Gustavus Adolphus the Great

[lonewolf371]

If his march on Moscow failed then he wasn't undefeated, was he?

Not trying to sound like a jerk, just have a hard time believing he was undefeated.

Well, in this fashion you'd have to count Alexander as defeated, too. His army mutinied as he was attempting to conquer the Nanda (or was it the Maurya?) Empire.

As for undefeated generals, I heard that Wu Qi, from China's Warring States Period, was undefeated.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

The thirty years war was absolutely insane.

I believe it was Maurya after his "conquest" of King Porus.

[Oleander Ardens]

Gustavus adopted many tactical and technical innovations from abroad, especially from the Dutch. Small linear infantry formations, extensive drills for rapid fire and many other aspects of his army were already well known at his time. However as a King he was able to marshal the ressources of his land into building a solid army with excellent training and equipment, fine discipline and great tactical skill. Good logistics and regular pay kept his men marching.

So he had time and ressources to build an army into a mighty tool wielded by his great skill as commander. I think his successes were due to this synergies of state and army, tactical innovations and strategic skill.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

That too, yes. But mainly that I prefer to discuss Caeser and the rest with Org members, not with my grocer. I am afraid some of you have far too lofty ideas about historical knowledge among the general public. Many may somehow recognize the name Caesar, for instance, but if asked to specify will describe him as the Egyptian emperor who killed Jesus.

LOL.

You're exagerating a touch, of course, since most of the Western world at least would connect him with Rome, but you are quite correct as to the level of "fuzziness" most have in their knowledge of history. If it will not get them laid or paid, many will fast track the bit of knowledge in question into the recycle bin and use that grey matter for something more important.

[Strike For The South]

Caesar and Rommel are known to you, but not to my grocer. Then again he's more knowledgeable on vegetables than most Org members, know what I'm saying?

As a grocer I take offense

[Alexanderofmacedon]

LOL.

You're exagerating a touch, of course, since most of the Western world at least would connect him with Rome, but you are quite correct as to the level of "fuzziness" most have in their knowledge of history. If it will not get them laid or paid, many will fast track the bit of knowledge in question into the recycle bin and use that grey matter for something more important.

And that is the shame of society.

About Gustavus. How about making alliances with Catholic French cardinals against the HRE/AH? First signs that the state's importance outweighed the religion (a common theme for wars of the time).

[KarlXII]

And that is the shame of society.

About Gustavus. How about making alliances with Catholic French cardinals against the HRE/AH? First signs that the state's importance outweighed the religion (a common theme for wars of the time).

Problem there.

[Owen Glyndwr]

John Carl Chodkiewicz was undefeated. For me Gustavus was great .... infantry general. People on west are talking about his great cavarly but it was infantry that made him famous. We have to remember that since his changes into swedish army (whole unit shot same time) swedish tactic was being used up to mid of XIX century.

That's what I remember him for. Gustavus was significant because he ended the centuries long dominance of the Spanish invented turcio formation, replacing it with a more mobile and flexible infantry force.

That is if I recall correctly.

[Megas Methuselah]

Having recently wrote an essay on Gustavus Adolphus Magnus and the Swedish military of his time, I think I might add in a few more points, amongst many others:

-his reformation of the Swedish native forces, modernizing it into Europe's first national standing army of conscripts
-his spectacular use (and possibly invention) of salvo-fire amongst his field artillery pieces and musketeers, a shock tactic designed to replaced the push of pike
-many other achievements, not solely in military matters, which helped him receive the epither "The Great," the only honour of its sort gifted to any Swedish monarch to date

I'm not Swedish, so I'm less biased. He was a good guy...

[General Appo]

I am Swedish, so I guess I´m biased. No matter how great a general and "good guy" he was, one important thing remains to be said. He ruined Sweden. Sure, he conquered a lot of land and made us famous and important, but he ruined Sweden´s "economy" as it was back then. His endless war emptied many towns and villages of young men leading to more and more people moving to the cities were overpopulation and extremely bad sanitation became a huge problem, yet Gustavus never even attempted to do anything about this.
He basically set back Sweden´s economical and social progress by decades.

Not saying that he wasn´t great at what he did, nor that the German and Polish ports didn´t make the crown any richer, but most of that money went to funding even more war anyway, like that big ship that sunk on its maiden voyage.
He (or actually Oxenstierna and co) did do some good work with Riksbanken and the goverment reforms, but overall I wouldn´t say he was really that great for Sweden.

[Megas Methuselah]

His endless war emptied many towns and villages of young men leading to more and more people moving to the cities were overpopulation and extremely bad sanitation became a huge problem, yet Gustavus never even attempted to do anything about this.

Acceptable loss.

[General Appo]

Ummm...not. Might just be me, but I think the well being of ones citizens should go above ones own personal dreams of glory. Not saying anyone else back then was different, but still.

[Megas Methuselah]

Humans are a renewable resource.

[General Appo]

*shots Meth in the head and waits for new guy to pop up*

[Martok]

Come now, gentlemen. If you two are gonna flirt with each other, keep it in the EB Tavern.


But anyway....


Regardless of what effects -- positive or negative -- he had Sweden's economic & social infrastructure, it's undeniable that GA put his country on the map in a way no other Swedish monarch had done previously. My question is this: Ultimately, what legacy (good or bad) did he leave behind? What was his true impact, both inside Sweden's borders and without?

[Knight of the Rose]

Well, I don't know if you're hinting to socio-economics or diplomatic stance og millitary development?

Most of these points have already been covered, but the most important in my book are the limitations of catholic influence in germany. If Gustav hadn't intervened all of germany, and perhaps even more of europe would have become catholic. Keeping north germany lutheran protestant drew lines of thought that can still be seen in europe today. Some historians claims this is very important, others point to a host of other factors. It's complicated, as they say...

And Gen. Appo, I think I read somewhere that the number of peasants drafted in sweden compared to the population was the highest in the world. Something like 1 in 4 males nationwide. Does anybody have any info on that?

/KotR

[General Appo]

Can´t bring up any source right now, no, but that does sound about right compared to what I´ve read.

[Megas Methuselah]

Yeah, that sounds believable. The number of conscripted peasants was insane. Glorious, even.

[nokhor]

Yeah, but who isn't? To the best of my knowledge, Alexander is the only "Great General" who can make the claim of never having lost a battle in which he personally commanded.

alexander was routed by ariobarzanes at the persian gate.

http://www.livius.org/ap-ark/ariobar...barzanes2.html

[Knight of the Rose]

Even if the article is to be belived, it merely states that Alexander was ambushed at the gate and slaughtered the persians on the following day. What a humiliating defeat?

/KotR

[nokhor]

alexander did not defeat them the following day. He waited 30 days before he attempted another assault, in which he was victorious. The macedonians abandoned their casualties during the first battle, something that hellenic armies never did, unless they had been thoroughly defeated. the macedonians lost platoons at a time from the projectile bombardment of the persians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Persian_Gate

[Watchman]

Jeez, stick to the pikes and muskets guys...

Anyway, old GA is wont to get credit for stuff he didn't really do, and not get it for stuff he *did*. For example he tends to get hailed as some sort of military genius, which is untrue; he just put together stuff that worked, most of it picked up from some foreign lad or another, particularly for the rather meager resources he had at his disposal. (And tried a fair few things that *didn't* work, like the creative but inherently flawed leather cannon.) Or the bit about "national" armies. Bah. The damn French had more of one already in the 1500s, their backbone formations being manned by, well, Frenchmen. And Thirty Years' War Swedish field armies were almost all foreign mercenaries (Germans, mostly), these being preferred for combat duty; the hapless peasant conscripts from the home country were mainly used for garrison duties, being cheap and readily available. (The "native" combat units consisted of paid volunteers - particularly the cavalry drew heavily on a sort of quasi-feudal "tax breaks in exchange of an armed horseman" arrangement.)

And most people fail to appreciate the importance of his assorted adminstrative, economical and political reforms had; the man basically set rolling the developement that resulted in one of the first examples of a centrally adminstered unitary state in the modern sense.

Then again, that latter was pretty much something he *had* to do if he was to get anything ambitious done with the piss-poor backwater little kingdom he inherited. Developing the beginnings of a well-run, responsive modern state bureaucracy allowed the realm to make most out of what it had (chiefly, extract taxes and manpower from the populace) and "punch above its weight" as it were. ('Course, the Swedish Great Power burned itself out in under a century but...)

This is not to say that Gustavus didn't get stuff changed. Far from it. But he was more the guy who first put a number of ideas that had been bouncing around for a while already together into a cohesive whole, rather than an inventor. His infantry formations drew quite a bit on the Dutch; his cavalry tactics, the dire necessity of having to fight the quite formidable Polish and Lithuanian lancers (the idea of using the pistol as a cavalry shock weapon - pistolade is one term for it - wasn't anything new though; it had already been used to good effect in the French Wars of Religion in the previous century). Ditto for the inclusion of organic regimental artillery to improve the firepower of the infantry blocks.

His newfangled tactics did come as bit of a shock to the German belligerents, although they'd themselves been slowly moving in some of the same directions anyway. They were duly impressed, and promptly copied the whole lot thus more or less negating any "systemic" advantage the Swedish armies had initially enjoyed. At Lützen already - the second Swedish year into the war - both sides were already using nigh identical techniques, and the whole thing was duly more or less a bloody draw which the Swedes won mainly by default, having been slower to leave the field...
That's the problem with an advantage derived from using existing technologies in a new manner - there's nothing keeping the other guy from bluntly copy-pasting them. (Which is why anyone with delusions of military grandeur keeps pouring megabucks into cutting-edge deathware these days; hard to match it if you plain can't afford to...)

[Brandy Blue]

I'm not trying to refute anything you said, Watchman. Sounds pretty convincing to me. But can the greatness of a military leader really be summed up by listing what he did and didn't do? The impression I got is that GA's sucess was as much because of who he was as what he did. I find it hard to believe that mercinaries from a war from hell responded to all that scripture quoting and kneeling on battle fields, but they seem to have sensed his faith and greatness of soul and responded to it ... or is that just myth?

Anyway, it seems to me that all the really great generals of history were more than just extra clever, which is why they call 'em Alexander the Great instead of Alexander the Smart. In one way or another the great generals had some inner quality which their troops could respond to ... or is that just myth too?

[Watchman]

Usually files under "charisma" and/or "success", AFAIK. Although in GA's case I imagine playing the Protestant card - and I don't doubt that there was real faith behind it too; religion was *very* Serious Business those days - worked rather well among the German Protestant audience.

Hell, he was being hailed as a damn saint and a prophesised saviour...

Then he stumbled into a squadron of Imperial cuirassieurs in the smoke of Lützen and kind of embarassingly died. Ah well, at least that helped preserve his image since he didn't end up presiding over the round sixteen further grimy, cynical and pitiless years of the war. (One of the great ironies of which was the thorough Swedish razing of Bohemia, the origin of the Protestant rising, late to the conflict...)

[Brandy Blue]

Hmm ... giving it a couple of names and filing it is all very well, but it doesn't really explain it, or even take it adequately into account.

As for the Protestant card ... very true, but there have been lots of militiary leaders with a religious faith in history. Not all of them get hailed as saints by a long shot. He was probably a remarkable individual to gain such a reputation, even after we take into account the propaganda angle and the human need ffor a hero, not to mention glossed over faults. (His mistress and illegitimate son don't quite fit the Protestant saint picture, do they?)

Seems to me that there is always something in war that cannot be counted or quantified for the simple reason that we don't really understand human nature. No wonder you want to file it. Thats all we can do. Except maybe pull it out of the file now and then, marvel at it, and perhaps even draw some inspiration from it. How valuable that is cannot be counted or quantified either, but I suspect it does us more good than any amount of analysis of 30 year war tactics, economics, etc.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Problem there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu

[Watchman]

Given that the French had never had much issue about allying with the Ottomans to outflank the Hapsburgs... (and conversely the Hapsburgs cheerfully allied with the Persians to outflank the Ottomans...)
Realpolitik.

It incidentally occurs to me that this thread's title is quite possibly the first time ever I've seen the moniker "the Great" tagged onto ole Gustavus II Adolphus... which isn't really surprising, as his achievements weren't really those rulers generally earned the title with.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

He's one of my heroes .

I don't know how much of a Leader he was when it came to ruling nations, but fighing wise, he was a genius in my opinion.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Given that the French had never had much issue about allying with the Ottomans to outflank the Hapsburgs... (and conversely the Hapsburgs cheerfully allied with the Persians to outflank the Ottomans...)
Realpolitik.

It incidentally occurs to me that this thread's title is quite possibly the first time ever I've seen the moniker "the Great" tagged onto ole Gustavus II Adolphus... which isn't really surprising, as his achievements weren't really those rulers generally earned the title with.

Yeah the book I'm looking at doesn't mention "the Great" as a title.

Realpolitik, exactly.

[KarlXII]

Yeah the book I'm looking at doesn't mention "the Great" as a title.

Swedish Parliament gave the distinction in 1634.