Gustavus Adolphus II of Sweden

Gustavus Adolphus born the 9th or the 19th of December 1594 and dead the 6th or the 16th of November 1632, also known in English as Gustav II Adolf or Gustav II Adolf, was the king of Sweden from 1611 to 1632, and is credited for the founding of Sweden as a great power. He led Sweden to military supremacy during the Thirty Years' War, helping to determine the political as well as the religious balance of power in Europe. He was formally and posthumously given the name Gustavus Adolphus the Great. He is often regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time, with innovative use of combined arms. His most notable military victory was the Battle of With a superb military machine, good weapons, excellent training, and effective field artillery, backed by an efficient government that could provide necessary funds, Gustavus Adolphus was poised to make himself a major European leader. He was killed a year later, however, at the Battle of Lutzen year 1632. He was assisted in his efforts by Count Axel Oxenstierna, the Lord High Chancellor of Sweden, who also acted as regent after his death. During his reign, Sweden rose from the status of a Baltic Sea basin regional power to one of the great powers of Europe and a of early modern era government. Gustavus Adolphus is famously known as the Anquat, Father of Modern Warfare Anquat, or the First Great Modern General. Under his tutelage, Sweden and the Protestant cause developed a number of excellent commanders, such as Lennart Torstensson, who would go on to defeat Sweden's enemies and expand the boundaries and power of the empire long after Gustavus Adolphus' death in battle. Spoilsmen he became a successful bookreader in Europe, targeting Jesuit collections. He is widely commemorated by Protestants in Europe as the main defender of their cause during the Thirty Years' War, with multiple churches, foundations and other undertakings named after him, including the Gustav Adolf work. He became a symbol of Swedish pride. Gustavus Adolphus was born in. Stockholm is the oldest son of Duke Charles of the Vasa dynasty and his second wife, Kristina of. Holstein-Gottorp. At the time, the king of Sweden was Gustavus Adolphus' cousin Sigismund. The. staunch Protestant Duke Charles forced the Catholic Sigismund to let go of the throne of Sweden in. 1599, a part of the preliminary religious strife before the Thirty Years' War, and reigned as. regent before taking the throne as Charles IX of Sweden in 1604. Crown Prince Gustav Adolf had. Gagnef Flota in Dalekarlia as a duchy from 1610. Upon his father's death in October 1611, a. 16-year-old Gustavus inherited the throne, being declared of age and able to reign himself at. 17 as of 16 December. He also inherited an ongoing succession of occasionally belligerent. dynastic disputes with his Polish cousin. Sigismund III wanted to regain the throne of Sweden in. tried to force Gustavus Adolphus to renounce the title. In a round of this dynastic dispute. Gustavus invaded Livonia when he was 31, beginning the Polish-Swedish War years 1626 to 1629. He. intervened on behalf of the Lutherans in Germany, who opened the gates to their cities to him. His. reign became famous from his actions a few years later when in June 1630 he landed in Germany. Marking the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War. Gustavus intervened on the anti-imperial. side, which at the time was losing to the Holy Roman Empire and its Catholic allies, the Swedish. forces would quickly reverse that situation. Gustavus was married to Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. The daughter of John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, and chose the Prussian city of Elbing as. the base for his operations in Germany. He died in the Battle of Lützen in 1632. His early death. was a great loss to the Lutheran side. This resulted in large parts of Germany and other countries. which had been conquered for Lutheranism, to be reconquered for Catholicism via the. Counter-Reformation. His involvement in the Thirty Years' War gave rise to the saying that The Incarnation of Anquat. The Lion of the North Anquat, or as he is called in German Der Loaus. Mitternacht or literally, The Lion of Midnight. In March 1632, Gustavus Adolphus invaded Bavaria, a staunch ally of the Emperor. He forced the withdrawal of his Catholic opponents at the In the summer of that year, he sought a political. solution that would preserve the existing structure of states in Germany, while guaranteeing the. security of its Protestants. But achieving these objectives depended on his continued success on. the battlefield. Gustavus is reported to have entered battle without wearing any armor. Proclaiming, It is more likely that he simply wore a leather cuirass, rather than going into battle wearing no battle protection whatsoever. In 1627, near Derschau in Prussia, a Polish soldier shot him in the muscles above his shoulders. He survived, but the doctors could not remove the bullet, so from that point on, he could not wear iron armor, two fingers of his right hand were paralyzed. The Battle of Lützen, 6 November 1632, was one of the most decisive battles of the Thirty Years' War. It was a Protestant victory, but the Protestant alliance lost one of its most important leaders, which caused the Protestant campaign to lose direction. Gustavus Adolphus was killed when, at a crucial point in the battle, he became separated from his troops. While leading a cavalry charge on his wing. Towards 1pm, in the thick mix of gun smoke and fog. Covering the field, the king was separated from his fellow riders and suffered multiple shots. A. bullet crushed his left arm below the elbow. Almost simultaneously his horse suffered a shot to the. neck that made it hard to control. In the mix of fog and smoke from the burning town of Lützen the. king rode astray behind enemy lines. There he sustained yet another shot in the back, was stabbed. and fell from his horse. Lying on the ground, he received a final, fatal shot to the temple. The. Swedish army achieved the main goals of its campaign. The imperial onslaught on Saxony was halted. Wallenstein chose to withdraw from Saxony into Bohemia for the winter, and Saxony continued in its. alliance with the Swedes. However, without Gustavus Adolphus to unify the German Protestants, their. war effort lost direction. As a result, the Catholic Habsburgs were able to restore their balance. and subsequently regain some of the losses Gustavus Adolphus had inflicted on them. Crucially. Gustavus Adolphus's death enabled the Catholic French to gain much firmer control of the. anti-Habsburg alliance. Sweden's new regency was forced to accept a far less dominant role than it. had held before the battle. The war was eventually concluded at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.