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210 HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. [1611—
CHAPTER XV.
GUSTAVUS n. ADOLPHUS. HIS INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
EDUCATION OP THE KING. HIS ACCESSION TO THE GOVERNMENT. CONDITION OF SWEDEN. STATE OP
PARTIES. VIEW OF THE SWEDISH CONSTITUTION IN THIS REIGN. ORDER OF PROCEEDING IN THE DIETS.
SUMMARY OF THEIR LEGISLATION. TAXATION AND CONSCRIPTION, REVENUE AND RESOURCES OF THE
GOVERNMENT FOR THE CONDUCT OF WAR. INDUSTRY AND TRAPE. NEW SUPREME COURT. CHURCH
GOVERNJIENT AND EDUCATION.
A. D. 1611—1C32.
" King Gustavus the Great, and the second of that
name, called at his baptism Gustavus Adolphus,"
says a contemporary account *,
" was born in the
castle of Stockhi)lm, the 9th of December, 1594.
His father was Charles, at this time prince heredi-
tary of the realm of Sweden, duke of Sutherman-
land, Nerike and Vermeland, afterward king of
Sweden, of his name the ninth. His mother was
Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Sleswick-
Holstein, and granddaughter of king Frederic I. of
Denmark; on her mother’s side of the family of the
Landgrave of Hesse, by Christina, daughter of
Philip the magnanimous. In his childhood fell out
that domestic feud, wherein the said noble duke
Charles and the estates of the realm were arrayed
on the one part, king Sigismund and his adherents
on the other. The young prince accompanied his
father and mother in the year 1600 to Livonia,
and went with them the following year, late in
autumn, from Reval to Finland. Then it came to
pass, that when towards evening the duke with his
ship came near the haven, it froze so hard in the
night, that he was obliged at morning to walk with
his train to land over the ice, and so passed through
Finland to Sweden.
" To be the prince’s tutor and chamberlain
master John Skytte and Otto von Mbrner were
appointed. The latter was marshal to king Charles
IX,, a Brandenburg nobleman, well ti-avelled, and
of cultivated mind. Master John Skytte’ had re-
turned home after nine years’ sojourn in foreign
parts, and sat in the state chancery as secretary,
having shortly before concluded the boundary
treaty with Denmark. These instructed the young
pi’ince in all that was needful for a king, and
Skyttd especially in the Latin language, in the
history and the laws of Sweden. As his lord
father was a strict ruler and a martial prince, his
lady mother (fair in form and stature) lofty in
spirit and heart, so he was reared severely, and held
to labour, virtue, and manhood.
" Betimes in his early youth, but particularly
after he had reached his tenth year, he was moi-e
and more permitted by his lord father, as he grew
up, to attend the general deliberations and hear
what passed. So he was obliged alway to be pre-
sent at audiences to embassies, and was at last
5 Critical and Historical Memoirs (Kritiskaoch Historiska
HancUingar), edited by E. E. (Eric Ekholm), Stock. 1760, p. 9;
and somewhat more fully in the Memoirs for the History
of Scandinavia (Handlingar till Skandinaviens Historia),
ii. 91.
8
According to statements in the Scandinavian Memoirs,
viii. 38, the king also knew Greek. It is there said,
" Of
charged by his lord father to make answer to them,
in order thus to accustom him to weighty affairs,
and their treatment. Because the time was full of
warlike turmoils, there was assiduous resort to the
king’s court, especially by officers, not only Swedes,
but also Germans, French, English, Scots, Nether-
landers, and some Italians and Spaniards, who,
after the twelve years’ truce just then concluded by
the Netherlanders with Spain, sought their fortune
in Sweden. These often waited upon the young
prince, by the will and order of his lord father ;
and their discourse touching the wars waged by
other nations, battles, sieges, and discipline both by
land and sea, as well as ships and navigation, did so
arouse and encourage the mind of the young prince,
by nature already inclined thereto, that he spent
almost every day in putting questions concerning
what had befallen at one place and another in the
wai-s. Besides, he acquired in his youthful years no
little insight into the science of war, especially into
the mode and means how a regular war, well
ordered, and suited to the circumstances of Sweden,
•was to be waged, having the character and rules of
Maurice prince of Orange as a pattern before his
ej’es. By the intercourse and converse of the
above-mentioned gentlemen, in which every one
told the most glorious acts of his own nation, the
young lord was enkindled to do like others, and if
possible to excel them.
"^^In his youthful years he gained also a complete
and ready knowledge of many foreign languages, so
that he spoke Latin ", German, Dutch, French, and
Italian, as purely as a native, and besides had some
foretaste of the Russian and Polish tongue.
" When he had attained his fifteenth year, his
lord father made him grand prince of Finland, and
duke of Estlaud and Westmanland, and presently
bestowed upon him the town of Westeras with a
good portion of Westmanland, over which the
prince set master John Skytte to be governor."
Such is the account of Axel Oxenstierna, who
well deserves to have the first word concerning his
royal friend.
King Charles IX. was a tender and careful
father. " Fear God before all," is the injunction
of his own monitory notes for his son Gustavus
Xenophon, whom he loved best to read in Greek, his majesty
said that he knew of no vviiter better than Xenophon for a
true military historian (militise historicus)." It is added,
that for some years after he mounted the throne, he con-
tinued his studies for his profit with his tutor, master John
Skytte.
"
Every day he devoted at least one hour or another
to reading, preferring to all others the works of Grotius,
especially his treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis."
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