William, prince of Orange. He saw the workings of Catholicism under a
fearful aspect. He beheld his countrymen dragged from their firesides,
driven into exile, thrown into dungeons, burned at the stake; and all
this for no other cause than because they dared to dissent from the
dogmas of the Romish Church. His parents had been Lutherans, his wife
also was a Protestant, and William of Orange embraced the doctrines of
the Reformation. We cannot follow his career. After quelling a mob at
Antwerp, which threatened to destroy the city, realizing that he could
place no reliance upon Philip, or Margaret his regent, and as they now
looked upon him with suspicion, William of Orange determined to retire
to his estates in Germany. He there occupied himself with studying the
Lutheran doctrine, and making himself acquainted with the principles
of the glorious Reformation of which he was one day to become the
champion. The regency of Margaret continued in the Netherlands from
1559 to 1567; and in the last years she succeeded in putting down
the revolt. Philip, through his regent, and the aid of the Pope, had
now, by several successful contests in the Netherlands, quelled the
rebellion, and the party of reform had disappeared, and its worship
was everywhere proscribed. On its ruins the Catholic party had risen
in greater splendor than ever. Margaret now resigned the regency, and
the duke of Alva was appointed in her place. He created a new tribunal,
which is known in history by the terrible name it received from the
people, as the “Council of Blood.”
[Illustration: PHILIP II., KING OF SPAIN.]
In order to justify his cruel proceedings against the Netherlands,
Philip now submitted the case to the Inquisition at Madrid, and that
ghostly tribunal came to the following decision: “All who had been
guilty of heresy, apostasy, or sedition, and all, moreover, who, though
professing themselves good Catholics, had offered no resistance to
these, were, with the exception of a few specified individuals, thereby
convicted of treason in the highest degree.” This sweeping judgment
was followed by a royal edict, dated on the same day, in which, after
reciting the language of the Inquisition, the whole nation, with
the exception above stated, was sentenced, without distinction of
sex or age, to the penalties of treason,—death and confiscation of
property; and this, the decree went on to say, “without any hope of
grace whatever, that it might serve for an example and a warning to all
future time!”
Then followed the awful work of the “Council of Blood.” Men, women, and
children were dragged to the gallows. Blood ran through the streets
of the cities like a red river. The poor martyrs were tortured with
horrible contrivances even at the scaffold, that their dying cries
might cause merriment for their fiendish foes.
And thus Philip II. vindicates his conduct during this reign of terror:
“What I have done has been for the repose of the provinces, and for
the defence of the Catholic faith. If I had respected justice less,
I should have despatched the whole business in a single day. No one
acquainted with the state of affairs, will find reason to censure my
severity. Nor would I do otherwise than I have done, though I should
risk the sovereignty of the Netherlands,—no, though the world should
fall in ruins around me!”
The young Queen Isabella having died, Philip II. married for his fourth
wife, Anne of Austria, who had also been affianced to his son Carlos.
Then came the rebellions of the Moriscoes, who were the descendants of
the Moors in southern Spain. In 1569, the Moriscoes rose in a general
insurrection against the Christians. Many a Moor had perished in the
flames of the Inquisition, and they now retaliated with bloodthirsty
ferocity. The horrors which ensued cannot be described. Before these
Moors had been goaded by the cruel edicts of Philip, they had been kind
neighbors. The cruelties committed by the Spanish troops sent against
the Moors, were as shocking as the deeds of the barbarians. The Spanish
army, before entering into a battle, knelt in prayer, invoking God’s
blessing; and after a victory, reeking with the blood of their victims,
they marched, under the banner of the cross, to the cathedrals, and
chanted the _Te Deum_. Thus was religion turned into a mockery of a
merciful God, and a cloak for the vilest of crimes.
Philip brought his fourth bride, Anne of Austria, to the magnificent
palace or monastery of the Escurial. She lived ten years. Her children
all died in infancy, except one son, who lived to succeed his father on
the throne as Philip III. Spain was now rapidly on the decline. Civil
war, persecution, banishment and emigration, were fast depopulating the
country. The population diminished from ten to six millions.
As Queen Elizabeth of England had warmly espoused the Protestant cause,
there was enmity between that nation and Spain. In 1558, Philip II.,
of Spain, who had been for three years preparing the famous Spanish
Armada, ordered the fleet to sail against England. This splendid armada
set sail from Lisbon with high hopes. But next day they met with a
violent storm, which scattered some of the ships, and sunk others, and
forced the rest to take shelter in the Groine. After the damages had
been repaired, the armada again set forth. The fleet consisted of one
hundred and thirty vessels, and many of them were of greater size than
had ever before been employed in Europe. The plan of the king of Spain
was, that the fleet should sail to the coast opposite to Dunkirk and
Newport, and having joined the fleet of the duke of Parma, should make
sail to the Thames, and having landed the whole Spanish army, complete
at one blow the conquest of England. The armada reached Calais. Here
the English admiral practised a stratagem upon the Spaniards. He took
eight of his smaller vessels and filled them with combustibles, and
setting them on fire, sent them amongst the Spanish fleet. In the
confusion caused by this incident, the English fell upon the Spanish,
and captured or destroyed twelve of their ships. The Spanish admiral
thereupon started to return home. A violent tempest overtook the armada
after it passed the Orkneys. The ships were driven upon the western
isles of Scotland, and coast of Ireland, and were miserably wrecked.
Thus was the famous Spanish armada destroyed. It was almost a death
blow to the Spanish monarchy. At length Philip II., with a bankrupt
treasury, while his mind was filled with gloom and his body tortured
with a loathsome and terrible disease, died on the 13th of September,
1598. In view of his great opportunities, vast power, and the hopeful
promise of his early career, and the miserable ending of his wrecked
life, brought upon himself by his barbarous cruelties and religious
bigotry and superstitions, we are reminded of the saying quoted at the
commencement of the sketch, and are more fully convinced that no people
can be prosperous unless their rulers are humane and virtuous. In the
light of such shocking events as we have just been describing, and of
such barbarous deeds performed in the name of religion, it seems to be
an indisputable fact that the world has surely made vast progress in an
enlightened civilization and in true Christianity.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.
1594-1632 A.D.
“Ay, every inch a king!”—SHAKESPEARE.
THE oldest account of the nations of Europe in the far north is that
given by Pytheas, who lived three hundred and fifty years before
the Christian Era. His voyages carried him to the shores of Britain
and Scandinavia. The Goths were the most ancient inhabitants of
Scandinavia, occupying the south, and were earlier in Sweden than the
Sueones. These two tribes were at war for many years, but finally
united and formed the Swedish nation. During twelve centuries after
the visit of Pytheas to northern countries, nothing was known of the
Scandinavian people in their own homes, although wild tribes from
the north overran southern Europe, and were known as the Cimbri,
Teutons, Germans, and Goths. But in the time of Alfred the Great, two
travellers from Scandinavia visited the court of the English king.
From the account they gave of their travels, King Alfred wrote a brief
history and made a chart of modern Europe. In this book Scandinavia was
described.
[Illustration: GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.]
Of the three Scandinavian countries, Sweden did not become known to
the nations of southern Europe as soon as Denmark and Norway. Like the
Danes, the Swedes traced the descent of their early kings back to Odin.
Olaf was the first Christian king of Sweden, and received Christian
baptism about the year 1000 A.D.
The son and successor of Charlemagne, Louis le Débonnaire, took an
ardent interest in sending Christian missionaries to the pagans of the
north. The union of the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway was
consummated in 1387. In 1523 the union with Denmark was dissolved, and
Gustavus Vasa was proclaimed king of Sweden. This king was one of the
ablest of the monarchs of the sixteenth century. He was the grandfather
of Gustavus Adolphus. Charles IX., the father of Adolphus, came to the
throne of Sweden in 1604. During the reigns of the elder brothers of
Charles, there had been constant conflicts with Denmark. Charles IX.
died in 1611, leaving an unfinished war with Denmark to be completed by
his illustrious son, Gustavus Adolphus, then seventeen years of age.
His father, Charles, had entered into friendly alliances with all the
principal Protestant powers, and for the first time Sweden had been
brought into important political relations with the more influential
European nations. Gustavus Adolphus was born at the royal palace in
Stockholm, Dec. 9, 1594. His mother, Christine, was the daughter of
Adolphus, duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and grand-daughter of Frederic
I., king of Denmark.
Tycho Brahe, the famous astronomer, had announced, when a comet
appeared in 1572, that there would spring up in Finland a prince
destined to accomplish great changes in Germany, and deliver the
Protestant people from the oppression of the popes. His countrymen
applied to Gustavus this prediction of the Danish astronomer. Gustavus
possessed a vigorous constitution, which was rendered robust by his
childish experiences and manner of life. His early years were passed in
the midst of constant wars between Sweden and Denmark. This account is
given of the education and boyhood of Gustavus Adolphus:—
“To be the tutor of the prince was appointed Master John Skytte, and
Otto von Mörner his chamberlain. The last named was marshall of the
court of Charles IX., and born of noble parents in Brandenburg. He had
acquired extensive learning and distinguished manners in the numerous
countries in which he had travelled. John Skytte, after having employed
nine years in visiting foreign lands, had become one of the secretaries
of the king’s government. Gustavus received all the instructions
necessary to a prince destined to reign. Skytte directed him in the
study of Latin, of history, and of the laws of his country.
“As Charles was a strict ruler and martial prince, and as Christine
had, besides her beauty, the soul proud and courageous, the education
of the prince was free from softness. He was habituated to labor. At
times in his early youth, particularly after he had arrived at his
tenth year, he was more and more allowed by his father to attend the
deliberations of the Council. He was habituated also to be present at
the audiences of the foreign embassies, and was finally directed by
his royal father to answer these foreign dignitaries in order thus to
accustom him to weighty affairs and their treatment.
“As it was a period of warlike turmoils, there was much resort to
the king’s court, especially by officers,—not only Swedes, but also
Germans, French, English, Scots, Netherlanders, and some Italians and
Spaniards,—who, after the twelve years’ truce then just concluded
between Spain and Holland, sought their fortune in Sweden. These
often waited upon the young prince by the will and order of the king.
Their conversation relating to the wars waged by other nations,
battles, sieges, and discipline, both by sea and land as well as
ships and navigation, did so arouse and stimulate the mind of the
young prince, by nature already thus inclined, that he spent almost
every day in putting questions concerning what had happened at one
place and another in the wars. Besides, he acquired in his youthful
years no little insight into the science of war, especially into the
mode and means,—how a regular war, well directed and suited to the
circumstances of Sweden, should be carried on, having the character and
rules of Maurice, prince of Orange, as a pattern before his eyes. By
the intercourse and converse of these officers, in which each told the
most glorious acts of his own nation, the young prince was enkindled to
act like others, and if possible, to excel them. In his early years he
gained also a complete and ready knowledge of many foreign languages;
so that he spoke Latin, German, Dutch, French, and Italian as purely
as a native, and besides had some knowledge of the Russian and Polish
tongues. When he was of the age of sixteen years, his father made
him grand duke of Finland, and duke of Esthonia and Westmanland, and
presently bestowed upon him the town of Vesteras, with the principal
portion of Westmanland, over which was placed John Skytte to be
governor.”
It is also stated that Gustavus knew Greek, and read Xenophon in that
tongue, of whom he said “that he knew of no writer better than he for a
true military historian.”
For some years after Gustavus ascended the throne, he is said to have
devoted an hour each day to reading, preferring to all others the works
of Grotius, especially his treatise on “War and Peace.”
Young Gustavus possessed great courage, to which was joined striking
benignity of character which he did not inherit from his parents.
King Charles was stern and somewhat heartless, and he was persuaded
by his wife, the mother of Adolphus, to great acts of cruelty towards
the victims of his civil wars, which obscured his nobler qualities.
The mother of Gustavus, though possessed of a strong and positive
character, was too tyrannical to be attractive, and too unrelenting
to exert a loving influence in her household, and the severity of
both husband and wife came often in collision. Adolphus was the only
member of the royal family who dared attempt to pacify his father when
he was angry. Though Gustavus inherited the strong characteristics of
his parents, and possessed his father’s failing of a quick temper,
his nature was so sympathetic and unselfish that his winning manners
attracted the hearts of all as much as the unrelenting sternness of his
parents repelled. Their sternness became in the household only exacting
selfishness; whereas all the severity of his character manifested
itself only in unflinching allegiance to the right and true, and the
steadfast upholding of high and noble principles of state or religion.
Gustavus was scarcely fifteen years of age when he requested to be
placed in command of troops in the war against Russia. But his father,
deeming him too young, refused. When he was seventeen years of age, war
having been declared with Denmark, young Gustavus was pronounced in
the Diet—as the assembly of the Swedish nobles was called—fit to bear
the sword, and he was, according to ancient custom, invested with this
dignity with most splendid ceremony.
In this expedition young Gustavus endured his first trial of warfare,
being present at all the remarkable encounters, holding chief command
in most of them. For during this war King Charles died, and the
command was left to Gustavus, then seventeen years of age. In the first
month of his eighteenth year, he received the crown in the presence
of all the representatives of the estates of Sweden, at the Diet of
Nyköping. He took the title of his father,—king-elect and hereditary
prince of Sweden, of the Goths, and of the Wends. Since the death of
Gustavus Vasa, his grandfather, a period of more than fifty years,
Sweden had not enjoyed a single year of peace.
When Gustavus Adolphus ascended the Swedish throne, in 1611, being then
in his eighteenth year, he found an exhausted treasury, an alienated
nobility, and not undisputed succession, and, with all this, no less
than three wars upon his hands,—one with Denmark then raging,—also
the seeds of two other wars, with Russia and with Poland, which soon
after burst forth. The first fifteen years of his reign were occupied
in bringing these wars to a conclusion; and in these struggles he
won an experience which afterwards proved of great service in making
him illustrious upon a more conspicuous battle-field. We have not
space to describe at length the wars between Sweden and Denmark, nor
her conflicts with Russia and Poland, but must pass on to the more
important period of the history of Gustavus Adolphus, which gives him
a place in the foremost ranks of leadership, and places his name with
Napoleon I., Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, and Charlemagne. It was
not so much what he himself personally accomplished,—though that was
much, for death met him long before the glorious end was reached,—but
it was on account of the vast and momentous train of circumstances he
set in motion, because he stood forth, the only man capable of taking
the helm of the great ship of the Reformation, which, but for him,
aided by the almighty ruling of an Omniscient Providence, seemed to
the finite vision of mankind doomed to destruction. It was not as a
conqueror of vast empires, like Alexander, Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon,
that Gustavus Adolphus is illustrious; but it is because, through the
providence of God, he was made the instrument in helping to achieve
the more important conquest of gaining spiritual liberty of soul
from the bondage of bigotry and superstition. As the champion of the
Reformation, the name of Gustavus Adolphus must be placed amongst the
foremost of the famous rulers of the world.
[Illustration: GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, FROM A PICTURE BY VAN DYCK.]
Gustavus was now thirty-four years of age. He had prosecuted wars with
Denmark, Russia, and Poland, and secured advantageous terms of peace
with these nations. Before he had reached his twentieth year, he had
driven back the invaders of his country, and gained independence for
Sweden. In four years more, his victories over his eastern enemies
enabled him to declare, “Russia cannot now, without our consent, launch
a single boat on the Baltic.”
For twelve years Gustavus had watched the bloody strife between
the defenders of the Reformed Faith in Germany and the powers of
the Catholic league of the Empire and of Spain. What Philip II. of
Spain was to the Catholics as a leader and upholder of the infamous
Inquisition, such a power did Gustavus Adolphus become, in behalf of
the Protestants, as a leader and defender of the Reformation. Holland,
England, and France had earnestly pressed him to conclude the Polish
wars; for the eyes of the suffering adherents of the Reformed Faith in
Germany were turned in hope toward the youthful king of Sweden as their
deliverer. In setting out upon this distant enterprise, Gustavus
Adolphus encountered the gravest obstacles, which he himself did not
fail to realize; for when his resolution was fully formed, and the
consent of his Estates obtained, he exclaimed, “For me there remains
henceforth no more rest but the eternal.”
Though he left Sweden full of hope and courage, it was with the sure
presentiment that he would never return. Gustavus had married Marie
Eleonore, daughter of the elector of Brandenburg; and at the time
of his German expedition left a little daughter behind him, only
four years of age, who was sole heir to the Swedish throne. Gustavus
Adolphus was one of the most skilful commanders of his age. Napoleon I.
was wont to set him among the eight greatest generals whom the world
has ever seen, placing him in the same rank with Alexander the Great,
Hannibal, Julius Cæsar, in the ancient world, with Turenne, Prince
Eugene, Frederic the Great, and himself, in the modern.
Before his time, the only artillery brought into the open field
consisted of huge, heavy guns, slowly dragged along by twelve, sixteen,
or twenty horses or oxen, which, once placed, could only remain in one
position, even though the entire battle had shifted elsewhere. Gustavus
was the first who introduced flying artillery, capable of being rapidly
transferred from one part of the field to another. At a siege, this
valiant Swedish king would in the same day “be at once generalissimo,
chief engineer to lay out the lines, pioneer, spade in hand and in
his shirt digging in the trenches, and leader of a storming party to
dislodge the foe from some annoying outwork. If a party of the enemy’s
cavalry were to be surprised in a night attack, he would himself
undertake the surprise. He, indeed, carried this quite too far, obeying
overmuch the instinct and impulses of his own courageous heart. And
yet there was also a true humility in it all,—a feeling that no man
ought to look at himself as indispensable. ‘God is immortal,’ he was
wont to reply, when remonstrated with on this matter, and reminded of
the fearful chasm, not to be filled by any other, which his death would
assuredly leave.” Richelieu said of him, “The king of Sweden is a new
sun which has just risen, young, but of vast renown. The ill-treated or
banished princes of Germany in their misfortunes have turned their eyes
towards him as the mariner does to the polar star.”
Gustavus was admitted by the ablest statesmen of Europe to be the
ablest general of his time. He was familiar with the military tactics
of ancient and modern times, and he devised a more effective system of
warfare than his predecessors had known. In answer to the question, Why
did Gustavus Adolphus enter into the religious contests of Germany,
and assume the commanding place he filled in that terrible struggle
known as the “Thirty Years’ War”? an able writer gives thus briefly the
reason:—
“First, a deep and genuine sympathy with his co-religionists in
Germany, and with their sufferings, joined to a conviction that he was
called of God to assist them in this hour of their utmost need.
“Secondly, a sense of the most real danger which threatened his own
kingdom, if the entire liberties, political and religious, of northern
Germany were trodden out, and the free cities of the German Ocean,
Stralsund and the rest, falling into the hands of the emperor, became
hostile outposts from which to assail him. He felt that he was only
going to meet a war which, if he tarried at home, would sooner or later
inevitably come to seek him there.
“And, lastly, there was working in his mind, no doubt, a desire to
give to Sweden a more forward place in the world, with a consciousness
of mighty powers in himself, which craved a wider sphere for their
exercise.”
In answer to John Skytte, who remarked that war put his monarchy at
stake, he responded: “All monarchies have passed from one family to
another. That which constitutes a monarchy is not men, it is the law.”
At length, in 1630, Gustavus landed on the island of Usedom, at the
mouth of the Oder.