Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

lay between Russia and that sea. Then came the Polish war, which continued with interruptions until September, 1629, ending with a truce by which Gustavus was left in possession of Memel, Pillau, Braunsberg, and Elbing, that is, in control of the coast. In 1628 the attack of Wallenstein upon Stralsund revealed a new claimant for power on the Baltic. The emperor had the Protestant states of Germany under his heel, and the Catholic design was with Spanish help to secure ascendency on the northern inland sea. Gustavus saw that his work must all be undone unless this design were frustrated; that it was dangerous to wait until Sweden should be attacked, and that by taking the initiative he would compel the Protestants of Germany to be his helpers. Accordingly, making alliance with France, the other great enemy of the emperor, he resolved to attack the empire in Germany and to complete the defences of Sweden by the acquisition of the coasts of Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The time of his action was propitious, for Wallenstein had just been driven from command, and the emperor by the edict of restitution had embittered the chief Protestant princes, though they still hesitated to take up arms against him. Gustavus landed on the island of Usedom, at the mouth of the Oder, in July, 1630. His force was small, but the Imperialist forces in the north-east of Germany were also small, and were scattered over a wide area without unity of command. He never expected or intended the Swedish army alone to overthrow the Catholic powers -the emperor and the league-but he regarded it as the instrument by which he would unite the Protestant states and bind their several twigs into a strong rod with which to chastise their opponents.

Gustavus is often described as an inventor or originator in the matter of tactics and organization. The truth is that he was merely, what every intelligent commander is, a thorough student of the military sciences of his time, applying to his own army with discernment, and with an authority

which his teachers not being kings did not possess, the lessons he had learned. His masters were the military leaders belonging to the house of Orange, whose tactical judgment at the close of the sixteenth century had been stimulated by the study of Polybius. They had perceived the superiority of the legion, as a combination of separate mobile units each homogeneous in its armament but representing by their working together the co-operation of different arms, over the phalanx as a great immobile mass of heterogeneous elements. Accordingly they taught an order of battle in which the then traditional great squares of pikemen lined outside with musketmen were broken up into small oblongs, either of pikemen or of musketmen, disposed chequerwise for mutual support. They reduced the depth of these bodies so as to prevent the rear ranks being idle spectators of the defeat of the front ranks. They developed the use of firearms and advocated the preparation of an attack by the fire of artillery. These were the lessons which Gustavus Adolphus put into practice, improving his artillery and his musketry so as to develop a rapid fire. He is said to have taught his cavalry to rely upon pace and shock and the arme blanche, having learned in these matters from his Polish experience, but upon these points the evidence is imperfect. He is known to have studied Machiavelli's great work on war, the profoundest treatise on strategy written between the fall of the Western Empire and the maturity of Frederick the Great, and there he would find ideas akin to his own upon the subject of a national army, of discipline and of the use of force for the attainment of political ends. The Swedish discipline and the experience of many campaigns in Poland gave his troops the superiority upon every field, and the small formations on the Dutch or Protestant model invariably had the better of the large and ponderous squares and oblongs to which the Catholic armies still clung.

The king's strategy can best be judged by examining it in connection

con

with three definitions representing as many aspects of this branch of military theory. One writer has said that strategy is the doctrine of communications. In the first half of the seventeenth century there were no metalled roads in Germany. Heavy goods were veyed by water. The population lived in walled towns where all the produce of the surrounding districts was stored. Thus the movement of an army at a distance from rivers was much embarrassed, and as the haulage of supplies by land was impracticable except for short distances it was necessary to have access to the towns for provisions. A country devoid of rivers and towns presented difficulties to the passage of an army resembling those offered in our own day by a desert. An unfordable river, moreover, was a very serious obstacle, bridges being few and their construction slow. These are the keys to one part of the strategy of Gustavus Adolphus. Based on the shore of the Baltic which was a Swedish lake behind him, he landed on one of the islands at the mouth of the Oder, took the other island, and thus obtained control of the estuary; he then advanced up that river, making Stettin his principal depôt, occupying Cüstrin, and eventually taking Frankfurt, Landsberg (on the Wartha), and Crossen. The passages of the Oder being thus in the hands of the king, the Imperialist forces on its right bank were isolated and the coast of Pomerania between Stettin and Danzig was reduced by the Swedes. At the same time Gustavus established a firm hold on Pomerania west of the Oder, besieging the coast towns which were occupied by Imperial troops and covering the sieges by a field army. His arrangements during the first months of 1631 illustrate his use of rivers. Stralsund and Wolgast were in his hands and he was besieging Greifswald. For this purpose he held the continuous water line formed by the Peene, the Trebel, and the Recknitz, having garrisons in the towns at which these streams could be crossed; at Anklam, Loitz, Demmin, Tribsees, and Dammgarten. He instructs Fieldmar

shal Horn to keep in his own hands all the boats on these rivers in order to defend the streams and in order to carry reinforcements to any point where they may be required. At a later stage we find him protecting a more extended base by the similar water line of the Elbe and the Havel, extending from Frankfurt on the Oder to his entrenched camp at Werben at the confluence of the Havel with the Elbe. When the alliance with Brandenburg and with Saxony and the defeat of Tilly at Breitenfeld have rendered practicable his advance into South Germany, his communications were formed by the occupation of a series of towns until he reached the Main; here he held the strong fortress of Würzburg, and from this point the Main formed his principal communication. He marched his troops along its banks and transported his artillery and supplies in boats on the river. Thus from the point of view of communications the instruments of his strategy are rivers and fortified towns.

A favorite account of the essence of strategy is that it consists in dividing an army for the purposes of movement and supply and in uniting it for battle. In this matter Gustavus appears as a precursor of Napoleon. At first sight the modern student is astonished at the dispersal of the Swedish forces; but a close examination shows that Gustavus has always arranged for a concentration in case of need, and his instructions to his scattered generals are full of provisions for the event of a concentration becoming requisite.

A third account of strategy regards it as the art of using battles so as to further the object of the war. Gustavus, though the very ideal of personal bravery, and though he has perfect confidence in the morale and in the tactical superiority of his troops, never fights a battle for nothing. In the whole war, from his landing in July, 1630, to his death in November, 1632, there are only four general engagements. At Breitenfeld Gustavus attacked Tilly against his own strategical judgment in order to secure the alliance of the elector of

Saxony whose immediate anxiety to prevent his territories being ravaged induced him to urge an attack upon the Imperialists. When the king thinks the time ripe for striking a blow against the enemy's army, he is deterred by no considerations of numbers or position. Thus, when his great base from the Baltic to the Rhine has been secured and the time has come for taking the offensive from this base against the Catholic powers, he attacks the Bavarian army, although its position behind the Lech was, according to the then current opinion, almost impregnable. In the same way at Nuremberg, so soon as he has united with the army of Oxenstierna the force which till then he has preserved in his entrenched camp, he attacks Wallenstein, thoug. the Imperialist general held a fortified position which, as the event proved, was too strong even for Swedish bravery and Swedish tactics. A few weeks later, when Wallenstein by his invasion of Saxony threatens at once the king's system of alliances, his communications with the Baltic, and the centre of his great base, or sedes belli, Gustavus unhesitatingly marches to the attack and delivers it without the slightest delay. The strategy of Gustavus Adolphus was methodical, not in the perverse sense of an attempt to prove a theory by practice, but in the higher sense of the rational employment of the available means clearly understood in order to effect a purpose of which the grasp is never relaxed.

The career of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany has been the subject of controversies upon which some light may be shed by a consideration of the king's design in connection with the conditions in which it had to be executed. In the first place he has been held responsible for the fall of Magdeburg, in the sense that his action stimulated and encouraged the resistance offered by that town to the emperor, and that he failed to bring relief in time. The alliance between Magdeburg and Sweden was concluded in August, 1630, when the enter prise of Gustavus was just beginning. The king's purpose was to unite the

Protestant states for their defence, and he may well have expected the example set by Magdeburg of alliance with himself to have been more readily followed than it was. He sent Falkenberg, who proved himself in the highest degree brave, skilful, and determined, to assist in the defence of the town, and he conducted his own operations with unprecedented energy and persistency. He could not have fully foreseen the vacillation and timidity of the elector of Brandenburg and of his Saxon colleague. To have marched to the relief of Magdeburg while the policy of Brandenburg was in doubt, would have been an act, not of generalship, but of Quixotic folly, and it is perhaps the best proof of the strength of the king's character that he did not attempt it, though he took decided measures for bringing Brandenburg on to his side.

The next disputed question is concerned with the course taken by Gustavus after the battle of Breitenfeld. He engaged the elector of Saxony in the invasion of Silesia and Bohemia, and himself marched through Thuringia to the Main and the Rhine. It has been thought that a more decisive operation would have been for Gustavus himself to march upon Vienna, leaving the elector of Saxony to operate in the German states.

This course was not dictated by sound strategy. There was in Australia no military objective, for there was at this time no imperial army to be attacked. Vienna had not the importance which it possessed a hundred and fifty years later. The emperor would have left his capital, and if, as was probable, he refused to make peace, Gustavus would have found himself in the position of Napoleon at Moscow. Moreover, a march on Vienna from Leipzig was probably impracticable. Bohemia had been devastated, and neither the direction of the rivers nor the distribution of the towns facilitated such a march. But the decisive consideration is that the enterprise would have diverted the king of Sweden from his great design, which was in the first place to unite the Protestants of Germany. The elector

of Saxony was quite unequal to this, that enemy is already at the centre of task, and in case of any mishap to the his own communications. The immeSwedish arms might have turned diate base of Gustavus at this time was against them and made terms with the on the Main, but his great base was emperor against Gustavus. The course the whole of Germany between Ulm adopted increased the breach between and Stettin, and its extremities were the Saxon elector and the emperor, and connected by his alliance with Saxony. enabled Gustavus to strengthen him- Wallenstein's object was to break up self by uniting under his own lead the this base by forcing the elector of SaxProtestants of South Germany. It en- ony to desert his ally. Gustavus was abled him to create a new and strong therefore compelled to march directly base between the Main and the Upper to the attack of Wallenstein. Had he Danube, and prepared the way for the survived the battle of Lützen, which most effective attack upon the chief would in that case have been decisive, Catholic powers, Bavaria and the em- he would have been master of Gerperor, that by the line of the Danube. many, could have dictated terms to the Oxenstierna was the advocate of the emperor, and would have had to remarch on Vienna. Nothing more sist the subsequent intrusion of Richeclearly proves the inferiority of his lieu. His death left his work unfinished, judgment to that of his master, which the Protestants disunited, and Richelieu partly explains the collapse of the great master of the situation. At the peace scheme immediately upon the king's of Westphalia, Sweden retained little death. more than that strip of Pomerania between the Recknitz and the Lower Oder, which had been the king's original base.

The king has been blamed for marching on Munich and conquering Bavaria while the elector was effecting his junction with Wallenstein, which Gustavus was thus too late to prevent. But at this time the king did not know the direction of the movements of his adversaries, and the most effective blow against the Bavarian power consisted in the conquest of the elector's territory; so soon as Gustavus was aware that the junction was to be attempted he marched with extraordinary rapidity to prevent it. The moment he perceived himself to be too late he entrenched his army at Nuremberg, and awaited reinforcements; the moment they arrived he attacked the enemy. Though the attack failed, the repulse was not decisive, for the Swedish army was intact. Wallenstein was compelled to retire, and during the time when his direction was uncertain, the king moved into Swabia in order to restore his authority in the region which was to be his base in a future campaign down the Danube.

It has been suggested that the proper reply to Wallenstein's march upon Leipzig was for the king to march upon Vienna. But no general in his senses will commence an offensive against a distant point in the enemy's rear when

In summing up the work of Gustavus Adolphus it seems possible to distinguish two parts of his design: that which represented the defence of Sweden, the national purpose, and that which represented the ideal of the king's personal ambition, the corpus evangelicorum, in which no doubt his own influence was to be paramount. That this latter ideal really possessed him is proved by his dying words when Wallenstein's cuirassiers finding him wounded asked his name. According to a tradition which seems to rest upon sufficient evidence, he replied: "I am the king of Sweden, who seal the religion and liberty of the German nation with my blood." It is probable, however, that this conception was not an essential part of the original plan, but that it grew up during the course of the struggle and was fostered alike by difficulties and by success. At any

rate Oxenstierna, after the king's death, said that his general intention had been to secure his empire of the Baltic, to break the

power of his enemies, to free the oppressed territories and then to pause or to go according to circumstances; that he had never

expected to go as far as he had done, and had all along taken advantage of opportunity and based his decisions from time to time on the situation which presented itself.

ultimate personal ambition, suggest an interesting parallel to the results of Napoleon's work as summed up by the late Sir John Seeley, who held that Napoleon's work, in so far as it represented the national interests of France, was abiding, but that the project of an extended empire, which developed in his own ambition as the consequence of his success, produced only ephemeral results. In each case the sense of nationality and the love of independence in the states whose co-operation was required frustrated an ideal design represented by the ruler of a foreign state. In the case of Gustavus Adolphus this ultimate failure was not prevented by the high morality and humanity of the ideal which he had con

SPENSER WILKINSON.

From The Cornhill Magazine. SPLENDIDE MENDAX.

The design then of a permanent union of the German Protestant states under Swedish direction was gradually formed as the result of the difficult conditions with which the king had to deal. His first act on obtaining possession of Stettin was to compel the Duke of Mecklenburg to sign a treaty by which on the death of that potentate, who was childless, his duchy should be held by Sweden until the costs of the war, fixed at a very high sum, had been repaid. The next heir on the death of the duke was the elector of Brandenburg, who naturally thought this treaty an aggres-ceived. The net result of his work was sion on his rights. The treaties which to establish for a full century the greatGustavus made with most of the ness of Sweden and to save from deProtestant states stipulated that he struction, though not to bring about the should have the sole command of their | preponderance of, the Protestant cause armies. The elector of Saxony, who in Germany. thought himself the principal Protestant personage in Germany, took umbrage at the great position thus acquired by the Swedish king. None of the Protestant magnates could rise to the king's conception of a great Protestant cause especially as it required sacrifices from them and, as he had made himself its representative, gave additional power to him. Yet the Protestant population of Germany rightly recognized in him the leader of their cause. The lukewarmness of his allies compelled him in asserting the cause to assert himself also. His case is like that of Cromwell, whose ideal was so lofty that none but himself could realize it, and in whom, therefore, devotion to a great end of necessity took the form of the assumption of authority in his own hands. The second half of the king's design was forced upon him by that individual independence and consequent disunion of the Protestant princes which had already all but ruined them and which after his death was destined to prevent their triumph. The enduring success of that portion of the king's purpose which represented the defence of Sweden, and the failure of that part of it which represented his

[ocr errors]

"D'ye mind ould Nancy Lafferty?" said Maria to me, as we were talking over the changes of ten years in that remote Donegal parish. "Nancy, the ould woman with the wee donkey and creels, that used to bring fish to the door to sell. Did ye see her in Ramelton then? It's a wonder ye knowed her, for she's quarely failed. Ould John Lafferty, that was her husband, was a fisherman some place down thonder by Dunfanaghy, and she used to take his fish round and sell them to all the quality as far as Letterkenny. But some time after yees all left the big house-I don't mind rightly when it was, but maybe it was seven or eight year ago-ould John died. The boys was all out in America, and she had just the one daughter with her-Mary Jane they called her. Well, when ould John died, they was greatly straitened, and Mary Jane she be to go into service. There was a lady at Creeslough that was willing to take her for nursemaid, but the boys wrote for her to

« AnteriorContinuar »