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164 A History of Sweden
attendants tried to help him onto another horse. But
according to reports, the king was then surrounded by
enemy troopers, who asked who the wounded man was,
and when Gustavus answered, "I am the king of Swed-
en," one of them fired a shot through his head.
The Swedish forces had been driven back. But when
they saw the king’s horse, bloodstained and with an
empty saddle, running wildly, a terrible foreboding
seized them all : "The king has fallen/’ they all burned
with a desire to rush forward and avenge his death*
Their center was largely cut down, yet Wallenstein
was put to rout. The Swedes were masters of the field,
but darkness prevented a pursuit. The victory was
thus not quite complete, for the victors could not scat-
ter and cut down the enemy. And the death of the
great king was an irreparable loss.
AnJ^tinuitejff.. Gustavus AdolpJms. JEallen was
Sweden’s greatest king, fallen the greatest son of the
North. As a statesman he had the gift of genius to
survey the world and to judge of the proper time to
act. The world’s greatest military genius, Napoleon I,
reckoned Gustavus Adolphus as one of the greatest
commanders of all time, and as one who had trans-
formed the art of war. But that is not all. There was
something out of the ordinary in everything that he
did. His chief greatness lies in the fact that he devoted
his genius to a great and noble end : to secure religious
freedom to a people oppressed and threatened with its
lossVHis warm human sympathy, his strong and noble
will equaled his keen, penetrating intellect. His warm
patriotism he showed in his deeds and expressed in
words to Axel Oxenstiern: "The majesty of the state
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