Chapter 20

(A. L.)

GURWOOD, JOHN(1790-1845), British soldier, began his career in a merchant’s office, but soon obtained an ensigncy in the 52nd (1808). With his regiment he served in the “Light Division” of Wellington’s army throughout the earlier Peninsular campaigns, and at Ciudad Rodrigo (19th Jan. 1812) he led one of the forlorn hopes and was severely wounded. For his gallant conduct on this occasion Wellington presented Gurwood with the sword of the French governor of Ciudad Rodrigo. A little later, transferring to the 9th Light Dragoons, he was made brigade-major to the Guards’ cavalry which had just arrived in the Peninsula. In the latter part of the war he served as brigade-major to Lambert’s brigade of the sixth infantry division, and was present at the various actions in which that division played a conspicuous part—the Nivelle, the Nive, Orthes and Toulouse. At Waterloo Captain Gurwood was for the third time severely wounded. In the first twelve years of the peace he was promoted up to the grade of lieut.-colonel, and in 1841 became brevet-colonel. He was for many years the duke of Wellington’s private secretary, and was entrusted by him with the collection and editing of theWellington Despatches, which occupied Gurwood from 1837 to the end of his life. This work is a monument of industrious skill, and earned its author a Civil List Pension of £200. But overwork and the effects of his wounds had broken his health, and he committed suicide on Christmas day 1845. He was a C.B. and deputy-lieutenant of the Tower.

GUSLA,orGusli, an ancient stringed instrument still in use among the Slavonic races. The modern Servian gusla is a kind of tanbur (see Pandura), consisting of a round, concave body covered with a parchment soundboard; there is but one horse-hair string, and the peg for tuning it is inserted in oriental fashion in the back of the head. The gusla is played with a primitive bow calledgoudalo. Thegouslarsor blind bards of Servia and Croatia use it to accompany their chants. C. G. Anton1mentions an instrument of that name in the shape of a half-moon strung with eighteen strings in use among the Tatars. Prosper Merimée2has taken theguslaas the title for a book of Servian poems, which are supposed to have been collected by him among the peasants, but which are thought to have been inspired by theViaggio in Dalmaziaof Albarto Fortis.

Among the Russians, the gusli is an instrument of a different type, a kind of psaltery having five or more strings stretched across a flat, shallow sound-chest in the shape of a wing. In the gusli the strings, of graduated length, are attached to little nails or pins at one end, and at the other they are wound over a rod having screw attachments for increasing and slackening the tension. There is no bridge to determine the vibrating length of the strings. The body of the instrument is shaped roughly like the tail of the grand piano, following the line of the strings; the longest being at the left of the instrument. Matthew Guthrie gives an illustration of the gusli.3

(K. S.)

1Erste Linien eines Versuchs über den Ursprung der alten Slaven(Leipzig, 1783-1789), p. 145.2La Guzla, ou choix de poésies lyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie, &c.(Paris, 1827).3Dissertations sur les antiquités de Russie(St Petersburg, 1795), pl. ii. No. 9, p. 31.

1Erste Linien eines Versuchs über den Ursprung der alten Slaven(Leipzig, 1783-1789), p. 145.

2La Guzla, ou choix de poésies lyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie, &c.(Paris, 1827).

3Dissertations sur les antiquités de Russie(St Petersburg, 1795), pl. ii. No. 9, p. 31.

GUSTAVUS I. ERIKSSON(1496-1560), king of Sweden, was born at his mother’s estate at Lindholm on Ascension Day 1496. He came of a family which had shone conspicuously in 15th-century politics, though it generally took the anti-national side. His father, Erik Johansson of Rydboholm, “a merry and jocose gentleman,” but, like all the Swedish Vasas, liable to sudden fierce gusts of temper, was one of the senators who voted for the deposition of Archbishop Trolle, at theriksdagof 1517 (seeSweden,History), for which act of patriotism he lost his head. Gustavus’s mother, Cecilia Månsdåtter, was closely connected by marriage with the great Sture family. Gustavus’s youthful experiences impressed him with a life-long distrust of everything Danish. In his eighteenth year he was sent to the court of his cousin Sten Sture. At the battle of Brännkyrka, when Sturedefeated Christian II. of Denmark, the young Gustavus bore the governor’s standard, and in the same year (1518) he was delivered with five other noble youths as a hostage to King Christian, who treacherously carried him prisoner to Denmark. He was detained for twelve months in the island fortress of Kalö, on the east coast of Jutland, but contrived to escape to Lübeck in September 1519. There he found an asylum till the 20th of May 1520, when he chartered a ship to Kalmar, one of the few Swedish fortresses which held out against Christian II.

It was while hunting near Lake Mälar that the news of the Stockholm massacre was brought to him by a peasant fresh from the capital, who told him, at the same time, that a price had been set upon his head. In his extremity, Gustavus saw only one way of deliverance, an appeal for help to the sturdy yeomen of the dales. How the dalesmen set Gustavus on the throne and how he and they finally drove the Danes out of Sweden (1521-1523) is elsewhere recorded (seeSweden:History). But his worst troubles only began after his coronation on the 6th of June 1523. The financial position of the crown was the most important of all the problems demanding solution, for upon that everything else depended. By releasing his country from the tyranny of Denmark, Gustavus had made the free independent development of Sweden a possibility. It was for him to realize that possibility. First of all, order had to be evolved from the chaos in which Sweden had been plunged by the disruption of the Union; and the shortest, perhaps the only, way thereto was to restore the royal authority, which had been in abeyance during ninety years. But an effective reforming monarchy must stand upon a sound financial basis; and the usual revenues of the crown, always inadequate, were so diminished that they did not cover half the daily expenses of government. New taxes could only be imposed with extreme caution, while the country was still bleeding from the wounds of a long war. And men were wanted even more than money. The lack of capable, trustworthy administrators in Sweden was grievous. The whole burden of government weighed exclusively on the shoulders of the new king, a young man of seven and twenty. Half his time was taken up in travelling from one end of the kingdom to the other, and doing purely clerical work for want of competent assistance. We can form some idea of his difficulties when we learn that, in 1533, he could not send an ambassador to Lübeck because not a single man in his council, except himself, knew German. It was this lack of native talent which compelled Gustavus frequently to employ the services of foreign adventurers like Berent von Mehlen, John von Hoja, Konrad von Pyhy and others.

It was not the least of Gustavus’s many anxieties that he had constantly to be on the watch lest a formidable democratic rival should encroach on his prerogative. That rival was the Swedish peasantry. He succeeded indeed in putting down the four formidable rebellions which convulsed the realm from 1525 to 1542, but the consequent strain upon his resources was very damaging, and more than once he was on the point of abdicating and emigrating, out of sheer weariness. Moreover he was in constant fear of the Danes. Necessity compelled him indeed (1534-1536) to take part inGrevens fejde(Counts’ War) (seeDenmark,History), as the ally of Christian III., but his exaggerated distrust of the Danes was invincible. “We advise and exhort you,” he wrote to the governor of Kalmar, “to put no hope or trust in the Danes, or in their sweet scribbling, inasmuch as they mean nothing at all by it except how best they may deceive and betray us Swedes.” Such instructions were not calculated to promote confidence between Swedish and Danish negotiators. A fresh cause of dispute was generated in 1548, when Christian III.’s daughter was wedded to Duke Augustus of Saxony. On that occasion, apparently by way of protest against the decree of the diet of Vesterås (15th of January 1544), declaring the Swedish crown hereditary in Gustavus’s family, the Danish king caused to be quartered on his daughter’s shield not only the three Danish lions and the Norwegian lion with the axe of St Olaf, but also “the three crowns” of Sweden. Gustavus, naturally suspicious, was much perturbed by the innovation, and warned all his border officials to be watchful and prepare for the worst. In 1557 he even wrote to the Danish king protesting against the placing of “the three crowns” in the royal Danish seal beneath the arms of Denmark. Christian III. replied that “the three crowns” signified not Sweden in especial, but the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and that their insertion in the Danish shield was only a reminiscence of the union of Kalmar. But Gustavus was not satisfied, and this was the beginning of “the three crowns” dispute which did so much damage to both kingdoms.

The events which led to the rupture of Gustavus with the Holy See are set forth in the proper place (seeSweden:History). Here it need only be added that it was a purely political act, as Gustavus, personally, had no strong dogmatic leanings either way. He not unnaturally expressed his amazement when that very juvenile reformer Olavus Petri confidently informed him that the pope was antichrist. He consulted the older and graver Laurentius Andreae, who told him how “Doctor Martinus had clipped the wings of the pope, the cardinals and the big bishops,” which could not fail to be pleasing intelligence to a monarch who was never an admirer of episcopacy, while the rich revenues of the church, accumulated in the course of centuries, were a tempting object to the impecunious ruler of an impoverished people. Subsequently, when the Protestant hierarchy was forcibly established in Sweden, matters were much complicated by the absolutist tendencies of Gustavus. The incessant labour, the constant anxiety, which were the daily portion of Gustavus Vasa during the seven and thirty years of his reign, told at last even upon his magnificent constitution. In the spring of 1560, conscious of an ominous decline of his powers, Gustavus summoned his last diet, to give an account of his stewardship. On the 16th of June 1560 the assembly met at Stockholm. Ten days later, supported by his sons, Gustavus greeted the estates in the great hall of the palace, when he took a retrospect of his reign, reminding them of the misery of the kingdom during the union and its deliverance from “that unkind tyrant, King Christian.” Four days later the diet passed a resolution confirming the hereditary right of Gustavus’s son, Prince Eric, to the throne. The old king’s last anxieties were now over and he could die in peace. He expired on the 29th of September 1560.

Gustavus was thrice married. His first wife, Catherine, daughter of Magnus I., duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, bore him in 1533 his eldest son Eric. This union was neither long nor happy, but the blame for its infelicity is generally attributed to the lady, whose abnormal character was reflected and accentuated in her unhappy son. Much more fortunate was Gustavus’s second marriage, a year after the death of his first consort, with his own countrywoman, Margaret Lejonhufvud, who bore him five sons and five daughters, of whom three sons, John, Magnus and Charles, and one daughter, Cecilia, survived their childhood. Queen Margaret died in 1551; and a twelvemonth later Gustavus wedded her niece, Catharine Stenbock, a handsome girl of sixteen, who survived him more than sixty years.

Gustavus’s outward appearance in the prime of life is thus described by a contemporary: “He was of the middle height, with a round head, light yellow hair, a fine long beard, sharp eyes, a ruddy countenance ... and a body as fitly and well proportioned as any painter could have painted it. He was of a sanguine-choleric temperament, and when untroubled and unvexed, a bright and cheerful gentleman, easy to get on with, and however many people happened to be in the same room with him, he was never at a loss for an answer to every one of them.” Learned he was not, but he had naturally bright and clear understanding, an unusually good memory, and a marvellous capacity for taking pains. He was also very devout, and his morals were irreproachable. On the other hand, Gustavus had his full share of the family failings of irritability and suspiciousness, the latter quality becoming almost morbid under the pressure of adverse circumstances. His energy too not infrequently degenerated into violence, and when crossed he was apt to be tyrannical.

See A. Alberg,Gustavus Vasa and his Times(London, 1882); R. N. Bain,Scandinavia, chaps. iii. and v. (Cambridge, 1905); P. B. Watson,The Swedish Revolution under Gustavus Vasa(London, 1889); O. Sjögren,Gustaf Vasa(Stockholm, 1896); C. M. Butler,The Reformation in Sweden(New York, 1883);Sveriges Historia(Stockholm, 1877-1881); J. Weidling,Schwedische Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation(Gotha, 1882).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS II. ADOLPHUS(1594-1632), king of Sweden, the eldest son of Charles IX. and of Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein-Gottorp, was born at Stockholm castle on the 9th of December 1594. From the first he was carefully nurtured to be the future prop of Protestantism by his austere parents. Gustavus was well grounded in the classics, and his linguistic accomplishments were extraordinary. He may be said to have grown up with two mother-tongues, Swedish and German; at twelve he had mastered Latin, Italian and Dutch; and he learnt subsequently to express himself in Spanish, Russian and Polish. But his practical father took care that he should grow up a prince, not a pedant. So early as his ninth year he was introduced to public life; at thirteen he received petitions and conversed officially with the foreign ministers; at fifteen he administered his duchy of Vestmanland and opened the Örebro diet with a speech from the throne; indeed from 1610 he may be regarded as his father’s co-regent. In all martial and chivalrous accomplishments he was already an adept; and when, a year later, he succeeded to supreme power, his superior ability was as uncontested as it was incontestable.

The first act of the young king was to terminate the fratricidal struggle with Denmark by the peace of Knäred (28th of January 1613). Simultaneously, another war, also an heritage from Charles IX., had been proceeding in the far distant regions round lakes Ilmen, Peipus and Ladoga, with Great Novgorod as its centre. It was not, however, like the Danish War, a national danger, but a political speculation meant to be remunerative and compensatory, and was concluded very advantageously for Sweden by the peace of Stolbova on the 27th of February 1617 (seeSweden:History). By this peace Gustavus succeeded in excluding Muscovy from the Baltic. “I hope to God,” he declared to the Stockholm diet in 1617, when he announced the conclusion of peace, “that the Russians will feel it a bit difficult to skip overthatlittle brook.” The war with Poland which Gustavus resumed in 1621 was a much more difficult affair. It began with an attack upon Riga as the first step towards conquering Livonia. Riga was invested on the 13th of August and surrendered on the 15th of September; on the 3rd of October Mitau was occupied; but so great were the ravages of sickness during the campaign that the Swedish army had to be reinforced by no fewer than 10,000 men. A truce was thereupon concluded and hostilities were suspended till the summer of 1625, in the course of which Gustavus took Kokenhusen and invaded Lithuania. In January 1626 he attacked the Poles at Walhof and scattered the whole of their army after slaying a fifth part of it. This victory, remarkable besides as Gustavus’s first pitched battle, completed the conquest of Livonia. As, however, it became every year more difficult to support an army in the Dvina district, Gustavus now resolved to transfer the war to the Prussian provinces of Poland with a view to securing the control of the Vistula, as he had already secured the control of the Dvina. At the end of 1626, the Swedish fleet, with 14,000 men on board, anchored in front of the chain of sand-dunes which separates the Frische-Haff from the Baltic. Pillau, the only Baltic port then accessible to ships of war, was at once occupied, and Königsberg shortly afterwards was scared into an unconditional neutrality. July was passed in conquering the bishopric of Ermeland. The surrender of Elbing and Marienburg placed Gustavus in possession of the fertile and easily defensible delta of the Vistula, which he treated as a permanent conquest, making Axel Oxenstjerna its first governor-general. Communications between Danzig and the sea were cut off by the erection of the first of Gustavus’s famous entrenched camps at Dirschau. From the end of August 1626 the city was blockaded, and in the meantime Polish irregulars, under the capable Stanislaus Koniecpolski, began to harass the Swedes. But the object of the campaign, a convenient basis of operations, was won; and in October the king departed to Sweden to get reinforcements. He returned in May 1627 with 7000 men, which raised his forces to 14,000, against which Koniecpolski could only oppose 9000. But his superior strategy frustrated all the efforts of the Swedish king, who in the course of the year was twice dangerously wounded and so disabled that he could never wear armour again. Gustavus had made extensive preparations for the ensuing campaign and took the field with 32,000 men. But once again, though far outnumbered, and unsupported by his own government, the Polish grand-hetman proved more than a match for Gustavus, who, on the 10th of September, broke up his camp and returned to Prussia; the whole autumn campaign had proved a failure and cost him 5000 men. During the ensuing campaign of 1629 Gustavus had to contend against the combined forces of Koniecpolski and 10,000 of Wallenstein’s mercenaries. The Polish commander now showed the Swedes what he could do with adequate forces. At Stuhm, on the 29th of June, he defeated Gustavus, who lost most of his artillery and narrowly escaped capture. The result of the campaign was the conclusion of the six years’ truce of Altmark, which was very advantageous to Sweden.

And now Gustavus turned his attention to Germany. The motives which induced the Swedish king to intervene directly in the Thirty Years’ War are told us by himself in his correspondence with Oxenstjerna. Here he says plainly that it was the fear lest the emperor should acquire the Baltic ports and proceed to build up a sea-power dangerous to Scandinavia. For the same reason, the king rejected the chancellor’s alternative of waging a simply defensive war against the emperor by means of the fleet, with Stralsund as his base. He was convinced by the experience of Christian IV. of Denmark that the enemies’ harbours could be wrested from them only by a successful offensive war on land; and, while quite alive to the risks of such an enterprise in the face of two large armies, Tilly’s and Wallenstein’s, each of them larger than his own, he argued that the vast extent of territory and the numerous garrisons which the enemy was obliged to maintain, more than neutralized his numerical superiority. Merely to blockade all the German ports with the Swedish fleet was equally impossible. The Swedish fleet was too weak for that; it would be safer to take and fortify the pick of them. In Germany itself, if he once got the upper hand, he would not find himself without resources. It is no enthusiastic crusader, but an anxious and farseeing if somewhat speculative statesman who thus opens his mind to us. No doubt religious considerations largely influenced Gustavus. He had the deepest sympathy for his fellow-Protestants in Germany; he regarded them as God’s peculiar people, himself as their divinely appointed deliverer. But his first duty was to Sweden; and, naturally and rightly, he viewed the whole business from a predominantly Swedish point of view. Lutherans and Calvinists were to be delivered from a “soul-crushing tyranny”; but they were to be delivered by a foreign if friendly power; and that power claimed as her reward the hegemony of Protestant Europe and all the political privileges belonging to that exalted position.

On the 19th of May 1630 Gustavus solemnly took leave of the estates of the realm assembled at Stockholm. He appeared before them holding in his arms his only child and heiress, the little princess Christina, then in her fourth year, and tenderly committed her to the care of his loyal and devoted people. Then he solemnly took the estates to witness, as he stood there “in the sight of the Almighty,” that he had begun hostilities “out of no lust for war, as many will certainly devise and imagine,” but in self-defence and to deliver his fellow-Christians from oppression. On the 7th of June 1630 the Swedish fleet set sail, and two days after midsummer day, the whole army, 16,000 strong, was disembarked at Peenemünde. Gustavus’s plan was to take possession of the mouths of the Oder Haff, and, resting upon Stralsund in the west and Prussia in the east, penetrate into Germany. In those days rivers were what railways now are, the great military routes; and Gustavus’s German war was a war waged along river lines. The opening campaign was to be fought along the line of the Oder. Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, and the key of the Oder line, was occupied and converted into a first-class fortress. He then proceeded to clear Pomerania of the piebald imperial host composed of every nationality underheaven, and officered by Italians, Irishmen, Czechs, Croats, Danes, Spaniards and Walloons. Gustavus’s army has often been described by German historians as an army of foreign invaders; in reality it was far more truly Teutonic than the official defenders of Germany at that period. Gustavus’s political difficulties (seeSweden:History) chained him to his camp for the remainder of the year. But the dismissal of Wallenstein and the declaration in Gustavus’s favour of Magdeburg, the greatest city in the Lower Saxon Circle, and strategically the strongest fortress of North Germany, encouraged him to advance boldly. But first, honour as well as expediency moved him to attempt to relieve Magdeburg, now closely invested by the imperialists, especially as his hands had now been considerably strengthened by a definite alliance with France (treaty of Bärwalde, 13th of January 1631). Magdeburg, therefore, became the focus of the whole campaign of 1631; but the obstructive timidity of the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony threw insuperable obstacles in his way, and, on the very day when John George I. of Saxony closed his gates against Gustavus the most populous and prosperous city in North Germany became a heap of smoking ruins (20th of May). Gustavus, still too weak to meet the foe, entrenched himself at Werben, at the confluence of the Havel and Elbe. Only on the 12th of September did the elector of Saxony, alarmed for the safety of his own states, now invaded by the emperor, place himself absolutely at the disposal of Gustavus; and, five days later, at the head of the combined Swedish-Saxon army, though the Swedes did all the fighting, Gustavus routed Tilly at the famous battle of Breitenfeld, north of Leipzig.

The question now was: In what way should Gustavus utilize his advantage? Should he invade the Austrian crown lands, and dictate peace to Ferdinand II. at the gates of Vienna? Or should he pursue Tilly westwards and crush the league at its own hearth and home? Oxenstjerna was the first alternative, but Gustavus decided in favour of the second. His decision has been greatly blamed. More than one modern historian has argued that if Gustavus had done in 1631 what Napoleon did in 1805 and 1809, there would have been a fifteen instead of a thirty years’ war. But it should be borne in mind that, in the days of Gustavus, Vienna was by no means so essential to the existence of the Habsburg monarchy as it was in the days of Napoleon; and even Gustavus could not allow so dangerous an opponent as Tilly time to recover himself. Accordingly, he set out for the Rhine, taking Marienberg and Frankfort on his way, and on the 20th of December entered Mainz, where he remained throughout the winter of 1631-1632. At the beginning of 1632, in order to bring about the general peace he so earnestly desired, he proposed to take the field with an overwhelming numerical majority. The signal for Gustavus to break up from the Rhine was the sudden advance of Tilly from behind the Danube. Gustavus pursued Tilly into Bavaria, forced the passage of the Danube at Donauwörth and the passage of the Lech, in the face of Tilly’s strongly entrenched camp at Rain, and pursued the flying foe to the fortress of Ingolstadt where Tilly died of his wounds a fortnight later. Gustavus then liberated and garrisoned the long-oppressed Protestant cities of Augsburg and Ulm, and in May occupied Munich. The same week Wallenstein chased John George from Prague and manœuvred the Saxons out of Bohemia. Then, armed as he was with plenipotentiary power, he offered the elector of Saxony peace on his own terms. Gustavus suddenly saw himself exposed to extreme peril. If Tilly had made John George such an offer as Wallenstein was now empowered to make, the elector would never have become Gustavus’s ally; would he remain Gustavus’s ally now? Hastily quitting his quarters in Upper Swabia, Gustavus hastened towards Nuremberg on his way to Saxony, but finding that Wallenstein and Maximilian of Bavaria had united their forces, he abandoned the attempt to reach Saxony, and both armies confronted each other at Nuremberg which furnished Gustavus with a point of support of the first order. He quickly converted the town into an entrenched and fortified camp. Wallenstein followed the king’s example, and entrenched himself on the western bank of the Regnitz in a camp twelve English miles in circumference. His object was to pin Gustavus fast to Nuremberg and cut off his retreat northwards. Throughout July and August the two armies faced each other immovably. On the 24th of August, after an unsuccessful attempt to storm Alte Veste, the key of Wallenstein’s position, the Swedish host retired southwards.

Towards the end of October, Wallenstein, after devastating Saxony, was preparing to go into winter quarters at Lützen, when the king surprised him as he was crossing the Rippach (1st of November) and a rearguard action favourable to the Swedes ensued. Indeed, but for nightfall, Wallenstein’s scattered forces might have been routed. During the night, however, Wallenstein re-collected his host for a decisive action, and at daybreak on the 6th of November, while an autumn mist still lay over the field, the battle began. It was obviously Gustavus’s plan to drive Wallenstein away from the Leipzig road, north of which he had posted himself, and thus, in case of success, to isolate, and subsequently, with the aid of the Saxons in the Elbe fortresses, annihilate him. The king, on the Swedish right wing, succeeded in driving the enemy from the trenches and capturing his cannon. What happened after that is mere conjecture, for a thick mist now obscured the autumn sun, and the battle became a colossal mêlée the details of which are indistinguishable. It was in the midst of that awful obscurity that Gustavus met his death—how or where is not absolutely certain; but it would seem that he lost his way in the darkness while leading the Småland horse to the assistance of his infantry, and was despatched as he lay severely wounded on the ground by a hostile horseman.

By his wife, Marie Eleonora, a sister of the elector of Brandenburg, whom he married in 1620, Gustavus Adolphus had one daughter, Christina, who succeeded him on the throne of Sweden.

SeeSveriges Historia(Stockholm, 1877, 81), vol. iv.; A. Oxenstjerna,Skrifter och Brefvexling(Stockholm, 1900, &c.); G. Björlen,Gustaf Adolf(Stockholm, 1890); R. N. Bain,Scandinavia(Cambridge, 1905); C. R. L. Fletcher,Gustavus Adolphus(London, 1892); J. L. Stevens,History of Gustavus Adolphus(London, 1885); J. Mankell,Om Gustaf II. Adolfs politik(Stockholm, 1881); E. Bluemel,Gustav Adolf, König von Schweden(Eisleben, 1894); A. Rydfors,De diplomatiska förbindelserna mellan Sverige och England 1624-1630(Upsala, 1890).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS III.(1746-1792), king of Sweden, was the eldest son of Adolphus Frederick, king of Sweden, and Louisa Ulrica of Prussia, sister of Frederick the Great, and was born on the 24th of January 1746. Gustavus was educated under the care of two governors who were amongst the most eminent Swedish statesmen of the day, Carl Gustaf Tessin and Carl Scheffer; but he owed most perhaps to the poet and historian Olof von Dalin. The interference of the state with his education, when he was quite a child, was, however, doubly harmful, as his parents taught him to despise the preceptors imposed upon him by the diet, and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation. But even his most hostile teachers were amazed by the brilliance of his natural gifts, and, while still a boy, he possessed that charm of manner which was to make him so fascinating and so dangerous in later life, coupled with the strong dramatic instinct which won for him his honourable place in Swedish literature. On the whole, Gustavus cannot be said to have been well educated, but he read very widely; there was scarce a French author of his day with whose works he was not intimately acquainted; while his enthusiasm for the new French ideas of enlightenment was as sincere as, if more critical than, his mother’s. On the 4th of November 1766, Gustavus married Sophia Magdalena, daughter of Frederick V. of Denmark. The match was an unhappy one, owing partly to incompatibility of temper, but still more to the mischievous interference of the jealous queen-mother.

Gustavus first intervened actively in politics in 1768, at the time of his father’s interregnum, when he compelled the dominant Cap faction to summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in a monarchical direction. But the victorious Hats refused to redeem the pledges which they had given before the elections. “That we should have lost theconstitutional battle does not distress us so much,” wrote Gustavus, in the bitterness of his heart; “but what does dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its own felicity in absolute anarchy.” From the 4th of February to the 25th of March 1771, Gustavus was at Paris, where he carried both the court and the city by storm. The poets and the philosophers paid him enthusiastic homage, and all the distinguished women of the day testified to his superlative merits. With many of them he maintained a lifelong correspondence. But his visit to the French capital was no mere pleasure trip; it was also a political mission. Confidential agents from the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the duc de Choiseul, weary of Swedish anarchy, had resolved to discuss with him the best method of bringing about a revolution in Sweden. Before he departed, the French government undertook to pay the outstanding subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half million livres annually; and the comte de Vergennes, one of the great names of French diplomacy, was transferred from Constantinople to Stockholm. On his way home Gustavus paid a short visit to his uncle, Frederick the Great, at Potsdam. Frederick bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he had guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution, and significantly advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.

On his return to Sweden Gustavus made a sincere and earnest attempt to mediate between the Hats and Caps who were ruining the country between them (seeSweden:History). On the 21st of June 1771 he opened his first parliament in a speech which awakened strange and deep emotions in all who heard it. It was the first time for more than a century that a Swedish king had addressed a Swedish diet from the throne in its native tongue. The orator laid especial stress on the necessity of the sacrifice of all party animosities to the common weal, and volunteered, as “the first citizen of a free people,” to be the mediator between the contending factions. A composition committee was actually formed, but it proved illusory from the first, the patriotism of neither of the factions being equal to the puniest act of self-denial. The subsequent attempts of the dominant Caps still further to limit the prerogative, and reduce Gustavus to the condition of aroi fainéant, induced him at last to consider the possibility of a revolution. Of its necessity there could be no doubt. Under the sway of the Cap faction, Sweden, already the vassal, could not fail to become the prey of Russia. She was on the point of being absorbed in that northern system, the invention of the Russian vice-chancellor, Count Nikita Panin, which that patient statesman had made it the ambition of his life to realize. Only a swift and suddencoup d’étatcould save the independence of a country isolated from the rest of Europe by a hostile league. At this juncture Gustavus was approached by Jakob Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish nobleman of determined character, who had incurred the enmity of the Caps, with the project of a revolution. He undertook to seize the fortress of Sveaborg by acoup de main, and, Finland once secured, Sprengtporten proposed to embark for Sweden, meet the king and his friends near Stockholm, and surprise the capital by a night attack, when the estates were to be forced, at the point of the bayonet, to accept a new constitution from the untrammelled king. The plotters were at this juncture reinforced by an ex-ranger from Scania (Skåne), Johan Kristoffer Toll, also a victim of Cap oppression. Toll proposed that a second revolt should break out in the province of Scania, to confuse the government still more, and undertook personally to secure the southern fortress of Kristianstad. After some debate, it was finally arranged that, a few days after the Finnish revolt had begun, Kristianstad should openly declare against the government. Prince Charles, the eldest of the king’s brothers, was thereupon hastily to mobilize the garrisons of all the southern fortresses, for the ostensible purpose of crushing the revolt at Kristianstad; but on arriving before the fortress he was to make common cause with the rebels, and march upon the capital from the south, while Sprengtporten attacked it simultaneously from the east. On the 6th of August 1772 Toll succeeded, by sheer bluff, in winning the fortress of Kristianstad. On the 16th Sprengtporten succeeded in surprising Sveaborg. But contrary winds prevented him from crossing to Stockholm, and in the meanwhile events had occurred which made his presence there unnecessary.

On the 16th of August the Cap leader, Ture Rudbeck, arrived at Stockholm with the news of the insurrection in the south, and Gustavus found himself isolated in the midst of enemies. Sprengtporten lay weather-bound in Finland, Toll was five hundred miles away, the Hat leaders were in hiding. Gustavus thereupon resolved to strike the decisive blow without waiting for the arrival of Sprengtporten. He acted with military promptitude. On the evening of the 18th all the officers whom he thought he could trust received secret instructions to assemble in the great square facing the arsenal on the following morning. At ten o’clock on the 19th Gustavus mounted his horse and rode straight to the arsenal. On the way his adherents joined him in little groups, as if by accident, so that by the time he reached his destination he had about two hundred officers in his suite. After parade he reconducted them to the guard-room of the palace and unfolded his plans to them. He then dictated a new oath of allegiance, and every one signed it without hesitation. It absolved them from their allegiance to the estates, and bound them solely to obey their lawful king, Gustavus III. Meanwhile the senate and the governor-general, Rudbeck, had been arrested and the fleet secured. Then Gustavus made a tour of the city and was everywhere received by enthusiastic crowds, who hailed him as a deliverer. On the evening of the 20th heralds perambulated the streets proclaiming that the estates were to meet in the Rikssaal on the following day; every deputy absenting himself would be regarded as the enemy of his country and his king. On the 21st, a few moments after the estates had assembled, the king in full regalia appeared, and taking his seat on the throne, delivered that famous philippic, one of the masterpieces of Swedish oratory, in which he reproached the estates for their unpatriotic venality and licence in the past. A new constitution was recited by the estates and accepted by them unanimously. The diet was then dissolved.

Gustavus was inspired by a burning enthusiasm for the greatness and welfare of Sweden, and worked in the same reformatory direction as the other contemporary sovereigns of the “age of enlightenment.” He took an active part in every department of business, but relied far more on extra-official counsellors of his own choosing than upon the senate. The effort to remedy the frightful corruption which had been fostered by the Hats and Caps engaged a considerable share of his time and he even found it necessary to put the whole of a supreme court of justice (Göta Hofrätt) on its trial. Measures were also taken to reform the administration and the whole course of judicial procedure, and torture as an instrument of legal investigation was abolished. In 1774 an ordinance providing for the liberty of the press was even issued. The national defences were at the same time developed on a “Great Power” scale, and the navy was so enlarged as to become one of the most formidable in Europe. The dilapidated finances were set in good order by the “currency realization ordinance” of 1777. Gustavus also introduced new national economic principles. In 1775 free trade in corn was promoted and a number of oppressive export-tolls were abolished. The poor law was also amended, absolute religious liberty was proclaimed, and he even succeeded in inventing and popularizing a national costume which was in general use from 1778 till his death. His one great economic blunder was the attempt to make the sale of spirits a government monopoly, which was an obvious infringement upon the privileges of the estates. His foreign policy, on the other hand, was at first both wise and wary. Thus, when the king summoned the estates to assemble at Stockholm on the 3rd of September 1778, he could give a brilliant account of his six years’ stewardship. Never was a parliament more obsequious or a king more gracious. “There was no room for a single No during the whole session.” Yet, short as the session was, it was quite long enough to open the eyes of the deputies to the fact that their political supremacy haddeparted. They had changed places with the king. He was now indeed their sovereign lord; and, for all his gentleness, the jealousy with which he guarded, the vigour with which he enforced the prerogative, plainly showed that he meant to remain so. Even the few who were patriotic enough to acquiesce in the change by no means liked it. The diet of 1778 had been obsequious; the diet of 1786 was mutinous. The consequence was that nearly all the royal propositions were either rejected outright or so modified that Gustavus himself withdrew them.

The diet of 1786 marks a turning-point in Gustavus’s history. Henceforth we observe a determination on his part to rule without a parliament; a passage, cautious and gradual, yet unflinching, from semi-constitutionalism to semi-absolutism. His opportunity came in 1788, when the political complications arising out of his war with Catherine II. of Russia enabled him by the Act of Unity and Security (on the 17th of February 1789) to override the opposition of the rebellious and grossly unpatriotic gentry, and, with the approbation of the three lower estates, establish a new and revolutionary constitution, in which, though the estates still held the power of the purse, the royal authority largely predominated. Throughout 1789 and 1790 Gustavus, in the national interests, gallantly conducted the unequal struggle with Russia, finally winning in the Svensksund (9th-10th July) the most glorious naval victory ever gained by the Swedish arms, the Russians losing one-third of their fleet and 7000 men. A month later, on the 14th of August 1790, peace was signed between Russia and Sweden at Värälä. Only eight months before, Catherine had haughtily declared that “the odious and revolting aggression” of the king of Sweden would be “forgiven” only if he “testified his repentance” by agreeing to a peace granting a general and unlimited amnesty to all his rebels, and consenting to a guarantee by the Swedish diet (“as it would be imprudent to confide in his good faith alone”) for the observance of peace in the future. The peace of Värälä saved Sweden from any such humiliating concession, and in October 1791 Gustavus took the bold but by no means imprudent step of concluding an eight years’ defensive alliance with the empress, who thereby bound herself to pay her new ally annual subsidies amounting to 300,000 roubles.

Gustavus now aimed at forming a league of princes against the Jacobins, and every other consideration was subordinated thereto. His profound knowledge of popular assemblies enabled him, alone among contemporary sovereigns, accurately to gauge from the first the scope and bearing of the French Revolution. But he was hampered by poverty and the jealousy of the other European Powers, and, after showing once more his unrivalled mastery over masses of men at the brief Gefle diet (22nd of January-24th of February 1792), he fell a victim to a widespread aristocratic conspiracy. Shot in the back by Anckarström at a midnight masquerade at the Stockholm opera-house, on the 16th of March 1792, he expired on the 29th.

Although he may be charged with many foibles and extravagances, Gustavus III. was indisputably one of the greatest sovereigns of the 18th century. Unfortunately his genius never had full scope, and his opportunity came too late. Gustavus was, moreover, a most distinguished author. He may be said to have created the Swedish theatre, and some of the best acting dramas in the literature are by his hand. His historical essays, notably the famous anonymous eulogy on Torstenson crowned by the Academy, are full of feeling and exquisite in style,—his letters to his friends are delightful. Every branch of literature and art interested him, every poet and artist of his day found in him a most liberal and sympathetic protector.

See R. N. Bain,Gustavus III. and his Contemporaries(London, 1904); E. G. Geijer,Konung Gustaf III.’s efterlemnade papper(Upsala, 1843-1845); C. T. Odhner,Sveriges politiska historia under Konung Gustaf III.’s regering(Stockholm, 1885-1896); B. von Beskow,Om Gustaf III. såsom Konung och människa(Stockholm, 1860-1861); O. Levertin,Gustaf III. som dramatisk författare(Stockholm, 1894);Gustaf III.’s bref till G. M. Armfelt(Fr.) (Stockholm, 1883); Y. K. Grot,Catharine II. and Gustavus III.(Russ.) (St Petersburg, 1884).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS IV.(1778-1837), king of Sweden, the son of Gustavus III. and Queen Sophia Magdalena, was born at Stockholm on the 1st of November 1778. Carefully educated under the direction of Nils von Rosenstein, he grew up serious and conscientious. In August 1796 his uncle the regent Charles, duke of Sudermania, visited St Petersburg for the purpose of arranging a marriage between the young king and Catherine II.’s granddaughter, the grand-duchess Alexandra. The betrothal was actually fixed for the 22nd of September, when the whole arrangement foundered on the obstinate refusal of Gustavus to allow his destined bride liberty of worship according to the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church—a rebuff which undoubtedly accelerated the death of the Russian empress. Nobody seems to have even suspected at the time that serious mental derangement lay at the root of Gustavus’s abnormal piety. On the contrary, there were many who prematurely congratulated themselves on the fact that Sweden had now no disturbing genius, but an economical, God-fearing, commonplace monarch to deal with. Gustavus’s prompt dismissal of the generally detested Gustaf Reuterholm added still further to his popularity. On the 31st of October 1797 Gustavus married Frederica Dorothea, daughter of Charles Frederick, grand-duke of Baden, a marriage which might have led to a war with Russia but for the fanatical hatred of the French republic shared by the emperor Paul and Gustavus IV., which served as a bond of union between them. Indeed the king’s horror of Jacobinism was morbid in its intensity, and drove him to adopt all sorts of reactionary measures and to postpone his coronation for some years, so as to avoid calling together a diet; but the disorder of the finances, caused partly by the continental war and partly by the almost total failure of the crops in 1798 and 1799, compelled him to summon the estates to Norrköping in March 1800, and on the 3rd of April Gustavus was crowned. The notable change which now took place in Sweden’s foreign policy and its fatal consequences to the country are elsewhere set forth (seeSweden,History). By the end of 1808 it was obvious to every thinking Swede that the king was insane. His violence had alienated his most faithful supporters, while his obstinate incompetence paralysed the national efforts. To remove a madman by force was the one remaining expedient; and this was successfully accomplished by a conspiracy of officers of the western army, headed by Adlersparre, the Anckarsvärds, and Adlercreutz, who marched rapidly from Skåne to Stockholm. On the 13th of March 1809 seven of the conspirators broke into the royal apartments in the palace unannounced, seized the king, and conducted him to the château of Gripsholm; Duke Charles was easily persuaded to accept the leadership of a provisional government, which was proclaimed the same day; and a diet, hastily summoned, solemnly approved of the revolution. On the 29th of March Gustavus, in order to save the crown for his son, voluntarily abdicated; but on the 10th of May the estates, dominated by the army, declared that not merely Gustavus but his whole family had forfeited the throne. On the 5th of June the duke regent was proclaimed king under the title of Charles XIII., after accepting the new liberal constitution, which was ratified by the diet the same day. In December Gustavus and his family were transported to Germany. Gustavus now assumed the title of count of Gottorp, but subsequently called himself Colonel Gustafsson, under which pseudonym he wrote most of his works. He led, separated from his family, an erratic life for some years; was divorced from his consort in 1812; and finally settled at St Gall in Switzerland in great loneliness and indigence. He died on the 7th of February 1837, and, at the suggestion of King Oscar II. his body was brought to Sweden and interred in the Riddarholmskyrka. From him descend both the Baden and the Oldenburg princely houses on the female side.

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