The Thirty Years War, book 4 | Page 2

field, and their common weal
was threatened with ruin, by the spirit of disunion.
Gustavus had left no male heir to the crown of Sweden: his daughter
Christina, then six years old, was the natural heir. The unavoidable
weakness of a regency, suited ill with that energy and resolution, which
Sweden would be called upon to display in this trying conjuncture. The
wide reaching mind of Gustavus Adolphus had raised this unimportant,
and hitherto unknown kingdom, to a rank among the powers of Europe,

which it could not retain without the fortune and genius of its author,
and from which it could not recede, without a humiliating confession of
weakness. Though the German war had been conducted chiefly on the
resources of Germany, yet even the small contribution of men and
money, which Sweden furnished, had sufficed to exhaust the finances
of that poor kingdom, and the peasantry groaned beneath the imposts
necessarily laid upon them. The plunder gained in Germany enriched
only a few individuals, among the nobles and the soldiers, while
Sweden itself remained poor as before. For a time, it is true, the
national glory reconciled the subject to these burdens, and the sums
exacted, seemed but as a loan placed at interest, in the fortunate hand of
Gustavus Adolphus, to be richly repaid by the grateful monarch at the
conclusion of a glorious peace. But with the king's death this hope
vanished, and the deluded people now loudly demanded relief from
their burdens.
But the spirit of Gustavus Adolphus still lived in the men to whom he
had confided the administration of the kingdom. However dreadful to
them, and unexpected, was the intelligence of his death, it did not
deprive them of their manly courage; and the spirit of ancient Rome,
under the invasion of Brennus and Hannibal, animated this noble
assembly. The greater the price, at which these hard-gained advantages
had been purchased, the less readily could they reconcile themselves to
renounce them: not unrevenged was a king to be sacrificed. Called on
to choose between a doubtful and exhausting war, and a profitable but
disgraceful peace, the Swedish council of state boldly espoused the side
of danger and honour; and with agreeable surprise, men beheld this
venerable senate acting with all the energy and enthusiasm of youth.
Surrounded with watchful enemies, both within and without, and
threatened on every side with danger, they armed themselves against
them all, with equal prudence and heroism, and laboured to extend their
kingdom, even at the moment when they had to struggle for its
existence.
The decease of the king, and the minority of his daughter Christina,
renewed the claims of Poland to the Swedish throne; and King
Ladislaus, the son of Sigismund, spared no intrigues to gain a party in
Sweden. On this ground, the regency lost no time in proclaiming the
young queen, and arranging the administration of the regency. All the

officers of the kingdom were summoned to do homage to their new
princess; all correspondence with Poland prohibited, and the edicts of
previous monarchs against the heirs of Sigismund, confirmed by a
solemn act of the nation. The alliance with the Czar of Muscovy was
carefully renewed, in order, by the arms of this prince, to keep the
hostile Poles in check. The death of Gustavus Adolphus had put an end
to the jealousy of Denmark, and removed the grounds of alarm which
had stood in the way of a good understanding between the two states.
The representations by which the enemy sought to stir up Christian IV.
against Sweden were no longer listened to; and the strong wish the
Danish monarch entertained for the marriage of his son Ulrick with the
young princess, combined, with the dictates of a sounder policy, to
incline him to a neutrality. At the same time, England, Holland, and
France came forward with the gratifying assurances to the regency of
continued friendship and support, and encouraged them, with one voice,
to prosecute with activity the war, which hitherto had been conducted
with so much glory. Whatever reason France might have to
congratulate itself on the death of the Swedish conqueror, it was as
fully sensible of the expediency of maintaining the alliance with
Sweden. Without exposing itself to great danger, it could not allow the
power of Sweden to sink in Germany. Want of resources of its own,
would either drive Sweden to conclude a hasty and disadvantageous
peace with Austria, and then all the past efforts to lower the ascendancy
of this dangerous power would be thrown away; or necessity and
despair would drive the armies to extort from the Roman Catholic
states the means of support, and France would then be regarded as the
betrayer of those very states, who had placed themselves under her
powerful protection. The