الموضوع: أعظم الناس:ما سر عظمتهم!!..وهل لليتم دور في العظمة؟
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33- غوستاف الثاني أدولف

Reengineering

Gustavus Adolphus was a very forward thinking military engineer. He reengineered the way in which his army worked, with simple innovations that proved devastating to his adversaries.
One example of this was the Swedish cavalry system. Cavalry had been pushed to the fringes of military worth and had been largely neutralized by the Spanish tercios. They were being ineffectively used to charge the enemy front or flank, fire broadsides with pistols and muskets and then retreat to reload and reform.[5] However, Gustavus Adolphus used light cannons (reengineered to have 3 standard calibers, one of which was eventually called "The Regimental Cannon,") along with muskets to eliminate enemy pikemen, then the cavalry would swoop in and cut through enemy lines with sabers.[5]
Military commander

Gustavus Adolphus inherited three wars from his father when he ascended the throne: Against Denmark, which had attacked Sweden earlier in 1611, against Russia, due to Sweden having tried to take advantage of the Russian Time of Troubles, and against Poland, due to King Charles' having deposed King Sigismund III, his nephew, as King of Sweden.
The war against Denmark (Kalmar War) was concluded in 1613 with a peace that did not cost Sweden any territory, but it was forced to pay a heavy indemnity to Denmark (Treaty of Knäred). During this war, Gustavus Adolphus let his soldiers plunder towns and villages and as he met little resistance from Danish forces in Scania, they pillage and devastate 24 Scanian parishes. His memory in Scania has been negative because of that.[citation needed]
The war against Russia (Ingrian War) ended in 1617 with the Treaty of Stolbovo, which excluded Russia from the Baltic Sea. The final inherited war, the war against Poland, ended in 1629 with the Truce of Altmark which transferred the large province Livonia to Sweden and freed the Swedish forces for the subsequent intervention in the Thirty Years' War in Germany, where Swedish forces had already established a bridgehead n 1628.
When Gustavus Adolphus began his push into northern Germany in June–July 1630, he had just 4,000 troops. But he was soon able to consolidate the Protestant position in the north, using reinforcements from Sweden and money supplied by France (Treaty of Bärwalde). After Swedish plundering in Brandenburg (1631) endangered the system of retrieving war contributions from occupied territories, "marauding and plundering" by Swedish soldiers was prohibited.[6] Meanwhile, a Catholic army under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly was laying waste to Saxony. Gustavus Adolphus met Tilly's army and crushed it at the First Battle of Breitenfeld in September 1631. He then marched clear across Germany, establishing his winter quarters near the Rhine, making plans for the invasion of the rest of the Holy Roman Empire.
In March 1632, Gustavus Adolphus invaded Bavaria, a staunch ally of the Emperor. He forced the withdrawal of his Catholic opponents at the Battle of Rain. This would mark the high point of the campaign. In the summer of that year, he sought a political solution that would preserve the existing structure of states in Germany, while guaranteeing the security of its Protestants. But achieving these objectives depended on his continued success on the battlefield.
Gustavus is reported to have entered battle without wearing any armor, proclaiming, "The Lord God, is my armor!" It is more likely that he simply wore a leather cuirass rather than going into battle wearing no battle protection whatsoever. In 1627, near Dirschau in Prussia, a Polish soldier shot him in the muscles above his shoulders. He survived, but the doctors could not remove the bullet, so from that point on, he could not wear iron armor. Also, two fingers of his right hand were paralyzed.[7]
Gustavus Adolphus was killed at the Battle of Lützen, when, at a crucial point in the battle, he became separated from his troops while leading a cavalry charge into a dense smog of mist and gunpowder smoke. After his death, his wife initially kept his body, and later his heart, in the castle of Nyköping for over a year. His remains (including his heart) now rest in Riddarholmskyrkan in Stockholm.
In February 1633, following the death of the king, the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates decided that his name would be styled Gustav Adolf the Great (or Gustaf Adolf den Store in Swedish). No such honor has been bestowed on any other Swedish monarch before or since.
The crown of Sweden was inherited in the Vasa family, and from Charles IX's time excluded those Vasa princes who had been traitors or descended from deposed monarchs. Gustavus Adolphus' younger brother had died ten years before, and therefore there were only the King's daughter left as a female heir. Maria Eleonora and the king's ministers took over the government on behalf of Gustavus Adolphus' underage daughter Christina upon her father's death. He left one other known child, his illegitimate son Gustav, Count of Vasaborg.
Alternative views

The German Socialist Franz Mehring (1846–1919) wrote a biography of Gustavus Adolphus with a Marxist perspective on the actions of the Swedish king during the Thirty Years' War. In it, he makes a case that the war was fought over economics and trade rather than religion.
In his book "Ofredsår" ("Years of Warfare"), the Swedish historian and author Peter Englund argues that there was probably no single all-important reason for the king's decision to go to war. Instead, it was likely a combination of religious, security, as well as economic considerations.
This view is supported by German historian Johannes Burkhardt who writes that Gustavus entered the 30 Years War exactly 100 years after the publication of the Confessio Augustana, the core confession of faith of the Lutheran Church, and let himself be praised as its saviour. Yet Gustavus' own "manifesto of war" does not mention any religious motivations at all but speaks of political and economical reasons. Sweden would have to maintain its integrity in the face of several provocations and aggressions by the Habsburgian Empire. The manifesto was written by scholar Johann Adler Salvius in a style common of the time that promotes a "just war". Burkhardt argues that traditional Swedish historiography constructed a defensive interest in security out of that by taking the manifesto's text for granted. But to defend Stockholm, the occupation of the German Baltic territories would have been an extreme advance and the imperial Baltic Sea fleet mentioned as a threat in the manifesto had never reached more than a quarter of the size of the Swedish fleet. Moreover it was never maintained to challenge Sweden but to face the separatist Netherlands. So if ruling the Baltic Sea was a goal of Swedish strategy, the conquests in Germany were not a defensive war but an act of expansion. From Swedish Finland, Gustavus advanced along the Baltic Sea coast and eventually to Augsburg and Munich and he even urged the Swiss Confederacy to join him. This was no longer about Baltic interests but the imperial capital of Vienna and the alpine passes were now in close reach of the Swedish army. Another point mentioned by Burkhardt is the Gothic legacy of the Swedes, which had become a political program. The Swedish king was also "Rex Gotorum", (Latin: King of the Goths) and the list of kings was traced back to the Gothic rulers to construct continuity. Prior to his embarkment to northern Germany, Gustavus urged the Swedish nobility to follow the example of conquests set by their Gothic ancestors. Had he lived longer, it would have been likely that Gustavus had reached out for the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire.[8]
Politics

Gustav II Adolf's success in making Sweden one of the great powers of Europe, and perhaps the most important power in the Thirty Years' War after France and Spain, was due not only to his military brilliance, but also to important institutional reforms in Sweden's government. The chief among these reforms was the institution of the first Parish registrations, so that the central government could more efficiently tax and conscript its populace.
Gustav II Adolf's politics in the conquered territory of Estonia also show progressive tendencies. In 1631 he forced the nobility to grant the peasants greater autonomy.[9] He also encouraged education, opening a school in Tallinn in 1631, today known as Gustav Adolf High School (in Estonian: Gustav Adolfi Gümnaasium)[10] On 30 June 1632, Gustav II Adolf signed the Foundation Decree of Academia Dorpatensis in Estonia, today known as the University of Tartu.[11] With policies that supported the common people, the period of Swedish rule over Estonia initiated by Gustav II Adolf and continued by his successors, is popularly known by Estonians as the "good old Swedish times" (Estonian: vana hea Rootsi aeg).[12]
On August 27, 1617, he spoke before his coronation, and his words included these:
I had carefully learned to understand, about that experience which I could have upon things of rule, how fortune is failing or great, subject to such rule in common, so that otherwise I would have had scant reason to desire such a rule, had I not found myself obliged to it through God’s bidding and nature. – Now it was of my acquaintance, that inasmuch as God had let me be born a prince, such as I then am born, then my good and my destruction were knotted into one with the common good; for every reason then, it was now my promise that I should take great pains about their well-being and good governance and management, and thereabout bear close concern.[13]