GUSTAVUS II. (Anomius) was b. at Stockholm, Dec. 9, 1594, and d. in 1632 on the field of battle at Lfftzen. He was the grandson of Gustavus Vasa, by his youngest son, Charles IX., at whose death. in 1611, he succeeded to the throne of Sweden. Gustavus had been strictly brought up in the Lutheran faith, and carefully trained in habits of business, and was one of the most accomplished princes of Ids age. He was acquainted with eight languages, five of which he spoke and wrote fluently, was well read in the classics and ancient history; proficient in music. and excelled in all warlike and manly exercises. At his accession to power, he found the country involved in wars abroad, and disorders at home, arising from the disputed succession of his father, who had been elected king on the exclusion of his nephew, Sigismund, king of Poland. the direct heir, whose profession of the Roman Catholic religion made him obnoxious to the Swedish people, and virtually annulled his claims to the crown. The first act of Gus tavus was to secure the hearty co-operation of the nobles, whose privileges he confirmed, and made dependent upon the performance of military service to the crown, and thus laid the foundation of an essentially feudal or military form of government, in which the nobles held their lands directly, and the peasantry indirectly, under the crown. In addition to these two bodies, which had formerly constituted the national diet. Gus tavus for the first time admitted special delegates of the army into the assembly a.: assessors to the nobles. Having thus organized the internal government, and succeeded in levying heavy imposts and raising some companies of etlicient troops, he inaugurated his military career by a war with Denmark, which at that time occupied the Baltic districts of the Swedish territories, and thus completely cut off the Swedes from direct communication with the continent of eastern Europe. The war continued for a year, and terminated in a peace between the two countries, by which Gustavus renounced his claims on the Lappish districts and other disputed territory, and recovered pos session, under certain conditions, of Calmar, ()eland, Elfsborg, and the province of Gottenborg.
Having thus gained an outlet on time Baltic, secured a peaceful ally in the king of Denmark, and concluded an allegiance with the .Netherlands, Gustavus turned 1113 attention to time 'Russian war, which. after a fluctuating success, was concluded in 1617. by the treaty of,Stolbova, by which Sweden obtaine4 dominion over Inger nmuland and lintelia, and part of Lifland, While RdSsiakrectAbred Novogorod and all other conquests made by the Swedes. The boundary of the Swedish territory, which then included the site of the future St. Petersburg, was marked, after the peace, by a stone which bore the three crowns of Sweden above a Latin inscription, recording that it marked the limits of the dominions of Gustavus Adolphus. king of Sweden. The disputes with Poland still, however, remained undecided; and in 1021 war was openly declared between the two countries, and was continued, with occasional intermissions, till 1629, when it terminated in a six years' truce, which was settled by a treaty that secured reciprocity of trade and freedom of religion to the natives of both countries, and left Gustavus master of Elbing, Braunsberg, Pillau, and Memel.
This peace enabled the king to mature the plans he had long cherished in regard to Germany; and having made various administrative reforms, and availed himself of the short interval of peace to promote the material prosperity of the country, he remitted the charge of the government and the care of his infant daughter Christina to his chancellor Oxenstiern, and set sail, in the summer of 1630, with an army of about 15,000 men, to aid the Protestants of Germany in their hard struggle against the Catholic league, which was backed by the power of the empire.
Everything favored the success of the Swedes, who drove the imperialists from Pomerania, and took Stettin. The childless duke of Pomerania engaged, in return for Swedish aid, that the dukedom should, after his death, he given up to Sweden until the expenses of the war were fully repaid; whilst France, through hatred of the empire, agreed to furnish Gustavus with a subsidy of 400,000 six-dollars as long as lie main tained au army of 36,000 men. Wallenstein Had also retired from the service of the
emperor. But while the Swedes were besieging Spandau and Kustrin, the city of Magdeburg, which had applied to Gustavus for assistance, was taken in 1631 by the imperial general, Tilly, whose troops perpetrated the most terrible atrocities against the unfortunate inhabitants. Although Gustavus could not save Magdeburg, he soon after its fall inflicted a defeat on the imperialists at Breitenfeld, which excited the respect and fear of the Catholics, who thenceforward ceased to despise the ''snow-king and his body-guard," as they designated Gustavus and his small army. 'flicking now advanced into Franconia, and after allowing his army to recruit their strength in the rich bishop rics of Wfirzburg and Bamberg. took the Palatinate and _Mainz, where he held a splendid court, surrounded by numerous princes and ambassadors. In the spring of 1632 the Swedes, in the face of Tilly's army, crossed the Danube, and gained a decisive victory at Ingolstadt, where Tilly was mortally wounded. From thence the march to Munich was one continued triumph, and wherever Gustavus appeared lie was received by the populace as their guardian angel. The road to Vienna was now open to him, and the fate of the emperor would have been sealed, lied the latter not.recalled his gen eral, Widlenstein, who, having accepted office on his own terms, gatlieted together a large army, with which he advanced on Nuremberg; but after standing a desperate assault of the Swedes, he was obliged to retire into Thuringia. The unfavorable season and the bad roads hindered Gustavus from attacking the imperialists at the time he intended, but on Nov. 6, 1032, the two armies came finally face to face at Ltitzen. As usual, the Swedes began by singing Luther's hymn, Eine feste Burg let unser Gott, and a hymn composed by the king. Gustavus now made an address to the army, and swing ing his sword above his head, be gave the word of command, and with the cry of "Onwards!" he rushed forward, followed by the eager troops, who were commanded conjointly by himself and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Victory was already on the side of the Swedes, when a strong reinforcement of imperialists appeared under the com mand of Pappenheim. Gustavus seeing that his troops wavered under this fresh attack, rode hastily forward, when, having come too near a squadron of Croats, he received a shot in hits arm, and, as he was turning aside, another in the back, which caused him to fall from his horse. The sight of the riderless animal spread dismay and fury among the Swedes; but before they could advance to his rescue, a party of Croats had thrown themselves between the king and his army; and it was not till after many hours' hard fighting, and when the field was strewn with 10.000 dead and wounded, that they recovered the body of the king, which had been plundered, stripped, and covered with wounds. The artillery of the enemy fell into the hands of the Swedes, who remained masters of the field, after having fought with an impetuosity that nothing could resist. A rumor long prevailed that the shot in the back which caused the king to fall was from the hand of Albert duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, but it appears that there was no just ground for the suspicion.
Although Gustavus was eminently a warlike king, he made many salutary changes in the internal administration of his country, and devoted his short intervals of peace to the promotion of commerce and es. He was pre-eminently religious, and his success in battle is perhaps to be ascribed not only to a better mode of warfare, and the stricter discipline which he enforced, but also still more to the moral influence which his deep-seated piety and his personal character inspired among his soldiers. The spot where lie fell on the field of Lntzen was long marked the 8clgeedenslpin, or Swedes stone, erected by his servant, Jacob Erichsson, on the night after the battle. Its place has now been taken by a noble monument erected to his memory by the German people on the occasion of the second Centenary battle held in .1532.