Sweden and the Thirty Years’ War
Sweden is a weak and apparently unimportant country, in compar-
ison with some of its powerful neighbors; but its history is not without
events of thrilling interest. It was from Sweden that deliverance came
to Germany in her terrible struggle against the papal armies during the
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thirty years’ war. The imperial forces had swept over the Protestant
States of Germany, to the shores of the Baltic Sea, and were looking
across its waters to a conquest which should extend the papal dominion
over the countries of the North. The religion and the liberty of Chris-
tendom were on the point of being trodden out. For years the work
of ruin had been going forward. Other nations looked on, but lifted
no hand to interpose. Even England stood apart. And in Germany
itself, some of the Protestant princes had so far lost the spirit of the
Reformation that they contented themselves with appeals and protests,
and lent no aid to their brethren struggling against such fearful odds.
Then it was that Gustavus II., the king of little Sweden, came
to the deliverance of the oppressed nations. It was a herculean task
which he had undertaken. With slender means and a small army
he must encounter an enemy that possessed exhaustless resources
and unnumbered forces. But faith that God, whose cause he was
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undertaking, would sustain him, urged him forward to become the
defender of Protestantism.
“Like a dying man he set his house in order,” and bade a solemn
farewell to the States, which he was never to see again. With his little
force he landed on the shores of Germany on the 24th of June, 1630,
exactly a hundred years from the day when the Augsburg Confession
had been presented to Charles V. The emperor Ferdinand heard with
contemptuous indifference of the coming of Gustavus. The proud
courtiers of Vienna “looked in the State Almanac to see where the
country of the little Gothic king was situated.” Even the Protestant
princes failed to discern their deliverer in a guise so humble. They had
hoped for assistance from some powerful nation, but what help could a
petty kingdom like Sweden bring them? But the Lord delivereth neither
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