Memoirs of a Cavalier | Page 2

his adventures as a volunteer officer in the Swedish army, where he gained the experience which was to serve him well in the Civil War at home. Many a real Cavalier must have had just such a career as Defoe's hero describes as his own. After a short time at Oxford, "long enough for a gentleman," he embarked on a period of travel, going to Italy by way of France. The Cavalier, however, devotes but little space to description, vivid enough as far as it goes, of his adventures in these two countries for a space of over two years. Italy, especially, attracted the attention of gentlemen and scholars in those days, but the Cavalier was more bent on soldiering than sightseeing and he hurries on to tell of his adventures in Germany, where he first really took part in warfare, becoming a volunteer officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero King of Sweden, and where he met with those adventures the story of which forms the bulk of the first part of the Memoirs.
To appreciate the tale, it will be necessary to have a clear idea of the state of affairs in Europe at the time. The war which was convulsing Germany, and in which almost every other European power interfered at some time, was the Thirty Years' War (1618--1648), a struggle having a special character of its own as the last of the religious wars which had torn Europe asunder for a century and the first of a long series of wars in which the new and purely political principle of the Balance of Power can be seen at work. The struggle was, nominally, between Protestant and Catholic Germany for, during the Reformation period, Germany, which consisted of numerous states under the headship of the Emperor, had split into two great camps. The Northern states had become Protestant under their Protestant princes. The Southern states had remained, for the most part, Catholic or had been won back to Catholicism in the religious reaction known as the Counter-Reformation. As the Catholic movement spread, under a Catholic Emperor like Ferdinand of Styria, who was elected in 1619, it was inevitable that the privileges granted to Protestants should be curtailed. They determined to resist and, as the Emperor had the support of Spain, the Protestant Union found it necessary to call in help from outside. Thus it was that the other European powers came to interfere in German affairs. Some helped the Protestants from motives of religion, more still from considerations of policy, and the long struggle of thirty years may be divided into marked periods in which one power after another, Denmark, Sweden, France, allied themselves with the Protestants against the Emperor. The Memoirs are concerned with the first two years of the Swedish period of the war (1630--1634), during which Gustavus Adolphus almost won victory for the Protestants who were, however, to lose the advantage of his brilliant generalship through his death at the battle of L��tzen in 1632. Through the death of "this conquering king," the Swedes lost the fruits of their victory and the battle of L��tzen marks the end of what may be termed the heroic period of the war. Gustavus Adolphus stands out among the men of his day for the loftiness of his character as well as for the genius of his generalship. It is, therefore, fitting enough that Defoe should make his Cavalier withdraw from the Swedish service after the death of the "glorious king" whom he "could never mention without some remark of his extraordinary merit." For two years longer, he wanders through Germany still watching the course of the war and then returns to England, soon to take part in another war at home, namely the Civil War, in which the English people were divided into two great parties according as they supported King Charles I or the members of the Long Parliament who opposed him. According to the Memoirs, the Cavalier "went into arms" without troubling himself "to examine sides." Defoe probably considered this attitude as typical of many of the Cavalier party, and, of course, loyalty to the king's person was one of their strongest motives. The Cavalier does not enter largely into the causes of the war. What he gives us is a picture of army life in that troubled period. It will be well, however, to bear in mind the chief facts in the history of the times.
From the beginning of his reign, Charles had had trouble with his parliaments, which had already become very restless under James I. Charles's parliaments disapproved of his foreign policy and their unwillingness to grant subsidies led him to fall back on questionable methods of raising money, especially during the eleven years (1629--1640) in which he ruled without a