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Gustavus Adolyhus 145
CHAPTER IX
REIGN OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 1611-1632
A. INTRODUCTION
His Early Problems were a war with Russia, one
with Denmark, which was still stronger than Sweden,
and a threatened war with Poland, then one of Europe’s
most extensive kingdoms. The country thus confronted
was exhausted by domestic and foreign conflicts and
ruled by a youth scarce seventeen years of age.
His Training and Attainments. But the youth had
matured and toughened through plain and simple liv-
ing. One did not learn effeminacy at a court where the
king forbade the court people to bone the herring,
and where the queen is said to have measured out the
thread to the court ladies. When Gustavus was six
years old, his father took him in midwinter on a jour-
ney around the Gulf of Bothnia and through Finland.
It has been said that Charles IX, like the eagle, "early
drove the young out of the nest to learn to fly."
At the age of thirteen Gustavus Adolphus was in-
trusted with receiving ambassadors from other lands,
and surprised them not a little when he conversed with
them in their own language, or at least showed them
that he understood it, no matter what country in Eu-
rope they came from. Latin, which was still the lan-
guage of culture, he learned to speak and write fluent-
ly at an early age. More and more he assisted his fa-
ther in the affairs of state. In the Danish war he took
his first lesson as a commander.
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