriges Historia_ (Stockholm, 1877, 81), vol. iv.; A.
Oxenstjerna, _Skrifter och Brefvexling_ (Stockholm, 1900, &c.); G.
Bjorlen, _Gustaf Adolf_ (Stockholm, 1890); R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia_
(Cambridge, 1905); C. R. L. Fletcher, _Gustavus Adolphus_ (London,
1892); J. L. Stevens, _History of Gustavus Adolphus_ (London, 1885);
J. Mankell, _Om Gustaf II. Adolfs politik_ (Stockholm, 1881); E.
Bluemel, _Gustav Adolf, Konig von Schweden_ (Eisleben, 1894); A.
Rydfors, _De diplomatiska forbindelserna mellan Sverige och England
1624-1630_ (Upsala, 1890). (R. N. B.)
GUSTAVUS III. (1746-1792), king of Sweden, was the eldest son of
Adolphus Frederick, king of Sweden, and Louisa Ulrica of Prussia, sister
of Frederick the Great, and was born on the 24th of January 1746.
Gustavus was educated under the care of two governors who were amongst
the most eminent Swedish statesmen of the day, Carl Gustaf Tessin and
Carl Scheffer; but he owed most perhaps to the poet and historian Olof
von Dalin. The interference of the state with his education, when he was
quite a child, was, however, doubly harmful, as his parents taught him
to despise the preceptors imposed upon him by the diet, and the
atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him
precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation. But even his most
hostile teachers were amazed by the brilliance of his natural gifts,
and, while still a boy, he possessed that charm of manner which was to
make him so fascinating and so dangerous in later life, coupled with the
strong dramatic instinct which won for him his honourable place in
Swedish literature. On the whole, Gustavus cannot be said to have been
well educated, but he read very widely; there was scarce a French author
of his day with whose works he was not intimately acquainted; while his
enthusiasm for the new French ideas of enlightenment was as sincere as,
if more critical than, his mother's. On the 4th of November 1766,
Gustavus married Sophia Magdalena, daughter of Frederick V. of Denmark.
The match was an unhappy one, owing partly to incompatibility of temper,
but still more to the mischievous interference of the jealous
queen-mother.
Gustavus first intervened actively in politics in 1768, at the time of
his father's interregnum, when he compelled the dominant Cap faction to
summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the
constitution in a monarchical direction. But the victorious Hats refused
to redeem the pledges which they had given before the elections. "That
we should have lost the constitutional battle does not distress us so
much," wrote Gustavus, in the bitterness of his heart; "but what does
dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its
own felicity in absolute anarchy." From the 4th of February to the 25th
of March 1771, Gustavus was at Paris, where he carried both the court
and the city by storm. The poets and the philosophers paid him
enthusiastic homage, and all the distinguished women of the day
testified to his superlative merits. With many of them he maintained a
lifelong correspondence. But his visit to the French capital was no mere
pleasure trip; it was also a political mission. Confidential agents from
the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the duc de
Choiseul, weary of Swedish anarchy, had resolved to discuss with him the
best method of bringing about a revolution in Sweden. Before he
departed, the French government undertook to pay the outstanding
subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half
million livres annually; and the comte de Vergennes, one of the great
names of French diplomacy, was transferred from Constantinople to
Stockholm. On his way home Gustavus paid a short visit to his uncle,
Frederick the Great, at Potsdam. Frederick bluntly informed his nephew
that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he had guaranteed the
integrity of the existing Swedish constitution, and significantly
advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from
violence.
On his return to Sweden Gustavus made a sincere and earnest attempt to
mediate between the Hats and Caps who were ruining the country between
them (see SWEDEN: _History_). On the 21st of June 1771 he opened his
first parliament in a speech which awakened strange and deep emotions in
all who heard it. It was the first time for more than a century that a
Swedish king had addressed a Swedish diet from the throne in its native
tongue. The orator laid especial stress on the necessity of the
sacrifice of all party animosities to the common weal, and volunteered,
as "the first citizen of a free people," to be the mediator between the
contending factions. A composition committee was actually formed, but it
proved illusory from the first, the patriotism of neither of the
factions being equal to the puniest act of self-denial. The subsequent
attempts of the dominant Caps still further to limit the prerogative,
and reduce Gustavus to the condition of a _roi faineant_, induced him at
last to consider the possibility of a revolution. Of its necessity there
could be no doubt. Under the sway of the Cap faction, Sweden, already
the vassal, could not fail to become the prey of Russia. She was on the
point of being absorbed in that northern system, the invention of the
Russian vice-chancellor, Count Nikita Panin, which that patient
statesman had made it the ambition of his life to realize. Only a swift
and sudden _coup d'etat_ could save the independence of a country
isolated from the rest of Europe by a hostile league. At this juncture
Gustavus was approached by Jakob Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish
nobleman of determined character, who had incurred the enmity of the
Caps, with the project of a revolution. He undertook to seize the
fortress of Sveaborg by a _coup de main_, and, Finland once secured,
Sprengtporten proposed to embark for Sweden, meet the king and his
friends near Stockholm, and surprise the capital by a night attack, when
the estates were to be forced, at the point of the bayonet, to accept a
new constitution from the untrammelled king. The plotters were at this
juncture reinforced by an ex-ranger from Scania (Skane), Johan
Kristoffer Toll, also a victim of Cap oppression. Toll proposed that a
second revolt should break out in the province of Scania, to confuse the
government still more, and undertook personally to secure the southern
fortress of Kristianstad. After some debate, it was finally arranged
that, a few days after the Finnish revolt had begun, Kristianstad should
openly declare against the government. Prince Charles, the eldest of the
king's brothers, was thereupon hastily to mobilize the garrisons of all
the southern fortresses, for the ostensible purpose of crushing the
revolt at Kristianstad; but on arriving before the fortress he was to
make common cause with the rebels, and march upon the capital from the
south, while Sprengtporten attacked it simultaneously from the east. On
the 6th of August 1772 Toll succeeded, by sheer bluff, in winning the
fortress of Kristianstad. On the 16th Sprengtporten succeeded in
surprising Sveaborg. But contrary winds prevented him from crossing to
Stockholm, and in the meanwhile events had occurred which made his
presence there unnecessary.
On the 16th of August the Cap leader, Ture Rudbeck, arrived at Stockholm
with the news of the insurrection in the south, and Gustavus found
himself isolated in the midst of enemies. Sprengtporten lay
weather-bound in Finland, Toll was five hundred miles away, the Hat
leaders were in hiding. Gustavus thereupon resolved to strike the
decisive blow without waiting for the arrival of Sprengtporten. He acted
with military promptitude. On the evening of the 18th all the officers
whom he thought he could trust received secret instructions to assemble
in the great square facing the arsenal on the following morning. At ten
o'clock on the 19th Gustavus mounted his horse and rode straight to the
arsenal. On the way his adherents joined him in little groups, as if by
accident, so that by the time he reached his destination he had about
two hundred officers in his suite. After parade he reconducted them to
the guard-room of the palace and unfolded his plans to them. He then
dictated a new oath of allegiance, and every one signed it without
hesitation. It absolved them from their allegiance to the estates, and
bound them solely to obey their lawful king, Gustavus III. Meanwhile the
senate and the governor-general, Rudbeck, had been arrested and the
fleet secured. Then Gustavus made a tour of the city and was everywhere
received by enthusiastic crowds, who hailed him as a deliverer. On the
evening of the 20th heralds perambulated the streets proclaiming that
the estates were to meet in the Rikssaal on the following day; every
deputy absenting himself would be regarded as the enemy of his country
and his king. On the 21st, a few moments after the estates had
assembled, the king in full regalia appeared, and taking his seat on the
throne, delivered that famous philippic, one of the masterpieces of
Swedish oratory, in which he reproached the estates for their
unpatriotic venality and licence in the past. A new constitution was
recited by the estates and accepted by them unanimously. The diet was
then dissolved.
Gustavus was inspired by a burning enthusiasm for the greatness and
welfare of Sweden, and worked in the same reformatory direction as the
other contemporary sovereigns of the "age of enlightenment." He took an
active part in every department of business, but relied far more on
extra-official counsellors of his own choosing than upon the senate. The
effort to remedy the frightful corruption which had been fostered by the
Hats and Caps engaged a considerable share of his time and he even found
it necessary to put the whole of a supreme court of justice (_Gota
Hofratt_) on its trial. Measures were also taken to reform the
administration and the whole course of judicial procedure, and torture
as an instrument of legal investigation was abolished. In 1774 an
ordinance providing for the liberty of the press was even issued. The
national defences were at the same time developed on a "Great Power"
scale, and the navy was so enlarged as to become one of the most
formidable in Europe. The dilapidated finances were set in good order by
the "currency realization ordinance" of 1777. Gustavus also introduced
new national economic principles. In 1775 free trade in corn was
promoted and a number of oppressive export-tolls were abolished. The
poor law was also amended, absolute religious liberty was proclaimed,
and he even succeeded in inventing and popularizing a national costume
which was in general use from 1778 till his death. His one great
economic blunder was the attempt to make the sale of spirits a
government monopoly, which was an obvious infringement upon the
privileges of the estates. His foreign policy, on the other hand, was at
first both wise and wary. Thus, when the king summoned the estates to
assemble at Stockholm on the 3rd of September 1778, he could give a
brilliant account of his six years' stewardship. Never was a parliament
more obsequious or a king more gracious. "There was no room for a single
No during the whole session." Yet, short as the session was, it was
quite long enough to open the eyes of the deputies to the fact that
their political supremacy had departed. They had changed places with
the king. He was now indeed their sovereign lord; and, for all his
gentleness, the jealousy with which he guarded, the vigour with which he
enforced the prerogative, plainly showed that he meant to remain so.
Even the few who were patriotic enough to acquiesce in the change by no
means liked it. The diet of 1778 had been obsequious; the diet of 1786
was mutinous. The consequence was that nearly all the royal propositions
were either rejected outright or so modified that Gustavus himself
withdrew them.
The diet of 1786 marks a turning-point in Gustavus's history. Henceforth
we observe a determination on his part to rule without a parliament; a
passage, cautious and gradual, yet unflinching, from
semi-constitutionalism to semi-absolutism. His opportunity came in 1788,
when the political complications arising out of his war with Catherine
II. of Russia enabled him by the Act of Unity and Security (on the 17th
of February 1789) to override the opposition of the rebellious and
grossly unpatriotic gentry, and, with the approbation of the three lower
estates, establish a new and revolutionary constitution, in which,
though the estates still held the power of the purse, the royal
authority largely predominated. Throughout 1789 and 1790 Gustavus, in
the national interests, gallantly conducted the unequal struggle with
Russia, finally winning in the Svensksund (9th-10th July) the most
glorious naval victory ever gained by the Swedish arms, the Russians
losing one-third of their fleet and 7000 men. A month later, on the 14th
of August 1790, peace was signed between Russia and Sweden at Varala.
Only eight months before, Catherine had haughtily declared that "the
odious and revolting aggression" of the king of Sweden would be
"forgiven" only if he "testified his repentance" by agreeing to a peace
granting a general and unlimited amnesty to all his rebels, and
consenting to a guarantee by the Swedish diet ("as it would be imprudent
to confide in his good faith alone") for the observance of peace in the
future. The peace of Varala saved Sweden from any such humiliating
concession, and in October 1791 Gustavus took the bold but by no means
imprudent step of concluding an eight years' defensive alliance with the
empress, who thereby bound herself to pay her new ally annual subsidies
amounting to 300,000 roubles.
Gustavus now aimed at forming a league of princes against the Jacobins,
and every other consideration was subordinated thereto. His profound
knowledge of popular assemblies enabled him, alone among contemporary
sovereigns, accurately to gauge from the first the scope and bearing of
the French Revolution. But he was hampered by poverty and the jealousy
of the other European Powers, and, after showing once more his
unrivalled mastery over masses of men at the brief Gefle diet (22nd of
January-24th of February 1792), he fell a victim to a widespread
aristocratic conspiracy. Shot in the back by Anckarstrom at a midnight
masquerade at the Stockholm opera-house, on the 16th of March 1792, he
expired on the 29th.
Although he may be charged with many foibles and extravagances, Gustavus
III. was indisputably one of the greatest sovereigns of the 18th
century. Unfortunately his genius never had full scope, and his
opportunity came too late. Gustavus was, moreover, a most distinguished
author. He may be said to have created the Swedish theatre, and some of
the best acting dramas in the literature are by his hand. His historical
essays, notably the famous anonymous eulogy on Torstenson crowned by the
Academy, are full of feeling and exquisite in style,--his letters to his
friends are delightful. Every branch of literature and art interested
him, every poet and artist of his day found in him a most liberal and
sympathetic protector.
See R. N. Bain, _Gustavus III. and his Contemporaries_ (London, 1904);
E. G. Geijer, _Konung Gustaf III.'s efterlemnade papper_ (Upsala,
1843-1845); C. T. Odhner, _Sveriges politiska historia under Konung
Gustaf III.'s regering_ (Stockholm, 1885-1896); B. von Beskow, _Om
Gustaf III. sasom Konung och manniska_ (Stockholm, 1860-1861); O.
Levertin, _Gustaf III. som dramatisk forfattare_ (Stockholm, 1894);
_Gustaf III.'s bref till G. M. Armfelt_ (Fr.) (Stockholm, 1883); Y. K.
Grot, _Catharine II. and Gustavus III._ (Russ.) (St Petersburg, 1884).
(R. N. B.)
GUSTAVUS IV. (1778-1837), king of Sweden, the son of Gustavus III. and
Queen Sophia Magdalena, was born at Stockholm on the 1st of November
1778. Carefully educated under the direction of Nils von Rosenstein, he
grew up serious and conscientious. In August 1796 his uncle the regent
Charles, duke of Sudermania, visited St Petersburg for the purpose of
arranging a marriage between the young king and Catherine II.'s
granddaughter, the grand-duchess Alexandra. The betrothal was actually
fixed for the 22nd of September, when the whole arrangement foundered on
the obstinate refusal of Gustavus to allow his destined bride liberty of
worship according to the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church--a rebuff
which undoubtedly accelerated the death of the Russian empress. Nobody
seems to have even suspected at the time that serious mental derangement
lay at the root of Gustavus's abnormal piety. On the contrary, there
were many who prematurely congratulated themselves on the fact that
Sweden had now no disturbing genius, but an economical, God-fearing,
commonplace monarch to deal with. Gustavus's prompt dismissal of the
generally detested Gustaf Reuterholm added still further to his
popularity. On the 31st of October 1797 Gustavus married Frederica
Dorothea, daughter of Charles Frederick, grand-duke of Baden, a marriage
which might have led to a war with Russia but for the fanatical hatred
of the French republic shared by the emperor Paul and Gustavus IV.,
which served as a bond of union between them. Indeed the king's horror
of Jacobinism was morbid in its intensity, and drove him to adopt all
sorts of reactionary measures and to postpone his coronation for some
years, so as to avoid calling together a diet; but the disorder of the
finances, caused partly by the continental war and partly by the almost
total failure of the crops in 1798 and 1799, compelled him to summon the
estates to Norrkoping in March 1800, and on the 3rd of April Gustavus
was crowned. The notable change which now took place in Sweden's foreign
policy and its fatal consequences to the country are elsewhere set forth
(see SWEDEN, _History_). By the end of 1808 it was obvious to every
thinking Swede that the king was insane. His violence had alienated his
most faithful supporters, while his obstinate incompetence paralysed the
national efforts. To remove a madman by force was the one remaining
expedient; and this was successfully accomplished by a conspiracy of
officers of the western army, headed by Adlersparre, the Anckarsvards,
and Adlercreutz, who marched rapidly from Skane to Stockholm. On the
13th of March 1809 seven of the conspirators broke into the royal
apartments in the palace unannounced, seized the king, and conducted him
to the chateau of Gripsholm; Duke Charles was easily persuaded to accept
the leadership of a provisional government, which was proclaimed the
same day; and a diet, hastily summoned, solemnly approved of the
revolution. On the 29th of March Gustavus, in order to save the crown
for his son, voluntarily abdicated; but on the 10th of May the estates,
dominated by the army, declared that not merely Gustavus but his whole
family had forfeited the throne. On the 5th of June the duke regent was
proclaimed king under the title of Charles XIII., after accepting the
new liberal constitution, which was ratified by the diet the same day.
In December Gustavus and his family were transported to Germany.
Gustavus now assumed the title of count of Gottorp, but subsequently
called himself Colonel Gustafsson, under which pseudonym he wrote most
of his works. He led, separated from his family, an erratic life for
some years; was divorced from his consort in 1812; and finally settled
at St Gall in Switzerland in great loneliness and indigence. He died on
the 7th of February 1837, and, at the suggestion of King Oscar II. his
body was brought to Sweden and interred in the Riddarholmskyrka. From
him descend both the Baden and the Oldenburg princely houses on the
female side.
See H. G. Trolle-Wachtmeister, _Anteckningar och minnen_ (Stockholm,
1889); B. von Beskow, _Lefnadsminnen_ (Stockholm, 1870); K. V.
Key-Aberg, _De diplomatiska forbindelserna mellan Sverige och
Storbrittannien under Gustaf IV.'s Krig emot Napoleon_ (Upsala, 1890);
Colonel Gustafsson, _La Journee du treize mars_, &c. (St Gall, 1835);
_Memorial des Obersten Gustafsson_ (Leipzig, 1829). (R. N. B.)
GUSTAVUS V. (1858- ), king of Sweden, son of Oscar II., king of Sweden
and Norway, and Queen Sophia Wilhelmina, was born at Drottningholm on
the 16th of June 1858. He entered the army, and was, like his father, a
great traveller. As crown prince he held the title of duke of Warmland.
He married in 1881 Victoria (b. 1862), daughter of Frederick William
Louis, grand duke of Baden, and of Louise, princess of Prussia. The
duchess of Baden was the granddaughter of Sophia, princess of Sweden,
and the marriage of the crown prince thus effected a union between the
Bernadotte dynasty and the ancient Swedish royal house of Vasa. During
the absence or illness of his father Gustavus repeatedly acted as
regent, and was therefore already thoroughly versed in public affairs
when he succeeded to the Swedish throne on the 8th of December 1907, the
crown of Norway having been separated from that of Sweden in 1905. He
took as his motto "With the people for the Fatherland."
The crown prince, Oscar Frederick William Gustavus Adolphus, duke of
Scania (b. 1882), married in 1905 Princess Margaret of Connaught (b.
1882), niece of King Edward VII. A son was born to them at Stockholm on
the 22nd of April 1906, and another son in the following year. The
king's two younger sons were William, duke of Sudermania (b. 1884), and
Eric, duke of Westmanland (b. 1889).
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS UNION (GUSTAV-ADOLF-STIFTUNG, GUSTAV-ADOLF-VEREIN,
EVANGELISCHER VEREIN DER GUSTAV-ADOLF-STIFTUNG), a society formed of
members of the Evangelical Protestant churches of Germany, which has for
its object the aid of feeble sister churches, especially in Roman Catholic
countries. The project of forming such a society was first broached in
connexion with the bicentennial celebration of the battle of Lutzen on the
6th of November 1832; a proposal to collect funds for a monument to
Gustavus Adolphus having been agreed to, it was suggested by
Superintendent Grossmann that the best memorial to the great champion of
Protestantism would be the formation of a union for propagating his ideas.
For some years the society was limited in its area and its operations,
being practically confined to Leipzig and Dresden, but at the Reformation
festival in 1841 it received a new impulse through the energy and
eloquence of Karl Zimmermann (1803-1877), court preacher at Darmstadt, and
in 1843 a general meeting was held at Frankfort-on-the-Main, where no
fewer than twenty-nine branch associations belonging to all parts of
Germany except Bavaria and Austria were represented. The want of a
positive creed tended to make many of the stricter Protestant churchmen
doubtful of the usefulness of the union, and the stricter Lutherans have
always held aloof from it. On the other hand, its negative attitude in
relation to Roman Catholicism secured for it the sympathy of the masses.
At a general convention held in Berlin in September 1846 a keen dispute
arose about the admission of the Konigsberg delegate, Julius Rupp
(1809-1884), who in 1845 had been deprived for publicly repudiating the
Athanasian Creed and became one of the founders of the "Free
Congregations"; and at one time it seemed likely that the society would be
completely broken up. Amid the political revolutions of the year 1848 the
whole movement fell into stagnation; but in 1849 another general
convention (the seventh), held at Breslau, showed that, although the
society had lost both in membership and income, it was still possessed of
considerable vitality. From that date the Gustav-Adolf-Verein has been
more definitely "evangelical" in its tone than formerly; and under the
direction of Karl Zimmermann it greatly increased both in numbers and in
wealth. It has built over 2000 churches and assisted with some two million
pounds over 5000 different communities. Apart from its influence in
maintaining Protestantism in hostile areas, there can be no doubt that the
union has had a great effect in helping the various Protestant churches of
Germany to realize the number and importance of their common interests.
See K. Zimmermann, _Geschichte des Gustav-Adolf-Vereins_ (Darmstadt,
1877).
GUSTROW, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
on the Nebel and the railway from Lubeck to Stettin, 20 m. S. of
Rostock. Pop. (1875), 10,923; (1905) 17,163. The principal buildings are
the castle, erected in the middle of the 16th century and now used as a
workhouse; the cathedral, dating from the 13th century and restored in
1868, containing many fine monuments and possessing a square tower 100
ft. high; the Pfarrkirche, with fine altar-paintings; the town hall
(Rathaus), dating from the 16th century; the music hall, and the
theatre. Among the educational establishments are the ducal gymnasium,
which possesses a library of 15,000 volumes, a modern and a commercial
school. The town is one of the most prosperous in the duchy, and has
machine works, foundries, tanneries, sawmills, breweries, distilleries,
and manufactories of tobacco, glue, candles and soap. There is also a
considerable trade in wool, corn, wood, butter and cattle, and an annual
cattle show and horse races are held.
Gustrow, capital of the Mecklenburg duchy of that name, or of the Wend
district, was a place of some importance as early as the 12th century,
and in 1219 it became the residence of Henry Borwin II., prince of
Mecklenburg, from whom it received Schwerin privileges. From 1316 to
1436 the town was the residence of the princes of the Wends, and from
1556 to 1695 of the dukes of Mecklenburg-Gustrow. In 1628 it was
occupied by the imperial troops, and Wallenstein resided in it during
part of the years 1628 and 1629.
GUTENBERG, JOHANN (c. 1398-1468), German printer, is supposed to have
been born c. 1398-1399 at Mainz of well-to-do parents, his father being
Friele zum Gensfleisch and his mother Elsgen Wyrich (or, from her
birthplace, zu Gutenberg, the name he adopted). He is assumed to be
mentioned under the name of "Henchen" in a copy of a document of 1420,
and again in a document of c. 1427-1428, but it is not stated where he
then resided. On January 16, 1430, his mother arranged with the city of
Mainz about an annuity belonging to him; but when, in the same year,
some families who had been expelled a few years before were permitted to
return to Mainz, Gutenberg appears not to have availed himself of the
privilege, as he is described in the act of reconciliation (dated March
28) as "not being in Mainz." It is therefore assumed that the family had
taken refuge in Strassburg, where Gutenberg was residing later. There he
is said to have been in 1434, and to have seized and imprisoned the town
clerk of Mainz for a debt due to him by the corporation of that city,
releasing him, however, at the representations of the mayor and
councillors of Strassburg, and relinquishing at the same time all claims
to the money (310 Rhenish guilders = about 2400 mark).[1] Between 1436
and 1439 certain documents represent him as having been engaged there
in some experiments requiring money, with Andreas Dritzehn, a
fellow-citizen, who became not only security for him but his partner to
carry out Gutenberg's plan for polishing stones and the manufacture of
looking-glasses, for which a lucrative sale was expected at the
approaching pilgrimage of 1440 (subsequently postponed, according to the
documents, although there is no evidence for this postponement) to
Aix-la-Chapelle. Money was lent for this purpose by two other friends.
In 1438 another partnership was arranged between Gutenberg, Andreas
Dritzehn, and Andreas and Anton Heilmann, and that this had in view the
art of printing has been inferred from the word "drucken" used by one of
the witnesses in the law proceedings which soon after followed. An
action was brought, after the death of Dritzehn, by his two brothers to
force Gutenberg to accept them as partners in their brother's place, but
the decision was in favour of the latter. In 1441 Gutenberg became
surety to the St Thomas Chapter at Strassburg for Johann Karle, who
borrowed 100 guilders (about L16) from the chapter, and on November 17,
1442, he himself borrowed 80 livres through Martin Brechter (or Brehter)
from the same chapter. Of his whereabouts from the 12th of March 1444
(when he paid a tax at Strassburg) to the 17th of October 1448 nothing
certain is known. But on the latter date we find him at Mainz, borrowing
150 gold guilders of his kinsman, Arnold Gelthus, against an annual
interest of 7-1/2 gold guilders. We do not know whether the interest on
this debt has ever been paid, but the debt itself appears never to have
been paid off, as the contract of this loan was renewed (_vidimused_) on
August 23, 1503, for other parties. It is supposed that soon afterwards
Gutenberg must have been able to show some convincing results of his
work, for it appears that about 1450 Johann Fust (q.v.) advanced him 800
guilders to promote it, on no security except that of "tools" still to
be made. Fust seems also to have undertaken to advance him 300 guilders
a year for expenses, wages, house-rent, parchment, paper, ink, &c., but
he does not appear to have ever done so. If at any time they disagreed,
Gutenberg was to return the 800 guilders, and the "tools" were to cease
to be security. It is not known to what purpose Gutenberg devoted the
money advanced to him. In the minutes of the law-suit of 1455 he himself
says that he had to make his "tools" with it. But he is presumed to have
begun a large folio Latin Bible, and to have printed during its progress
some smaller books[2] and likewise the Letter of Indulgence (granted on
the 12th of April 1451 by Pope Nicholas V. in aid of John II., king of
Cyprus, against the Turks), of 31 lines, having the earliest printed
date 1454, of which several copies are preserved in various European
libraries. A copy of the 1455 issue of the same Indulgence is in the
Rylands Library at Manchester (from the Althorp Library).
It is not known whether any books were printed while this partnership
between Gutenberg and Fust lasted. Trithemius (_Ann. Hirsaug._ ii. 421)
says they first printed, from wooden blocks, a vocabulary called
_Catholicon_, which cannot have been the _Catholicon_ of Johannes de
Janua, a folio of 748 pages in two columns of 66 lines each, printed in
1460, but was perhaps a small glossary now lost.[3] The Latin _Bible of
42 lines_, a folio of 1282 printed pages, in two columns with spaces
left for illuminated initials (so called because each column contains 42
lines, and also known as the _Mazarin Bible_, because the first copy
described was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin), was finished
before the 15th of August 1456;[4] German bibliographers now claim this
Bible for Gutenberg, but, according to bibliographical rules, it must be
ascribed to Peter Schoffer, perhaps in partnership with Fust. It is in
smaller type than the _Bible of 36 lines_, which latter is called either
(a) the _Bamberg Bible_, because nearly all the known copies were found
in the neighbourhood of Bamberg, or (b) _Schelhorn's Bible_, because J.
G. Schelhorn was the first who described it in 1760, or (c) _Pfister's
Bible_, because its printing is ascribed to Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg,
who used the same type for several small German books, the chief of
which is Boner's _Edelstein_ (1461, 4to), 88 leaves, with 85 woodcuts, a
book of fables in German rhyme. Some bibliographers believe this 36-line
Bible to have been begun, if not entirely printed, by Gutenberg during
his partnership with Fust, as its type occurs in the 31-line Letters of
Indulgence of 1454, was used for the 27-line Donatus (of 1451?), and,
finally, when found in Pfister's possession in 1461, appears to be old
and worn, except the additional letters k, w, z required for German,
which are clear and sharp like the types used in the Bible. Again,
others profess to prove (Dziatzko, _Gutenberg's fruheste Druckerpraxis_)
that B^36 was a reprint of B^42.
Gutenberg's work, whatever it may have been, was not a commercial
success, and in 1452 Fust had to come forward with another 800 guilders
to prevent a collapse. But some time before November 1455 the latter
demanded repayment of his advances (see the Helmasperger Notarial
Document of November 6, 1455, in Dziatzko's _Beitrage zur
Gutenbergfrage_, Berlin, 1889), and took legal proceedings against
Gutenberg. We do not know the end of these proceedings, but if Gutenberg
had prepared any printing materials it would seem that he was compelled
to yield up the whole of them to Fust; that the latter removed them to
his own house at Mainz, and there, with the assistance of Peter
Schoffer, issued various books until the sack of the city in 1462 by
Adolphus II. caused a suspension of printing for three years, to be
resumed again in 1465.
We have no Information as to Gutenberg's activity, and very little of
his whereabouts, after his separation from Fust. In a document dated
June 21, 1457, he appears as witness on behalf of one of his relatives,
which shows that he was then still at Mainz. Entries in the registers of
the St Thomas Church at Strassburg make it clear that the annual
interest on the money which Gutenberg on the 17th of November 1442 (see
above) had borrowed from the chapter of that church was regularly paid
till the 11th of November 1457, either by himself or by his surety,
Martin Brechter. But the payment due on the latter date appears to have
been delayed, as an entry in the register of that year shows that the
chapter had incurred expenses in taking steps to have both Gutenberg and
Brechter arrested. This time the difficulties seem to have been removed,
but on and after the 11th of November 1458 Gutenberg and Brechter
remained in default. The chapter made various efforts, all recorded in
their registers, to get their money, but in vain. Every year they
recorded the arrears with the expenses to which they were put in their
efforts to arrest the defaulters, till at last in 1474 (six years after
Gutenberg's death) their names are no longer mentioned.
Meantime Gutenberg appears to have been _printing_, as we learn from a
document dated February 26, 1468, that a syndic of Mainz, Dr Conrad
Homery (who had formerly been in the service of the elector Count
Diether of Ysenburg), had at one time supplied him, not with money, but
with some formes, types, tools, implements and other things belonging to
printing, which Gutenberg had left after his death, and which had, and
still, belonged to him (Homery); this material had come into the hands
of Adolf, the archbishop of Mainz, who handed or sent it back to Homery,
the latter undertaking to use it in no other town but Mainz, nor to sell
it to any person except a citizen of Mainz, even if a stranger should
offer him a higher price for the things. This material has never yet
been identified, so that we do not know what types Gutenberg may have
had at his disposal; they could hardly have included the types of the
_Catholicon_ of 1460, as is suggested, this work being probably executed
by Heinrich Bechtermunze (d. 1467), who afterwards removed to Eltville,
or perhaps by Peter Schoffer, who, about 1470, advertises the book as
his property (see K. Burger, _Buchhandler-Anzeigen_). It is uncertain
whether Gutenberg remained in Mainz or removed to the neighbouring town
of Eltville, where he may have been engaged for a while with the
brothers Bechtermunze, who printed there for some time with the types of
the 1460 _Catholicon_. On the 17th of January 1465 he accepted the post
of salaried courtier from the archbishop Adolf, and in this capacity
received annually a suit of livery together with a fixed allowance of
corn and wine. Gutenberg seems to have died at Mainz at the beginning of
1468, and was, according to tradition, buried in the Franciscan church
in that city. His relative Arnold Gelthus erected a monument to his
memory near his supposed grave, and forty years afterwards Ivo Wittig
set up a memorial tablet at the legal college at Mainz. No books bearing
the name of Gutenberg as printer are known, nor is any genuine portrait
of him known, those appearing upon medals, statues or engraved plates
being all fictitious.
In 1898 the firm of L. Rosenthal, at Munich, acquired a _Missale
speciale_ on paper, which Otto Hupp, in two treatises published in 1898
and 1902, asserts to have been printed by Gutenberg about 1450, seven
years before the 1457 Psalter. Various German bibliographers, however,
think that it could not have been printed before 1480, and, judging from
the facsimiles published by Hupp, this date seems to be approximately
correct.
On the 24th of June 1900 the five-hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg's
birth was celebrated in several German cities, notably in Mainz and
Leipzig, and most of the recent literature on the invention of printing
dates from that time.
So we may note that in 1902 a vellum fragment of an Astronomical
Kalendar was discovered by the librarian of Wiesbaden, Dr G. Zedler
(_Die alteste Gutenbergtype_, Mainz, 1902), apparently printed in the
36-line Bible type, and as the position of the sun, moon and other
planets described in this document suits the years 1429, 1448 and 1467,
he ascribes the printing of this Kalendar to the year 1447. A paper
fragment of a poem in German, entitled _Weltgericht_, said to be printed
in the 36-line Bible type, appears to have come into the possession of
Herr Eduard Beck at Mainz in 1892, and was presented by him in 1903 to
the Gutenberg Museum in that city. Zedler published a facsimile of it in
1904 (for the _Gutenberg Gesellschaft_), with a description, in which he
places it before the 1447 _Kalendar_, c. 1444-1447. Moreover, fragments
of two editions of Donatus different from that of 1451 (?) have recently
been found; see Schwenke in _Centralbl. fur Bibliothekwesen_ (1908).
The recent literature upon Gutenberg's life and work and early
printing in general includes the following: A. von der Linde,
_Geschichte und Erdichtung_ (Stuttgart, 1878); _id. Geschichte der
Buchdruckerkunst_ (Berlin, 1886); J. H. Hessels, _Gutenberg, Was he
the Inventor of Printing?_ (London, 1882); _id. Haarlem, the
Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz_ (London, 1886); O. Hartwig,
_Festschrift zum funfhundertjahrigen Geburtstag von Johann Gutenberg_
(Leipzig, 1900), which includes various treatises by Schenk zu
Schweinsberg, K. Schorbach, &c.; P. Schwenke, _Untersuchungen zur
Geschichte des ersten Buchdrucks_ (Berlin, 1900); A. Borckel,
_Gutenberg, sein Leben_, &c. (Giessen, 1897); _id. Gutenberg und seine
beruhmten Nachfolger im ersten Jahrhundert der Typographie_
(Frankfort, 1900); F. Schneider, _Mainz und seine Drucker_ (1900); G.
Zedler, _Gutenberg-Forschungen_ (Leipzig, 1901); J. H. Hessels, _The
so-called Gutenberg Documents_ (London, 1910). For other works on the
subject see TYPOGRAPHY. (J. H. H.)