The Boys' Book of Famous Rulers

by Lydia Hoyt Farmer

“To be the tutor of the prince was appointed Master John Skytte, and Otto von Mörner his chamberlain. The last named was marshall of the court of Charles IX., and born of noble parents in Brandenburg. He had acquired extensive learning and distinguished manners in the numerous countries in which he had travelled. John Skytte, after having employed nine years in visiting foreign lands, had become one of the secretaries of the king’s government. Gustavus received all the instructions necessary to a prince destined to reign. Skytte directed him in the study of Latin, of history, and of the laws of his country.

“As Charles was a strict ruler and martial prince, and as Christine had, besides her beauty, the soul proud and courageous, the education of the prince was free from softness. He was habituated to labor. At times in his early youth, particularly after he had arrived at his tenth year, he was more and more allowed by his father to attend the deliberations of the Council. He was habituated also to be present at the audiences of the foreign embassies, and was finally directed by his royal father to answer these foreign dignitaries in order thus to accustom him to weighty affairs and their treatment.

“As it was a period of warlike turmoils, there was much resort to the king’s court, especially by officers,—not only Swedes, but also Germans, French, English, Scots, Netherlanders, and some Italians and Spaniards,—who, after the twelve years’ truce then just concluded between Spain and Holland, sought their fortune in Sweden. These often waited upon the young prince by the will and order of the king. Their conversation relating to the wars waged by other nations, battles, sieges, and discipline, both by sea and land as well as ships and navigation, did so arouse and stimulate the mind of the young prince, by nature already thus inclined, that he spent almost every day in putting questions concerning what had happened at one place and another in the wars. Besides, he acquired in his youthful years no little insight into the science of war, especially into the mode and means,—how a regular war, well directed and suited to the circumstances of Sweden, should be carried on, having the character and rules of Maurice, prince of Orange, as a pattern before his eyes. By the intercourse and converse of these officers, in which each told the most glorious acts of his own nation, the young prince was enkindled to act like others, and if possible, to excel them. In his early years he gained also a complete and ready knowledge of many foreign languages; so that he spoke Latin, German, Dutch, French, and Italian as purely as a native, and besides had some knowledge of the Russian and Polish tongues. When he was of the age of sixteen years, his father made him grand duke of Finland, and duke of Esthonia and Westmanland, and presently bestowed upon him the town of Vesteras, with the principal portion of Westmanland, over which was placed John Skytte to be governor.”

It is also stated that Gustavus knew Greek, and read Xenophon in that tongue, of whom he said “that he knew of no writer better than he for a true military historian.”

For some years after Gustavus ascended the throne, he is said to have devoted an hour each day to reading, preferring to all others the works of Grotius, especially his treatise on “War and Peace.”

Young Gustavus possessed great courage, to which was joined striking benignity of character which he did not inherit from his parents. King Charles was stern and somewhat heartless, and he was persuaded by his wife, the mother of Adolphus, to great acts of cruelty towards the victims of his civil wars, which obscured his nobler qualities. The mother of Gustavus, though possessed of a strong and positive character, was too tyrannical to be attractive, and too unrelenting to exert a loving influence in her household, and the severity of both husband and wife came often in collision. Adolphus was the only member of the royal family who dared attempt to pacify his father when he was angry. Though Gustavus inherited the strong characteristics of his parents, and possessed his father’s failing of a quick temper, his nature was so sympathetic and unselfish that his winning manners attracted the hearts of all as much as the unrelenting sternness of his parents repelled. Their sternness became in the household only exacting selfishness; whereas all the severity of his character manifested itself only in unflinching allegiance to the right and true, and the steadfast upholding of high and noble principles of state or religion. Gustavus was scarcely fifteen years of age when he requested to be placed in command of troops in the war against Russia. But his father, deeming him too young, refused. When he was seventeen years of age, war having been declared with Denmark, young Gustavus was pronounced in the Diet—as the assembly of the Swedish nobles was called—fit to bear the sword, and he was, according to ancient custom, invested with this dignity with most splendid ceremony.

In this expedition young Gustavus endured his first trial of warfare, being present at all the remarkable encounters, holding chief command in most of them. For during this war King Charles died, and the command was left to Gustavus, then seventeen years of age. In the first month of his eighteenth year, he received the crown in the presence of all the representatives of the estates of Sweden, at the Diet of Nyköping. He took the title of his father,—king-elect and hereditary prince of Sweden, of the Goths, and of the Wends. Since the death of Gustavus Vasa, his grandfather, a period of more than fifty years, Sweden had not enjoyed a single year of peace.

When Gustavus Adolphus ascended the Swedish throne, in 1611, being then in his eighteenth year, he found an exhausted treasury, an alienated nobility, and not undisputed succession, and, with all this, no less than three wars upon his hands,—one with Denmark then raging,—also the seeds of two other wars, with Russia and with Poland, which soon after burst forth. The first fifteen years of his reign were occupied in bringing these wars to a conclusion; and in these struggles he won an experience which afterwards proved of great service in making him illustrious upon a more conspicuous battle-field. We have not space to describe at length the wars between Sweden and Denmark, nor her conflicts with Russia and Poland, but must pass on to the more important period of the history of Gustavus Adolphus, which gives him a place in the foremost ranks of leadership, and places his name with Napoleon I., Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, and Charlemagne. It was not so much what he himself personally accomplished,—though that was much, for death met him long before the glorious end was reached,—but it was on account of the vast and momentous train of circumstances he set in motion, because he stood forth, the only man capable of taking the helm of the great ship of the Reformation, which, but for him, aided by the almighty ruling of an Omniscient Providence, seemed to the finite vision of mankind doomed to destruction. It was not as a conqueror of vast empires, like Alexander, Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon, that Gustavus Adolphus is illustrious; but it is because, through the providence of God, he was made the instrument in helping to achieve the more important conquest of gaining spiritual liberty of soul from the bondage of bigotry and superstition. As the champion of the Reformation, the name of Gustavus Adolphus must be placed amongst the foremost of the famous rulers of the world.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, FROM A PICTURE BY VAN DYCK.