Well, that's certainly a good and obvious point I overlooked Arilou, with regrards to
Sigismund III: when one is *not there* it's very difficult to gain support for his/her cause.
...Protestantism wasn't really entrenched enough yet to be able to mobilize people in that way.
No? It'll take some digging, but I am sure, on the surface of it,
Gustav Vasa officially proclaimed Sweden Protestantic in the 1520s/30s, influenced by the teachings of
Petri (
Oalus or
Laurentius?). If it wasn't entrenched heavily in the 1590s, yet
Gustavus Adolphus proclaimed himself the 'protector' of Protestantism by 1630, Protestantism must have really boomed in Sweden only under him.
As for revolution and evolution, it is very important to undersatnd (I'm hardly an expert) as to how war was prosecuted and maintained from the resources the combatants could secure and command etc.
By the time of the Battle of Nordlingen in 1634, the 'Swedish' army by this time was one of a nominal nature only. Remember,
Gustavus landed in Pomerania 4 years earlier with only 13,000 of his core Swedes, which were immediately supported by the garrison of Stralsund, mainly Scots. The Swedes were but a handful, and many would have been with
Gustav Horn on the Protestant right (south), who stormed the Allbuch hill (initially capturing it), and practically the rest would have been with
Heinrich Matthias von Thurn's unit, which was sent, from the Protestant left/center line, by
Bernhard to help
Horn's plight, as he was failing in repeated cavalry attacks. It didn't help, and ultimately, we are told, the 'Swedes' lost 8,000 killed and 4,000 prisoner. Of those 12,000, how many can we conservatively guess were native Swedes? Less than half of them? Even less? Some accounts say the army was 19,000 total, but more seem to state 25,000 (16,000 infantry and 9,000 cavalry) total.
Whether
Gustavus' personal presence, which so much was centered around, could have made a difference, the actuality that manifested was the Swedes were unable to establish sufficient support for his great army in Germany by 1632. After all, a primary impetus for their arrival was French subsidizing;
Armand Richelieu woked hard to get
Gustavus out of Poland and into Germany, and formed an alliance with
Bernhard in 1635, bringing France into the 30 Years War. In May of 1633,
Axel Oxenstierna 'admitted' that the wages of the Army in Germany were more than quadruple the amount of local contributions. Basically, what befell the Swedes was akin to what happened to the Spaniards in Flanders a generation earlier: a problem of distances covered and the cost of military intervention in foreign lands. Moreover, the premium of marshalling infantry firepower and improved artillery became more costly than ever.
Geoffrey Parker tells us, in his
The Military Revolution, Pg. 21,
"...Most wars in the century 1550-1650 were in fact decided by the relative financial strength (or weakness) of the various antagonists: it was very often a case of 'he who has the most money wins', as the Marquis of Aytona put it. In wars where the resources of the two sides were fairly equal, and the combatants obstinate, it might even take eighty years for a victor to emerge..."
Not long after the Battle of Lutzen,
Oxenstierna extracted Swedish national troops, placing them back in the Baltic, and sending most of the mercenaries in Swedish service, here since 1630, back to Germany. Thus the Swedish conquests in the Rhineland were too be primarily maintained by Germans; resentment of Sweden didn't take long to foster; who can blame the peoples of Germany for resenting their lands being constantly overrun by foreigners. Furthermore,
Bernhard, it seems, was claiming Lutzen as his personal triumph (fair argument: he did assume command and charge home tactically after
Gustavus' death). Though he was denied the title of
generalissimo of the Swedish forces, obviously his influence wasn't too weak, as the Protestant army at Nordlingen attacked a resolute and well-entrenched enemy, reinforced with the
Tercios Viejos, with no supporting artillery barrage (the unlucky explosion in the ammunition wagons, which some cite as an 'excuse' given by Swedish-apologists, happened after they were thrown back and attacked by the Imperial cavalry).
Horn, the Swede, supposedly advocated a delay until 6,000 approaching Germans under a Rheingraff arrived.
By 1635, the Swedes were mutineering for pay arrears, but
Oxenstierna conciliated them with land grants, which included a license to loot.
Bernhard benefited greatly form this policy. For better or worse, he was becoming another
Wallenstein.
Unlike
Mauritz van Nassau, whose outstanding reforms centered around improved flexibility wrought from drill and discipline,
Gustavus did not fight his wars in his own land out of direct civil defense. Thus, though
Gustavus brought to new heights tight discipline, extended infantry lines, the 'counter-march', mobile field artillery, and a national character amongst his core troops surrounded by soldiers of fortune etc., somebody - or something - had to pay for all this! With his death in the fog at Lutzen, the 30 Years War was destined to drag on for another 16 years. The French subsidy and the invaluable revenues gained from his Polish campaign sustained him well until 1632, but now increased suffiency was needed.
In 1630, for all in all, mercenaries comprised perhaps 1/2 the Swedish army; by 1631, 3/4; by 1632, when
Gustavus' total forces in Germany were about 150,000 (I have read also up to 200,000), maybe as many as 9/10 were non-Swedes. After his death, in which attritional war would become more prominent, the domestic conscriptions functioned erratically, and the native replacements and mercenaries could not deliver the superb standards of drill and discipline required to effectuate the tactics of
Gustavus. The Swedish Brigade was a brilliant instrument of war; never before, as I constantly reiterate, had one faced an army co-ordinating its cavalry, mobile field artillery, pikemen, and musketeers together with such precise cohesion, speed, and adaptability. It was worse for the Imperialists, as not only were they outgunned in quantity, the Swedish regimental guns contained fixed-ammunition cartridges, which resulted in 3 shots to 1 - on even terms! So the Imperialists were really, potentially, outfired by a count of 6 to 1! But it must be stated that Gustavus' methods were quickly adopted and adapted by his enemies, as everyone began strengthening their artillery, and the Battle of Nordlingen of 1634 proved that old-line methods could still prevail. The Spaniards did begin to fire with 2 ranks simultaneously.
But this demanded a high degree of discipline and a superb officer corps (NCO), not to mention that such a structure was remarkably effective only under a cerebral commander capable of juggling the arms in positive conjunction. The fact the Swedish Brigade was gone by 1634 illustrates that these very qualities were absent, a result primarily wrought from the economic issues. Remember, it was mostly an economic deterioration that brought the Roman Empire down; the 'barbarians' who marched into Italy at the beginning of the 5th century were scarcely opposed by field armies.
In his famous historical study of the 30 Years War,
Johann Schiller, no fan of
Gustavus Adolphus, tells us that 6,000 Swedes came directly from Sweden to join
Bernhard and the Palatinate
Christian of Birkenfeld, whom in turn were to junction with 4,000 from Saxony, all to meet up with the now-fugitive Wallenstein, who had recently lost the support of his army. This would have occured in early 1634. But most of the native Swedes probably stayed with
Johan Baner while the Protestant army faltered at Nordlingen.
For all his qualities as the finest, in my opinion, commander of his age,
Gustavus' ambition for Sweden may have been sought at an unsustainable cost; his system of conscription (
Utskrivning), which brought about 10,000 men to the colors every year, saw the numbers of men between the 15-60 age range fall by perhaps half - in a country vastly underpopulated for this continuing military objective.
Gustavus could have made a difference had he lived, but he certainly would have outlived, if not killed in battle or an 'accident', the condition of Germany as a Swedish province: the thought of Sweden controlling Germany for long is like a cat digesting an elephant! I'm sure he knew that.
But as we know, hindsight is 20/20, and maybe those embrolied in these events at the time have cataracts. Maybe
Gustavus should have marched on Vienna after Breitenfeld, and not chase
Tilly (though Vienna was not essential to the existence of the Habsburg monarchy as it was in the later days of
Napoleon). Maybe had he not been killed the war would have ended sooner, as he must have known that the extravagances of his recruitments by 1632 could not be supported unless a rapid end to hostilities was achieved. The power of his commanding person was not unlike that of
Hannibal,
Caesar, or
Suvorov, to cite a few of many examples. Maybe...maybe...maybe...
The Protestant forces at Nordlingen in early September, 1634 presumably numbered some 25,000 men. Whatever figures we may come across as the number of native Swedes, they are extrapolations, which can be gauged by the probability that it was already 2 years past the point that attrition (
Gustavus would have sought more battles in the field) and constant warfare had depleted the great Swedish army of its significant ranks. True, the likes of
Johan Baner,
Lennart Torstensson (who avenged Nordlingen of 1634 against
Matthias Gallas in 1642), and
Karl Wrangel (with the great
Turenne) achieved successes up until the Peace of Westphalia against the Imperialists, it was advanced more for Protestantism than for Sweden per se, and by now the 'Swedish army' was almost entirely composed of adventurers and now-more-dubious mercenaries. Certainly, the native Swedes at Nordlingen, 1634, were but a handful.
Thanks, Spartan JKM
