Pius V was followed by Gregory XIII and then Sixtus V (1585–90) who changed the direction of the Catholic Reformation from an approach of compelling attendance through threats and fear to attracting adherence. He was aided in this by the new early Baroque era that emphasized order and balance.
It was a period of revolution in the arts and sciences. Copernicus and others had already challenged the very tenets of science as prescribed by Ptolemy and Aristotle, concepts that had ruled for over a thousand years. Now Descartes, Galileo and Kepler were breaking new ground, challenging the Aristotelian methods of science, expanding human knowledge in diverse fields of science and geography. The new movement extended to architecture where the dark and dreary interiors of the Middle Age churches and castles were being replaced by decorated, lighted interiors, pleasing to the senses and spiritually uplifting. Sixtus fostered a great rebuilding of churches and cathedrals in Rome and throughout the church. Congregations were enticed to remain faithful rather than coerced. In less than a hundred years the Church of Rome had carried out these reforms and turned from defense to offense in the quest for souls.
Gustav Vasa was about to be pulled into this religious conflict very directly, a world quite foreign to him. His view of this world would change with experience. At the Öregro Riksdag of 1617 he expressed his outlook, the sentiments of a young man and an inexperienced king:
This religion, if I may call it that, is not only in itself idolatry, the invention and fancy of men—clearly contrary to the word of God in the Holy Scriptures wherein standeth written our way to salvation, but it embraces one principle which is especially damning: with heretics, as they call us, shall no man keep faith. And King Sigismund has made it clear enough in all his actions that he has well learned to apply this popish maxim, as well against us as against others. What can we expect of King Sigismund, who is not only wicked himself, but allows himself to be ruled by those Devil’s minions, the Jesuits, who have been the instigators of the fearful tyrannies practiced in Spain, France and elsewhere? These Jesuits and their Inquisition have spared neither high nor low, man or woman.5
These are fiery words from a youth just returned from a war involving his Catholic cousin and with the Spanish Armada’s attack on England in 1588 still fresh in everyone’s minds. He had, no doubt, heard stories of Jesuit triumphs in Poland, Hungary and Austria. But that same year his religious world of “us against them” got more complicated.
The Treaty of Stolbova in that year gave Sweden the provinces of Kexholms and Ingria. A large part of the populations were Finns of the Greek Orthodox faith. Gustav worked hard at incorporating these people into his realm. Great pains were taken to keep good relations with the Greek church. He tried to change the perception, common among Swedes of the time, that Russians were not Christians, a notion useful up to then in inciting Swedes and Finns to war against this traditional foe. A conference was even held at the Uppsala University on the subject in 1620. The king pointed out that Protestants and Orthodox Christians had a common enemy in the Church of Rome. In the main, Gustav won this battle for the hearts of the people in the newly acquired districts. There was no religious war or open hatred toward the newly acquired territories and their people.
The following year at the fall of Riga, the king had the members of the Jesuit College located there brought before him. Among the men was the Norwegian Laurentius Nicolai, the infamous Klasterlasse of King Johan III’s time. Upon recognizing him Gustav burst out, “You old limb of Satan!”6 The king demanded to know what he was going to do in the afterlife when he had to pay for following false doctrines in this life. The priest, now an old man, drew himself up proudly and retorted that it was not he who would pay, but those who followed the Lutheran practices. There was much debate as to the disposition of the heretics, but in the end Father Laurentius and the Jesuits were all escorted safely to Polish territory.
The Swedish monarch moved from the Livonian War to the Prussian campaign, then to the invasion of Germany. The north German states were Protestant, but as he progressed further south, he encountered cities and territories primarily Catholic. By this time one of his chief allies was France, a Catholic nation led, for all practical purposes, by Cardinal Richelieu, a Catholic clergyman. In fact a section of the alliance agreement required Gustav to not interfere with German Catholics’ practice of their faith. The Swedish king made good on this promise. Where militarily possible, he avoided molesting Catholic churches and monasteries. When monks and priests were displaced by war, he sheltered and protected them. Because of Gustav’s policy and the discipline maintained in his army, the Jesuits of Mainz later said, “We suffered no interference in the exercises of our religion.”7 In Munich the king even engaged the Jesuits in debate and conversation. The Capuchin Fathers were particularly taken with the heretical conqueror, urging him to return to the fold. Gustav seems to have taken this as a compliment, a far cry from his outburst at Riga eleven years earlier.
At Augsburg he personally assured the town council that all Catholics would be protected saying, “Since the judgment belongs to God alone, each man must answer to Him for his faith.”8
After a year in Germany, Gustav’s purpose was not to convert the country by the sword, but to restore the religious freedom that had existed earlier, allowing each state to practice the form of Christianity it believed. Ultimately, he had respect for those “who sought to serve the Lord according to their understanding and after the fashion of their fathers.”9
Gustav dropped to his knees on the shores of the Baltic at Peenemünde and prayed for his army and the cause upon which they were embarking. Yet the Protestant cause was not the only or even the primary reason for his intervention in this German civil war. He empathized with the Lutheran princes who had been overrun by the emperor’s and League of Catholic States’ forces, but he neither counted on nor did he trust these Protestant rulers. He knew that politics were as important as religion in this war. Protestant princes would fight for power and territory just as readily as for religion. Likewise the Catholic League princes would join the emperor in his war until they felt their own independence was threatened. Motivations in this war were many and complex, often conflicting.
So it was with the king of Sweden. The final impetus for entering this conflict was the safety of his country. Certainly the argument that won his countrymen’s support was the danger Hapsburg occupation of the Baltic seaports represented to the people. Swedes had been watching the progress of the war with great interest as any substantial change in the political situation would affect them directly.
Europe had been expecting the war between Spain and the Netherlands to be renewed upon the expiration of the Truce of 1621. Germany would be involved as Spain needed part of its territory to use as an overland route to convey troops from its provinces in Italy to the Netherlands war. Their sea route had been effectively blocked by Dutch warships. Before this eventuality occurred, a religious war erupted in the Holy Roman Empire.
By the terms of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, Lutheranism was given official recognition in the empire. Lands taken from the Church of Rome were to remain in the hands of Protestant and secular factions. Each prince could decide whether his state would be Catholic or Lutheran. This peace worked for a time, but by the early 17th century it was falling apart.
The slide toward a military resolution became more and more evident as states, particularly in Protestant northern Germany, appropriated additional church property. Some rulers had become Calvinists, a form of Protestantism not covered by the peace agreement. At the same time the government of the empire was controlled by the Catholic princes creating opposition in the north. Alliances were formed to protect the rights of their members, the Catholic League headed by Maximilian of Bavaria and the Protestant Union under Friedrich of the Palatine Electorate. Add to this the aggressive surge of the Counter-Reformation and all of the elements for a bloody conflict were in place. Only a spark was needed.
The igniting incend
iary was the election of the new emperor, Ferdinand II (1619–37). Charles V had been fought to a standstill by the Protestant princes and had agreed to the Augsburg Peace. His rule was followed by Ferdinand I (1556–64) and Maximilian II (1564–76) who devoted their energies to fighting the Ottoman Turks encroaching through the Balkans. Rudolf II (1576–1612) preferred to play with astrology and search for the philosopher’s stone, an item he hoped would turn base metals into gold. In Ferdinand II, however, the empire would have a Hapsburg ruler ready to push the Counter-Reformation in all of Germany. As Duke of Styria he had already stamped out Protestantism in his home state. A foreboding was felt nowhere more strongly than in Bohemia.
Bohemia, today’s Czech Republic, was a rich country, providing almost half the revenues of the emperor. A majority of its inhabitants were Lutheran, Calvinist or members of one of the Hessite sects. The Catholic minority was, however, growing in strength thanks to the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits, and support of the Hapsburgs. Not only did the Bohemian Protestant nobles fear Ferdinand’s religious interference, but loss of political independence as well. They had been pressured to accept Ferdinand as their future king as well as emperor. While Ferdinand was in Frankfort for his election and coronation as emperor, the Bohemian nobles struck.
The rebels seized control of the country, formed an alliance with Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, and Friedrich, elector of Palatine. Once in control, the Bohemian nobles elected Friedrich king, then marched on Vienna. Queen Ann of England, wife of James I, seemed to have made a good choice. Her daughter, Elizabeth, was married to the ruler of the Upper and Lower Palatinate and now he was king of Bohemia instead of Gustav, that “illegitimate” king of Sweden.
But Ferdinand was not about to lose the riches of his most productive state. He immediately turned to his Hapsburg relatives, the king of Spain and Maximilian of Bavaria, who supplied him with troops and money. He was also supported by the Protestant elector of Saxony. With these resources he went after the rebel king.
First he threatened the other princes of the Protestant Union and the organization disintegrated leaving the Palatinate elector and new Bohemian king to fight on his own. Adding Austrian troops to his army, the emperor advanced into Bohemia and brought Friedrich to heel at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague (1620) where he obtained a decisive victory. The Winter King and Elizabeth escaped to the Netherlands and exile.
The formerly elective monarchy of Bohemia was made a permanent hereditary Hapsburg kingdom. The Lower Palatinate was turned over to Spain, giving that country its avenue to bring troops from Italy to the Netherlands war. The Upper Palatinate and the office of elector were given to Maximilian of Bavaria, who set about recovering the country for the Church of Rome. The first phase of the Thirty Years’ War had been won by the emperor though he still had the war with Transylvania which would smolder until 1626.
With the emperor having gained a stunning triumph, England and the Netherlands began casting around for a champion to lead the Protestant cause in Germany and they first approached Gustav. But his demands were too high and they finally settled on King Christian IV of Denmark, who was part of the empire as count of Holstein. France was also worried it might be encircled by Spain if that country should be successful in conquering the Netherlands. Christian raised an army of 30,000 troops and advanced into Germany on December 9, 1625, as the commander of Protestant forces. The second phase of the Thirty Years’ War had begun.
To oppose this new threat Ferdinand placed the army of the Catholic League under the command of the very capable Bavarian general Jan Tserclaes Tilly, who had already distinguished himself in the Bohemian war. But this army, by itself, was not sufficient and the rest of his forces, so successful in Bohemia, were committed in Transylvania. Ferdinand needed a new imperial army and his answer came from a Bohemian nobleman, Albrecht von Wallenstein. Born a Lutheran, he had converted to Catholicism and married a wealthy widow who conveniently died soon afterward. He had parlayed this small fortune into a very large one. Wallenstein was so wealthy that he could offer Ferdinand a 50,000 man army raised at his expense. The emperor need only pay wages once the troops were in the field. Frederick accepted his offer on April 7, 1625, and now the emperor had two armies in the field in Northern Germany.
Wallenstein defeated Protestant forces on April 25 at Dessau on the Elbe River and again at Kosel on July 9. Meanwhile, Tilly routed Christian at the Battle of Lutter on the Barenberg. During the winter of 1626–27 Christian equipped a new army only to be defeated by Tilly again and driven from Germany. League forces pushed on into Jutland relegating Christian to his island possessions protected by his navy. The champion of the Protestant cause had been crushed.
Wallenstein, meanwhile, had driven to the Baltic coast taking most of the seaport cites. Only Stettin, Stralsund, Rostock and Lübeck retained a precarious independence. His lieutenant, Hans George von Arnim, had occupied the large island of Rügen and then attacked Stralsund in 1628, but was repulsed due to the intervention of Denmark and Sweden. In February Wallenstein was installed as duke of Mecklenburg, the rightful dukes having been driven from the territory. In April Ferdinand gave him the title of general of the Oceanic and Baltic seas. He was already assembling an Imperial navy at Wismar while Sigismund was doing the same at Danzig. Ferdinand invited Spain to send ships to create a Hapsburg Baltic fleet, an intrusion neither Denmark nor Sweden could afford. Besides the threat of Hapsburg-Polish domination of the Baltic, Imperial control of the northern German Baltic ports provided access to Sweden by either the Hapsburgs or Sigismund or worse, a combination. It was this threat that finally compelled Gustav to act, and convinced the nobles and peasants to support his intervention in the German war.
In March 1629 Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution demanding all properties taken from the Church of Rome since the Treaty of Passau (1552) be returned. On March 22 the Peace of Lübeck was signed, restoring conquered Danish territory to Christian in exchange for his removal from the war. Frederick’s power had reached its zenith. Only Magdeburg, which had resisted Wallenstein’s siege, and a few scattered principalities and coastal cities remained unconquered. Not since the days of Charles V had the holy Roman emperor so completely dominated his domain. Still he had some problems and one of those was Wallenstein, who had just helped him achieve this supremacy.
Wallenstein’s huge army, now almost 70,000 men, was divided and quartered in various parts of the empire. The German princes complained loudly about the burden of supporting these mercenaries on their lands. Also they feared Wallenstein’s increasing power. Maximilian particularly eyed the ambitious general with suspicion. Finally, the conquered princes and city burghers protested the ill treatment they received at the hands of Wallenstein’s soldiers. Unrestrained looting, pillaging and raping had been the order of the day as the army had invaded northern Germany, they claimed.
Bowing to this pressure, Ferdinand twice reduced the size of the Imperial army after 1628. On August 30, 1630, he removed Wallenstein altogether as commander of the Imperial army. The first two phases of the Thirty Years’ War were over and the part dominated by Gustav Adolf was about to begin.
On June 17, 1630, Gustav left Älvsnabben with 15,000 soldiers on a hundred transports covered by a fleet of warships. Under Admiral Karl Karlsson Gyllenheilm and his chief assistant, Klas Fleming, seven other contingents sailed from points all around the Baltic loaded with troops. On June 26 Gustav reached landfall at Peenemünde on the island of Usedom in Pomerania and by July 26 he had his advance party ashore. Swedes and mercenaries continued to arrive so that by November he had 42,100 soldiers in his expeditionary force. For the Protestant nobles and commoners the Lion of the North had arrived to push back the tide of Catholicism which had engulfed northern Germany. Wallenstein dismissed this new intruder as the Snow King who would quickly melt away as he moved south. To the northern German princes he was an invader, though a Protestant. The question was would he fold as Christian had? Rememberi
ng Friedrich, the Winter King, they could not risk alienating the emperor further. Gustav would be on his own.
The Swedish king led a small force to reconnoiter the Island of Usedom, expelling several Imperial garrisons as he advanced, then he crossed to the island of Wollin where Imperial detachments fled before him. None of the Protestant princes came to his aid. He was quite alone with his Swedish army in a foreign land. The only exception was Stralsund which declared for him with its 5,000 troops. The city’s allegiance also gave him the island of Rügen.
Gustav now brought his ships around the islands, then secured, and into the Stettiner Haff. He swiftly advanced with a force of 9,000 men on 51 ships through the inland sea to its head and by July 18 was at the city of Stettin, capital of Pomerania. He landed his troops below the city and met with Bogislaw XIV, duke of Pomerania, and the townspeople. Overawed by the Swedish force Bogislaw capitulated, signing a treaty giving a cash contribution of 200,000 riksdalers and the Pomeranian army to Gustav. The 5,000 troops were taken into the Swedish army as the White Brigade, which would distinguish itself in Gustav’s service. The monetary arrangements of the treaty set the pattern for the rest of the campaign. The occupation would pay for itself and not require Sweden’s total support. Bogislaw was elderly and childless. The probable beneficiary of this situation was Gustav’s father-in-law, George William of Brandenburg. So the king also inserted in the treaty a provision requiring the next duke, upon Bogislaw’s death, ratify this treaty or Sweden would hold the country as protectorate until expenses for the war were reimbursed and the treaty ratified. Pomerania would stay friendly to Sweden one way or the other.
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