Great Britain on Sweden

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Great Britain on Sweden

Textbook: David Maland, Europe in the Seventeenth Century. London: MacMillan, second edition, 1983), pp. 148-164, 371-391.
Text in English:

THE PERIOD OF HABSBURG DECLINE 1630-48

The Intervention of Sweden 1630-34
Gustavus Adolphus landed at Peenemunde in Pomerania on 16 July 1630. The reasons for this historic intervention in the affairs of central Europe have been much debated, and are described more fully in Chapter VIII (see p. 378). Briefly, there is broad agreement that the issues uppermost in Gustavus' mind were those which had prompted him to help Stralsund - his anxiety at the Habsburgs' advance upon the Baltic and a deep concern to defend the Protestant cause. His chancellor, Oxenstierna, opposed the venture, reminding Gustavus that he was already at war with Sigismund of Poland, a Roman Catholic claimant to the Swedish throne. Gustavus brushed this aside. The emperor, he claimed, was the more serious danger in the long run both to Sweden and to Protestantism. Moreover, by denying him access to the Baltic Gustavus intended to provide himself with a secure base in Germany from which to direct operations, as circumstances required, not only against the Habsburgs but also against Sweden's ancient enemies, Poland and Denmark.
The first thing to be done was to negotiate a truce with Poland. The Dutch offered valuable diplomatic assistance. They were anxious to see an end to the war which disrupted their vital trade in Polish grain, and they were more than anxious to launch Sweden's troops against the Habsburgs in central Europe. So too were the French, whose agents helped to persuade Sigismund that he could not for the time being hope to defeat Sweden. In the event a truce was signed at Altmark in September 1629 which allowed Sweden, for a period of six years, to occupy Livonia and collect the customs duties in the Prussian ports, a privilege worth 600,000 talers in a good year.
As soon as Gustavus landed in Pomerania the French followed up their diplomatic , offensive. A few months earlier, Richelieu had hoped to stir up Maximilian of Bavaria against the emperor at the Diet of Regensburg, but the dismissal of Wallenstein had eased relations between them, and it was to Gustavus that Richelieu now turned. By the treaty of Bärwalde, signed in January 1631 he promised a subsidy of 200,000 talers every six months if Gustavus agreed to lead 30,000 troops against the emperor and to leave unharmed all Roman Catholic churches in regions where the Catholic religion was established by the Peace of Augsburg.

In retrospect it is clear that Richelieu was too optimistic in hoping to harness so vigorous a warhorse to the Bourbon chariot. Gustavus was a man of independent spirit and although the subsidies were of value they were not entirely indispensable. The price of copper, a valuable commodity in the Swedish budget, had fallen on the Amsterdam- market but there was now the revenue of the Prussian ports. Russia, moreover, Sweden's ally against Poland, had granted,. Gustavus the right to export Russian corn at a low price, which had just gained him a profit in Amsterdam of 400,000 talers.
Anxious to make the outcome as secure as possible Richelieu proposed an alliance between Gustavus and the German Protestants. 'The King of Sweden', he wrote, 'is a sun which has just risen: he is young but of vast renown. The ill-treated or banished princes of Germany have turned to him in their misfortune as the mariner turns to the Pole Star.' John George of Saxony did not agree. Gustavus might talk of the defence of the Reformation but he was nonetheless a foreigner intent on acquiring territory in north Germany. Moreover his invasion would only serve to prolong the war. John George therefore recruited whatever troops were available in north Germany in order to deny their use to Gustavus, and summoned his fellow Lutherans to a conference at Leipzig where it was agreed to ally with the emperor provided that he revoke the Edict of Restitution. It was an offer of historic importance, and a tragedy for Germany that it failed. Ferdinand, however, underrated Gustavus' strength and saw no need to purchase help by compromising over Church property.
Maximilian, too, misread the situation. Anxious above all to safeguard his electoral title and his acquisition of the Palatinate, he was persuaded by Richelieu that the Habsburgs were not to be trusted in this matter while Spanish troops still occupied the Rhineland. In May 1631, therefore, by the Treaty of Fontainebleau Louis XIII undertook to defend the elector's titles and territories provided he did not assist the enemies of France and Sweden. It apparently went unnoticed that although Gustavus agreed in consequence to respect the neutrality of Bavaria and the Catholic League, he had already published his intent of restoring the former elector to the Palatinate.
The Lutheran camp was left in a state of fearful neutrality. If the princes could not support their persecutor, they dared not join their self-appointed saviour - who meanwhile overran Mecklenburg and Pomerania, thereby establishing Swedish control of the Baltic coastline, from Finland to the Danish peninsula. Gustavus had thus achieved one of his principal war aims. What he needed was a settlement to guarantee it, but no one was prepared to deal with him.

Matters were suddenly brought to a head by the sack of Magdeburg in May 1631. One of the most appalling incidents of a war rich in atrocities, the sack resulted indirectly from Wallenstein's dismissal. His army had passed into Tilly's hands, but not the granaries and storehouses which supplied it. Thesee remained safe in Wallenstein's own keeping and, with every justification, he refused to provision Tilly without advance payment. Tilly was in despair.. The emperor had no money to send him, the men deserted daily to enlist in Saxony's new army, and the only remedy seemed to be the seizure of Magdeburg. The city was one of the few to have declared for Gustavus and, it enjoyed a position of strategic importance on the Elbe, but its chief interest for Tilly was that it was well stocked with provisions. The marauding army began the siege in April, and four weeks later Magdeburg fell. Fire, famine and disease destroyed those who survived the sack, leaving a mere five thousand of the thirty thousand inhabitants. Unfortunately for Tilly, the all-essential provisions had also been destroyed.
The news of the sack passed like a shock wave through the Protestant states, doubling and redoubling its effect with every repetition. In the midst of all the uncertainty and dismay, one thing was clear: Tilly's army was in full cry after provisions, and when it occupied Leipzig even John George had to follow the elector of Brandenburg into the Swedish camp. By the end of the summer Gustavus was assured of the alliance of all the north German princes. The way was clear for his advance. At Breitenfeld, in the broad Saxon plain outside Leipzig, he fought his first battle in Germany. His allies were driven from the field, exposing his flank, but his own men stood firm in solid squares, supported by light artillery and small groups of fast moving cavalry. By this combination of strength with manoeuvrability he won the day.

If Gustavus had been nothing more than Richelieu's mercenary he would have marched south into the Habsburg homeland, but the sequel to Breitenfeld proved as alarming to the French as the victory itself had been to the Habsburgs. Gustavus refused to take the risk that John George, whose motives he understood only too well, might betray him in his absence and cut his lines of communication with Pomerania. Instead, and also with a view to committing John George more deeply against the emperor, he compelled the Saxons to invade Bohemia, where they liberated Prague and inspired the return of exiles from all over Europe. Meanwhile the Swedish army marched. westwards to the wealthy Catholic lands of Franconia and the Rhineland, the celebrated 'Priests' alley'. With Catholic loot in abundance to pay his troops Gustavus could afford to forfeit the French subsidies: at the same time he was well placed to control the north German waterways and his lines of communication.

Frankfurt, captured in November 1631, was the constitutional centre of the Holy Roman Empire and it was here that Gustavus held court throughout the winter and pondered upon his purposes. In invading Germany he had summarised his policy in two key words : assecuratio, the need for a secure base in north Germany, and satisfactio, the payment he required from the Protestants to recompense him for saving them from the Edict of Restitution and the Counter-Reformation. These were now to be achieved by his proposal that the German Protestant princes dissolve their connection with the emperor and unite with Sweden. It was not received with any enthusiasm. The Protestants as Gustavus' allies, had already experienced his heavy hand; they had no wish to become his vassals. They could merely play for time and await the outcome of the next campaign.

Gustavus' occupation of the Rhineland was a disaster for Spain since the garrisons protecting the vital lines of communication to the Netherlands were scattered. Worse still, from Spain's point of view, was the action of the French government which, in order to contain the Swedish advance, moved its own troops into Alsace and Lorraine and offered treaties of protection to the Rhineland princes. As a result the archbishop-elector of Trier agreed that the great fortresses of Ehrenbreitstein and Philippsburg (formerly garrisoned by Spain) would be assigned for French use once they had been cleared of Swedish troops.
The emperor meanwhile, with Maximilian's agreement, recalled Wallenstein to take command of his army. Wallenstein had accepted disgrace in 1630 with characteristic fatalism, taking comfort from his horoscope and awaiting a more favourable conjunction of the stars. The terms on which he accepted command have never been known but there is little doubt that he demanded and secured a free hand in the conduct of the war: his first action was to drive John George from Bohemia and recover control of Prague. He then moved south-west towards the upper Danube to meet the Swedish army Which. had taken the field in the spring of 1632. Gustavus had restored the exiled elector Frederick to the Palatinate, driven Maximilian from Bavaria and, by the summer, was poised to advance down the Danube towards Vienna.

Wallenstein handled the crisis with considerable finesse. He occupied a strong position along a ridge of high ground overlooking the Swedish camp at Nuremberg. Gustavus was reluctant to attack but dared not continue his advance with Wallenstein at his heels. In the event he chose to sit things out, but whereas Wallenstein, with Bohemia at his back, could supply his men for months on end, the Swedish army began to run short of provisions. Finally, when Gustavus in some desperation seemed about to advance down the Danube regardless, Wallenstein moved north to threaten the Swedish bases in Pomerania. Gustavus felt obliged to follow and the armies met at Lützen in November 1632. The Swedes drove Wallenstein's army from the field but in victory suffered a blow more serious than any defeat. Gustavus was killed.
Fortunately for Sweden the chancellor, Oxenstierna, was in Frankfurt at the time and was able to take command of the situation. He summoned the Protestant princes to meet him at Heilbronn in order to safeguard the fruits of Gustavus' victories - not least the Swedish occupation of Pomerania - by forming a new Protestant league. John George of Saxony remained aloof but the others accepted Sweden's leadership. So swiftly was the Heilbronn League created that the French ambassador arrived too late to reduce the princes' dependence upon Sweden but nonetheless committed his .government to provide the appropriate subsidies.

Meanwhile, in the Catholic camp, the old quarrel between Maximilian and Wallenstein had broken out afresh, especially because Wallenstein failed to attack the Swedish army in possession of Bavaria. This time, however, Ferdinand was not prepared to defend his servant. While Gustavus lived, Wallenstein could dictate his own terms to the emperor, but from the moment of Gustavus's death he was no 'longer indispensable. Maximilian's enmity and Ferdinand's obvious mistrust drove him to consider desperate measures to safeguard his own position. Controversy surrounds his plans. Certainly he negotiated in secret and separately with Sweden, Saxony and France. This might have been done to divide his enemies: equally, he may have been planning to capitalise his one asset, the army, and sell out to the Heilbronn League, his price being the kingdom of Bohemia.
Ferdinand for his part had no notion what his servant might be up to and in January 1634 he ordered Wallenstein to resign his command. No one knew whether the dismissal would carry any weight with the army. Wallenstein himself never doubted the loyalty of his own officers, and he failed to perceive that some of them were genuinely attached to the emperor and to Catholicism; others were simply ambitious, seeking the promotion which might result from effective service in the emperor's cause. Despite the need for haste, the mutiny was well planned and in February Wallenstein was murdered.

Wallenstein's death gave new life to the emperor. During the past three years he had lost his resilience, prayer and fasting being his only response to the disasters which befell his cause. Now, with Gustavus and Wallenstein dead, he regained his spirits and renewed his efforts to forward the cause of his family and his religion. His son Ferdinand, king of Hungary, was appointed commander in Wallenstein's place, and soon justified himself as a soldier by defending both Bohemia and Bavaria from attacks by the Heilbronn League. Better still, help from Spain was on its way as Olivares mobilised all the resources of Castile for yet one more major campaign against the Dutch and their allies (see p. 226).
Twenty thousand men, under the command of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand landed at Genoa, marched through the Valtelline and joined forces with those of Ferdinand of Hungary in the Tyrol. Together they marched against the Heilbronn League and, at Nördlingen in September 1634 they won one of the most decisive battles of the war. Fifteen desperate charges were made against the impregnable lines of Spanish infantry, but the armies of the League were outnumbered and, in the event, outmanoeuvred. When finally they began to withdraw from the field, the Catholic armies seized the opportunity and launched their own attack. The exhausted Protestants could make no effective resistance, and their retreat became a rout.

The Treaty of Prague and the German War 1635-48
The immediate results of the battle of Nördlingen were startling. The Habsburgs broke the power of the Heilbronn League, recovered control of the Rhineland and strengthened their position in the Netherlands. So great indeed was the triumph that the French government, after years of underhand conflict with Spain, felt itself obliged to intervene more directly by declaring war openly. It was a decision which proved to be disastrous for Spain, and whatever it did for France, assured the triumph of the United Provinces. (See pp. 201-4, 252-8 and 382-5 for an account of warfare outside Germany, in particular in the Netherlands, in the Baltic and between France and Spain.)
These, however, were the long-term consequences, not evident in 1635. Within the empire the victory left Ferdinand II in a commanding position from which he wisely chose to seek an accommodation with the defeated Protestants. He was persuaded by his son that the Edict of Restitution should be abandoned on the grounds that the 'hereditary lands' of Austria and Bohemia could never be secure while the protestant princes of the north remained hostile to the house of Habsburg. This therefore eased the way to settlement, ,and John George of Saxony was the first to accept the emperor's terms, confirmed in the Treaty of Prague, May 1635. He was allowed to retain all lands secularised by his family since 1626 and confirmed in his title to Lusatia. In return, however, he was required to make no alliance with the emperor's enemies. This, the elector hoped, was merely a negative undertaking, but he discovered that its effect was to make him the ally of the emperor against Sweden and thus to exchange one enemy for another.

The other princes, after considering rival proposals by Sweden and France, eventually followed suit by signing agreements similar to that of Prague. The remarkable consequence of this was to unite nearly all the Catholic and Protestant princes of Germany in one army under the leadership of the emperor's son, a position wholly unimaginable before 1635 and one which very nearly led to the destruction of the Swedish power in north Germany. Sweden's troops were unpaid and mutinous; the treaty of Prague removed from her all hope of assistance from the German princes; the expiry of the truce of Altmark (see p. 155) deprived her of the revenues of the Prussian ports and condemned her to renew the war with Poland; and the subsidies offered by France could not be accepted without an undertaking, unacceptable to Oxenstierna, that Sweden abandon her claim to territory in the Rhineland. Baner, the commander of the mutinous garrisons, was at his wits' end to prevent them deserting to Saxony or Denmark and it was not until his government had purchased peace with Poland (Treaty of Stuhmsdorf 1635, see p. 382) that 10,000 men were released from the Polish war to join him in Pomerania. With their support he restored a measure of morale by defeating a Saxon army at Wittstock in 1636 but the emperor's troops drove him back into Pomerania the following year.

Ferdinand II had already died (1636) having successfully ensured the election of his son as Ferdinand III. He had indeed fulfilled the expectations of the emperor Matthias in 1618. Bohemia and Austria had never been so obedient to the government in Vienna, and, both by persecution and by gentler methods, the influence of Protestantism within the 'hereditary lands' had been substantially reduced. Within the empire, no emperor had so dominated events since the reign of Charles V, early in the sixteenth century, and the Edict of Restitution was in many respects the high-water mark of imperial authority. It could not, however, be sustained without the army of Wallenstein, whereas the treaties negotiated after the treaty of Prague left the emperor, having abandoned the edict, in a much stronger position both politically and militarily.
At this juncture Oxenstierna decided to abandon the Rhineland to France and, by the treaty of Hamburg (1638) received an annual subsidy of 400,000 talers. Thus reinforced, Baner took the field with great success. In 1639 he led his army to the gates of Prague, in 1640 to Regensburg where Ferdinand III was addressing the Diet, but on each occasion when it was in his power to deliver a crushing blow to the Habsburgs, he withdrew to allow secret negotiations to take place, the object of which was to provide him with the title to a German principality. Before anything had been resolved he died in the spring of 1641, to be replaced by a tougher, less self-seeking, commander in Torstensson. Within two years he had defeated the Imperialists in the second battle of Breitenfeld (November 1642) and established Swedish outposts in Bohemia and Moravia.

For the next two years Torstensson was recalled to the Baltic coast line to conduct Sweden's campaign against Denmark (see pp. 383-4), but when victory had been secured in the Peace of Brömsebro in 1645 he returned in strength against the emperor's forces. Meanwhile French troops, in alliance with those formerly raised by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar (see p. 202), established mastery of the Upper Rhineland, and began to overrun parts of Bavaria.
Every advantage the emperor had hoped to derive from the Treaty of Prague was now denied him. The 'hereditary lands' were invaded every year and his enemies quartered their troops each winter on the territories of his allies. One such ally had indeed already deserted him. The new elector of Brandenburg, a more resolute and imaginative prince than his father, had succeeded him in 1640, determined to take the risk of repudiating the Treaty of Prague and seek instead the support of Sweden, France and the United Provinces (see p. 401). His example was eventually followed by Saxony, Bavaria and others, not least in defying the emperor's ban by accepting separate invitations to the peace conferences assembling in Westphalia.
By 1648 the emperor's position resembled that of his father in the worst months of 1631-32, with Bavaria under French invasion and a Swedish army at the gates of Prague.

The Peace of Westphalia 1648
For many years before this critical position had been reached in 1648 negotiations to end the war had been intermittently in progress in Westphalia. As early as 1641 the emperor agreed to meet representatives of the French and Swedish governments - separately at Münster and Osnabrück respectively - but it was many months before serious discussion took place. Each government awaited the outcome of a campaign before deciding whether to raise or lower its terms and the second battle of Breitenfeld (1642), for example, while it increased the anxieties of the emperor to achieve a settlement, correspondingly reduced those of Sweden. A new turn was given to events in 1643 by the decision of Brandenburg, Bavaria and others to insist upon sending their own representatives to Westphalia, so that the emperor's freedom of action was substantially restricted. Even more humiliating from the emperor's point of view was the French demand that Spain be excluded from the negotiations. Mazarin (see p. 203) was resolutely determined to deny Spain any opportunity to restore her influence in the Rhineland and, by concluding a peace settlement with the other European powers, to leave Spain the more vulnerable to a French offensive thereafter. It was a measure of the emperor's rapidly worsening position in Germany that, despite the invaluable help given to his father by Spain in 1619 and 1634, he should find himself unable to protect Spain's interests in Westphalia.

In December 1645 the emperor recognised the danger of his position and sent his closest adviser, Trautmannsdorf, with full powers to bring about a settlement. A detailed examination of the policies and proposals of the governments of France, Sweden, Brandenburg, Spain and the United Provinces, and of the problems they faced in determining these policies, is provided in the chapters appropriate to these countries (see pp. 203, 226, 258, 384 and 401). The most important issues affecting the outcome of the negotiations and with which Trautmannsdorf himself had to deal were, in general, as follows:

1. Christina of Sweden was determined to bring peace to her country, partly because the continuation of the war prolonged the period in office of her father's advisers. On the other hand she recognised the military strength of Sweden 1645-1648 and was not prepared to forfeit the fruits of her father's victories.
2. The elector of Brandenburg, recognising that Sweden was determined to retain Pomerania showed unusual diplomatic skill in soliciting the support of France in particular to secure compensation quite out of proportion to the territory lost to Sweden.
3. The French government, having successfully excluded Spain from the negotiations, was resolved to make gains on its eastern frontier, to support the German states against the emperor and, when civil unrest became serious at home in 1648, to secure a settlement without delay.
4. The Dutch government recognised that although it had little to fear from Spain, the conquest of the Spanish provinces was out of the question. It determined therefore to secure the best possible terms to conclude its Eighty Years with Spain.

In the event it was the Dutch who settled matters by private negotiation with the Spanish representatives. In January 1648, in a separate treaty of Münster, Spain granted full independence to the United Provinces, partly because the Dutch could not be defeated, partly because this would deprive the French of a powerful ally in their continuing war with Spain. The possibility of other bilateral agreements so alarmed the other governments that their agents in Westphalia were ordered to conclude the negotiations as swiftly as possible.
All the agreements and compromises negotiated by Trautmannsdorf were finally put together in the two treaties of Munster and Osnabrück. These treaties, along with the separate Treaty of Münster between Spain and the United Provinces, and the Treaty of Brömsebro (1645), provided or confirmed the solutions to nearly every international crisis which had occurred in the first half of the seventeenth century.
The main points of what was collectively to be known as the Peace of Westphalia may be summarised as follows:

1. To all intents and purposes the separate states of the Holy Roman Empire were recognised as sovereign members of the Diet, free to control their own affairs independently of each other and of the emperor.
2. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio was reaffirmed, but construed to relate only to public life, so that attendance at the established church was no longer compulsory and freedom of private worship was permitted. Moreover, any subsequent change of religion by the ruler was not to affect that of his subjects.
3. Calvinism was recognised within the Confession of Augsburg and was thus protected by the Augsburg settlement of 1555. The Edict of Restitution, shelved in 1635, was abandoned and, except within the Bavarian and Austrian lands, the retention of all land secularised before 1624 was allowed.
4. In matters of religion there were to be no majority decisions taken by the Diet. Instead both sides were to meet separately to prepare their cases and disputes were to be settled only by compromise.
5. Maximilian retained his electoral title and the Upper Palatinate.
6. A new electoral title was created for Charles Louis, the son of the former Elector Palatine, on his restoration to the Lower Palatinate.
7. John George of Saxony was confirmed in his acquisition of Lusatia.
8. The terms of the Treaty of Xanten (1614), assigning Cleves, Mark and Ravensburg to the elector of Brandenburg, were confirmed. In addition, Frederick William acquired eastern Pomerania and the bishoprics of Cammin, Minden and Halberstadt, along with the succession to Magdeburg.
9. The emperor's claim to hereditary rights in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia was established. The Sundgau was surrendered to France.
10. The duke of Nevers was confirmed in his inheritance of Mantua, Montferrat and Casale (Treaty of Cherasco 1631).
11. Sweden had acquired her mainland provinces of Jemteland, Herjedalen and Halland, with the islands of Gotland and Osel by the Treaty of Brömsebro (1645). The Peace of Westphalia confirmed her control of the river-mouths of the Oder, the Elbe and Weser - virtually the entire German coastline by the occupation of western Pomerania, Stettin, Stralsund, Wismar, the dioceses of Bremen and Verden and the islands of Rügen, Usedom and Wollin. She was paid an indemnity of 5 million talers.
12. France acquired the Sundgau and, in effect, Lower Alsace, though the six free cities along with the city and bishopric of Strassburg retained their membership of the Diet. In Lorraine, her occupation of the bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun (Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis 1559) was confirmed, along with her more recent gains of Moyenvic, Baccarat and Rambervillers. Other acquisitions included Pinerolo in Savoy, and Breisach and Philippsburg on the right bank of the Rhine.
13. The United Provinces were declared independent of Spain and also of the Holy Roman Empire.
14. Spain was excluded from the Westphalian settlement. Having been forced to give way on all points to the Dutch, her position in the Rhineland was substantially weakened by the French acquisitions and by the restoration of the elector Palatine. The apportioning of Lorraine was determined without reference to Spain or to her ally the duke. Left alone in her war with France, no prince of the Empire, not even the emperor himself might come to her aid, unless Imperial territory was involved - and for this purpose Franche Comté, despite its membership of the Diet, was specifically excluded.

Earlier historians have tended to exaggerate the significance of the Thirty Years War. The war and the peace treaty, they claimed, marked the end of an epoch, paved the way for the greatness of France, discredited the emperor's authority in Germany, replaced religious standards in public life by those of secular self-interest, ruined the economy of the German states, and brutalised the German peoples so totally that they could never again become a civilised race. All these claims, save the last which is nonsense,. did contain some element of truth, but it would be wrong to suppose that these developments were necessary consequences of the war. Some of them would have occurred in any case; others had already taken place before 1618. France did not owe her ascendancy in Europe solely to the disintegration of the empire, nor was Ferdinand III's power any more negligible than that of Ferdinand I, Rudolf or Matthias. It was only in contrast with the temporary, and unexpected, triumphs enjoyed by his father in 1629 and 1635 that his own authority appeared to have been discredited.
It is true that religious zeal, as a dominant factor in political behaviour, became less evident in Europe after 1648, and, with some hesitation, this process may be described as the secularisation of public life, or the triumph of raison d'etat. Men were as devout or as pagan as they had always been, but their public utterances, their justification of their actions to the world, were being phrased in different terms. Warfare after 1648 was more frequently waged for reasons of national security, commercial ambition or dynastic pride. It would, however, be wrong to assume this to be a consequence of the Thirty Years War.

Nonetheless the negotiators at Westphalia were justifiably criticised for betraying the religious principles which had been so vital an ingredient in the conflict of the past thirty years. Pope Innocent X uttered his formal condemnation of it as 'null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time'. More poignantly, the Bohemian scholar Comenius gave vent to the cry of the Calvinist exile: 'They have sacrificed us at the treaties of Osnabrück...I conjure you by the wounds of Christ that you do not forsake us who are persecuted for the sake of Christ'. But the truth of the matter was expressed by an anonymous writer: 'This war has lasted so long that they [the German princes] have left it more out of exhaustion than from a sense of right behaviour.'
What, then, had been achieved? The remarkable thing was that within the Empire so little had been changed. Alsace and western Pomerania were now in foreign hands; Saxony, Brandenburg and Bavaria had increased. their territory, the elector Palatine had lost much of his, and Bohemia had been brought entirely under the control of Austria. Apart from this, the situation established in 1648 was fundamentally that of 1618. The Catholic powers had hoped to recover the land secularised since 1559, the emperor to revive Imperial authority, and Sweden to control the destinies of the German Protestants; but none of these ambitions was achieved. The Empire remained, as it had been since 1559, an untidy collection of autonomous states, some Catholic, some Protestant. If the fighting had stopped in 1621, in 1629, or even in 1635, there might have been many changes to record, but its wearisome prolongation had tinally brought Germany full circle, to perpetuate for another hundred years the political fragmentation of the past hundred.

Yet there were some significant differences of emphasis and direction. The Palatinate was not again to be the hub of international Calvinist politics; and, if Saxony was a spent force, Brandenburg was a potent new one. The efforts of Ferdinand II to impose Imperial authority, of a kind which no emperor had exercised for centuries, came near to success in 1629 and 1635, but the oligarchic, federalist, centrifugal forces within the Empire, assisted by the armies of Sweden and France, had rendered vain his unifying, authoritarian and monarchic aspirations, and, in so doing, had ensured the survival of religious diversity within the Empire.
Ferdinand III accepted this because his ambitions lay in a different direction. As head of the House of Austria, his power had been strengthened by the years of war. Hungary was a problem that had yet to be solved, but the other 'hereditary lands' had been reduced to order. In Bohemia and, no less important, in Upper and Lower Austria, the Estates had been deprived of their powers, the administration was centralised on Vienna and religious uniformity was established. In addition, Ferdinand was recognised as the hereditary sovereign of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia: The contrast between the overall position of Ferdinand III and that of Rudolf or Matthias indicates the full measure of the revolution which had taken place. The price, in territorial terms, had not been high - Lusatia, sold to Saxony for support against the Bohemian rebels, and the Sundgau; Trautmannsdorf had brilliantly contrived that the gains of Sweden and France were made at the expense of powers other than Austria. Consequently, the Austrian house of Habsburg was left free to fulfil its dynastic ambition outside the Empire, to make Austria once again the Eastern March against the Ottoman Turks, and, in pursuit of its mission to liberate Hungary, to create the Danubian monarchy.
Economic trends and differences of emphasis are less easy to discern than shifts in political power and are the subject of considerable debate. That there was misery endured throughout the hideous progression of campaigns and sieges, with the slaughter, plague and famine which attended them, cannot be questioned. It was not, however, so widespread or devastating as was sometimes put about later by propagandists to heighten the achievement of their princes in creating prosperity out of adversity. Not only is it impossible to assume a uniform condition, whether of improvement or of decline, before or after the wars; but there is also disagreement about the nature of the evidence and how to interpret it (see The Thirty Years War ed. T.K. Rabb) Population figures for example, even when reliable, are not always interpreted in the same way. A fall in numbers, evidence of deaths or permanent migration to one historian, is taken by another to indicate merely a temporary evacuation or a failure to investigate correctly the compensatory number of births.
Much of the decline, where evidence of decline can be established, is often attributed to events preceding the outbreak of war; most regional studies, however, leave little doubt that in the areas selected for scrutiny the consequences of the war itself were disastrous. 'The death and destruction was extensive: even worse, it was prolonged. When all allowance is made for the exaggeration and propaganda of stories about the horrors of war, there is- still no reason to discount the reality of devastation, plague, famine and the sheer barbarism of the soldiery.' (Kamen The Iron Century) .
Though the warfare was destructive it was not universal. The areas worst affected were those of the greatest strategic importance - the Saxon plain, the Rhine crossings, the roads across the Black Forest and those leading to Vienna and Prague. Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck and Danzig, on the other hand, grew rich from the war and were spared the presence of enemy troops within their gates.
Whatever the precise nature and extent of the economic consequences of the German wars, the conclusion of the conflict was the prerequisite of recovery, and recovery could be surprisingly rapid. A good harvest safely gathered in made all the difference: wooden houses were rebuilt, traders moved freely across the land and births began to outnumber deaths. For most Germans it was the harvest of 1650 which was celebrated as the first fruits of the peace.

On 22 August 1650, in the city of Ulm and throughout its neighbouring villages, thanksgiving feasts and services were held, when the memories of past sufferings and the hope of a peaceful future were alike commemorated in a prayer written specially to be said in every pulpit:
'We thank you, Dear Lord, that you have given us peace after years of suffering, turmoil and war, and that you have granted our pleas. We thank you for pulling us like a brand out of the fire, allowing us to rescue our life almost as if it were itself war booty ... Oh Lord, you have indeed treated us with mercy that our city and lands, which had previously been full of fear and horror, are now full of joy and happiness. We beseech you, who has saved us from the sword, mercifully to let our corn grow again, that we may multiply and prosper once more ... Oh God, the lover of peace, grant us henceforth permanent peace and leave our boundaries and houses in calm and peace that the voice of the war messenger shall not frighten us and the man of war touch us not.'
As for the powers outside the Empire, it was not yet time to apportion the laurels of victory. Sweden was well on the way towards her goal of Baltic supremacy, Spain had suffered serious losses in north Italy and the Netherlands, and France had extended her hold over the Rhineland; but it was not until 1660, when the treaties of the Pyrenees and Oliva had been signed, that we can think in terms of one period ending and another beginning. The Thirty Years War, in fact, continued without any appreciable break for another twelve years.

SWEDEN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY IN THE BALTIC
1600- 1700

THE RISE OF SWEDEN Gustavus Adolphus 1610-32
The inhabitants of north-eastern Sweden, led by Gustavus Vasa, had rebelled against Danish rule in 1523 and the fact that both countries subsequently adopted Lutheranism had in no way diminished their hostility. By the end of the century the Danes had in Christian IV (1588-1648) a vigorous and intelligent king who was determined to recover the ground lost by his predecessors. Sweden was ill equipped to resist. The southern provinces of Blekinge, Scania and Halland remained under Danish occupation and her one Atlantic port, Älvsborg (Gothenburg) was easily blockaded and almost impossible to defend. Denmark, moreover, by her possession of the islands of Bornholm, Gotland and Osel was able to dominate the Baltic from Copenhagen to the Gulf of Riga.
In order to strengthen their position in the Baltic Gustavus Vasa and his sons, Eric XIV and John III, had established bases along the coasts of Finland and Estonia, but this had served only to bring them into conflict with Russia. To complicate matters further, John III had married a Polish princess and his son Sigismund, brought up by her as a Roman Catholic and elected king of Poland in 1587, was therefore unacceptable to the Lutheran Swedes when he succeeded John in 1592. After six years of dispute and unrest, he was deposed in favour of his uncle Charles in 1598. Sigismund, no less vigorous than Christian IV of Denmark, was equally as determined to recover the throne, and Sweden accordingly was threatened on all sides by dangerous enemies.
Even more dangerous to Sweden were the symptoms of internal dissension. The nobles considered themselves the natural leaders of Sweden; they had been affronted by Gustavus Vasa's assumption of royalty in 1523, and their jealousy had not been allayed by his gifts of Church land. They argued that the monarchy should be elective, and the subsequent depositions of Gustavus's eldest son Eric XIV, and of Sigismund I, the one for being insane, the other for being a Catholic, gave practical force to their theory. They objected in particular to their exclusion from the council (the riksrad) and to the novel practice of the Vasa kings in summoning representatives of the Estates (the riksdag) to approve matters which, in the nobles' opinion, were beyond their competence. As disaffection grew, many of the nobles returned to their Danish allegiance, others chose to follow Sigismund, while the remainder determined to withhold allegiance from Charles IX's son when he should succeed his father, unless he agreed to guarantee them a monopoly of power both in making policy and in administering it.
When Charles died in 1611 the nobles found his successor unexpectedly conciliatory. Though Gustavus Adolphus was not a man to be readily intimidated he recognised that Sweden was too small a country to withstand the secession from public service of so important a section of the community. In order to bring the nobles back into responsible political activity, therefore, he disarmed them by wholly conceding to the demands presented by their leader Axel Oxenstierna. The working out of his promises, enshrined in the charter of 1612, was to transform the government of Sweden over the next twenty years.

The successful implementation of the Charter depended upon the close co-operation which developed between Gustavus and Oxenstierna. In the latter were personified the best qualities of public service, and he proved to be an admirable foil to the volatile king, being practical, cautious, diplomatic and a gifted bureaucrat: when Gustavus complained, 'If we were all as cold as you we should freeze', he retorted, 'If we were all as hot as your majesty we should burn'. Gustavus was indeed a fiery monarch, and it was his personality as much as his concessions which transformed a jealous nobility into a body of loyal officials. A big, clumsy man with tawny beard and hair, il re d'oro to the Italian mercenaries, immensely strong, with the fierce temper, the easy manners and the blunt directness of an infantry officer, he inspired others with his boundless self-confidence: 'He thinks the ship cannot sink that carries him,' wrote the English ambassador. But self-confidence and a manly gait were not all. His father had prepared him well for the task of kingship, training him in military skills, making him fluent in five languages and able to understand four more, and instilling in him a respect for the institution of monarchy as intense as his devotion to the Lutheran Church. In addition to his education, Gustavus possessed natural powers of leadership which made him a national figure, able to win the nobles back into public life without forfeiting the affection of the other estates. The nobles followed him despite themselves because, like Henry IV of France, he commanded both loyalty and affection.
Important changes, nonetheless, were made as a result of the Charter, and the first affected the composition of the riksrad. The low-born secretaries and the bailiffs who ran the royal estates in the provinces, were replaced by members of the nobility with authority to review royal policy. In the initial stages this was not of any great significance since meetings were infrequent and few attended: Gustavus, moreover, was so personally acceptable that the suspicions of the leading nobles were soon swept away. Before long, in place of scrutinising royal policy they had begun to identify with it and in 1625 the riksrad under Oxenstierna's chairmanship became a Regency council, the government of Sweden to all intents and purposes while Gustavus fought abroad.

In their criticism of the riksrad in 1612 the nobles had complained not only about their exclusion from it but equally about its inefficiency. The Vasa kings with their handful of secretaries and bailiffs had failed to cope with the growing complexity of government work. Primitive and peripatetic, the system depended upon the king's capacity to be his own chief bureaucrat when what was needed was an expanded civil service, operating permanently in Stockholm. As a consequence of the charter, therefore, members of the noble families were recruited to staff a number of new departments of state. The development was piecemeal, the differentiation of function determined by a series of experiments. The-judicature Ordinance of 1614 created the Supreme Court under its High Steward, the Exchequer
Ordinance of 1618 regularised the work of the Treasury, and in 1635 the experience of the past two decades was given expression in the Form of Government. This established the main structures of an administration organised into five colleges (departments), under the admiral, the treasurer, the high steward, the marshal and the chancellor. The nomenclature was that of medieval government, and so were the sources of revenue, since the administration was maintained by the produce of crown lands assigned to the separate colleges; but because of the co-operation between king and nobles the system worked admirably, withstanding the burdens of perpetual warfare, of assimilating conquered territories and of governing in the absence of a king whose reign was spent with the army.
Co-ordinating and directing everything was the chancellor, Oxenstierna, and since two of the other four senior offices were held by his relatives he was able to supervise the entire administration to good effect. The Chancery, in addition to serving as the principal channel of. communication between the king and his civil service, handled matters of foreign policy, religion and local government. The reform of local government was in fact one of the most crucial achievements of the reign, and the administration of the royal bailiffs was superseded in 1624 by the creation of twenty-three districts whose governors enjoyed power not unlike those of the intendants of France.
Among the other reforms of the reign the position of the riksdag was regularised. In 1617 its composition was confirmed, with its four estates - the nobility, the clergy, the townsmen and the free peasantry - and in 1632 its consent was declared necessary for changes in taxation. The nobles, however, remained suspicious of its rôle lest a future king use it to by-pass their control of the riksrad, and although the riksdag's legislation was declared valid it was denied the power to initiate legislation on its own account.
The extent of the reforms achieved by Gustavus and Oxenstierna should not be exaggerated. Inefficiency was not always eliminated, it was many years before the shortage of trained administrators had been overcome and the lines of demarcation were never as clear in practice as the Form of Government suggested. The main achievement was to recruit the nobles into government service, cementing the new alliance between them and their king, and to create an administrative system capable of governing not only Sweden but also an empire which, under Gustavus' direction, expanded along the shores of the Baltic into the heart of Germany.

Indeed, perhaps the most important consequence of the Charter of 1612 was that it left Gustavus free to deal with his enemies abroad. Chief among these was Christian of Denmark whose forces had taken Älvsborg and were poised to strike at the heart of the kingdom. Christian, however, was unaware of the true weakness of the Swedish army, and lacked the funds to finance a new campaign: in addition, his troops around Älvsborg had been disconcerted by the bitter resistance maintained by the local peasantry. The conquest of Sweden, though conceivably within his grasp, appeared to involve a prolonged war of attrition, too expensive to sustain, and he settled instead for the retention of Älvsborg. By the Treaty of Knäred (1613) Älvsborg was assigned to Denmark until it could be redeemed for 1,000,000 riksdaler, a price well beyond the Swedish king's resources. This saved the day for Sweden. The Danes' success, moreover, brought the Dutch upon the scene, (see p. 243) anxious to re-establish Sweden as a counterweight to Danish power in the Baltic, and it was with the help of Dutch loans that Älvsborg was redeemed in 1619.
Meanwhile on the eastern frontier the Russians had become involved in a civil war which afforded Swedish troops the opportunity to seize the important city of Novgorod. When a new tsar, Michael Romanoff, had defeated his rivals he secured peace with Gustavus by offering generous terms at Stolbova in 1617. Sweden evacuated Novgorod but was left in possession of Ingria, Karelia, Ingermannland -- the bridge between Finland and Estonia - and the isle of Kexholm (see map 14). This deprived Russia of her access to the Baltic and made Sweden controller of her Baltic trade.
As for Poland, a series of short-term truces were agreed upon until Gustavus, attracted by the valuable customs duties to be collected at the mouths of the Polish rivers, invaded Livonia in 1621 and laid siege to Riga. Standing at the mouth of the Dvina and controlling one-third of Poland's exports, Riga was one of the great cities of the Baltic: it was also a great fortress, and it was the measure of Gustavus' success that within ten years he had brought his kingdom so successfully from the brink of defeat that he could now achieve so great a prize. The conquest of Livonia afforded Gustavus a golden opportunity to reward noble families with new estates - and unruly peasants were transported to work them. By 1650, in fact, the Swedish nobility controlled nearly half of the province and government offices were reserved for Swedes or Swedish-speaking Livonians.

From 1626 to 1629 Gustavus challenged Sigismund for control of Polish Prussia, a coastal region between the mouths of the Niemen and the Vistula, whose ports provided an average income of over 600,000 riksdalers in customs duties. Sigismund, having other enemies to contend with in the Turks and the Russians (see p. 424), was unable to contain the Swedish advance, and was fortunate that Gustavus allowed his own attention to be distracted by events in north Germany. Wallenstein's growing power and his assumption of the title `Admiral of the Baltic' compelled Gustavus to send aid to Stralsund in 1628 (see p. 143).
Wallenstein's military ambitions were the more ominous since the Habsburg emperor who employed him was both a champion of the Counter-Reformation and an ally of Poland. His victories in north Germany had been "exploited to enforce an Edict of Restitution: it was not too fanciful to suppose that further victories in the Baltic might presage a restoration of the Catholic Vasas to the Swedish throne. 'All the wars which are going on in Europe,' wrote Gustavus, 'are linked together and are directed to one end' - the triumph of the Habsburgs and the defeat of Protestantism. So great was the emergency that he even invited Christian of Denmark, one of his bitterest enemies, to make common cause with him to save Stralsund. 'I now see with little difficulty that the projects of the House of Habsburg are directed against the Baltic; and that by a mixture of force and favour the United Provinces, my own power and finally yours are to be driven from it.'

Many years later when it would have been only too easy to disassociate himself from it all Oxenstierna endorsed Gustavus' action. 'It is certain that had his late Majesty not betaken himself to Germany with his army, the emperor would today have a fleet upon these seas. And if the emperor had once got hold of Stralsund, the whole coast would have fallen to him, and here in Sweden we should never have enjoyed a minute's security.' This was not however his judgement in 1629 when he argued that Gustavus should concentrate all his efforts to secure the defeat of Poland and strongly opposed his decision to free himself for Germany by seeking a truce with Sigismund.
It was not in any case a propitious moment for negotiation since Sigismund, reinforced by Wallenstein, had just defeated Gustavus at Stuhm, but the Polish Diet, unlike its ruler, wanted peace and the representatives of France and the United Provinces worked hard on Sweden's behalf. France was eager to enlist Gustavus' help against the Habsburgs without delay, and the Dutch were desperately anxious to put an end to the war which for three years had more than halved the profits of their staple trade with the Polish Prussian ports. The outcome was the Six Year Truce of Altmark, and Sweden, for the period of the truce was to occupy Livonia and enjoy the revenues of the Prussian ports. Within months Gustavus had landed in Pomerania to intervene with dramatic effect in the events of the Thirty Years War. (For an account of Gustavus' campaigns, see pp. 148-52).

Historians are agreed that the French subsidies, offered in the Treaty of Barwalde (1631) were an inducement but not the main reason for the invasion of Germany: for the rest there is general disagreement about Gustavus' underlying purposes. Some maintain that he was a military adventurer, fighting for the sake of fighting and ready to chase the horizon on any pretext whatsoever: others interpret his actions more sympathetically and identify his inner preoccupation with the idea of a just war: others, again, stress the defensive strategy behind the relief of Stralsund. Nonetheless, when Gustavus told the riksrad that he proposed to occupy Pomerania, 'to guarantee Sweden's position for a few years to come', he had more than defence in mind. Pomerania was not only, after Livonia and Polish Prussia, the next target to offer itself as he conducted his successful campaign along the Baltic littoral, but also a base from which he could threaten both Denmark and Poland. At the same time Gustavus believed his own propaganda, which cast him in the role of Protestant Champion against the fell hand of the Habsburgs, so that for him the cause of Sweden and that of the Reformation were inseparable. His purposes were summarised, therefore, in two key words: assecuratio, the need for a secure base in northern Germany, and satisfactio, the indemnity he required from the north German Protestants to recompense him for saving them from the Edict of Restitution and the Counter-Reformation.
No matter how precisely Gustavus defined his terms they were in the event capable of infinite expansion.

'If we should conquer,' he said in council, 'it will be in our power to do as we please.' If, as is possible, his words were deliberately vague in order to evade precise definition of his ambitions, it is none the less true that once launched upon his campaigns these ambitions fed upon success. The victory at Breitenfeld and the triumphal progress through the Rhineland enlarged his appetite. The saviour of north Germany required payment. It was no longer Pomerania alone but Magdeburg too. Moreover, as the Rhineland cities fell to his onset, south Germany beckoned alluringly.
By 1632 Gustavus had no doubts about his mission to dominate Germany. Continued success brought out in him the autocratic streak and the arrogant conceit of the presumptive world conqueror. Justly perhaps, he scorned the military ability of the Lutheran princes, and compelled their assent to treaties of contingent federation, a form of subsidiary alliance which gave him full control of their armies. If any protested the right, as an ally, to be consulted, he was brusquely informed that his lands were already at Sweden's mercy by right of conquest. It required a special mission by Oxenstierna to smooth the ruffled vanities of his sovereign's allies; but there was more at stake than vanity. The treaties of contingent federation could too easily become stepping stones to a political federation with Sweden, a corpus bellicum et politicum which Gustavus actually proposed when encamped at Frankfurt.
If Gustavus' aims have perplexed posterity, his genius for military affairs astounded his contemporaries. A great admirer of Maurice of Nassau (see p. 240) he learned from him to adopt new tactics and to develop new weapons: indeed, where Maurice had armed his cavalry with pistols in order to fire into the enemy and wheel away to reload, Gustavus trained his to charge with the sabre after discharging their firearms. His greatest achievement was to revive the role of the infantry who had become accustomed to scrumming together in massive formations, whether in defence or attack.

Gustavus regrouped them in smaller units and thus enabled them to change front and to move their ground with speed and efficiency, as was well demonstrated at Breitenfeld when the Saxon army fled exposing the Swedish flank. Since the smaller units were more exposed he provided groups of cavalry to defend them, and equipped them with light artillery. His famous 'leathern gun', a three-pounder with a very thin bronze barrel, bound with rope and mastic enclosed in a sheath of hard leather, was developed by him before 1627, though its successor in 1629, an all metal four-pounder, proved rather more effective. The value of these guns was that they were easily portable and, relatively speaking, quick-firing. Three men were enough to transport and to operate one in the battlefield, and it was the possession of forty-two of these at Breitenfeld, against Tilly's ponderous twenty-four pounders, which helped to give the Swedes their victory..
Regulations introduced in 1620 improved the recruitment and payment of conscripts. These were assigned to designated royal estates from which were derived the rents which paid their wages and where they could be billeted when not on active service. Swedish troops, however, although they provided a useful stiffening among the ranks of Gustavus' army, comprised barely onefifth of his strength at Breitenfeld and the proportion diminished as the range of his operations extended. Indeed, contrary to the legend, embroidered by later ages, of blonde Nordic giants fighting with matchless valour for their king and their faith against the mean spirited mercenaries of north Germany, the Swedish army was almost as polyglot as its rivals. What distinguished it was the regularity with which it was paid, the vital factor which made recruitment easy and reconciled troops to the harsh discipline and training upon which the success of Gustavus' tactics depended.

The cost of maintaining a standing army of ever-increasing size imposed heavy burdens of taxation upon a relatively impoverished kingdom. Stockholm, the capital, was an established commercial centre and Älvsborg thrived by reason of its position west of the Sound - supplying timber and hemps to the Dutch dockyards without payment of dues to Denmark - but the other cities lagged behind them in wealth. The government therefore encouraged foreign merchants and craftsmen to settle in Sweden, and Alvsborg in particular became virtually a butch colony.
Among the immigrants one of the most enterprising was Louis de Geer who, in co-operation with the Swedish government, virtually created an armaments industry and played a major role in the exploitation of the country's mineral resources. In the Stora Kopperberg at Falun, Sweden enjoyed possession of the largest deposit of copper in Europe, at a time when copper was in great demand for the manufacture of coinage and artillery. In 1619 Gustavus Adolphus set up a company to exploit the mine so that, with the aid of Dutch capital and Dutch engineers, 3,000 tons of copper were produced annually until the ores were exhausted by the middle of the century. From this production the Swedish government initially enjoyed over 300,000 riksdalers in annual royalties. Iron too was mined, again with Dutch aid, and production was raised from 5,000 tons in 1620 to 20,000 by 1630.

Sweden nonetheless could not afford to finance her army overseas from her own wealth and resources. It had taken more than six years of heavy taxation, and a Dutch loan, to raise 1,000,000 riksdalers to redeem Älvsborg: one regiment of foot cost approximately 1,000,000 riksdalers a year. In 1626 moreover, the copper market collapsed for a 'period of years when the first imports of Japanese copper arrived in Amsterdam and the Spanish government abandoned its copper currency and returned to silver.
By 1629, of course, Sweden had secured the right to collect the customs duties of the Polish Prussian ports, worth up to 600,000 riksdalers a year. In the same year the Swedish navy raised a further 584,000 riksdalers by levying tolls on all ships entering the Baltic ports under its control. On top of this Gustavus derived considerable help from his allies. The French promised 400,000 riksdalers a year by the Treaty of Barwälde and the Russian government, Sweden's ally against Poland since the Treaty of Stolbova, sold grain at a subsidised price to Gustavus' agents who in 1630 made a clear profit on the Amsterdam market of 400,000 riksdalers.
Despite these additional and valuable sources of revenue Gustavus found it impossible to undertake the invasion of Germany without making further demands upon his subjects at home. In addition to meeting the normal expenses of government the Swedes raised over 2,300,000 riksdalers in 1630 to send to Germany. It was an intolerable burden and one which could not be sustained, even though the nobility voluntarily agreed to make its own contribution. In 1631, however, Gustavus was master of Germany, and as a result of the forced contributions levied by the army the additional taxes demanded at home fell to 1,147,278 in 1631, to 476,439 in 1632 and to 128,577 in 1633. From 1631 in fact it had become the unchallengeable assumption of Swedish foreign policy that warfare was required to pay for itself.

The Regency and Reign of Queen Christina 1632-54
Although it was well known that Gustavus always fought alongside his men in battle and thus incurred the risks which beset the humblest soldier, Sweden was utterly unprepared for his death in 1632 and the succession of his young daughter Christina. His chancellor, Oxenstierna, was in the Rhineland when the news broke and moved swiftly to Dresden in order to keep a watchful eye on John George of Saxony. From there, too, he arranged matters in Sweden where the riksdag, summoned at his orders to receive the news of Gustavus' death, entrusted the conduct of the regency to the riksrad. This in effect gave Oxenstierna all the power he needed. Not only was he an able and loyal public servant, but in addition his leadership was acknowledged by the other noble families. Moreover, he held the most important office in the administration. while two of the other four great offices were held by a brother and a cousin.
The situation in Germany was less easy to control. Saxony was a reluctant ally, as were the other German Protestants, and Richelieu was eager to mobilise the anti-Habsburg states of the Empire under the leadership of France. In the event the formation of the Heilbronn League (see p. 152), despite the unwelcome intrusion of the French in its councils, served Sweden's purpose well enough in the aftermath of Lützen.

After Nördlingen, however, (see p. 154) Oxenstierna was in serious difficulties. When the Swedish army mutinied for lack of pay he was more or less made prisoner by the garrison in Magdeburg: the German princes began to make their peace with the emperor; France offered assistance in the Treaty of Compiegne but only on condition that Sweden renounce her claims in the Rhineland; Denmark threatened war, and the Truce of Altmark with Poland was about to expire. Of all these problems the most crucial was the need to avert a renewal of war with Poland, but the riksrad, in Oxenstierna's absence, completely bungled its own negotiations with the Poles by making public its minimum terms before the settlement had been concluded. In the event the truce was renewed at Stuhmsdorf and Sweden remained in occupation of Livonia, but the Prussian ports and their valuable revenues reverted to Poland.
Against the odds Baner, the Swedish commander-in-chief, held together the remnants of the Swedish army so that Oxenstierna could return to Stockholm to reassert his authority and to prevent the Queen Mother marrying Christina to a Danish prince. Denmark was indeed the enemy Oxenstierna most feared after Poland. Germany was of less importance provided that Gustavus' conquest of Pomerania be preserved and to this end he abandoned Sweden's pretensions in the Rhineland in order to secure the French subsidies which Baner desperately needed (Treaty of Hamburg 1638). Baner tried to exploit his improved position for his own advantage rather than his country's (see p. 556), but when his successor Torstensson had re-established Swedish authority in north Germany at the second battle of Breitenfeld (1642), Oxenstierna decided that the time was propitious to deal with Denmark.

'We find', he wrote, 'that Denmark is not less hostile to us than Austria, and a more dangerous enemy because she is nearer to us'. Christian IV's diplomacy moreover had been devoted since 1635 to weakening Sweden's position, so that Oxenstierna was justified in his complaint that Christian 'had repeatedly tucked us under the chin to see if our teeth were still firm in our heads.' The latest dispute arose over the Sound dues. Sweden's exemption from these was not in question but Denmark refused to exempt ships plying from Baltic ports under Swedish occupation and no longer countenanced the deception by which many Dutch ships sailed under a Swedish flag.
Late in the autumn of 1643 Oxenstierna ordered Torstensson to abandon a campaign in Silesia and take Denmark by surprise. By January Torstensson was master of the Danish mainland, waiting impatiently for the Little and Great Belts to freeze to allow his troops access across the ice to Copenhagen. Louis de Geer, the Dutch entrepreneur_ with a fortune invested in Swedish metallurgical industries, had commissioned a private fleet in the United Provinces which gave Sweden temporary command of the Sound and made easy the capture of Gotland and Osel, two islands belonging to Denmark which commanded shipping lanes in the eastern Baltic. Meanwhile Horn attacked the Danes in Scania, one of the provinces of Danish-occupied Sweden, in the hope of reaching the coast and of launching an invasion across the Sound.
In the event, the Little Belt failed to freeze and Horn was delayed by unexpected resistance at Malmo. Torstensson was therefore trapped in the Jutland peninsula and, if Gallas, who had had the wit to chase after him, had also had the sense to keep sober, the emperor might well have recovered his influence in northern Germany. Torstensson left Wrangel to hold the mainland and with almost contemptuous ease gave Gallas the slip at Kiel. When Gallas turned to follow he defeated him. Denmark was therefore still in danger from Swedish armies in Jutland and Skåne, but Christian saved the day at sea. He drove off de Geer's fleet in May, and for several weeks engaged the Swedish navy in a running battle among the Danish islands. The battle reached its climax on 1 July off Kolberg Heath, between Kiel Fjord and the island of Fehmarn, when Christian was victorious. The survivors however joined with other Swedish ships to seize the island of Bornholm, and a form of stalemate ensued in which Sweden could not overrun Copenhagen but the Danes had little hope of counter-attacking successfully.
Into this mood of hesitancy intruded the personality of Christina, perceptive, imperious and uncompromisingly determined to end the war, not merely with Denmark but with all Sweden's enemies. She was convinced that war served no other purpose than to justify Oxenstierna in excluding her from the direction of a purely masculine occupation. In September ' 1644 she came formally of age on her eighteenth birthday; and with the termination of the regency came an end to the war. In one respect, however, her strictures on the futility of the war were unfair since the campaign against Denmark resulted in important gains for Sweden in the Treaty of Bromsebro, 1645:

(i) Denmark ceded the provinces of Jemteland and Herjedalen along the frontier between Norway and Sweden;
(ii) Denmark ceded the islands of Gotland and Osel, both of strategic value in the Baltic;
(iii) Denmark agreed that not only Sweden but all the ports throughout her empire should be exempted from the payment of the Sound dues. In pledge of this Sweden was to occupy the province of Halland on her south-western coast for a period of thirty years.

In the event, the acquisitions made at Bromsebro proved to be of much greater value to Sweden than those gained four years later at Westphalia. Despite the successful campaigns led by Torstensson against the emperor after 1645 (see p. 156), Sweden gained less in 1648 than Gustavus II Adolphus had held at the end of 1631. Denied an electoral title or any voice in the Imperial Diet, she was bought off with a payment of 5,000,000 riksdalers and confirmed in her possession of Western Pomerania, of Stettin, Stralsund and Wismar, and of the offshore islands of Rügen, Usedom and Wollin. In addition, the secularised bishoprics of Bremen and Verden gave her control of the river mouths of the Weser and the Elbe.

The ending of the war went almost unnoticed in Sweden where the country was swiftly moving to the brink of civil war, as a result of the wholesale alienation of crown land which had taken place since 1632. The departments of the administration depended on the produce of the royal estates assigned to them, but as rents in kind were sometimes difficult to convert into negotiable currency-salted hides and bales of corn were scarcely liquid assets-Oxenstierna had decided to alter the fiscal system. He began by giving land outright in lieu of payment for good service in the army or in the administration, or by selling it to raise immediate capital. His next step was to recoup the administration by providing it with a more efficient source of revenue from indirect taxation and he hoped that the development of the towns and the expansion of Sweden's Baltic trade would provide alternative sources of wealth for the government to tap.
Unhappily for Sweden, Oxenstierna lost control of his colleagues in the riksrad, who became so excited by the opportunity afforded them by the disposal of royal estates that they ignored the second, essential part of his plan. From 1632, without Gustavus's physical presence to overawe and to inspire them, the nobles forgot their recent conversion to the ideal of public services, and, brushing aside the protestations of Oxenstierna, began to plunder Sweden with the irresponsible selfishness of triumphant mercenaries. Two-thirds of the Crown's territorial revenues had vanished by 1654. Twenty-two of the most influential families obtained lands worth one-fifth of the ordinary revenue of the state, their lesser colleagues gaining less in proportion to .their status. With land they also sought honours and titles, the number being more than doubled during the Regency: where three men had held the title of count, twenty were to glory in the honour, and the barons increased from seven to thirty-four.

The consequences for the peasantry, a vigorous and self-reliant estate, were serious. Those living on crown lands, who had enjoyed a position of virtual independence under an absentee and generally tolerant landlord, were subjected to the mercy of a profit-minded noble in their midst, anxious to exploit his investment. Worse still, and much more frequent, was the sale not of land but of the tax revenues from the freeholding peasantry, since the nobles who thus collected these taxes for themselves fell very easily into the habit of treating these freeholders as though they were their tenants. The threat of degradation to the status of servile labourers, made all the worse by the seigneurial habits acquired by the nobles from their experience of serfdom while on service in Germany, brought the peasantry very close to rebellion.
At the same time, the administration began to founder without its accustomed revenues: offices in the civil service went unpaid, and the army had to plunder to survive. When the riksrad at last took up Oxenstierna's proposals for indirect taxation it could not introduce these without the riksdag's consent, and on this issue the peasantry, the clergy and the townsmen were united in opposition: 'When the nobility have all the peasants subject to themselves,' declared Archbishop Lenoeus 'then the Estate of Peasants will no longer have a voice at the diet, and when the Estate of Peasants goes under, Burghers and Clergy may easily go under too.' The riksdag demanded reduktion, the restoration of all crown lands, and when the riksrad refused to surrender its gains, the riksdag refused to pass the indirect taxes.
In this impasse the decision lay with Christina, a woman of such intrepid self-assurance that it was unlikely that she could stay out of any controversy for long. In many ways she resembled her father; physically tough, capable of great endurance, trained to diplomacy and the command of foreign languages, she was as autocratic and self-willed. Her ebullient mind extended beyond the confines of statecraft and war: these alone bored her., and she looked for companionship to men of letters and philosophy-she patronised both Grotius and Descartes-delighting in the excitement of intellectual debate. Unlike Gustavus, Christina had no concept of duty: if ruling Sweden should prove tedious then with wilful disregard of the consequences she was ready to give it up: if ruling Sweden meant that she would have to provide an heir, she was too imperious to submit to the servitude of marriage and chose rather to abdicate. In her place she resolved to be succeeded by her cousin Charles, who had commanded the Swedish army at the end of the German war.

Her first move was to secure the, assent of the riksrad to the nomination of Charles as heir to the throne. It was a difficult task since the nobles could see no reason why this was necessary: moreover they intended, when the day came, to impose stringent conditions before allowing Charles to become king. To achieve her purposes, therefore, Christina decided to champion the riksdag's demand for reduktion. It was a cynical manoeuvre. Of all the lands alienated by -the crown more than half had been. lost since Christina herself came of age in 1644, and she had shown herself as indifferent as any self-seeking noble to the needs of the peasantry. In 1650, however, she discovered in the threat of peasant revolt a weapon with which to coerce the riksrad.
In that year the failure of the harvest, the worst of the century, brought peasant discontent to a head The riksdag met for the unprecedented period of four months in one year, and the speeches of the lower estates, in conjunction with the demonstrations of hungry villagers, caused consternation among the nobles. Oxenstierna confessed that he was afraid to visit his country house, and another noble drew an unhappy parallel with events elsewhere: 'They all want to do as they have been doing in England, and make us all as like as pig's trotters.' The more the nobles panicked, the more they played into Christina's hands. Cynical though she was of the riksdag's demands, she incited it to attack the nobility and pretended to embrace the cause of reduktion. At this the nobles had no option but to capitulate: Christina, in return for withdrawing her support from the campaign for reduktion, won acceptance of Charles as Hereditary Prince.

Christina's remaining years as queen were spent in filling in the details of her abdication. She was determined to live as lavishly in retirement as she had done on the throne, and, by one of the ironies of her reign, compelled the riksrad to recover certain crown lands in order to assure her of a fixed income. Occupied also in preparing for her spiritual comfort, she entertained in secret a succession of priests through whom she was received into the Roman Church. In May 1654 she abandoned her throne.
Christina's romantic vision of herself as an exiled queen holding, literary court in Rome before the astonished eyes of Europe was not fulfilled. After the initial shock people found her merely absurd. Her punishment was to live to an old age, ignored by. her former subjects and bored by her friends.

Charles X 1654 - 60
Christina's abdication solved none of Sweden's problems except that it left the throne vacant for a successor with a more profound sense of public duty. If Charles X had little experience of anything but the military life, which he passionately enjoyed, he had nonetheless observed the difficulties facing Christina's government and had declared in advance his opinion that crown lands would have to be recovered. Herman Fleming, the treasurer, agreed with him. The administration was bankrupt, unable to pay its servants, provision the navy or supply hay for the royal horses..
Fleming and Charles X overrode the opposition of the riksrad - which had, after all, accepted Charles as Christina's successor only to avoid reduktion - by appealing to the riksdag. For a moment there was a serious risk of rebellion until Charles agreed to a compromise. Royal estates deemed to be 'indispensable' for the administration of the court, the armed forces and the mining industry, were restored to the crown along with one quarter of all other crown land. This represented the recovery of roughly 3,000 farms and homesteads although it took Fleming several years to implement the agreement. In return, the nobles were guaranteed permanent possession of the other crown lands they had acquired.

One important reason for insisting upon a compromise was that Charles X was about to declare war on Poland. As commander-in-chief in the last months of the German war he felt 'he had been cheated of victories by the settlements made in Westphalia: now, aged 32, he could still hope to rival the achievements of Gustavus Adolphus. There were also more fundamental issues at stake. Having acquired an empire Sweden lacked the resources necessary for its defence. Since the government could not afford to maintain its garrisons in idleness, the only alternative to disbanding them was to send them to wage war abroad where they could keep themselves alive by plunder. 'Other nations make war because they are rich,' said one Swede sadly, 'Sweden because it is poor'.

Warfare could prove profitable in one other respect. For the first time, perhaps, in the century economic considerations ranked as important in the councils of Sweden as motives of security, the defence of Protestantism, military strategy or national ambition. Oxenstierna set up in 1651 the Kommerscollegium to encourage the growth. of Swedish shipping and hoped ultimately to solve the government's financial problems by providing it with a rich and permanent flow of revenues from customs dues and shipping tolls. To this end the government would have to establish control of every major port and estuary in the Baltic and, finally, to wrest control of the Sound from Denmark.
In the meantime the government faced a more immediate problem in Poland. Sigismund's son, John Casimir, had reasserted his father's claim to the Swedish throne, while the Swedish government coveted the revenues of the Prussian ports which it had briefly enjoyed during the Truce of Altmark (1629-35). John Casimir moreover was challenged by rebellious subjects and his country had been invaded by separate forces of Magyars, Cossacks and Russians. Although it seemed to be an opportune moment for Sweden to settle old scores with Poland, Charles X was more concerned with the success of the advancing Russian army. Ever since the treaty of Stolbova (1617), when Sweden had acquired Russia's foothold on the Baltic coast, the two countries had remained on surprisingly friendly terms because of their common hostility to Poland. When, however, the Russians threatened to break through to the Polish Prussian coastline Charles X feared they might well attack the Swedish bases in Livonia and Estonia and re-establish themselves as a force in the Baltic. As a result he offered to assist John Casimir against his enemies in return for possession of the Prussian ports, and only when this offer was rejected did he prepare to invade on his own account.

Britain on Sweden