Gustavus

“ He was in every particular a child of his time, and every inch a king. Gustavus was decidedly French in education, taste and superficiality, but had by his first teacher Dalin been inspired with a deep love of his country, its history, language and traditions. He handled the Swedish and French languages with equal skill, and a more eloquent monarch has never graced a throne. He was passionately fond of theatricals and impressive ceremony, and, like his mother and illustrious uncle, he surrounded himself with men of genius. ”

“ Gustavus stood too high to be angry; but he must needs place himself still higher; he fell on his neck and said with clear, resolute voice, "be angry and hate me, but I must forgive thee and love thee. My whole heart with every vein remains true to thine and seeks it out in thy breast, and even if thou henceforward misunderstandest me, still I will come every week. I will look on thee; I will listen to thee when thou speakest with a stranger, and if thou then lookest on me with hatred, I will go with a sigh, but still love thee. ”

“ His unstrung nerves kept on quivering in an enervating slumber. Beata, exhausted and stunned, went away with her mother. Gustavus no longer saw anything, hardly her. The father had no consolation and no comforter. The feverish doze lasted on till after midnight. A total eclipse of the moon exalted the heavens and attracted upward the affrighted eyes of men. Gustavus, agitated and agonized, looked up with wet eyes to the heaven-reaching shadow of the earth which lay upon the moon as on a profile-board. ”

“ Beata gave Gustavus, as a hint for departure, the desired leaf--he pressed the hand from which it came to his mute lips--he could not speak either thanks or farewell--he took her other hand and all within him cried and repeated: "She is truly once more thine and remains so forever," and he must needs weep over his bliss. ”

“ Heroism, when disproportioned to genius and its resources, resembles folly: there was a mixture of heroism and folly in the projects of Gustavus against France; and yet this folly was noble, as its cause—and great, as his own courage. Fortune had accustomed Gustavus to desperate and bold enterprises; and success had taught him to believe nothing impossible. Twice he had made a revolution in his kingdom, twice he had striven single-handed against the gigantic power of Russia, and had he been seconded by Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, Russia would have found a rampart against her in the north. ”

“ Gustavus would fain get out of the carriage, in order to wrap up the dew-sprinkled, fleeing summer, which, delicately woven, overspread the earth like a human life, and take it along with him. But thou, man! how often dost thou hang down over nature as a pestilential and mephitic vapor!
For they could hardly have gone on a league, after which he already began to take every village for Scheerau.... ”

“ Every denial on the part of Gustavus was a new leaf in his laurel crown. "I will be more honest," he said; "I will be my own traitor, since I have no one outside of me. In the apartment where you have an altar, stands one for me; it is a Pantheon; [70] you kneel more before a God than a Goddess--but I find there my Venus (Beata) . She wants nothing to make her a Venus de Medici than--position; but I know not which hand, in that position, I should kiss to her." ”

“ But Gustavus before he was thirty-five years of age had made his countrymen a nation of soldiers; had freed his kingdom from Danish, Russian, and Polish enemies; had made great improvements in the art of war, having introduced a new system of tactics never materially improved except by Frederic II.; had reduced strategy to a science; had raised the importance of the infantry, had increased the strictness of military discipline, had trained up a band of able generals, and inspired his soldiers with unbounded enthusiasm.
And he had raised in the camp a new tone of moral feeling. ”

“ At that moment there moved cautiously around the garden-wall a shy picket of peasants' children, whose object was to hear more nearly the old starling, which Gustavus had to-day brought in its cage out into open air, and amuse themselves with the racy and saucy words the bird would utter in his tone of genuine irony. Children in strange clothes, and strange places, are strangers to each other; but Gustavus had fortunately his key-note at hand by which to pass over into conversation with them, the starling, and had only to begin one with him. ”

“ Gustavus, however, though he sometimes heard such things, saw with his own eyes that Edward could back a horse with any man in the country—was always foremost in the chace—could bring down as many brace of birds as most men in a day—had saved one or two persons from drowning; and if he did all these things as well as other men, Gustavus (though hitherto too idle to learn much himself) did not see why a man should be sneered at for being an accomplished scholar as well. ”

“ We, with our small philosophy, can make allowance for the greater dangers of the higher sphere; and shall we arrogate to ourselves a larger judgment and ampler sympathies than we allow to God? Yet Gustavus was happy. Among soldiers and statesmen, if there is a greater, there is hardly a purer name. He had won not only honour but love, and the friend and comrade was as much bewailed as the deliverer and the king. In him his Sweden appeared for the first and last time with true glory on the scene of universal history. ”

“ Guardian angel of my Gustavus! Thou canst no longer save him; but heal him, if he is lost, if he has lost all, his virtue and his Beata! Draw with me the mourning curtain around his fall and say, even to the soul which is as good as his is: "Be better!"
Before we go to the soul to whom he says it, to Beata, we will hear at least a single advocate for poor Gustavus, that he may not be so severely condemned. The Vindicator suggests for our reflection simply this: if women are so easy to overcome, it is because in all military relations the assailant has the advantage over the party assailed ”

“ On a table lay the black hand of a dyer, upon whose color the Doctor was about to make experiments.... What a scene for a reconciliation and a leave taking; three looks made and sealed the former,--even looks, in this naked disembodiment of souls, speak too loud a language--but when Gustavus, transported by the finest enthusiasm above fear and suspicion, announced to his friend the latter; when he made known to him, who had till now no idea of it, his new neighborhood and the loss of the old one, the friend had flown away and a black foe sprang up out of the ashes. ”

“ Unfortunately his genius never had full scope, and his opportunity came too late. Gustavus was, moreover, a most distinguished author. He may be said to have created the Swedish theatre, and some of the best acting dramas in the literature are by his hand. His historical essays, notably the famous anonymous eulogy on Torstenson crowned by the Academy, are full of feeling and exquisite in style,—his letters to his friends are delightful. Every branch of literature and art interested him, every poet and artist of his day found in him a most liberal and sympathetic protector. ”

“ For centuries the independence and arrogance of the great nobles had been the curse of the Swedish people. Gustavus missed no opportunity of limiting their influence. He compelled them to bear their fair share of the public burdens, and secured for himself faithful allies by obtaining for burghers and the peasantry, who had lost almost all their political influence, a recognized place in the diet, which was now summoned more frequently and regularly than it had been for several generations. Gustavus did everything he could to encourage industry. ”

“ A throne-crater can swallow up and calcine even gold mountains, and eject them as lava.
Unluckily Gustavus pleased him, because he regarded the young man's youthful good nature as an exclusive attachment to himself, his modesty as lowliness before the Oefelian grandeur, his virtues as weaknesses. He was pleased with him because Gustavus had a taste for poetry, and consequently, he inferred, the greatest for his own; for Oefel's noble bloody contrary to nature, ran in a thin poetic vein, and in a satirical one, too, he thought. ”

“ And at whose feet, when Heaven his toils repaid,
His brightest wreaths the grateful Hero laid.
Many have attributed the efforts which Gustavus made use of to deliver his country, to ambition, and a desire of reigning. Yet, since his elevation produced much good to Sweden, and no evil, it is surely allowable, if not just, to attribute them to a purer motive: at any rate, a poet is at liberty to set his hero's character in the fairest light he can, consistently with history. ”

“ With you, my worthy nobles, those gentlemen are this day united, who have both enriched and embellished the Swedish language; and in the midst of an assembly, whose talents are consecrated to the eulogy of the national heroes and benefactors, and whose anniversary festival is to be celebrated on the birth-day of the great Gustavus-Adolphus, how can that man be forgotten, whose name will ever be inseparably united with that of the illustrious hero, whose death he has with such pathetic elegance lamented? ”

“ We have nothing to charge against King Gustavus, but owe him deep gratitude for having freed us from the cruel and tyrannical rule of King Christian, and kept the land in law and right as well as in peace and quiet. What you, good sirs, say of the new faith, we peasants can neither judge nor understand; perhaps it may not be so bad as fame reports. Change of rulers generally costs the peasants and the land dear, and we might by these means draw upon ourselves and our children long disquiet and disorder. ”

“ By very little aid Gustavus would have been able to recover all the territories on the eastern side of the Baltic which had been wrested from Sweden by Russia, and would thus have kept a formidable power always, as it were, at the very gates of St. Petersburg. But Gustavus was left, with his brave heart but limited forces, to contend with Russia alone. He kept down his disaffected nobles by cultivating the interests of the people at large, and maintained a determined struggle with Russia. ”

“ Sweden in the early part of the sixteenth century was not fertile in literary men. Gustavus himself, judged by any rational standard, was an abominable writer. His despatches are in number almost endless and in length appalling. Page after page he runs on, seemingly with no other object than to use up time. Often a document covers four folios, which might easily have been compressed into a single sentence. Such was the habit of the age. A simple letter from a man to his wife consisted mainly of a mass of stereotyped expressions of respect. ”

“ In the effort to set the heart free from blood and joy, Gustavus's hand sank into Beata's--he knew not what he took--she knew not what she gave--and their present feelings were exalted far above insignificant refusals. At last the thunder-beset sun laid himself down like a philosopher under the cool earth, his evening glow calmly reposed under the flashes of the retiring tempest, he seemed like a soul gone to God and a clap of thunder followed his death.
Twilight came on.... Nature was a mute prayer.... Man stood more sublime therein, like a sun ”

“ Gustavus is in good health. As for the one that died twenty years ago, you have never known him; in fact, have scarcely seen him. Beside, where is the merit and [157] advantage of philosophy, if it is not able to console you under afflictions; to moderate grief, and impart to the mind the calmness requisite to diminish evil, and enable you to arrive at truth?'
Instead of making answer, the philosopher burst into tears; two briny streams flowed down his cheeks, attesting the vanity of his stoicism, and the superiority of Thales of Melitus over Thales of Paris. ”

“ But if Gustavus had been the only man killed on that side, his death would have more than counterbalanced the whole of the imperialist losses, for not only was he the general and the king, not only was the one man capable of uniting the forces of Protestantism, the one who could successfully cope both with the ambition of Richelieu and the fanaticism of Ferdinand, but he was also the only man still in power in Germany who ennobled the struggle with a distinct moral ideal. ”

“ An unaffected and pure piety animated the courage of his great mind. Equally free from that gross incredulity which leaves without restraint the ferocious movements of the barbarian, and the grovelling bigotry of a Ferdinand, who abased himself in the dust before the Divinity, and yet disdainfully trampled on the necks of mankind, in the height of his good fortune, Gustavus was always a man and a Christian ”

“ It was probably fortunate for Gustavus’s honour that his brilliant career was here cut short. He died when no more successes could have enhanced the fame as a soldier which he had already acquired; at a period, says Schiller, when he had ceased to be the benefactor of Germany, and when the greatest service that he could render to German liberty was to die. However pure his views had been at the commencement of the war, success had taught him ambition. ”

“ Gustavus was the first to step upon the German soil, at the disembarkation; and in the sight of all his army he fell upon his knees and prayed for the blessing of God upon the vast enterprise which had been confided to him. As he arose from his prayer, he seized a spade and began instantly the work upon the intrenchments of the camp.
If his troops were few in number, it is not to be denied that they were excellent in quality. Many were hardened veterans from the king's earlier campaigns ”