Gustavus Adolphus
Gustavus Adolphus, the Golden King, the Lion of the North, and the Father of Modern Warfare was a 17th-century Swedish warrior-king who basically invented the concept of the cavalry sabre charge primarily because he wanted to lead thundering hordes of rampaging cavalry blade-first into the enemy – even though the dude couldn't even wear armor into combat because his ribs and shoulder were too fucked up from having been hit by too many bullets. He is the only Swedish King ever referred to as "The Great", he brought his country from the brink of collapse into prominence as one of the most dominant powers in Europe, he won every battle he commanded, he revolutionized military strategy and tactics, he has an entire page dedicated to him on the official website of the heavy metal band Sabaton, and, to this day, the anniversary of his death is a national holiday in Sweden.
Gustav was born on December 9, 1594, to the Swedish royal House of Vasa. His mother was Christina of Holstein (I'll avoid the obvious cow jokes here) and his father was a usurper king – Charles IX, a Protestant who had seized control of Sweden from his brother, the Catholic King Sigismund of Poland. There's a lot of politics going on here that I'm not really going to get into, but here's the basic idea – Immediately upon the death of Charles IX, the nobles of Sweden appointed Gustavus Adolphus King – not because they liked Charles, but because they didn't really want to give the Swedish Crown to the King of Poland so he could combine both countries into a big empire and then make all the Swedish people convert to Catholicism. Well, King Sigismund was pretty pissed about this, and when Gustavus Adolphus succeeded to the Throne of Sweden in 1611 at the young age of sixteen the situation was basically like when you start a new Total War campaign on Hard Mode and pick one of the shitty countries, and like on turn one you have two military units, all of your cities are about to revolt, your yearly income is a negative number, and you're surrounded by a half-dozen World Powers that all want to squash your empire into oatmeal.
For starters, the kid was at war with three countries at the same time – Denmark, Russia, and Poland. To the south, Germany was in the early stages of a brutal civil war that was about to blow up into a conflict that would kill about 8 million people. Sweden was broke (probably from fighting all those wars), the nobles were all pissed off (they hated Charles), and Gustav's uncle Sigismund still had a super-legit claim to the Throne of Sweden and was ready to defend it with the full might of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Oh, right, and about ten seconds after he'd been crowned King, Gustavus Adolphus received word that a fleet of 36 Danish warships were blitzing towards Stockholm to nuke the city into oblivion and kill everyone they could get their hands on.
It was time for the kid to get to work.
Gustavus immediately summoned his army and rode, on horseback, directly towards the Danish fleet. Riding hard day and night, dragging artillery and ammunition behind them, the new King and his men raced towards the fortified bluffs of the Swedish coast, desperately hoping to get there before the enemy. Then, thanks to their breakneck pace and spurred on by the unrelenting dedication of their teenage King, the Swedes reached the cliffs, set up the guns, and blasted the shit out of the Danish fleet, sinking a few of their ships and sending the entire armada back to Copenhagen. A few months later, Gustavus single-handedly captured a Danish castle by marching right up to the front gates with 500 men, bluffing the Danish guards into believing that this big army was actually a group of mercenaries coming to help with the castle's defense, and then capturing the castle as soon as the guards let him inside. He signed the Peace of Knared in 1613, ending the war, and while he did have to give up Sweden's access to the North Sea it could have been a hell of a lot worse.
Adolphus then turned his attention to Russia, where he annexed Ingria and Kexholm, seized territory in Finland and Estonia, cut off Russia's access to the Baltic sea, captured the lands where the Russian city of St. Petersburg sits today, and then famously declared, “The enemy now cannot launch a boat on the Baltic without our permission.” The Peace of Stolbova ended that war in 1617, and Russia wouldn't have access to a non-frozen body of water again until Peter the Great came by like 100 years later.
Finally, with those two fronts closed, Gustavus Adolphus turned his attention to his Dear Uncle Sigismund, the King of Poland who wouldn't shut the fuck up about how he should also be the King of Sweden or whatever. Yeah, ok boomer, we get it, you're the legitimate King of Sweden according to every European diagram of succession – but the only way you're going to take that shit from Gustavus Adolphus is if you pry the crown from his cold rigormortised hands. Adolphus attacked Polish forces in Latvia, captured Riga, and personally led charge after charge into enemy forces, including one cavalry charge in 1627 where the now 33-year-old King took a bullet to the chest but kept on fighting. In future battles, this wound would bug Gustavus so badly that it was super uncomfortable to wear an armored breastplate, so from that point on he would just lead goddamn cavalry charges while wearing a regular riding coat. This is like basically the 17th-century military equivalent of those action movie heroes who just wear sunglasses and a black tank top into epic gunfights while all the other soldiers around him are decked out in plate carriers, MOLLEs, kevlar helmets and night-vision goggles.
solid.
When he wasn't trampling scrotums from horseback in the most fashionable way imaginable, Gustavus Adolphus also fixed shit up at home as well. He won over the nobility by being a Cool Dude, and also by creating a proto-Parliament by forming the Office of the Treasury, the War Office, a Supreme Court, and the Admiralty and then appointing different powerful noblemen to run them. He invested in schools, built up the University of Uppsala and the University of Tartu, signed the carter for the City of Gothenberg, established Stockholm as the capital of Sweden, and rebuilt the economy by increasing trade in copper and tin (and by cock-blocking Russia's Baltic Sea access and forcing them to do all their trade through Sweden).
He also established the first modern professional army of the Modern Era. Rome had done it's Legions and things, but that had been a long time ago – for several hundred years before Gustavus Adolphus, armies were working under that Medieval system where lords reported to their kings and most armies were comprised of a bunch of psycho Mad Max mercenaries who only fought for whatever good shit they could loot from burning cities. Gustavus instituted conscription, drafted a professional army, paid his soldiers, got them uniforms, and, most importantly, drilled the fuck out of them so they could march, shoot, fight, and form up like professionals instead of some rowdy mob of untrained psychopaths. He also made big advancements in tactics and weapons tech, creating lighter-weight guns and cannons, issuing paper cartridges to his soldiers, and organizing his troops into smaller, more mobile units (he invented and coined the word brigade). Without getting too hardcore into it, the core idea was this – when Gustavus took over as king, wars were basically fought Braveheart style. When he was done, they were fighting The Patriot style.
But, whatever, winning three wars in 15 years and inventing the Supreme Court is cool and all, but what Gustavus Adolphus is really best known for is his involvement in the Thirty Years' War (which, by 1630, had only been going on for twelve years, so who knows what they were calling it). The 30YW (TTYW? You think there'd be a cool acronym for this like there is for WWII) began in Germany in 1618 as a struggle between Catholics and Protestants back when people still gave a shit about that sort of thing. The Catholics of the Holy Roman Empire's House of Hapsburg had taken over the throne of Bohemia and started trying to forcibly convert all of Germany into Papists, which, who cares, but what made Gustavus Adolphus worried was that the Catholics were also backed by our friend King Sigismund of Poland – and Adolphus did not love the idea of Sigismund using this support to leverage an attack of Sweden aimed at deposing him.
The idea of whether Adolphus was motivated by his true-believer religious fervor or political/military interests is one of those pointless things that historians love to jerk off about, but in the end it doesn't matter. Gustavus offered his help to the Protestant forces in Germany, who at first refused his help – the Elector of Saxony hated the Hapsburgs, sure, but he also didn't really love the idea of 30,000 heavily-armed Swedes wandering around his kingdom, either. That all changed in May of 1631, when Imperial forces under the command of Count Johannes von Tilly captured the Protestant city of Magdeburg and fucking trashed the place – all 2500 soldiers who surrendered to the Imperials were slaughtered, the city was torched and looted, and 20,000 of the city's 30,000 civilians were killed. It would be the greatest atrocity committed of a war that full of horrific atrocities committed by both sides.
So, naturally, when Count Tilly marched into Saxony and laid siege to Leipzig, the Elector of Saxony changed his mind and begged Gustavus Adolphus to come pull his balls out of the fire. He committed the Saxon army to Adolphus, who now had nearly 30,000 men under his control – a strong core of professional Swedish soldiers, several brigades of Dutch, Scottish, and German mercenaries, and around 10,000 Saxons.
(Fun Fact: The Thirty Years' War is just another those dumb historical names that doesn't reflect reality -- imho it should have been called the 29 Years, 11 Months, 3 Weeks, and 1 Day War because that's how long it was…. Seriously, wtf, get it together historians, you just gonna pad your stats by six days? This is why everyone hates you.)
Gustavus Adolphus met Count von Tilly at a place called Breitenfeld, about five miles north of Leipzig. Tilly drew up his 35,000 men on a ridgeline in the standard formation of the day – the Spanish tercio – which was when you had this huge fucking mass of 2000-3000 pikemen in a giant formation supported by some muskets (picture the Macedonian phalanx, then put a squad of arquebusiers at each of the four corners of the square). He also drew up his gigantic heavy siege cannons and lined them on the ridge as well. Gustavus Adolphus lined up across from him with his smaller, more mobile brigades, that looked more like what you picture when you see the armies of the Revolutionary War or the Civil War.
The battle started with a cannonade, and, to Tilly's surprise, the Swedes were blasting the shit out of him. Tilly's guns were way bigger, but the Swedish guns were light, could be repositioned quickly, fired much faster, and were aiming at much bigger targets (those huge tercios). Meanwhile, the smaller brigades left more empty space on the field for Imperial cannonballs to fly through.
Ok, well the Imperial cavalry got annoyed, and they didn't want to sit around fucking off when they should be shooting shit. 5000 of the Imperial horse took off without orders and charged towards the Swedish lines, firing shots from their pistols as they went forward.
To Gustavus Adolphus's horror, the Saxon forces immediately bolted and fucking ran for it without firing a shot. They only stopped fleeing long enough to plunder the Swedish baggage train on their way out of town.
Ok, so now Gustavus Adolphus had a problem. His entire left flank was exposed, the Imperial infantry was moving up to attack, and Count von Tilly's cavalry was circling around to roll up the flank.
Any other army in the world at this time would have been crushed.
But Gustavus Adolphus did not have any other army in the world at this time. He had the one he'd built, drilled, trained, and inspired. And as the Imperial infantry and cavalry ran forward into the gunsmoke, mud, and dust, expecting to crush the Swedish forces once and for all, they watched in horror as the entire left-center of the Swedish line wheeled, lowered their rifles, and opened fire point-blank with muskets and grapeshot, ripping into the onslaught with a lethal barrage that slammed into the tercios and stopped the assault dead in its tracks. It's the sort of maneuver that was commonplace among the armies of the Napoleonic Era or the Civil War, but, in 1631, no man had seen such an epic display military discipline since the days of Augustus Caesar.
The attack staggered, and slowed, and then the Count von Tilly noticed something that made his blood run cold – King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, in his epic cool dude riding coat, leading a saber charge of Swedish cavalry around the Imperial attack and up onto the ridgeline directly into the Imperial artillery.
Adolphus had somehow maneuvered around behind the enemy, hit their cannons, hacked apart the gunners, then had his guys dismount, man the fucking cannons, and open fire on the tercios from the rear. The same guys who just moments ago thought they'd won the battle – the guys who just a couple months ago had slaughtered the entire population of Magdeburg – were now caught in a vice, with grapeshot raining down on them from in front and from behind.
The Imperial forces were almost completely annihilated – 27,000 casualties in just a few hours, including 7,000 KIAs, and all of their artillery had been captured by the Swedes. The Count von Tilly survived, but a few weeks later he would be killed in battle trying to slow the advance of Gustavus's forces across the Leich River.
The Swedes lost 3,000 men, most of them during the opening cannonade. It was such a huge victory that it completely changed all of European warfare, instituting a new set of military tactics that would be used throughout Europe from 1631 until the invention of the belt-fed machine gun
Gustavus Adolphus was immediately hailed as the Hero of Protestantism, but his work wasn't done yet. He marched forward, crossing the Leich with the intention of capturing Munich and defeating the Duke of Bavaria. The Imperials sent their greatest general – the ferocious Count Albrecht von Wallenstein – to face Adolphus. The Swedes attacked them at a place called Lützen in November of 1632, with King Gustavus Adolphus personally leading a thundering cavalry charge through a thick fog that plunged into enemy lines and smashed the Imperial forces. The Swedes fought ferociously, but, in the swirling melee of fog, dust, and smoke, Gustavus and his bodyguards somehow found themselves cut off by a large group of Imperial cavalry. Gustavus Adolphus battled heroically, charging the enemy with his saber drawn. He took a bullet to the arm, his horse was shot, but still he battled, slashing and firing. He took a sword to the arm, a bullet in the back, and, finally, was killed by a gunshot to the head. As he lay dying on the battlefield, the Swedish army rallied, surged forward, and crushed von Wallenstein's army, driving them from the field and breaking Imperial power in the region. The states of Northern Germany never became Catholic.
To this day, the anniversary of this battle, November 6, is celebrated as Gustavus Adolphus Day in Sweden.
Links:
Sources:
Davis, Paul K.. 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Ground Warfare: An International Encyclopedia. United Kingdom: ABC-CLIO, 2002.
International Encyclopedia of Military History. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2004.
MacDonald, John. Great Battlefields of the World: Stunning 3-dimensional Graphics Recreate the Greatest Battles and Battlefields of All Time. United States: Chartwell Books, 2015.