AXEL OXENSTIERN, his friend, companion, and prime minister,
was of like mind and character with himself. He was high-born,
religiously trained, and thoroughly educated in both theology and law
in the best schools which the world then afforded. He was Sweden's
greatest and wisest counselor and diplomatist, liberal-minded,
true-hearted, dignified, and devout. In religion, in patriotism,
in earnest doing for the profoundest interests of man, he was one with
his illustrious king. He negotiated the Peace of Kmered with Denmark,
the Peace of Stolbowa with Russia, and the armistice with Poland. He
accompanied his king in the campaigns in Germany, having charge of all
diplomatic affairs and the devising of ways and means for the support
of the army in the field, whilst the king commanded it. He won no
victories of war, but he was a choice spirit in creating the means by
which some of the most valuable of such victories were achieved, and
conducted those victories to permanent peace.
When Gustavus Adolphus fell at Lützen a sacrifice to religious
liberty, the whole administration of the kingdom was placed in
Oxenstiern's hands. The congress of foreign princes at Heilbronn
elected him to the headship of their league against the papal power of
Austria; and it was his wisdom and heroism alone which held the league
together unto final triumph. Bauer, Torstensson, and Von Wrangle were
the flaming swords which finally overwhelmed that power, but the brain
which brought the fearful Thirty Years' War to a final close, and
established the evangelical cause upon its lasting basis of security
by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), was that of Axel Oxenstiern, the
very man who sent to Pennsylvania its original colonists as the
founders of a free state.